A POSSIBLE MULTIVERSE DEFEATER

Several years ago I had a conversation with an intellectual new age neo-pagan pantheist kinda guy. (At the time he was naming his religion as Aquarian.) We had a discussion about the cosmological argument and fine-tuning. One of the defeaters that he raised was the idea of a multiverse. 

I mentioned the only defeater for the idea of a multiverse that I had heard: that there is no evidence for a multiverse. While this is necessarily true, I do not find it to be a very satisfying defeater. It does not really defeat the idea of a multiverse: it simply holds it at bay. Of course, it has also been noted that the idea of a multiverse only moves the problem back a step: What (or who) generated the multiverse?

Subsequent to that conversation, I began to think more about this idea of a multiverse. (My factory job at the time generally gave me lots of time to think!) And I came up with what I think is a very sound defeater. I have presented this idea to knowledgeable people several times but have only had one very vague rebuttal offered (and to my mind it was very unpersuasive and had some inherent problems).

At any rate, a multiverse (or infinite number of universes) does not solve the problem of the fine-tuning found in our universe. If there was, in fact, a natural process that generated universes, the problem would be:

1. Natural processes occur randomly or regularly--whenever the right conditions are met. 

2. In order for a natural multiverse generating process to replace a Creator, the means of multiverse generation would have to be eternal. Otherwise, the multiverse generator itself will need to have a cause. (And if the multiverse was not eternal and the cause of the multiverse generator was natural, this would lead to essentially the same problem as I am describing here anyways.)

3. If this multiverse generator were eternal, the result would be that an infinite number of universes would have been generated long before we got here. In fact, there would now have been an infinite number of universes generated in exactly the same coordinates as our own universe.

4. Therefore, the space that we inhabit would be filled with infinitely dense matter.

5. The space that we inhabit is clearly not filled with infinitely dense matter.

6. Therefore, if such a multiverse generator exists, it is not a natural ungoverned process. Rather it must be an intelligent mind who is able to plan and place universes. This demands a highly intelligent mind of an all-powerful being who has a will to do things according to a predetermined plan--in other words, God.

*RESOURCES ON THE FINE-TUNING ARGUMENT
*RESOURCES ON THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

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