The Multiverse Myth
Also: "The Invisible Everywhere" Movie Reviews
Glorious Day, My Precious Fellow Traveler -
The Invisible Everywhere: Believing Is Seeing continues receiving glowing reviews. To God alone be the glory! Here are just three of them.
“I finally watched it last night and I LOVED IT! THANK YOU for such a meaningful and creative depiction of your journey, Michael, and the many ways [it] helped us to understand the glorious reality of God’s creation and who we are as His image-bearers. HALLELUJAH!” - Jacqueline G.
“Dr. G, I really enjoyed watching your movie. I was raised Roman Catholic and am still a practicing Christian and believe that science can lead to a stronger faith in God. Thanks for your insights and the ability to reconcile Christianity with modern science.” - Jay A.
“My husband Jim and I watched “The Invisible Everywhere: Believing is Seeing” and WOW!!!! We thought it was super interesting, insightful, and inspiring! You did such a fantastic job with presenting such a difficult and abstract topic. We learned so much, and a few days later, we went back to rewatch to absorb even more. BRAVO to you for using your talents to shed scientific light on a topic that everyone who is human needs to know about and explore!” - Donna D. R.
Multiverse Madness
If you’ve been to a movie theater, played a modern video game, or even walked down the toy aisle at your local store recently, you’ve undoubtedly come across one of the most hyped concepts of our modern era: The Multiverse Hypothesis.
From blockbuster superhero epics and Oscar-winning films to animated series and video games, today’s pop culture is in love with the idea that there are an infinite number of parallel universes - and quite possibly infinite versions of you living out every possible scenario. It’s a wildly entertaining concept that makes for great comic books, fantastic action figures … and, of course, enormous profits.
But while the Multiverse Hypothesis is being paraded around the public square as cutting-edge, established science, the truth is far less glamorous. In this week’s letter - at the risk of being branded a killjoy - I’ll pull back the curtain on why this idea was actually created, why it has utterly failed, and why its future is quite bleak.
I. Desperate Beginnings
The idea of multiple universes was conceived out of desperation by different physicists at different times for different reasons. At least two of them were the result of modern science coming face-to-face with the supernatural. (Another notable one, involving String Theory, will be the topic of a future letter.)
Running From Supernatural Weirdness
The first rigorous, mathematical argument for parallel universes appeared in the 1957 doctoral thesis of Hugh Everett III, a grad student at Princeton University. He proposed it as a solution to the vexing paradox in quantum mechanics called the “measurement problem.”
This problem is commonly illustrated by Schrödinger’s Cat, a hypothetical feline kept inside a closed box. According to the translogical laws of quantum mechanics the animal is both dead and alive at the same time - a vexing paradox, indeed.
Everett’s proposed solution - which came to be called the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics - is that many different versions of Schrodinger’s Cat exist in many different parallel universes. In one version the cat is alive and well; in another, dead as a doornail. In still other versions, the cat is in various states of well being.
Everett’s brainchild immediately tickled the public imagination. But as often happens in modern science, the MWI only made a weird situation even weirder.
Running from a Supernatural Creator
The most popularized version of the multiverse originated in the 1980s with Russian-American physicist Andrei Linde. He elaborated his idea in two published papers titled, “Chaotic Inflation” (1983) and “Eternal Chaotic Inflation”(1986).
Linde conceived the Multiverse Hypothesis to solve a crisis that to this day still plagues modern cosmology: our universe’s perfect vital signs. Please note, the vital signs aren’t nearly perfect, they’re 100% perfect!
By vital signs I mean all the numerical descriptors of the universe that tell us how it’s wired. They’re akin to your own vital signs, which doctors check to see how well or poorly you’re wired.
The vital signs of our universe - what we scientists call “fundamental constants of nature” (e.g., the strength of gravity, the mass of electrons, the expansion rate of the cosmos, the strong and weak nuclear forces) - have numerical values so utterly perfect it defies human comprehension. If the value of just one of these vital signs was off by a tiny, tiny bit our universe would be desolate: no stars, no planets, no life.
Put plainly, when we “doctors” check the universe’s vital signs, we discover it’s wired in a way that clearly argues against its being an accident. Against all odds our beloved universe appears to be deliberately tailormade for life.
For secularists, this is very bad news because it discredits the canonical atheist-materialist worldview. In order to save face they desperately need a way to explain away the miracle of our existence without invoking God.
Enter Linde’s Multiverse Hypothesis, which goes like this: If there are an infinite number of universes with randomly assigned laws of physics, then by pure, blind luck one of them is guaranteed to have the long string of perfect vital signs - like a long row of cherries on a slot machine. We just happen to live in the cosmos that by chance hit the jackpot.
II. History of Failure
Since the late 1950s scientists have eagerly sought ways to find ways to put meat on the bones of the various multiverse hypotheses, but so far they’ve failed. Here are two examples of their many failures.