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Is the Universe Designed?

Is the Universe Designed?. Revd Dr Rodney Holder The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St Edmund’s College, Cambridge www.faraday-institute.org. Is the Universe Designed?. The Big Bang Specialness of the Big Bang: Cosmic Fine-Tuning Explanations: Why a Multiverse?

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Is the Universe Designed?

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  1. Is the Universe Designed? Revd Dr Rodney Holder The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St Edmund’s College, Cambridge www.faraday-institute.org

  2. Is the Universe Designed? • The Big Bang • Specialness of the Big Bang: Cosmic Fine-Tuning • Explanations: Why a Multiverse? • Problems for Multiverses

  3. The Big Bang

  4. The Big Bang • Predicted by Lemaître from Einstein’s equations • Extremely well-supported by evidence, especially: - Cosmic background radiation - Manufacture of light elements - More active galaxies at largest distances

  5. Specialness of the Big Bang • Initial conditions • Physical constants

  6. Paul Davies • ‘Like the porridge in the tale of Goldilocks and the three bears, the universe seems to be “just right” for life, in so many intriguing ways.’

  7. Examples of Fine-Tuning • Density at the beginning is right to 1 part in 1060 • Ratio of forces is just right for carbon and oxygen to be manufactured in stars • Cosmological constant is right to 1 part in 10120

  8. A superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. Sir Fred Hoyle

  9. Design by God? Explanations: Why a Multiverse?

  10. Is There Really Anything to Explain?

  11. What are the Alternative Explanations to Design? • Possible strategies for the atheist 1. Only 1 set of laws possible 2. A multiverse

  12. Problems with the atheist strategies • For 1: Why does the only self-consistent set of laws give rise to life? • For 2: Why this multiverse, which gives rise to at least one life-bearing universe, as opposed to another?

  13. How do physicists conceive of multiverses? • Quantum branching • Cyclic models • Different regions within a single over-arching space

  14. Problems for Multiverses • Physics speculative • Problem about infinities • Human identity • Hypothesis not simple • Lack of predictability • Fine-tuning still required • Amount of order in the universe • Fake universes

  15. Comparing the Explanations • Multiverse ▪ Complex ▪ Doesn’t explain why there should be life ▪ This universe looks too special

  16. Comparing the Explanations • God ▪ Simple ▪ Explains why there should be life ▪ Explains why the universe is so special

  17. Georges Lemaître • There were two ways of arriving at the truth. I decided to follow them both.

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