Dr. Stephen Meyer

We don't know about them.

We're positing them.

But if there are other universes that are separate from our universe, what happens in those other universes has no effect on what happens in this universe.

including those other universes would have no effect on whatever process it was that set the fine-tuning parameters in this universe.

So simply positing other universes doesn't solve the problem.

But in virtue of that, multiverse advocates have essentially recognized that, and they've proposed instead universe-generating mechanisms so that you can

think of our universe as the lucky winner of a giant cosmic lottery where there's an underlying process that's spitting out universes.

So there's a kind of connection to a common cause.

And so that would potentially work, but the problem there is that those universe-generating mechanisms, some based on something called string theory, others based on something called inflationary cosmology, those universe-generating mechanisms themselves turn out, even in theory,

to be finely tuned, even in theory to have a- To be able to generate.

To generate new universes, the universe generating mechanisms have to be finely tuned themselves.

And so no one has been able to get around this.

And so what it shows is that the fine tuning can be explained by positing other universes,

if you posit an underlying universe generating mechanism, but those mechanisms themselves have to be exquisitely finely tuned, and so you're right back to where you started, which is unexplained fine tuning.

And yet, we know in our experience that finely tuned systems, think of a radio dial, think of a French recipe, think of an internal combustion engine, finely tuned systems where a lot of parameters have to fall within narrow tolerances to achieve a significant outcome,

Those systems always are the product of intelligence, of a mind.

So since the multiverse hasn't gotten rid of ultimate fine-tuning, I think you're right back to where you started, which is a very strong indicator of a fine-tuner of a prior intelligence.

Well, there are two questions embedded in that, and they're both good.

The first having to do with natural laws, that there's something mysterious about the regularities of nature themselves.

And Newton and other early scientists thought they were a mode of divine action.