It was a Universe and now a Multiverse!

It is amazing the way physicists speculate! We all know that we live in a universe containing within it millions of galaxies and billions of stars and know not how many planets revolving around the stars. This in itself is mind-boggling. Now some of the physicists have come up with the idea of multiverse, that is, many-verse or many universes. It is a very interesting concept alright. It is even more interesting to come to know that such a multiverse concept has been propounded mainly as an argument to prove that there is no God and that all these have come about by chance alone.

The argument for and against God has been waged in the West for quite some centuries now. In India, fortunately or unfortunately, we do not doubt the presence of an Almighty God, whether a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian or a Buddhist or a Jain. May be that is one advantage of being a poorer country. Here because of the deprivation and wants and needs in life, people depend on a God, who could miraculously provide for them, send rains on time, crop to grow and ripen on time and to be harvested and marketed well. At every stage everyone depends on God and His providence. In the economically richer countries, may be, there is no need for God, because man’s efforts have made everything available to him and there are really no wants, excepting to accumulate more and more wealth and materialistic objects. Atheism seems to thrive under such conditions. It becomes the job of the theists or the apologetic to prove that there is a God, who created this world and all the things that are in the world or the universe, as we see today.

One of the main arguments of the theists is the fine tuning that one observes in our universe. According to them, the fundamental constants of the galaxies, stars, planets, atoms and sub-atoms and particles in our universe are so finely tuned that even a hair breath of alteration in these constants will make life impossible on earth and the universe as we see it today. For example, if gravitational constant is varied 1 in 10 raised to the power of 60 parts, the universe, galaxies, stars and planets will not exist. The universe will either expand very fast or collapse within itself and we will not be there to speculating about its existence!

The expansion rate of the universe is known in cosmological constant and if this changes its values by 1 part in 10, raised to the power of 120 parts, it will make the universe to expand very fast and no stars will be formed and consequently no life could have been formed. Again mass and energy seem to have been evenly distributed and fine tuned to 1 part in 10 raised to the power of 10, raised to the power of 123. If this is altered even a bit, there is no possibility of life being developed and sustained on earth.

Such delicate balancing shows that there is a very narrow range available for permitting life on earth in this universe. These points are agreed to both by the atheist and theist physicists, but lead them to very different conclusions. For theists it points to a Designer, God, Almighty, who has designed the earth and calibrated the Universe to such a fine degree, to make possible the life He created on earth. It is not a matter of chance or blind force, but definitely an intelligent Designer who had orchestrated the whole thing.

The atheists come with a different explanation. To them this fine-tuned universe and the earth, have come about purely by chance. According to them, it is possible that in the millions and billions of the stars, it just happened that one planet orbiting around one star, our sun, happened to have all the necessities required to support life and life evolved. When others point out that such probabilities are remote, then they come out with even a grander scheme of things, calling it as multiverse, or many universes. Their hypothesis is that there must be a universe generator, from which many universes keep popping out. In that process of bubbling of many universes, somewhere, sometime it has happened that a finely tuned universe like us which is able to support a life system, popped up. Like a pack of cards, if one keeps dealing the cards enough time, eventually every hand will turn up. It is a probability that in a multiverse, a planet like earth could have come about purely as a chance.

This is almost like one lie leading to the other and finally one day the lie is detected to the dismay of the liar, for no further explanations could be given! To explain one universe, they speak about many universes or multiverse, and one leads to the other, that finally they are not able to explain anything satisfactorily. And there is no evidence as of today even to such a hypothesis. It is just a guess work. Moreover if many such universes were to be generated, where is the generator? Who made that? Who is operating that? It cannot be a blind force! Even if cards are being dealt with, someone must be shuffling the cards and if so, who is it? Isn’t that ‘someone’ called God?

Moreover we do not observe randomness and chaos in the universe. It is orderly, subject to specific scientifically verifiable constants and measures and laws of physics. Such a meticulously planned universe with a design definitely requires a Designer.

A multiverse! Hmm, sounds very far-fetched!