A quick question and a couple minor comments:
1? On what criteria does Hawking say the actual universe was selected from
the perhaps infinitely many possible universes? Is it just random, or does
he claim there's some physical law that resulted in a life-friendly universe
being formed?
2. I'm not sure if the many-worlds hypothesizers claim that there are
literally infinitely many universes. It depends on their views on how many
quantum possibilities there are. It's a huge, huge, huge number that grows
exponentially at every moment, but I don't know if they'd say it's precisely
infinite.
3. On the many-worlds interpretations that I'm vaguely familiar with, every
universe branches off with every quantum possibility, so it's not a question
of when this universe popped up -- this "set of universes", the set of
universes starting with this universe at time t, is growing constantly. We
can simply stipulate that this universe appeared at time t, since a new
universe appears at -every- time t. It's more a matter of picking out which
universe we're talking about, since there are so many. It's hard even to
talk about in ordinary language, since in the course of writing one
sentence, indefinitely many universes have branched off with every
keystroke.
--John
> -----Original Message-----
> From: evolution-owner@udomo2.calvin.edu
> [mailto:evolution-owner@udomo2.calvin.edu]On Behalf Of Russell Cannon
> Sent: Monday, January 12, 1998 9:17 PM
> To: evolution@calvin.edu
> Subject: RE: Big crunch idea on universe exploded
>
>
> Stephen Jones reported the news about the collapse of the closed
> universe theory by quoting the following story (abridged by me) from the
> West Austrailian ?newspaper?:
>
> > Big crunch idea on universe exploded
> >
> > WASHINGTON
> >
> > Research by US astronomers has debunked the "collapsing universe"
> > theory in favour of the belief that the universe will continue
> > expanding forever
> >
> > THE "big bang" will not be followed by the "big crunch". That's the
> > conclusion of five teams of astronomers who used different
> > techniques to study the future of the universe.
> >
> <snip>
>
> Incidentally, this was the top story on CNN a couple of days ago.
>
> John Rylander replied:
>
> > Just as background, probably the preferred way to avoid the issue of
> design
> > now is adopt the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, in
> which
> > (as I understand it, though there are probably variations) every
> quantum
> > possibility is actualized in individual spatio-temporally disconnected
>
> > universes. So every femtosecond, an unimaginably large quantity of
> > universes is coming into being, said quantity increasing exponentially
> with
> > each passing femtosecond.
> >
> > This lets theoreticians avoid, e.g., the quantum measurement problem,
> and
> > some other aspects of quantum weirdness.
> >
> > Of course, it does pay a rather enormous price for this. Most
> physicists
> > find this to be truly egregious, a simple theory with an
> extraordinarily
> > bloated ontology (talk about needlessly multiplying hypothetical
> entities!),
> > but it's one way to avoid design, in theory at least.
>
> Remember, the design answer is automatically excluded from
> consideration. Consequently, only naturalistic answers to ultimate
> origin questions nead apply. As the situation becomes more desperate
> for the materialist, more and more bizarre proposals will be trotted
> out. Materialists will never concede the need for a designer even if
> all the evidence comes out for it. If we ever do reach that point, the
> cosmologists will drop the origin of the univese question the same way
> evolutionary biologists tend to ignore the question of the first origin
> of life. Then we will all go on our merry way pretending that although
> none of the theories ultimately work, we know we got here naturally.
> Or, maybe they will simply declare that an infinite number of universes
> probably exist and leave it at that. This will solve their problem and
> Darwin's at the same time.
>
> Perhaps the answer is to split origin issues off from the basic
> sciences. Maybe they should fall entirely into the domain of
> philosophy. One thing is certain, however, the way evolution is taught
> in schools ought to change. I don't mean that they should start
> teaching creation paradigms beside the natural one. I mean they should
> quit teaching children the certainty of naturalistic materialism as the
> one and only obvious explanation that satisfies all the evidence. They
> should teach the difference between the Special and General Theories of
> Evolution and explain that the General Theory falls beyond the domain of
> pure science.
>
> I live in the great American state of Alabama where there is an ongoing
> effort to introduce intellectual honesty concerning evolution and the
> origin of life into classroom curriculum. Don't believe the media which
> has been lying about the intentions of the government here in
> Montgomery. They are not trying to introduce Creationism as an
> alternate scientific theory; they are simply trying to correct the
> errors of the existing science programs.
>
> Public school science textbooks, however, are the sacred ground of the
> materialist and cannot be changed no matter what evidence stacks up. I
> have found that as the evidence mounts, the depth of information
> provided in textbooks supporting evolutionary claims diminishes.
> Eventually we will get to the point--if we are not already there--where
> they will simply teach that everything came about naturally without
> offering the necessary evidence to support the claim.
>
> The first multiple universes theory was Stephen Hawking's proposal that
> an infinite number of possibilities were tested before 1x10^-42 seconds
> (0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds) after the Big
> Bang and finally resulted in the one that contained life. This is no
> better than before because according to this theory, only one actual
> universe formed. This means that only one roll of the dice rally hit
> the table--so to speak--and actually resulted in a bonifide chance for
> life. No matter how long of a hesitation occurred before Planck Time,
> only one universe formed and only one opportunity for Darwin to work his
> magic. The other theory--the one described by John above--is even more
> audacious. In it, we actually have an infinite number of universes
> forming--more all the time--and we cannot even be sure where in the
> sequence ours popped up. I think we should just declare the puzzle
> solved and go home ;-).
>
> Russ
> Russell T. Cannon
> rcannon@usa.net
>
>