The Einstein Pool, a Christian science fiction novel by Jake Danger
Over the last few decades, physicists began noticing that a number of fundamental physical constants, such as the cosmological constant (and about two dozen others), all happened to fall within the very narrow range of values that allow for the development of intelligent life in the universe. For example, the ratio of the mass of the proton to the mass of the electron is 1,836.15267245 to 1, with a measurement error of about four parts per billion. If this ratio were only slightly less, protons would explode and atoms would be impossible. If it were slightly more, protons would implode and atoms would be impossible. The resulting atom-less universe would be unable to support the complexity necessary for intelligent life. There seems to be no particular reason for these 25 numbers to be "fine-tuned" to render the universe capable of supporting intelligent life, and the odds against it happening by chance are too immense for the human mind to imagine. Theists resolve this mystery by asserting the existence of a God who created the universe for the purpose of allowing intelligent life to arise.
Cosmologists, however, have a different idea. They assert the existence of a multiverse -- a great ensemble of a vast multitude of separate universes, each with their own fundamental constants that vary randomly from universe to universe. If you have enough universes, the argument goes, the appearance of at least one universe like ours is statistically inevitable.
A theist might object to the idea of a multiverse by asking why, of all possible universes, this particular universe is the one that got lucky? The answer, of course, is that since a universe such as ours is necessary to produce life that is intelligent enough to ask the question "Why here?", the answer could only be "Because if it hadn't happened here, we wouldn't be around to ask the question in the first place!" This reasoning is known as the Weak Anthropic Principle.
To explain by an analogy, if the odds against winning the California Lottery are 30 million to one, and John Doe buys the winning ticket, he might ask "Why did I win, instead of somebody else?" But from the point of view of the lottery administrator, the fact that John Doe won the California Lottery requires no explanation -- after all, somebody had to win, and if John Doe hadn't won, Mary Roe would have won and she'd by asking "Why me?" instead.
Critics of multiverse theory (including many cosmologists) assert that it is not even science at all. Since different universes would have to be causally disconnected, we could never observe them, and thus any multiverse theory, no matter how elegant, could never be more than a mathematical flight of fancy that qualifies as philosophy, not physics. What do you think, dear reader?
The Einstein Pool, a Christian science fiction novel by Jake Danger
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