05 January 2015

Short remarks on “Scientifically Proved Religion”

The WSJ published an article entitled “Science Proves Religion”, and Lawrence Krauss responded for it highlighting some of its scientific misinterpretations. But the real problem is that even an exact and flawless paper would be irrelevant about the existence or non-existence of God.
A strong form of Anthropic Principle (SAP) states that coincides which made possible life are too improbable to be an accident. So, continues the argument, it is not an accident, but our Universe is fine-tuned for our life. From here it is only a step to believe that if it is fine-tuned us, and it is a result of an intelligent entity’s creating action.
But there are problems with it.
One can interpret the multiverse hypothesis as a solution for SAP, since if we suppose that there are infinitely many universes, then we can lead back our Universe's fine-tuned features for a selection effect. According to this approach, we are simply lucky to find ourselves in a biofil universe, but there are many others without life.
But Robin Collins argues from a theistic point of view [The multiverse hypothesis: a theistic perspective. In: Universe or Multiverse, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007] that the supposed existence of multiverses does not rule out the existence of God. In case we are willing to believe in his ability to create a whole universe, then we can believe that he was able to create a multiverse (or anything else), as well.
Thus whatever we can dream up as an explanation based on natural processes, it is easy to put a question to the end of the chain of reasoning, and ask: “but who created it?” This is similar to the “God of the gasps” argument. What is more, it is impossible to find a situation where it wouldn’t be applicable. In other words: the statement that “it was created by a creator” is not bound to any physical phenomenon, observation, etc.
But since modern science is about reality, science and God does not have any relevance to each other.

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