Particular facts from general laws.

[Notvacka]

The Multiverse bears no conviction about purpose in any sense. It is designed to answer particular questions about hypothetical situations in QM.

There are severeal different notions of multiple universes, designed to answer different questions. The most popular is probably the many worlds interpretation of quantum uncertainty, which suggests that everything that could possibly happen (in our universe) does indeed happen in some alternate universe. (Our natural laws still apply everywhere, though.)

The cosmological multiverse discussed in this thread is even more "multi", suggesting that every possible configuration of natural laws and constants are real in some alternate universe. Useful for explaining the seemingly teleological aspects of our universe, without resorting to teleology. (Basically, our universe is what it is, because out of every possible universe, one must be.) The conviction about purpose expressed in this speculation, is the conviction that there is no purpose.

God is a speculation based on a range of assumptions, not exclusively concerned with humans existing for a reason.

I guess that different notions of God can be based on any number of assumptions. However, what's discussed here is essentially teleology. Any conscious creator, creating the universe for any deliberate purpose, would fit the bill. And I do believe that most ideas about God stem from a wish for our existence to have some ultimate purpose.

[chaz wyman]

The Multiverse bears no conviction about purpose in any sense. It is designed to answer particular questions about hypothetical situations in QM.

There are severeal different notions of multiple universes, designed to answer different questions.

Really - name one!

The most popular is probably the many worlds interpretation of quantum uncertainty, which suggests that everything that could possibly happen (in our universe) does indeed happen in some alternate universe. (Our natural laws still apply everywhere, though.)

This is the one I was talking about and bears no conviction about purpose exactly as I said.

The cosmological multiverse discussed in this thread is even more "multi", suggesting that every possible configuration of natural laws and constants are real in some alternate universe. Useful for explaining the seemingly teleological aspects of our universe, without resorting to teleology. (Basically, our universe is what it is, because out of every possible universe, one must be.) The conviction about purpose expressed in this speculation, is the conviction that there is no purpose.
No, it explains nothing whatever.

God is a speculation based on a range of assumptions, not exclusively concerned with humans existing for a reason.

I guess that different notions of God can be based on any number of assumptions. However, what's discussed here is essentially teleology. Any conscious creator, creating the universe for any deliberate purpose, would fit the bill. And I do believe that most ideas about God stem from a wish for our existence to have some ultimate purpose.

A bit far fetched is it not?

[Notvacka]

The cosmological multiverse discussed in this thread is even more "multi", suggesting that every possible configuration of natural laws and constants are real in some alternate universe. Useful for explaining the seemingly teleological aspects of our universe, without resorting to teleology. (Basically, our universe is what it is, because out of every possible universe, one must be.) The conviction about purpose expressed in this speculation, is the conviction that there is no purpose.

No, it explains nothing whatever.

Maybe you say that because you don't really care for an explanation? At least not one that comes in the shape of a metaphysical speculation?

I guess that different notions of God can be based on any number of assumptions. However, what's discussed here is essentially teleology. Any conscious creator, creating the universe for any deliberate purpose, would fit the bill. And I do believe that most ideas about God stem from a wish for our existence to have some ultimate purpose.

A bit far fetched is it not?

Far fetched? God or the multiverse? Sure, they both are. If you can fetch something closer by, I would like to know about it.

[chaz wyman]

The cosmological multiverse discussed in this thread is even more "multi", suggesting that every possible configuration of natural laws and constants are real in some alternate universe. Useful for explaining the seemingly teleological aspects of our universe, without resorting to teleology. (Basically, our universe is what it is, because out of every possible universe, one must be.) The conviction about purpose expressed in this speculation, is the conviction that there is no purpose.

No, it explains nothing whatever.

Maybe you say that because you don't really care for an explanation? At least not one that comes in the shape of a metaphysical speculation?

I guess that different notions of God can be based on any number of assumptions. However, what's discussed here is essentially teleology. Any conscious creator, creating the universe for any deliberate purpose, would fit the bill. And I do believe that most ideas about God stem from a wish for our existence to have some ultimate purpose.

A bit far fetched is it not?

Far fetched? God or the multiverse? Sure, they both are. If you can fetch something closer by, I would like to know about it.

Religion: the school of easy answers.

[Notvacka]

Religion: the school of easy answers.

Well, as I said earlier in this thread: There is no way to know! There is no knowledge to be had!

You don't have an answer to the question discussed here, the one that Kuznetzova got backwards to begin with: How come there are natural laws in the first place?

You are welcome to dismiss both God and the multiverse as far fetched speculations or "easy" answers. But what do you offer instead?

[chaz wyman]

Religion: the school of easy answers.

Well, as I said earlier in this thread: There is no way to know! There is no knowledge to be had!

You don't have an answer to the question discussed here, the one that Kuznetzova got backwards to begin with: How come there are natural laws in the first place?

You are welcome to dismiss both God and the multiverse as far fetched speculations or "easy" answers. But what do you offer instead?

I offer a reflection that god is no answer, and the multiverse is a solution looking for a problem that does not exist.

[Kuznetzova]

Is this the Max Tegmark you are misquoting and taking out of context? http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9704009v2

The only postulate in this theory is that all structures that exist mathematically exist also physically, by which we mean that in those complex enough to contain self-aware substructures (SASs), these SASs will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically "real" world.

I just had a glance at wiki and I think this is the tee shirt guy, I didn't realise. Hey Max, I think the answer can't be printed because the tee shirt needs to be blank.

Like Max is going to be reading this

I think where Max Tagmark is right now intellectually, is a dark place. By "dark" I mean confusing an unenlightened. He is stumbling in the dark because he is trying to build a bridge over the gap between General Laws and Particular Facts. For a reason having to do with philosophical logic, it may be the case that no such bridge can be built. In all physical systems which change through time, all of their particulars are the result of the playing-out of laws. Some people in this thread are pretending like the universe is de novo considered a pointless stew of undirected uncorrelated random events, and that (somehow) after-the-fact, some laws are derived. That is backwards. Once physicists discover a new law, the law is considered to have retro-actively operated since the beginning of the universe.

When faced with an infinite regress of "explain the initial conditions!", Tegmark tried to abort the regress by proposing yet another law, namely that all structures that exist mathematically also exist physically. And lets not just point our philosophical finger at Tegmark alone. A very common explanation for fine-tuning of various constants of physics is a recourse to a multiverse. In particular, the tiny tiny value of the Cosmological Constant, is explained by physicists by simply declaring that we happen to live in that particular universe that has that value. No, they really do say that, and I can name two physicists off the top of my head who assert this with impunity.

"God" concepts should not be introduced into this discussion until we have reason to believe that people recoil from the subject matter on account of a pre-existing repugnance to a "God" concept. To some other people in this thread who has suggested that the source of asymmetries in the early universe are "unknowable": first I agree with that in principle. However, there are a number of logical items existing outside of the discussion of certainty and knowable-ness. Namely, there are logical constraints in the relationship of laws to particular facts.

[Kuznetzova]

Some here have suggested that the source of initial conditions in our universe are "un-knowable".

Here is a contrary stance,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf7BXwVeyWw