We continue with J. Warner Wallace’s analysis of multiverse theories in his new book God’s Crime Scene: A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe.

The second reason multiverse theories fail to explain the origin of fine tuning is that rather than explaining the origin of fine tuning, the multiverse theory requires fine tuning to first exist.

If there is a multiverse vacuum capable of such creative activity, it would be reasonable for us to ask how the physics of such an environment could be so fine-tuned to create a life-permitting universe. As Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne observed, any proposed multiverse mechanism “needs to have a certain form rather than innumerable possible other forms, and probably constants too that need fine-tuning in the narrow sense … if that diversity of universes is to result.” Eternal inflation, for example, requires a precise relationship between cosmological constants of gravity and the other forces of quantum physics. In other words, the vacuums proposed in multiverse models are equally fine-tuned.

Third, multiverse theories rely on speculative notions of time.

Theorists who propose a preexisting vacuum must account for the nature of time in this setting. All descriptions of this vacuum describe it as temporal (with bubble universes emerging or quantum events occurring over time). But the Standard Cosmological Model (as we described it in the prior chapter) indicates time, as we know it, began with our universe. Multiverse explanations must provide an account for the temporal nature of the vacuum lying at the core of their theory.

Fourth, multiverse theories result in absurdities.

Like string theory models, multiverse proposals result in a number of interesting (and disturbing) absurdities. If there are an infinite number of universes in the multiverse collection, and there exists a remote chance one of them could have a set of laws like ours (and a history similar to our own), we must accept (given the infinite size of the multiverse) an infinite number of universes resembling ours. In fact, if there’s a small chance any of these similar universes might have precisely the same history as our own (with someone exactly like you reading this book at this very moment), there are an infinite number of universes precisely the same as ours in every possible way.

The absurdity of this proposal has been noted by a number of physicists and philosophers. Multiverse models describe an ensemble of universes both identical and slightly different from our own. As Alan Guth admitted, “There is a universe where Elvis is still alive.” The incredulity of such a proposal seems a high price to pay to accommodate a theory yet unproven by the evidence. As Paul Davies said, “The very notion that there could be not just one, but an infinity of identical copies of you, leading identical lives (and infinitely many others leading similar but not identical lives) is deeply unsettling.”

Worse yet, if the multiverse model is true, we may not even be living in a “real” universe at all. If there is even a small chance our universe is simply a Matrix-like simulation (and this possibility certainly exists), the infinite number of universes assures there are also an infinite number of such “computer simulation” universes. While this probably seems absurd (and it ought to), it is the zany, inevitable consequence of multiverse theories.

While multiverse theories fail to explain fine tuning, one thing they concede is that the fine tuning in our universe must have been caused by something outside of our universe. There is nothing inside our universe that could have done the job, and this is a major concession. As Christian theists, we agree that something or Someone outside the universe is the cause of its fine tuning.