I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOUR HIGH SCHOOL...:

Science's Alternative to an Intelligent Creator: the Multiverse Theory: Our universe is perfectly tailored for life. That may be the work of God or the result of our universe being one of many. (Tim Folger, November 10, 2008, Discver)

Physicists don’t like coincidences. They like even less the notion that life is somehow central to the universe, and yet recent discoveries are forcing them to confront that very idea. Life, it seems, is not an incidental component of the universe, burped up out of a random chemical brew on a lonely planet to endure for a few fleeting ticks of the cosmic clock. In some strange sense, it appears that we are not adapted to the universe; the universe is adapted to us.

Call it a fluke, a mystery, a miracle. Or call it the biggest problem in physics. Short of invoking a benevolent creator, many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multi­verse. Most of those universes are barren, but some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life.

The idea is controversial. Critics say it doesn’t even qualify as a scientific theory because the existence of other universes cannot be proved or disproved. Advocates argue that, like it or not, the multiverse may well be the only viable non­religious explanation for what is often called the “fine-tuning problem”—the baffling observation that the laws of the universe seem custom-tailored to favor the emergence of life.

...and I've a notoriously bad memory, but I'm almost certain that when they taught us the Scientific Method it didn't go like this: when every observation and experiment points towards one conclusion, but you don't like it, just make up an obviously bogus alternative and chant it to yourself until you come to believe it.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 20, 2008 8:10 PM