Reddit mentions of The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

Ughhh, bashing on theoretical physics is such a tired game, and this article is as misrepresentative as ever.

The most egregious flaw is probably poisoning the well with the comparison to intelligent design. The problem with intelligent design is not merely that it's "untestable", it's that it's untestable even in principle, and most importantly, it's vacuous: the content of the proposal is "God did it", which is not an explanation.

More to the point, the way the author quotes related topics like string theory and their advocates in order to disparage them or say just enough to make them sound bad, while being otherwise uninformative.

In particular, he brings up the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics several times, conflating it with multiverse theories in general. This is mispresentative since it is (1) primarily an interpretation of a theory, not a theory itself, (2) particularly outlandish to a casual audience, who if anything have been conditioned to think Bohr's version to be reasonable, and (3) has nothing to do with most actual multiverse theories, which are not described, and except for one not even named. For a useful overview, see Brian Greene's The Hidden Reality.

All of this is intermingled with a lot of philosophy, mostly Popper, which I can't really comment on except that I've heard that Popper's views are not quite so dominant in academia as they are often portrayed in popular media, and thus shouldn't treated as the authoritative opinion on what constitutes science.

This is especially grating because some of these theories could very well make testable predictions about our own universe, in particular those relating to inflationary cosmology. This, of course, would undermine the author's attempts to throw everything related to "the multiverse" under the bus.

In any case, it's not possible to interpret the science with respect to the philosophy based on what the author has written.

TLDR: The issue is an important, but this article adds little of substance, and is actively misleading.

Below, I'll post something I actually wrote first, which is kind of tangential but addresses another way in which theoretical physics is often falsely framed as "unscientific".

Book: Brian Green's The Hidden Reality

Movie: (slightly older than the book, but an easy intro) The Elegant Universe

These might have too much mass appeal but:

The Big Bang -- I personally love this book.

The Hidden Reality

Anything by Michio Kaku.

>If you know as much about science as I hope, then explain how everything came out so perfect out of (insert atheist way of creation)!

I will refer you to 3 books for that one, but then I will explain why that is not a valid argument and then explain why god does not answer that question either.

First the books: the first two will explain the big bang and inflationary cosmology (this is actually what took over or heavily modified the big bang theory from its original form) they are both by Briane Greene and I highly recommend them if you are interested in physics at all (they are not about god) the fabric of the cosmos and The hidden reality. There are also NOVA specials you can watch from the Fabric of the cosmos and his earlier book the elegant universe though I do not remember if they cover the big bang or inflation. The third book is specifically about the argument you just put forward. It is The fallacy of fine tuning:why the universe is not designed for us by Victor Stenger.

The reason that the argument you made is fallacious involves logical fallacies. Now, I don't want to seem like I'm talking down to you at all (I'm not) but I'm not sure how familiar you are with the intricacies of logic. Basically every argument has a premise, logical steps, and a conclusion. The argument you made (that the universe is perfect) has three flaws.

1: False premise - The universe is not actually perfect, far from it in fact. The reason why we are accustomed to the universe as it is is due to evolution. We evolved to fit the universe, not the other way around. If you mean something specific like how could the constants have got to the exact values we have please read the hidden reality, it answers that question by explaining multiple instances of how the universe can be fractured into slightly variable universes. The god delusion also answers this question but from my experience most theists are not willing to read it.

2: False premise - The burden of proof is not on me to prove or explain anything. I don't know is a completely acceptable answer if I had no evidence to put forward (We do actually have evidence, see the three books). Saying that I don't know how the universe came about does not immediately cede the argument to god. God has to answer to the same standards of logic and evidence that I would require of my own pet hypothesis. Burden of proof was explain in analogy by [Russell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot "This is why our logo is riding in a teapot")

3: Logical fallacy - Argument from ignorance. I already explained this one a little but basically this is the part that says you cannot use what we both do not know as evidence. If we come to a cave, and you ask what is in the cave and I say that I don't know but I bet it's a dragon then I would be using our shared ignorance to try and put forward the idea of a dragon as the inhabitant of the cave (sorry this analogy is bad, I have a flu right now so I'm kind of worn down)

Now, the reason that god fails the logic test (before he fails the evidence test, which he also does) is that if you say that god created the universe then you have put a terminator on the infinite regression that is causality (there are some hypothetical reasons that causality could be violated before the universe but I am skeptical of many of them and it would take me too far off track to get into them). The problem here is why do you give god a break from needing a cause? If we both agreed that there must be a first cause, why the hell should we give it sentience, and intelligence, and supernatural powers? If we also put forward a first cause that did not have those things then we would have an explanation that used fewer assumptions (many fewer assumptions). One of the best logical tools is occam's razor, which says that when we have multiple competing hypothesis we remove the ones with the most assumptions. Now it is only a logical tool and does not guarantee we will be correct but it is still a good probability chooser (remember how I said science is about probabilities).

So anyways, if you read this far I really hope that your takeaway is at least to read the three books i recommended (they are complicated but very interesting). I would also ask that you read the FAQ and probably The God Delusion (as it covers more of the faux science arguments for god than God is Not Great).

This book by Brian Greene lays out the many multiverse theories, and how they may eventually be tested.