Steve Meyer on why a supposed multiverse is no answer to the extreme fine-tuning of our universe

Here’s an excerpt from Steve Meyer’s chapter, “What is the evidence for intelligent design?” in The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos (2021)

The speculative cosmologies (such as inflationary cosmology and string theory) they propose for generating alternative universes invariably invoke mechanisms that themselves require fine-tuning, thus begging the question as to the origin of that prior fine-tuning. Indeed, all the various materialistic explanations for the origin of the fine-tuning — i.e., the explanations that attempt to explain the fine-tuning without invoking intelligent design — invariably invoke prior unexplained fine-tuning.

Improbability and Functional Specification

Moreover, the fine-tuning of the universe exhibits precisely those features — extreme improbability and functional specification — that invariably trigger an awareness of, and justify an inference to, intelligent design.6 Because the multiverse theory cannot explain fine-tuning without invoking prior fine-tuning, and because the fine-tuning of a physical system to accomplish a recognizable or propitious end is exactly the kind of thing we know intelligent agents do, it follows that intelligent design stands as the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe. And that makes intelligent design detectable in both the physical parameters of the universe and the information-bearing properties of life.

Stephen C. Meyer, “Anthropic Fine-Tuning as Evidence of Design” at Evolution News and Science Today (March 28, 2022)

Here are the rest of the excerpts from Meyer’s chapter.

You may also wish to read: Templeton tries to wish away fine-tuning of the universe.

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