A couple of posts ago I complained about scientists moving into science fiction in their claims about mutliverses. So why do I get so hot under the collar about the idea? Well, it’s because I can’t help feeling that there is an underlying motivation behind their longing for something ‘out there’ – in fact some of our popular atheists are quite explicit about this.

In essence, many people have always believed that the design apparent in the universe pointed to the exisence of a cosmic mind behind the whole thing. Nowadays, it is often pointed out how unlikely it is that, given the nature of things, we should inhabit a universe able to develop stars with solar systems. Even with such solar systems, it is extremely unlikely that a planet like ours would develop, providing the very specific conditions needed for life to get started. It is also extremely unlilkely that the spark of life would occur and progress to primitive cellular forms.

Given primitive life, it is extremely unlikely that the mechanism of evolution should kick into action, that its results should be as they are, and that one such result should be intelligent human life. The chance of all these things occuring is one in trillions of trillions of trillions…

Atheists argue, however, that this sense of purpose is an illusion. They claim that, in fact, if there are billions of universes (or possibly even an infinite number) it is likely or certain that the process of the creation of intelligent life has happened many times, simply by the laws of chance. There is no evidence for this, but that seems of little importance.

The absurdity of the atheistic argument can be seen from an illustration. Let’s suppose that a certain town has two Casinos. In Casino A crowds are gathered around a roulette table. A lucky gambler is sitting behind a huge pile of chips, having selected the correct result of the spinning of the wheel ten times in a row. The chances of this happening are unthinkably small.

Meanwhile, in Casino B a couple of miles away, another surge of excitement is taking place – a similar thing is happening there! Eventually, once the dust has settled, people start to discuss what happened. Everyone is spooked out by the sheer improbability of it all – apart from one person. He claims that the events in Casino B are perfectly understandable, to be expected even, considering what had happened in Casino A. Everyone else thinks he’s nuts.

We would probably be inclined to agree with the popular verdict. Yet the kind of thinking seen in our oddball is very similar to that shown by some atheist propagandists. They seem to think that the probability of an exceedingly unlikely event on earth could somehow be affected by another extremely unlikely event that might have happened, say, a thousand light years away.

I just don’t get it.