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doesn't multiverse theory open the door a bit wider...

... to acknowledging that our universe is contingent? Matter doesn't have to be this way: in fact, the matter called "our universe" doesn't have to be at all... (see Aquinas's 3rd way for more).

And don't the various hypothetical universes have to be individuated in some way? (I dunno, but it seems so). That is, don't they have to have something different about them: otherwise, there would be no explanatory gain in positing them.
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Unknown said…
It's not clear that multiverses actually exist yet. Besides that, I can't imagine how you could demonstrate their existence.

But suppose they exist. I wouldn't say that means we're any more or less contingent that before, simply because the "black box" is from quantum mechanics to begin with (regardless of whether we interpret QM in terms of multiverses or not). Measurements don't have deterministic outcomes. That seems to suggest contingency. In a way, multiverses make for less of a need for causal input - everything that can happen does happen.

ZZZZ
11:46 PM
Leo White said…
Granted that it's not clear that they exist: I'm arguing that if one is willing to consider the very possibility that many different universes with different laws of nature exist, then one is taking for granted that our universe is contingent, and one is granting this in a way that opens the door rather wide for Aquinas's third way of demonstrating God's existence, a way that takes it starting point from the contingency of the universe as a whole.

This is a hunch that I haven't worked out, but if you pursue your questions it will help me to think it out ore.
8:31 AM
Unknown said…
I was thinking of the many-worlds hypothesis in quantum mechanics - that every measurement results in two or more different universes. In other words, if I measure the direction an electron is traveling, this act sprouts one universe where it's going right and one universe where it's going left. Both universes, afterward, are "there", but which one I experience becomes a matter of probability. This possibility has a lot of distressing philosophical and theological consequences...

But as for the multiverses - with different laws of physics in different "regions" - it's a different issue. Can you explain more what you mean by contingent in this context?
11:16 AM
Leo White said…
Oh yeah, the many worlds hypothesis: what kind of hashish do those guys use, anyways?
10:16 PM
Leo White said…
Better to have said the following in the initial post:
"Doesn't multi-verse theory open the door a bit wider... to the acknowledgment that our universe is contingent? Matter doesn't have to be this way: in fact, the matter called 'our universe' doesn't have to be at all... (see Aquinas's 3rd way for more)."
11:23 AM
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