From Steve Graham
Ward can cherry-pick whichever cosmological theory seems to support his “supreme being” hypothesis, in defiance of those of us who think that Occam’s razor provides a better rule of thumb. That said, the many worlds idea seems an odd choice.
Certainly, as he suggests, in an infinite multiverse we might find “an indefinite number of forms of beauty, intelligibility and bliss”. But surely the other half contains an infinite number of forms of ugliness, incomprehensibility and pain. More than half, if we understand Boltzmann’s idea that “ordered states are less probable”.
More generally, Ward falls into the trap of thinking that science is attempting to discover why the world is the way it is. “Why?” is a question we cannot answer. “How?” we’re pretty good at.
As to why the universe seems so well suited to intelligent life, I offer him the late Douglas Adams’s argument based on the puddle which cannot fathom why the depression in which it finds itself is so mysteriously suited to its existence.
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Aghalee, County Armagh, UK
