Why Does the World Exist: An Existentia - By Jim Holt Page 0,45

it. Our sole source of knowledge about other universes is a detailed study of this universe and its laws. How then can we suppose that those other universes are governed by totally different laws?”

Perhaps, I said, the laws governing the other universes were the same, but the “constants” that occurred in those laws—the list of twenty or so numbers that determine the relative strength of the physical forces, the relative masses of elementary particles, and so forth—differed from one universe to the next. If our universe is but one among a vast ensemble of universes in which such constants varied at random, then isn’t it to be expected that some of these universes should have the right mix of constants for life to occur? And, as humans, wouldn’t we be bound to observe ourselves living in one of the universes whose features happened to be congenial to our existence? Doesn’t this “anthropic principle” make the apparent fine-tuning of our universe wholly unremarkable? And, in that case, wouldn’t the God hypothesis be unnecessary as an explanation of why we are here?

“Right,” he said, with a faintly audible chuckle, as though he had heard this very point innumerable times before. “But then we would need to find a law of how these constants varied from universe to universe. If the simplest theory is one where the constants of nature undergo some change when a mother universe gives birth to a daughter universe, then that raises the question of why the multiverse is like that, as opposed to all the infinite other ways a multiverse might be. Those other multiverses would not give rise to universes with life. In any case, to posit a trillion trillion other universes to explain the life-fostering features of our universe seems slightly mad when the much simpler hypothesis of God is available.”

But is the God hypothesis really all that simple? There is, I was willing to concede, a sense in which God might be the simplest thing imaginable. The God of the theologians is defined as the entity—or “substance,” to use the technical term—that possesses every positive attribute to an infinite degree. He is infinitely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely good, infinitely free, eternally existing, and so forth. Setting all the parameters equal to infinity makes a thing easy to define. In the case of a finite being, by contrast, you have to say it’s of such-and-such size and has such-and-such degree of power, that it knows this much and no more, that it began to exist at such-and-such time in the past, and so on. In other words, there is a long and messy set of finite numbers to specify.

Now, in science, infinity is a very nice number, along with its opposite, zero. Neither infinity nor zero needs an explanation. Finite numbers do need explanations, however. If the number 2.7 occurs in your equation, someone will always ask, “Why 2.7? Why not 2.8?” The simplicity of zero and infinity precludes such awkward inquiries. The same logic might be said to apply to God. If the cosmic creator could make a universe only of such-and-such mass, but no heavier, then the question would arise of why there was such a constraint on its power. With an infinite God, there are no such limits to be explained.

So the God hypothesis does possess a certain sort of simplicity. But Swinburne’s God is not mere infinite substance. He also intervenes in human history. He answers prayers, reveals truths, causes miracles to occur. He even incarnated himself in human form. This is a God that acts with complex purposes. Doesn’t the ability to act according to complex purposes imply a corresponding complexity within the agent? Swinburne himself, I had noticed, seemed to assume as much in some of his writings. For instance, in a 1989 essay he observed that we humans could have complex beliefs and purposes only because we had complex brains. Wouldn’t God, in order to accomplish what he does, have to be internally complex on a much vaster scale—infinitely complex, in fact?

Swinburne knit his tall brow a bit when I asked the question. But in an instant, it was unknit again.

“Humans need bodies if they are to interact with the world and benefit one another,” he said. “And that necessitates having a complicated brain. But God doesn’t need a body or a brain. He acts on the world directly.”

But, I objected, if God created the world for a purpose, if he has complicated designs for his creatures, then his