Christ of the Klingons
Above the Heavens
These aren't Star Trek-style mirror universes, in which duplicates of each one of us live on parallel Earths where Hitler won the war or the Twin Towers never fell. The multiverse made possible in M-Theory predicts an incredibly diverse array of possible universes with different sets of physical laws—maybe as many as 10500 possible realities. We likely cannot ever reach them, and only a few would be hospitable to human life. Some suggest that universes are continually created, and maybe destroyed, as branes collide with one another.
According to Hawking, the multiverse eliminates the need for God. "M-Theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing," he writes in The Grand Design. "Their creation did not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god. Rather, these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law."
But Collins says Hawking can't escape God that easily: If the universe arose from the laws of physics, then who designed the laws of physics? Why does the multiverse work the way it does? Trying to apply science to the question of God, Collins said, "is where scientists are way overstepping their area of competence."
"One of the problems with those arguments is it really puts God … in a very small box," Cleaver says. "It portrays God as someone who can only fill in the gaps that science can't explain. As theists, we need to perceive God as the primary source, the fundamental laws of physics as the secondary."
To Cleaver, M-Theory's multiverse, with its dizzying variety, unending moments of new creation, and perhaps infinite scope, makes perfect sense as the work of "a God of the infinities, who creates eternally." If God is truly eternal, infinite, and self-consistent, Cleaver wrote in a 2006 paper, "We should expect God to create eternally and infinitely, or not at all."
A scientist stepping on philosophy's turf? Maybe. But Collins expressed similar thoughts.
"Paul says in Romans 1 that creation manifests the eternal attributes of God—God's eternal and infinite power," Collins says. "You may expect an infinitely creative being to create more than one universe—in fact, many, and maybe more kinds of realities."
The Lion, the Klingon, and the Carpenter's Son
Once again, speculative fiction writers are way ahead of scientists. C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia includes one of the classic depictions of a multiverse in Western literature. The protagonists of The Magician's Nephew (1955) stumble into the Wood Between the Worlds, a quiet forest full of pools through which they can enter not just Earth and Narnia but countless universes stretching off into the distance. In the course of the story, the heroes see an old universe destroyed and a new one created—and meet the one Lord over all of them. And at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952), Aslan tells Edmund and Lucy, "You must begin to come close to your own world now …. There I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name."
Star Trek Into Darkness
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Carlos Ramirez Trevino
Knox is right on Heb10:14. What is missing from the Collins / Cleaver equation is guidance from a sound Biblical perspective. What Christians haven't fully understood is the reason for creation. The universe was not created as an artistic expression of God's creativity, it was created to sustain human life so that God could have a body, an instrument through which to abolish the actuality and potentiality of corruption in the entire universe for all eternity (Heb10:5). That's why God created heaven and earth. All of creation, including the angels, and that is pretty much all-inclusive, is waiting for the redemption of mankind (Rom8:19). The eradication of sin, decay and corruption (Dan9:24) is played out on earth once and for all (1Cor15:50). Heb4 is the clue that there can be no extraterrestrials; God rested from creation until He creates the new heaven and earth. Finally, it is not about numbers. It is about what is needed to implement God's eternal plan. We are eternity's spectacle.
Wesley Mcgranor
Nonsence is this sermon from the postmodern church. Your attempt to upset Natural Law and Order fails, as God subdues the vain imaginings of Satanic chaos.
Galen Smith
As brilliant as Hawkings may be, I do not see why the potential existence of many universes eliminates the need for a Creator God. To my pea-brain, it seems to increase the requirement for an omniscient Creator. My understanding of science (and my BS is in the sciences) suggests to me that nothing comes from nothing. The greater the universe (or multiverse), the greater its Creator must be. Chuck's question, "who designed the designer?" also seems to me to miss the mark. Everything that was created must have had a beginning. Something or Someone must have existed before all created things in order to create them. This suggests that the Creator of all else must be eternal, with no beginning. That is precisely what I understand the Bible to teach. The eternal God, who had no beginning and no designer, created all else. To argue, as the Mormons do, that the image of God in man requires that God possess a corporeal body, is contradicted by Scripture. I'm out of room to go on.