Do you believe in God?

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To be honest, I think in the near future the religion and science debate will come to a complete close. If it is determined that the multiverse does in fact exist, the anthropic (cosmological fine tune argument will fail) and it
will be proven that we are nothing more than a cosmic coincidence. If it does not, the anthropic principle combined with the cosmological argument would make the notion of God a certainty, or at the very least, a respected scientific hypothesis. There will be no greater winner takes all scenario than this. There is no question that I hope for the former. Besides, our Universe is already as big as it is.

At this point, the best lead towards the so-called multiverse is the superstring theory. It is however, extremely unstable and untestable. It is more likely that AspE will declare his extreme dedication to the church and upload a video of his baptism, than any facet of the SST to be proven in a laboratory setting.

To be honest, even the "proof" of a "multiverse" would not shake my belief that a Mind lies behind it all.

I really doubt that a multiverse exists. Really. The whole notion of the multiverse is to simply dodge the cosmological argument and anthropic principle in the most scientific effort possible. It is an ad hoc hypothesis, that is doomed to be fully untestable.

The whole notion of the multiverse is really anchored upon whether the M-Theory has any pragmatic functionality, if so, it must accurately describe quantum entanglement and maintain agreement with classical mechanics. But above all, the so-called 11 dimensions that it proposes MUST be subject to test. I think Jono knows more about this subject than I do. Four of the dimensions are easily subject to test, the other seven though, hehehe that is a completely different story.

Here is an excerpt from Standford PR

Christ, I pray they are wrong.

Also.. people forget and/or misunderstand the nature of explanation in science. The laws of physics are descriptions... abstract descriptions of what is happening. They do not cause anything. I love John Lennox's analogy of "Aunt Matilda's cake." The basic idea is that science asks a very narrow range of questions. These questions and explanations are analogous to studying the the "syntax" of a dance... and then trying to extrapolate to assume that the "dancing" itself is merely a secondary, latent, emergent phenomenon with no purpose. Or analyzing a poem in terms of the shapes of the letters instead of comprehending the layers of communication of meaning.

In addition, too many people seem unaware of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and its implications. (From my understanding of Kant, he basically arrived at the same conclusion from a different path (again something that lends to my judgement of truth in weighing this whole question of what we can know anything about God.) Leibniz's contingency argument also gives you a description of God out of logical necessity....

At a certain level of liberal interpretation of the word God, it's practically atheism. Pantheism is pretty much atheist. But I happen to think minds are special, especially the subjective experience of being one, and it's unlike the rest of the universe, if I may draw an artificial boundary around it. Regardless of the superficial similarities in appearance, (and certain quantum theories) the network of stars and galaxies are not and cannot be in communication like our neurons are.

I've taken part in a few holiday rituals (some of my relatives are more practicing than my immediate family), but I'm very cynical about it. The whole exodus story is probably false. I'm a huge fan of blasphemy, and I think circumcision of infants should be a crime. So, I'm barely Jewish, although I have a buttload of Israeli cousins, and I used to speak Hebrew when I was a kid.

Alan was not a pantheist either.... like me, and Spinoza, the "ism" which would best describe his ontology would be panentheism.... the difference is profound.

So we live in a multiverse. And by the way, the chances of me existing, with my unique set of DNA, would also seem to be just as small, but it doesn't mean it couldn't happen.

They don't necessarily have to occur simultaneously. It's enough that universes arise with seemingly random properties, and the ones in which life can occur can also contain cosmologists and theologians.

Once again... I refer you to the series of videos to explain why you are correct in this assertion, and why I, and many others, disagree with you on the conclusion to be drawn from it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOXZGnY ... 9D03D88AA5

This vehicle of thinking is inherently problematic because you are now trying to hold onto a predetermined conclusion in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. As I have mentioned, the whole notion of the multiverse is on life support, that is being the superstring theory, which is already built upon a contended foundation.

Exactly... it is dangerously close to its own "God-of-the-gaps" sort of reasoning. "One day science will have explained away God... just wait" In fact, this sort of misunderstanding of science is circular reasoning, because the claim that science is the source of all truth and knowledge is not a scientific statement... its a philosophical speculation.

The same condition applies for anyone that argues that God exists. This is not a disadvantage that is circumscribed to those who wish to argue against the existence of God.

I'm actually not doing anything of the sort, as it still beats anything supernatural, which has never before been required to explain any observations. And like I said, a plethora of mini-universes within one larger meta-universe doesn't necessarily require multiple dimensions. They could be separated by mere time and space.