I recently encountered a Christian website offering THIS as a
"proof" of their god...
#1. Since 1996, we know that the expansion of the universe is
ACCELERATING...
#2. "Big Bang theory" (which supposes that the universe had a
beginning in time) is all but proven.
#3. The universe exhibits an uncanny juxtapostion of constants,
ect. which gives the appearance of DESIGN, not a random
development over time.
NOW... all this WOULD be strongly indicative of a "God" if the
universe is UNIQUE, and there is only one universe.
But consider that back before 1920, we considered the Milky Way
galaxy to be unique, and to contain the entire universe in fact. THEN
we found that there were BILLIONS of galaxies.
Is it not reasonable, then, to suppose that our universe is but one of
perhaps an infinite number of universes... which are, always have been, and always will be "popping" into existence due the inherent instability of the "quantum vacuum"?
Thusly, a universe like ours... seemingly "magical" - HAS to "pop up" sooner or later - so long as there are no "laws" prohibiting it. (And in pure nothingness - the quantum vacuum - there WOULD necessarily be NO LAWS!) The vast majority of new universes won't support life, but a tiny proportion of them WILL - and always have - and always will. (Is it so "miraculous" then, that we're here? Even if consciousness hardly ever emerges in Reality, "we" can expect to "be there" where it does!)
Perhaps we've all been here before, an infinite number of times... each time we recur, the details are a bit different. Maybe my next occurence will be as MILLIONAIRE Chumley, 500 sextillion to the googoleth power years from now. A long time... but hey, it's the same as a nanosecond when you're dead. Kinda cool when you think about it, eh?
After all, nature doesn't show a tendency towards LINEAR progressions of events... it shows itself to be CYCLICAL. (Look around you... lots of curves and recurring patterns in nature, but how often do you see a straight line?)
Hence, an apparently linear-time universe, can be contained within a cyclical whole - even as our linear individual lives occur within the cyclical context of generations being replaced by new generations.
And does time itself, have any meaning without an observer to subjectively observe it, anyway? It seems silly to assume, as so many people (and even some physicists) do, that time is an objective thing. What meaning does it have, without an observer to subjectively experience it..?
So, "linear" reality (based on an objectivist notion of time) seems to be an illusion. Reality, then, must be CYCLICAL... no?
Finally, there is the issue of parsimony... the simplest explanation being the most likely. The Christian website I mentioned at the beginning of this post claims that "God" is a simpler postulate than infinite universes emerging from the primordial vacuum.
BUT WAIT! What is simple about "God"..? Here we have an INFINITELY COMPLEX being, lacking ANY cause!
On the other hand, with infinite parallel universes, all we need is NOTHING (the primordial vacuum) together with a tendency toward instability (or to put it better, no laws prohibiting instability.) "Sooner or later" (from a limited, time-bound human point of view) something will happen...
An "inflationary event" - a suddenly expanding "ball" of empty space - occurs out of the vacuum, merely one of an infinite number of possibilities (being sheer empty space, it is one of the simpler possibilities, much more likely to happen than a "weird" universe like ours, which starts out with a huge amount of ENERGY which later "gels" into matter - elements, stars, ect.)
"Eventually" an inflationary event will occur, which produces a universe like our own... just as surely as if a million monkeys type for a million years, you will get some coherent words, sentences (maybe even the Gettysburg address!)
And there you have it! The interplay of "something" (or all possibility) with nothingness. Since there is nothing in nothingness, there are no rules to prevent instabilities! So you get instability, and ultimately everything you see about us. You might even say, reality springs from a concept... thus, the universe would indeed be "mental" although there would be NO "thought" involved in the process.
Is this not simpler, than an all-powerful, all-knowing, infinitely complex Sky Fairy who has NO cause?

B-man

Hm, god isn't that simple-minded that he would just create one universe. ;-) A multiversum is much more creative than simple-minded theories about a single universe that doesn't allow other universes. This reminds me hardly in "the earth is the centre of the universe" as a long time postulation by the church. ;-)

The Sun is the centre of our universe.  The Earth is the Garden of Eden, wherein all life is manifested into form.
*****************
HUH???
Are you on DRUGS, Augie..?
(Don't tell me you're with the Flat-Earth society!!!)