Answering The Multiverse Objection to the Design Argument

The multiverse objection to the design argument attempts to address the extremely low probability of life existing in the universe by increasing the objector’s probabilistic resources.  If there are a multitude of universes, it’s less surprising that at least one of them has the resources for life to arise.  Paired with the Anthropic Principle, which points out that certain properties could never be observed by us because those properties exclude our existence--then of course we can only observe universes in which are fine-tuned.  We couldn’t exist otherwise.  These two moves seem to offer a powerful defeater to the design argument. 

Theistic responses are not wanting.  Here’s a sketch of such responses.  

(a) There’s no empirical evidence that we exist in a multiverse.  It’s a speculative hypothesis.

(b) The multiverse (or whatever generates subsequent universes) may itself exhibit extremely improbable parameters that call out for design.  It may only push the question a step back.

(c) Even if there is a multiverse, the odds of us occupying this specific one is still extremely low given the extremely complex and precise values we observe in it.  We’d expect instead to occupy a much simpler universe (Boltzmann Brains?).  The fact that we instead occupy this extremely complex one is extremely improbable in relation to the other multitudes of universes we could have observed instead.  

(d) If the most popular model for postulating a multiverse is correct (BGV theorem?), then the multiverse is not past eternal.  If it is not past eternal, it has not produced an infinite number of universes.  If it has not produced an infinite number of universes, it may not sufficiently increase the probabilistic resources of the objector.