Stephen Meyer writing at The Daily Wire examines the rise of the Multiverse — in popular culture, inspired by the imaginings of scientists. From, “The Madness of the Multiverse and the Strangeness of Atheism”:

As millions of fans know, Marvel Studios recently released its latest superhero blockbuster Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Like earlier Marvel films, this offering unfolds within an interconnected network of parallel universes known as the “Multiverse.” 

Scientists uneasy about the theistic implications of the cosmic fine-tuning at the inception of the universe have embraced the Multiverse as a remedy. As Meyer explains, there are a couple of issues with that. The first has to do with Ockham’s razor. The second is the doozy.

Second — and here’s the twist — all Multiverse proposals, whether based on “inflationary cosmology” or “string theory,” posit universe-generating mechanisms that themselves require prior, unexplained fine-tuning. This means that the ultimate origin of the fine-tuning remains a mystery — which seems to take us right back to the need for an ultimate Fine-Tuner. 

Ironically, the folks at Marvel and DC studios seem to recognize this. The Marvel Universe envisions a God-like figure called the One-Above-All as the creator of all the interconnected universes in the Multiverse. His DC equivalent is called The Presence. 

Yet many modern scientists, wedded to atheism or materialism, fail to distinguish these ideologies from science itself. Consequently, they have recently advanced ever more strange and exotic hypotheses. In addition to the multiverse, some scientists posit a space alien designer to explain the digital code in DNA, while others suggest we may be nothing more than the simulation of a cosmic computer programmer. 

These speculative hypotheses illustrate the growing strangeness of scientific atheism, as scientists reach for increasingly exotic ideas to explain evidence that seems otherwise to point straightforwardly to God. 

As for the Multiverse, even sci-fi writers now recognize that if such a thing exists, it would still require an ultimate Creator. 

So, who will tell the scientific atheists? 

Read the rest at The Daily Wire (note that it is behind a paywall). Meyer’s latest book is Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe.