Question:

Once you allow the multiverse, is it not possible that life on earth just popped into existence kind of like Boltzmann brains?

Answer:

First of all, there is absolutely zero evidence for the multiverse.  This is utter speculation. This speculation only exists, in my opinion, because atheists need a fall-back argument against the FACT of the precise nature of a universe required for life to exist.  This is an ad hoc hypothesis, created, not because of evidence or a theoretical imperative, but simply in order to have a response to the obvious evidence for design in the universe we live in.  The number of anthropically-designed “coincidences” required to make a universe which can support life means that we live in a universe which is something like one in ten to the 200th power universes.  That is a lot of universes.   The proposal is that we just so happen to live in the one lucky universe out of 10 to the 200th power.  Really?  Is this believable?  Is there any evidence for other universes?  The answer to these questions is no!

But, just for the sake of argument, even though the proposal is not even scientific, let us allow for the idea that there are an infinite number of universes, and we happen to live in the one with the right strength of gravity, of nuclear strong force, of nuclear weak force, with the right ratio of matter to antimatter, and many, many other things.  Let us grant this, no matter how outrageous the proposal is. In this perfect universe, could life just happen?  My answer is certainly not!  I go into this in great detail in my book Is There a God?  (www.ipibooks.com) Another helpful book is Signature in the Cell (Steven Meyer). Let me give you the very very short version.  Life requires information.  In fact, for the simplest conceivable living thing, the amount of information required to create that living thing is in the tens of millions of pieces of information at the bare minimum.  The fact is that in the universe we live in, information is not created except in a system which already has information.  All attempts to create a supposed regimen by which life can “evolve” (none of which have been successful) begin with putting a lot of information into the system.  Informationless systems DO NOT create information.  This is an implication of the second law of thermodynamics.  It has been demonstrated with such consistency that we would be justified in calling it a fact of the universe. Atheists choose to ignore that rather obvious fact in creating their so-called theories about how life evolved from non-life.  In fact, these are not theories.  Like the multiverse idea, supposed theories about the origin of life by chemical evolution are not really theories at all.  They are ad hoc speculations, and these speculations are not based on experiment.  I tell you this.  There is no experiment done yet which began with zero information and which created usable information.

The answer is a very strong no!!!!  Even if we allow for the massive speculation of the multiverse theory, no, life could not have simply popped into existence in this universe.

John Oakes