Note, I am not saying that God HAS created an infinity of universes past, present, and will so in future. I am saying that God CAN do so, there is no obstacle in it to His Omnipotence.
Bruno may have been burned for among other things saying there is an infinity of worlds (though he meant that in a sense of each star being a "solar system" and such continuing into infinity, as new horizons would be potentially infinitely variable ... if the world were a flat disc).
That God could not have created more worlds than this one is however also condemned, though no heretic got burned in the process. As far as I know. Laetare Sunday in Mid Lent, early March, late 1276 (as they said when March 25 was new years day) or early 1277 (as one counts now), a syllabus of 219 propositions was attached to a general condemnation of bad teachers and bad books circulating at Paris University.
Condemned proposition 34 is what I would call the Narnia clause:
Quod causa prima non posset plures mundos facere.*
Note that this is a subordinate clause, attached to some main clause in the introduction, I have not the wording of the original by Stephen Tempier, but the republication in England which makes the same proposition the ninth proposition of chapter VI, errores de Deo has:
Isti articuli qui sequuntur, condempnati sunt a domino stephano parisiensi episcopo, de consilio magistrorum theologie, anno domini M °. CC °. LXXVI, die dominica qua contatur "Letare Ierusalem" in curia parisiensi, ubi excommunicauit in scriptis omnes illos qui scienter eos docuerint uel defenderint. Et primo ordinantur qui sunt de deo, scilicet :*
Note very well, the document as such was not revoked, only whatever excommunication could have been suspected of lying over a Thomist thesis by reason of these condemnations, which happened 48 years later. However, St Thomas Aquinas never defended
Quod causa prima non posset plures mundos facere.
And therefore the condemnation of said error is NOT revoked by Stephen III 48 years later. It still stands, in the diocese of Paris as well as in the Medieval dioceses of England.*
So, I would not be inclined to say the multiverse were inherently atheistic.
As Hawking was being honest with his own scientific postulates (which then led him to the infinite Multiverse), Fr. Spitzer obviously couldn’t go in the same direction since the Multiverse is intrinsically atheistic. It has no beginning and needs no God.
From Sungenis' criticism of "Father" Spitzer "SJ" and his Cosmic Origins.**
As Chesterton noted***, the proofs of God's existence given by St Thomas Aquinas are such as work equally well if you assume the universe to be eternal. The prima via would work for each universe in an eternal multiverse, plus the unity of the multiverse would need an infinite consciousness to be aware of them all (since they are assumed to be different universes, they cannot be connected by simple material unity), so, a multiverse, though very possibly not true, would still need a God.
What they would work less well for:
- A) prima via per se as well as showing unity of God less well in a multiverse would also show it less well in the kind of "Bruno multiverse" a k a Modern Cosmology which is more Classic, since when after discussing existence of God, when coming to the attribute unity (I, Q 11, A 3), St Thomas does refer to the unified daily movement of the one universe around the one earth°;
- B) prima via also works somewhat less well if you assume constant speed and unilinear movement to be equivalent to rest. Especially if you add the in Newton's first three laws as such unwarranted equivalence of constant orbital movement to a non-accelerating movement and forget about all factors which could slow down the orbit (like friction from a yearly shower of asteroids);
- C) a totally mindless universe (or, paradoxically, one in which mind were a byproduct of matter via life, but that is impossible) would not have the proofs of IV and V viae in I, Q 2 A 3.
This old post of Sungenis** came up - and I'll return to read the rest of it after making these quibbles - because "Father" Spitzer "SJ" has since then refused debating Sungenis.°°
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Day after St Bartholomew Apostle
25.VIII.2016
Notes: * Stephen Tempier's condemnations:
Index in stephani tempier condempnationes from where you click on capitulum VI, errores de deo where you find the heading Collectio errorum in Anglia et Parisius Condempnatorum ...
It is presumably operative not just in Paris with suffragan dioceses and in all English dioceses, but also in colonies and former such of England and of France. For England it is obvious, due to all dioceses being invoked, for France one should know that Québécoué is an off-shot of 17th or 18th C. Paris dialect - not of any rural dialects from back then, even if now it is seen as another rural one.
** Here is the blog post and pdf for Sungenis' paper:
GWW : Cosmic Origins: The Movie
Just Another Heresy in Religious Garb
Download PDF
Posted by galileowaswrong on Oct 8, 2013
http://galileowaswrong.com/cosmic-origins-the-movie/
The Movie: Cosmic Origins: Just Another Heresy in Religious Garb
http://galileowaswrong.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Cosmic_Origins_Movie.pdf
The latter is better for reading the text, the former for commenting or for browsing other posts.
*** See his Biography of St Thomas Aquinas:
St. Thomas Aquinas
G. K. Chesterton
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/aquinas.html
See further his [G. K. Chesterton's] Works on the Web
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/
PS, one could of course consider that creating a new universe after having created this one - like creating a Narnia around a new pool in the "wood between the worlds" when Digory and Polly and Jadis and Strawberry and its owner and Uncle Andrew had gone there by magic - is not something which is according to the Revelation for God to do, since He is said to have on the seventh day 7099 or so years before the meeting of Digory and Polly is set in the novel to have rested from new works of Creation. But it would still be true that He didn't do so because He needed to./HGL
° Quoting:
Thirdly, this is shown from the unity of the world. For all things that exist are seen to be ordered to each other since some serve others. But things that are diverse do not harmonize in the same order, unless they are ordered thereto by one. For many are reduced into one order by one better than by many: because one is the "per se" cause of one, and many are only the accidental cause of one, inasmuch as they are in some way one. Since therefore what is first is most perfect, and is so "per se" and not accidentally, it must be that the first which reduces all into one order should be only one. And this one is God.
°° I know that from a comment under the video, which I have not yet seen:
FB : EWTN online : 23 août, 16:33 ·
From Fr. Spitzer's Universe
https://www.facebook.com/ewtnonline/videos/10153954636677582/
Know as in "am reasonably aware", I will know it, I presume, once I hear the video.
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