Futurama and Philosophy
Page 15
In Bender’s Big Score Ethan “Bubblegum” Tate notes that “a time travel duplicate results in a complex denominator in the causality ratio”—or, for those of us without the intellect of Professor Farnsworth or the raw processing power of Bender, “a duplicate body is always doomed. It’s just a matter of time.” The Globetrotters call this the “Doom Field,” and it underpins the paradox-correcting nature of the time spheres discussed earlier. While it doesn’t allow us to avoid contradictions, it does provide us with a solution to our current problem.
So, what happens to this one unlucky Bender who fails to live out the year? Does the universe conspire against him, seeking to destroy him and avoid catastrophe? Well, no—not quite. All good things must come to an end, and at some point Bender’s number will be up. Since he’s planning on living out the rest of his days confined merely to 3008, it makes perfect sense that on one of those “live-throughs” he’ll meet his proverbial maker. It’s hard to picture this with a robot (particularly one who seems capable of surviving for thousands of years), but suppose we use a meatbag as an example instead.
Suppose that it was instead thirty-four-year-old Fry who elected to perpetually relive 3008. If he lived to one-hundred years of age, then he’d be able to fit in sixty-seven “live-throughs”—one for every year of life he had remaining. This means that there would only be sixty-seven Frys in 3008. The same will be true of Bender. While his longevity may be far greater than that of a mere human, he will—eventually—come to an end. In doing so, he’ll ensure that his unusual time travel experiment only ever leads to a finite (though possibly very large) number of Benders in the universe.
Backwards Time Travel—Utterly Bizarre, Entirely Possible
Backwards time travel is possible. Many of those stories taken to demonstrate its impossibility are just that—stories. Backwards time travel doesn’t allow someone to kill their own grandfather or steal the body of their earlier self. These sorts of things are logically impossible, and anyone who attempts to do the logically impossible will always fail.
There are, however, a number of equally bizarre things a backwards time traveler could do, like become his own grandfather. While our commonsense notions of cause-and-effect may balk at such stories, there’s nothing logically impossible about them. As Professor Farnsworth notes: “If history doesn’t care that our degenerate friend Fry is his own grandfather, then who are we to judge?”
Who are we to judge, indeed?
14
Room for God in Futurama?
JOHN M. DEPOE
Scientists say some of the darnedest things.
And I don’t just mean the crazy stuff Professor Farnsworth and Ethan “Bubblegum” Tate say on Futurama. I mean real scientists who wear white lab coats and everything. They tell us really weird stuff, such as, the universe includes an invisible energy that’s like a mist spread throughout space (they call this “dark energy”), and our universe was once an infinitely dense point that exploded and subsequently yielded the entire world we observe (they call this one, “big bang cosmology”).
Perhaps one of the strangest things some scientists have said is that our universe is one among many other universes (they call this the “multiverse theory”). Great philosophers, theoretical scientists, and fans of sci-fi have pondered what all of this implies about the existence of God. Let’s see if looking at Futurama helps us to work out some of their different lines of reasoning.
Multiverse Shmultiverse
So, what exactly is the multiverse theory? To answer this question we first have to be clear about what we mean by a single universe. A single universe is a collection of things causally connected to one another in space and time. The multiverse theory is the hypothesis that there are many universes that exist, each of which is causally distinct from the others. It may be helpful to think of it this way: if something is in one universe, then it can’t cause something to happen in another universe and vice versa.
You can’t conduct any empirical tests to observe the existence of other universes because these other universes (if they exist) can’t be causally related to anything in our universe. If they caused something to happen in this universe, then they’d have to be part of this universe and not a separate universe (since what it means to be a universe is to be part of a collection of things that are causally connected). So, we can’t observe any universe but our own. (Of course, good science fiction occasionally breaks this rule.)
How many other universes are there, according to the multiverse theory? The answers range from a growing myriad (with infinity as its limit) to an already infinite number of universes, depending on the varying reasons a particular person may have for believing in a multiverse theory. Let’s not worry too much about those reasons for now. What matters is that the multiverse theory implies that either an infinite number of other universes already exist or the number of universes will continue to grow with infinity as a limit. If an infinite number of universes currently exist, then every circumstance that is possible has existed in some universe or another.
Think of it like this. If you get to roll a pair of dice a large number of times (say, 5000 times), you are bound to get every possible combination (there are only 36 different possible combinations). Well, if there are an infinite number of universes, then every possible combination of things that make up reality will eventually occur in one of the infinitely many universes.
Fans of Futurama will likely recall the Season Four episode “The Farnsworth Parabox,” which (sort of) illustrates this implication of the multiverse theory. The episode begins with Professor Farnsworth creating a box, which he forbids anyone to open. Leela, after guarding the box from Fry and Bender’s botched attempt to steal it, flips a coin to decide if she should give in to her own temptation to look inside the box. The coin comes up heads, and so she peaks inside the box to discover that it contains a parallel universe. The parallel universe (universe-1, as it eventually is designated) is very similar to the universe she came from (which gets called universe-A). Universe-1 has the same people, places, and things in it that are in universe-A, although there are some little differences. For example, the Leela in the parallel universe (Leela-1) has red hair, Zoidberg’s body is blue, and Bender’s body is made of gold (his catchphrase is apparently “bite my glorious golden ass!”). Eventually, each of our familiar cast of characters from Planet Express (except Hermes) goes inside the box to join their counterparts in universe-1.
The episode reaches a dramatic climax when Professor Farnsworth-A remembers that he has given Hermes-A instructions to destroy the box (by casting it into the Sun—how else do you destroy another universe?), and they’re unable to find the box with universe-A because the Zoidbergs have absconded with it. The Professors then create several hundred more boxes, each one containing another parallel universe, in a misguided attempt to find another way back to universe-A. At this point, the Zoidbergs show up, and upon sensing the disapproval of everyone, run away by jumping into the newly created universe boxes at random. The crew members pursue them, and we catch a glimpse of several other universes. In one of the universes, we find counterparts to our familiar crew members of Planet Express, but they have no eyes. In another universe, the Planet Express crew consists of robotic duplicates. We discover a parallel universe where everyone wears Greek togas, another where everyone is a leprechaun, and another where everyone is a pirate. There’s even a universe occupied by bobblehead copies of the crew members. Finally, the Zoidbergs are caught in a universe where everyone, including Professor Farnsworth’s Doppelgänger, is a reefer-smoking hippie. Once the crew gets the box with universe-A from the Zoidbergs, they’re able to travel back to universe-A and stop Hermes-A from destroying the box containing universe-1.
The important thing to notice is that each universe represents a possible way things could be. As you proliferate universes, you realize more possibilities. So, if there are an infinite number of universes, then every possibility is bound to be realized in
one of them. While the various universes in Futurama are intended to be humorous, if there really are an infinite number of other universes, then we have good reason to think scenarios like these really exist in some universe. No, seriously, if there’re an infinite number of universes, then there’s a universe with people who mirror you and I, but who dress entirely in Greek togas, and another one where they are dressed like pirates—but in all other respects, these universes are just like ours. Heck, there’s even a universe where half the people are dressed like pirates and the others are dressed in Greek togas. To the extent that Futurama represents a coherent possible universe, then there’s a world where the fiction of Futurama is reality. Given an infinite number of universes, every possibility is realized. That’s one important consequence of multiverse theories.
I Got Your Fine-Tuning Right Over Here
So, what’s the multiverse theory got to do with God? Many philosophers have argued that if the multiverse theory is true, it would undermine one of the most popular and compelling arguments for the existence of God, which is commonly referred to as the fine-tuning argument. So, what’s the fine-tuning argument?
The fine-tuning argument claims that God must exist in order to maintain the amazing set of virtually perfect balances of various natural constants in our universe, like gravity, conditions for life, and so on, which make the existence of intelligent, embodied life possible. Fans of Futurama should think about the Season Three episode “Time Keeps on Slippin’” as an illustration of what it means for the universe to exhibit fine-tuning. In that episode, Professor Farnsworth creates mutant creatures to play basketball against the Globetrotters (beings from the Globetrotter home world who play basketball and whom are some of the universe’s most brilliant cosmologists as well). The mutants are created with chronitons that are extracted from a nebula. However, due to the slight change in the universe caused by removing the chronitons from the nebula, the flow of space-time becomes disjointed. By altering the chronitons, the universe no longer provides a stable environment for sentient creatures to have a coherent experience of the world. Advocates who claim that the universe is finely tuned for life, likewise, maintain that by making slight variations to our world, the existence of intelligent, embodied life would be impossible.
For instance, we’ve discovered that if the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in 1 part to 1060, the universe would either have ended abruptly (by collapsing in on itself) or expanded too quickly for stars to form (thus, making biological life impossible). Mainstream findings in physics tell us that if the strong nuclear force (the force that binds protons and neutrons in an atom) had been stronger or weaker by five percent of its current value, then the existence of embodied intelligent life would be impossible. These sorts of constants, and others like the force of gravity, the electromagnetic force, the ratio of the mass of protons to the mass of neutrons, the ratio of the number of protons to electrons, and the list could go on and on (I’ve seen some estimates that exceed ninety different constants that must be fine-tuned for a life-permitting universe to exist) are cited in favor of the fine-tuning argument.
There’s some debate about the exact number of these different constants and whether they’re all independent from one another. But the current data seems to strongly indicate the vanishingly small probability that all of these various constants would coincidentally come together in just the right proportions to create a life-permitting universe. I mean a really, really, really small probability! It’s so improbable that it makes Fry’s chances with Leela seem pretty good.
The fine-tuning argument works out great for those who believe in God, as long as we’re looking at the probability of creating a life-permitting universe given that there’s only one shot at setting the constants for the universe. However, once the multiverse theory is brought to bear on this issue, we find a handy alternative explanation for the existence of a universe that is finely tuned for life. If the multiverse theory is correct, then there’s an infinite number of attempts for a universe to meet the very narrow range of conditions necessary to permit life. So, while it may be wildly improbable to create a life-permitting universe given one random arrangement of constants, it’s absolutely certain that our life-permitting universe will exist if there are an infinite number of universes. So, you don’t need God to explain why the very improbable conditions necessary for a life-permitting universe happened. With an infinite number of universes it seems as if you can explain why anything is the way it is, because given an infinite number of universes, it was bound to be that way.
Oh Yes, Let Me Explain
So, if the multiverse theory is correct, there are an infinite number of alternative worlds, which explains why our universe exists with the precise constants that are finely-tuned for the existence of biological, intelligent life. However, it’s natural to wonder: If it’s not the work of God, how did an infinite number of universes come into existence?
In the “Farnsworth Parabox,” universes are created by one of Professor Farnsworth’s inventions. Of course, this really isn’t possible. The universes created by the Professor’s machine would have to contain a sufficient amount of matter and energy for a complete universe to exist, which would exceed the amount of matter and energy at his disposal (he would have to use up all the matter and energy of the entire universe to create one duplicate of it). Another problem is that these universes have a past history that’s longer than the duration of the box’s existence. Third, and perhaps most obviously, a box that is approximately 16″ x 6′ x 6″ is too small to contain a world with lots of large objects, such as buildings, planets, stars, and galaxies. All three of these problems are magnified by considering that, after creating universe-1, the Planet Express gang goes inside universe-1 and creates more universes from the resources available inside universe-1.
As it turns out, nobody really thinks that universes could be proliferated by manufacturing them from within another universe. But if they can’t be manufactured in this way, where do they come from? Atheist advocates of the multiverse theory typically take the multiverses or some universe-generating process to be metaphysically primitive. Something is metaphysically primitive when its existence has no deeper explanation or cause than its mere existence—it can be used to explain the existence of other things, but there’s no explanation for its own existence. In other words, if something is metaphysically primitive, then it exists and there’s no deeper reason why it exists.
Traditionally, theists have maintained that God is metaphysically primitive and thereby properly exempt from any questions concerning where He came from or what caused Him to exist. Due primarily to variations on Aristotle’s influential arguments, many philosophers (theists and atheists alike) have agreed that there must be some basic or fundamental things that exist, which have no explanation but by which we’re able to explain everything else. What’s not clear is how to determine when something is metaphysically primitive.
The famous debate on the existence of God that took place in 1948 between Frederick Copleston and Bertrand Russell nicely illustrates the problem of determining what’s metaphysically primitive. At one point, Copleston argues that the universe requires some explanation or cause for its existence. Russell responds, “I should say that the universe is just there, and that’s all.” The debate on this argument ends with an argumentative stalemate: Copleston insists that the universe isn’t metaphysically primitive, while Russell believes it is. This part of the debate closes with Russell’s admission, “Yes, it is very difficult. What do you say—shall we pass on to some other issue?” Different people have different judgments about what is metaphysically primitive.
Given these differences, how can we make a reasonable judgment as to whether the multiverse theory should be counted as expressing a metaphysically primitive conclusion or if it’s reasonable to think that its existence requires some deeper, more basic explanation? While the multiverse theory can offer an alternative explanation of the fine-tun
ing of our universe, it isn’t clear to everyone that it’s a better explanation compared to the existence of God. Of course, there are extensive philosophical debates about what makes one explanation better than another. It’s sometimes thought, for instance, that a simpler explanation (all else being equal) is a better explanation—essentially, this is the idea expressed by what is known as “Ockham’s razor.” However, if we’re going to use simplicity as the standard for determining which explanation is better, we’re going to face a number of tough metaphysical questions.
Consider, first, the theistic explanation. On the one hand, the existence of one Being (God) explains everything—a very simple explanation. On the other hand, this one Being seems very complex—He has infinite degrees of power, knowledge, and goodness. On the surface, this is hardly a “simple” beginning to explain everything else.
But now consider the (atheistic) multiverse explanation. In favor of its simplicity is that the multiverse theory only postulates the same kind of things (physical in nature) that we find in this world. However, the multiverse theory introduces undeniable complexity because of its inclusion of an infinite number of unobservable physical universes. Is this explanation really simpler than theism?
So, here are our choices. We could accept theism, where one being with infinite power, knowledge, and goodness is taken as primitive in order to explain the existence of everything else, or, we could accept the multiverse theory, where an infinite number of universes are taken as primitive in order to explain everything else.
Now What?
Unfortunately, even the imaginative resources of Futurama can’t resolve the philosophical controversies of the multiverse theory, the fine-tuning argument, and the existence of God.
Perhaps the strongest evidence for or against the existence of God isn’t related to the fine-tuning of the universe or the multiverse theory. Maybe the existence of evil, examined by Chapter 15 of this volume, is incompatible with the existence of God. Or maybe God’s existence is made highly probable through religious experiences or miracles. If there’s a God, perhaps He has good reason not to make His existence obvious. For instance, if God values having His creation come to know Him in a way that’s compatible with the exercise of free will, too much compelling evidence of His existence could hinder this goal. As the God Entity says in the Season Three episode “Godfellas,” “When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.” Maybe the evidential stalemate between the multiverse theory and theism is exactly what God wants.