#891 Theism and Boltzmann Brains

Dr. craig’s response

I have previously said that if anyone wants to believe in a multiverse, Bálint, he had better be a theist because that enables him to avoid the Boltzmann Brain problem. God can preferentially order the universes in a World Ensemble so that the vast majority of observable worlds contain ordinary observers like us, whereas worlds with freak observers like Boltzmann Brains are vanishingly rare.

You suggest another reason why the theist should not be worried about Boltzmann Brains, namely, if theism and mind/brain dualism is true, then God would not attach a soul to anything like a Boltzmann Brain. That seems correct. But notice that your conclusion “if theism and substance dualism are true, Boltzmann brains wouldn't be conscious” follows only if you add a third factor to theism and substance dualism, namely, creationism with respect to the soul. An emergent dualist like William Hasker could conceivably maintain that once the neurological complexity exhibited by a Boltzmann Brain exists, then consciousness emerges naturally from such a substructure. That takes us into difficult debates about the origin of the soul.

So your conclusion that even if a brain were to fluctuate into existence out of the quantum vacuum, it would not have a conscious life and so would not be an observer follows only given a creationist view of the origin of the soul. So the theist who is a substance dualist and a creationist needn’t sweat being a Boltzmann Brain.