http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/books/review/15powell.html?_r=0
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What troubles Susskind is an intelligent design argument considerably more vexing than the anti-evolution grumblings recently on trial in Dover, Pa. Biologists can point to unambiguous evidence that evolution truly does happen and that it can account for many otherwise inexplicable aspects of how organisms function. For those who take a more cosmic perspective, however, the appearance of design is not so simply refuted. If gravity were slightly stronger than it is, for instance, stars would burn out quickly and collapse into black holes; if gravity were a touch weaker, stars would never have formed in the first place. The same holds true for pretty much every fundamental property of the forces and particles that make up the universe. Change any one of them and life would not be possible. To the creationist, this cosmic comity is evidence of the glory of God. To the scientist, it is an embarrassing reminder of our ignorance about the origin of physical law.
Until recently, most physicists took it on faith that as they refined their theories and upgraded their experiments they would eventually expose a set of underlying rules requiring the universe to be this way and this way only. In "A Brief History of Time," Stephen Hawking recalled Albert Einstein's question "How much choice did God have in constructing the universe?" before replying that, judging from the latest ideas in physics, God "had no freedom at all." Like many leading physicists at the time, Hawking believed that scientists were closing in on nature's essential rules - the ones that even God must obey - and that string theory was leading them on a likely path to enlightenment.
Although string theory resists translation into ordinary language, its central conceit boils down to this: All the different particles and forces in the universe are composed of wriggling strands of energy whose properties depend solely on the mode of their vibration. Understand the properties of those strands, the thinking once went, and you will understand why the universe is the way it is. Recent work, most notably by Joseph Polchinski of the University of California, Santa Barbara, has dashed that hope. The latest version of string theory (now rechristened M-theory for reasons that even the founder of M-theory cannot explain) does not yield a single model of physics. Rather, it yields a gargantuan number of models: about 10 (raised to the) 500, give or take a few trillion.
Not one to despair over lemons, Susskind finds lemonade in that insane-sounding result. He proposes that those 10 (raised to the)500 possibilities represent not a flaw in string theory but a profound insight into the nature of reality. Each potential model, he suggests, corresponds to an actual place - another universe as real as our own. In the spirit of kooky science and good science fiction, he coins new names to go with these new possibilities. He calls the enormous range of environments governed by all the possible laws of physics the "Landscape." The near-infinite collection of pocket universes described by those various laws becomes the "megaverse."
Susskind eagerly embraces the megaverse interpretation because it offers a way to blow right through the intelligent design challenge. If every type of universe exists, there is no need to invoke God (or an unknown master theory of physics) to explain why one of them ended up like ours....
Quote from VVV1234:
It does not follow that that a Creator is the most logical. If so, break the logic down for us. And you clearly did not pay attention to what Susskind said, as you were seduced by the tendentious title of the video. Susskind indeed states his support for the Megaverse and he cites the fine tuning of the cosmological constant as a result of it. He states that the possibilities for variations of conditions in the universe, or the number of universes out there, is so great that the cosmological constant is effectively inevitable. And I'll let Susskind and Hawking explain why there are universes (Susskind) and why there is something that arose from nothing (Hawking).
Game, set, match. Sayonara motherfucker!
