Further to “Multiverse skeptic Peter Woit clarifies, he is NOT a creationist”:
Columbia mathematician Woit has received, essentially, a call to conversion from an intolerant religion, which multiverse theory is proving to be. Intolerant, that is, of any orientation that makes traditional demands for evidence from the theories that somehow get classed as “science.”
Of course no one really believes that Woit is sympathetic to the ideas of, say, David Berlinski, Michael Denton, or Michael Behe. All of whom are derided as creationists though not one of them posits creation events. In the end, that isn’t even what this is about. It’s about the role evidence should play, as opposed to theory.
Implying that Woit must be or may as well be a creationist is a way of sending him a message.
Woit took the wrong message, as it happens, from Tegmark’s disparagement of traditional religious folk in his book, Mathematical Universe. A book about a mathematical universe as such would not likely feature such material. A book about a new concept of the universe that is religious in character—with math to suit—would, of course, feature such material.
Now the important question for Woit is, where does that leave Woit? Either he avoids criticizing multiverse theory, in order to have peace (dhimmitude) or he gets called a “creationist” (conceptually, an infidel). Consequences follow either way.
Woit, who is—one gathers—an honest skeptic, wants his voiced doubts. But today doubt may only be directed against disapproved ideas, not approved, funded ones that happen to be poorly evidenced, undemonstrable, or incoherent. And the science media have made very clear that the multiverse is an Approved idea.
It will be interesting to see what he does next.
See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips on the growth of multiverse theory and its ramifications.
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