The extent of the shift in thinking that the multiverse entails is often underestimated. It is now orthodoxy. Stephen Hawking has blessed it, dismissing philosophy and religion in the process. Multiverse cosmologists look out on a bright future, freed from the demands of evidence. Leonard Susskind reportedly told Alan Guth, “You know, the most amazing thing is that they pay us for this,” and Nobelist David Gross (the fellow who “hates” the Big Bang) has admitted about string theory, “We don’t know what we are talking about.” But they do know what they are not talking about, and that is enough.

As if the multiverse wasn’t bizarre enough … meet Many Worlds

In 1957 physicist Hugh Everett suggested that the universe constantly splits into different futures each time a subatomic particle goes one way as opposed to the other. In other words, not only is there an infinite number of universes, but they come into existence every time you turn right instead of left. Today, such ideas come thicker, faster. We are told that we are “on the brink of understanding everything,” when our cosmology guarantees that we can understand nothing and there is nothing to understand anyway.

Physicist Rob Sheldon sums it up:

Multiverse theory is designed for one purpose, and one purpose only, and that is to defend atheism. It makes no predictions, it gives no insight, it provides no control, it produces no technology, it advances no mathematics, it is a science in name only, because it is really metaphysics.

He warns that science cannot thrive outside reality: “Now some will say that this is still a small price to pay for the freedom it provides from a creator-god. But I want to make it very clear what the terms of the exchange will be.” Lest any reader think that the circus outlined in previous instalments of this series is an unfortunate, temporary side effect of the onward march of science, here are some of the terms: