The intelligentsia is always telling us to “follow the science.” But what happens when “the science” starts undermining academia’s deeply-held beliefs? Suddenly, the definition of science changes — or we’re told we misunderstood it all along.

If you’ve followed the debates over climate change or gender ideology, this story might sound familiar. But what may surprise you is that the same tactics are now at work in elite physics departments around the world. Even the most brilliant minds aren’t immune to bias — or to pushing a philosophical agenda under the guise of objectivity.

So, how is this playing out in the world of advanced physics?

Atheist scientists hold one belief above all: God is fiction. Why? Because God isn’t science. And only scientific claims can be true. Science, they say, explains the universe through natural, blind forces. This picture of reality is supposed to be testable and falsifiable.

But are they still living up to that standard?

In recent decades, physicists uncovered something remarkable. Nature’s laws contain fundamental constants, specific numbers that determine how particles like electrons behave. For years, no one knew where these mysterious numbers came from. Then came the scientific discovery that many of them are finely tuned. Change them even slightly, and the universe as we know it wouldn’t exist. No atoms. No stars. No life.

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The implication was hard to miss. An intelligent cause had fine-tuned the constants to produce a complex, structured universe. That conclusion sounded uncomfortably like God. And many atheist physicists wanted nothing to do with that.

Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind, himself an atheist, explained the fear:

Physicists dislike mixing religion into physics. I think they were somewhat afraid that if it was admitted that the reason the world is the way it is has to do with our own existence, that that could be hijacked by the creationists, by the intelligent designers. And of course, what they would say is, “Yes, we always told you so. There is a benevolent somebody way up high in the universe who created the universe exactly so that we could live.” I think physicists shrank at the idea of getting involved in such things.

But if the evidence pointed to God, scientists had a choice: follow it, or explain it away.

Enter the multiverse: an infinite set of unobservable universes, each with different laws. If the multiverse exists, then finding ourselves in a fine-tuned universe isn’t all that surprising. With infinite tries, some universes are bound to support life. And naturally, we’d only ever find ourselves in one of those.

Sounds clever, but here’s the problem: science requires observation and testability. One of the most renowned physicists of the prior generation, Richard Feynman, stated clearly: “All scientists will agree that a question — any question, philosophical or other — which cannot be put into the form that can be tested by experiment…is not a scientific question.”

By definition, an infinite number of unobservable universes can’t be tested by experiment. By Feynman’s standard, and that of virtually all scientists for the past 300 years, the multiverse is not science.

So, what does academia do when faced with this problem? It tries to change the rules.

Physicist Bernard Carr openly argues for redefining science: “It is surely dangerous to impose a philosophical prescription that prevents scientists from changing the border of their field. As Susskind cautions, it would be a pity to miss out on some fundamental truth because of an over-restrictive definition of science.”

In other words: if the multiverse doesn’t fit the definition of science that’s guided discovery since the Enlightenment, no problem — just redefine science.

As if redefining science weren’t bad enough, some scientists go further. Johns Hopkins physicist Sean Carroll boldly claims that falsifiability was never a requirement of science:

The ways in which we evaluate the multiverse as a scientific hypothesis are precisely the ways in which hypotheses have always been judged. The point is not that we are changing the nature of science by allowing unfalsifiable hypotheses into our purview. The point is that “falsifiability” was never the primary criterion by which scientific theories were judged (although scientists have often presented it as such).

So, Feynman got it wrong. Einstein too. Generations of scientists? All mistaken. Or so we’re now told.

How long before textbooks are rewritten to teach students that science doesn’t require testing, observation, or falsifiability? We’ve seen this play before, and it doesn’t end well.

This isn’t just semantics. Redefining science erodes public trust in real, tested science. If untestable multiverse theory now falls under the esteemed banner of science, how is anyone supposed to tell the difference between the real thing and its impostor version?

Fortunately, some scientists have sounded the alarm about these shifts. George Ellis, a leading physicist, has warned bluntly:

The foundations must be respected if one is to preserve the core features of science that have led to its phenomenal success: that is, the feedback from reality to theory provided by experiment and observational testing. One abandons that at one’s peril…it is dangerous to weaken the grounds of scientific proof in order to include multiverses under the mantle of “tested science”.

Ellis is right. If science is to remain credible, scientists need to stop playing word games. Fine-tuning in our one, ordered universe is a real scientific discovery. But it most certainly doesn’t point to an infinite, chaotic multiverse.

The bottom line? The multiverse isn’t science. It’s a speculative philosophical idea — and not even a good one. Passing it off as science is dishonest. These scientists are hijacking the credibility of science to promote a weak philosophical theory that can’t stand on its own.

We’re not saying God is a scientific theory. That would be dishonest. What we are saying is that science points to God. Because when you follow the evidence, the most straightforward explanation for fine-tuning is an intelligent designer.

And if academics really believe in “following the science,” then maybe it’s time they followed it themselves — all the way to God.

Rabbi Elie Feder, PhD, and Rabbi Aaron Zimmer, host the “Physics to God” podcast.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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