How Postmodern Relativism Broke Physics | The American Spectator

Beginning in the mid-20th century, Western intellectuals began dismantling the concept of objective truth. Postmodern philosophy insisted that truth is relative, that everyone has their own version of it. The effects have been disastrous. Today, even the most self-evident facts are denied, and reason is routinely replaced by opinion.

But the collapse of truth didn’t stop with the humanities. It spread into the hard sciences, which once prided themselves on sober objectivity about the real world. Even physics — the crown jewel of human reason — has not been immune. Nowhere is this clearer than in the rise of the multiverse, perhaps the strangest and most self-defeating idea ever promoted as if it were science.

The multiverse claims that an infinite number of unobservable universes exist, each with its own laws of nature. While it sounds harmless, this idea ultimately dissolves the concept of objective reality altogether — an outcome that, for an academic culture increasingly committed to relativism, is more feature than bug.

Before we look at the connection between postmodern relativism and the multiverse, we need to understand what motivates multiverse theory in the first place: the attempt to preserve a godless worldview in the face of mounting evidence for design. “If there is only one universe,” atheist physicist Bernard Carr said, “you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.” (RELATED: What is the Scientific Theory of Intelligent Design?)

Here’s why. Built into our universe are fixed numbers that determine the strength of gravity, the mass of the electron, and other fundamental properties of reality. Scientists have discovered that these numbers are astonishingly fine-tuned. If some were even slightly different, the universe wouldn’t have atoms, stars, or life. Nothing complex would exist at all.

The natural question, then, is what caused these numbers to be set with such precision. The straightforward answer is that they were chosen by an intelligent cause for the purpose of bringing about an ordered, complex universe. But for scientists committed to atheism, the idea that fine-tuning points to God is unthinkable. So they look for another explanation.

If there are infinite universes, they argue, then every possible combination of numbers exists somewhere. Most of those universes would be sterile and chaotic, but at least one would inevitably have the right conditions for life. And of course, we find ourselves in that one, because it’s the only kind of universe where observers like us could exist.

As strange as that sounds, multiverse theory doesn’t stop there. To explain the apparent design of the laws of nature themselves — not just the fine-tuned numbers, but the very form of the laws — physicist Max Tegmark goes even further. He proposes that every mathematically possible law of nature actually exists in its own universe. “The only postulate in this theory,” he writes, “is that all structures that exist mathematically exist also physically.” In other words, if you can write down a consistent mathematical equation, Tegmark believes it describes a real universe somewhere.

That means universes where gravity pushes instead of pulls. Universes with dozens of dimensions. Universes governed by exotic equations that bear little resemblance to the structure of nature as we know it. Physicist Alan Guth summarized it bluntly: in an infinite multiverse, “anything that can happen will happen; in fact, it will happen an infinite number of times.”

The growing popularity of multiverse theory among physicists has serious consequences. Beyond the multiverse’s conceptual problems, the idea undermines the very foundation of science itself. For centuries, science has advanced on the conviction that one universal set of laws governs our universe. Great physicists have pursued the dream of uncovering those universal truths and constructing a final theory that could explain the reality we observe.

The multiverse overturns that vision and replaces it with a shallow relativism. All laws exist, and all possible universes are real. There is no single objective truth, but instead an infinite number of relative ones. From this distorted perspective, the great scientists of the past did not reveal the structure of nature — they merely described local curiosities in one tiny corner of an infinite landscape where anything goes.

And once everything possible happens infinitely many times, nothing is unique or meaningful. Every imaginable event is real somewhere. Every story, every physical configuration, every possible law of nature exists in some universe. A science that treats every possibility as real ends up with no universal truths left to discover.

The multiverse removes the very constraint that gives science its purpose: explaining the one universe we can actually observe. Instead of seeking a unified theory that explains what we see, it retreats to the claim that everything imaginable exists. That isn’t progress; it’s a return to a pre-scientific way of thinking.

How can any serious scientist not see that this departure from the heart of science drains it of meaning? The answer lies not in physics, but in philosophy.

For decades, universities have trained generations of students to believe that there are no moral truths, no objective standards, no privileged perspectives. Every belief is a construct. Every viewpoint is equally valid. Once that way of thinking took hold, it was only a matter of time before it spread to the sciences.

The multiverse is the logical extension of postmodern relativism. It tells us that every universe is real, every possibility exists, and nothing has genuine meaning. When that idea enters the halls of science, objective truth quietly slips away. It is the same relativism that hollowed out the humanities, now wrapped in mathematical language.

This makes postmodernism and the multiverse natural allies. The first softens the ground by teaching that objective reality can be dismissed. The second offers scientific cover for the idea that everything is equally true. Together, they amount to a rejection of reality itself.

For centuries, scientists used the scientific method to study the real universe, and what they found pointed to an intelligent cause behind its remarkable structure. Confronted with the implications of fine-tuning, many retreated to a philosophical relativism that allowed them to push away the very conclusions their own science had revealed.

While there are still physicists who understand that the multiverse is a drastic departure from science, they are becoming a minority. We should not stand by as the growing force of relativism begins to reshape the scientific enterprise. Science is humanity’s shared inheritance, and we have a duty to defend it in an age that increasingly doubts the existence of truth.

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

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