Alan Moore: Woo propagandist

[Orrex]

You may have heard about the small independent film Watchmen that debuted with little fanfare last week. Well, I was rereading the source material for the first time in about 12 years, and I came upon two quick but significant bits of classic woo thinking.

MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW IN WHITE TEXT: HIGHLIGHT THE SPACE BETWEEN THE ==== TO SEE THE SPOILER
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One of the between-chapter pieces is an essay on the political significance of Dr. Manhattan. In this fictional piece, the fictional scientist/author matter-of-factly refers to the increasing similarity between quantum mechanics and Taoism. This is a favorite trope among woo-thinkers, especially those who like to use nifty-sounding scientific jargon to validate their nonsensical claims about vibrations and perception and all of that.

Later, in the discussion between Laurie and Dr. Manhattan, the good blue doctor laments his wish to witness a "thermodynamic miracle," and event so unlikely as to be functionally impossible, such as oxygen spontaneously turning into gold. After a lengthy debate, Dr. Manhattan decides that every human life, arising from a vast series of improbable events, is statistically equivalent to such a miracle, and this is of course nonsense. Some event was going to happen at the end of that series of events, so it's only a miracle if we'd predicted that this particular organism was going to be the result. Dr. Manhattan, supernaturally intelligent and transcendently wise, nevertheless makes a mistake that should have been covered in STAT 101. This, too, plays into woo-thinking in general but also to Creationism in particular, which has long favored the "fine tuning" argument, which proceeds along much the same lines.
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Moore's mistakes here are likely innocent--though a fine writer, he's no scientist, and I don't hold him to that standard--but it plays directly into the kind of uncritical thought that makes it so hard to debate woos rationally.