If "who made it" is a secret, how does one study it?
"Secret" in the sense of that which isn't known, not what can't be known.

That's like saying that rather than studying Newton's Laws, we should just study Sir Isaac Newton. Or rather than studying how a mechanical watch works, we should research its inventor.
Well, yes. It's an interesting commentary on the times when impersonal things are of more interest than personal things.

If there is a Creator, it's unclear how one could study "God Himself."
Perhaps that's because science is so wrapped up in impersonal things that it doesn't know how do deal with things it can't control. A Turing Test on the universe might prove fruitful. But, as with computers, one runs the risk that it might not want to talk to you.

I think you completely missed the point. If there is a God, then studying what He/She/It created is of far lesser importance than studying God Himself. Once God is found, everything else pales in comparison. The secrets of the universe are not in what it does, or how it works; but who made it. I think that's what Jastrow was saying, anyway.

Either theology is a subset of physics (the atheistic view) or physics is a subset of theology (the theistic view). If the latter, there comes a point where the two might be hard to distinguish.
I'm reminded of the Jastrow quote, "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

I've heard it's due to demographic pressure and xenophobia. The Japanese birthrate is declining and they don't like foreigners. With fewer workers and no outside source they have to increasingly mechanize their factories.

What is "non-mathematical software"?

I'll take age and treachery against youth and strength any day.

Even so, there is a difference between voluntarily submitting to the democratic process and being forced to do so. Too, at least in the USA, we weren't a democracy but a constitutional republic based on the fear of the tyranny of the majority.

Two words: "golden handcuffs"?

Because people are intelligent enough to know that's a bad idea
  You overestimate us. Consistently, the majority of people generally choose security over freedom.

If robots are ever more intelligent than us, they'll also be intelligent enough to make good decisions.
Like not letting the toddlers have free run of the house? There's a reason why we have playpens and put locks on cabinets.

Frankly, I'd rather have the more intelligent beings in charge.
And so it begins... letting others make your decisions is the essence of slavery.

This isn't a question of kicking anything out. It's solely about how they are let in and whether or not it will be done by secret ballot or open petition. The "open petition" format has too much potential for abuse so, IMO, it should remain by secret ballot.

And the multiverse is a "patch a hole in materialism" argument. To be fair, you allude to this when you ask "is it testable in any way?" So far, it's competing philosophies, not science.