Lebell

I've been studying up on the latest theories of the Cosmos and how it might exist and I've been pondering the possible meanings for a semi-traditional Judeo Christian view of the things.

Namely:

If one theory is correct, there are an infinite number of Realities out there where every choice was made.

To take one example: If you were deciding to whether or not to get up this morning and you did, there now exists a separate reality in which you didn't.

The non-religious implications of this theory alone are staggering: an infinitely branching tree of realities.

NOW.

Through Heaven and God into the mix.

What then happens when I die?

First, there are an infinite number of me in these realities; some have died ealier, some have died sooner.

Also, some have lived a good life, and some are probably very bad.

What happens to this "super-being", this infinite Lebell?

Are some branches "pruned off", i.e. the evil ones, which fall into the darkness of Hell, while the good ones go to heaven?

Are we merged into one being or treated seperately?




Anyway, these are some of the things I come up with

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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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asaris

It's possible, even if you accept the theory that there are an infinite number of realities, that there is still only one you. The "you's" are really just people who are quite a lot like you, but not identical with you. How you do you know they're not you? Well, you got up this morning, and the other person didn't.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

CSflim

Well, from my point of view, even ignoring the religious content, I think that the many-worlds interpreation of things, is rather bizzare to say the least. There is nothing in quantum theory which leads irrevocably to "every posibility happens".
All it does is restore determinism to physical theory. This is certainly far from an elegant solution. The 'price' is far too high. It makes far more sense to simply accept randomness as real...or else restore determinism in a much more reasonable manner (Hidden Variables).
Certainly we cannot prove that "every possibility happens" is real...but the evidence for this bizzare claim is incredibly tentative, to say the least.

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Ustwo

This reminds me of the Hindu story of the 'parade of ants'.

I forget the whole of it, but one of the Gods was feeling really full of himself and he was shown a long line of ants walking, and was told each of those ants was once a god such as he is, and is now a humble ant.

Now at the time I was reading it I assumed they were talking from an infinite time perspective, but it works equally well in an infinite universe perspective.

Of course the 'multiverse' is a great Sci-Fi tool, used by both horrible and great sci-fi writers.

One direction to go is if EVERY possibility could happen and heaven/hell is real, then shouldn't in some universe the devil have won the first battle and not been cast into hell?

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

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tecoyah

One direction to go is if EVERY possibility could happen and heaven/hell is real, then shouldn't in some universe the devil have won the first battle and not been cast into hell? [/B][/QUOTE]


Well thought, Also wouldnt this mean that there really is no true faith, or god for that matter. But instead, infinate gods and infinate truths.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

asaris

Not the case, tecoyah. Since God is outside of space, and all of these infinite realities are presumably spatial (since being described by physics), he would be outside of all of them, and present in all of them. And Ustwo, it was impossible for God to lose, so that's not a possibility that can be actualized.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

iccky

I think this brings into question the broader question of self. For example, if your dad married a different person, would you ewxist? Would it still be you, but only in a differnet form? If I continued to play baseball after the age of twelve instead of starting to do theater, would I be the same person today? I would argue that these two people would represent two different people, not totally different, but certainly as different as say me and my best friend. Thus these two people can be judged differently by God. Simmilarly, theres really no problem with having iccky1 and iccky3 go to heaven and iccky2 go to hell, since all are different people.

A better way to look at it might be identical twins. Same genetic material, smmilar basic upbringing, but certainly they make differnet choices and in some pairs one leads a good life and one a bad life.

I think the bigger problem multiverses poses is for the idea of the savior. If every possible reality exists, is there a reality where he was not killed? Is there a reality where he died in infancy? Are there realities where he never appeared, because, say, the human race died off a few thouseand years too early? Would his message have differed greatly if the Romans had never decided to expand beyond italy? Or does he appear under different circumstances in every reality, but delivering the same basic message and offer of salvation?

triad

One way of looking at it is that although there are unlimited realities out there, this is the one that God choose us to experiance...

sexymama

I have found that even two people living in the same house, experiencing day and night together, will look back at it and have their own "reality" of what happened. We seem to create our own reality around our experiences. My reality coexist with your reality, although it is most likely different in some (if not many) ways.

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If you can go deeply into lovemaking, the ego disappears. That is the beauty of lovemaking, that it is another source of a glimpse of god

It's not about being perfect; it's about developing some skill at managing imperfection.

Mantus

You should not take the multiple universe theory literally. It’s a useful logic tool, though it has not even been proven to work flawlessly. For example there are still question on whether everything that is necessary actually exists.

Yet if something is to exist in an alternative reality it would actually have to be possible. Hence if God or Heaven are impossible then they will never exist in any reality.

Jasmar

If there are infinite realitys all going on then statisically wouldn't one world end up being a personal paradise and one being a personal hell?

Thagrastay

Let us consider that God, being in this equation,is actually in control. We could therefore assume that nothing would happen without His consent as all things happen according to His will. A little deflating, that, when it comes to the human element of wanting to be God, but once God is introduced, He shouldn't be discounted and accidents are no longer really a possibility.
Or am I being too absolute again?

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"That's it! They've got the cuffs on him, he's IN the car!"

Yakk

Actually, I find it very elegant. It explains how a photon can both follow one path and interfear with itself going down another path. When physiscs integrate over all possible paths, they might be doing more than just a useful trick: they might actually be approximating the real process.

Hidden Variables requires faster than light communication, as far as I know.

The neat thing is, "every possibility happens" is equivilent to a model with bunches of wierd things going on with wave/particle dualities and special "observers" and lots of other such stuff.

From what little I know of, "every possibility happens" as a model actually makes alot of the wierdness and the undefined observer problem go away in a natural way. It might actually be less strange than the alternatives.

Don't restrict God to the perspective of the single reality.

If Jesus could save both all those that came before and after, he could save all those who aren't even in his reality.

One reality may be as important to God as what a building looks like to a photograph is to an architect. Or even less so, what a building lit under a single frequency of light, through a thin vertical line, at a particular instance, looks like. A sliver of the reality of the full building.

Just as suffering in pain is permitted by God, a reality of suffering may be permitted, for analagous reasons.

You could also take the approach that God is the (multi)verse itself. Or, the approach that God started off this little multiverse, and is just watching. Or, that only 777 people from every single multiverse will ever reach the true heaven. All are at least interesting thought experiments. =)

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

CSflim

Well elegance is in the eye of the beholder I guess.
Still, I strongly believe that extraordinary claims require extrordinary evidence. And nothing of the sort has been provided in favor of Many Worlds.

Yes and no...no matter neeeds to go faster than the speed of light, and also no information could be sent by this "communication", so as such is doesn't result in infinite energy, or problems with causality (sending instructions back in time).

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Mantus

I don’t see how a photon’s interaction with itself constitutes the existence of another reality. And I always though that the reason photons interfered with themselves was because they are also waves.

As for faster then light communication, it does happen, and has been documented. I believe Einstein called it "spooky action" at a distance. Happens between entangled particles.

:::OshnSoul:::

What experience what we choose to be. We are what we experience. In each choice, we experience more of who we are, and that's how we reinvent ourselves and gather information in our own perception of experience, therefore drawing conclusions.
The afterlife is what you will it to be. Ultimately, there is no physical Heaven or Hell, but we may experience the likes of either, depending on our Soul's evolution in the prior physical life.

We were all created by One Being- that of "God". We are pieces of God merely only physically seperated, yet still bound universally and once we pass the physical life, we will become One With All again and then our Souls will determine its continuing evolution in the next phase, whatever it may be.


There are infinite experiences to infinite choices which create infinite realities. It all comes down to choice.

Yakk

*nod*, causality isn't broken.

But, what happens to someone "elsewhere" is predictable, based off an observation made at a point in space time. It is a non-local effect.

In the many worlds interpritation, the 'observation' simply makes your reality orthoginal to some other realities. It is a local operation. The realities where the photon isn't found to have a consistent orientation are just never encountered by your worldline.

In the classic model, your observation at one point has non-local effects on reality, popogating at an arbitrary speed. A third party could see either person A observing the photon then person B observing the photon at right angles, or B then A: which one CAUSED the orientation of the photon at the other location is not determinable. That photon communicated faster than light/backwards in time/instantaniously depending on where you are when you are looking at the two events.

[quote]I don’t see how a photon’s interaction with itself constitutes the existence of another reality.[/quote

It doesn't imply it: it is consistent with it. Hell, when we figure out the chance that a photon is at a location, we integrate its chance of getting there over every possible path. One interpritation is that it went over every possible path, another is that a photon is a wave that magically turns into a particle when a mystical observer looks at it.

I know what I find more elegant.

Tell me what an observer is. When do quantum mechanical states collapse?

No, something that could be interprited as faster than light communication (highly restricted: the communication is symetric and cannot be used to move information) has been observed.

Don't get me wrong: all the many worlds interpritation is is an interpritation. All the other models are is an interpritation. They predict the same behaviour, use the same equations. They just think the equations mean different things.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.