From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Wed Jul 09 2003 - 13:25:22 EDT
Dr. Blake Nelson wrote:
>
> I still get hung up on statements like, in another
> universe did Jesus marry, was Mohammed the Messiah,
> (Nero raised from the dead), etc. These are not on
> their surface quantum events and thus are not
> possibilities that readily flow from the MWH (at best
> one can hypothesize that these events are due to a
> vast conglomeration of quantum events, but it is not
> clear to me that they are). Just because something is
> imaginable doesn't mean that a universe exists where
> it happened, even if MWH is true, which has been my
> point all along with where this line of what ifs seems
> to go too far.
>
> I am also uncertain that the MWH says much about
> eschatological hope. On one level, if we use Glenn's
> way of talking about it (which I have the
> aforementioned issue with) then everyone is saved in
> some universe (for Glenn's infinity in Hell there is
> an inifinity in Heaven). I don't see this as a
> problem with vindication that George may because --
> leaving aside what Hell means -- divine justice is not
> in anyway compromised. I find the notion, even if it
> were theoretically possible, of a quantumly entangled
> infinity of Glenns no more difficult a problem for God
> to sort out than one Glenn. Certainly, our hope is
> not in a particular Hubble volume, but in a different
> kind of life after death, which perhaps reconciles any
> particular difficulty one may think inheres in there
> possibly being multiple me-s (of course to go back to
> a point Howard, those me-s may be considered DIFFERENT
> people, not the same person. Plenty of philosophers
> think there is a new and different "me" each moment
> and pose the question, which one does God save? The
> "last" one? How are parallel quanum "me-s" any
> different, assuming they are all "me" whatever that
> means).
>
> Finally, for reasons discussed above, I don't see how
> the MWH allows for Nero, for example, to be raised
> from the dead. If raising from the dead is an act of
> God, even if it is built in from the beginning, it
> would be an act it seems to me that is done, if
> necessary, to vindicate the incarnation of the second
> person of the trinity. Thus, it only occurs in those
> universes where that is necessary, i.e., it is not
> possible that Nero (as we know him) is raised from the
> dead in any possible universe. As I have said, it
> does not follow to me, and maybe I am thick, that just
> because all possible quantum event outcomes are
> realized that all imaginable macro events occur.
> Likewise, if it is an act of God that occurs in a
> supernatural way (however, ill-defined we want to use
> that term), then it is not a matter for MWH at all.
>
> I just don't see how MWH particularly effects
> eschatology in a different way, but it may be my own
> lack of understanding that prevents me from seeing
> this point.
Blake -
You make some valid points. But I think that it's a helpful exercise to try to
draw the most threatening implications possible from something like MWH & then think
about how we might deal theologically with them.
I was speaking rather generally of MWHs. I think (for reasons several people
have noted) that versions of that which involve duplicate worlds separated spatially
from one another by 10^(big number) LY are pretty implausible. The more limited Everett
interpretation of QM (usually designated by MW_I_) is viable, though by no means a slam
dunk. But IF it's correct then somehow at every "decision" or "observation" that has
happened since the beginning of the big bang (leaving aside the question of how
observation took place with no conscious observers) there has been a splitting of the
universe so all things consistent with the laws of physics (which doesn't mean
everything) has happened in some branch of the "multiverse."
& then one has to ask theologically what is meant by the reconciliation or
summing up (Col.1:20, Eph.1:10) of "all things" in Christ? Or to put it another way:
How could one make sense of Barth's idea that evil is "the nothingness that God has not
chosen" if in some sense everything _is_ chosen? I don't pose those as any kind of
refutation of Christian concepts but simply as statements of issues that theologians
need to wrestle with. & as Glenn suggests, they ought to be doing that wrestling now
instead of waiting till MWI is (maybe!) confirmed & then having to play catch-up (or run
& hide).
The resurrection is (among other things) a revelation of God's ultimate future:
The kind of life & death that Jesus represents is God's ultimate future. In the late
first century there were rumors that Nero had returned from the dead and was raising an
army in the east to invade the Roman Empire. (That likely lies behind some of the
imagery of Revelation, including the # of the beast.) If the message of Easter were
that Nero, rather than Jesus, had been raised it would be bad news, because it would
mean that the kind of life represented by Nero was God's ultimate future.
BTW, Muslims believe that Jesus (not Muhammed) is the Messiah, and in fact that
he will preside at the last judgment. But they don't believe that he died on the cross
& is the Son of God.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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