Are you meaning “alternate universe” metaphorically or literally?
I mean that in miraculous interventions of God you have people living in two real parallel worlds and watching different phenomena at the same place and time.
I have referred to the “Miracle of Fatima”. Another similar example is the conversion of Paul the Apostle, according to the narrative in Acts 22:9.
On this basis one can already conclude that the hypothesis of the Multiverse may be an argument in favor of Miracles, rather than one against God.
And the hypothesis has many other interesting implications.
It’s an interesting hypothesis that raises questions. Are these “temporary” or “virtual” universes that “resolve” back to one? Something like an uncollapsed wave function?
I wonder, though, if this is merely a conceptual exercise that spurns evidential testing, and again, if Willy Ockham might have a problem with it. It’s one thing to add an extra variable or two…it’s another to add a while universe!
The many-worlds theory was introduced by US physicist Hugh Everett to avoid “the collapse of the wave function” (the so called “Copenhagen interpretation”): It assumes that in any experimental round the universe and the experimenter split, so that all possible outcomes become realized in parallel universes and observed by a parallel experimenter. So the parallel universes are supposed to be as real as the initial universe before splitting. Additionally it is supposed that after splitting the parallel universes are inaccessible to each other.
So there is no “collapse” and thus no need of invoking influences coming from outside space-time. Free-will and the personal identity disappear.
However one can raise the following objection (in accord with Leibniz’s Principle):
If something cannot in principle be accessed by observation, it does not exist in space-time at all. And if we can derive its existence by reasoning, this means that it exits mentally beyond space-time as the content of some mind. The “many worlds” proposed by Everett are not “parallel space-times”, but are rather possible thoughts in the “mind of God”.
So at the end of the day both the “collapse” and “many-worlds” are basically equivalent: Both interpretations imply that the “physical reality” we live in is more than what we can access with our senses.
In this light one can formulate the Multiverse hypothesis a bit differently:
When I perform an experiment by choosing certain settings of my apparatus, all other possible alternative choices I could make are also contained in God’s mind, who assigns corresponding outcomes following the quantum mechanical principles (the so called Born’s rule). So in this version of the hypothesis for each choice we maintain only one outcome and shave all possible alternative ones (Willy Ockham will be happy!).
The interest of this explanation is that allow you to have both: Divine omniscience and human free will. All possible choices humans of all times could do (all possible histories) are contained in God’s mind: God knows what would have occurred in case something would have happened that did not happen. Nonetheless I am perfectly free to realize the history I want for me. From my perspective I experience as real the history where I choose to live. However from God’s perspective all histories are equivalent or equal real, in the sense that all of them have the same end: God’s Kingdom.
In summary, the idea of parallel worlds is interesting to explain miracles (in particular Noah’s Flood) and to solve the outstanding theological conundrum of harmonizing divine omniscience and human free will: If I choose to sin, the alternative history where I do not sin is also contained in God’s mind.
Willy might also be happy to avoid the theological quagmire that infinitely multiplying universes would entail. Which universe gets picked by God as the “real one” with regard to judgment day? The one where John Doe accepted Christ … or another one where he didn’t? Maybe he picks that one rare universe were none of us choose to sin ever! But that world would be so unlike our present one (in terms of who all even exists) that nobody could reasonably suggest any meaningful continuity between the two.
Arguably we would participate in the creation of the future (i.e., the “one future that actually exists beyond mere possibility”), and there is some merit to that idea.
A crucial deference between my explanation All Possible Worlds and the conventional Many-Worlds or Multiverse is that the number of worlds I assume is finite. This means that in God’s mind can be contained only a finite number of possible human histories. So Willy Ockham will be happy in this respect.
Mervin, here you have just hit the nail on the head!
The history where “none of us choose to sin ever” (let us call it H0 for “History with zero sin”) has necessarily to be considered by God as really possible, otherwise we would not be free to NOT sin, what is absurd.
So in this H0 history God defines the precise number of places in heaven and the names of them who will occupy them.
All other histories will in the end bring the same number of saints into heaven as in H0, and consequently the names will be the same as in H0. In this sense if one looks “from the End” (i.e.: God’s perspective) all possible histories are equivalent.
If I commit the madness of renouncing to occupy a place in heaven, the place will not remain unoccupied, but I will remain without name (be none) forever.
So there is “meaningful continuity” between H0 and any other possible history.
A final remark:
If you deny alternative worlds in God’s mind you would deny that “we participate in the creation of the future” (as @fmiddel rightly remarks) and this would mean that God predestines people to go to hell, what is absolutely contrary to God’s wisdom, justice, and mercy. A much bigger “theological quagmire” than the Multiverse!
You seem to have landed on a perfecting mathematics for how this could work! You might have delved further into this possibility than what I’ve grasped here, but it seems to me that I could still rest not-too-uncomfortably in my less exciting notion of our one solitary universe existing here complete with our in-built free will to help determine how things play out in at least one small corner of it.
Regarding the quagmire of having God consign people to eternal punishment if they never were offered any real opportunity to escape from — I hear and agree with you there.
It seems to me that your “less exciting notion” is equivalent to my proposal with “all possible histories” after all:
Suppose you decide to sin and reject God in “our one solitary universe”. If you claim that in choosing to sin you are free, this means that in God’s mind the possibility that you do NOT sin is a real one, otherwise God would have “consign you to eternal punishment”.
This means that in each action where it is possible for a human person to sin, two alternative paths are contained in God’s mind: The path where this person decides to loathe God, and also the path where this person decides to love Him.
Accordingly in God’s mind are contained all possible human histories. Nonetheless for God all these histories are equivalent since all of them will end in “the feast of God’s Kingdom”, where all places will be occupied (Luke 14:15-24).