The Incarnational Cosmic Christ, Part 2

The Incarnational Cosmic Christ

PART 2

Compiled by R.E. Slater

de Chardin's Relationship

with Process Theology

I am reiterating Teilhard de Chardin's (TdC)view of the Cosmic Christ here below. At times close to Whitehead's process thought in many components, de Chardin's Catholic view was more vitalist in approach positing a muscular psycho-spiritual form of teleology into evolutionary progress.

In the past, as well as the present, both Catholic and Protestant beliefs have struggled with accepting Darwinian evolution - which viewpoint the French Jesuit priest de Chardin promoted, stating that all creation was moving towards an "Omega Point" in Christ. A theological statement which a Christ-centered process theology would be sympathetic towards, however, de Chardin's metaphysic is more theological than it is philosophic making it much less broad than Whitehead's process metaphysic (I will explain what I mean by this in the next several articles). For now here are a few observations leading into "The Incarnational Cosmic Christ."

At the center of TdC's philosophy was the belief that the human species is evolving spiritually, progressing from a simple faith to higher and higher forms of consciousness, including a consciousness of God, and culminating in the ultimate understanding of humankind's place and purpose in the universe.

SIMILARITIES

Creation as Christo-Centric:

Both Teilhard de Chardin and Whitehead's process philosophy / theology emphasized a dynamic, evolving universe and a God who is immanent in creation.

Their views of Christ and the nature of the divine also differed significantly, with process theology understanding Christ as God's divine agent responding to God's call of creation, while Teilhard sees Christ as the cosmic center of evolution.

Emphasis on Evolution and a Dynamic Universe:

Both Teilhard and process thinkers see the universe as a dynamic, evolving process, not a static entity.

Immanence of God:

Both emphasize God's presence and involvement in the world, rather than a distant, transcendent God.

Cosmic Christ:

Both view Christ as having a cosmic significance, not just a historical or local one. 

Cosmological and Evolutionary Framework:

Both Teilhard de Chardin’s mysticism and process philosophy emphasize a dynamic evolving universe. For de Chardin, Christ represents the Omega Point, the ultimate goal of the evolutionary process toward greater complexity and unity. This resonates with process theology's idea of the "Divine lure," where God calls creation towards greater complexity and fulfillment.

Process philosophy, particularly through figures like Alfred North Whitehead, emphasizes the processual nature of reality, where everything is in constant flux and development, much like Teilhard’s understanding of the universe evolving towards a unifying point of divine fulfillment.

Immanence of God:

Both perspectives see God as immanent in the world, guiding and participating in the unfolding of creation. In de Chardin’s view, Christ is present in every part of the universe, drawing it toward its divine fulfillment. Similarly, process theology views God as deeply involved in the unfolding process of the world, working within the world to inspire growth, order, and harmony.

Christ as a Cosmic Principle:

In de Chardin’s mysticism, Christ is not just a personal savior but also a cosmic figure — the Christogenesis or the principle by which the universe reaches its ultimate zenith or unity. This connects with process theology's idea of God as both a personal presence and a guiding cosmic force. Christ, for de Chardin, is the focal point of the universe's evolutionary trajectory, and this aligns with process theology’s understanding of God's role as a co-creator with the world.

PSEUDO-DIFFERENCES

Christ's Role in Creation:

• Teilhard de Chardin viewed Christ as the ultimate point of convergence for all of creation’s evolutionary journey — the Omega Point. His Christology is highly metaphysical, rooted in an esoteric understanding of cosmic evolution.

• Process theology, however, does not necessarily view Christ as the sole focus of cosmic evolution but as a key participant in the unfolding divine process. In Whitehead’s framework, Christ (or the Christ Principle) is seen as an aspect of God's interaction with the world rather than the singular focus of cosmic progression.

• This then forces the question, "What does the person of Christ (not the work of Christ) mean in a philosophical v theological sense? That is, "How is Christ the objective end of the universe? In theological language it is readily apparent but in philosophical language process thought must go beyond the ontology of the Person to the metaphysic itself - which in God, is one-and-the-same, envisioning a dance of symmantics. Which is why de Chardin's Christogenic OmegaPoint can be seen as sympathetic to process thought though limiting in its metaphysic (again, I will explain in several follow up articles).

The Nature of God and Creation:

• Teilhard’s view is more panentheistic — God is both within and beyond creation, and Christ is the divine principle that encapsulates the unity of the world’s evolutionary ascent.

• In process thought, God is also panentheistic but the emphasis is often on God’s dynamic relationship with the world. God is understood to both suffer with creation and persuade it toward greater good, with Christ being an incarnation of this divine process.

Teleologic Eschatology:

• Teilhard de Chardin’s eschatology is highly optimistic, seeing the entire universe ultimately converging in the Christ at the Omega Point — a kind of final cosmic unity and perfection. This view has a very teleological (goal-oriented) aspect to it.

• Process theology, while hopeful, often rejects a strict end-point of perfection. The future in process thought is more open-ended, with the possibility for ongoing transformation and growth, and doesn’t always adhere to the idea of a final cosmic goal in the way de Chardin envisioned.

CONCLUSION

While Teilhard de Chardin’s mystic view of Christ and process theology share a very close cosmic and evolutionary framework and a deep sense of divine immanence, Teilhard’s Christology is more metaphysical, esoteric, and teleological, whereas process theology offers a more relational and open-ended view of God's involvement in the world. The integration of Christ into the evolutionary process, central to de Chardin’s thought, parallels process philosophy's idea of God’s involvement in creation but differs in its scope and finality.

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de Chardin's Relationship

with the Catholic Church

Summary:

While the Catholic Church previously issued a monitum (warning) against Teilhard de Chardin's writings in 1962, there's a growing trend of positive recognition and engagement with his ideas, including references by multiple popes, though a formal rehabilitation remains absent. Here's a more detailed breakdown:

Initial Condemnation:

In 1962, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Office) issued a monitum against Teilhard de Chardin's writings, citing "dangerous ambiguities and grave errors". 

Shift in Perspective:

Despite the initial warning, there's been a noticeable shift in the Church's perspective on Teilhard, with multiple popes making positive references to his work. 

Pope Francis's Influence:

Pope Francis, in particular, has been quoted as referencing Teilhard's writings, including in "Laudato Si'," which has led to speculation about a potential rehabilitation of Teilhard's work. 

Positive Recognition:

Scholars from the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture have noted Teilhard's "prophetic vision," and some supporters have called for him to be named a Doctor of the Church or for the monitum to be removed. 

Ongoing Dialogue:

The Church continues to engage with Teilhard's ideas, with the opening of the Teilhard de Chardin Center in a Paris suburb serving as a place for dialogue between science, philosophy, and spirituality. 

No Formal Rehabilitation:

While there are positive signs, the Church has not formally reversed the 1962 monitum or declared Teilhard a Doctor of the Church. 

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THE COSMIC CHRIST

REFORMULATING THE CLASSICAL FAITH

Published in The Furrow, April 2024

by Hilda Geraghty

The article presents an overview, in thumb-nail sketches, of new perspectives in theology as it meets today’s cosmic worldview. It offers a dynamic, holistic view of creation, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all existence. It offers the notion of a universal imperfection and the concept of a very human Christ, along with cosmic dimensions of the Eucharist. The emphasis on unity, collective consciousness, and the need for a goal to energize the world lead to a hope-filled conclusion.

Theology is a vast field of study, but at the cutting edge its perspectives are beginning to embrace the newly-discovered dimensions of reality.  Interdisciplinary approaches, where science and faith embrace, are revealing a beautiful and unifying story that is hope-inspiring and energising for the human task of building the world, even as it offers us breathtaking vistas for worship.  When the ground under them moves from static to dynamic, and expands to almost infinite space-time, the core Christian mysteries of Creation, Fall, Incarnation, Redemption, Resurrection and Pleroma, become transposable like melodies into a new key, without losing anything of their integrity.

A TRANSFORMED VIEW OF CREATION

The first of these is the new perspective on creation, which, as we now know, began in deep time, around fourteen billion years ago.  The history of the universe, from elementary quantum particles generated in the ‘big bang’ to the furthest reaches of space, is one single vast process, that is, one great story.  The result is that we have moved from a human-centred view of creation, where we saw ourselves as Lords and Masters of a static world, to a cosmic awareness in which we are one part of a great unfolding story. Teilhard de Chardin writes:

“Humankind is not the centre of the universe, as we once thought in our simplicity, but something much more wonderful- the arrow pointing the way to the final unification of the world in terms of life.  The human alone constitutes the last-born, the freshest, the most complicated, the most subtle of all the successive layers of life.” (1)

THE WHOLE GREATER THAN ITS PARTS

The beauty of this cosmic story is that it hangs together as a whole.  We now realise that nothing or no one exists on its own. Creation is a Whole, and is greater than the sum of its parts.  Moreover, this cosmic story is dynamic, in a continuous movement of development, known as evolution. Creation is on-going.

There is a basic oneness about the nature of reality itself:  matter and energy are now seen as different forms of the same thing, and energy is a form of spirit.  “Foundational to the quantum worldview is the perception that everything in creation is energy.  It is all that is- and everything that is.  Empty space is full of creative energy; the perceived emptiness is actually a fulness.“ (2)

The universe is actually a spiritual reality, and we no longer divide it into such categories as spiritual and material, sacred and secular, superior and inferior.  All of creation is holy, and all our lives can be holy when lived in deep cooperation with the Whole.

THE CREATIVE BREATH OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

These advances in creation theology focus with new appreciation on the Holy Spirit, the creative Breath of God, who continually brings all things into being. We understand the Holy Spirit “as the primary manifestation of the divine in our earthly-human awareness, and as the first intuitive and mystical insight into the meaning of God.” (3) The great Holy Spirit has always breathed life into creation from the beginning of time, and the human calling is now seen as co-creating with the Spirit. “God does not so much make things as make them make themselves.” (4) The immanence of God in the world is being freshly appreciated, drawing us into deeper intimacy with the Divine Presence in all things.   Pope Francis reminds us that “If the universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely … there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face.”  (5)

THE DEEP INCARNATION OF CHRIST

In this awesome perspective theologians are coming to describe the Christ event as ‘Deep Incarnation’.  Jesus is not seen as coming to the universe ‘from outside’, as it were, but that, like every other life form, he too in his human nature emerges organically from nature’s deep time as a Homo Sapiens, made of star dust and fruit of aeons of development.  The birth of Christ is the whole reason for the world to exist, and the growth of Christ is its business.  In the words of Teilhard de Chardin: 

“God did not will individually the sun, the earth, plants, or humanity.  God willed His Christ.  And in order to have Christ, God had to create the spiritual world and humanity in particular, upon which Christ might germinate.  And to have humanity God had to launch the vast process of organic life which is an essential organ of the world.  And the birth of that organic life called for the entire cosmic turbulence…” (6) A little later he continues “…Christ is so engrained in the visible world that Christ could henceforth be torn away from it only by rocking the foundations of the universe.” (7)

UNIVERSAL IMPERFECTION

In the new perspectives the understanding of ‘original sin’ morphs from being a once-off choice by an initial pair of humans that somehow blighted everyone, to the defective state of a species, a whole world still in formation, still unfinished.  It can be seen as universal imperfection, or a slowness to make the effort to evolve further.  In that view, the story of Adam and Eve illustrates our on-going reality: it is a portrait of human nature, of people still on their way to God, who do not want to listen to their conscience (‘voice of God’).  Paradise lies up ahead at the term of our collective evolution, rather than lost behind us in an actual past history. “Evolution is a laborious process… of trying things out, so that disaster, pain, suffering and death necessarily go with it.  In a world of this sort evil is no accident… It is an essential aspect of an evolutionary process which has to pick its way through a maze of errors and misplaced efforts. Since God willed to create a world that must grow to its completion via an evolution, imperfection and evil were bound to occur in this creation.  It could not be otherwise.” (8)

IN WHAT SENSE A SAVIOUR?

Because evil is so endemic, the world stands in radical need of salvation.  Salvation by Christ therefore also has cosmic dimensions.  In this context ‘salvation’ means that humanity, individually and collectively, is brought on-course in the evolutionary journey, as opposed to getting derailed and failing to reach our fulfilment in God (Omega). Through incarnating in this world Jesus, the Divine Human, inevitably meets this shadow side of creation and, as we would expect him to, tackles it head on.  However he does so in a totally counter-intuitive way.  In him evil meets love and is defeated by it, the only energy capable of doing so.  

John the Baptist had defined Jesus as the Lamb of God, -not the Lion, or the Bull, or the Eagle,  but the Lamb, gentle and vulnerable.  In his passion and death Jesus stands before us as God’s sign, the One sent by God, as he self-identified at his trial before the Sanhedrin and before the world.  By accepting and suffering the cross we imposed on him, Jesus places Godself in the position to forgive sin, since to forgive something you must have suffered it.  He thus restores the relationship between God and our repentant selves. As the Lamb who forgives the sins of the world Jesus makes evolution his cause and becomes its very soul, leading the human race forward through love towards a mysterious destiny. This will be when humanity finally unifies in love, focused on Omega-God.  This process too is on-going.  Repenting-forgiving love is what repairs the ever-breaking, ever-wounding, ever-falling Whole on its journey, and Jesus calls his followers in turn to channel this healing energy into life at all levels.  

Relationality is key.  In the new perspectives ‘sin’ is seen as letting down the Whole, in my/our patch of reality by damaging or breaking relationships in a multitude of ways. ‘Hell’ is the fact that there is nowhere good to go if a person breaks away from the Whole through serious unrepented wrongdoing.  ‘Holiness’ is personal evolution into love, as individuals grow towards Omega.  ‘Heaven’ begins now as we live love, sharing the mission of the Lamb. 

THE RESSURECTION OF CHRIST

The resurrection is God’s great sign, vindicating Jesus’ claim to be indeed the One sent by God, and the victory of love over evil.  It shows that to love, repent and forgive are wisdom, not foolishness.   In the risen flesh of Christ matter has become spiritualised, pointing to a future resurrection of all in Christ, when heaven and earth are drawn into union, the mysterious pleroma [fulness, completion].  “And I will raise them up on the last day.”  (Jn 6, 52) This, then, will complete the unfinished story. So, with proper balance, the Christ event is seen not only as repairing broken relationships, but as leading this world towards its final fulfilment in a love that converges in Omega.  “The essence of Christianity is nothing more or less than a belief in the world’s coming to be one in God, through the taking of human nature by Christ.” (9)

THE VERY HUMAN CHRIST

The Incarnation of Christ enacts the supreme meaning of the universe, and yet Jesus, the Divine Human, is not lost as an individual in this vast perspective.  By living normally for ninety per cent of his short life, working for eighteen of his thirty-three years at his carpenter’s bench, Jesus is seen as endorsing our human vocation to build the earth through work.  The new theology reclaims the complete life of Jesus, and not only his public life, because his whole life builds the Kingdom of God.  Long in coming, we are now allowed to love the world, the Whole, as God’s creation, and to engage with it passionately in all walks of life as we seek to progress God’s Kingdom here on earth.  The whole Church now fully recognises the dignity and holiness of the lay vocation to build this world according to Christ’s values, doing a good job.  However, we do not forget that “If undertaken in pliant surrender, the pursuit of Christ in the world culminates logically in an impassioned enfolding, heavy with sorrow, in the arms of the Cross.”  (10)

Dutch theologian N.M Wildiers writes, “It is precisely because we live in a world which is under construction that our labour takes on a new value and a capital importance. The human task coincides exactly with the duty to carry out the great work of evolution and guide it to completion…  Teilhard urges us to go beyond every form of secularism by including the values of the earth in a Christocentric vision of the world.” (11)

The new theology also underpins the new worldwide ecological movement, a love-energy arising almost too late.  In this way Christianity moves beyond spiritual individualism to collectively empower us to build a better world, as it is called to do.  (In so doing, of course, we will find that ‘our souls have been saved’.)  In the words of Teilhard:

“Eating, drinking, working, seeking; creating beauty, or truth, or happiness- all these things could have seemed to us just like varied activities… Now, directed towards the Super-Christ, the variety draws itself together.  Like the countless shades that combine in nature to produce a single white light, so the infinite modes of action are fused, without being confused, into one single colour under the mighty power of the universal Christ. And it is love that heads this movement: love…the higher, universal and synthesised form of spiritual energy in which all the other energies of the soul are transformed and redirected, once they fall within the field of Omega.  In that centre every activity is amorised.  A super-humankind calls for a Super-Christ.  A Super-Christ calls for a Super-Charity.” (12)

THE COSMIC EUCHARIST

Within the new perspectives our understanding of the Eucharist, centre of our faith, also grows naturally to cosmic dimensions.  As Pope St John Paul writes,

” I have been able to celebrate Holy Mass in chapels built along mountain paths, on lakeshores and seacoasts… This varied scenario of celebrations of the Eucharist has given me a powerful experience of its universal and, so to speak, cosmic character. Yes, cosmic! Because even when it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world. It unites heaven and earth. It embraces and permeates all creation. The Son of God became man in order to restore all creation, in one supreme act of praise, to the One who made it from nothing.” (13)

Pope St John Paul might almost have been quoting from Teilhard’s Mass on the World, a text treasured by many, that par excellence celebrates its cosmic outreach into the whole of creation:

[After the consecration] “Once again the [divine] Fire has entered the Earth.

Without earthquake or thunderclap the Flame has lit up the whole world

from within.  All things are individually and collectively penetrated and flooded by it, from the inmost core of the tiniest atom……to the mighty sweep of the most universal laws of being…

In the new humanity which is begotten today the Word prolongs the unending act of his own birth.  And through his immersion in the world’s womb……the great waters of the kingdom of matter have, without even a ripple, been endowed with life.

No visible tremor marks this transformation beyond words, and yet mysteriously and in all truth, at the touch of the super-substantial Word…the immense host that is the universe is made flesh through your own incarnation, my God. …We are all of us together carried in the one world-womb, …yet each of us is our own little microcosm in which the Incarnation is wrought independently, with degrees of intensity.” (14)

How inspiring and meaningful liturgical texts will be when they incorporate something of this new cosmic language!  The universe itself will be made into an instrument resounding with the praise of Christ! 

TOWARDS THE FUTURE

The new perspectives intuit, tentatively, the course of evolution as we hurtle towards the future faster than many of us would like.  Despite living through two world wars (the first experienced at length as a stretcher-bearer on the front lines of battle), Teilhard continued to believe in the power of life to keep moving forward, a movement that would ultimately lead towards a unity of humankind.  An ever-increasing convergence was the feature he highlighted, as, through technology, our minds grow ever closer together into a living, collective consciousness,  both for better and also, as yet, for worse.   “We are gathered here as one big tribe and earth is the tent we all live in,” said Morgan Freeman as he opened the Men’s Football World Cup in 2023.   We must all learn to live together constructively or we will perish together. 

A goal is needed to energise us with hope. “The greatest event in the history of the earth, now taking place, may indeed be the gradual discovery, by those with eyes to see, not merely of Some Thing but of Some One at the peak of the evolving universe as it converges upon itself.” (15)

In other words, the Christian view sees the whole of history as an ascent of the world toward its fulfilment in Christ.  This cosmic vision is classic St Paul:

“His purpose He set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.”  (Eph1:9-10)

NEWLY RELEVANT   

As the Christian faith learns to accommodate these new cosmic perspectives, it finds itself regaining the relevance it has been gradually losing over the past three centuries.  It sounds real!  Most importantly, it invests the life of the laity with new dignity, holiness and purpose. They are building the values of Christ into the workings of this world,  doing God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven.”  The strength of this approach comes from its unified vision: God’s work is one, a single reality, and it generates a deeply holistic and refreshing spirituality.  For Christians there is no longer any conflict between science as it reveals material reality, and faith in Christ, Alpha and Omega of everything.  “A road is opening up: to make our way to heaven through earth…It [Christianity] is the very religion of evolution.” (16) This new story offers a horizon of hope for our troubled times.  

This renewed faith needs to make its way into every place where ‘traditional’ (static, dualistic, individualistic, oblivious to the universe) Christian faith is celebrated, prayed, sung, preached, taught, explored and transmitted to others.  There is a huge task of theological education to be done, a new ‘language’ to be learned, an evolutionary path to be trodden.  At the same time, of course, a broad education in cosmology is needed to underpin it.

The strength gained from drawing these two visions of science and the Christian faith into a single worldview will be phenomenal for the Christian life!  This faith can enable the Church to once more lead people of today and tomorrow into living as befits their responsibilities to the Divine Mystery, to each other and to the universe.  To conclude with the words of Ilia Delio, of the Christogenesis Center for developing Teilhardian thinking: “If we can imagine a new wholeness emerging through science and religion and developing renewed institutional systems for human flourishing, then can we realise a new type of planetary community.  The only way to predict the future is to create it, and the power to do so will come from those who are unbounded in love.” (17)

For more articles on Teilhard see: @teilharddechardinforall.com

REFERENCES

(1) Teilhard de Chardin: The Phenomenon of Man, p 224, translated by Bernard wall.  New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2008.

(2) Diarmuid O’Murchú,  MSC, Doing Theology in an Evolutionary Way, p 12. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY. 2021.

(3) Ibid. p 95.

(4) T. de C., Towards the Future, p 125. Translated by René Hague, New York, Harcourt, 2002.

(5) Laudate Deum, 65.

(6) T.de C., Science and Christ, p 61, translated by René Hague, New York, Harper & Row, 1968.

(7) Ibid.., p 61.

(8) An Introduction to Teilhard de Chardin, N. M. Wildiers. P.143.  Collins. Fontana Books, London and harper & Row, New York 1968.

(9) T.de C. L’Énergie Humaine, p 113 Oeuvres VI.

(10) T.de C. Writings in Time of War, p 61, Tr, René Hague, New York: Harper & Row, 1968.

(11) N. M. Wildiers in the Foreword to Christianity and Evolution, by Teilhard de Chardin,  Orlando, new York, London, A Harvest Book, Harcourt Inc. First Harvest Edition 1974. P. 11, 13.

(12) T. de C., Science and Christ, p 170, translated by René Hague, New York, Harper & Row, 1968.

(13) Ecclesia de Eucharistia, April 17, 2003.

(14) T. de C., The Mass on the World, published in The Heart of Matter, p 123 translated by René Hague, A Harvest Book, Harcourt Inc.  San Diego, New York, London.

(15) T. de C., The Future of Man, p 293 Translated by Norman Denny. Collins. Fontana Books, London and Harper and Row, New York, 1964.

(16) T. de C., Christianity and Evolution, p 93. Tr. R. Hague. A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Inc. Orlando, New York, London. 1974.

(17) Ilia Delio, 23 Dec 2023, on a promotional email for the Christogenesis centre in America.

The Incarnational Cosmic Christ, Part 1

The Incarnational Cosmic Christ

PART 1

by R.E. Slater

I am going to begin a concentrated discourse of process philosophy which must necessarily take us into a great many fields of study. After fifteen years of forging 1) a new path for Christianity and 2) for faithful Christians to explore-and-consider (see The Calf Path of an Open, Discerning Faith which I wrote in November of 2012) I believe it's time to double down and give even greater root to this new directional assignment encumbering my heart. Roots which are both philosophical and theological.

Incarnational

I titled this post here "The Incarnational Christ" which means to me that the God who became man, and lived as a man, within the world of his creation, has transformed God's Self from "what-ness" to "being-ness." Now perhaps my ontology is wrong and God has always been a Cosmic Being of some sort but where it concerns humanity, I can easily make the case that God has furthered God's Being-ness by God's transforming human incarnation into this world we inhabit. (As an aside, God's Being-ness has ever been... God's Incarnation is making this fact evident to humans here.) 

Cosmic

By "Cosmic" I mean to assert that God as Christ was always existent and will always be existent. That as Creator, Christ must be as cosmic as Christ is Incarnational. That neither diminishes the other but significantly expands and expounds the other. If Christ is not Creator-God than Christ is less a cosmic Being than is understood.

Christ

Lastly, by "Christ" I mean "the Son of God" who is at the right hand of the Father and in fellowship with the Father and the Spirit. Though I prefer for simplicity's sake to think of God as One the bible and tradition seem to imply their is a tri-partness to God's Being... that of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In essence, this speaks to me of relationship, experience, and presence.

Process

Not inconsequentially then does process philosophy and theology insist on the same qualities of panrelationalism, panexperientialisim and panpsychism all bound up in one cosmic ontological presence. Thus my attraction to process thought as it correlates quite nicely with traditional Christianity - and, might I add, other interrelated religious touchstones (sic, interfaith commonalities)

Conclusion

And so, I believe I am going to settle in and think through how a post-structural, metamodern, radically processual Christian faith might live and breath underneath it's verbiage. When I look at a healthy field of grasses and wildflowers swaying together under a small breeze, seeing, smelling, feeling within it its greenery and colours, I assume there resides healthy, complex ecosystem of roots. But should I dig those roots up I could further explore what makes the field of grasses and wildflowers so beautiful in its expanse and vibrancy.

Here, I intend to look at my process faith root-and-all, small-and-large, heartbeat-and-body, soul-and-spirit, as an expression of the God I love in correlation with process philosophy and theology. Now for those readers who want an expositional bible study they will need to go elsewhere... perhaps in my earlier discussions over the years; but here, I intend to use philosophical dialogue in conjunction with theological ideas so that your and my Christian faith not wilt under the intemperate suns of human ideologies conflicting this same faith. Why?

Because my theological faith built on loving ethics and community needs a bit more depth in order to breathe. I need to test it out a bit more... or help it extend and expand a bit more... into societal thinking. This project then is my missional project to the world of inter-religious and Christian faith. My request is to pray for the Spirit's continued enlightenment to dissect, discern, direct, discover, and help determine a healthy expression of God's announcement in Christ:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life". - John 3.16

Peace,

R.E. Slater

March 28, 2025

"For God so loved the world...": This phrase highlights the profound and extensive love God has for humanity.

"...that he gave his only Son...": This emphasizes God's ultimate sacrifice, offering his Son, Jesus, as a means of salvation. 

"...that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life": This outlines the consequence of faith in Jesus: eternal life, not death.

Examining the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of Quantum Physics, Part 3

Examining the Many Worlds Interpretation

(MWI) of Quantum Physics

Part 3

Let's recap the last two articles and add a third...

Part 1 - The Many World's Theory of Quantum Science

Part 2 - Implications of Whitehead's Process Cosmology (WMPI)

             for the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI)

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The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics

by Accha FM   |   Oct 20, 2024

Imagine a universe where every decision you've ever made, every path not taken, every "what if" scenario, actually exists in parallel realities. This isn't science fiction; it's the mind-bending realm of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. A theory that suggests our reality is just one of countless others, branching off with every quantum event.

Picture yourself standing at a crossroads, but instead of choosing one path, you take both simultaneously. In one world, you turn left; in another, you go right. This is the essence of many-worlds, where the fabric of reality splits with each quantum interaction. It challenges our understanding of existence, consciousness, and the very nature of choice. Are you ready to explore the infinite possibilities that might lie just beyond our perception? Buckle up, as we dive into the fascinating world of quantum mechanics and its mind-boggling implications for our reality.

* * * * * * *

What is The Many-Worlds Interpretation ( Quantum Physics )

By Beyond The Atom   |   Mar 6, 2024

Welcome to our fascinating journey into one of the most intriguing interpretations of quantum mechanics: the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI). Imagine a universe where every decision you make, every chance event, creates a branching path leading to a new, parallel universe. This isn't science fiction; it's a serious scientific hypothesis proposed by physicist Hugh Everett in 1957, suggesting an almost unimaginable reality.

In this video, we dive deep into the heart of quantum mechanics to explore the foundational concepts behind the Many-Worlds Interpretation. We'll start by unraveling the mystery of quantum superposition, where particles exist in multiple states simultaneously, and the puzzle of quantum measurement, which has perplexed scientists for decades.

Discover how the MWI proposes a radical solution to these quantum quandaries by suggesting that all possible outcomes of quantum measurements actually occur, each in its own newly branched universe. This interpretation eliminates the need for wavefunction collapse, offering a deterministic and symmetric view of the universe that includes both the observer and the observed.

But the implications of the Many-Worlds Interpretation are as vast as they are controversial. We'll explore the mind-bending concept of parallel universes and what it means for our understanding of reality. Does every choice we make spawn a new universe? Are there infinite versions of ourselves living out alternate lives in these parallel worlds?

Critics of the MWI argue that its predictions are impossible to test and that it posits an excessively extravagant view of the universe. We'll delve into these criticisms, the challenges of interpreting probabilities, and the ongoing debates within the scientific community.

Join us as we navigate the complexities and marvels of the Many-Worlds Interpretation. Whether you're a seasoned physicist or just curious about the mysteries of the quantum world, this video will provide you with a deeper understanding of one of the most fascinating theories in modern physics. Prepare to have your mind expanded as we consider the profound implications of living in a multiverse. 

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The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics

by Dr. Sean Carroll  |   Nov 22, 2024

Join renowned physicist Dr. Sean Carroll as he unravels one of science's greatest mysteries: the true nature of quantum mechanics and its mind-bending implications for reality itself.

Dr. Carroll is:

• The Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University Fractal Faculty at Santa Fe Institute
• Author of "The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, Vol. 2: Quanta and Fields"
• Host of the Mindscape podcast
• Recipient of prestigious awards from NSF, NASA, Royal Society of London & more

In this talk, Dr. Carroll explores:

• Why quantum mechanics remains puzzling despite its practical success
• The probabilistic nature of quantum measurements
• The revolutionary "many worlds" interpretation
• How our reality might be constantly branching into different versions
• Implications for quantum gravity and spacetime emergence

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Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine

Why the Many-Worlds Interpretation

Has Many Problems

article link

by Phillip Ball   |   October 18, 2018

The idea that the universe splits into multiple realities with every measurement has become an increasingly popular proposed solution to the mysteries of quantum mechanics. But this “many-worlds interpretation” is incoherent, Philip Ball argues in this adapted excerpt from his new book Beyond Weird.

It is the most extraordinary, alluring and thought-provoking of all the ways in which quantum mechanics has been interpreted. In its most familiar guise, the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) suggests that we live in a near-infinity of universes, all superimposed in the same physical space but mutually isolated and evolving independently. In many of these universes there exist replicas of you and me, all but indistinguishable yet leading other lives.

The MWI illustrates just how peculiarly quantum theory forces us to think. It is an intensely controversial view. Arguments about the interpretation of quantum mechanics are noted for their passion, as disagreements that can’t be settled by objective evidence are wont to be. But when the MWI is in the picture, those passions can become so extreme that we must suspect a great deal more invested in the matter than simply the resolution of a scientific puzzle.

The MWI is qualitatively different from the other interpretations of quantum mechanics, although that’s rarely recognized or admitted. For the interpretation speaks not just to quantum mechanics itself but to what we consider knowledge and understanding to mean in science. It asks us what sort of theory, in the end, we will demand or accept as a claim to know the world.

After the Danish physicist Niels Bohr articulated and refined what became known as the Copenhagen interpretation — widely regarded as the orthodox view of quantum mechanics — in the 1930s and ’40s, it seemed that the central problem for quantum mechanics was the mysterious rupture created by observation or measurement, which was packaged up into the rubric of “collapse of the wave function.”

The wave function is a mathematical expression that defines all possible observable states of a quantum system, such as the various possible locations of a particle. Up until a measurement is made and the wave function collapses (whatever that means), there is no reason to attribute any greater a degree of reality to any of the possible states than to any other. It’s not that the quantum system is actually in one or other of these states but we don’t know which; we can confidently say that it is not in any one of these states, but is properly described by the wave function itself, which in some sense “permits” them all as observational outcomes. Where, then, do they all go, bar one, when the wave function collapses?

At first glance, the many-worlds interpretation looks like a delightfully simple answer to that mysterious vanishing act. It says that none of the states vanishes at all, except to our perception. It says, in essence, let’s just do away with wave function collapse altogether.

This solution was proposed by the young physicist Hugh Everett III in his 1957 doctoral thesis at Princeton, where he was supervised by John Wheeler. It purported to solve the “measurement problem” using only what we know already: that quantum mechanics works.

But Bohr and colleagues didn’t bring wave function collapse into the picture just to make things difficult. They did it because that’s what seems to happen. When we make a measurement, we really do get just one result out of the many that quantum mechanics offers. Wave function collapse seemed to be demanded in order to connect quantum theory to reality.

So what Everett was saying was that it’s our concept of reality that’s at fault. We only think that there’s a single outcome of a measurement. But in fact all of them occur. We only see one of those realities, but the others have a separate physical existence too.

The American physicist Hugh Everett III, who proposed the
many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics in his
doctoral thesis at Princeton University in 1957. - Wikipedia

(opens a new tab)

In effect, this implies that the entire universe is described by a gigantic wave function that contains within it all possible realities. This “universal wave function,” as Everett called it in his thesis, begins as a combination, or superposition, of all possible states of its constituent particles. As it evolves, some of these superpositions break down, making certain realities distinct and isolated from one another. In this sense, worlds are not exactly “created” by measurements; they are just separated. This is why we shouldn’t, strictly speaking, talk of the “splitting” of worlds (even though Everett did), as though two have been produced from one. Rather, we should speak of the unraveling of two realities that were previously just possible futures of a single reality.

(The many-worlds interpretation is distinct from the multiverse hypothesis, which envisions other universes, born in separate Big Bangs, that have always been physically disconnected from our own.)

When Everett presented his thesis, and at the same time published the idea in a respected physics journal, it was largely ignored. It wasn't until 1970 that people began to take notice, after an exposition on the idea was presented in the widely read magazine Physics Today by the American physicist Bryce DeWitt.

This scrutiny forced the question that Everett’s thesis had somewhat skated over. If all the possible outcomes of a quantum measurement have a real existence, where are they, and why do we see (or think we see) only one? This is where the many worlds come in. DeWitt argued that the alternative outcomes of the measurement must exist in a parallel reality: another world. You measure the path of an electron, and in this world it seems to go this way, but in another world it went that way.

That requires a parallel, identical apparatus for the electron to traverse. More, it requires a parallel you to observe it — for only through the act of measurement does the superposition of states seem to “collapse.” Once begun, this process of duplication seems to have no end: you have to erect an entire parallel universe around that one electron, identical in all respects except where the electron went. You avoid the complication of wave function collapse, but at the expense of making another universe. The theory doesn’t exactly predict the other universe in the way that scientific theories usually make predictions. It’s just a deduction from the hypothesis that the other electron path is real too.

For every tragedy, like Gwyneth Paltrow’s character being hit by a van in the

many-worlds-inspired 1998 movie Sliding Doors, there is salvation and triumph.

Who could resist that idea?

This picture gets really extravagant when you appreciate what a measurement is. In one view, any interaction between one quantum entity and another — a photon of light bouncing off an atom — can produce alternative outcomes, and so demands parallel universes. As DeWitt put it, “Every quantum transition taking place on every star, in every galaxy, in every remote corner of the universe is splitting our local world on earth into myriads of copies.” In this “multiverse,” says the physicist and many-worlds proponent Max Tegmark, “all possible states exist at every instant” — meaning, at least in the popular view, that everything that is physically possible is (or will be) realized in one of the parallel universes.

In particular, after a measurement takes place, there are two (or more) versions of the observer where before there was one. “The act of making a decision,” says Tegmark — a decision here counting as a measurement, generating a particular outcome from the various possibilities — “causes a person to split into multiple copies.” Both copies are in some sense versions of the initial observer, and both of them experience a unique, smoothly changing reality that they are convinced is the “real world.” At first these observers are identical in all respects except that one observed this path of the electron (or whatever is being measured) and the other that path. But after that, who can say? Their universes go their separate ways, launched on a trajectory of continual unraveling.

You can probably see why the MWI is the interpretation of quantum mechanics that wins all the glamour and publicity. It tells us that we have multiple selves, living other lives in other universes, quite possibly doing all the things that we dream of but will never achieve (or never dare to attempt). There is no path not taken. For every tragedy, like Gwyneth Paltrow’s character being hit by a van in the many-worlds-inspired 1998 movie Sliding Doors, there is salvation and triumph.

Who could resist that idea?

There are, of course, some questions to be asked. For starters, about this business of bifurcating worlds. How does a split actually happen?

That is now seen to hinge on the issue of how a microscopic quantum event gives rise to macroscopic, classical behavior through a process called “decoherence,” in which the wavelike states of a quantum system become uncoordinated and scrambled by their interactions with their environment. Parallel quantum worlds have split once they have decohered, for by definition decohered wave functions can have no direct, causal influence on one another. For this reason, the theory of decoherence developed in the 1970s and ’80s helped to revitalize the MWI by supplying a clear rationale for what previously seemed a rather vague contingency.

In this view, splitting is not an abrupt event. It evolves through decoherence and is only complete when decoherence has removed all possibility of interference between universes. While it’s popular to regard the appearance of distinct worlds as akin to the bifurcation of futures in Jorge Luis Borges’ story “The Garden of Forking Paths,” a better analogy might therefore be something like the gradual separation of shaken salad dressing into layers of oil and vinegar. It’s then meaningless to ask how many worlds there are — as the philosopher of physics David Wallace aptly puts it, the question is rather like asking, “How many experiences did you have yesterday?” You can identify some of them, but you can’t enumerate them.

What we can say a little more precisely is what kind of phenomenon causes splitting. In short, it must happen with dizzying profusion. Just within our own bodies, there must be at least as many splitting events affecting each of us every second as there are encounters between our molecules in the same space of time. Those numbers are astronomical.

The main scientific attraction of the MWI is that it requires no changes or additions to the standard mathematical representation of quantum mechanics. There is no mysterious, ad hoc and abrupt collapse of the wave function. And virtually by definition it predicts experimental outcomes that are fully consistent with what we observe.

But if we take what it says seriously, it soon becomes clear that the conceptual and metaphysical problems with quantum mechanics aren’t banished by virtue of this apparent parsimony of assumptions and consistency of predictions. Far from it.

The MWI is surely the most polarizing of interpretations. Some physicists consider it almost self-evidently absurd; “Everettians,” meanwhile, are often unshakable in their conviction that this is the most logical, consistent way to think about quantum mechanics. Some of them insist that it is the only plausible interpretation — for the arch-Everettian David Deutsch, it is not in fact an “interpretation” of quantum theory at all, any more than dinosaurs are an “interpretation” of the fossil record. It is simply what quantum mechanics is. “The only astonishing thing is that that’s still controversial,” Deutsch says.

My own view is that the problems with the MWI are overwhelming — not because they show it must be wrong, but because they render it incoherent. It simply cannot be articulated meaningfully.

I’ll attempt to summarize the problems, but first, let’s dispense with a wrong objection. Some criticize the MWI on aesthetic grounds: People object to all those countless other universes, multiplying by the trillion every nanosecond, because it just doesn’t seem proper. Other copies of me? Other world histories? Worlds where I never existed? Honestly, whatever next! This objection is rightly dismissed by saying that an affront to one’s sense of propriety is no grounds for rejecting a theory. Who are we to say how the world should behave?

The very familiarity of the centuries-old doppelgänger trope prepares us to accept the notion of multiple versions of ourselves rather casually, and the level of the discourse about our alleged replica selves is often shockingly shallow.

A stronger objection to the proliferation of worlds is not so much all this extra stuff you’re making, but the insouciance with which it is made. Roland Omnès says the idea that every little quantum “measurement” spawns a world “gives an undue importance to the little differences generated by quantum events, as if each of them were vital to the universe.” This, he says, is contrary to what we generally learn from physics: that most of the fine details make no difference at all to what happens at larger scales.

But one of the most serious difficulties with the MWI is what it does to the notion of self. What can it mean to say that splittings generate copies of me? In what sense are those other copies “me?”

Brian Greene, a well-known physics popularizer with Everettian inclinations, insists simply that “each copy is you.” You just need to broaden your mind beyond your parochial idea of what “you” means. Each of these individuals has its own consciousness, and so each believes he or she is “you” — but the real “you” is their sum total.

There’s an enticing frisson to this idea. But in fact the very familiarity of the centuries-old doppelgänger trope prepares us to accept it rather casually, and as a result the level of the discourse about our alleged replica selves is often shockingly shallow — as if all we need contemplate is something like teleportation gone awry in an episode of “Star Trek.” We are not being astonished but, rather, flattered by these images. They sound transgressively exciting while being easily recognizable as plotlines from novels and movies.

Tegmark waxes lyrical about his copies: “I feel a strong kinship with parallel Maxes, even though I never get to meet them. They share my values, my feelings, my memories — they’re closer to me than brothers.” But this romantic picture has, in truth, rather little to do with the realities of the MWI. The “quantum brothers” are an infinitesimally small sample cherry-picked for congruence with our popular fantasies. What about all those “copies” differing in details graduating from the trivial to the utterly transformative?

The physicist Lev Vaidman has thought rather carefully about this matter of quantum youness. “At the present moment there are many different ‘Levs’ in different worlds,” he says, “but it is meaningless to say that now there is another ‘I.’ There are, in other words, beings identical to me (at the time of splitting) in these other worlds, and all of us came from the same source — which is ‘me’ right now.”

The “I” at each moment of time, he says, is defined by a complete classical description of the state of his body and brain. But such an “I” could never be conscious of its existence.

Consciousness relies on experience, and experience is not an instantaneous property: It takes time, not least because the brain’s neurons themselves take a few milliseconds to fire. You can’t “locate” consciousness in a universe that is frantically splitting countless times every nanosecond, any more than you can fit a summer into a day.

One might reply that this doesn’t matter, so long as there’s a perception of continuity threading through all those splittings. But in what can that perception reside, if not in a conscious entity?

And if consciousness — or mind, call it what you will — were somehow able to snake along just one path in the quantum multiverse, then we’d have to regard it as some nonphysical entity immune to the laws of (quantum) physics. For how can it do that when nothing else does?

David Wallace, one of the most ingenious Everettians, has argued that purely in linguistic terms the notion of “I” can make sense only if identity/consciousness/mind is confined to a single branch of the quantum multiverse. Since it is not clear how that can possibly happen, Wallace might then have inadvertently demonstrated that the MWI is not after all proposing a conceit of “multiple selves.” On the contrary, it is dismantling the whole notion of selfhood. It is denying any real meaning of “you.”

I shouldn’t wish anyone to think that I feel affronted by this. But if the MWI sacrifices the possibility of thinking meaningfully about selfhood, we should at least acknowledge that this is so, and not paper over it with images of “quantum brothers and sisters.”

The science-fiction vision of a “duplicated quantum self” has nevertheless delivered some fanciful, and undeniably entertaining, images. If splitting can be guaranteed by any experiment in which the outcome of a quantum process is measured, then one can imagine making a “quantum splitter”: a handheld device that measures, say, an electron’s intrinsic quantum angular momentum, or spin, which can be thought of as having two states, either pointing up or down; it then converts the result to a macroscopic arrow pointing on a dial to “Up” or “Down.” This conversion ensures that the initial superposition of spin states is fully decohered into a classical outcome. You can make these measurements as often as you like just by pushing the button on the device. Each time you do (so the story goes), two distinct “yous” come into being.

What can you do with this power to generate worlds and selves? You could become a billionaire by playing quantum Russian roulette. Your quantum splitter is activated while you sleep, and if the dial says Up then you’re given a billion dollars when you wake. If it shows Down then you are put to death painlessly in your sleep. Few people, I think, would accept these odds on a coin toss. But a committed Everettian should have no hesitation about doing so using the quantum splitter. For you can be certain, in this view, that you’ll wake up to be presented with the cash. Of course, only one of “you” wakes up at all; the others have been killed. But those other yous knew nothing of their demise. Sure, you might worry about the grief afflicted on family and friends in those other worlds. But that aside, the rational choice is to play the game. What could possibly go wrong?

You’re not going to play? OK, I see why. You’re worried about the fact that you’re going to die as a result, with absolute certainty. But look, you’re going to live and become rich with absolute certainty too.

Are you having trouble comprehending what that means? Of course you are. It has no meaning in any normal sense of the word. The claim is, in words aptly coined by the physicist Sean Carroll in another context (ironically, Carroll is one of the most vocal Everettians), “cognitively unstable.”

You can’t ‘locate’ consciousness in a universe that is frantically splitting countless

times every nanosecond any more than you can fit a summer into a day.

Some Everettians have tried to articulate a meaning nonetheless. They argue that, despite the certainty of all outcomes, it is rational for any observer to consider the subjective probability for a particular outcome to be proportional to the amplitude of that world’s wave function — or what Vaidman calls the “measure of existence” of that world.

It’s a misleading term, since there’s no sense in which any of the many worlds exists less. For the “self” that ends up in any given world, that’s all there is — for better or worse. Still, Vaidman insists that we ought rationally to “care” about a post-splitting world in proportion to this measure of existence. On this basis, he feels that playing quantum Russian roulette again and again (or even once, if there’s a very low measure of existence for the “good” outcome) should be seen as a bad idea, regardless of the morality, “because the measure of existence of worlds with Lev dead will be much larger than the measure of existence of the worlds with a rich and alive Lev.”

What this boils down to is the interpretation of probabilities in the MWI. If all outcomes occur with 100-percent probability, where does that leave the probabilistic character of quantum mechanics? And how can two (or for that matter, a thousand) mutually exclusive outcomes all have 100-percent probability?

There is a huge and unresolved literature on this question, and some researchers see it as the issue on which the idea stands or falls. But much of the discussion assumes, I think wrongly, that the matter is independent of questions about the notion of selfhood.

Attempts to explain the appearance of probability within the MWI come down to saying that quantum probabilities are just what quantum mechanics looks like when consciousness is restricted to only one world. As we saw, there is in fact no meaningful way to explain or justify such a restriction. But let’s accept for now — just to see where it leads — the popular view of the MWI that two copies of an observer emerge from the one who exists before a measurement, and that both copies experience themselves as unique.

Imagine that our observer, Alice, is playing a quantum version of a simple coin-toss gambling game — nothing as drastic or emotive as quantum Russian roulette — that hinges on measurement of the spin state of an atom prepared in a 50:50 superposition of up and down. If the measurement elicits up, she doubles her money. If it’s down, she loses it all.

If the MWI is correct, the game seems pointless — for Alice will, with certainty, both win and lose. And there’s no point her saying, “Yes, but which world will I end up in?” Both of the two Alices that exist once the measurement is made are in some sense present in the “her” before the toss.

Philip Ball, author of Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought
You Knew About Quantum Physics Is Different.  |   Richard Haughton

But now let’s do the sleeping trick. Alice is put to sleep before the measurement is made, knowing she will be wheeled into one of two identical rooms depending on the outcome. Both rooms contain a chest. Inside one is twice her stake, while the other is empty. When she wakes, she has no way of telling, without opening the chest, whether it contains the winning money. But she can then meaningfully say that there is a 50-percent probability that it does. What’s more, she can say before the experiment that, when she awakes, these will be the odds deduced by her awakened self as she contemplates the still-closed chest. Isn’t that a meaningful concept of probability?

The notion here is that quantum events that occur for certain in the MWI can still elicit probabilistic beliefs in observers simply because of their ignorance of which branch they are on.

But it won’t work. Suppose Alice says, with scrupulous care, “The experience I will have is that I will wake up in a room containing a chest that has a 50-percent chance of being filled or empty.” The Everettian would say Alice’s statement is correct: It’s a rational belief.

But what if Alice were to say, “The experience I will have is that I will wake up in a room containing a chest that has a 100-percent chance of being empty”? The Everettian must accept this statement as a true and rational belief too, for the initial “I” here must apply to both Alices in the future.

In other words, Alice Before can’t use quantum mechanics to predict what will happen to her in a way that can be articulated — because there is no logical way to talk about “her” at any moment except the conscious present (which, in a frantically splitting universe, doesn’t exist). Because it is logically impossible to connect the perceptions of Alice Before to Alice After, “Alice” has disappeared. You can’t invoke an “observer” to make your argument when you have denied pronouns any continuity.

What the MWI really denies is the existence of facts at all. It replaces them with an experience of pseudo-facts (we think that this happened, even though that happened too). In so doing, it eliminates any coherent notion of what we can experience, or have experienced, or are experiencing right now. We might reasonably wonder if there is any value — any meaning — in what remains, and whether the sacrifice has been worth it.

Every scientific theory (at least, I cannot think of an exception) is a formulation for explaining why things in the world are the way we perceive them to be. This assumption that a theory must recover our perceived reality is generally so obvious that it is unspoken. The theories of evolution or plate tectonics don’t have to include some element that says “you are here, observing this stuff”; we can take that for granted.

In the end, if you say everything is true, you have said nothing.

But the MWI refuses to grant it. Sure, it claims to explain why it looks as though “you” are here observing that the electron spin is up, not down. But actually it is not returning us to this fundamental ground truth at all. Properly conceived, it is saying that there are neither facts nor a you who observes them.

It says that our unique experience as individuals is not simply a bit imperfect, a bit unreliable and fuzzy, but is a complete illusion. If we really pursue that idea, rather than pretending that it gives us quantum siblings, we find ourselves unable to say anything about anything that can be considered a meaningful truth. We are not just suspended in language; we have denied language any agency. The MWI — if taken seriously — is unthinkable.

Its implications undermine a scientific description of the world far more seriously than do those of any of its rivals. The MWI tells you not to trust empiricism at all: Rather than imposing the observer on the scene, it destroys any credible account of what an observer can possibly be. Some Everettians insist that this is not a problem and that you should not be troubled by it. Perhaps you are not, but I am.

Yet I have pushed hard against the MWI not so much to try to demolish it as to show how its flaws, once brought to light, are instructive. Like the Copenhagen interpretation (which also has profound problems), it should be valued for forcing us to confront some tough philosophical questions.

What quantum theory seems to insist is that at the fundamental level the world cannot supply clear “yes/no” empirical answers to all the questions that seem at face value as though they should have one. The calm acceptance of that fact by the Copenhagen interpretation seems to some, and with good reason, to be far too unsatisfactory and complacent. The MWI is an exuberant attempt to rescue the “yes/no” by admitting both of them at once. But in the end, if you say everything is true, you have said nothing.

We needn’t fear a scientific idea that changes our view of macroscopic reality. But an idea that, when we pursue it seriously, makes that view inchoate and unspeakable doesn’t fulfill the function of science. The value of the many worlds, then, is that they close off an easy way out. It was worth admitting them in order to discover that they are a dead end. But there is no point then sitting there insisting we have found the way out. We need to go back and keep searching.