Can The Multiverse Give You An Afterlife?

Rui Vieira says yes it can, of sorts.

- Rui Vieira

The idea of an afterlife is central to many of the world’s religions, and understandably so, since the thought that eternal oblivion might await us after death can be terrifying. But to many skeptics the notion of an afterlife as put forth by most religions seems implausible, leaving eternal oblivion as the only possibility. However, they need not be so pessimistic. Maybe science itself could provide us with a coherent, even plausible, account of a kind of cosmological afterlife, especially if we throw some philosophy of mind into the mix.

How might science help assuage our fear of death? Modern physics has provided us with theories which claim that we may be living in a multiverse, in which our universe is only one among a potentially infinite number of universes. A mind-bending consequence of this is that there would be universes similar or even physically identical to ours containing duplicates of you and me. As some have wondered, if there are copies of you and me in these other universes, could we not view their continued existence as an afterlife of sorts, once our current life in this universe has ceased?

But would such a copy of me be me? Perhaps; but the idea can be made more plausible if it’s combined with a particular philosophy of mind and of the corresponding self in which neither is reducible to matter. So before addressing the cosmology, we must first address the problem of consciousness as it relates to matter.

The Mind & The Brain