Author's Introduction
- Recently, I was caught on the horns of a dilemma. I had a decision to make and, either way, I knew my life would follow a different track. On one path, I accept a job offer: it’s an incredible opportunity, but means relocating hundreds of miles away, with no social network. On the other, I stay in Oxford where I’d lived for a decade: less adventure, but close to my friends and family. Both options had upsides and downsides, so I wished that I could take the job and turn it down, somehow living each life in parallel.
- Well… there was potentially a way to make this happen. I could have my cake and eat it too.
- This will seem odd at first, but bear with me. There are smartphone apps that can help you decide between two options by harnessing the unpredictable quirks of quantum mechanics. But this is no ordinary coin toss, where randomness decides your fate. Instead, it guarantees that both choices become realities.
- You open the app and request a measurement of a photon, which forces it to occupy a binary state, such as ‘spin up’ or ‘spin down’. In my case, ‘spin up’ meant accept the job and ‘spin down’ meant decline. You will see only one result but, in theory, another you will see the opposite, in a different universe. From that moment, two versions of you co-exist, living in parallel.
- It’s inspired by the ‘Many-Worlds’ interpretation of quantum mechanics ("Carroll (Sean M.) - Splitting the Universe"), first proposed by the physicist Hugh Everett III in his doctoral dissertation in the 1950s (Everett - On the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, short thesis as defended, 1957). He argued that our Universe branches into multiple worlds every time a quantum event takes place – and thousands happen every second. While this idea seems fantastical, a growing number of scientists and philosophers think this is how our world really works. In fact, if the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, then the splitting of worlds is not only possible, it is ubiquitous.
- As a philosopher of religion, I am interested in how this mind-boggling scientific theory might force us to reexamine even our most deeply held beliefs. In fact, I believe that the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics encourages us to radically reconceptualise our understanding of ourselves. Perhaps I am not a single, unique, enduring subject. Perhaps I am actually like a branching tree, or a splitting amoeba, with many almost identical copies living slightly different lives across a vast and ever-growing multiverse. I also believe that this picture encourages us to rethink our ideas about moral responsibility, and what religion tells us about God – maybe, even, abandon the traditional idea of God altogether.
Author's Conclusion
So, if the Everettian multiverse is reality, we exist as continually branching selves like splitting amoeba, our ideas of morality are turned upside down, and there are compelling arguments for why there is no God overseeing it all.
- We are also left with something of an identity crisis: it’s not even clear if we ‘survive’ from moment to moment, if branching is a kind of a death. How do I make sense of that personally? One solution I am currently exploring is the idea that who we are is determined by a narrative thread of our own weaving. On this view, who I am is no more nor less than my own internal self-conception, shaped by memory, desire, emotion, experience and embodiment. On this view, it does not matter whether there are copies of me or not, and I should not care which philosophical principles these copies might violate. All that matters is that who I am is decided by me – it is subjective, not objective.
- What this means is that instead of human beings having a core essence – something like an eternal and indivisible soul – we are collections of stories told and retold by us and those who love us. We are rivers, ever fluid, whose banks are shaped by sediments of stories stored in our depths.
- The late philosopher Daniel Dennett held a similar view. According to him, the self is like a centre of gravity, a useful fiction that theoretical physicists and ordinary people alike construct to make sense of the world. For Dennett, all we have are evolving identities tied together by an autobiographical thread that is ever in flux. The self is an abstract construct; it does not really exist.
- It would also mean that, if you are ever caught in a seemingly impossible dilemma, there is a way for you to have your cake and eat it too. I decided not to accept my job offer in this universe, but I like to think that another Emily did. In the many worlds of the Everettian multiverse, we have an infinite number of futures laid out before us. No more Sophie’s choice-type decisions need keep you up at night, instead you can flip a quantum coin and live both lives (even if you won’t ever know how the other future works out). Although we know that some of our futures contain suffering, perhaps we can take comfort in the idea that somewhere out there at least one version of us is living the best life possible.
- Finally, it might encourage us to abandon religious ideas written in different historical contexts and shaped by different metaphysical understandings of the Universe. Perhaps there is no God. Instead of this leaving us with a cold and meaningless cosmos, I think it gives us radical autonomy to create our own systems of meaning. What matters, what is good and valuable, is up to us to decide.
- Whatever solutions we eventually land on, what’s clear is that this radical and mind-bendingly weird interpretation of quantum mechanics raises big questions about ourselves, the Universe, and the existence of God. I, for one, can’t wait to see where the quantum physics takes us. Wherever we end up, it’ll be a wild ride.
Author Narrative
- Emily Qureshi-Hurst is a philosopher specialising in theology and natural science in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, UK. She is interested in the interaction of science and religion, particularly physics and Christianity, and is the author of God, Salvation, and the Problem of Spacetime (2022) and Salvation in the Block Universe: Time, Tillich, and Transformation (2024).
Notes
- Well, this is a very interesting paper. I think it's entirely wrong-headed but it covers a lot of ground and all of it very much related to my Thesis. I need to go through it again and engage with almost everything she has to say.
- During the course of the paper, the author reveals that consideration of the problem of evil led her to atheism ("Even if we live in a singular universe, the problem of evil is the prevailing reason that I cannot accept that God exists.")
- See the author's website: Emily Qureshi-Hurst: Homepage. The Gallery section has links to various talks that will be worth following up.
- See also:-
→ Oriel College Oxford: Emily Qureshi-Hurst
→ Google Scholar: Emily Qureshi-Hurst
→ The Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion (IRC): Emily Qureshi-Hurst
→ CU Faculty of Divinity: New Teaching Associate in Theology and Natural Science - Dr Emily Qureshi-Hurst
→ CU Faraday Institute: Dr Emily Qureshi-Hurst
→ Linkedin: Emily Qureshi-Hurst
- There are references to other Aeon papers:-
→ "Baggott (Jim) - Calculate but don’t shut up"
→ "Kent (Adrian) - Our quantum problem"
→ "Aeon - Video - Three ways to think about free will"
→ Aeon: Video - Eleonora Stump on the problem of evil
→ "Goff (Philip) - My leap across the chasm"
→ Aeon: Simon - How to pray to a dead God
→ "Huenemann (Charlie) - If I teleport from Mars, does the original me get destroyed?"
- Also:-
→ "Johansson (Jens) - Parfit on fission"
→ "Qureshi-Hurst (Emily) - Many Worlds and Moral Responsibility"
→ "Qureshi-Hurst (Emily) - Is the Problem of Evil Made Worse by the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics?"
→ "Qureshi-Hurst (Emily) - The Many Worries Of Many Worlds"
- There are 37 Aeon Comments of variable quality, with some responses by the author. They deserve study.
- This paper relates to my notes on Quantum Mechanics, Free Will, Parfit, Fission, Logic of identity, Self, Teletransportation, and many more.
Comment:
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026
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