By an amazing coincidence, our MSc class in Science and Religion has just this afternoon been discussing the merits of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and I came back to my office to find a piece posted on the BBC website describing Brian Cox’s enthusiasm for the same Many-Worlds interpretation –

Brian Cox: ‘Multiverse’ makes sense

It might be a bizarre and extravagant interpretation, but Many Worlds has some definite explanatory strengths over the (more mainstream and more manageable) Copenhagen interpretation. Perhaps more importantly for us here in Edinburgh, while the Copenhagen interpretation has been discussed endlessly in theological and science-religion circles over the past decades, the Many Worlds interpretation is still largely uncharted territory in religious terms. Theologians have been able to respond positively to the Copenhagen interpretation’s suggestion that the physical world is somehow fuzzy and indeterminate at its basis, and that we as observers are inextricably tied into it, and this has provided some fertile models for divine action. But few have thought seriously about a theology of Many Worlds, endlessly branching from each other. If Brian Cox is right to say that physicists are now warming to Many Worlds, then it’s perhaps time for theologians to start warming to it too. If the Many Worlds interpretation isn’t too preposterous for physics, then it can’t be too preposterous for theology either.