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Monday, April 29, 2019

Prayer in the multiverse

The problem of unanswered prayer is an issue in pastoral theology as well as theodicy and apologetics. By "unanswered prayer" I simply mean you didn't get what you ask for. 

On the face of it, it's often the case that God doesn't grant the prayers of Christians (or OT Jews). However, when we talk about unanswered prayer, that's shorthand for prayers that go unanswered in this world

Suppose you have a suicidal son or brother. You pray for mental healing but he ends up taking his own life despite your heartfelt prayers on his behalf. 

Did God decline to answer your prayer? Perhaps. In a sense.

But there's a hidden assumption to the problem of unanswered prayer. Suppose God created a multiverse. If that's the case, then prayers that go unanswered in our world are answered in a parallel universe or alternate timeline. 

There's a parallel universe in which my counterpart prays for his suicidal brother, and God grants the prayer request. The brother doesn't commit suicide. If that's true, then God answers nearly every prayer. On this view, prayers that go unanswered in one timeline are answered in another timeline. On this view, the unqualified prayer promises in Scripture might be absolutely true. 

Of course, that's a bit philosophical. However, every human being of average intelligence takes hypothetical and counterfactual scenarios in stride. That's part of human deliberation and decision-making. We contemplate different courses of action. We think of ourselves as the same agent in different hypothetical scenarios. 

The main question is whether those remain unexemplified possibilities, or whether they actually happen. Obviously, forking paths don't happen in the same timeline. But if God made a multiverse, then they actually play out. 

Even in a multiverse, wicked or foolish prayers will still go unanswered. There is that exception.

I'm not saying for a fact that God created a multiverse. I'm in no position to verify or falsify that conjecture, although I think it's theologically reasonable and even likely, for reasons I've given before. 

But my argument in this post doesn't require anything that ambitious. The point is that for all we know, the problem of unanswered prayer is a misnomer if, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, God did, in fact, answer our prayers. But because our only fame of reference is the timeline in which we find ourselves, we can't tell. Even if we're multiply instantiated in alternate timelines, we're not conscious of every timeline.

It's analogous to my future counterpart. My present self isn't conscious of what my future self is aware of, or vice versa. Like a moving spotlight. 

We often seem to pray in vain. We prayed our heart out for something that never transpires. Or maybe it does. Just not in this particular timeline. 

If so, why would God set things up that way? Because every plot its share of unique goods. So there's value in having alternate world histories. 

5 comments:

  1. So who are the versions of you in the alternate timelines? Does this not imply reincarnation?

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    1. i) It's a concrete extension of counterfactual reasoning, which we all engage in. Those "what might have been scenarios", viz. "If I'd been an orphan, I'd turn out differently." "If I grew up in a small farm town, I'd turn out differently that if I grew up in the big city", "If JFK hadn't been assassinated, LBJ wouldn't have assume the presidency the same day".

      Assuming hypothetical or counterfactual scenarios like this are meaningful or true, what grounds them? What reality to they correspond to? That's usually cashed out in terms of possible worlds as abstract objects of divine ideas.

      ii) An extension of that principle is a multiverse where an alternate timeline plays out in a parallel universe.

      iii) Reincarnation involves the notion that the same individual undergoes sequential different lives. He's born to a set of parents, lives one life, dies, is reborn to a different set of parents, &c.

      That's not the same thing as a parallel universe paradigm.

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    2. To take a comparison, consider the biblical doctrine regarding the resurrection of the body. We will resume embodied, earthly existence. But that's not what's meant by reincarnation, in the Hindu/Buddhist/Platonic sense.

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  2. Mr Steve,

    I just realized that Middle Knowledge is related to Chaos Theory.

    Chaos theory says that there are things we cannot predict no matter how good our models and calculations, because there are too many variables - for example the weather (affected by temperature, wind patterns, humidity, solar radiation etc) or share markets (too many humans each with too many variables).

    So if I give a scenario that Joe is in an Italian restaurant and given a plate of sushi, how would he react? We can guess or predict, but no matter how well we know Joe, we don't have 100% accuracy - a neuron could fire in his brain and he makes a different decision.

    But if God has an infinitely powerful mind, He can 100% accurately calculate the result of thousands of variables mixing together. God is immune to 'chaos' - He is the solution to chaos theory (a very OT Jewish sounding phrase indeed).

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    1. I believe it was Lorenz who said chaos theory is "when the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future"! :)

      Of course, the butterfly effect is often used to illustrate chaos theory. A butterfly flaps its wings in South America, and, a few weeks later, a tornado occurs in the United States. Minor perturbations in the air due to the flapping of the butterfly's wings later result in the formation of a tornado thousands of miles away.

      Granted, there are different definitions for a chaotic system, but I think a fairly standard or generic definition is that a chaotic system is a system that is (a) highly sensitive to initial conditions within the system, (b) nonlinear, and (c) deterministic.

      (a) Change the initial conditions ever so slightly, and there will be different results, as you said.

      (b) The fact that it's nonlinear means it's not possible to accurately predict its behavior within the system.

      (c) As for determinism, here’s a point of contrast: certain aspects of quantum mechanics are said to be non-deterministic, that is, the results are not necessarily determined by initial conditions. This is also why certain aspects of quantum mechanics might be used to illustrate the difference between random vs. chaotic.

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