It struck me the other day that quantum physics, in its "many-worlds" interpretation, could make a beautiful metaphor for the mind of God. Obviously, this is only a metaphor. We're pretty god-damn sure about that.
In an unavoidably dumbed-down nutshell (me being neither a physicist, nor God): some quantum theoreticians will put it that there are an infinite number of realities, of which our reality, the reality that we all share, is only one. These infinite realities are separated from one another by quantum vibrational frequencies. I suppose it is much like the way one can live one's entire life on Rock 103.7, never crossing over into the horrors of Smooth Jazz 102.1 or indeed, even knowing that such a frequency exists. Because unlike in your pulp sci-fi yarns of yore, we don't have a dial to twist, to switch our receiver over and tune ourselves in to a new reality.
OK. So that's what they believe. There are an infinite number of realities, which means that every possibility that could ever unfurl, every infinite variation of your life multiplied by every infinite variation on every other life, by every choice ever made by a human, animal, and (insofar as it applies) vegetable, mineral, or microbe; and then throw in an additional infinity of realities where no life has ever existed, or where hydrogen has a different precession frequency, or where the speed of light is twice or half what we observe or is wildly inconstant, or where there is an entirely different set of elements on the periodic table, or where there are no building blocks of matter and energy whatsoever - or radically different ones from those we know. A reality exists where every one of those possibilities unfolds. An infinite range of realities.
So that's pretty simple so far, right? But let's picture the mind of God. For the sake of example, let's picture a God who created all of those infinite folds of infinity, let's picture the mind that would be necessary to superintend all of those infinite universes. Could God do it? Could God possibly keep track of all that?
Duh. Yes. Easy. God could do it easy*, because God's mind is also infinite. Not only infinitely vast, but infinitely fast, infinitely high and infinitely deep. God can not only keep track of all of that on the surface (such as we've barely glossed), but also to an infinite depth and an infinite complexity, such that there is not one twist, flip or pulse of one bizarre ray or particle, not one dust speck floating in the void or one googgely 129th-dimensional creature, not one lonely comet or one mildewed mop sitting in a tin pail that God does not know, right down to an infinite degree of fineness. God knows not only everything, but where every indivisible particle of everything is situated, and what it is doing exactly right now. And God's mind knows all of that with a full and perfect mastery and attention given to each part - galactic or infinitesimal - stretching out across every infinity, with an awareness that never blinks, with an interest that never flags, not even for an instant.
Infinite perception, infinite understanding. It's not even a strain for God. The bizarre and unimaginable is not so to God. Chaos is not chaos to God. It's plain. It's easy. This is what "infinite" means. It's not really that hard to conceptualize, is it? It shouldn't be. If you've ever given half a benefit of doubt to the concept of infinity, it ought to be hard to conceptualize it any other way! How could it not be easy?
Let's get back to the metaphor. Here is how I conceptualize it: there is only one reality. This one. The one we all share. And what of all those other infinities, vibrating in their ethereal frequencies out into the transcendent dimensions of the multiverse? What of all those other possibilities, every other path that could possibly have been gone down, every infinite split in the road, plotted out and plumbed to an infinite degree? What of all that quantum superstring? Well, that's the mind of God.
That's just the infinity of all the other cool shit God's thinking about, at any given moment. And to some degree, you and me...we plot our own course, through it.
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