How should Pantheism (reverence for the Universe) relate to the Multiverse concept? Pantheism basically amounts to a decision to attach a high value to our deep connection with Nature and the wider Universe. This choice is based initially on what we witness via our senses and scientific instruments, so we can call it an empirically based choice.
Most of us extend it to include our scientific understanding of the Universe, in so far as that is accessible these days to non-specialists. But we have to recognize that scientific theories are always provisional and may be revised or revolutionized. So we can’t go overboard with reverence for Relativity, or Quantum Mechanics, or String Theory. We can wonder at a Universe that could be described by those theories, and at our human ability to devise such theories. And we can marvel at the details of the most accepted theories. But probably we should not get too attached to any one of them.
The Multiverse is currently only a theoretical idea for which there are several possible models. At present we have no empirical observations that back up either the concept in general, or any specific version of it. From that point of view it does not seem appropriate, at this point, to replace “reverence for the Universe” with “reverence for the Multiverse.”
Second, in some models of a Multiverse (for example eternal inflation) there is no connection between the individual Universes that make it up, apart from the fact that they might all be bubbles from the same matrix. If there’s no connection, and we can’t observe them, then we are not obliged to feel anything in particular towards them.
If we knew what the matrix was like, we might have some basis for some feelings about it – for example, it could be regarded as a more mysterious collective or basis for being, rather like the Tao. But probably those feelings would remain vague and variable.
In some other models (such as periodically colliding brane-worlds or multiple Everett universes which interfere with each other at quantum level) there is some connection with our Universe. However, the other universes remain inaccessible to us in our everyday lives.
What if one of the Multiverse models were backed up with evidence? Should we shift the focus of our deepest spiritual feelings of connection? That would be a matter of individual choice, of course. Personally I’d reserve my affections for the Universe I know, while reflecting on the profound mystery of an eternal foam of universes.
