The closest answer - provided my hypothesis holds true - is "no".

Of the articles I've written thus far, this is probably the hardest. Though my format necessarily differs from what one typically sees in a scientific journal, I have endeavored to give the previous pieces as much of an aloof, objective treatment as possible. However, in the case of this article it is important that the reader be given some important personal information about the author: namely, I am not religious. Nor am I atheist. In my "natural" state I'm typically inclined to remain non-opinionated as to the likelihood or validity of higher powers, spirituality, souls, or the afterlife. I don't have a particular agenda in mind, and if, indeed, everything I have written in this series is proven to be malarkey, I won't be having a crisis of faith (though I obviously wouldn't be happy about having wasted my time, either). Indeed, I don't particularly want to write about the prospects of an afterlife. It feels presumptuous. And it will make others immediately question whether I'm off my rocker, and whether any of the rest of what I've written is true,

Nevertheless, this is information I think people will want to know - in the event that I am right.

Infinite Realities, Infinite You's

As anyone who has ever watched Star Trek knows, more versions of reality means more copies of yourself. However, popular fiction tends to highlight the differences between these realities (e.g. evil twins), when in fact there will be an infinite number of realities in which the difference is imperceptible. What does it matter if in some remote part of the universe, or at some point in time long after or before your existence, a single photon is deflected in one direction rather than another?

To accept my hypothesis is to accept that there are multiple, identical copies of yourself that will live out their lives on identical Earths.

Parent and Child Realities

Earlier I demonstrated through a thought experiment that as long as the reality's rules designate it as "read only", there is effectively no difference between a reality that is "run" on a computer, a reality that exists in concept only, or a reality that has never and will never be conceived of in our own reality. There is also no difference between multiple instances of that reality that might be "executed" via computer or any other means. In the case of a reality being run on a computer, our reality is the parent reality and the reality being run on the computer is the child reality.

What bearing does this have on the afterlife? Consider what happens to a hypothetical sentient life form that meets its end (from natural causes) as part of the deterministic algorithm in a computer program. That is to say, no matter how many times one runs the program containing the virtual life form, it always lives the same life and dies the same way. As you consider this, realize that in an infinite number of realities, you too will live the same life and die in the same way.

Now consider what happens if a sentimental computer programmer, having become attached to the artificial life form (living in its virtual fishbowl screen-saver), decides to make a copy of its neural structure during its final moments and place it in a fresh, living body, thereby resurrecting it. The programmer lives in the parent reality and the virtual life form that died in the child reality. In performing the resurrection, the programmer has effectively created a brand new child reality with an equally new sentient life form that operates with a copy of the neural data of the deceased life form. The sentient life form, in the meantime, recollects having lived out its final moments (perhaps surrounded by weeping virtual relatives), followed by an instantaneous change in environment in which all was restored to its previous state.

Bear in mind that the previous scenario was constructed as a means of helping the reader wrap his head around this concept of "resurrection". The new sentient life form and its modified reality also exist entirely independent of the programmer and his efforts. There are an infinite amount of these resurrected sentient lifeforms in an infinite number of realities. Even if every one of them conjectures that they were revived by a benevolent programmer, only a percentage of them will be "correct". Another percentage will have been resurrected by malicious programmers that think of being resurrected is a terrible fate, and still more resurrected under any number of normal, bizarre, intentional, and accidental circumstances. The existence or nature of the "parent" reality simply does not make a difference in how the beings in the child reality perceive their world.

Knowing this, we are forced to admit that, no matter what fate our deterministic computer program dictates for our hypothetical sentient life form, there will always be an infinite number of identical copies that perceive the instant of death as having been immediately followed by a return to full, healthy life.

The obvious analogy to this situation is, of course, the human beings living in the realities like the ones in which this article was written. What infinite fates await our resurrected duplicates when our present perception comes to an end?

The Beginning and End of a Reality

In No Beginning and No End, I attempted to explain that realities do not necessarily need to start from a "big bang" and develop in an emergent manner. Realities can and will start and end at any given point as their rules dictate, without any semblance of reason or logical governance. As far as anyone reading (or writing) this article knows, their reality may have started an instant ago and may end an instant hence - i.e. may be a "line of code" in their reality that tells it to stop at the end of this sentence. This is certainly true for a percentage of those reading this article right now. However, an infinite number of other realities will be identical in every way save the stop point, going on happily. There is no way for the sentient beings living in them (you) to know whether they are in the reality that stopped "running" abruptly or if they are in the one that continued. One might as well just accept that he or she is will always continue to exist in a reality that didn't stop in this manner.

The Transitions of Consciousness

Human consciousness is a complicated matter - one that is to some (probably large) degree beyond my or anybody's understanding. Before making any conclusions based on this issue, let me pose some questions for the reader to ponder:

• What was the first moment you were conscious?
• Does consciousness end when you go to sleep every night? Does it pick up again during dreams, and then when you finally wake?
• Does consciousness end when one is "knocked out"?
• Does consciousness end when one dies on an operating table, only to pick up again once one is revived by defibrillation or other methods?
• During the transitional states of consciousness are you still "you", or another entity entirely?

It appears to me that no matter how you look at it, human consciousness is a very "spongy" matter. As one goes to sleep, consciousness doesn't abruptly end - it wavers, stops working quite so effectively, then proceeds to a substantially less active state. Even in the case of being knocked unconscious, the transition is not instantaneous - it may be a matter of milliseconds before the relevant neurons have all switched from what state to another. And in the case of death, all neurons do not normally die simultaneously. How do we describe the the intermediary form of consciousness?

When contemplating this subject I tend to bring into question the notion of "self". Who are you? What is the level of mental faculty that makes you "yourself"? Are you still "you" during the transition from consciousness to unconsciousness when being knocked out? Or during the process of death? Are you still "you" when your brain is addled by illness, drink, or drugs? Does the real "you" remain untouched by these external changes, continuing alertly on in another reality, while alternate versions are by their nature always ill, drunk, or drugged? As I said earlier, I consider this matter to be beyond my understanding.

As to the state of not being conscious, or of being dead, however, it's certainly accurate to say that one cannot perceive this. One may perceive the preceding moments, that is true. But how can one perceive being dead? This, taken together with the inescapable fact that there will always be an infinite number of realities in which one's consciousness resumes, may lead lead one to conclude that one of the multiple consciousnesses "takes over" where the original left off, such that the only existence a sentient being can perceive is one of immortality.

The Many Possible Fates

Being unable to perceive death - which one might envision as an eternal sleep, or state of total thoughtless complacency - is not necessarily a good thing. Among the infinite number of possible afterlife experiences, some will be sublime and some will be horrific - and all will be completely real.

• Nearly every conceivable religious belief is "true" within an infinite subset of realities. Whether or not you and I live within one of these subsets is very hard to determine, but it is true that there every person has an infinite number of copies that will wake up in an afterlife consistent with the afterlife of some religion followed on our earth.
• However, one's beliefs don't have any affect on what percentage of their duplicate personas are resurrected in a given afterlife. Thus a completely devout, morally uncorrupted individual will be duplicated in afterlife realities that are heavenly as well as hellish.
• An percentage of afterlife realities will have no basis in religion. Inhabitants will wake up only to find themselves living in a computer simulation, or in a cartoon world, or in something even more surreal.
• Recall that a reality only needs a set of defining rules for it to exist. As it happens, our minds operate according to set of defining rules - those of neural networks - and can, with proper implementation, exist without an outside world or even a body. Thus for each person that dies there will be an infinite number of resurrected copies that exist as solitary minds within a void - unable to die, bereft of anything but their own thoughts.

But Are Any of These Afterlife Copies Really Me?

Hopefully I have done well to establish the unfathomable infinitude of afterlife realities. But the question is, are any of them really you? If so, which?

The smart-alecky answer is "all of them". But this doesn't help you any more with the afterlife than it does with the current one. In both cases each version of yourself perceives only one reality.

The closest "real world" experience any of us has with this situation comes from probability. For example, we think of lottery drawings as having a probability of success. However, even these are deterministic, relying on physical mechanics that are ultimately predictable. But there is another good approximation: quantum random number generators. The more popular of these operate by firing a photon at a semi-transparent mirror. For each photon, there is a 50% chance that the photon continues through to the other side, and a 50% chance that the photon is deflected. This behavior is intrinsically random. Indeed, the increasingly predominant view among physicists is that each time the photon interacts in this manner, our universe is in fact being split between two versions - one in which the photon is deflected and one in which it is not (this is called the Multiple Worlds Theory - though it differs from the multiple realities discussed here in that each of the multiple worlds are still a subset of the same rules of physics that define the realities this article exists in) . To us, not knowing which of the two universes we belong to, it appears that there is a 50% probability of winding up in either one.

If one subscribes to the view that it is impossible to perceive one's own death, and that furthermore this necessitates that an afterlife consciousness "takes over" where the deceased consciousness left off, one should expect that the form that afterlife takes will be perceived to come as if from a lottery drawing - a random percentage chance.

So what are the chances of "winding up" in a good afterlife? This I think is very difficult to answer. We can narrow down the possible afterlife realities to ones that include a working model of your mind - otherwise you wouldn't be there to begin with. However this isn't of much help, since a fraction of infinity is still infinity. Ultimately whether your afterlife will be heavenly or hellish is up to a random roll of the dice. Unfortunately this is not a very comforting thought. And further, I have no solution to propose to it - save to do one's very best to prolong our current lives, and hope for the best.