Contemporary Cosmology and the Meaning of Life

OK. I've been an atheist all my adult life. I accept that we live in a world without the meaning which some religions provide. There have been (sadly short) period when love has seemed to provide a meaning, but I know that that's just my genes playing their effective trick.

So I'm comfortable in a meaningless universe. I'm happy that short-term human constructs such as art, poetry and music, love, the struggle for justice, equality and fairness provide enough short-term meaning to live by.

I can accept quite happily, I think, (as Einstein couldn't) the randomness of quantum mechanics. But Everett's many-worlds theory, that every time any of us makes a choice two branches of history are created, so that all possible choices are made in one of the very many worlds, upsets me. If worlds exist in which I take every conceivable action, why, in this world, not just stay in bed.

And now I really dislike the implications of some contemporary cosmology. I can't argue with the impeccable logic that in an infinite universe there are copies of me in many different worlds; that my life is duplicated exactly again and again across the multiverse. I'm used to infinities: I can see the implications. But I don't want to believe it. A Godless meaninglessness is one thing: but this is just ridiculous. [And at the moment I type this Jove sends his thunder.]

I can't accept multiple infinite universes with equanimity. So I have to conclude that the comfort with which I thought I embraced atheism is illusory. Deep down below my consciousness I guess want meaning.