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}}</ref> Tipler claims to provide a mechanism for [[immortality]] and the [[resurrection of the dead]] consistent with the known laws of physics via the use of computers which use the entire universe to compute on and which diverge to a state infinite computational resources that Tipler terms the Omega Point and which he identifies with [[God]]. The line of argument is that the evolution of intelligent species will enable scientific progress to grow exponentially, eventually enabling control over the [[universe]] even on the largest possible scale. Tipler predicts that this process will culminate with an all-powerful intelligence whose computing speed and information storage will grow exponentially at a rate exceeding the collapse of the universe, thus providing infinite "experiential time" which will be used to run computer simulations of all intelligent life that has ever lived in the history of our universe. In more recent works, Tipler says that the existence of the Omega Point is required to avoid the violation of the known laws of physics.
}}</ref> Tipler claims to provide a mechanism for [[immortality]] and the [[resurrection of the dead]] consistent with the known laws of physics via the use of computers which use the entire universe to compute on and which diverge to a state infinite computational resources that Tipler terms the Omega Point and which he identifies with [[God]]. The line of argument is that the evolution of intelligent species will enable scientific progress to grow exponentially, eventually enabling control over the [[universe]] even on the largest possible scale. Tipler predicts that this process will culminate with an all-powerful intelligence whose computing speed and information storage will grow exponentially at a rate exceeding the collapse of the universe, thus providing infinite "experiential time" which will be used to run computer simulations of all intelligent life that has ever lived in the history of our universe. In more recent works, Tipler says that the existence of the Omega Point is required to avoid the violation of the known laws of physics.



According to [[George Ellis]]'s review of Tipler's book in the journal ''[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]'', Tipler's book on the Omega Point is "a masterpiece of [[pseudoscience]] ... the product of a fertile and creative imagination unhampered by the normal constraints of scientific and philosophical discipline",<ref name="ellis1994">
{{cite journal
|author=[[George Ellis]]
|title=Review of The Physics of Immortality
|journal=[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]
|year=1994
|pages=115
|volume=371
|issue=
|url=http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v371/n6493/pdf/371115a0.pdf
|doi=10.1038/371115a0
}}</ref> and [[Michael Shermer]] devoted a chapter of ''[[Why People Believe Weird Things]]'' to enumerating what he thought to be flaws in Tipler's thesis.<ref name="shermer1997">
{{cite book
|author=[[Michael Shermer]]
|title=[[Why People Believe Weird Things]]
|publisher=[[W.H. Freeman]]
|year=1997
|isbn=0-7167-3090-1
}}</ref>[[David Deutsch]] identified some aspects of Tipler's physics of the Omega Point as being correct.<ref name="Deutsch1997">
{{cite book
|author=David Deutsch
|year=1997
|title=The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes—and Its Implications
|chapterurl=http://theophysics.chimehost.net/deutsch-ends-of-the-universe.html
|location=London
|publisher=[[Penguin Press]]
|isbn=0713990619
|chapter=The Ends of the Universe}} [http://theophysics.host56.com/deutsch-ends-of-the-universe.html Mirror link.]</ref>


Tipler's 2007 book ''The Physics of Christianity'' analyzes the Omega Point Theory's pertinence to [[Christian theology]].<ref name="Tipler2007a">{{cite book
Tipler's 2007 book ''The Physics of Christianity'' analyzes the Omega Point Theory's pertinence to [[Christian theology]].<ref name="Tipler2007a">{{cite book

Revision as of 22:16, 29 June 2010

The Omega Point is a term used by Tulane University professor of physics and mathematics Frank J. Tipler to describe what he maintains is a physically-necessary cosmological state in the far future of the universe. Tipler identifies the Omega Point as being the Judeo-Christian God, particularly as described by Christian theological tradition, and claims it provides a mechanism for the miracles of Jesus Christ, immortality and the resurrection of the dead that is consistent with the known laws of physics.

Tipler's Omega Point theories have received criticism by physicists and skeptics.[1] George Ellis, writing in the journal Nature, described Tipler's book on the Omega Point as "a masterpiece of pseudoscience ... the product of a fertile and creative imagination unhampered by the normal constraints of scientific and philosophical discipline",[2] and Michael Shermer devoted a chapter of Why People Believe Weird Things to enumerating what he thought to be flaws in Tipler's thesis.[3]

Theory

Tipler has published his Omega Point Theory in a number of peer-reviewed scientific journals since 1986.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] The first book describing the Omega Point theory was his book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle with John D. Barrow in 1986, which reviewed the intellectual history of teleology, the large number of physical coincidences which allow sapient life to exist (see anthropic principle), and investigated the ultimate fate of the universe.

In his controversial 1994 book The Physics of Immortality,[15][2][16] Tipler claims to provide a mechanism for immortality and the resurrection of the dead consistent with the known laws of physics via the use of computers which use the entire universe to compute on and which diverge to a state infinite computational resources that Tipler terms the Omega Point and which he identifies with God. The line of argument is that the evolution of intelligent species will enable scientific progress to grow exponentially, eventually enabling control over the universe even on the largest possible scale. Tipler predicts that this process will culminate with an all-powerful intelligence whose computing speed and information storage will grow exponentially at a rate exceeding the collapse of the universe, thus providing infinite "experiential time" which will be used to run computer simulations of all intelligent life that has ever lived in the history of our universe. In more recent works, Tipler says that the existence of the Omega Point is required to avoid the violation of the known laws of physics.


Tipler's 2007 book The Physics of Christianity analyzes the Omega Point Theory's pertinence to Christian theology.[17] In the book, Tipler identifies the Omega Point as being the Judeo-Christian God, particularly as described by Christian theological tradition. In this book Tipler also analyzes how Jesus Christ could have performed the miracles attributed to him in the New Testament without violating any known laws of physics, even if one were to assume that we currently don't exist on a level of implementation in a computer simulation (in the case that we did then, obviously and as noted by Tipler, such miracles would be trivially easy to perform for the society which was running the simulation whilst it would still seem amazing from our perspective). Based on a semi-religious variation of the Strong Anthropic Principle that Tipler refers to as the Eternal Life Postulate, the occurrence of extremely improbable miracle events are considered by Tipler to be a necessary pre-condition of the existence of the universe[18].

Tipler's writings have been cited by William A. Dembski as forming the basis of the process for review in the intelligent design journal Progress in Complexity, Information and Design of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (now defunct), where both Tipler and Dembski served as fellows.

See also

References

  1. ^ Gardner, Martin (March / April 2008). "The Strange Case of Frank Jennings Tipler". Book Review, "The Physics of Christianity". The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Retrieved 29 June 2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ a b George Ellis (1994). "Review of The Physics of Immortality" (PDF). Nature. 371: 115. doi:10.1038/371115a0.
  3. ^ Shermer, Michael (1997). Why People Believe Weird Things. W.H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-3090-1.
  4. ^ Frank J. Tipler, "Cosmological Limits on Computation", International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 25, No. 6 (June 1986), pp. 617-661, doi:10.1007/BF00670475, Bibcode:1986IJTP...25..617T. (First paper on the Omega Point Theory.)
  5. ^ Frank J. Tipler, "Achieved spacetime infinity", Nature, Vol. 325, No. 6101 (January 15, 1987), pp. 201-202, doi:10.1038/325201c0, Bibcode:1987Natur.325..201T.
  6. ^ Frank J. Tipler, "The Anthropic Principle: A Primer for Philosophers", PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 1988, Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers (1988), pp. 27-48; published by University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science Association.
  7. ^ Frank J. Tipler, "The Omega Point as Eschaton: Answers to Pannenberg's Questions for Scientists", Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science, Vol. 24, Issue 2 (June 1989), pp. 217-253, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9744.1989.tb01112.x. Mirror link. Republished as Chapter 7: "The Omega Point as Eschaton: Answers to Pannenberg's Questions to Scientists" in Carol Rausch Albright and Joel Haugen (editors), Beginning with the End: God, Science, and Wolfhart Pannenberg (Chicago, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Company, 1997), pp. 156-194, ISBN 0812693256, LCCN 97-0.
  8. ^ Frank J. Tipler, "The ultimate fate of life in universes which undergo inflation", Physics Letters B, Vol. 286, Issues 1-2 (July 23, 1992), pp. 36-43, doi:10.1016/0370-2693(92)90155-W, Bibcode:1992PhLB..286...36T.
  9. ^ Frank J. Tipler, "A New Condition Implying the Existence of a Constant Mean Curvature Foliation", Bibcode:1993dgr2.conf..306T, in B. L. Hu and T. A. Jacobson (editors), Directions in General Relativity: Proceedings of the 1993 International Symposium, Maryland, Volume 2: Papers in Honor of Dieter Brill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 306-315, ISBN 0521452678, Bibcode:1993dgr2.conf.....H. Mirror link.
  10. ^ Frank J. Tipler, "Ultrarelativistic Rockets and the Ultimate Future of the Universe", NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Workshop Proceedings, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, January 1999, pp. 111-119 (mirror link); an invited paper in the proceedings of a conference held at and sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, August 12-14, 1998; Error: Bad DOI specified!. Document ID: 19990023204. Report Number: E-11429; NAS 1.55:208694; NASA/CP-1999-208694. Mirror link.
  11. ^ Frank J. Tipler, "The Ultimate Future of the Universe, Black Hole Event Horizon Topologies, Holography, and the Value of the Cosmological Constant", arXiv:astro-ph/0104011, April 1, 2001. Published in J. Craig Wheeler and Hugo Martel (editors), Relativistic Astrophysics: 20th Texas Symposium, Austin, TX, 10-15 December 2000 (Melville, N.Y.: American Institute of Physics, 2001), pp. 769-772, ISBN 0735400261, LCCN 20-1, which is AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 586 (October 15, 2001), doi:10.1063/1.1419654, Bibcode:2001AIPC..586.....W.
  12. ^ Frank J. Tipler, "Intelligent life in cosmology", International Journal of Astrobiology, Vol. 2, Issue 2 (April 2003), pp. 141-148, doi:10.1017/S1473550403001526, Bibcode:2003IJAsB...2..141T. Mirror links here and here; also available here. Also at arXiv:0704.0058, March 31, 2007.
  13. ^ F. J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers", Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964, doi:10.1088/0034-4885/68/4/R04, Bibcode:2005RPPh...68..897T. Mirror link. Also released as "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything", arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007.
  14. ^ Frank J. Tipler, Jessica Graber, Matthew McGinley, Joshua Nichols-Barrer and Christopher Staecker, "Closed Universes With Black Holes But No Event Horizons As a Solution to the Black Hole Information Problem", arXiv:gr-qc/0003082, March 20, 2000. Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 379, Issue 2 (August 2007), pp. 629-640, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.11895.x, Bibcode:2007MNRAS.379..629T.
  15. ^ John Polkinghorne (1995). "I am the Alpha and the Omega Point". New Scientist (1963): 41.
  16. ^ Richard G. Baker (1995). "Fossils Worth Studying" (PDF). Science. 267 (5200): 1043–1044. doi:10.1126/science.267.5200.1043. PMID 17811443.
  17. ^ Frank J. Tipler (2007). "Christianity as Physics". The Physics of Christianity. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0385514247. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
  18. ^ Cite error: The named reference Deutsch1997 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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