Frank Tipler Says Physics Proves Christianity

Frank Tipler makes a startling statement in his book The Physics of Christanity:

I have a salary at Tulane… some 40 percent lower than the average for a full professor at Tulane as a consequence of my belief.”

He’s referring to his belief in God, which he says he does not share with his colleagues.

And I’m not sure how university salaries work… but I thought you got paid by how credentialed you were, and how many published papers you wrote, and so on.

In any case, sounds like Tipler’s statement needs some backing up, but we don’t get that in Bryan Appleyard’s review of the book.

You get get much out of the book itself, either. Atheists without much scientific knowledge may have a problem with the following passage from Chapter 1 of the book (emphasis mine):

Contrary to what many physicists have claimed in the popular press, we have had a Theory of Everything for about thirty years. Most physicists dislike this Theory of Everything because it requires the universe to begin in a singularity. That is, they dislike it because the theory is consistent only if God exists, and most contemporary scientists are atheists. They don’t want God to exist, and if keeping God out of science requires rejecting physical laws, well, so be it.

There are some atheists who wouldn’t want God to exist because they see God as a malevolent being. But on the whole, if there was someone who could actually answer prayers and give you real hope, what atheist wouldn’t want God to exist? It’s a horrible, inaccurate statement to make. And it’s just a moot point.

You can ask an atheist a similar question: Why don’t you want to believe in Heaven? And the truth is I would love to believe in Heaven. I just don’t see any evidence that Heaven actually exists. It’s not a question of “wanting” it to exist.

Tipler get even better at the end of the first chapter:

Christians claim that Jesus will come again, at the end of human history. Two developments in physics suggest that human history will end in about fifty years: computer experts predict that computers will exceed human intelligence within fifty years, and the de-materialization mechanism can be used to make weapons that are to atomic bombs as atomic bombs are to spitballs. Such weapons and super-human computers would make human survival unlikely, and in his discussion of the Second Coming, Jesus said he would return when human would face a “Great Tribulation” of such magnitude that we would not survive without his direct intervention. We will face such a Great Tribulation within fifty years.

He says the world is going to end in 50 years. Which many Christians have been saying for the past… oh… more than 50 years. And they’ve always been wrong.

You can read that whole first chapter by going here, by the way.

Appleyard mentions a few other nuggets we get from the book, including the idea that miracles “happen through known physical processes.” Do we have any examples? Here’s one:

Walking on water is accomplished through a particle beam and dematerialization through the multiple universe model implied by quantum theory.

I put that through Google Translate and came up empty.

Still, I’m sure someone with more background in Physics (or just a better background in science) could rip Tipler’s book a new one within minutes.

I am surprised by Appleyard’s last paragraph:

I doubt this book will make many converts. Believers will continue to believe, perhaps with a little more confidence, and skeptics will continue to doubt, perhaps with a little less. But Tipler should not be ignored by anybody. His great virtue is that he dramatizes the possibility that there is a deep and so far unknown connection between our faiths, our intuitions and our knowledge. He is due, at the very least, for a salary review.

Just from the first chapter alone, I have no idea what Tipler’s actually contributing to the field, in which case, the salary review would seem unnecessary.

(Thanks to Diana for the link!)

[tags]atheist, atheism, Frank Tipler, The Physics of Christanity, Tulane, God, Bryan Appleyard, Theory of Everything, Heaven, Jesus, Great Tribulation, Christian[/tags]

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olvlzl, no ism, no ist

They don’t want God to exist, and if keeping God out of science requires rejecting physical laws, well, so be it.

Talking about God has no place in science, though if scientists want to talk about God and even to make claims about their religious conclusions flowing from science there isn’t anything wrong with them doing so, outside of Science and especially publicly funded science classrooms.

There are some atheists who wouldn’t want God to exist because they see God as a malevolent being. But on the whole, if there was someone who could actually answer prayers and give you real hope, what atheist wouldn’t want God to exist?

I’m sure that Hitchens would hate to think there was anything higher than he was. It would also mean some quick job searches for a number too, including one kind of washed up novelist I can think of. Actually, I’ve known some atheists who would probably feel it was better to rule over a tiny cult of admirers in the prelude to dust than to have hope in a God.

This reminds me of the Dickinson poem, “I taste a licquor never brewed”. You can look it up if that arouses your curiosity. There are two versions, I can’t remember which one contains the relevant line.
Heather

Really good post.
I love the line: “I put that through Google Translate and came up empty. ”
I will have to plagiarise it.
Chris Hallquist

I knew Tippler had some odd ideas, but I didn’t know he know he had descended to this level of raving fundeism (Hmmm… new word. I like it).

This is going on my list of weird shit to read. I’m curious about his God = theory of everything claim. I suspect its “we can explain everything if we say ‘God did it, why he did it… who cares.'” That would be funny.
dpoyesac

I always assumed that Tipler was like Michael Behe — second-rate junior faculty at a second-rate school, blissfully ignorant of the complexities of the subject matter they were misusing.

I had no idea that Tipler was a full-on crazy person.

Sometimes I try to convince my fellow atheists that theists aren’t necessarily irrational or deluded, that sometimes they are perfectly reasonable people who have come up with thoughtful — but wrong — answers to important questions. Tipler’s claim that dematerialization rays are responsible for Jesus walking on water doesn’t help my case.
Karen

I saw Tipler “debate” Lawrence Krauss at Caltech a couple weeks ago. The man can only be described as a crackpot. When he concluded his initial statement with the prediction about Jesus returning in 50 years and the world being populated by cyborgs, I turned to the guy next to me and said, “He’s been watching too much Battlestar Galactica!”

It was surreal. I actually felt kinda sorry for the man. He’s obviously a bright guy, but a screw has come loose somewhere.

The only redeeming feature of the afternoon was getting to hear Krauss talk about real physics, and that was incredibly fun. He seems to be a great guy, and a wonderful teacher. And he – and everyone at the Skeptics Society for that matter – went out of their way to be polite and respectful to Tipler, no matter how nutty he got.
mollishka

No. Just, no.
Lynet

Shroud of Turin? Please. That one got disproved by carbon dating ages ago. Not to mention the fact that we don’t know that the universe will end in a singularity — some models suggest it will expand forever. Furthermore, there are other singularities predicted by our current theories besides those involving the whole universe — black holes! What are they? Angels? And we won’t have a theory of everything until we have a reasonable answer for what gravity looks like on a quantum scale. I doubt that Tipler does.

That man must be such an embarrasment to his university.
Darryl

This guy is an aberration. Whenever you start setting dates for the end of the world, you’ve screwed yourself and embarrassed all mostly-normal Christians. One thing this guy does remind me of though is the built-in failure of beginning from a system of beliefs and trying to fit the facts around the system. You end up with bizarre results that are easily falsified or that are completely trivial.
Siamang

He seems to have a problem discriminating between fantasy and reality. I don’t know why the Skeptics society booked him.

Who’s next? Bobby Fischer lecturing about the Holocaust?

Anyway, I don’t think that the Skeptics society should have done that to the man.
Miko

Walking on water is accomplished through a particle beam and dematerialization through the multiple universe model implied by quantum theory.

Okay… the multiple universe model suggests that whenever a quantum wave function collapses, the universe splits into multiple copies of itself corresponding to all the possible positions a particle could have been in. Since the probability of walking on water through quantum chance is probably around 1 in 100 billion per second of walking on water, that means that Tipler is arguing that God created hundreds of billions of universes, of which more than 99.999999999% of which involve a guy named Jesus trying to walk on water and failing. I suppose God didn’t care about saving the souls of the versions of ourselves in all of those parallel universes, since a spectacularly botched miracle by the alleged Son of God doesn’t seem like very compelling evidence. We should feel honored that we live in the universe in which Christianity exists, since according to this theory the existence of Christianity is something which happened only by a random coincidence that makes the proverbial 747 from a duststorm example sound like an excellent bet.
Darryl

The following account is true, and it is not the only one like it:

When I was a believer, in Bible College, in the late ’70’s, I had occasion to visit a church in Southern CA (actually, a building that was the meeting place for the church) that was a part of our denomination. The church had disbanded. The reason was simple: the Pastor had been preaching for sometime that he knew when Christ was going to return–he named a precise date. The Pastor advised his flock to sell all they had, cash in their investments, run up their credit cards, etc., in other words, to live like there was no tomorrow. Well, on the appointed day, the church had gathered together, and they were of course shocked when Jesus didn’t return. The Pastor tried recalibrating and setting a couple of other dates, but the damage was done.

Most ministers wouldn’t think of doing this kind of thing, and most believers wouldn’t buy it. However, it does happen.
Logos

That guy sounds NUCKING FUTS!
Daniel

Salary review indeed! Whatever that guy makes, it’s exactly that amount too much.
AV

Two developments in physics suggest that human history will end in about fifty years: computer experts predict that computers will exceed human intelligence within fifty years, and the de-materialization mechanism can be used to make weapons that are to atomic bombs as atomic bombs are to spitballs.

He’s right, you know:

Frink: You’ve got to listen to me. Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and the kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving.
Scientist: How much time do we have professor?
Frink: Well according to my calculations, the robots won’t go berserk for at least 24 hours.
(The robots go berserk.)
Frink: Oh, I forgot to er, carry the one.
Ash

but will the robots believe in silicon heaven? and if silicon heaven isn’t real, where would all the calculators go?
Ash

but will the robots believe in silicon heaven? and if silicon heaven isn’t real, where would all the calculators go?
DrB

I’d actually like to take an aside here about something Hemant mentioned and say that I, for one, would NOT like there to be a heaven within which we would all live forever and ever.

No moment or experience would be precious — you’ll have a gazillion of them and they would all be meaningless.

You’d never bother to explore your relationships with the other “spirits” once you got to the point of absolute predictability. There’d be no surprises; after a trillion years you’d know everybody too well.

No meals to look forward to. Probably no sex. Probably no drugs or drinking. Probably no fun poker games (but I bet Judas would have been a mean stud player — oh wait, he probably would not make it to heaven…). Probably no emotions — they are physical/chemical phenomena that wouldn’t exist in heaven. Right?

What would there be to explore after a few million years? (Especially if the universe had been swept away for the greatest temple to GOD ever imagined.) You can only read Thomas Pynchon novels so many times, you know.

A longer life would be nice (like, say, 300-400 years). Especially now: Look what’s happened to the world in that amount of time! But “Forever”? THAT is the REAL definition of hell. Think about it.

What we’re given is perfectly adequate in all its fragileness and its limited scope. That is why I think life has MORE meaning if you’re an athiest: it all comes to an end. I have a feeling that coming to terms with that each and every day until I’m gone will keep things plenty interesting.

Now I’ll go and enjoy something truly heavenly: a quiet beer on my modest porch, listening to the nocturnal insects in a gentle, temperate summer breeze, breathing in the scents of the herbs in my flower pots, letting my cat sit with me and allow her to live precisely in the moment while I contemplate that she is most likely better off to not be able to imagine the possibility of life after death.
Anatoly

That guy is certainly due for a salary review… how about… about 0% as much as his fellow scientists. Yeah, fire him,* he’s nuttier than peanut butter on almonds!

* Actually, no, dont fire him, it’ll just make him martyr-crazy and some people get erections when they climb on their self-made crosses.
Maria

This guy is nuts
olvlzl, no ism, no ist

Robots with a metaphysical yen want to become toasters. Hamilton Beach, specifically.

I’d give you the line on miracles but it would drive several here nuts and this is a dying thread.
diana

The reason I sent the link to Hemant was (a) it was intrinsically interesting but also (b) the reviewer, Bryan Appleyard, is a respected British cultural critic. Also, I think, a believer. That he simply didn’t say the book was worthless is noteworthy. The fawning towards religion isn’t limited to the USA.
OsakaGuy

I read his book The Physics of Immortality years ago. I don’t remember any Christian leanings in that book. Basically he outlined an interesting idea of life creating a “god” at the end of the universe during the Big Crunch. Cool science fiction, but certainly not biblical. Google up “omega point theory” and you’ll find the basic outline. Here’s the Wikipedia section:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_point#Tiplerian_omega_point

Did he convert to Christianity at some point? I’m curious how he reconciles Christianity with his SciFi Omega Point Theory.
HappyNat

Most physicists dislike this Theory of Everything because it requires the universe to begin in a singularity. That is, they dislike it because the theory is consistent only if God exists,

IF (note the big if) this is true then I missed the part where he makes the connecting that this god is the god of the bible. It could just as easily be Allah, or Zeus, or aliens or the FSM, right? And the part about Jesus coming to save up from the super human computers . . .are we sure this isn’t science fiction?
OsakaGuy

I just wrote a comment along the lines of HappyNat’s but it disappeared, so forgive me if it suddenly reappears as a double post…

I read Tipler’s book The Physics of Immortality years ago, and his basic idea was interesting and cool as science fiction. His Omega Point Theory basically says life (but not necessarily human life) will spread throughout the cosmos, and eventually utilize the energy of the Big Crunch to create “god”. This god is like a giant cosmic computer which will resurrect people into some kind of virtual heaven.

I don’t remember any Christian elements in the book or about this “theory”. Although I think it’s a neat idea as SciFi, it certainly has no relation to the Bible. Did Tipler convert to Christianity at some point?

Here’s a Wikipedia link to his OPT:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_point_%28Tipler%29
Vincent

“quantum theory” is generally a BS term thrown out by people who believe in magic. The thing is, it doesn’t apply to anything even as big as the nano scale. So, it certainly could not account for walking on water because once something as big as a foot is introduced, quantum theory no longer has ane effect.
OsakaGuy

I just wrote a comment along the lines of HappyNat’s but it disappeared, so forgive me if it suddenly reappears as a double post…

I read Tipler’s book The Physics of Immortality years ago, and his basic idea was interesting and cool as science fiction. His Omega Point Theory basically says life (but not necessarily human life) will spread throughout the cosmos, and eventually utilize the energy of the Big Crunch to create “god”. This god is like a giant cosmic computer which will resurrect people into some kind of virtual heaven.

I don’t remember any Christian elements in the book or about this “theory”. Although I think it’s a neat idea as SciFi, it certainly has no relation to the Bible. Did Tipler convert to Christianity at some point?

(Maybe my post was blocked because of the Wikipedia link I added. Just google “omega point theory” and you’ll find it!)
Miko

So, it certainly could not account for walking on water because once something as big as a foot is introduced, quantum theory no longer has ane effect.

No, it still has an effect. The only thing is that the effect won’t be noticable unless every particle involved happens to undergo quantum changes in the exact same way. Since the probability of this can be abbreviated as 0%, it’s not going to happen, but it theoretically could, in the same sense that I could theoretically grow a second head on my left shoulder.
miller

Since you were wondering what someone with more physics background would say, there was a post earlier on Cosmic Variance about this book.

http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/05/30/the-physics-of-christianity/
Richard Wade

No need to worry about de-materialization weapons, rogue super-intelligent robots or walking on water:

Simply installing a bi-phasic tachyon particle inverter with gluon-muon dichotomy capability in strategic points around probable targets will reverse the polarity of the de-materialization beam causing a multi-dimensional backlog of an infinite number of nothings so that in effect the beam is forever caught in a nano-moment just before it strikes. Eventually the weapon’s quantum-quantum (in layman’s terms, meta-quantum) anti-anti-graviton battery will overload with plasma polluted anti-energy and freeze into a steaming blob of irritated quarks.

As for the rogue super-intelligent robots, we all know that intelligence makes one vulnerable to endless futile pursuits of solutions for paradoxes, and super-intelligence makes one super-vulnerable. It takes a bit of dumb wisdom to be able to dismiss a pointless activity as pointless and then actually stop. So simply asking the oncoming murderous robot if God exists or not will cause a cognitive feedback loop that will fry its circuits. Much the same effect has been witnessed many times in their so-smart-they’re-stupid human creators.

Miko is on the right track about Jesus using a large number of parallel universes to walk on water, but I will clarify the process:

If Jesus were able to direct uncommitted leviton particles (those that create levity to counteract gravity) from the 99.99999999% of the other parallel universes into the water under his feet it would stop the molecular vibration in a thin film corresponding to the water’s surface tension. Thus it would be temporarily solid enough to walk on. Of course, the molecules being absolutely still would be very cold, and uncomfortable on Jesus’s feet. He would have said, “Jeezus, this is frikkin’ cold!” Having all knowledge of the future he would know that “Jeezus, this is frikkin’ cold!” would become a popular exclamation for such circumstances and he would have uttered it without even thinking. The fact that this utterance is not recorded in any of the gospels throws more doubt on their veracity or completeness.

In the meantime all the other Jesuses (Jesusi?) in all the other universes would have plunged into the water, and coming up spitting and choking they would all have said some lame thing about his disciples having to, uh, be willing to jump headlong into his teaching, holding nothing back, or some dumb thing like that. It probably would have fooled a bunch of bewildered fishermen and things would most likely have turned out pretty much the same in the other universes with the exception of Olympic-sized pools installed in churches.

Now that I’ve been able to put all that to rest, Mr. Data, set a course for Hussongs Cantina and……Engage!
Karen

Did Tipler convert to Christianity at some point?

Someone at Caltech asked this question. He responded by saying he was raised a Southern Baptist, but became an agnostic in his late teens when confronted with science. In college at UC Berkeley, he came across a physics concept that led him back to belief, and he re-dedicated his life to Christ.

What that physics concept was that prompted his reconversion, I honestly can’t tell you. It was probably whatever he wrote about in his first book. His presentation was absolutely awful, in terms of being jargon-filled, terribly dull and way over the heads of any non-physicist in the audience. I could only follow about 25% of what he was saying.

The contrast with Krauss, just in terms of presentation (forget about content), was breathtaking.
Darryl

Richard, you’ve got to write a book!
monkeymind

all the other Jesuses (Jesusi?)

Wouldn’t it be Jesi?
OsakaGuy

Yikes! Sorry for the multiple posts back there. I wasn’t used to my comment not appearing right away. Please feel free to delete the extras if you have the ability.

Thanks to Karen for answering my question. I guess I blocked out all the Christian elements when I read the book that long ago. (I’m an SF fan, so I focused on those bits!) Using the Amazon search function reveals some pretty odd sentences (from the Physics of Immortality):

on Page 315:
“… If Jesus really did rise from the dead (which I don’t believe), and if his resurrection body really was a spiritual body, …”

on Page 306:
“… THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY for in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. I personally do not believe that the writers of these works had any revealed knowledge. Rather, I think that, …”

If these quotes are any indication, he certainly doesn’t have mainstream Christian beliefs. He seems to be some kind of Christian materialist. (Amazon won’t let me view more than brief quotes, so they are a bit choppy.)
OsakaGuy

OK, I just read the blog link miller posted above and many of the comments there about his earlier book agree with my impression. Here’s one revealing quote from Amazon search:

on Page 305:
“… let me state here that I am at present forced to consider myself an atheist, in the literal sense that I am not a theist. (A-theist means “not theist. …”

So I guess Tipler’s world view changed quite a bit between these two books. (The Physics of Immortality pub. 1997 vs. The Physics of Christianity pub. 2007)
Prokop

The author is using the ‘Grey Goo’ theory, but there is no reason whatsoever to suggest that technology would be there within fifty years. It really seems like he is taking great liberty with modern science to adapt it to his pre-existing set of beliefs.
Richard Wade

The only grey goo is the stuff between Tipler’s ears. As for taking great liberty with modern science to adapt it to a pre-existing set of beliefs, why large museums are being founded on that practice. It’s all the rage.

The fifty years thing is a convenient balance between dramatically soon but still beyond his lifetime.
Brendon Lake

This ‘Theory of everything’ I’ve heard about seems pretty nuts to me, sounds like total scifi…
Adam

Hi All

The “Theory of Everything” he promotes is nothing new – just the Minimally Extended Standard Model, plus a quantum gravity equation developed years ago. And Tipler’s use of the Many Worlds approach to Quantum Mechanics is nothing new either.

Somewhat batty is his ideas about Jesus using macroscopic sphaleron fields to cause super-rapid proton-decay, turning a tiny bit of mass into a neutrino beam to carry him across water, or turning neutrinos into “loaves and fishes” to feed the 4000. Basically he’s saying “miracles” are really “God-tech”, literally, and so only use physical law, rather than violating it. If you believe that God is the Omega Point then I guess those sort of miracles might work.

Most of his claims have pretty solid physics behind them BUT he’s saying his take on the physics is the ONLY valid approach. That’s where his claim to some kind of divine truth really has problems. His strident advocacy of the Many Worlds version of QM, for example, might have problems because of recent experiments that potentially falsify it.

Tipler also thinks the quantum gravity equation of Richard Feynman and Steve Weinberg is correct – but it has been rejected by most physicists working on quantum gravity because it has an infinite number of terms when expanded and can’t be renormalised. Tipler argues, perhaps validly, that many proofs in mathematics potentially involve an infinite number of statements, but I think most physicists working on quantum gravity are hoping for a set of equations their finite minds can handle. Tipler might be right but his case is a LONG way from proven.

As for his Apocalyptic hyperbole… well I’d blame it on his faith tradition’s penchant for “Left Behind” style dramas in human history. Except more than a few Futurists expect radical changes as Super-Intelligence is developed. He’s certainly not a lone lunatic voice on this one – for example Vernor Vinge thinks the Singularity is only 50 years away.
Einmaliger

Walking on water is accomplished through a particle beam and dematerialization through the multiple universe model implied by quantum theory.

That quote is just awesome! I want to put it on a T-Shirt
leo bradley

“There are some atheists who wouldn’t want God to exist because they see God as a malevolent being. But on the whole, if there was someone who could actually answer prayers and give you real hope, what atheist wouldn’t want God to exist? It’s a horrible, inaccurate statement to make. And it’s just a moot point.

“You can ask an atheist a similar question: Why don’t you want to believe in Heaven? And the truth is I would love to believe in Heaven. I just don’t see any evidence that Heaven actually exists. It’s not a question of “wanting” it to exist.”
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Are you aware of how stupid you sound? Athiests “seeing God as a malevolent being”? That’s called gnosticism, somewhat different than atheism. “… answer prayers and give you real hope”? As opposed to what, “unreal” hope? “Horrible”? “Inaccurate”? “Moot”????? Moot means “settled.” You should look words up before using them.
Do you believe life exists elsewhere in the universe? I suspect you do… probably having been weaned on science fiction movies. What “evidence” do you have that there are aliens out there??? as opposed to, say, Heaven?
What a pack of morons! You take on someone whose garment you are not fit to touch! Rip him a new one? Ha! Not even in an alternate universe of your own design! Stick with TV, or whatever it is that you rely on for your muddled facts. You’re way out of your depth.
Leo Bradley
Adam

Hi Leo

Your post is just bile. Do you actually have an intelligent point to make?

Sure these atheist buffoons are pillorying Tipler, but that’s the point of this particular blog post. As for the doubts about Heaven do you have any objective evidence for Heaven you’d care to share with us? If Tipler is right then you’re about 10 quadrillion years too early.

Someone has dragged out the Shroud of Turin’s supposed falsification by carbon dating, but if they’d bothered to read any recent literature on the subject they might have found the carbon dating has been cast into serious doubt – not because it was wrong, but because the sample came from a Medieval patchwork repair on the Shroud. The sample region is chemically and optically (in UV) distinct from the rest of the material, so the supposed debunking has been debunked. Other chemical based tests on the Shroud date it to between 3,000 – 1,300 years old i.e. probably as old as it is claimed to be.

Is JC’s rising from the dead proven then? No. There will always be room for doubt or for faith. But there is no room for absurdities like a “mythical Christ” who didn’t exist in history. Jesus is as real as any other historical figure, but you can either accept the message or you can reject the messengers as untrustworthy. Considering the hypocrisy of so many Christians I can understand why the second option is so popular.

Adam
ash

Moot means “settled.” You should look words up before using them.

moot –adjective
1. open to discussion or debate; debatable; doubtful: a moot point.
2. of little or no practical value or meaning; purely academic.
3. Chiefly Law. not actual; theoretical; hypothetical

Are you aware of how stupid you sound?

hmmm…
James Redford

Hemant Mehta, you greatly underestimate the hatred of many in acedemia for belief in God, especially Christianity. This is the same Western academia that defended and covered-up for the U.S.S.R. and Mao Tse-tung’s China. During which time the Soviet government murdered over 61 million of its own noncombatant subjects, while the Communist Chinese government murdered over 76 million of it own noncombatant subjects. (The preceding figures are from Prof. Rudolph Joseph Rummel’s website at http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ .)

Western academia in no small part helped enable those mass-slaughters with its faithful adoration of those regimes and the socialist ideologies upon which they were founded. Instead of shining a spotlight on the tyranny and horrors of Communism (and thereby helping to diminish it by focusing world attention on it), they instead acted as Communism’s intellectual bodyguards. Still to this day not much is said in academia or the major media about the biggest mass-slaughters by far in human history.

Concerning the Omega Point Theory:

The known laws of physics (i.e., general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Extended Standard Model of particle physics) force us to the conclusion that computational resources in the universe must diverge to infinity (i.e., in order for the known laws of physics to be mutually consistent at all times). The final state of infinite informational capacity (which is never reached in experiential time) is identified as being God.

For much more on the technical details of the above, see the below resources:

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. http://math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf Also released as “Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything,” arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.3276

“Omega Point (Tipler),” Wikipedia, January 6, 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Omega_Point_%28Tipler%29&oldid=182549075

“Frank J. Tipler,” Wikipedia, January 5, 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frank_J._Tipler&oldid=182407923

Theophysics http://geocities.com/theophysics/

The only way to avoid the Omega Point cosmology is to invent tenuous physical theories which have no experimental support and which violate the known laws of physics, such as with Prof. Stephen Hawking’s paper on the black hole information issue which is dependant on the conjectured string theory-based AdS/CFT correspondence (anti-de Sitter space/conformal field theory correspondence). (See S. W. Hawking, “Information loss in black holes,” Physical Review D, Vol. 72, No. 8, 084013 [October 2005] http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0507171 .)

That is to say, Prof. Hawking’s paper is based upon invented and unconfirmed laws of physics. It’s an impressive testament to the Omega Point Theory’s correctness, as Hawking realizes that the known laws of physics require the universe to collapse in finite time. Hawking knows quite well that the black hole information issue must be resolved without violating unitarity, yet he’s forced to abandon the known laws of physics in order to avoid unitarity violation without the universe ending in finite time via collapse.

So we have confirmation from no less than Hawking himself that one can’t get around the universe ending in a collapse in finite time if one sticks to the known laws of physics. The only way to get around that is to invent new laws of physics.

Some have suggested that the universe’s current acceleration of its expansion obviates the Omega Point. But as Profs. Lawrence M. Krauss and Michael S. Turner point out in “Geometry and Destiny” (General Relativity and Gravitation, Vol. 31, No. 10 [October 1999], pp. 1453-1459 http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9904020 ), there is no set of cosmological observations which can tell us whether the universe will expand forever or eventually collapse.

There’s a very good reason for that, because that is dependant on the actions of intelligent life. The known laws of physics provide the mechanism for the universe’s collapse. As required by the Standard Model, the net baryon number was created in the early universe by baryogenesis via electroweak quantum tunneling. This necessarily forces the Higgs field to be in a vacuum state that is not its absolute vacuum, which is the cause of the positive cosmological constant. But if the baryons in the universe were to be annihilated by the inverse of baryogenesis, again via electroweak quantum tunneling (which is allowed in the Standard Model, as B – L is conserved), then this would force the Higgs field toward its absolute vacuum, thereby forcing the universe to collapse. Moreover, this process would provide the ideal form of energy resource and rocket propulsion during the colonization phase of the universe.

Prof. Tipler’s above 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper also demonstrates that the correct quantum gravity theory has existed since 1962, first discovered by Richard Feynman in that year, and independently discovered by Steven Weinberg and Bryce DeWitt, among others. But because these physicists were looking for equations with a finite number of terms (i.e., derivatives no higher than second order), they abandoned this qualitatively unique quantum gravity theory since in order for it to be consistent it requires an arbitrarily higher number of terms. Further, they didn’t realize that this proper theory of quantum gravity is consistent only with a certain set of boundary conditions imposed (which includes the initial Big Bang, and the final Omega Point, cosmological singularities). The equations for this theory of quantum gravity are term-by-term finite, but the same mechanism that forces each term in the series to be finite also forces the entire series to be infinite (i.e., infinities that would otherwise occur in spacetime, consequently destabilizing it, are transferred to the cosmological singularities, thereby preventing the universe from immediately collapsing into nonexistence). When combined with the Standard Model, the result is a Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics.
pj johnson

Dr. Tipler has raised an interesting speculation on our physical future. His claims appear to have considerable strength based on his attempt to give a physical explanation for christian eschatology. Oddly a recent revelation of Isaac Newton’s speculation re the endtime for humans was given as 2060 close to Dr. Tipler’s prognostication. The angry attacks by faith followers of atheism are understandable human and the inevitable reaction to novel predictions offered by theorists, faith engenders very strong feeling.
j

Appealing to one coincidence does not make Tipler’s speculations valid.

“Newton, like many historicist prophetic commentators of his age, believed that the prophetic time periods 1260, 1290, 1335 and 2300 days actually represent 1260, 1290, 1335 and 2300 years using the “day-for-a-year principle”.”

http://www.isaac-newton.org/update.html

Tipler’s ideas sound at best historicism, just like Newton’s theological predictions because they aren’t falsifiable in a scientific fashion. The previous comment provides a misplaced appeal to scientific authority (when Newton wasn’t using science to make his theological predictions) instead of give scientific evidence and also uses a combination of straw man and ad hominem arguments. Usually when someone does that I think it is out of desperation because of the lack of scientific rigor supporting the thesis.
MGT

I see lots of personal insults directed toward Dr. Tipler and no real refutation of his points. Paranoia and emotional rants are not going to help the atheist case. Tipler’s Omega Point Theory is endorsed by none other than David Deutsch, mind you – some scientists find the theory plausible.
Siamang

Yet another crazy?

Wake up, nutball. This dead thread is two years old.

Go dig a hole and live in it. Tipler’s end of the world is two years closer!

I swear, the insane shouldn’t be allowed the internet. It’s like crack to them.
Adam

His theory is one logical outcome of physics-as-we-know-it but his claims go beyond mere physics into out-and-out speculation and seem to serve as a blanket refusal to consider other possibilities. He claims physicists are avoiding the cosmological singularity for essentially religious reasons, but gives no meaningful reason why it shouldn’t be treated like any other singularity in physics – i.e. evidence that one’s equations have gone beyond their useful limits.