Brilliantly imagined and reasoned vision

books:

	• The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead Frank J. Tipler Anchor, 1997 - 560 pages average customer review:based on 80 reviews view larger image
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Physics is theology is physics

Let me summarize as best as I can.

Theology is a branch of physics. All things (including people) are reducible to their physics. Humans could and will be recreated and indistinguishable from the original as universal Turing machines when computing power is sufficient (Tipler writing in 1994 claims a 30-year horizon for this). At the Omega Point, the boundary between time and infinity, an infinite state machine with boundless knowledge and all the resources of the universe, will be able to recreate (resurrect, says Tipler) all past humans as universal Turing machines, emulations in the computer. The Omega Point is God, the emulation is the resurrection spoken of in the Bible, and the rest of infinity will be heaven.

That's pretty much it. Even though Tipler quotes the Bible, and other religion's scriptures, he explicitly is atheist in that he does not believe in the Creator God of the Bible, but does believe that his Omega Point theory provides a basis in physics for a belief in the standard Christian world view of God, eternity, resurrection and heaven.

While I questioned his sanity at first, by the end of the book I came to believe he is quite serious, basing his science on quantum physics and recent scientific and mathematical theories about infinities (things--equations, theories--do act strangely as they approach infinite boundaries). The theories, even in layman's summaries, are sometimes hard to follow, and he includes a lengthy Appendix for Scientists which includes page-long equations.

He left me, and will most readers, shaking my head and questioning his standing amongst "real" physicists.

Compare this to my review of Barrow's Pi in the Sky: Counting, Thinking, and Being.

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Brilliantly imagined and reasoned vision

Some of the general points Tipler develops and presents are these:

* An intelligent robot probe could seed other star systems with life by coding human and other terrestrial DNA sequences in its memory. Then use this information to create living cells of these life forms in the star systems.

* A 100-gram payload would hold all DNA coding for 10,000 individuals, and could reach 90% light speed in 1.5 months, using a moon-based 10-gigawatt laser to push the craft.

* With multiple probes at 90% light speed and Relativistic time dilation, it would take 600,000 years to colonize the entire Milky Way Galaxy, which is 100,000 light years across.

* The nearest Virgo Cluster of large galaxies is about 60 million light years away, and could be highly colonized by life from biosphere probes in about 70 million years.

* All life forms frequently replace all atoms in their bodies as life forms develop. The substance of human beings is thus not preserved, only the patterns. So future life will extract the relevant information from radiated background noise.

* Huge clusters of future intelligent life, among all known galaxies, will use game theory to conspire toward universal defeat of death by life. Part of this cooperative conspiracy will be to assemble a network of a Godly "Omega Point."

* The Omega Point will find a way to overcome the accelerated expansion of the universe [today, believed caused by dark energy's pull], and will carry out the reviving of previously dead intelligent life forms.

* The life-born, Godly "Omega Point" will thus create such perfectly accurate simulations of these past lives, that those past lives will in fact be resurrected.

* The Omega Point will want to do this because of its commitment to knowledge and triumph of life over death.

* The dead will be resurrected when the computer capacity of the universe is so large that the amount of capacity required to store all possible human simulations is an insignificant fraction of the entire capacity.

* You're dead and completely unaware until the Omega Point resurrects you. But you will awaken as if no subjective time passed, even after trillions of years.

* The Omega Point will not resurrect individuals it considers irretrievably evil, but will guide flawed humans toward acceptable levels of good via long Purgatory processes.

* "Hell" will be non-resurrection and true, non-aware death. "Purgatory" will be resurrection and a process of purification.

Whether we find Dr. Tipler's scientific analyses and resultant speculations likely or preposterous, desirable or undesirable, he at least stimulates thinking about grand-scale potentialities that many of us might not otherwise imagine, and he lays some scientific bases for such speculations. At best, his hypotheses might be decent science; at worst, at least provocative science fiction!

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Fascinating work of the imagination

I found this book such a fascinating read that I don't mind if is complete bunk as science. The author offers several testable predictions, some of which I believe have by now proven false. However, I greatly admire the author's imagination. He made me want the theory to be true, weird as it is. Apparently, I do "have a taste for well educated lunatics making weird arguments," to quote one reviewer.

Very interesting read

I have to say this is one of the most interesting books on theoretical science that i have come across so far.
At first when i heard of the Omega Point theory, i thought it was highly absurd that the existence of a higher power (God, Allah or others) and the resurrection of the dead is compatible with modern physics. Once again, Tipler shows how absurd ideas can be proven to be true, despite common notions and beliefs stating otherwise.
While of course, the Omega Point theory is speculative at present, it could be the best cosmological scenario we could ask for assuming the LHC at CERN finds evidence for it and other scientific experiments.

Tipler also gives us hope for the future of life in the universe and how it could prove to be stronger than the blind laws of physics governing the physical universe. Finally, this book provides reason for hope that science and religion are not incompatible and they would work very well together in tackling life's big questions.
I hope that anyone who reads this review agrees with my main points i've raised and finds meaning in life after reading this book.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

A professor of physics explains how he used a mathematical model of the universe to confirm the existence of God and the likelihood that every human who ever lived will be resurrected from the dead. Reprint. PW.