- Tipler, Frank J.
The Physics of Christianity.
New York: Doubleday, 2007.
ISBN 0-385-51424-7.
-
Oh. My. Goodness.
Are you yearning for answers to the Big Questions which philosophers
and theologians have puzzled over for centuries? Here you are, using
direct quotes from this book in the form of a catechism of this
beyond-the-fringe science cataclysm.
- What is the purpose of life in the universe?
- It is not enough to annihilate some baryons. If the laws
of physics are to be consistent over all time, a substantial
percentage of all the baryons in the universe must be
annihilated, and over a rather short time span. Only
if this is done will the acceleration of the universe be
halted. This means, in particular, that intelligent life
from the terrestrial biosphere must move out into interstellar
and intergalactic space, annihilating baryons as they go.
(p. 67)
- What is the nature of God?
- God is the Cosmological Singularity. A singularity
is an entity that is outside of time and space—transcendent
to space and time—and it is the only thing that exists
that is not subject to the laws of physics.
(p. 269)
- How can the three persons of the Trinity be one God?
- The Cosmological Singularity consists of three
Hypostases: the Final Singularity, the All-Presents
Singularity, and the Initial Singularity. These can
be distinguished by using Cauchy sequences of different
sorts of person, so in the Cauchy completion, they become
three distinct Persons. But still, the three Hypostases
of the Singularity are just one Singularity. The Trinity,
in other words, consists of three Persons but only one
God.
(pp. 269–270.)
- How did Jesus walk on water?
- For example, walking on water could be accomplished
by directing a neutrino beam created just below
Jesus' feet downward. If we ourselves knew how
to do this, we would have the perfect rocket!
(p. 200)
- What is Original Sin?
- If Original Sin actually exists, then it must in some
way be coded in our genetic material, that is, in our
DNA. … By the time of the Cambrian Explosion, if not
earlier, carnivores had appeared on Earth. Evil had
appeared in the world. Genes now coded for behavior
that guided the use of biological weapons of the
carnivores. The desire to do evil was now hereditary.
(pp. 188, 190)
- How can long-dead saints intercede in the lives of
people who pray to them?
- According to the Universal Resurrection theory, everyone,
in particular the long-dead saints, will be brought back
into existence as computer emulations in the far future,
near the Final Singularity, also called God the Father.
… Future-to-past causation is usual with the
Cosmological Singularity. A prayer made today can be
transferred by the Singularity to a resurrected saint—the
Virgin Mary, say—after the Universal Resurrection. The
saint can then reflect on the prayer and, by means of the
Son Singularity acting through the multiverse, reply. The
reply, via future-to-past causation, is heard before it is
made. It is heard billions of years before it is made.
(p. 235)
- When will the End of Days come?
- In summary, by the year 2050 at the latest, we will see:
- Intelligent machines more intelligent than humans.
- Human downloads, effectively invulnerable and far
more capable than normal humans.
- Most of humanity Christian.
- Effectively unlimited energy
- A rocket capable of interstellar travel.
- Bombs that are to atomic bombs as atomic bombs
are to spitballs, and these weapons will be
possessed by practically anybody who wants one.
(p. 253)
Hey, I said answers, not correct answers! This is
only a tiny sampler of the side-splitting “explanations”
of Christian mysteries and miracles in this book. Others include the
virgin birth, the problem of evil, free will, the resurrection of
Jesus, the shroud of Turin and the holy grail, the star of Bethlehem,
transubstantiation, quantum gravity, the second coming, and more,
more, more. Quoting them all would mean quoting almost the whole
book—if you wish to be awed by or guffaw at them all, you're
going to have to read the whole thing. And that's not all, since it
seems like every other page or so there's a citation of Tipler's 1994
opus,
The Physics of Immortality
(read my
review), so some sections are likely to be baffling
unless you suspend disbelief and slog your way through that
tome as well.
Basically, Tipler sees your
retro-causality and raises to
retro-teleology. In order for the laws
of physics, in particular the unitarity of quantum
mechanics, to be valid, then the universe must evolve
to a final singularity with no event horizons—the
Omega Point. But for this to happen, as it must,
since the laws of physics are never violated, then
intelligent life must halt the accelerating expansion of the
universe and turn it around into contraction. Because
this must happen, the all-knowing Final Singularity,
which Tipler identifies with God the Father, acts as a
boundary condition which causes fantastically improbable
events such as the simultaneous tunnelling disintegration of
every atom of the body of Jesus into neutrinos to become
certainties, because otherwise the Final Singularity
Omega Point will not be formed. Got that?
I could go on and on, but by now I think you'll have gotten
the point, even if it isn't an Omega Point. The funny thing
is, I'm actually sympathetic to much of what Tipler says
here: his discussion of free will in the multiverse and
the power of prayer or affirmation is not that unlike
what I suggest in my eternally under construction
“General Theory of Paranormal
Phenomena”, and I share Tipler's optimism about
the human destiny and the prospects, in a universe of which
95% of the mass is made of stuff we know absolutely nothing
about, of finding sources of energy as boundless and unimagined
as nuclear fission and fusion were a century ago. But
folks, this is just silly. One of the most irritating
things is Tipler's interpreting scripture to imply a
deep knowledge of recently-discovered laws of physics
and then turning around, a few pages later, when the argument
requires it, to claim that another passage was influenced by
contemporary beliefs of the author which have since been
disproved. Well, which is it?
If you want to get a taste of this material, see
“The
Omega Point and Christianity”,
which contains much of the physics content of the book in
preliminary form. The
entire
first chapter of the published book can be downloaded
in icky Microsoft Word format from
the author's
Web site, where additional technical and popular
articles are available.
For those unacquainted with the author, Frank J. Tipler is
a full professor of mathematical physics at Tulane
University in New Orleans, pioneer in global methods in
general relativity, discoverer of the massive rotating
cylinder time machine, one of the first to argue
that the resolution of the Fermi Paradox is, as his
paper was titled,
“Extraterrestrial
Intelligent Beings Do Not Exist”, and, with John
Barrow, author of
The Anthropic Cosmological
Principle,
the definitive work on that topic.
Say what you like, but Tipler is a serious and dedicated
scientist with world-class credentials who believes that
the experimentally-tested laws of physics as we understand
them are not only consistent with, but require, many of the
credal tenets which traditional Christians have taken on
faith. The research program
he proposes (p. 271), “… would make Christianity a
branch of physics.” Still, as I wrote almost twelve years ago,
were I he, I'd be worried about
getting on the wrong side
of the Old One.
Finally, and this really bothers me, I can't close these
remarks without mentioning that notwithstanding there
being an entire chapter titled “Anti-Semitism Is
Anti-Christian” (pp. 243–256), which purports
to explain it on the last page, this book is
dedicated, “To God's Chosen People, the Jews,
who for the first time in 2,000 years are advancing
Christianity.” I've read the book; I've read the
explanation; and this remark still seems both puzzling
and disturbing to me.
June 2007 