Reply to Christian Polson-Brown
James Redford
the Omega Point exists is to reject the known laws of physics (i.e.,
the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum
mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics), and hence to
reject empirical science: as these physical laws have been confirmed
by every experiment to date. That is, there exists no rational reason
for thinking that the Omega Point Theory is incorrect, and indeed, one
must engage in extreme irrationality in order to argue against the
Omega Point cosmology.
Additionally, we now have the quantum gravity Theory of Everything
(TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics: of
which inherently produces the Omega Point cosmology. So here we have
an additional high degree of assurance that the Omega Point cosmology
is correct.
Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theory has been peer-reviewed and
published in a number of the world's leading physics and science
journals.[1] Even NASA itself has peer-reviewed his Omega Point Theory
and found it correct according to the known laws of physics (see
below). No refutation of it exists within the peer-reviewed scientific
literature, or anywhere else for that matter.
Below are some of the peer-reviewed papers in science and physics
journals wherein Prof. Tipler has published his Omega Point Theory:
* 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.)
* 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.
* 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. 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 97000114. http://www.webcitation.org/5nY0aytpz
* 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.
* 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. http://www.webcitation.org/5qbXJZiX5
* Frank J. Tipler, "There Are No Limits To The Open Society", Critical
Rationalist, Vol. 3, No. 2 (September 23, 1998).
http://www.webcitation.org/5sFYkHgSS
* 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; an invited paper in the proceedings of a conference
held at and sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio,
August 12-14, 1998; doi:2060/19990023204. Document ID: 19990023204.
Report Number: E-11429; NAS 1.55:208694; NASA/CP-1999-208694.
http://www.webcitation.org/5nY13xRip Full proceedings volume:
http://www.webcitation.org/5nwu4fT31
* 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.
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0003082 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.
* 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.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0104011 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
2001094694, which is AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 586 (October 15,
2001), doi:10.1063/1.1419654, bibcode: 2001AIPC..586.....W.
* 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.
http://www.webcitation.org/5o9QHKGuW Also at arXiv:0704.0058, March
31, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0058
* 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.
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
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in which the above
August 2007 paper was published, is one of the world's leading
peer-reviewed astrophysics journals.
Prof. Tipler's paper "Ultrarelativistic Rockets and the Ultimate
Future of the Universe" was an invited paper for a conference held at
and sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center, so NASA itself has
peer-reviewed Tipler's Omega Point Theory (peer-review is a standard
process for published proceedings papers; and again, Tipler's said
paper was an *invited* paper by NASA, as opposed to what are called
"poster papers").
Zygon is the world's leading peer-reviewed academic journal on science
and religion.
Out of 50 articles, Prof. Tipler's 2005 Reports in Progress in Physics
paper--which presents the Omega Point/Feynman-Weinberg-DeWitt quantum
gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE)--was selected as one
of 12 for the "Highlights of 2005" accolade as "the very best articles
published in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2005 [Vol. 68].
Articles were selected by the Editorial Board for their outstanding
reviews of the field. They all received the highest praise from our
international referees and a high number of downloads from the journal
Website." (See Richard Palmer, Publisher, "Highlights of 2005,"
Reports on Progress in Physics. http://www.webcitation.org/5o9VkK3eE )
Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading journal of the Institute
of Physics, Britain's main professional body for physicists. Further,
Reports on Progress in Physics has a higher impact factor (according
to Journal Citation Reports) than Physical Review Letters, which is
the most prestigious American physics journal (one, incidently, which
Prof. Tipler has been published in more than once). A journal's impact
factor reflects the importance the science community places in that
journal in the sense of actually citing its papers in their own
papers. (And just to point out, Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in
Physics paper could not have been published in Physical Review Letters
since said paper is nearly book-length, and hence not a "letter" as
defined by the latter journal.)
For much more on these matters, particularly see Prof. Tipler's above
2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper in addition to the following
resources:
"God Proven to Exist According to Mainline Physics", TetrahedronOmega,
libertyandtruth, December 26, 2008.
http://www.armleg.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=122&mforum=libertyandtruth
Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist.
http://theophysics.chimehost.net , http://theophysics.host56.com ,
http://theophysics.ifastnet.com
***
In Michael Shermer's book Why People Believe Weird Things:
Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New
York: A. W. H. Freeman/Owl Book, revised and expanded, 2002; original
ed. 1997), Shermer doesn't really attempt to refute Prof. Tipler's
Omega Point Theory. Shermer's main argument is that one wasn't at the
time required to believe in the Omega Point cosmology because in
Tipler's book The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and
the Resurrection of the Dead (New York: Doubleday, 1994) Tipler
investigated what would be necessary from the postulate that life
continues forever while still keeping the analysis confined to the
known laws of physics. On p. 395 of that book, Tipler said that he
himself does not yet accept the Omega Point Theory, and that he is
still an atheist, but that if the Omega Point Theory is confirmed,
then he shall be a theist. Since the publication of this book it has
been shown that the Omega Point cosmology is a logically unavoidable
result of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, and
quantum mechanics.
Prof. Tipler didn't set out to physically prove the existence of God.
Tipler had been an atheist since the age of 16, yet only circa 1998
did he again become a theist due to advancements in the Omega Point
Theory which occured after the publication of his 1994 book The
Physics of Immortality. Of which advancements, Shermer's book doesn't
deal with.
Tipler's first paper on the Omega Point Theory was in 1986 (Frank J.
Tipler, "Cosmological Limits on Computation", International Journal of
Theoretical Physics, Vol. 25, No. 6 [June 1986], pp. 617-661). What
motivated Tipler's investigation as to how long life could go on was
not religion (indeed, Tipler didn't even set out to find God), but
Prof. Freeman J. Dyson's paper "Time without end: Physics and biology
in an open universe" (Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 51, Issue 3
[July 1979], pp. 447-460
http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Omega/dyson.txt ).
Further, in a section entitled "Why I Am Not a Christian" in The
Physics of Immortality (p. 310), Tipler wrote, "However, I emphasize
again that I do not think Jesus really rose from the dead. I think his
body rotted in some grave." This book was written before Tipler
realized what the resurrection mechanism is that Jesus could have used
without violating any known laws of physics (and without existing on
an emulated level of implementation--in that case the resurrection
mechanism would be trivially easy to perform for the society running
the simulation).
In Shermer's book, his argument against the continuity of
consciousness is confused and self-refuting. As Shermer writes,
""
If Omega/God resurrects me with all of my memories, which memories
will they be? The memories I had at a particular point in my lifetime?
Then, that won't be all of me. All the memories I had at every point
in my life? That won't be me either. Thus, whatever would be
resurrected by Omega/God, it cannot possibly be me, with my very own
memories. And if a Michael Shermer is resurrected, and he does not
have my memories, who will he be? For that matter, who am I?
""
If one were to take what Shermer is saying there seriously, then one
would have to maintain that human consciousness doesn't even exist,
since one isn't exactly the same person one was a moment ago. But
Shermer's confused objection presents no problem to the civilization
near the Omega Point, as it will be a trivial matter for them to
perfectly emulate, down to the quantum level, the entire timeline of
the multiverse from its start at the Big Bang (which starts at zero
informational capacity and diverges to infinite informational capacity
as the universe progresses in time, thereby allowing sufficiently
later states of the universe to perfectly render earlier states). In
this manner, they ensure that not so much as a single bit of
information is lost.
Given an infinite amount of computational resources, per the
Bekenstein Bound, recreating the exact quantum state of our present
universe is trivial, requiring at most a mere 10^123 bits (the number
which Roger Penrose calculated), or at most a mere 2^10^123 bits for
every different quantum configuration of the universe logically
possible (i.e., the powerset, of which the multiverse in its entirety
at this point in universal history is a subset of this powerset). So
the Omega Point will be able to resurrect us using merely an
infinitesimally small amount of total computational resources: indeed,
the multiversal resurrection will occur between 10^-10^10 and
10^-10^123 seconds before the Omega Point is reached, as the
computational capacity of the universe at that stage will be great
enough that doing so will require only a trivial amount of total
computational resources.
-----
Note:
1. While there is a lot that gets published in physics journals that
is anti-reality and non-physical (such as string theory, which
violates the known laws of physics and has no experimental support
whatsoever), the reason such things are allowed to pass the
peer-review process is because the paradigm of assumptions which such
papers are speaking to has been made known, and within their operating
paradigm none of the referees could find anything crucially wrong with
said papers. That is, the paradigm itself may have nothing to do with
reality, but the peer-reviewers could find nothing fundamentally wrong
with such papers within the operating assumptions of that paradigm.
Whereas, e.g., the operating paradigm of Prof. Tipler's 2005 Reports
on Progress in Physics paper is the known laws of physics, i.e., our
actual physical reality which has been repeatedly confirmed by every
experiment conducted to date. So the professional physicists charged
with refereeing this paper could find nothing fundamentally wrong with
it within its operating paradigm, i.e., the known laws of physics.
----------------------------------------
James Redford, author of "Jesus Is an Anarchist", Social Science
Research Network (SSRN), revised and expanded edition, October 17,
2009 (originally published December 19, 2001)
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1337761 ,
http://theophysics.chimehost.net/anarchist-jesus.pdf ,
http://theophysics.ifastnet.com/anarchist-jesus.html
Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist (a website with information
on Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theory and the quantum gravity
Theory of Everything [TOE]) http://theophysics.chimehost.net ,
http://theophysics.host56.com