It’s only with some reluctance that I even mention Frank Tipler’s latest book, The Physics of Christianity. But people keep telling me about it, so, it’s like, my duty or something.
Now, I’m all in favor of writing about the physics of imaginary things; it can be a very enlightening exercise to compare the laws of the actual world to ones that we make up for purposes of fiction. And The Physics of Christianity is such an obvious title that you knew someone would write such a book eventually. And Frank Tipler, in his youth, did some pioneering research on closed timelike curves in general relativity, so he has credentials as an honest physicist.
But, if there remains an interesting book to be written about the physics of Christianity, this isn’t it. And I say that in full confidence, not having actually read the book. Usually I like to defer judgment about crazy-sounding books that I haven’t even looked at, but in this case I’ll make an exception. Reviews by Vic Stenger or Lawrence Krauss tell you everything you need to know. From Lawrence’s review:
As a collection of half-truths and exaggerations, I am tempted to describe Tipler’s new book as nonsense – but that would be unfair to the concept of nonsense…
Tipler, for example, claims that the standard model of particle physics is complete and exact. It isn’t. He claims that we have a clear and consistent theory of quantum gravity. We don’t. He claims that the universe must recollapse. It doesn’t have to, and all evidence thus far suggests that it won’t. He argues that we understand the nature of dark energy. We don’t. He argues that we know why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe. We don’t. I could go on, but you get the point…
[Tipler] argues that the resurrection of Jesus occurred when the atoms in his body spontaneously decayed into neutrinos and antineutrinos, which later converted back into atoms to reconstitute him.
Not much motivation for reading further than that. I’ve said many times (even if people don’t believe me) that I have a great deal of respect for intelligent and thoughtful religious people, even if I disagree with them on some deep truths about the universe. But man, those people don’t seem to get a lot of press, do they? The crazy stuff is much bigger box office, which perhaps is not a surprise.
Neutrinos and antineutrinos! That kills me. Everyone knows that Jesus shifted through the extra dimensions onto another brane, where he chilled for three days before coming back.
Many years ago, Frank Tipler gave a lecture series in Vienna about general relativity and quantum cosmology, he was very competent and his lecture very interesting. A few years later he published “The physics of immortality” and I had really mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it contained quite a lot of interesting physics and ideas, on the other hand, his conclusions were kind of odd.
Recently, he crossed the line into complete madness imho.
Pretty sad story actually.
Some years ago I read Tipler’s “The Physics of Immortality”. I have to say that while I consider Barrow and Tipler’s “The Anthropic Cosmological Principle” a very thorough and scientific work, in my opinion Tipler must have had some type of significant life changing experience which led him to very much want to believe in rebirth. He unfortunately lets this belief interfere with objective scientific reasoning.
All that notwithstanding, I do think that future “Omega Point” theologies are potentially interesting and cannot be totally dismissed categorically. (although Sean you might be able to easily dismiss them ;))
There is a deep sadness in this as I think he is/was a genuinely bright scientist at some point and that seems to have been lost along the way.
e.
Wow. When the author of ‘the physics of star trek’ says you’ve written a silly book, you know he knows what he’s talking about. The difference is Krauss was being deliberately tongue-in-cheek.
I would agree that Tipler is over the top… No… he’s flat-out, off his rocking high-horse, but it’s been my observation that this is same kind of abusrdity that you get when you extend any flawed theory, so maybe Frank isn’t the whole problem here, and I know that’s giving him a wide benefit of doubt. Make that a grand canyon… OYE!
I also have to say that Vic Stenger is highly motivated antifanatic and for this reason his physics is full of crackpot holes as Tiper’s is, so don’t waste your time.
It’s probably worth pointing out that if you don’t have a New Scientist subscription, Krauss’s review can be found on his website http://genesis1.phys.cwru.edu/~krauss/Tiplerreview.pdf
Absolutely hilarious.
And I bet the people on that other brane are waiting eagerly for his return.
by the way, Frank Tipler wrote about ‘The Omega Point and Christianity’
here.
This should give one some flavor of what is in the book:
“It is this mechanism of baryon annihilation via electroweak tunnelling that could have been used to accomplish ALL of the miracles described in the Gospels, in particular the Resurrection. I point out in my book [1] that Jesus’ resurrection body, as described in the Gospels, has all the essential properties of the computer emulation resurrection bodies we all will have in the far future. “
Oh dear. Well, at least the book tries to use science to explain how various religious dogmas may be true and not how religious texts may illuminate science. I’ve seen that before. I’m still waiting for some apologist to say that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is alluded to in Matthew 24:36 (“No one knows about that day or hour [of the coming of the Son of Man], not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”)
Krauss raises some interesting points from a scientific standpoint. However, I don’t see how the real problem with this work is its scientific accuracy as we currently understand physics so much as something else. Stenger notes that Tipler’s previous book, “The Physics of Immortality”, was written prior to the work providing evidence for the existence of dark energy. As that book was predicated on having a ‘controlled collapse’ of the universe (by robots, no less), empirical evidence in favor of a braking mechanism against collapse presents ‘challenges’ (to put it mildly) to Tipler’s model. His new book seems to retort “No problem! Higgs field to the rescue”. Now, I’m nowhere near an expert in astroparticle physics, but is it possible that new developments in particle physics may cast doubt on the idea that the Higgs field could help bring about collapse? My worry is that his explanations may hide in the shadows of theories that are just beyond empirical testing/falsification at the moment. Once the theories upon which his apologetics rest are cast into doubt he simply moves onto the next one: very ad hoc. This isn’t much better than adding another dozen epicycles to fit an orbit once you find out that 20 won’t do.
I agree with Elliot. I was quite impressed after reading “The Physics of Immortality” that he had made a prediction of the energy, of the not yet observed top quark, which matched the observed value when it was found. He also made a prediction of the energy of the Higgs boson – I don’t know if we have passed that energy yet.
But of course the prediction that he really falls down on for the value of the Hubble constant to be consistent with a closed universe. The revolution in cosmology from the SN1a supernova studies sure wrecked that. Though I understand from these reviews that he has multiplied hypotheses to try to get round this.
In the introduction to “The Physics of Immortality” Tipler states “I am still an atheist”. I guess he has changed now, indeed he has moved into the raving loony territory.
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But of course the prediction that he really falls down on for the value of the Hubble constant to be consistent with a closed universe.
It is possible to derive a geometrically closed model from general relativity that expands at an accelerating rate, without losing stability, so “closed” doesn’t have to necessitate recollapse.
Not that your point doesn’t appear to be correct, but it could be a mistake to assume too much from evidence for accelerating expansion, when it comes to geometry vs. matter density.
I love that. A very complicated and energy intensive way to get… a dead body. Does he think people die because their atoms get old and need to be “rebooted”?
I’m still waiting for some apologist to say that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is alluded to in Matthew 24:36 (“No one knows about that day or hour [of the coming of the Son of Man], not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”)
Can we use the quantum Zeno effect to get around this measurement problem? That would be totally cool!
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Gee, that does sound bad alright, but you really should read it before you dismiss it, even if you sort of know in advance that you won’t like it. I’ve come to this conclusion after reading so many attacks on Richard Dawkins in the last year, almost always by people who said they hadn’t bothered to read his book yet. Here’s a good rule of thumb: If it’s not worth reading, it’s not worth mentioning, and if it’s worth mentioning, you have to read it first.
I always thought that this biblical passage….
– Mark 10:25,
… became well-defined if interpreted in turns of a quantum mechanical probablistic point of view. Just as there is a vanishingly small, but still non-zero probability that camel could tunnel through the eye of a needle, one can imagine there is some vanishingly small, but non-zero probability than a rich man could go to heaven.
That’s what Tipler should have written about! 🙂 Plus, it woulda been much more in keeping with the whole “Physics of….” genre.
That was pretty much the conclusion I came to from picking up the book and glancing through the contents so I’m happy that Krauss has read it so I don’t have to. It’s a shame because I too enjoyed “The Physics of Immortality” – you have to like a book which includes a game theory analysis of hell and purgatory. Tipler’s idea that a sufficiently advanced intelligence might “resurrect” us by simulation has been picked up by Charles Stross in his SF book Accelerando.
I know most of Tipler’s latest is easy to make fun of, but he has made some good points in the past about the difficulty of defending modal realism versus the problem of existential principle of sufficient reason for substantive selective realism (you’ll have to look up and puzzle over “modal realism” etc.) One point about survival in a more abstract and non-sectarian sense: If you can agree that destroying a computer that a program once ran on won’t destroy “the program” if the program can run on another computer… then perhaps your mind can in some sense survice, if there’s something for it to “run” on somewhere. If you look into modal realism, that isn’t so far-fetched. If other universes at all, what’s to keep them penned into nice “physics” style analogs of our own?
Since Tipler in a mathematician (not a physicist), it would seem more appropriate for him to write about the math of Christianity rather than the physics of Christianity. Plus, mathematicians are free to play around with the supernatural (so it appears), whereas physicists must stay within the confines of Nature – at least I pray that’s the case.;) But then, we all know physics is sexier than math and sex sells, especially Christian sex, I reckon…;)
Is it only physicists who go mad in this grandiose and vaguely mystical manner ? Is there a book on the Chemistry of Baptism ? Or the Statistics of Judaism ? Doesn’t sound like a banker. Maybe the Genetics of the Saints could be gripping though.
“The Physics of Christianity”: that is quite sad. The sequel of course will be called “The Physics of Islam”, while the prequel will be called “The Physics of Judaism”. Just absolutely nuts…
> it would seem more appropriate for him to write about the math of Christianity
This has been done already by somebody else here.
Sean, I have been meaning to mention this for a few weeks now. Professor Tipler is a regular source over at NRO’s ‘higher education’ sub-blog, for complaints on how post-modernism is destroying Physics as well as the humanities. His whining centers around the fact that he feels the Standard Model and GR aren’t getting enough attention in physics undergraduate and graduate curricula, and that this is evidence of intellectual laziness on the part of a new breed of academics.
examples:
http://www.popecenter.org/clarion_call/article.html?id=1843
http://ronrosenbaum.pajamasmedia.com/2007/04/29/the_damage_done_2_academias_po.php
Would love to hear some thoughts to this from some academic physicists who inhabit the comments section here.
[Tipler] argues that the resurrection of Jesus occurred when the atoms in his body spontaneously decayed into neutrinos and antineutrinos, which later converted back into atoms to reconstitute him.
That’s just nutty. On several levels. Was this a self-published book? ‘Cause this is right there on the level of the Internet crackpots with their “alternate theory” web pages (some of whom even comment here). This isn’t even worthy of response.
complaints on how post-modernism is destroying Physics as well as the humanities.
Some parts of post-modernism are bash-in-your-head stupid, but I don’t think Physics is under any serious threat from it.
Most undergraduate Physics courses do have some sort of basic introduction to quarks and the standard model, in a modern physics course. They don’t go heavy-duty into the math because it’s *hard*. Hell, a good fraction of grad students get a PhD without ever studying quantum field theory (like, say, me).
-Rob
Professor Tipler is a tenured professor of mathematical physics at Tulane, just as a reference. His homepage is here: http://www.math.tulane.edu/~tipler/
Rob, I am going to be a first year physics graduate student in the upcoming fall, so I have been spending a little time scanning through my upcoming classes, both the required ones and the electives. Thats math methods, classical mechanics, two semesters of E&M and Quantum, and Stat mech to round it out. Thats seven classes, pretty standard, and covers all of first year +1. Then you have the classes for your speciality like biophysics, HEP, or computational, etc. While some schools, like my alma mater have an introductory course for undergrad & grad students in condensed matter or particle physics, a full blown semester course on Quantum Field Theory is rather narrow for a departmental requirement.
Those elite tier one schools which the right loves to site, may not have all the same basic required cources. They oftern have students take a set number of courses among the areas of specialization depending on their particular focus. But that still is a far cry from requiring to learn GR (however spectacular Sean’s book may be).
Prof. Tipler should know better. Just because he doesn’t get his way funding or curriculum wise in a department dominated by Condensed Matter experimentalists, doesnt mean the entire structure of physics education is rotting from within due to an infection of radical literary theory and post-structuralism.
-Matt