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.
I’d be happy if every physics undergrad at least knew the basics of GR and the Standard Model, although I’m sympathetic with the difficulties of fitting it all in. Tipler’s judgment that we can blame postmodernists for the absence of the Standard Model in undergrad curricula is up there with the neutrino business.
A good many physics undergrads I knew at MIT had encountered postmodern literary theory in humanities classes and such places. Every last one of them lionized Alan Sokal.
We also got the basic basics of GR (Schwarzschild metric, some cosmology) before sophomore year was out. Moderately formal introductions to the Standard Model happened junior year.
Everyone on this board is horribly overreacting. I suggest reading the book instead of ending up arguing about strawmen.
I have read it (in fact it seems I might be the only one here), am a bonafide atheist and while it does contain some factual innaccuracies with physics (notably w.r.t to darkenergy), there is nothing a priori wrong with the gist.
To begin with Tipler himself points out *many* times, that he himself does not believe in these scenarios that he is writing about. Instead the whole point of the book was ‘knowing all we know about physics, is there any possible way, no matter how outlandish; to make the whole xtian thing work so long as we are consistent’. In many ways the book shows just how small the god of the gaps argument really is, and I think shows fairly well that such a thing is almost impossible. . Or so ludicrously improbable that its likely already falsified.
Its the type of book that any serious physicist might take up as a passtime to amuse himself, and thats exactly what this is. Its no different than the physics of star trek.
Haelfix, what you say might be correct, but FT has been making god arguments from the anthropic physics for quite a while now, and his theories about the role and destiny of the human race have been every bit as absurd for just as long as that.
He’s extended the completely rediculous anthropic principle beyond anything that anyone could call plausible physics for quite some time now, so now it seems like maybe he’s suddenly trying to say that he was only kidding?
That would be great, and then maybe James Gardner would follow suit and leave Lee Smolin’s cosmology alone… haha, I wish.
Point taken.
But I mean there’s a good deal of precedent. Physicists often will throw up a preprint with ridiculously over the top speculative ideas and even sometimes mutter some philosophy mumbo jumbo.
I mean to this day we have preprints with designs for warpdrives, timetravelling devices (ctcs) and so forth. And yes, im well aware usually the interesting physics is to see why such a thing *can’t* work, or ought to be forbidden, but it still is what it is.
The AP is another notable offender, where even very serious physicists sometimes go (how should I put it) a little bit awry in their usage. The early days of inflation model building had some notable lapses in this regard.
Then we have all the doomsday preprints (usually arguing for spacetravel) and so forth.
Ultimately it doesn’t bother me that much, b/c usually we know the physicists involved are just putting it out there for semi entertainement value, to make a little grant money from some overzealous foundation or for quicky coffee table chit chat in a sort of proffessional suspension of disbelief sort of way. The only times it can get problematic is when the popular press take it way out of context and make it into something its not.
Since when have “branes” had anything to do with believing in Christianity? Most of the ones I know seem to have left them at the door.
Haelfix,
as I mentioned in comment #7, Frank Tipler wrote about ‘The Omega Point and Christianity’ here.
Nowhere does he state that all his explanations are clearly nonsense. I think that he really believes his explanations are reasonable and reviewers of his book were under the same impression.
Having read one of John Barrow’s books and not thinking it was particularly offensive at the time, I thought that there might at least be some sort of attempt at sophistication by his former co-author Tipler.
Evidently I was wrong.
Here’s a quote: –
“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.
From the perspective of the latest physical theories, Christianity is not a mere religion, but an experimentally testable science.”
I can’t believe that this is just a matter someone losing the plot, he’s writing it to reinforce a definite audience:
The same people who will visit the Creationist Museum in Kentucky, the Global Warming denialist hooligans and right-wing fundamentalists who want science to be replaced by religious dogma.
The same people who will no doubt ask for it to be put on the course list and ordered by the library, arguing that “We have to consider both positions” as valid science.
It’s a conscious political tactic.
Tipler wrote my undergrad physics book. Should i forget everything i learned about physics or not? (i suppose it could simply be outdated. Anything of interest happen in physics since 1977? …At the undergrad level?)
I guess your book was written by Paul Tipler, not Frank Tipler.
Stephen, don’t be confused: this guy (Frank) is NOT that one (Paul)!! Poor Paul 😉
If you are actually looking for some comparative books which attempt to deal with both a higher power and real physics, I would recommend the works of Paul Davies, e.g. God and the New Physics.
I think I’ll write a book claiming that the devil is really entropy and god is really emergent complexity. I think I can make a reasonable sounding hand waving argument that this is what the bible is actually about.
I guess I’ll just publish it myself on the internet so I don’t have to share with those greedy publishers 😉
Suggested titles?
e.
Talking about addressing both sides, here’s an article about a creationist professor at the late Falwell’s Liberty University. This is an article from my local paper on Tuesday and may not have been picked up by any of the national press although I think it raises some important issues of intellectual integrity:
http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=125584&ran=220383
Do you suppose Tipler is angling for a Templeton prize?
Meanwhile, the new Creationist museum in Kentucky has a planaetarium:
Astronomy for Creationists
When I hear about creationist books written so-called scholars of science/math, I clearly understand why both Dawkins’ and Hitchens’ books are hitting best-seller lists! Thank God, maybe there’s hope for legit science, after all…
From Vic Stenger’s review:
So, any simulated observer will just experience a normal life. I mean there are only a finite number of quantum state a brain can be in. On the whole set of all possible states you can define a partial order according to a notion of subjective time….
Anthropic reasoning will then force you to conclude that we are already living in this sort of simulation. But then I don’t undestand why Jesus had to be resurrected in that very exotic way. Why didn’t Tipler let the robots take care of that? 🙂
I remember reading The Physics of Immortality one time in the bookstore, when I was 12 or so. I guess I didn’t realize at the time that nobody really knows. The gist of his argument is this:
One day, the universe will recollapse to an infinitely small counterpart of the big bang called the Omega Point (I believe this was invented by a guy named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin). At this point, all information in the universe will be compressed in an infinitesimal space, and thus any creature living in that space will have access to all information from the past. This creature will be a descendant of previous creatures like ourselves, but will also be god, by virtue of being omniscient. This creature will simulate every living being that has ever lived in its mind, which will be like an enormous computer. These living beings will thereby be resurrected.
Clearly, there is quite a number of things here that don’t follow, but if anyone wants to know, there it is. I remember a whole chapter being devoted to the plausibility of simulating a living creature in a computer, etc.
Yes, the ‘Omega Point’ idea traces its origin to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who coined the idea in a series of essays circa 1920-1930 and wrote about it more extensively in ‘The Phenomenon of Man’. He saw the Omega Point as something inevitable in the context of biological evolution, which in turn is simply another link in the chain of evolution from cosmological to stellar, to geological ..etc. While the emergence of life on Earth initiated the birth of the ‘biosphere’, he thought of the emergence of beings with rational free agency as the birth of the ‘noosphere’, the sphere of thought/self-conscious reflection. From this point, evolution isn’t just physiological but psychological-social. This emergence also necessitates the emergence of units of ‘cultural inheritance’ (there’s some interesting discussion of something that sounds like memes …40 years before Dawkins). Etc. Etc. Eventually this has something to do with God and Christianity and such. His ideas have some rather well known champions, including Julian Huxley, Theodosius Dobzhansky, and (today) Simon Conway Morris: not exactly lightweights. On the other hand, he’s had some fierce critics, most notably Peter Medawar who came completely unglued in a review of the book circa 1960. This happened after Teilhard had died (so he couldn’t defend himself), though it’s pretty clear to me his criticisms were rather silly: Medawar didn’t read the book very carefully.
While the idea shares the same name as Tipler’s, he never went into specifics about how the Omega Point would actually be reached. Certainly nothing was said of robots or computers bringing the Omega Point to actualization (even though there is one section in ‘The Phenomenon of Man’ that sounds eerily close to discussing the Internet, one of many extremely far-sighted aspects of that book).
While there are aspects of Teilhard’s thesis which are suspect -veers too close to Lamarckism at some points (though his argument is better without it) and the same ‘squaring the circle’ feeling you get from Tipler — it seems to feel less ‘contrived’ than saying that the Higgs field holds the key to understanding the resurrection.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/03/08/skeptical-pluggery/#comment-216639
Apparently, he decided it was a good idea to write this book after seeing that Not Even Wrong and Trouble With Physics actually got published.
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.
Splitter.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one confusing the Tiplers. I honestly thought they were the same guy. The freshman physics text by Paul Tipler was really quite good. I had two and I thought for learning Tipler was far superior to Halleday and Resnick (sp?). Of course once you knew it I enjoyed Halleday and Resnick better.
T,
I read a bizarre essay in in late ’90s where the author contended that the internet was going to evolve into God.
Maybe it’s part of the plan.
e.
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