Posted on 06/12/2007 8:29:09 AM PDT by mjp
The Physics of Christianity By Frank J. Tipler
'I have a salary at Tulane," says Frank Tipler, "some 40 percent lower than the average for a full professor at Tulane as a consequence of my belief."
Physicists today, he says, are not supposed to believe in God. But he does, though I suspect that in itself would not reduce his salary. What may well do, however, is his belief that the Cosmological Singularity is God. In other words, he believes that contemporary physics has found God and that physics explains Christianity. In fact, it is probably true to say that Tipler does not believe at all. There is no need, for he feels he has proved Christianity through physics.
With his previous book, The Physics of Immortality, Tipler used physics to prove that death would be utterly conquered as future beings deployed vast energy resources, derived from the contraction of the universe, to resurrect the past, ourselves included. Here he goes much further. He says that modern physics has confirmed Christianity - from the Virgin Birth through the Turin Shroud and walking on water to the Resurrection - in detail.
Central to this argument is his conviction that there is no discontinuity between the insights of science and the revelations of the Gospels. Miracles, for example, are not, as is often claimed, sudden deformations or breaches of the natural order. They happen through known physical processes. Walking on water is accomplished through a particle beam and dematerialization through the multiple universe model implied by quantum theory. That they happen when they do is, of course, God's will, but, in making them happen, he does not violate the order of his creation.
This is not a limitation on God's power because he established the laws of physics precisely to encompass all these eventualities. Similarly, the existence of evil is neither God's failing nor proof of his nonexistence. If we could see the many universes - the multiverse - he has created, the problem would simply vanish. Our limited perspective means that we cannot fully understand this any more than we can visualize a four-dimensional cube, but, as with the cube, we can at least imagine the possibility.
The strong argument against relying so much on contemporary scientific knowledge is that, in years to come, much of that knowledge may be overthrown. Indeed, for the majority of physicists, the physics on which Tipler rests his case is already obsolete or at least debatable. The multiverse is generally regarded only as one possible interpretation of quantum theory. The Standard Model of particle physics is thought to be incomplete, and we have no theory of quantum gravity. The Theory of Everything that seemed to be looming in the late '80s now seems as distant as ever. Hope now resides in the exotica of string theory and supersymmetry.
Tipler rejects all this. We have a theory of everything, all the problems were resolved 30 years ago. Subsequent stringy speculations are just that, speculations without any experimental proof. To deny the multiverse is to deny quantum theory; a complete theory of quantum gravity was stumbled upon long ago by Richard Feynman and Steven Weinberg, and the Standard Model is founded on rock-solid foundations of experimental evidence. Why, then, do the physicists deny all this? Because, says Tipler, they don't like the universe that emerges, a universe that begins and ends with God.
The experimentally based physics to which Tipler refers predicts a singularity - a point at which all known laws of physics break down and to which, therefore, our science has no access - from which the universe sprang. There is a further singularity at the end of the universe and a third joining the two. This is the Holy Trinity. The first singularity, says Tipler, is God the Father, the second God the Holy Ghost, and the third God the Son. The last, because of his role as the singularity that runs alongside the present, is able to appear in human history.
Though this may seem highly deterministic, Tipler insists we still have free will. Our role is to play our part in the drama that will lead to the final singularity. This is a technological matter, but clues to how it may be achieved were laid at the Resurrection. Notably there is the baryon annihilation process that will provide us with infinite energy, interstellar travel, and a mechanism that will advance the contraction of the universe toward its final encounter with God. Baryon annihilation will also provide us with appalling powers of destruction. It converts matter into energy with absolute efficiency. On that basis, a human body contains enough mass to create a 1,000-megaton explosion. Tipler expects the world as we know it to end within 50 years or so. Our destiny will be intact, however, as we shall have become backed-up computer programs, probably on our way to the stars.
I doubt this book will make many converts. Believers will continue to believe, perhaps with a little more confidence, and skeptics will continue to doubt, perhaps with a little less. But Tipler should not be ignored by anybody. His great virtue is that he dramatizes the possibility that there is a deep and so far unknown connection between our faiths, our intuitions and our knowledge. He is due, at the very least, for a salary review.
Not true. Although its not very developed.
Loop quantum gravity has already been used to derive a more general version of the Bekenstein-Hawking expression for the entropy of a Schwarzschild black hole.
Ditto.
#47. Thanks.
What they do is use the passive voice, which takes care of that automatically.
We’ll say a prayer for you. Hopefully you’ll have the easiest of times. I’m having trouble with mine too, but so far no one has decided to cut on me.
The post of mine you replied to was itself a reply to a poster stating categorically that if one does not take the Genesis creation story absolutely literally, one cannot have a deep, mature relationship with God.
I beg to differ.
As for a point by point, allegory or no discussion of the Bible, I can’t imagine you’d gain much from my agnostic ramblings.
As for a point by point, allegory or no discussion of the Bible, I can’t imagine you’d gain much from my agnostic ramblings.
Oh, I realize I stepped into a conversation you were having with someone else, and I apologize if I intruded into (what appears to be) a public conversation.
On this point, DMZ, we can and will agree.
Thank you for a civil discussion, it is one thing that we do not find much, anymore.
Ken Ham - Genesis - The Key to Reclaiming the Culture (2003)
The fundamental reason that people reject the God of the Bible is because they love their sin and want to remain in it.
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone that does evil hates the light, neither comes to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he that does truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are worked in God. (John 3:19-21)
Is that what William Law meant?
The Bible says this. Which is what I was referring to. What I think is of no importance.
But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us who are saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)
Regards, S4T.
You place a lot of importance in what men think.
Oh? Take a poll on FR, see how that hypothesis stands up. Scientific method.
Oh? Take a poll on FR, see how that hypothesis stands up. Scientific method.
I stand corrected. You place a lot of importance on what you think.
When one has the word of God, what man thinks is unimportant.
No. That is an old opinion of somebody else.
You place a lot of importance on what you think.
It's like having a conversation with a Chinese fortune cookie. Bye, Eliza.
Looked it up and found they are two different Tiplers. The textbook author is Paul Tipler.
Is that someone whose thoughts you think a lot of?
It's like having a conversation with a Chinese fortune cookie. Bye, Eliza.
That really does sum up your thoughts about the word of God. Which was apparent from the beginning, So what was there really for you and I to converse about. There was only to reveal your contempt for the God of the Bible.
You’ll put someone’s eye out with that. :)
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