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Frank J. Tipler: The Laws of Physics Say The Singularity is Inevitable!

by Socrates on October 29, 2013
Frank-J-TiplerDr. Frank J. Tipler is a physicist and cosmologist perhaps best known for concepts such as the Omega Point or The Cosmological Singularity. He is a professor of mathematical physics at Tulane University and the author of books such as The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, The Physics of Immortality and The Physics of Christianity.
During our 1 hour conversation with Dr. Tipler we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why he is both a physics imperialist and fundamentalist; the cosmological singularity, the technological singularity and the omega point; his personal journey from Christian fundamentalism through agnosticism and atheism and back to theism and Christianity; why most physicists are good atheists and bad scientists; immortality; determinism and whether God plays dice with the universe; mind-uploading and [Quantum] consciousness…
The most interesting quote that I will take away from this interview with Frank J. Tipler is:
“If the laws of physics be for us, who can be against us?!”
(You can listen to/download the audio file above or watch the video interview in full. If you want to help me produce more episodes please make a donation!)
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Who is Frank J. Tipler? (in his own words)
I was born and raised in Andalusia, a small farming town in southern Alabama. At the age of five, while in kindergarten, I became fascinated by the work of Alabama only famous physicist, the rocket scientist Werner von Braun, and decided then that I wanted to be an astrophysicist. With this goal, I obtained by undergraduate degree in physics in 1969 at M.I.T., where I first learned of the Many-Worlds of quantum mechanics, and of the Singularity Theorems of Stephan Hawking and Roger Penrose. In 1976, I obtained a Ph.D. in physics for my proof, using the techniques of Hawking and Penrose, that creating a time machine would necessarily result in singularities in the laboratory. I was hired in 1979, as a post-doc by John A. Wheeler, the great physicist best known for his work on black hole theory, to extend my 1978 proof that in general relativity, time is not relative: a unique rest frame exists. I became Professor of Mathematical Physics in 1981 at Tulane University, where I have been ever since, working to draw the full implications of my earlier work: that quantum mechanics and general relativity require that the Cosmological Singularity – the Uncaused First Cause – consists of Three Persons but one Cause. I have now written up these results for a popular audience, and the book is The Physics of Christianity.
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        • James Redford • a minute ago
          Hi, Socrates. Thank you for this interview with physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler.
          For those who would like more information on Prof. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE), which are mathematically required by the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics), see my following article. This article also examines the societal implications of the Omega Point cosmology.
          James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708.
          Additionally, in the below resource are six sections which contain very informative videos of Prof. Tipler explaining the Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model TOE. The seventh section therein contains an audio interview of Tipler. I also provide some helpful notes and commentary for some of these videos.
          James Redford, "Video of Profs. Frank Tipler and Lawrence Krauss's Debate at Caltech: Can Physics Prove God and Christianity?", alt.sci.astro, Message-ID: jghev8tcbv02b6vn3uiq8jmelp7jijluqk[at sign]4ax[period]com , July 30, 2013.
          The foregoing resource also provides details regarding the point Prof. Tipler made in his present interview about how modern physics (i.e., General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) are simply special cases of classical mechanics (i.e., Newtonian mechanics, particularly in its most powerful formulation of the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation), and how Quantum Mechanics is actually more deterministic than Newtonian mechanics.
          I find it interesting that Prof. Tipler mentioned (58:56 min:sec ff. of the video) Julian Jaynes in this interview and Jaynes's book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976). A footnote is provided to Jaynes's said book in Ch. 7: "Quantum Mechanics and the Anthropic Principle" of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1986) by John D. Barrow and Tipler, but I don't recall Tipler elsewhere having mentioned Jaynes.
          I myself have written on Jaynes and the implications of his theory of the bicameral mind vis-à-vis the widespread belief among the ancients circa three millennia ago and before that they actually directly interacted with the gods. The type of unconsciousness which Prof. Tipler mentioned in his interview in the works of Homer and Chinese writers from the era can also be found very strongly in the Tanakh, particularly the Torah. Jaynes's theory can also explain the superhuman longevity found in the Tanakh as deriving from a time when people would hear the voices of their dead ancestors and pass on the memory (and preserved bodies) of them to their descendants; and the near-lack of a concept of an afterlife in the Tanakh until the Latter Prophets (e.g., Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2).
          I haven't heard supporters of Jaynes mention this as an item in Jaynes's favor before, but muscarinic acetylcholine receptor antagonists, such as scopolamine, provide strong evidence for Jaynes's theory--indeed, perhaps the strongest, since it makes the voice-command state Jaynes wrote about completely reproducible. Lloyd deMause's work on psychohistory also fits well the Jaynes theory.
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