JamesRedford

Thank you very much, Timothy Ventura, for this interview of physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler. For those who would like more on this topic, see my following article: James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network, Sept. 10, 2012, doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708, https://archive.org/download/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEverything/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf , https://purl.org/redford/physics-of-god . My foregoing article concerns Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE), which is a proof (i.e., mathematical theorem) of God's existence per the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics). Tipler's Omega Point cosmology has been extensively peer-reviewed and published in a number of the world's leading physics and science journals.

Hi, Procgen. You asked, "You don't believe in the god of the Old Testament, do you?" I do. I also believe in evolution, including the evolution of mankind's conceptions of God. For more on this, see Sec. 7.4.2: "God’s Relation to the Old Testament", pp. 46-47 of my following article:

• 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, https://archive.org/download/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEverything/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf , https://purl.org/redford/physics-of-god .

Hi, Procgen. You asked, "Why do you believe in a god?" I believe in God because God has been proven to exist based upon the most reserved view of the known laws of physics. For much more on that, see my below article, which details physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics. The Omega Point cosmology demonstrates that the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics) mathematically require that the universe end in the Omega Point: the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity having all the unique properties (quiddities) traditionally claimed for God, and of which is a different aspect of the Big Bang initial singularity, i.e., the first cause.

Prof. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology has been extensively peer-reviewed and published in a number of the world's leading physics and science journals, such as Reports on Progress in Physics (the leading journal of the Institute of Physics, Britain's main professional organization for physicists), Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (one of the world's leading astrophysics journals), the International Journal of Theoretical Physics (a journal that Nobel Prize in Physics winner Richard Feynman also published in), and Physics Letters, among other journals.

For much more on Prof. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the details on how it uniquely conforms to, and precisely matches, the cosmology described in the New Testament, see my following article, which also addresses 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, https://archive.org/download/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEverything/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf , https://purl.org/redford/physics-of-god .

Additionally, in the below resource are different sections which contain some helpful notes and commentary by me pertaining to multimedia wherein Prof. Tipler explains the Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model TOE.

• 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@4ax.com , July 30, 2013, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sci.astro/KQWt4KcpMVo , https://archive.is/a04w9 .

I'm glad to see Meghan O'Gieblyn's present article on the logically-unavoidable religious implications of the advancement of technology (viz., "God in the machine: my strange journey into transhumanism", The Guardian [UK], Apr. 18, 2017).

A god (minuscule G) is an immortal sapient being who is still finite at any given time. Whereas God (majuscule G) is the infinite sapient being.

As physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler noted, "Any cosmology with unlimited progress will end in God." (See Anthony Liversidge, interview of Frank Tipler, "A Physicist Proposes a Theory of Eternal Life that Yields God", Omni, Vol. 17, No. 1 [Oct. 1994], pp. 89 ff. [8 pp.].) This means that, e.g., any form of immortality necessarily entails the existence of the capital-G God, in the sense of an omniscient, omnipotent and personal being with infinite computational resources. This is mathematically unavoidable, for the reason that any finite state will eventually undergo the Eternal Return per the Quantum Recurrence Theorem. This is very easy to see by considering the simple example of two bits, which have only four possible states (i.e., 2²): hence, once these four states have been exhausted, states will have to recur. What that means is that any finite state can only have a finite number of experiences (i.e., different states), because any finite state will eventually start to repeat.

Thus, immortality is logically inseparable from the existence of the capital-G God, since mathematically, immortality requires the existence of either an infinite computational state or a finite state which diverges to an infinite computational state (i.e., diverging to literal Godhead in all its fullness), thus allowing for states to never repeat and hence an infinite number of experiences.

Consequently, transhumanism--if the goal by that position is immortality--is inherently theistic, not only in a lowercase-G god sense, but also in the capital-G God sense.

The concept of man being gods and becoming ever-more Godlike is simply traditional Christianity, going all the way back to Jesus's teachings (e.g., see John 10:34), that of Paul and the other Epistlers, and that of the Church Fathers. In traditional Christian theology, this is known as apotheosis, theosis or divinization. For many examples of these early teachings, see the article "Divinization (Christian)" at Wikipedia (Mar. 26, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Divinization_(Christian)&oldid=772236036 ). Though this traditional position of Christian theology has been deemphasized for the last millennium.

Indeed, the words "transhuman" and "superhuman" originated in Christian theology. "Transhuman" is a neologism coined by Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy (Paradiso, Canto I, lines 70-72), referring favorably to a mortal human who became an immortal god by means of eating a special plant. For the Christian theological origin of the term "superhuman", see the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.), the first appearance being by Henry Montagu, 1st Earl of Manchester, in his Al Mondo: Contemplatio Mortis, & Immortalitatis (London, England: Robert Barker, and the Assignes of John Bill, 1636).

What Prof. Tipler has done is to make the foregoing mathematically and physically rigorous, as his Omega Point cosmology is a proof (i.e., mathematical theorem) per the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics) demonstrating that the universe must end in the Omega Point: the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity having all the unique properties traditionally claimed for God, and of which is a different aspect of the Big Bang initial singularity, i.e., the first cause. Said Omega Point cosmology is also an intrinsic component of the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics, of which TOE is itself mathematically forced by the aforesaid known physical laws. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology has been published and extensively peer-reviewed in leading physics journals. For a great deal more on that, see my following article, which also addresses the societal implications of the Omega Point cosmology and details how it uniquely conforms to, and precisely matches, the cosmology described in the New Testament:

• 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, https://archive.org/download/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEverything/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf , https://sites.google.com/site/physicotheism/home/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf , https://purl.org/redford/physics-of-god .

Additionally, in the below resource are different sections which contain some helpful notes and commentary by me pertaining to multimedia wherein Prof. Tipler explains the Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model TOE.

• 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@4ax.com , July 30, 2013, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sci.astro/KQWt4KcpMVo , https://archive.is/a04w9 , http://webcitation.org/6IUTAMEyS .

[Continued from a previous post.]

• 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, Mar. 20, 2000, http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0003082 . Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 379, No. 2 (Aug. 2007), pp. 629-640, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.11895.x, bibcode: 2007MNRAS.379..629T, https://webcitation.org/5vQ3M8uxB , https://pdf-archive.com/2013/09/29/tipler-et-al-closed-universes-with-no-event-horizons/tipler-et-al-closed-universes-with-no-event-horizons.pdf .

• 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, Apr. 1, 2001, http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0104011 , https://pdf-archive.com/2013/09/29/tipler-ultimate-future-of-the-universe/tipler-ultimate-future-of-the-universe.pdf . Published in J. Craig Wheeler and Hugo Martel (Eds.), Relativistic Astrophysics: 20th Texas Symposium, Austin, Texas, 10-15 December 2000 (Melville, NY: American Institute of Physics, 2001), pp. 769-772, ISBN 0735400261, LCCN 2001094694, which is AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 586 (Oct. 15, 2001), doi:10.1063/1.1419654, bibcode: 2001AIPC..586.....W.

• Frank J. Tipler, "Intelligent life in cosmology", International Journal of Astrobiology, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Apr. 2003), pp. 141-148, doi:10.1017/S1473550403001526, bibcode: 2003IJAsB...2..141T, https://webcitation.org/5o9QHKGuW , https://pdf-archive.com/2013/09/29/tipler-intelligent-life-in-cosmology/tipler-intelligent-life-in-cosmology.pdf . Also at arXiv:0704.0058, Mar. 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 (Apr. 2005), pp. 897-964, doi:10.1088/0034-4885/68/4/R04, bibcode: 2005RPPh...68..897T, http://www.math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf , https://pdf-archive.com/2013/09/29/tipler-structure-of-the-world-from-pure-numbers/tipler-structure-of-the-world-from-pure-numbers.pdf . Also released as "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything", arXiv:0704.3276, Apr. 24, 2007, http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.3276 .

• Frank J. Tipler, "Inevitable Existence and Inevitable Goodness of the Singularity", Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 19, Nos. 1-2 (2012), pp. 183-193, https://webcitation.org/69JEi5wHp , https://pdf-archive.com/2013/09/29/tipler-existence-and-goodness-of-the-singularity/tipler-existence-and-goodness-of-the-singularity.pdf .

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 Theorem (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 on Progress in Physics paper--which presents the Omega Point/Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg 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 website, ca. 2006, https://webcitation.org/5o9VkK3eE , https://archive.is/pKD3y .)

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.

For much more on these matters, see my above-cited article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything" in addition to my below website:

• Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist, http://theophysics.freevar.com , http://theophysics.0lx.net , http://theophysics.host56.com .

The only way to avoid the Omega Point cosmology is to reject the aforestated known laws of 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 cosmology is incorrect, and indeed, one must engage in extreme irrationality in order to argue against the Omega Point cosmology. As Prof. Stephen Hawking wrote, "one cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem." (From p. 67 of Stephen Hawking, The Illustrated A Brief History of Time [New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1996; 1st ed., 1988].)

Additionally, we now have the quantum gravity Theory of Everything (TOE) required by the known laws of physics and that correctly describes and unifies 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.

Note:

1. While there is a lot that gets published in physics journals that is anti-reality and nonphysical (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 and his other papers on the Omega Point Theorem 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 these papers could find nothing fundamentally wrong with them within their operating paradigm, i.e., the known laws of physics.

In the below resource are six sections which contain very informative videos of physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler explaining the Omega Point cosmology, which is a proof (i.e., mathematical theorem) of God's existence per the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics), and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE), which is also required by the known laws of physics. The seventh section therein contains an audio interview of Tipler.

• 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@4ax.com , July 30, 2013, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sci.astro/KQWt4KcpMVo , https://archive.is/a04w9 , https://webcitation.org/6IUTAMEyS .