The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead [Paperback]

Frank J. Tipler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 18, 1997

Is there a higher power in the universe? What happens to us when we die? Leading physicist Frank J. Tipler tackles these questions and more in an astonishing and profoundly important book that scientifically proves the existence of God and the physical resurrection of the dead.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mathematical physicist Tipler attempts to demonstrate via scientific principles the existence of God and the likelihood of reincarnation.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Expect to hear a great deal about this book, which will be boosted through major advertising and a 13-city author tour. Tipler, a professor of mathematical physics at Tulane, presents a scientific argument for the existence of God.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (September 18, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385467990
• ISBN-13: 978-0385467995
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 1.2 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #164,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

136 of 161 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Circular Argument, December 23, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead (Paperback)

I enjoy having my brain stretched, so, with that goal in mind, I picked up Dr. Frank J. Tipler's "Physics of Immortality."
There are a number of serious problems with this book, logical, scientific, philosophical, and theological, to wit:

1. The argument is completely circular. (The main thrust is that life, broadly defined, will be able to manipulate the physics of a closed universe in the final moments of its existence in such a way that a form of subjective immortality is possible, for all conscious intelligences, including ourselves.) In order to get from point A to point B, Tipler assumes part of his conclusion. He assumes that life must exist forever, and then uses that assumption in his proof, a definite logical no-no.
Similarly, Tipler includes a "proof" of his argument, saying, in essence that if certain facts about the Higgs boson and the top quark are true, he's right. His conclusions do not follow from his premises at all.

2. Even if one can accept Tipler's main argument, his subsidiary argument is weak. Tipler assumes that his future god-like intelligences will be beings of infinite compassion, who will grant you and I resurrection and immortality, essentially because they're nice guys. This seems like a very slender reed to lean on. The history of intelligent life on this planet (the only intelligence we know anything about) suggests that greater intelligence is not necessarily correlated with greater compassion.

3. Tipler goes off on a strange theological tangent when he attempts to equate his "omega point" being with the God of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). While there are similarities between his concept and those of some theologians, there are very many more differences, the major one being that most theologians would assert that God transcends time and space, while Tipler's omega point is bounded by both. Whether God exists or not is usually not considered a scientific question; his attempt to make theology a branch of physics is somewhat embarrasing.

4. Finally, even if we can assume that Tipler's argument is plausible, (a stretch), it looks as though the Universe is not cooperating with him. While some of the bounary conditions listed in his proof are as he predicted, the most recent observations seem to show that the Universe's expansion is increasing, not slowing down. Most cosmologists conclude from this evidence that the Universe is open, not closed...and unless the Universe is closed, the rest of Tipler's case falls apart. It's far too early to conclude that the Universe is open (the observations of supernovae in other galaxies which underly the current consensus can be explained in other ways), but at the same time, even without the latest observations, there doesn't seem to be anywhere near enough mass in the universe to allow gravity to eventually slow the expansion down.

Frank Tipler was a well respected physicist before this book, and is still regarded as an expert in the field of quantum cosmology. He is not the first world-class scientist to take a flyer on an implausible idea. I think it's interesting that in the book he condemns Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit paleantologist from whom he took the term "omega point" for doing precisely what Tipler does in this book. Teilhard did outstanding work investigating early hominid primates in Asia before he began working on his "omega point" speculations, which attempted to wed evolutionary biology and theology, and then began to believe that his speculations were scientific facts. Tipler has been caught in the same trap.

I give the book two stars, not one, however, because I find the ideas fascinating, and I did spend a considerable amount of time grappling with the physics and philosophy, which is the precise reason I picked up the book. He shouldn't have attempted to present it as a scientific theory, though, at least in my opinion.

42 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Loooong string of "if's", October 4, 2006

By 

D. S. Bornus (St. Paul, MN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead (Paperback)

The thesis in this book is that God (aka "the Omega Point" - an omniscient entity reminiscent of "Vger" in Star Trek) does not currently exist (but will develop at some point in the future) and will choose to replicate (emulate) exact duplicates of every human who has ever lived, in a virtual-reality Heaven. I made a list of the "if's" mentioned in this book, that all have to happen for this to occur:

IF
*strong (indistinguishable from human) artificial intelligence is possible
AND IF
*we can develop self-replicating interstellar probes
AND IF
*humans can be completely grown/raised/educated from stored DNA
AND IF
*on every planet, these seeded human colonists accept the destiny we assigned to them
AND IF
*nanotechnology is developed
AND IF
*250-gigwatt lasers are feasible
AND IF
*cost of materials relative to wages drops exponentially every 50 years
AND IF
*antimatter exists, can be feasibly manufactured, and harnessed as a means of propulsion
AND IF
*the universe is closed (will eventually contract)
AND IF
*a virtual "emulation" of a person in a computer is the same "consciousness" as the original person
AND IF
*all information in the physical universe can be retrieved without loss or distortion
AND IF
*a simulation of a living being also recreates perfectly its unexpressed internal states
AND IF
*emulations of every person in history can be made without also re-creating their diseases, conflicting ideologies, etc.
AND IF
*the cost of doing good is not significantly greater than the cost of doing evil, then an omniscient entity will choose the good
AND IF
*intelligent beings in the far future will have the desire to resurrect us to a life we will enjoy

THEN
on this basis, we might have hope of eternal life, "heaven," and a benevolent god.

If the thesis of this book is true, it won't matter what you believed anyway - resurrection is inevitable/inescapable. But personally I'm not going to bank my eternal existence on all these dice rolling the right way, billions of millenia from now. In my view, this requires much more "faith" than simply trusting in the conventional claim of Christianity...In my opinion, "Pascal's Wager" is a much better bet.

36 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An optimistic look at the end of the universe, December 30, 2001

By 

Ross Nordeen (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead (Paperback)

This was a mind-blowing book for me. Tipler lays out a testable hypothesis (The Omega Point Theory or OPT) about the end of the universe that shows how it would be possible for "life" to last forever in subjective time, even though the universe will end in a finite amount of "proper" time. Furthermore, based on projections of computing power available near the end of the universe, Tipler tries to show that the resurrection (via perfect emulation) of all humans who have ever lived is not only possible, but very likely.

This "Omega Point Theory" comes across as extremely controversial because of Tipler's efforts to integrate religion into his physics. The Omega Point, which is a virtual computer that will have near-infinite computing power, is predicted to have many of the abilities of what most people think of as God. A lot of the book is taken up with passages from religious texts in an attempt to show the the Omega Point corresponds closely to the God referred to in many different religions. There are also discussions of free will, hell and heaven. The section on an Omega Point-created future heaven opens Tipler to easy ridicule by skeptics, since it discusses not only why there will be sex in heaven, but how it will be possible for a man to make love to, not only the most beautiful woman who ever lived, but the most beautiful woman that can theoretically exist!

Tipler takes great pains to make sure that he is presenting a true scientific theory and not just some new age gobbledygook mixed in with particle physics and general relativity. To that end, he makes several testable predictions based on his theory, including a couple that might be resolved soon, the mass of the top quark and the Hubble constant. If recent calculations of the Hubble constant prove to be correct, the Omega Point Theory may have already been proven false.

If you can wade through the math and physics, I highly recommend reading this book. It is a fascinating speculative look at the far flung future.