Customer Reviews

The Physics of Immortality Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead

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Dr. Tipler's book on the reality of life after death is curious, to say the least. He writes as a professor of mathematical physics who is trying to make mathematical theory intelligible to the average person. He is not that successful. Those thinking, from the title, that this work is an attempt on the part of a Christian believer to prove what the Bible says as about immortality, will not find comfort unless they are ready to redefine some terms and concepts. Tipler spends the greater part of the book setting out his case from the view of theoretical physics. He has an appendix to the book which is written for "the scientist," but without some familiarity with physics the book may be hard to follow; especially, his material on quantum cosmology. Chapters 9 through 11 are easier to follow and have greater interest to the non-technical reader. Tipler's thesis seems to have grown out of Pierre Teilhard de Chardain's book, "The Phenomenon of Man," in which he sees the human race as moving to an Omega Point in its evolutionary development. Tipler sees God as the Omega Point toward which humanity is moving, in which the whole of humanity is given new existence, having been regenerated from the data of their existence which has survived "in space" following the demise of the original body. Man will not be the original of himself but will be an exact recreation of himself, created out of the extant data of his original existence. The book does not make a claim of presenting absolute proof of the author's thesis, but is a presentation of what may be possible in terms of theoretical physics. Possibilities of what "may be" make up "the stuff" of theoretical physics. The book is well worth the reading. Maurice III