May 18, 2007
Some Contentious Notions in The Physics of Christianity
The reflection in Hubble's eye: the visible universe, courtesy of NASA.
If the laws of physics be for us, who can be against us?
--Frank J. Tipler
by Jerome du Bois
I've seen no major reviews of this pugnacious book yet, and this won't be one either, but in the few online notices, micro-reviews and comments, I found no mention of some of Frank J. Tipler's more contentious, more outrageous notions. I'm going to list a few, but first I'll begin with a fact that should be shouted from the rooftops: Tipler has suffered professionally and financially for his views. Near the end of this new book he writes:
. . . A number of people who have read an earlier version of this book have asked me if I really believe the arguments I am presenting here.
I do. I think of myself as a Physics Fundamentalist, by which I mean that we have to accept as true the consequences of the five fundamental physical laws --quantum mechanics, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum cosmology, and the Standard Model-- unless and until an experiment shows these laws to have a limited range of applicability. To date all experiments are consistent with these fundamental laws. Therefore, I believe them. Therefore, I believe their consequences, which I have developed in this book. I will continue to believe in the fundamental laws of physics even if doing so results in my professional death as a physicist. It is not acceptable today for a physicist as physicist to believe in God. But I do; I believe in the Cosmological Singularity, which is God. I have a salary at Tulane some 40 percent lower than the average for a full professor at Tulane as a consequence of my belief. So be it. (P.268, emphasis mine.)
Back in 2002 he gave an interview to some transhuman promoter, where he expanded on his situation:
What I was unprepared for [after The Physics of Immortality] was the hostile "stone throwing" I received at Tulane University. I was actually formally tried for heresy (this word was not used by the panel convened to try me. Instead, I was told that I "didn't think like everyone else in the department"). I was not fired --- it's difficult to fire a tenured full professor, especially for unorthodox thinking, exactly what tenure is supposed to protect. But my salary was frozen: since my work was "worthless", it is clear to University officials that I should receive no raise. So now my pay is some $30,000 less than the Tulane full professor average, almost at the level of a starting assistant professor at Tulane, and definitely less than the assistant professor at a place like Cal Tech.
Not only that, the university has effectively and legally (Louisiana!) entailed the copyright to anything he might publish as an employee. Tulane should be ashamed of itself. Tipler's ideas are strange, all right, but so are those of Edward Witten and David Deutsch, and Julian Barbour and João Magueijo, and even Paul Davies and Lee Smolin and John Wheeler, and they get kudos, prizes, and support. Tipler gets the hind end. He deserves some vocal defenders, especially Deutsch, Barbour and Davies, who have used Tipler's ideas.
Now, about these new contentious ideas. I think they're more worth investigating than what the reviewers are concentrating on, which are the miracles, and whether Jesus was an XX-male. Take a glance:
1. Christianity requires the multiverse.
2. The Jews are helping advance Christianity.
3. Islam never contributed a damn thing to science.
4. Darwinism is gnostic.
5. Humanity "in the normal sense" is doomed in about fifty years due to the abuse of baryon-annihilation superbombs. The future --oh yes, the future's guaranteed!-- and it belongs to AIs and human downloads.
I'm amazed nobody, so far, has raised questions, objections, or hackles about these notions. (We are, after all, in the middle of a swell of atheist-scientists, bright and arrogant, beating their chests.) Although I'm not going to explore these ideas exhaustively, I'd like to unpack each one just a little.
1. Christianity requires the multiverse in order to be a "possibly true theory of reality." And he asserts that quantum mechanics requires the multiverse (p.95):
Nevertheless, the laws of terrestrial physics show that there are worlds invisible to us (as asserted by the Nicene Creed). I refer to the other universes of the multiverse, whose existence is required by quantum mechanics. These other universes are usualy considered to be a consequence of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, but this phrase is misleading, because it suggests that there may be other interpretations of quantum mechanics. This is not so. There is no other interpretation of quantum mechanics! More precisely, if the other universes and the multiverse do not exist, then quantum mechanics is objectively false.
The multiverse means reality jammed end to end with millions of analogues of you and everything else, some identical, most quite different, but still a kind of you, all strung out and connected across endless dimensions in a serpentine of seeming serendipity but actual inevitability. This is not Tipler's zany idea; many of the world's top physicists subscribe to the multiverse. String theorists call it The Landscape.
Personally I think that, like a shot of good single malt, the multiverse smooths out the kinks with too much facility, but I'm left with only Roger Penrose, maybe Lee Smolin, and words of cold comfort from physicist Daniel Greenberger:
Einstein said that if quantum mechanics is right, then the world is crazy. Well, Einstein was right. The world is crazy.
Great. Now I know. Tipler doesn't think the world is crazy, but he does think that only Christianity --because of its unique Trinitarian God-- can be coextensive with an accurate physical theory of reality.
2. The dedication reads, To God's Chosen People, the Jews, who for the first time in 2,000 years are advancing Christianity. Followed by a quotation from Genesis 12:3: I will bless those who bless you, and he who curses you, I will curse; and through you will be blessed all the families of the Earth.
And at the end of Chapter Ten, entitled "Anti-Semitism is Anti-Christian," he writes,
The influence of contemporary Jews on this book should be obvious, and I have thus dedicated this book to those Jews who are advancing the Christian cause. To hate the Jews is to hate both Christianity and science.
No wonder Jesus counselled us to develop slap-resistant cheeks. I won't go into Tipler's argument, but it follows from his conviction that only Christianity can help science and everyone into the future. Apparently he believes many Jews are helping people become Christian. To me that's like slapping a Jew on back and saying, "Thanks for providing us Jesus. That was a real gift."
A brief interview from Jacksonville published online May 11 contained this bit:
Tippler says his equations prove there is only one true religion: Christianity.
It's his conclusion that all the other world religions are, in a word, wrong. "Wrong as a matter of physics," he says.
When asked if he's ready for the firestorm that statement will cause, Tippler is unapologetic.
"Well, if people don't like that two plus two equals four, that's their problem," he says.
Well, you must say he has the courage of his convictions. And so far, no firestorm; not even a whiff of smoke. Curious --to me, anyway.
3. His dismissal of Islamic science, which I wholeheartedly applaud. I've heard enough jabber about al-jabbar. Page 113:
In fact, it [Islam] actively discourages the very idea of physical laws. In 1982, the Institute for Policy Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan, recommended that science textbooks be modified to emphasize that all change was due not to the action of physical law but to God:
There is latent poison present in the subheading Energy Causes Changes because it gives the impression that energy is the true cause rather than Allah. Similarly it is unIslamic to teach that mixing hydrogen and oxygen automatically produces water. The Islamic way is this: when atoms of hydrogen approach atoms of oxygen, then by the Will of God water is produced.
The implication being that God may change His mind in the next instant, and water would not be produced. . . .
. . . In my own rather extensive studies of Islam, I have never been able to find a single significant scientific discovery made in the entire history of Islamic civilization up to the twentieth century. The examples in the literature of Islamic scientific achievements are essentially trivial. . . . From the point of view of science, Islamic civilization did not exist. I attribute this fact to the Islamic theological doctrines against the idea of experimentally confirmed natural law just quoted, combined with the fact that, through Islamic history, anyone disagreeing with the prevailing theology has been regarded as an apostate, and the overwhelming number of Islamic jurists have agreed: the penalty for apostasy is death. No one is going to search for the laws of nature if even suggesting they exist makes him or her subject to the death penalty. A conference of seventeen Arab university presidents was held in Kuwait in 1983. The major topic of discussion was "Is science Islamic?" The Saudi delegation argued that science is not, being intrinsically secular and, hence, automatically against Islamic beliefs.
I haven't much to add except that this reflects the kind of mind which conceives the kind of god whose most precious attributes are capriciousness and irrationality --the power to cancel nature at will, to break his own laws-- which a criminal profiler will tell you fits the power killer mode.
5. The doomed humanity, baryon-annihilation, and AI takeover scenario. No, we haven't seen this movie before. This is where I hope Tipler has taken off for Loop City, because it's too fookin' scary for these times.
He starts off with a homey example: we all remember at the end of the original Back To The Future, when lovable ol' Doc returns from the future "with the car now powered by garbage dumped into a hopper on the car, and propelled by a rocket engine whose exhaust does not damage the immediate surroundings." Sweet. Plus: "Once we have mastered the techniques of baryon annihilation, oil, coal, hydroelectric, and nuclear forms of energy will be obsolete." Even better! But Tipler continues:
Unfortunately, this revolutionary new form of energy will bring with it a great danger: the possibility of revolutionary new weapons. . . . the baryon-annihilation process allows 100 percent of the mass-energy of ordinary materials to be converted into the energy of an explosion. Worse, since any material can be converted completely into energy, there is no rare material constraint to building a bomb nor any limit on the bomb's size . . . With the baryon-annihilation process, a few kilograms of garbage, converted entirely into energy, will annihilate a city.
A terrorist's dream come true. Concurrent with this rough beast's rousing will be the final geek dream come true: human-level AIs and the ability to download oneself into silicon and serenity, to shuffle off the mortal coil without dying; indeed, AIs and downloads will have us meat puppets beat brainwise, without the limitations of the body, so we'll be forced to become downloads too. (But I don't know; Doc got the idea for the Flux Capacitor when he bumped his head after falling doing a household repair above the toilet. You can't do that without a body.)
At any rate, according to Tipler, these two things will doom flesh-and-blood humanity: "So real-world human history is destined to end sometime this century, either with a bang or a download."
By the way, the baryon-annihilation process was revealed to us long ago (page 173):
. . . if the universe is to evolve into the Omega Point, then there must be a practical, small-scale method of annihilating baryons to provide energy before the recollapse of the universe provides gravitational energy. . .
Suppose the Son became incarnate to provide us this information. Notice that He can do so only be simultaneously providing us with knowledge that we ourselves one day will be resurrected with bodies in all essentials like the body Jesus had after His Resurrection. Also, we can obtain the necessary information only by believing in Him, believing that He is God, and believing that He rose from the dead. Without such a belief, no one would investigate Jesus for clues of constructing a practical device for annihilating baryons. If He provides us with the essential hints for how to construct such a device, He saves the entire world.
Reducing the Sacred Heart to a tech manual won't endear Tipler to most Christians, though he seems to count himself among them these days. He's very much out there, that's for sure. Among some of his other ideas: (1) evil is coded in our DNA; its been that way since we were metazoans (so don't feel guilty; I don't); (2) the correct theory of quantum gravity was discovered in the the Sixties by Richard Feynmann (a surprise to Lee Smolin and a generation of physicists who have been working on this their whole careers); (3) the multiverse solves The Problem of Evil; and (4) the Holy Spirit is the Initial Singularity (just before the Big Bang), God the Father is the Final Singularity, and Jesus is the All-Presents Singularity. Together they hypostatically become the Cosmological Singularity. Together they unite the multiverse.
What can I say, brother Tipler, except Amen? And travel well, because I see more travail coming your way.
Posted by Jerome at May 18, 2007 04:20 PM | TrackBack