Not Smelling What Frank Tipler is Cooking – Part III

Copyright 2006 by Sidney Harris

Finishing Frank Tipler’s ‘The Physics of Immortality’ was complicated by the fact that he consistently resorts to using unnecessarily dense scientific jargon and implicit authoritarianism whenever he is on shaky ground in his reasoning. Frankly, I found it exasperating how Tipler bloviated his way over the heads of his non-specialist audience on the points that would require the greatest expository clarity if his ideas were going to come together to form a rational framework (the points at which, in the words of Sidney Harris, “a miracle occurs”).

I actually have a reasonably good layperson’s head for physics yet Tipler occasionally managed to talk over it in his discussion of the science that supports his position. His efforts to justify his sometimes dubious conclusions consisted of authoritatively citing relatively obscure (from the layperson’s perspective) yet evidently legitimate scientific principles and then performing interpretive legerdemain to justify his belief that they support his position.

I was generally able to slog through this morass secure in the knowledge that no matter how confidently Tipler stated his case, his fundamental premise had already most likely gone down in cosmological flames. It was interesting to watch Tipler assemble such an impressive sounding argument in the aftermath of the discovery of solid contradictory evidence that was not available to him at the time.

The context in which I read ‘The Physics of Immortality’ provided me with a unique insight into how experts use their credentials, in conjunction with often impenetrable, yet seemingly coherent jargon to lead laypeople to accept untenable conclusions. But then I am innately mistrustful of those who, when speaking to a general audience, choose to use jargon that implicitly elevates them in the eyes of that audience rather than attempting to elevate their audience by simply and clearly explaining their position.

Reading ‘The Physics of Immortality’ under these circumstances, I got the distinct impression that Tipler was teleologically cherry picking from among the many diverse principles in cosmology, physics, information theory, cybernetics, etc. those that he interprets as supporting his conclusions. One cannot help but wonder whether Tipler is failing to mention other positions of equal or even greater significance that contradict his. Once you get into the business of citing legitimizing sources to a general audience it is disingenuous to imply that the consensus in the encompassing discipline supports your position when there may not even be a consensus or worse, when you are actually on the wrong side of the consensus.

The most disappointing thing about the whole Frank Tipler saga is what became of him in the aftermath of ‘The Physics of Immortality’. Though he still primarily works as a professor of physics and mathematics, Tipler has fallen in with the Intelligent Design crowd. While this does not automatically invalidate his position, it does give his work a certain theistic bias. This bias saturates in his follow-up book, ‘The Physics of Christianity’.

Tipler is out speaking to Christian audiences about how physics proves that their beliefs are valid. Ironically, I agree with his basic premise that many spiritual beliefs are supported by rational arguments. I simply do not believe that Tipler’s unswervingly materialist arguments are the appropriate ones.

Not Smelling What Frank Tipler is Cooking – Part I

As indicated by the preceding three essays, I have certain issues with Ken Wilber, not so much with his the core of his (primarily Dharmic) theory of Reality as with how he chooses to frame it. In the light of my ardent support for scientific rationalism one might reasonably assume that I would be more in tune with the materialist theory of Reality put forth by Frank J. Tipler, professor of Physics and Mathematics and author of several books, most notably, ‘The Physics of Immortality’. But, in the words of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, I cannot smell what Frank Tipler is cooking.

If you wanted to describe the science-based theory of Reality that is furthest from my views, you would be hard-pressed to do better than Tipler’s ‘The Physics of Immortality’. According to Tipler, numerous key elements of spiritual (primarily Christian) eschatology including the Resurrection of the Dead, Judgment Day, Heaven and Hell are supported by contemporary physics. This thesis alone led to his book becoming a major bestseller. Though he is a credentialed scientist with an impressive resume, Tipler’s theory simply does not hold up very well from either a scientific or philosophical point of view.

To save time let me first focus on the one thing Tipler posits that I agree with in a general sense. Tipler theorizes the existence of the Omega Point, a material singularity at the end of time that represents the ultimate destiny of all beings. In my framework the ultimate destiny of every distinguishable entity is Unity in what is essentially a metaphysical singularity. But even in this area of relative agreement Tipler and I do not see eye to eye.

For one thing as a hardcore causal materialist, Tipler characterizes the Omega Point as a God-like being (though he claimed to be an atheist at the time he wrote ‘The Physics of Immortality’) that represents the purely material end-product of the entire causal dynamic. As described by Tipler the essence of the end of this process is that the universe will continue to expand to a certain point at which gravity will overcome the expansion caused by the Big Bang and initiate a period of contraction that will end in what cosmologists refer to as the Big Crunch.

According to Tipler certain rather extraordinary events must transpire in the period leading up to the Big Crunch to lead to the formation of the Omega Point that is consistent with Christian eschatology. The most incredible of these events is that somehow intelligent life on Earth (Tipler argues against there being intelligent life anywhere else in the universe) is supposed to colonize the entire universe between now and the Big Crunch. Here Tipler steps way out of his element but proceeds to describe this dynamic as though his specialties included the Philosophy of the Mind, Information Theory, Aerospace Engineering, Cybernetics and a host of others. Tipler’s tendency to imply that his doctorate in physics and ability to cite largely obscure authoritative sources makes him an expert on pretty much everything reminded me of our friend Ken Wilber.

Tipler insists that in order for the (super) aware Omega Point to form (as opposed to simply a mindless, lifeless singularity), intelligence, in the form of sentient machines, must take over the entire universe such that life is actually able to significantly change the gross structure of the universe in a way that distorts its inevitable gravitation collapse. This alteration allows for the manifestation of a truly universal intelligence that brings about many of the predictions of the Christian Bible in the final microseconds before the Big Crunch. In addition, because of the nature of this universal intelligence and the manner in which it reshapes time itself, these last few material microseconds will last for an informational eternity.

Tipler’s claim that this fantastic hypothesis is not inconsistent with cosmological theory did not make it much easier for me to believe than the Book of Revelations. The primary reason for this is the fact that the years since the initial publishing of ‘The Physics of Immortality’ have not been kind to the a key prediction underlying Tipler’s theory. In the interim cosmologists have determined that his fundamental premise that the universe will collapse into a singularity is highly improbable. Current cosmological observations indicate that our universe’s rate of expansion is increasing, arguably thanks to the phenomenon known as dark energy. This increasing rate of expansion indicates that the universe is not likely to collapse into the singularity, an event that is a necessary condition of the formation of Tipler’s Omega Point.

Tipler has since come up with some re-interpretive hand-waving in an effort to re-validate his theory but it is difficult to take him seriously when he himself put forth in ‘The Physics of Immortality’ that it is the falsifiability of his theory that makes it a scientific rather than philosophical or spiritual speculation. One of the critical falsifiable aspects of his theory is the fact that he unequivocally predicts that the universe will collapse into a singularity.

I picked up‘The Physics of Immortality’ well after cosmologists had largely disproved one of Tipler's key predictions. As a result, reading it felt analogous to encountering a seemingly rational exposition on life after the Second Coming that is predicated on the belief that it occurred during the lifetime of the apostles of Jesus Christ.