Tuesday book reading

The following would have to be one of the most provocative opening passages ever!

This book is a description of the Omega Point Theory, which is a testable physical theory for an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God who will one day in the far future resurrect every single one of us to live forever in an abode which is in all essentials the Judeo-Christian Heaven. Every single term in the theory – for example, “omnipresent”, “omniscient”, “omnipotent”, “resurrection (spiritual) body”, Heaven – will be introduced as pure physical concepts. In this book I shall make no appeal, anywhere, to revelation. I shall appeal instead to the solid results of modern physical science; the only appeal will be to the reader’s reason. I shall describe the physical mechanism of the universal resurrection. I shall show exactly how physics will permit the resurrection to eternal life of everyone who has lived, is living, and will live. I shall show exactly why this power to resurrect which modern physics allows will actually exist in the far future, and why it will in fact be used. If any reader has lost a loved one, or is afraid of death, modern physics says: “Be comforted, you and they shall live again.”

• Frank J. Tipler
  The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead
  Doubleday, 1994
  Chapter 1, Page 1

This is a very readable book – apart from the mathematical excursions, which can be skimmed over by non-technical readers without detracting too much from a fascinating exposition.

I have to say, however, that Tipler’s argument seemed to this reader less than convincing. Indeed, it seems more an exercise in wish fulfillment on the part of the author. Tipler, a professor in mathematics, is the proverbial son of a preacher-man, and is forthright in asserting his Judeo-Christian beliefs.

A summary of Tipler’s Omega Point Theory can be read here from his homepage.