A God Atheists Can Believe In

The Omega Point Theory

I’m going to stretch your brain a little bit today. First, I’m going to warn you that this is a little long and difficult to read at times. Apologies in advance, but I believe that in the end the reading will be worth it.

In this day and age, we are all very familiar with pseudoscience. Internet wackos with a half cooked, laughable understanding of quantum mechanics make bold and ridiculous statements regarding the consequences of their supposed knowledge.

Things being as they are, it’s easy to brush off profound, grandiose statements about gods or souls or morality based off of so called “physics.” I wonder though- what if there were a physically contrived theological position that weren’t so easy to brush aside? Well, there is.

Frank Tipler is a professor of mathematical physics who earned his bachelor’s degree in physics at MIT, proceeded to complete his doctorate at the University of Maryland and worked as a research scientist at three major universities before settling down as a permanent staff member at Tulane University. He knows his stuff, and as a part of his research he has introduced something which is now called the “Omega Point Theory.” His theory includes its own axioms, such as the in-retrospect-ill-named “Final Anthropic Principle” (FAP).  It builds somewhat upon the work of the Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who developed an evolutionary theory called the “Law of Complexity/Consciousness.”

My point is that there is an awful lot of background which goes into the Omega Point Theory, including advanced mathematics and physics and some evolutionary work which was unfortunately performed by a priest. I won’t be able to relay all of that information in its entirety, but I would like to introduce you to this theory and would be interested as to your thoughts regarding it.

Before introducing it, I am compelled to tell you that this is only one interpretation in a long line of attempts to understand the concepts that Tipler addresses. John Bennett, the British mathematician, has an alternative view which he calls the hyparchic future, which rejects the two most common propositions for the universe(that it was created and designed, or that it came into existence by accident and is governed only by physical law) in favor of a third alternative which invokes the existence of the universe based on a physically inherent destiny as well as a patterned behavior governed by some sort of potential energy field. Most of this work is presented in bookstores and websites as spiritual material, because that is what it seems to address. What sparked my interest was that none of this work was originally created for that purpose, but instead for introduction to the peer review community as physical concepts. (It isn’t always well received.) The other thing which I find interesting is that I’ve often wondered(my own thinking here) whether the concepts they address might be the ultimate consequences of a successful transhumanist campaign…you will see what I mean.

On to business:

Tipler borrows the term “Omega Point” from our Jesuit priest and uses it to describe what he deduces to be the ultimate fate of the universe.  We can summarize his theory as the following points, these are not the arguments themselves but their conclusions, presented with a little commentary to explain:

·         The universe has finite size, and the topology of a 4 dimensional sphere

This is based on his physical calculations, which are detailed in his “can’t judge a book by its cover” titled book: The Physics of Immortality. It’s not an unreasonable conclusion, as the universe is four dimensional and a 3 sphere(as it is called) is the simplest shape to describe a four dimensional space.

·         There are no event horizons. The future c-boundary will therefore be a point rather than a singularity

If you follow recent updates in physics, it turns out that the hypothesis about event horizons is probably true. The c-boundary is a difficult concept to explain, but basically it is similar to an asymptote- ya know, that thing you get on either side of the point where you approach division by zero in a rational equation. The C-Boundary is the result of an intelligence explosion, a situation where the universe tends toward more and more complexity and intelligence. In a universe with event horizons, that tendency toward infinite complexity would result in an information loss. If event horizons don’t exist, the c-boundary cannot be a singularity but rather a defined point. I’m struggling to explain it…perhaps you can ponder the consequences of any variable tending towards infinity. It’s not essential that this be completely understood to address the point further down

·         Sentient life must eventually engulf the universe

This is a conclusion reached based on the complexity theory

·         The amount of information processed between now and the Omega Point is infinite

Skipping for now

·         The amount of information stored in the universe asymptotically tends to infinity as the Omega Point is approached

Also skipping for now

Essentially, Tipler’s predictions require two things: That the universe is closed and that it is going to end. If those two things are true, he arrives at the conclusion that the increasing complexity of life will continue to iterate upon itself as the universe approaches its end. As the end grows nearer and nearer, the processing power available to the combined intelligent beings living in the universe tends closer and closer to infinity, until a point is reached such that processing power is growing at such a rate that an infinite amount of processing can be done before the end of the universe.

Transhumanists may be familiar with the concept of escape velocity with regards to lifespans, but Tipler introduced the concept a couple decades ago with regards to intelligence. To illustrate this point intuitively, imagine if you could think twice as fast as you can today. If, to me, you live for a hundred years, you will experience the equivalent of two hundred years of life in that same amount of time. If you thought ten times as fast you would experience a thousand years of thoughts during the hundred years that you live. The Omega Point is the point when intelligent beings think so fast that they experience an infinite amount of life between whatever point they are currently at on a timeline and the eventual death of the universe.

At this point I must step back from the exact work of Tipler, whose proofs and theorems are beyond my ability to understand, and discuss this from my own perspective. Could you imagine an existence where thought is so fast as to create an infinite time line of thought and experience? A society which has achieved this level of existence would essentially have created exactly what our religious counterparts believe in: god. They, collectively, would have so much processing power available(due simply to the fact that their bound on computation time is infinite) that they could simulate every possible timeline. They could resurrect dead individuals by recreating the exact timeline that caused them to exist. They would live forever, have every thought, know everything, and they would be what our counterparts call god, and would live in the state which our counterparts call heaven.

To be clear, I’m not saying that I believe this. Tipler’s theory is based upon some laws I’m not sure exist. I consider it to be more of “The Omega Point Possibility.” It is certainly mathematically possible, even if his notion of an infinite lifespan through infinite processing doesn’t seem intuitively possible. The Omega Point is more likely at this point than any theistic god, because we can demonstrate mathematically that the Omega Point can exist. The beings living there would likely be able to master all the secrets of the universe and would be the closest thing imagineable to a god and an afterlife.

I actually did write a science fiction story about this concept a while back, told in unique timeline fashion, and it is essentially about the creation of the Omega Point. If you are interested, check it out the story, Destiny, here.

Now, I’d like to hear your thoughts. If you’ve made it this far, take a moment to tell me how you feel about the Omega Point, about life eventually evolving into this being that the theists call god, and about it’s supposed inevitability. I don’t introduce this to persuade you or anything along those lines, simply to discuss something other than the usual “OMG CHRISTIANS ARE SOO STUPID” that you here everywhere else.

May the dark lord watch over you ;)