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THE

PHYSICS of

IMMORTALITY

FRANK J.
TIPLER

Anchor Books

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T H E

P H Y S I C S

OF

I M M O R T A L I T Y

Modern Cosmology,

God and the

Resurrection of the Dead

An Anchor Book

published by doubleday

a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

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Anchor Books, Doubleday, and the portrayal of an anchor

are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell

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Book Design by Claire Naylon Vaccaro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tipler, Frank J.

The physics of immortality : modern cosmology, God and the

resurrection of the dead / Frank J. Tipler.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Cosmology. 2. Physics — Religious aspects. 3. Omega point.

4. Eschatology. 5. God — Proof, Cosmological. I. Title.

QB981.T57 1995

215'.3-dc20 95–9881

CIP

isbn 0–385–46799-0

Copyright © 1994 by Frank J. Tipler

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First Anchor Books Edition: September 1995

7 9 10 8

To the grandparents of my wife, the great-grandparents of my children

JOZEFA BASAREWSKA and ADAM ROKICKI

Shot to death by the Nazis in 1939, for the crime of being Poles.

JOZEF BASAREWSKI

Tortured by the Gestapo, and died shortly thereafter.

All three being citizens of Torun, Poland, the birthplace of

Copernicus.

Who died in the hope of the Universal Resurrection,

and whose hope, as I shall show in this book, will be fulfilled near

the End of Time.

Eternal must that progress be

Which Nature through futurity

Decrees the human soul;

Capacious still, it still improves

As through the abyss of time it moves,

Or endless ages roll

Its knowledge grows by every change;

Through science vast we see it range

That none may here acquire;

The pause of death must come between

And Nature gives another scene

More brilliant, to admire.

Thus decomposed, or recombined,

To slow perfection moves the mind

And may at last attain

A nearer rank with that first cause

Which distant, though it ever draws,

Unequalled must remain.

from “On the Powers of the Human Understanding”

by Philip Freneau (1752–1832),

known as the

“poet of the American Revolution”

and as the

“founder of American poetry”

Preface

It is quite rare in this day and age to come across a book proclaiming the unification of science and religion. It is unique to find a book asserting, as I shall in the body of this book, that theology is a branch of physics, that physicists can infer by calculation the existence of God and the likelihood of the resurrection of the dead to eternal life in exactly the same way as physicists calculate the properties of the electron. One naturally wonders if I am serious.

I am quite serious. But I am as surprised as the reader. When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.

I obtained my Ph.D. in 1976 in the area of global general relativity. This branch of physics, created in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the great British physicists Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking, enables us to draw very deep and very general conclusions about the structure of space and time by looking at the universe in its totality in both time and space.

Now one might think that such a view of the universe is the view  {x}  of all cosmologists, but this is not so. Almost all cosmologists concern themselves with what is called the visible universe: that part of the universe whose past can be seen from Earth. Since the universe came into existence about 20 billion years ago, and since nothing can go faster than light, we can in principle see the pasts of galaxies which are now about 20 billion light-years away: the visible universe is thus a sphere about 20 billion light-years across.

But to anyone regarding the universe in its total extent in space and especially in time, it is immediately obvious that the visible universe is only a tiny fraction of reality. The universe is almost certain to continue to exist for another 100 billion years, and probably much longer. In other words, the part of the spacetime which can be seen from Earth is relatively insignificant in comparison to the part which lies in our future; we humans have come into existence in the very early childhood of the cosmos. Hence, as a global relativist, I realized that I would have to study the future of the universe, since the future comprises almost all of space and time. It is not possible to look at the universe in its totality in both time and space while ignoring almost all of space and time.

But how does one calculate the behavior of the universe in the far future? My colleague, the British astrophysicist John D. Barrow, has proved that this behavior would be chaotic, which means that the evolution of the universe becomes unpredictable after a time short in cosmological scales. It is now known that chaotic evolution is common on all astronomical scales: on the scale of the solar system, on the scale of the galaxies, on the scale of clusters of galaxies, and so on up to the scale of the entire universe itself.

Furthermore, a simple calculation shows that, since chaos occurs on all size scales, intelligent beings would be able to use these instabilities to manipulate the motion of matter on the very largest scales. In other words, the possible presence and actions of intelligent life cannot be ignored in any calculation of the evolution of the far future. This would appear to make calculation of the universe's future even more impossible, since the behavior of humans is notoriously unpredictable. We shall have chaos in the society of intelligent living beings added to the chaos in the Einstein equations.

Interestingly, this is not true. The two sources of chaos cancel out.  {xi}  What happens is that intelligent life, in order to survive, must use the chaos in the physical laws to force the evolution of the universe into one of a very restricted number of possible futures. Its very survival requires life to impose order on the universe. Taking biology into account allows us to do the physics of the far future.

But in order to do calculations, it is essential to translate basic biological concepts into physics language. It is necessary to regard all forms of life — including human beings — as subject to the same laws of physics as electrons and atoms. I therefore regard a human being as nothing but a particular type of machine, the human brain as nothing but an information processing device, the human soul as nothing but a program being run on a computer called the brain. Further, all possible types of living beings, intelligent or not, are of the same nature, and subject to the same laws of physics as constrain all information processing devices.

Many people find this extreme reductionist approach to life not only wrong but repulsive. I think, however, that their hostility is not to reductionism as such but to what they mistakenly believe to be consequences of reductionism. They are convinced that regarding people as machines would mean that people would have no “free will,” that there is no hope of individual life after death, that life itself is a totally insignificant part of “an overwhelmingly hostile universe.”¹

In fact, the exact opposite is true. The very fact that humans are machines of a very special sort allows us to prove that we humans probably have free will, that we shall have life after death in an abode that closely resembles the Heaven of the great world religions, and that life, far from being insignificant, can be regarded as the ultimate cause of the very existence of the universe itself. How this works as a matter of physics is the subject of this book. The fact that all of these assertions are a consequence of physical reductionism has come as a great surprise to me also. As I said above, I never imagined when I began my career as a physicist that I would one day be writing, qua physicist, that Heaven exists, and that we shall each and every one of us enjoy life after death. But here I am, writing what my younger self would regard as scientific nonsense. Here I stand — as a physicist, I can do no other.

One naturally wonders why it is only in the last decade of the twentieth century that these ideas have appeared in physical cosmology.  {xii}  A good question. Part of the reason is that the mathematical techniques to analyze the global structure of the universe did not exist until about twenty-five years ago. But a deeper reason is that almost all physicists have ignored the future of the physical universe. There seemed to be a tacit consensus that the future is not as real as the present and the past, in spite of the fact that all fundamental physical theories advanced in the past three centuries — Newtonian mechanics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, string field theory — have insisted that there is no fundamental distinction between past, present, and future. Hence, the future is just as real as the present. Fifty years ago, the early universe was an equally taboo subject. As the Nobel-prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg put it:

. . . I think . . . the “big bang” theory did not lead to a search for the 3°K microwave background because it was extraordinarily difficult for physicists to take seriously any theory of the early universe. (I speak here in part from recollections of my own attitude before 1965.) . . . [The early universe is] so remote from us in time, the conditions of temperature and density are so unfamiliar, that we feel uncomfortable in applying our ordinary theories of statistical mechanics and nuclear physics.

This is often the way it is in physics — our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world. Even worse, there often seems to be a general agreement that certain phenomena are just not fit subjects for respectable theoretical and experimental effort.²

I take the far future of the universe as seriously as I do the early universe. The equations of physics tell us to take the far future seriously, and until I have experimental evidence to the contrary, I shall believe what the equations say. I hope my fellow physicists will do the same. I intend to show in this book that, by ignoring the far future, they are passing up opportunities to do physics as they previously did by ignoring the early universe.  {xiii}  It is more surprising to me that theologians have ignored the ultimate future of the cosmos. This ultimate future supposedly is the chief concern of the two main Western religions, Christianity and Islam. The central discipline for both religions should therefore be eschatology, which is the study of “last things.” Eschatology has traditionally dealt with questions of whether to expect life after death, what the afterlife will be like, and how God will provide for humankind in this afterlife.

I have been interacting with theologians and professors of religious studies for some six years now, and I have gotten the impression that, with only a few exceptions, they are quite ignorant of eschatology. Let me justify my accusation by recounting one of my recent experiences. In the fall of 1990 the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion happened to be held in New Orleans. I attended a plenary lecture by a famous Columbia University historian of the Middle Ages, who spoke on medieval beliefs about life after death. She discussed at length an analysis by St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the medieval theologians, of a technical problem which arises with the idea of the resurrection of the dead: if the universal resurrection is accomplished by reassembling the original atoms which made up the dead, would it not be logically impossible for God to resurrect cannibals? Every one of their atoms belongs to someone else! The audience, several hundred theologians and religious studies professors, thought this quaint “problem” hilarious, and laughed loudly.

I didn't laugh. When I first read Aquinas’ analysis, which I came across when I first began to consider seriously the technical problems associated with a universal resurrection, I did laugh. But I soon realized that Aquinas’ cannibal example was subtly chosen to illustrate the problem of personal identity between the original person and the resurrected person; establishing this identity is the central problem to be solved in any theory of resurrection of the dead. Any scholar who has seriously thought about the resurrection of the dead would almost certainly have come across Aquinas’ analysis, be completely familiar with the cannibal example, and not laugh when it was mentioned. I infer that the typical American theologian/religious studies professor has never seriously thought about the resurrection of the dead. Eschatology has been left to the physicists.³

We physicists are by and large an extremely arrogant group of  {xiv}  scholars. Our arrogance stems from the reductionist perception that ours is the ultimate science, and from our undoubted achievements over the past few centuries. What we promise, we generally deliver. Whatever one thinks of social significance of the nuclear bomb, there is no doubt that it works. Solar eclipses occur exactly when we predict they will. As one who has spent his entire life as a physicist or as a physicist manque, I not surprisingly share this arrogance. In my previous publications on religion and physics, I have attempted to conceal this arrogance (not very successfully). In this book, however, I have not bothered, mainly because such concealment in the past has prevented me from presenting the strongest case for reductionism. And reductionism is true. Furthermore, accepting reductionism allows one to integrate fully religion and science.

Many of my fellow physicists have strongly advised me to avoid using words like “God,” “Heaven,” “free will,” and the like. My friends believe these words have been debased by philosophers and theologians into synonyms for “nonsense.” The “Omega Point” is a beautiful pure physics construct, and it should not be sullied by calling it “God.” My friends have a point, but the old theological words retain a rough coherence in the popular language, and I propose to reintroduce them as technical terms which, as the reader will see in the chapters of this book, have roughly their popular meaning. “Resurrection of the dead” has a clear and unequivocal meaning to the person in the street, and if physics predicts such an event will one day occur, it seems unreasonable to adopt a new vocabulary to describe it. Another reason for their well-intended advice is that my fellow physicists are as a general rule atheists, believing that religion is a phenomenon of a prescientific world view. They are convinced that the God hypothesis is one which was refuted long ago.

But on rare occasions we physicists find we must reconsider long-rejected theories. Copernicus was perfectly aware that he was resurrecting a theory that had been rejected by astronomers nearly two thousand years before. As his student Rheticus reported in 1539: “My teacher [Copernicus] is convinced, however, that the rejected method of the Sun's rule in the realm of nature must be revived. . . .”⁴ Copernicus himself in his own book, published four years after Rheticus  {xv}  wrote these words, emphasized that the ancient astronomers had considered and then rejected the Sun-centered solar system.

It is time scientists reconsider the God hypothesis. I hope in this book to persuade them to do so. The time has come to absorb theology into physics, to make Heaven as real as an electron.

Fort Walton Beach, Florida July 1993

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Much thanks are due to many friends and colleagues who have commented on earlier versions and individual sections of this book, and who have discussed various technical points with me. I am particularly indebted to Peter C. Aichelburg, Robert Beig, Jacob Bekenstein, Frank Birtel, Brice Cassenti, David Deutsch, Willem Drees, George F. R. Ellis, Dieter Flamm, Antony Flew, James Force, Robert Forward, Martin Gardner, Thomas Gilbert, K. Hidaka, Christopher Hill, the late Sidney Hook, Bei Lok Hu, Morris Kalka, Andrei Linde, Val A. McInnes, Peter Moore, Heide Narnhofer, Joseph Needham, John Polkinghorne, Frank Quigley, Sir Martin Rees, Helmut Rumpf, Robert John Russell, Nathan Sivin, Walter Thirring, Jolanta Rokicka Tipler, John Updike, and John A. Wheeler. I learned a great deal from the Tulane students of the Omega Point Colloquium, held in the fall 1990 term at Tulane University. I should like to thank these students, and also the scholars who traveled to New Orleans to participate in the Colloquium, especially Willem Drees, Antony Flew, Philip Hefner, Ella Moravec, Hans Moravec, and Robert J. Russell.

I am especially grateful to Professor Wolfhart Pannenberg for an exchange of letters which played a crucial role in the improvement of this book. Pannenberg is a very rare exception among twentieth-century theologians: he bases his theology on eschatology, and for him “Heaven” is not just a metaphor but something that shall actually exist  {xxiv}  in the future. He is therefore one of the very few modern theologians to truly believe that physics must be intertwined with theology, and makes a serious effort to understand modern science. My very critical remarks directed against modern theologians do not apply to him. My intellectual debt to him will be apparent in what follows.

But my greatest intellectual debt, and hence my deepest debt of gratitude, goes to my colleague and coauthor (of many research papers and one book), Professor John D. Barrow, with whom I published an earlier version of the Omega Point Theory. John's seminal work on chaos in general relativity provided an essential foundation stone for the Omega Point Theory, as will be made clear in the text.

Writing the book and research on the Omega Point Theory were supported in part by the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique of Belgium, the Tomalla Stiftung of Switzerland, the Tulane Honors Program, the Tulane Judeo-Christian Chair, the Fundacion Federico's Gravitation and Cosmology Project, and the Austrian Bundesministerium fur Wissenschraft und Forschung under grant number GZ 30.401/1–23/92.

Mathematics
and Conventions
in This Book

This is intended to be a popular book. However, I shall attempt in it to solve the most important problems of human existence by using the most up-to-date knowledge of modern mathematics and physics. The most advanced mathematics and physics are impossible to present to a popular audience in a completely rigorous way. So at first blush it appears that this cannot be a popular book.

I've tried to make it a popular book by isolating the really tough math in an Appendix for Scientists at the very end. The main body of the book will contain no formulas at all (except for E = mc², which hopefully no one will have trouble with), so no prior deep mathematical knowledge will be required in this main part. But I'll assume in the main body of the book that the reader is familiar with scientific notation for numbers: instead of three million or 3,000,000 I'll simply write

3 × 10⁶

The 6 is called an “exponent,” and 10⁶ just means “1 followed by 6 zeros.” More generally, 10ⁿ means “1 followed by n zeros.” If you are a bit rusty in your algebra, recall that the symbol “n” represents any number. Thus, 3 × 10⁶ means “three multiplied by 1 followed by 6 zeros,” or 3 million. Finally, 3 × 10^–6 means “three multiplied by 1 over  {xxvi}  one million.” I shall find it necessary to deal with numbers that are so large they must be expressed as double exponentials, for example, 10¹⁰⁶. This means “1 followed by 10⁶ zeros (one million zeros).” The largest number I shall use is 10¹⁰¹²³, which is “1 followed by 10¹²³ zeros.”

I shall generally use metric system units. The units for mass are the gram, which is roughly 1/30 of an ounce, and the kilogram, which is roughly two pounds. The units for length are the meter, which is roughly a yard, and the kilometer, which is roughly half a mile.

Cosmology will play a central role in this book, so I shall assume that my reader has some knowledge of distances in astronomy. The basic unit is the light-year, defined to be the distance light can travel in a year. Since light travels 3 × 10⁸ meters per second, a light-year is 9.46 × 10¹⁵ meters. A light-year is huge by human standards: it's 63,000 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. But really large astronomical distances are usually given not in light-years, but in parsecs. A parsec is 3.26 light-years. I shall use the terms 1 kiloparsec = 1 thousand parsecs; 1 megaparsec = 1 million parsecs; 1 gigaparsec = 1 billion parsecs; and 1 teraparsec = 1 trillion parsecs. The center of our Galaxy is 10 kiloparsecs away from us. The nearest large galaxy, the Great Nebula in Andromeda, is about 1 megaparsec away. The edge of the visible universe is about 3 gigaparsecs away, and I predict that the other side of the universe is currently between 1 and 10 teraparsecs away.

In the main part of the book I'll describe in rough outline the basic ideas in the Appendix for Scientists, so anyone willing to do some hard thinking and with a high school education should be able to understand the main part.

I'll use three of the many different English translations of the Bible: KJV stands for King James Version, RSV stands for Revised Standard Version, and NEB means New English Bible.

Bibliography

Appendix for Scientists

Index

Italicized page numbers refer to figures

Abortion, 331

Accidents, notion of, 318, 319

Aetemitas duration, 134, 155, 219

African religions, afterlife in, 278–81

Afterlife, xi, 15–16

      in African religions, 278–81

      in Buddhism, 275–78

      in Christianity, 258, 290–94

      comparison of world religions and Omega Point Theory, 270–94, 299–304

      in Hinduism, 272–74

      in Islam, 299–304

      in Judaism, 284–90

      in Native American religions, 281–83

      in Omega Point Theory Heaven, 254, 255–59

      redemptive features (Hell and Purgatory), 251–55

      in Taoism, 270–72

Agassiz, Louis, 122

Age of Reason, The (Paine), 322

Algorithm, defined, 25

Allen, Ethan, 321, 322–23

All Religions Are True (Gandhi), 336

Alpher, Ralph, 72

Altruism, 245–47, 253

Anchor Bible, 306–7

Angels, 156–57, 357–59

Anger of God, The (Lactantius), 260

Animism, 88

Anthropic Cosmological Principle, The (Tipler and Barrow), 210

Antichrist, The (Nietzsche), 81

Antimatter rockets, 53–54, 512–15

Aquinas, St. Thomas, 6, 127, 293

      on duration, 134

      as physicist, 329

      on Problem of Evil, 260–61, 265

      on resurrection of the dead, xiii, 236

Aristarchus of Samos, 5, 104

Aristode, 8–9, 75, 127, 289, 292

Arithmetic, full theory of, 24–25, 192–94

Arrhenius, Svante, 90

Arrow Impossibility Theorem, 201

Artificial intelligence. See Intelligent machines

Atheism, xiv, 9–10, 79–80, 260–61, 305

Augustine, St., 6, 76, 215, 261–62, 265

Axelrod, Robert, 245, 246

Ayala, Francisco, 294, 296

Aztec people, 281

Babbage, Charles, 309

Babylonians, 74–75

Bachwa people, 279

Baronio, Cesare Cardinal, 8

Barrow, John D., x, 63, 125, 210

Barth, Christian Gottlieb, 255

Barth, Karl, 14, 291

Baumler, Alfred, 83

Beatific vision, 245

Becker, Gary, 246

Bekenstein, Jacob, 31

Bekenstein Bound, 239, 295, 296, 314, 363, 407–11, 452–53, 462

      emulation of universe and, 221–23

      intelligent machines and, 30–32

Bergson, Henri, 9

Berkeley, George, 211–12

Bemal, John Desmond, 3,16,108–10, 116

Beshat, the, 290

“Best of all possible worlds” viewpoint, 262–63

INDEX

Big Bang, xii, 72, 78, 101, 141, 214

Big Crunch, 101, 141, 355, 404, 441

Billiard ball computer, 37, 446

Biot, Jean–Baptiste, 312

Black holes, 363–64, 409–11, 455, 458, 478–79

Blindness, 243

Blind Watchmaker, The (Dawkins), 125–26

Bloch, Ernst, 5

Boesiger, Ernest, 112

Boethius, 134, 158, 159

Boltzmann, Ludwig, 94, 95

Boswell, James, 247

Brain, 33, 40–41

      decision making and, 196–98, 201

      information and, 22–23

      memories and, 237

Brush, Stephen, 73

Buddha in the Robot, The (Mori), 88

Buddhism, 284

      afterlife in, 275–78

      intelligent machines and, 88

Cairns–Smith, A. G., 124–25

Calvin, John, 318

Camus, Albert, 82

Cannibalism, xiii, 236

Canon of the Great Peace, 76

Cauchy hypersurface, 159

C–boundary, 131–32, 132, 154

      future c–boundary of universe as single point (Omega Point), 114, 142–46, 143, 145, 432–35

Celsus, 292–93, 316

Chance. See Randomness

Chance and Necessity (Monod), 199

Chaos, x–xi, 3, 493–97

      biosphere's control of universe and, 59–65

      determinism and, 189–90

      Quantum Recurrence Theorem and, 97, 99, 424–27, 492

      unstable chaotic motion, 59–63

China, 76–77, 270–72

Chinese Room Experiment, 38–43

Christianity

      afterlife in, 258, 290–94

      Deist movement, 321–27

      displacement of other religions, 332–33

      Eternal Return doctrine and, 76, 135

      “future being” view of God, 4–5

      Luke, Book of, 306–8

      membership of, 283–84

      miracles and, 308–9

      Omega Point Theory and, 16, 305–27

      personal God of, 3–4, 155–56, 326–27

      prayer and, 337–38

      Problem of Evil and, 260–62, 265

      Real Presence, doctrine of the, 317–21

      resurrection of Jesus, 306–8, 309–13, 320

      “time between death and resurrection” issue, 226–27

      transubstantiation, 318–21, 334

      triune deity issue, 313–17

      universal salvation and, 254–55, 303, 316–17

Church–Turing Thesis, 38, 446–48

City of God, The (Augustine), 76

Classical paths, 177, 182

Clement, St., 135

Coe, Michael, 282

Colonization of universe, 18–19

      controlling the universe, 59–65, 144, 154

      cost concerns, 44

      Earth, use of, 57

      energy for, 64

      engulfing the universe, 55–59, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65, 144–45, 154

      Galaxy–wide coverage, 45–46, 47

      self–sustaining colonies, 46, 54–55

      time requirements, 55

      See also Robot space probes

Comet Halley Mission, proposed, 49

Comparative Advantage, Theory of, 43

Compatabilism, 186, 201

Complexity, 118–19, 123

Computer metaphysics, 205–7. See also Emulations

Computers. See Intelligent machines

Confucianism, 271

Conservation laws, 161

Consolation of Philosophy (Boethius), 134, 158

Constraint equations, 162 Contingency

      in general relativity, 161–67

      in Newtonian physics, 160–61

      in quantum mechanics, 167–73

Continuity identity theory, 228–29

      emulations and, 235–39

Conway, John, 37

Copenhagen Interpretation, 167, 168–69

Copernicus, Nicolaus, xiv–xv, 6, 342, 360, 449

Cosmic background radiation, 72, 151, 152–53, 403, 410, 451, 456–59, 479

Cosmological Constant, 150, 465–66

Crescas, Hasdai ben Abraham, 290  {521} 

Cullmann, Oscar, 291, 293

Cyberspace, 108–9, 220

Damascus Document, 284

Dante, 16

Darwin, Charles, 68–69

Dashti, 'Ali, 304

Davies, P. C. W., 31

Dawkins, Richard, 125–26

Dead Sea Scrolls, 284

Decision-making process, 194–202

Decline of the West, The (Spengler), 81

Deism, 203, 321–27

Delusion, collective, 310–12

Dennett, Daniel C, 199

Density parameter. See universe

Determinism, 75, 159–60, 483

      chaos and, 189–90

      defining characteristics, 187

      No–Return Theorem and, 103

      time and, 188

      See also Contingency

DeWitt, Bryce, 170

Dialectics of Nature (Engels), 106–7

“Dilemma of Determinism,” (James), 187

Dirac, Paul, 3, 11

Divine Comedy, The (Dante), 16

DNA programs, 29

Drake, Frank D., 310–11

Dreams of a Final Theory (Weinberg), 171, 338–39

Drexler, K. Eric, 51

Duhem, Pierre, 71–72

Dyson, Freeman, 3, 57, 139–40

      Eternal Life Postulate and, 108, 116–19

Earth

      chaos on Earth's orbit, 63

      colonization of universe, used for, 57

      physical destruction of, 18–19

      virtual reality, transformation to, 108–9

Eaton, Daniel, 322

Ecce Homo (Nietzsche), 81

Eccles,John, 197

Eddington, Arthur, 73

Einstein, Albert, 146

Einstein static universe, 103

Emanationism, 214 — 15

Emperor's New Mind, The (Penrose), 27

Emulations, 14, 515–16

      characteristics of, 206–7

      of computers by computers, 36, 208, 213

      continuity identity theory and, 235–39

      “existence” issue, 207, 210

      free will and, 223

      Identity of Indiscernibles, 207–8, 211

      termination of, 210–11

      of universe, 208–9, 221–25

      See also Resurrection of the dead

Enchiridion (Augustine), 265

Engels, Friedrich, 105, 106–7

Enneads (Plotinus), 215

Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, An (Hume), 7–8, 310

Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, An (Hume), 238

Entropy, 67, 71, 94–95

Epicurus, 260

EQ frequency distributions, 120–22

Eschatology, xiii, 4

Eternal Life Postulate, 11–12, 66, 113–14, 132–33, 450–51

      in closed and open universes, 116–18

      complexity of life and, 118–19

      computer capacity for, 247–49

      conditions necessary for eternal life, 132–35

      Dyson's contributions, 108, 116–19

      eternal progress and, 265–68

      “life,” definition of, 124–27

      love as motivation for granting of eternal life, 14, 245–47, 253

      mathematics of, 116

      physical feasibility of eternal life, 135–38

      proof of, 212–13

      “soul,” definition of, 127–28

      See also Afterlife

Eternal progress, 217

      antiprogressive argument, 119–22

      Bernal's views on, 108–10

      eternal life and, 265–68

      evolutionary biology and, 119–23, 489–91

      extinction of Homo sapiens and, 218

      God and, 268

      gravity and, 106

      nineteenth–century views on, 105–7

      “progress,” meaning of, 104–5

Eternal Return doctrine, 34

      in ancient cultures, 74–76

      Christianity and, 76, 135

      cyclic notion of time and, 74–76

      Heidegger's views on, 79, 83–86

      linear notion of time and, 76–77

      meaning in life and, 81–82

      in medieval period, 76–77

      Nietzsche's views on, 77–81, 82

      palingenesia (reappearance of same people in each cycle), 75–76  {522} 

Eternal Return doctrine (cont.)

      physics–based variations, 67, 89–101

      political consequences, 82–86

      religious–philosophical implicatoins, 79–81

      “repeating” view of future, 66–67, 74

      symbol of, 83

      Tipler's rejection of, 83, 86–89

Event horizons, 140, 142, 409–11, 456, 458, 478–79

Everett, Hugh, 167

Evil

      Omega Point's response to, 251–55

      Problem of Evil, 13, 259–65

Evolutionary biology, 9–10, 68

      eternal progress and, 119–23

      Modern Synthesis, 9, 199

      randomness and, 29–30, 199

      vitalist approach to, 110–13

Evolution equations, 161

“Existence,” definition of, 210, 211–12

Existence of universe

      computer science and, 205–11

      Eternal Life Postulate and, 212–13

      number of existing universes, 210

      Omega Point Theory and, 211–12

      ontological/cosmological argument, 205

Experimental Test. See Omega Point Theory, testable predictions of

Extinctions, 30, 104

Homo sapiens and, 217–18

Fan Chen, 271

Faraday, Michael, 146

Fawell, Harris, 335

Fechner–Weber Law, 257

Feynman, Richard, 170, 203, 361–62

Finite state machines, 31–34

First Principles (Spencer), 105

First Three Minutes, The (Weinberg), 69–70

Fitzmyer, Joseph, 307

Flamm, Dieter, 22

Flat universe, 116–17

Flew, Antony, 228–29, 235, 237, 238–39, 293, 305, 309

Foliation of co–dimension one, 180–81, 438–40, 451

Forward, Robert, 49, 53–54

Four–Manifold Non–Classification Theorem, 190–91

France, 112

Franklin, Benjamin, 321, 323–25

Free will, xi, 2, 7, 13

      conditions for, 201–2

      decision–making process and, 194–202

      emulations and, 223

      God's omniscience and, 159–60, 188

      Many–Worlds Interpretation and, 173, 203

      Omega Point Boundary Condition and, 186–87, 202–4

      randomness and, 198–99

      schools of thought on, 186–87

      See also Determinism; Indeterminism

Frege, Gottlob, 205

Friedman, David, 246

Friedmann universe, 140, 141, 142, 143, 397–405

Future–endless worldliness, 131

Future evolution of universe, x–xi, xii

      assumptons about, 2–3, 11

      important events, 56–57

      longevity issue, 10

Galileo, 6, 8, 229, 331

Game of Life, 37–38

Game theory, 195, 199, 245–47, 251–54

Gandhi, Mohandas K., 274, 276, 278, 336

Gardner, Martin, 253

Gell-Mann, Murray, 170–71

General relativity, ix, 128–29, 131, 174

      contingency in, 161–67

      No–Return Theorem, 101–3, 427–31

      See also Spacetime

Genetic algorithms, 29–30

Geology, 90

Germ theory of disease, 328–29

Gibbs, J. Willard, 230–31, 232

Gibbs Paradox, 230–31

Gifford, Adam, 334

Glashow, Sheldon, 89, 146

Global general relativity, ix

Gnosticism, 3, 13

Gödel, Kurt, 24, 192

Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, 13, 24–26, 31, 191, 192, 194

Gould, Stephen J., 120–22

Gravity, 63, 101–3, 106, 338

Great Chain of Being, 216, 218

Greece, ancient, 75–76

Guth, Alan, 152

Habermas, Gary, 309

Haddad, Yvonne Y., 303

Haldane, J. B. S., 3, 107, 108, 116

Halting Problem, 25–26, 38, 194, 446–48

Hand-simulation of computer programs, 38–43

Harrison-Zel'dovich power spectrum, 151

Hartle, James B., 178, 181–82  {523} 

Hartle-Hawking boundary condition, 178–80, 181–82, 189

Hawking, Stephen, ix, 5, 170, 178

Hayek, Friedrich, 172, 267

Heat Death doctrine, 66, 90, 109, 111

      entropy and, 67, 461–63

      fallacies of, 70–71

      optimistic views about, 73

      Poincare Recurrence Theorem and, 94–95

      scientists' thoughts on, 68–70

      short–run views about, 70

Heaven. See Afterlife

Heidegger, Martin, 79, 83–86

Heisenberg, Werner, 177

Heliocentric theory of solar system, xiv–xv, 5–6, 104–5

Hell, 15–16, 251, 253, 254

Helmholtz, Hermann von, 67

Herman, Robert, 72

Heuristic programming, 195, 196

Hick, John, 261, 263–64, 265

Higgs boson, 105, 146–47, 150, 465–74

Higgs field, 150

Hilbert, David, 248

Hilbert's Hotel problem, 248–49

Hillis, Danny, 23

Himmelfarb, Gertrude, 105

Hinduism, 284

      afterlife in, 272–74

Historicity, 83–84

Hider, Adolf, 87

Hobbs, Thomas, 234

Hofstadter, Douglas R., 199

Holocaust, 260, 263

Holten, Gerald, 81

Holy Spirit, 13–14, 183–85, 399

Hubble's constant, 55, 149, 464, 480

Human beings as machines, xi, 1–2, 31–32, 516

Human importance, claim of, 250

Human race

      collective knowledge of, 41

      extinction of, 217–18

Hume, David, 7–8, 238, 247, 310

Hypnosis, 203

Hyppolite, Jean, 115

Identity. See Continuity identity theory: Pattern identity theory

Identity of Indiscernibles, 207–8, 211

Immortality, 7, 8. See also Afterlife; Eternal Life Postulate

Indeterminism, 13, 159

      decision–making process and, 194–202

      defining characteristics, 187

      epistemological indeterminism, 189

      of Omega Point Theory, 189–94

      ontological indeterminism, 189

India, ancient, 75

Inertia, principle of, 161

Infinite state machines, 32. See also Turing machines

Inflation Model, 152, 153, 451–56, 465

Information cost, 195

Information storage and processing, 113

      infinite amount of future storage and processing, 135–38

      by intelligent machines, 22–24

      life and, 124–27

      monotone increase of, 265–67, 268

      soul and, 127–28

      upper bound to rate of, 222–23

Initial data space, 161

Intelligent machines, 20

      Bekenstein Bound and, 30–32

      as beneficial to humanity, 43–44

      Chinese Room Experiment and, 38–43

      feasibility of constructing, 22–43

      finite state and infinite state machines, 31–34, 35, 36–38

      human's hostility toward, 86–88

      information processing capacity, 22–24

      information storage capacity, 22

      as next stage of intelligent life, 218

      parallel machines, 41

      Penrose's views on, 24, 26–32

      as persons, 21, 86–88

      semantics and, 42–43

      test for determining whether a computer

      is intelligent, 20–21

      See also Robot space probes

Introduction to Metaphysics (Heidegger), 84

Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, 265

Islam afterlife in, 299–304

      displacement of other religions, 333

      membership of, 283–84

      universal salvation and, 302–4

Islam, Jamal, 116

Isotropy Problem, 152–53

James, William, 13, 187, 189, 198

Japan, 87–88

Jaspers, Karl, 81

Jeans, James, 73

Jefferson, Thomas, 321–22, 325–26

Jerison, Harry J., 121

Jerome, St., 291  {524} 

Jesus Christ, 4, 226

      Jefferson's views on, 325

      knowledge about God, 316

      resurrection of, 244, 306–8, 309–13, 320

Josephus, 308

Judaism

      afterlife in, 284–90

      “future being” view of God, 4–5

      membership of, 283–84

Julian of Norwich, Mother, 265

Kant, Immanuel, 7, 203, 205, 210

Kelvin, Baron, 90

Kenny, Anthony, 26–27, 329

Kepler, Johannes, 170

Kolmogorov complexity, 295, 296

Krugman, Paul, 30

Kuhn, Thomas, 88–89

Kting, Hans, 5, 316

Lactantius, Lucius, 260

Lang, Bernhard, 258

Languages, 85

Laplace, Pierre–Simon, 313

Laser sail propulsion, 49–50, 52

Law of Mass Action, 232–33, 412–16

Leibniz, G. W. von, 207, 261

Levels of implementation, 36–37, 208, 213

Libertarianism, 186–87, 201

Libet, B., 201

Life complexity of, 118–19, 123

      as information processing, 124–27

      universal wave function as source of, 183–85

      See also Eternal Life Postulate

Life's movement into cosmos at large. See Colonization of universe

Light cones, future and past, 128–29, 130, 131

Light–year, defined, xxvi

Linde, Andrei, 328, 451–56

Liouville's Theorem, 93, 417–19

Local gauge theory, 146

Locke, John, 228

Lodagaa people, 280

Longuet–Higgins, Christopher, 26–27

Lovejoy, Arthur O., 216

Lowith, Karl, 83

Lozi people, 279

Lucas, John, 26–27

Luke, Book of, 306–8

Lun Heng (Wang), 271

Luther, Martin, 6, 318, 342 (n. 13)

Mach, Ernst, 72

Maimonides, 256, 288–89

Manifold, defined, 161–62

Mann, Christopher S., 307

Many–Worlds Interpretation, 167–68, 111, 176–77, 180, 210, 483–88

      Cat Experiment and, 169

      central claim of, 175, 488

      free will and, 173,203

      Omega Point Theory and, 169–70

      Problem of Evil and, 263

      truth of, 170–73 Maritain, Jacques, 318–19

Markov Recurrence Theorem, 95–97, 103, 420–24

Marx, Karl, 106

Mass action. See Law of Mass action

Mathematics as universal language, 85

Matter–antimatter annihilation, 53–54, 512

Maximal spacetime, 164–67, 165, 166

Maxwell, James Clerk, 230–31

Maya people, 281–82

Mayr, Ernst, 112, 298

Mbiti, John S., 279

McCarthy, John, 27

McDannell, Colleen, 258

NcNeill, William H., 333

Medawar, Peter, 111, 113

Memory, 176, 237

      resurrection of the dead and, 244–45

Meteor theory, 312, 313

Microeconomics, 245–47

Milne, Edward A., 107–8

Mind Children (Moravec), 225

Minkowski Diagrams, 128, 129

Minsky, Marvin, 201

Miracles, 308–9

Misner, Charles, 142, 144, 152

Mohammed, 226, 299, 300, 301, 304

Monod, Jacques, 199

Moon, jumping to the, 39–40

Morality, 330–32

Moravec, Hans, 17, 23, 24, 225–26

Morgenstern, Oskar, 195, 251

Mori, Masahiro, 88

Morrison, Philip, 312

Munck, Johannes, 307

Murray, John, 90

Nanotechnology, 49, 51, 52, 54

National Academy of Sciences, 5

Native Americans afterlife of, 281–83

      Christianity, shift to, 332–33  {525} 

Nazism, 83–86, 260

Nebular Hypothesis, 313

Needham, Joseph, 76, 77, 270

Newton, Isaac, 89, 163–64, 226

Nickelsburg, George W. E., 292

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 77–81, 82, 83, 88

Nihilism, 79

Nirvana, 275–77

Nisbet, Robert, 105

No Clone Theorem, 224, 235

Nonsatiation, principle of, 257, 258

Noosphere, 113

No–Return Theorem, 101–3, 427–31

Nowak, Martin A., 245

Nozick, Robert, 17

N–rays delusion, 312

“Omega Point,” origin of term, 110, 113

Omega Point Boundary Condition free will and, 186–87, 202–4

      Holy Spirit and, 13–14, 183–85

      for universal wave function, 181–85, 184

Omega Point Theory, xiv, 1, 8, 9, 71, 93, 106

      bounded system of, 114–15

      Christianity and, 16, 305–27

      closed universe and, 140–42

      completion of spacetime, 12, 144, 154–55

      creation of universe, 214–16

      density contrast of universe and, 151–53

      density of particle states and, 146

      density parameter of universe and, 149–51

      existence of universe and, 211–12

      future c–boundary of universe as single point (Omega Point), 114, 142–46, 143, 145

      “God” status of Omega Point, 12–13, 153–58

      indeterminism of, 189–94

      Many–Worlds Interpretation and, 169–70

      mass of subatomic particles and, 146–49

      meaning in life and, 82

      miracles and, 308–9

      religion and, 337–39

      Second Law of Thermodynamics and, 72–73

      Teilhard's contributions, 110, 113–16

      testable predictions of, 140–53

      theism of, 203 theodicy of, 261–65

      Tipler's personal views on, 305

      triune deity issue, 313–17

      universal history included in Omega Point, 154–55, 157–58

      See also Afterlife; Eternal Life Postulate: Resurrection of the dead

Omnipotence, 154, 259, 264

Omnipresence, 154

Omniscience, 154, 155, 159–60, 188, 259

O'Neill, Gerard, 54–55

O'Neill colonies, 46, 54–55

On the Immortality of the Soul (Hume), 247

Open universe, 116, 119

Origen, 6, 135, 254, 338

Origin of Species (Darwin), 68

Osborn, Henry, 9

Paine, Thomas, 321, 322

Pali Canon (Buddhist text), 275

Palingenesia, 75–76

Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 4, 13, 14–15, 154, 183–85, 188, 219, 293, 303, 315

Parallel machines, 41

Parrinder, Geoffrey, 279

Parsec, defined, xxvi

Particle accelerators, 147–48, 335–36

Pasteur, Louis, 8

Pattern identity theory, 227–29

      body's replacement of atoms and, 236–37

      Franklin's belief in, 324–25

      Jewish eschatology and, 286–87

      quantum mechanics and, 230–35

      “reproduction” of a human being, 239–40

      Ship of Theseus problem and, 234–35

Paul, St., 4, 6, 24, 214, 242, 308, 309

Paul VI, Pope, 320

Pelikan, Jaroslav, 334

Penrose, Roger, ix, 5, 40, 107, 169, 170, 196, 197, 221

      on c–boundary, 131

      on intelligent machines, 24, 26–32

Penrose Diagrams, 140, 141, 142, 143, 145

Periodic systems, 98–99

Personality, components of, 199–201

Peter, St., 254

Pets, resurrection of, 250

Phase paths, 181–82

Phase space, 91–94, 100, 101–2, 222

Phenomenon of Man, The (Teilhard), 110–16

Philosophy of Jesus, The (Jefferson), 325  {526} 

Physics, 5

      contingency in, 160–61

      laws of, 177

      morality and, 330–32

      objectivity of, 88–89

      theology as branch of, 328–29

      See also General relativity; Quantum mechanics

Pipes, Daniel, 304

Planck, Max, 95

Planck's constant, 100

Plato, 75–76, 158, 215, 290–91

Plotinus, 215

Plutarch, 234

Pluto Fast Flyby Mission, 48

Poincare, Henri, 90

Poincare Recurrence Theorem, 90–95, 97, 101, 103, 419–20

Polkinghome, John, 89, 293–94, 297–98

Popol Vuh (Mayan text), 281–82

Positivism, 71–72

Prayer, 337–38

Presburger arithmetic, 193

Principle of Plenitude, 216

Problem of Evil, 13, 259–65

Progress. See Eternal progress

Progressive movement, 105–7

Project Daedalus, 52

Prophets, 315–16

Proyine, William B., 9–10

Purgatory, 15–16,251,254

Quantum cosmology, 498–507

      basic ideas of, 174–78

      Hartle–Hawking boundary condition and, 178–80

Quantum mechanics, 95

      as almost periodic, 97–101

      Bekenstein Bound and, 31, 222

      contingency in, 167–73

      discreteness of, 99–100

      identity of systems, 230–35

      See also Many–Worlds Interpretation

Quantum nonlocality, 224–25

Quantum Recurrence Theorem, 97–101, 103, 424–27

Quantum states, replication of, 221–25

Qur'an (Islamic text), 299–302, 304

Racism Eternal Return and, 80–81, 83, 84–85

      intelligent machines and, 86–87

Radial energy, 111–13, 185

Rahner, Karl, 15

Rahula, Walpola, 276–77

Randomness, 29–30

      decision making and, 194–202

      free will and, 198–99

Rankine, WilHam J. M., 90

Raub, L. David, 170

Raup, David, 30, 123

Reality, ultimate, 191–92, 208, 213

Real Presence, doctrine of the, 317–21

Reason, the Only Oracle of Man (Allen), 322–23

Recurrence. See Markov Recurrence Theorem; Poincare Recurrence Theorem; Quantum Recurrence Theorem

Reductionism, xi, xiv, 294

      epistemological, 295–97

      methodological, 297

      ontological, 294–95, 297–99

Reincarnation, 272, 275, 330

Relativity. See General relativity

Religion

      morality and, 330–32

      Omega Point Theory and, 337–39

      physics and, 328–29

      revelation and, 336–37

      science and, 3, 5–10, 17, 333–34

      See also specific religions

Replica Objection, 228–29, 237, 238–39

Resurrection of Jesus, 244, 306–8, 309–13, 320

Resurrection of the dead, xiv, 1, 14–15, 100

      background environment for resurrected person, 241–42

      body of resurrected person, 15, 242–44

      cannibal example, xiii, 236

      emulation as means of resurrection, 14, 219–20

      identity issue, xiii, 227–40

      memory and, 244–45

      nonhuman creatures and, 249–50

      people from other phase trajectories and, 223–24

      “perfection” of finite natures, 244–45

      point in time when resurrection occurs, 225–26

      quantum states, replication of, 221–25

      “time between death and resurrection” issue, 226–27

      See also Afterlife; Eternal Life Postulate

Revelation, 336–37

Rheticus, xiv

Rig Veda (Hindu text), 272–73

Ritter, Don, 335–36

Robot space probes, 19, 508–17

      collison concerns, 51  {527} 

      cost of, 50–51,52, 54, 515

      feasibility of, 54

      mass of, 48–50, 51,514

      payload of, 45, 515–16

      propulsion system, 49–50, 52–54, 512

      self–reproduction by, 44–45, 51, 54–55

      solar system escape velocity, 48

      speed of, 51–52, 512

      synthesizing of life, 46, 48

      time concerns, 51 — 52, 515

Rochester Roundabout (Polkinghorne), 89

Rosenberg, Alfred, 83

Rotten Kid Theorem, 253

Russell Bertrand, 69, 70, 248

Russell, Robert, 160

Sabellius, 313

Sagan, Carl, 86–87

Schillebeeckx, Edward, 291, 292, 316, 320

Schrödinger, Erwin, 168

Schrödinger equation, 191

Schrödinger's Cat Experiment, 168–69

Schwartz, Jacob, 22, 23

Schweitzer, Albert, 4

Science–religion relationship, 3, 5–10, 17, 333–34

Searle, John, 24, 38–39, 41, 42

Second Law of Thermodynamics, 90, 94, 135, 295, 297, 441–42, 461–63, 476–78

      application to universe as whole, 72

      Heat Death doctrine and, 67

      Omega Point Theory and, 72–73

Selfish Gene, The (Dawkins), 126

Semantics, 42–43

Sex in afterlife, 256–57

Sheehan, Thomas, 10

Shen Kua, 77

Shen Mich Lun (Fan), 271

Shen Yo, 271–72

Shintoism, 88

Ship of Theseus problem, 234–35

Sigmund, Karl, 245

Simpson, George Gaylord, 111

Simulations, 206–7. See also Emulations

Sisyphus, myth of, 81–82

Smith, Jane I., 303

Smith, John Maynard, 30, 122

Soul, 1–2

      in Christian eschatology, 290–94

      Eternal Life Postulate and, 127–28

      “immorality” of, 237

      in Jewish eschatology, 287–88

      resurrection and, 226–27, 235

Space probes. See Robot space probes

Spacetime, 128–29, 129, 131, 161–64

      distinction between space and time, 180

      maximal spacetime, 164–67, 165, 166

      Omega Point and, 12, 114, 154–55

Spencer, Herbert, 105–6

Spengler, Oswald, 81

Stable motion, 60–61

Standard Model of particle physics, 88–89, 467–75

Stcherbatsky, Theodosius, 275–76

Stewart, Balfour, 73

Stoics, 75

String field theory, 179

Strong Al Postulate. See Intelligent machines

Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The (Kuhn), 88

Substance, notion of, 318–19

Suicide, 82

Summa Contra Gentiles (Aquinas), 236

Summa Theologica (Aquinas), 260–61, 265

Synaptic exocytosis, 196–97

Taha, Mahmoud Mohamed, 304

Tait, P. G., 73, 90

Talmud (Jewish text), 285–88, 303

Taoism, 76, 291

      afterlife in, 270–72

Tarski, Alfred, 192

Taub, Abraham, 136

Taub universes, 136–38, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 462

Technology, control of, 84, 85–86

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 9, 110–16, 185

Teissier, Georges, 112

Tertullian, 242

Theism, 203

Theodicies, 261–65

Theory of Everything, 209

Thermodynamics, 90, 135, 230, 231, 233, 295. See also Second Law of Thermodynamics

Tic–tac–toe, 252, 254

Tillich, Paul, 3, 4, 5, 188

Timaeus (Plato), 215

Time

      conformal time, 398

      cyclic notion of, 74–76, 89–90

      determinism and, 188

      duration, types of, 134

      entronic time, 402–3, 461

      linear notion of, 76–77, 89–90

      proper time, 398

      quantum cosmology and, 175–76  {528} 

      robot space probes and, 51–52

      subjective time, 266, 450, 461

      York time, 102, 440

      See also Spacetime

Time Without End (Dyson), 116

Topologoy change, 179, 198

Topology of universe. See Universe, topology of

Top quark, 146–47, 148, 150, 468–75

Tbynbee, Arnold. 81

Trade theory, 30, 43

Tragic Sense of Life, The (Unamuno), 8

Transubstantiation, 318–21, 334

Tristram Shandy paradox, 248

Triune deity issue, 313–17

Tuchman, Barbara, 258

Tug, Salih, 303

Tung Ku, 77

Turing, Alan, 20–21, 25, 194, 209

Turing machines, 34, 35, 36–38, 127, 446

Turing Test, 20–21

Chinese Room Experiment and, 38–43

Tyndall, John, 329

UFOs, 310–11

Unamuno, Miguel de, 8

Uncertainty principle, 222, 407

Universal Boundary Condition, 299

Universal constructors, 44–45

Universal Turing machine, 36–38

Universal wave function

      equation for, nonexistence of, 191

      Hartle–Hawking boundary condition and, 178–80

      as Holy Spirit, 13–14, 183–85

      Omega Point Boundary Condition and, 181–85, 184, 500, 503–7

Universe

      closed universe of Omega Point Theory, 140–42

      collapse of, 63–65, 117–18, 136–38, 131, 138, 139, 144, 456

      created by Omega Point, 214–16

      density contrast, 151–53, 456–58

      density parameter, 149–51, 399, 463–64

      early universe, xii

      “edge” of visible universe, 151–52

      emulation of, 208–9, 221–25

      engulfed and controlled by biosphere, 55–65, 59, 60, 61, 62, 144–45, 154

      finite time of existence, 78, 400

      inhomogeneities in, 151

      maximum expansion, size at, 149, 402

      models of, 116–17,397–98

      singularities, 101, 102, 404–5

      topology of, 397, 435, 456, 480 (n. 21)

      visible universe, x

      See also Existence of universe; Future evolution of universe

Unseen Universe, The (Stewart and Tait), 73

Updike, John, 236

Virtual machines, 36, 208, 213

Virtual reality, 108–9, 208, 220

Vitalism, 110–13

Von Neumann, John, 45, 135, 195, 251

Von Neumann probes. See Robot space probes

Voyager spacecraft, 48

Wald, Abraham, 195

Wang Ch'ung, 271

Warao people, 282

Washington, George, 322, 326

Wave function

      quantum cosmology and, 174–75, 177–78

      Quantum Recurrence Theorem and, 97–99, 100

      See also Universal wave function

Wave function reduction, 168–69

Wealth, exponentially increasing, 267–68

Weber, Max, 80

Weinberg, Steven, xii, 10, 89, 146, 171, 329, 335, 338–39

      on Heat Death doctrine, 69–70

      on ontological reductionism, 298, 299

Wheeler, John A., 169

Wheeler–DeWitt equation, 174, 177–78

Wigner, Eugene, 101, 169

Wilbert, Johannes, 282

Will to Power, The (Nietzsche), 81

Wolfson, Harry, 292, 328

World, the Flesh, and the Devil, The (Bernal), 108–10

Worldlines, 128, 129, 129, 130, 131

York, James, 102

Yoruba people, 280

Zakkai, Jochanan ben, 288, 292

Zero-sum finite dual game with perfect information, 251–53

Zwingli, Huldrych, 318

About the Author

Frank J. Tipler is Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University. He is the co–author, with John D. Barrow, of the universally praised The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Dr. Tipler's numerous articles have appeared in such journals as Nature, Physical Review Letters, Physical Review, The Astrophysical Journal, and Journal of Mathematical Physics. He divides his time between Fort Walton Beach, Florida, and New Orleans, Louisiana.