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The most absurd sentence I read today
I am proposing that the Son and the Father Singularities guided the worlds of the multiverse to concentrate the energy of the particles constituting Jesus in our universe into the Jesus of our universe.
That is from Frank Tipler's The Physics of Christianity.
But wait, there is competition for the honor:
If Jesus indeed rose from the dead using the mechanism described in Chapter 8, namely electroweak tunneling to convert matter into energy, and if indeed this was done with the intention of showing us how to use the same process, then we ourselves should be able to learn how to turn matter into either electromagnetic energy or neutrinos within a few decades.
You choose...
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 27, 2007 at 07:24 PM in Religion | Permalink
Comments
If you want a good laugh, check out the "Tags customers associate with this product" section.
I thought it was an unspoken but well-known truth that Jesus is really a marshmallow peeps - Tipler must have missed the memo.
Posted by: fustercluck at Jun 27, 2007 9:21:42 PM
It figures that somebody would translate the popular "how quantum physics is like the Eastern religion of your choice" subgenre into Christian terms.
I've always suspected that the comparisons to Eastern religion "worked" because the target audience was unfamiliar with both quantum and the religion in question, so that weird similes could pass without raising too many questions. That would argue against quantum apologetics finding much of a foothold in the US.
Posted by: Zach at Jun 27, 2007 10:00:25 PM
But if the IDers get their hands on quantum theory, they'll be even more upset than they are at evolution. They'll be at odds with the above, that's for sure! how could they possibly accept that God plays Dice?
Posted by: Allison at Jun 27, 2007 10:06:47 PM
What sequence of unfortunate events led you to actually reading those sentences? I'm all in favor of reading widely, but one can't read everything, so some filter must be applied.
Posted by: Sean Carroll at Jun 27, 2007 11:05:28 PM
It only looks like Dice from our position stuck in time, God knows what he's doing.
Posted by: John Goes at Jun 27, 2007 11:19:24 PM
How dare you mock Me.
Posted by: Jesus at Jun 28, 2007 12:15:00 AM
I was with him until the "within a few decades" bit
Posted by: Thomas at Jun 28, 2007 12:17:30 AM
As fun as it is to mock these guys, maybe they should be encouraged? It'd be great if religion became a technology-loving as opposed to a technology-fearing social force.
Posted by: Steve L at Jun 28, 2007 1:14:44 AM
The most curious thing is the 4 star rating on 9 reviews at Amazon. It surprises me the reviews are so positive in general and that there are so many in a relatively short period of time (the book was published in May, 2007).
Posted by: at Jun 28, 2007 1:40:48 AM
heh, where's your faith?
Posted by: bruce at Jun 28, 2007 2:44:59 AM
I've read his earlier "The Physics of Immortality", which is highly speculative but somewhat less ludicrous than the above quotes seem to be, and contains some very interesting lines of thinking.
Posted by: Andrew at Jun 28, 2007 3:55:53 AM
I must admit that I am quite partial to the way-Jesus in our universe into Jesus OF our universe-sounds. It's quite pleasing to the ears no matter HOW AMAZINGLY ABSURD the sentance is.
Posted by: ElectricJoe at Jun 28, 2007 4:00:23 AM
Only in America.....
Posted by: Tom at Jun 28, 2007 6:12:07 AM
Is this book part of a "Physics of ..." series? You know, "The Physics of Harry Potter", "Cartoon Physics", etc?
Posted by: Slocum at Jun 28, 2007 8:04:57 AM
Jesus Christ, Neutron Star,
Who in the multiverse do you think you are?
Posted by: Joshua Holmes at Jun 28, 2007 10:06:53 AM
I am proposing that the Son and the Father Singularities guided the worlds of the multiverse
So Christian Physics is pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths?
Posted by: foof at Jun 28, 2007 10:36:12 AM
1When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.[a] 2For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 4My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, 5so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.
Posted by: Paul (aka Saul) at Jun 28, 2007 12:24:42 PM
Tyler, I thought you took Ray Kurzweil somewhat seriously - Wouldn't he agree with the last clause of the 2nd quoted paragraph?
Posted by: BC at Jun 28, 2007 2:04:08 PM
The first sentence seems to me to make perfect sense, though it might, like any meaningful sentence, be false. My wife and I could shape the sand in an ant farm into a crude statue of me. The sand particles in that Eric Rasmusen would be seen by the ants and would become their Eric Rasmusen.
The second sentence is indeed absurd. It combines two silly things: the idea that God uses far-fetched natural causes instead of straightforward miracles (the Velikovsky idea), and the Mormon-like ide that good people become gods. This second idea is based on its own sub-absurdities--- complete lack of evidence that God has that intent, the inferior position of everyone born before 1900, and the total uselessness of the Gospels as instructions on how to turn matter into energy.
Posted by: Eric Rasmusen at Jun 30, 2007 9:37:14 AM
The first sentence seems to me to make perfect sense, though it might, like any meaningful sentence, be false. My wife and I could shape the sand in an ant farm into a crude statue of me. The sand particles in that Eric Rasmusen would be seen by the ants and would become their Eric Rasmusen.
The second sentence is indeed absurd. It combines two silly things: the idea that God uses far-fetched natural causes instead of straightforward miracles (the Velikovsky idea), and the Mormon-like ide that good people become gods. This second idea is based on its own sub-absurdities--- complete lack of evidence that God has that intent, the inferior position of everyone born before 1900, and the total uselessness of the Gospels as instructions on how to turn matter into energy.
Posted by: Eric Rasmusen at Jun 30, 2007 9:37:21 AM
See Prof. Frank J. Tipler's below paper, which among other things demonstrates that the known laws of physics (i.e., general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) require that the universe end in the Omega Point (the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity identified as being God):
F. J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers," Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964. http://math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf Also released as "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything," arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.3276
See also the below website for further information on the Omega Point Theory:
Theophysics http://geocities.com/theophysics/
Posted by: James Redford at Jan 17, 2008 6:43:58 PM
