From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Jul 04 2000 - 09:41:36 MDT
Spudboy100@aol.com writes:
> Can't help you with this one. Tipler (in his reclusiveness) never
> seemed to state that he believed in religion, merely that the
> ultimate future appeared to closely resemble some religious aspects
> regarding eschatology.
He might not be saying "Omega == God", but he definitely hints it
extremely strongly.
> Most dogmatic scientists, yes I do use that
> word, dogmatism, purposefully, simply disregard Tipler, because he
> messes with their world view.
Only partially; sure, there are plenty of physicists who think that
there should be waterproof boundaries between physics and religion,
but there are many other reasons to scoff at Tipler.
> Of the attacks, I have seen in the last six years; most seem not to
> disagree with the physics behind it.
I have seen plenty of attacks that disagree with the physics, there
are many very weak points and assumptions there. Most attackers are of
course not very detailled, like the SciAm reviewer of PoI they just
scoff at the notion of a supercomputer built out of nuclear plasma and
simular undemonstrated wild stuff, but there has been many good points
raised too (e.g. spacetime quantization, black hole horizons - and of
course the open universe).
> Of the attacks, I have seen in the last six years; most seem not to
> disagree with the physics behind it. But they are dead set against
> making conclusions regarding the future universe, that might include
> any resemblences to what religion had sugested. That is where Tipler
> has gotten his chops busted.
Sure. But even if you disregard that, there is a lot of relevant
criticism. In addition, the idea has now been adopted by many people
who are twisting it to their own ends in science fiction, religion,
new age or transhumanism - since it is not firmly based on observable
facts, especially not in its mutated forms, it can become anything.
I *like* Tiplers calculations, they were what made me become a
transhumanist. But when he tried to make the OP not just a possibility
but a necessity in his cosmology, then he made a big mistake both from
a science point of view and from a religious point of view.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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