Frank J. Tipler

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Frank J. Tipler (born in 1947 in Andalusia, Alabama) is a professor of mathematical physics at Tulane University, New Orleans, physicist, theologian, cornucopian philosopher and intelligent design advocate.

In his controversial book The Physics of Immortality, Tipler claims to prove the existence of life after death, provided by an artificial intelligence he calls the "Omega Point" and which he identifies with God. The line of argument is that the evolution of intelligent species will enable scientific progress to grow exponentially, eventually enabling control over the universe even on the largest possible scale. Tipler predicts that this process will culminate with a nearly all-powerful artificial intelligence whose computing speed and information storage will grow exponentially at a rate exceeding the collapse of the Universe, thus providing infinite "virtual time" which will be used to run computer simulations of all intelligent life that has ever lived in the history of our universe. This virtual reality exercise is what Tipler means by "the resurrection of the dead."

Tipler claims to derive this end state and its inevitability from general principles. However, a large majority of his colleagues in physics consider his logic to be flawed and do not take his theory seriously. Tipler's so-called Omega Point Theory makes physical assumptions, in particular that the universe will end in a final singularity (the Big Crunch), and that no other (nonfinal) singularities exist in the universe. These assumptions are by no means universally accepted.

George Ellis's review of Tipler's book in the journal Nature is typical of the reception Tipler received in the academic community: according to Ellis, Tipler's book on the Omega Point is "a masterpiece of pseudoscience ... the product of a fertile and creative imagination unhampered by the normal constraints of scientific and philosophical discipline", ^[1] and Michael Shermer devoted a chapter of Why People Believe Weird Things to enumerating perceived flaws in Tipler's thesis.^[2] Other scientists, such as Oxford physicist David Deutsch, find Tipler's arguments compelling. In his 1997 book, The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch incorporates Tipler's Omega Point Theory as a central feature of his "Four Strands" Theory of Everything.

His earlier book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (with John D. Barrow), reviews the intellectual history of teleology, the large number coincidences of Eddington and P. A. M. Dirac, then sets out Tipler's thinking as of the early 1980s on the ultimate fate of the universe.

Over the years, Tipler has had fruitful interactions with the theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg.

Tipler's writings on scientific peer review have been cited by William A. Dembski as forming the basis of the process for review in the intelligent design journal Progress in Complexity, Information and Design of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, where both Tipler and Dembski serve as fellows.