Talk:Omega point

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Didn't Teilhard de Chardin name as "Omega point" Jesus Christ as goal of evolution? Or something. -- Error

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[edit] Improper Use of "Evolution"

I've seen the improper use of the term "Evolution" in both the article, and above, in the discussion. It was said in the article that man or his consciousness has an "aim," and above that Jesus was the "goal of evolution." Evolution has no goal, nor an aim. These are improper uses of the word. Evolution is the change of genetic characteristics of a population over time. It is driven by natural selection, sexual selection, neutral selection, and even artificial selection. It is anthropomorphic to say that it has a goal, and it revives 300 year old bad biology that continues to misinform people. --FoodRiot 01:46, 15 May 2006 (UTC)Foodriot


(reply) ---> :Artificial selection is intrinsically goal oriented. --Amit 07:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

(reply) -------> nope, your wrong. It is completely situational, it has only to do with fitness relative to a given environment. Its biology, not philosophy. When you philosophize it, you screw it up and dont understand it. --FoodRiot 01:46, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


(reply) ---> Oxford English Dictionary definition of 'evolution':

1. The opening out or unfolding of what is wrapped up (e.g. a roll, a bud, etc.); fig. the spreading out before the mental vision (of a series of objects); the appearance in orderly succession of a long train of events. Also concr. ‘the series of things unfolded or unrolled’ (J.). 5. a. The process of evolving, developing, or working out in detail, what is implicitly or potentially contained in an idea or principle; the development of a design, argument, etc. 6. Biol. a. Of animal and vegetable organisms or their parts: The process of developing from a rudimentary to a mature or complete state.

It appears, FoodRiot that you may be refering to 'theory of evolution' (first propounded under that name by Bonnet 1762) which the OED defines thus: "The origination of species of animals and plants, as conceived by those who attribute it to a process of development from earlier forms, and not to a process of ‘special creation’. Often in phrases doctrine, theory of evolution."

MatthewStevenCarlos 14 May 2006 22:25 EDT (GMT -4).



    • Fuller Sense of Omega Point & 'Evolution' as 'Disclosure'

While this non-goal-oriented understanding of evolutions is certainly au courant especially in the scientific community, such was/is not always the conceptualization - particularly within certain Catholic metaphysics. The consensus is Chardin worked with a teleological metaphysics (literally meaning the 'study of ends/end-points/goals'). From this perspective evolution (literally 'to unroll') might be best understood in parallel to Heidegger's notion of 'unfolding': Dasein (and in fact all Being) slowly (from a linear perspective on temporality, such as Kant postulated, time is structured into human consciousness, although not the absolute perspective of Being itself) disclosing itself to itself - that is to say from the human perspective 'human being' gradually reveals/shows/displays/realizes the vast extent of its own nature to itself. This 'disclosing' (as Heidegger calls it .. meaning a 'making intelligible' which is synonymous with 'truth' / 'alathea' in Greek or (borrowing an American colloquialism) 'the be all, end all') takes place against the horizon of all beings (all existant things), and in fact can not be adequately understood apart from these relationships. The point of full disclosure is what Chardin calls 'the Omega Point'. As Dasein is always unfolding in time, the Omega Point is only realized at the end of linear time (or perhaps synonymous with the end of time).

Now the end of linear time can be understood not only mathmatically, but also metaphysically/ontologically. One possibility from this ontological perspective is that as (following Kant) time exists not objectively but entirely as a structure of human consciousness, then as human consciousness changes so that humans no longer perceive time, time itself will no longer exist (aka 'end').

All of the above is only the philosophy necessary to understand Chardin's conception of the Omega Point. There is still at least one other essential discipline necessary: theology. Chardin was a Catholic priest, let us not forget. The importance that the existential figure of Jesus as the Christ plays in Catholicism in general and for Chardin (how ever liberal his theorization of this doctrinal point) must be grasped in order to fully comprehend his creation/apprehension: 'the Omega Point'. Of course this forum is too limited to allow for a full exegesis, but allow me to provide an incomplete reduction - to 'cut to the chase' sort to speak. Taking into account the above philosophical and theological positions, the Omega Point as expressed by Chardin (rather than those who transpose/translate his ideas into one or another discrete realm of intellectual endevor such as computational theory/artificial intelligence) postulates that Jesus as the 'Christ' was/is in his 'fully human' and 'fully divine' being an instantiation of the most disclosed/unfolded state of Dasein which can ever exist, and in fact will exist 'at the end of time'. Thus temporally as well as ontologically Jesus 'is' the Omega Point.

This has serious implications for philosophy (metaphysics as well as cosmology), physics, and Catholic theology (for which Chardin was censured by the Church administration): it means that the 'eternal' (that which is not bounded by the structure of time) can manifest in its entirety within the realm of temporality (and not destroy temporality); it means that multiple 'realities'/ 'universes' can simultaneously exist (think 'super string theory'); it means that the 'end of the world' has already happened; it means 'the kingdom of God/heaven' or the 'New Jerusalem' already exists and is manifest although 'man does not perceive it'. Most profoundly from the theological perspective it means in some real sense that humanity is evolving into God, and thus human nature is essentially (although perhaps not entirely) divine.

MatthewStevenCarlos 12 May 2006 10:33 EDT (GMT -4).

[edit] Slightly random

This is possibly the most useless fact I could come up with in connection to this topic, but the British dance band The Shaman did a track (called Re-evolution, IIRC. On the Boss Drum album and remixed on Different Drum) in the early 90's with Terence McKenna in which McKenna talks about an omega point of transcendence floating in hyperspace at the end of the universe throwing off reflections of itself into the past, illuminating mystics and visionaries. Make of this what you will, he also heavily advocates the use of hallucinogenic drugs as a means of exploring these things, but nonetheless it appears to be a reference to this concept.

Mr Bungle, or specifically Trey Spruance, Tiplered its hat somewhat to Omega Point Theory in the lyrics to the track "None Of Them Knew They Were Robots".

[edit] Rings a bell

This theory (from 1986) sounds awfully like Asimov's "The Last Question" (1950s).

[edit] This article needs to be broken into two

Is the term disambiguation? I usually limit my edits to copyedits, so I don't feel comfortable doing this myself. But really, the article reads terribly right now. It's obviously talking about two very different uses of the term. In the very least discussion of the two usages should separated with subheadings and an outline.

i don't see it- what two different things do you see going on here? --Heah (talk) 18:53, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tunnelling

The section about quantum tunnelling:

"...baryon tunnelling as a means of propelling interstellar spacecraft. If the baryons in the universe were to be annihilated by this process, then this would force the Higgs field toward its absolute vacuum, cancelling the positive cosmological constant, stopping the acceleration, and allowing the universe to collapse into the Omega Point"

doesn't make any kind of physical sense. Quantum tunnelling has nothing to do with propulsion, or particle annihilation, and conservation laws would prevent all matter in the universe from being annihilated in any case (unless an equal amount of anti-matter existed). Did it get muddled in the writing, or is Tipler's "theory" just muddled to begin with?

[edit] rem unhelpful link

I removed The Last Question, which i have read, because it's not similar enough to Omega point ideas. I also question, but don't know enough to remove, links to Elisabet Sahtouris (gaia theory and sustainability advocacy are not the same as op), and The Footprints of God (which says nothing to explain the connection).

This raises an interesting point of writing/editing an encyclopedia (and please help this almost-no-longer-a-newbie): given that we have a minor problem with unhelpful links, should we link to articles that say nothing to explain why the link is relevant? Or if we know of a good reason to link which isn't clear from the articles, should we leave the link and add the info to the articles? Hope this helps, "alyosha" (talk) 18:52, 6 January 2006 (UTC)


Re: Tipler's "recent change". Can we have a link to where he has explained that?

[edit] Ordered and linked

Hi all, I tried to order this pae a little better because it was talking about many conceptions of the Omega Point without divisions. I think it was important to link Tipler's Omega Point to this page (that's why I did just that:), but I don't think that page is long enough to consider it a "main page".

Also, I think this page still needs to talk more about Chardin's original concept besides the intro. Hope someone helps on that. Thanks! Kreachure 16:17, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infinite amount of percieved time...

Is it just me or does the computer have to last until a singularity is reached in order for there to be infinite percieved time within the simulation? My reasoning is that for there to be an infinite amount of percieved time in the simulation, there has to be an infinite amount of computing capability, which is only achieved when a singularity is reached, by which time the computer cannot possibly exist any longer...Danorux 05:09, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure how much I understand some of the finer points of this, but I believe the jist is that by then, we will have a computer capible of "surviving" singularity, if such a thing is possible. 165.134.168.190 17:26, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] merge of tiplerian omega point

I can see how the language might lead somebody to believe that the tiplerian omega point and the omega point (a much more broad description) should be confined to the same article. However, the two are substantially different. Moreover, the tiplerian omega point article refers to a specific, doctrinal concept -- a concept that also references an individual person's theorems. It seems inappropriate to merge the articles. Consider this simile. These two articles would be like having an article on Yaqui animism and a separate animism article. It just makes sense to me. Lastly, while the merge tags have been added to both articles, and the "discuss" link is part of that template, no discussion has been had. I'm inclined to remove the tags unless somebody would like to explain the thinking behind adding them. 140.90.208.67 17:07, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the idea of merging the two articles shows a fundamental lack of understanding tiplerian eschatology. its been a month since the last discussion on the matter and only myself and one other have commented. The tag should be removed. And I think the discussion should have been direction to the other pages talk...but maybe thats a wikipedia thing- to have merge discussions on the talk page of the article where the merge is to go rather than from whence it came, but I think thats wrong. 75.26.5.96 02:25, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The City and the Stars

The being Vanamonde from Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars resembles the Omega point to a great degree, better than most of the popular culture references. Anyone else agree enough to add it to the main page? 131.111.135.117 15:50, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Omega point is not the technological singularity."

The "autonomous machine computation" mentioned in this section of the article would actually be our own thought processes. I see no real difference, then, between the Singularity and Omega Point.


I agree- a strong technological singularity would contain/connect to the Omega point[s] through physically equivalent simulations of the quantum multiverse and sheer computing power- /:set\AI

[edit] Clarify "Transcendent"

Under the heading Five Attributes of the Omega Point, the link transcendent goes to a disambiguation page. I was reading this to learn about the concept, so I have no idea which meaning of "transcendent" is intended. Could a subject matter expert please fix the link? Thanks.

I'm pretty sure it's the philosophical concept that's being referred to, but I'm not an expert. » byeee 19:16, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Popular Culture links

I vote to delete the Stargate reference. this does not seem to have anything to do w giant AI at end of the universe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vroman (talk • contribs) 17:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nietzschean connection?

I'm not an expert on the subject but reading the article I can't help but wonder that the omega point is essentially the same idea as Nietzsche's conception of the "Superman". Thoughts? Red marquis 14:28, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Popular Culture: Galactic Milieu trilogy (Julian May)

Although it doesn't explicitly use the term Omega point, the idea is used in Julian May's Galactic Milieu novels, and Teilhard de Chardin is frequently refernced by name in relation to the idea of Unity, which seems very similar to Teilhard de Chardin's Omega point. MorkaisChosen 14:14, 3 November 2007 (UTC)