Wednesday, October 6, 2010

The Physics of Christianity (3): Tipler's Version of Afterlife

In the standard orthodox Christian 0utlook, an "afterlife" is claimed to exist, mostly based on selected passages of scriptures. However, no one has actually taken videos of such, and NDEs hardly count since they're only ersatz evidence not bona fide (also many NDEs can be explained by appeal to hallucinations that arise because brain electro chemistry goes awry as the assorted bodily systems ...including respiration, blood circulation, and synaptic firings ..collapse. In addition, the orthodox Christian claims one actually enters some abode at death, either rewarded with a Hell or Heaven.

The nature of the first is more or less in dispute with some 55 million Pentecostals and Evangelicals leaning to the old "fire and brimstone" version, but most Catholics and Catholic theologians leaning to the more subtle torment of simple "pain of loss", as in non-ability to participate in the divine nature. (This pain is fully understandable when one recalls how painful it is be to be separated from a loved one). Meanwhile, the nature of Heaven ranges from childish notions of floating on clouds and playing harps to a more sublime concept of enhanced sense of cosmic unity and experience of part of the divine consciousness. ("Beatific Vision")

Again, none of these has been proven to any skeptic's satisfaction, and the most we can say therefore, is that all the preceding either represent wishful thinking, or non-thinking directed by mere adherence to a bible passage or two. As far as the atheist is concerned, the issue is settled, and when you die, that's it - lights out! Permanently! We go into nothingness. Mature adults accept this, but delusional infants (like most Americans) don't.

In Tipler's case, both physics and modern biology (genetics) are used to impart a scientific patina to all these issues. This is one of the more difficult aspects of his work so I will work through it piece by piece.

We begin with human resurrection.

In his chapter on this, Tipler writes (p. 78):

"...every human being who has ever lived will one day be resurrected, never to die again. Since this is the central claim of Christianity it is important to consider why this is true."

He then proceeds to use modern information theory in conjunction with an ultimate fate of the cosmos, presumed to be collapse. He notes the upper bound (Bekenstein Bound) to the information coded in a human being is ~ 10^45 bits, and for the entire visible universe this is ~ 10^125 bits. It is further known that the information content is the logarithm of the total number of possible states a human or universe can be in, viz.:

I = ln (g)

where g denotes the possible states, and as Tipler notes (ibid.)

"if we were to exponentiate these numbers, we would have the number of distinct humans and visible universes there cuold possibly be. These numbers are enormous, but nevertheless finite"

Checking this we find:

for humans: n(s) = exp (45) = 3.4 x 10^19

for universes:

n(s) = exp(125) = 1.9 x 10^54

Thus, he concludes "there is a finite complexity to a human being and to a visible universe at the present time"

He then argues that :

"as the universe collapses into the Final Singularity, the amount of complexity in all the universes of the multiverse increases without limit. Not the overall complexity but the amount of information coded in the computers of the biosphere increases without limit. Therefore there will come a time in the far future when the amount of information required to reproduce, as a computer simulation (one exact down to the quantum state) every human being who has ever lived is insignificant with computer capacity."


In other words, to ensure the resurrection of humans, Tipler is predicating his reality on the basis of a simulated universe! Readers of this blog may recall that I previously examined such an entity in three instalments, viz.

1)http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/03/is-universe-simulation-i.html

2) http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/03/is-universe-simulation-ii.html

3) http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/03/is-universe-simulation-iii.html

also predicated on a sophisticated quantum computer.

Thus, according to Tipler, any and every being that has ever lived (I am not sure about animals but suppose this includes them) will be resurrected in an infinitely advanced virtual reality. In the subjective time frame, all those inhabiting that last instant (in proper time) will experience a reasonable (virtual) facsimile of eternity. It is important to note that all these resurrected beings are simulations, not beings in solid material form (i.e. human bodies). Nonetheless, these simulations, much like those in a high-level virtual reality computer program(like the SIMS), can interact.

He clarifies this virtual basis of existence (p. 80):

"Our resurrected bodies will be in the form of computer programs which are spiritual entities....In computer language, our future bodies will be augmented versions of our current bodies but at a higher level of implementation"

What Tipler seems to be demanding here is that the information capacity at "resurrection" nearly eliminates all entropy (H). Recall the information capacity C = I - H, where the information I is in bits processed per second. Thus, the putative resurrected beings would have C ~ I (and H -> 0)

More importantly we need to recall the words of Seth Lloyd (‘Programming the Universe’, p. 154):

A quantum computer that simulated the universe would have exactly as many qubits as there are in the universe, and the logic operations on those qubits would exactly simulate the dynamics of the universe.”

And further (ibid.)

Because the behavior of elementary particles can be mapped directly onto the behavior of qubits acting via logic operations, a simulation of the universe on a quantum computer is indistinguishable from the universe itself

In other words, at root the simulated cosmos is a physical construct, not a "spirtual one".

Another problem that arises, which Tipler ignores, is what happens in terms of quantum entanglement? If the whole multiverse is a unitary quantum computing simulation then what is to prevent quantum information entanglement between parallel universes, say some of the 'evil' in our universe seeping into other less evil ones? Or even into the putatively perfect one? Or, is the divine computer programmer able to contain or limit entanglement to single universes, and if so, how?

A more serious issue is that the resurrections of beings in our universe (to reach an ultimate minimal state of complexity) requires collapse, or all the mass-energy of the cosmos being annihilated in a new superdense state at the "final singularity". However, the existing evidence shows that this isn't going to happen! (What we would call a "re-collapse", since it occurs after a prolonged expansion.)

Universes that re-collapse (decelerate), expand forever with zero limiting velocity (e.g. v uniform) or expand forever with positive limiting velocity (accelerate) are called in turn: 'closed' (can have curvature k = +1); 'critical' (k=0)or 'open' (can be k = -1), respectively Now, to determine whether any cosmological template leads to deceleration or not, we need to find the cosmic density parameter:

Omega = rho / rho_c

where the denominator refers to the critical density.

Thus if: rho > rho_c (c = critical)

then the cosmic density is able to reverse the expansion (e.g. decelerate it) and conceivably usher in a new cycle. (New Big bang etc.) The observations that help determine how large rho is, come mainly from observing galaxy clusters in different directions in space and obtaining a density estimate from them.

Current data, e.g. from Boomerang and other satellite detectors (See e.g. 'Balloon Measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background Strongly Favor a Flat Cosmos', p. 17, Physics Today, July 2000) shows that Omega~ 0.3 or that:

rho = 0.3 (rho_c)

I.e. that rho< rho_c so there is no danger of the cosmos decelerating. If it doesn’t decelerate, it means there'll be NO end singularity. But if this is so, then there can be no resurrections of the type Tipler forecasts, leading to enhanced values of C = (I - H).

Next: Tipler's version of Hell, Satan and demons.

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