ideal society the conditions of power used to achieve it will corrupt those who wield the power. Will future reformers learn or will some still unknown Robespierre sac-rifice human dignity on the altar of revo-lutionary zeal? Given the prostrate, tragic character of life in Russia today, it is clear that the ideal end was not worth the price in suffering that it exacted from the peo-ple.

What a pity to have had an entire nation predicate its existence on the myth

of Lenin. How important it is for the peo-ple of Russia and others who were enam-ored of Leninism to confront the truth of Lenin, abandon the icon, and move on.

Notes

1. I have written three articles in FREE INQUIRY about my visits to Russia in 1989, 1991, and 1992 as the Communist state was breaking up, "Militant Atheism Versus Freedom of Conscience: Reflections on the Moscow Atheist/Humanist Dialogue" (Fall 1989); "The End of 'Kremlin II'?" (Spring 1991); and "Letter from Moscow: Russia in Transition"

(Summer 1992). 2. Four books have been published by

Prometheus Books or are in press: Yuri Buranov, Lenin's Will: Falsified and Forbidden (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1994); Yuri L. Dyakov and Tatyana S. Bushuyeva, The Red Army and the Wehrmacht: How the Soviets Militarized Germany, 1922-33, and Paved the Way for Fascism (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1995); Gennadi V. Kostyrchenko, Out of the Red Shadows: Anti-Semitism in Stalin's Russia (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1995); and Valentina Vilkova, Struggle for Power: 1923 (Amherst, N.Y.: Pro-metheus Books, forthcoming, 1995).

3. Dmitry Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York: Grove Atlantic, 1991). •

Scientist Nitwit Atheist Proves Existence of God

Victor J. Stenger

The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology and the Resurrection of the Dead, by Frank J. Tipler (New York: Doubleday, 1994) 528 pp., cloth $24.95.

The jacket of The Physics of Immortality tells us that author Frank

Tipler had arrived at a "... stunning con-clusion: Using the most advanced and sophisticated methods of modern physics, relying solely on the rigorous procedures of logic that science demands, he had cre-ated a proof of the existence of God." Conservative radio newsman Paul Harvey obviously had read this when he exclaimed: "Professor Frank Tipler was a typical scientist nitwit and an atheist. As a physicist, he could not accept anything he could not prove. But when he began to cal-culate the ultimate end of the universe—wow! He discovered God!" (Conservative

Victor J. Stenger is professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii and the author of Not By Design: The Origin of the Universe (Prometheus Books, 1988) and Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses (Prometheus Books, 199O). He is currently working on The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology.

Chronicle, October 26, 1994). Tipler hedges no bets. He assures the

reader who may have lost a loved one or is afraid of death: `Be comforted, you and they shall live again" (p. 1). He claims his deductions follow straight from the laws of physics as we now understand them.

Frank J. Tipler is professor of mathe-matical physics at Tulane University. He is already well known from his earlier book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, co-authored with John D. Barrow, that has become an authoritative source for the new generation of Christian apologists who claim that science and religion are converging, and that what they are converging on is religion. Before the apologists get too excited about Tipler's latest effort, however, I urge them to read it very carefully.

Tipler's idea is not new, being the sort of thing cosmologists prattle about when they sit around drinking beer. However, he has added a few wrinkles. The author argues that the robots we should be able to build by the next century will ultimately spread themselves throughout the uni-verse, each generation of robot producing ever-superior versions of itself. He esti-mates that robotic life will blanket the galaxy in a mere million years. In a hun-dred million years, it will spread to the Virgo cluster of the galaxies. By then,

homo sapiens will likely have long van-ished from the universe.

Finally, after the passage of a billion billion years, give or take a hundred bil-lion years or so, the universe will be uni-formly populated with an extremely advanced form of life that will be capable of feats far beyond anyone's (but Tipler's) imagination.

At that point, Tipler assumes the uni-verse will begin to contract toward what is called "the big crunch," the reverse of the big bang. Now, it should be noted that most cosmologists currently do not expect that the big crunch will happen. The best guess based on current observation and theory is that the universe is open; that is, it will expand forever. Tipler, however, claims that his theory "predicts" that the universe is closed. It is a strange sort of scientific prediction, when a desired result far in the future is used to predict a current fact. But, at least we have a falsifiable claim: if someday cosmologists convinc-ingly demonstrate that the universe is open, then Tipler will be refuted.

Tipler makes other "predictions," such as the masses of the top quark and Higgs boson. But these are essentially based on the unrelated calculations of others and he is being a bit disingenuous to claim them as his own.

The big crunch is not sufficient for immortality. The crunch must happen in a highly specific way in order to maintain causal contact across the universe and pro-vide sufficient energy for what life must then accomplish in order to avoid extinc-tion. In other words, the collapse of the universe must be very carefully controlled.

Now, if Tipler believed in a supernatur-al cosmic mind controlling everything, he

54 FREE INQUIRY

could simply say "anything is possible." But he does not escape to supernaturalism. Rather he escapes to chaos. He notes that the equations of general relativity imply that the collapse of the universe is chaotic, meaning that it is very sensitive to the con-ditions that exist at the start of the col-lapse. According to Tipler, the "butterfly effect" that characterizes chaos will be uti-lized to guide the collapse of the universe.

The advanced life-form that evolves from our twenty-first century robots must collapse the universe in a highly con-trolled way. Assuming it can manage this, life then converges on what the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called the "Omega Point." Tipler associates the Omega Point, as did Teilhard, with God.

Being the ultimate form of power and knowledge, the Omega Point would also be the ultimate in love. Loving us, it would proceed to resurrect all humans who ever lived (along with their favorite pets and most popular endangered species). This is accomplished by means of a perfect computer simulation, what Tipler calls an "emulation."

Since each of us is defined by our DNA, the Omega Point simply emulates all possible humans that could ever live, which of course includes you and me. Our memories have long dissolved into entropy, but Omega has us relive our lives in an instant, along with all the other pos-sible lives we could have lived. Those that Omega-God deems deserving will get to live even better lives, including lots of sex with the most desirable partners we can imagine. Even this Tipler places on a mathematical basis, computing the relative "psychological impact" of meeting the most beautiful women whose existence is logically possible compared to simply the most beautiful woman in the world. He finds this to be [log o10` ").c""]/[logio109] = 100,000 (p. 257).

Those deemed undeserving by Omega will be put through purgatories, but if they perform satisfactorily they may gain heav-en. So, we can all correct our mistakes. I will live where I learn to hit a curveball. Hitler will live a life in which he is Jewish. Bill Clinton will be president over and over again until he finally gets it right.

Tipler claims that the Omega Point represents the God of Judeo-Christian religion. Omega is the God of Jews who

told Moses, in Hebrew, "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh," which Tipler translates as "I will be what I will be" in place of the conven-tional "I am that I am." Omega is the God of the early Christians who will reassem-ble the complete bodies of all humans on Judgment Day. Omega is the God of Islam, who continually destroys and recreates the universe from moment to moment and provides for his warriors a paradise of total pleasure.

Tipler finds parallels of Omega Point Immortality with the views of rebirth in Taoism and early Hinduism. He finds Buddhism also consistent, interpreting nirvana as "heaven" despite its literal meaning of "extinction." And not one to be politically incorrect, Tipler finds paral-lels as well in African and Native American religions.

Scientists have been less kind than media reporters in their evaluation of The Physics of Immortality. George Ellis starts his review in Nature magazine: "This has to be one of the most misleading books ever produced ... a masterpiece of pseu-doscience" (Nature 371, September 8, 1994, p. 115). Other prominent scientists have called the book "awful" and accused Tipler of writing it for the money. Undoubtedly, Paul Harvey would call

The following are a list of books that might prove helpful for those who wish to further pursue the topic of contemporary humanism and feminism.—EDs.

Reclaiming the Mainstream: Indi-vidualist Feminism Rediscovered, by Joan Kennedy Taylor (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1993) 271 pp., cloth $24.95. Taylor utilizes the work of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), a human-ist and feminist, to show the importance of individualism as the starting-point for social change. She gives a masterful cri-tique of the dangers that collectivist thinking has wrought on the feminist movement.

The Woman of Reason: Feminism, Humanism, and Political Thought, by

them "nitwits," so I will not mention their names.

However, Harvey and other believers should read The Physics of Immortality carefully, though much of the text is incomprehensible to non-physicists. For Tipler's Omega Point God is not the supernatural, spiritual being that their reli-gious leaders have imagined. Tipler's Omega is completely material rather than spiritual, natural rather than supernatural. His resurrected humans do not have bod-ies or souls—they are bits in a computer. I doubt very much that this is what Paul Harvey or the pope has in mind.

Is the Omega Point possible? Who can say what will happen a billion billion years in the future. Tipler, despite his claim, cannot predict that we will be res-urrected at the Omega Point. And I can't predict we will not be. Maybe we are liv-ing a simulation right now.

Others have imagined computers and robots as a means for extending human survival. While a purely material immor-tality may be problematical, the chances are surely better than those provided by supernatural fantasies. It's too bad Tipler makes his case so poorly, providing so many targets for ridicule. I am not sure he isn't pulling our legs.

Karen Green (New York: Continuum, 1995) 220 pp., cloth $24.95. Green reex-amines the humanistic tradition's influ-ence on feminist thought and argues that rationality is not a masculine attribute, but rather the means by which individuals throughout history have struggled against oppression.

Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, by Rosi Braidotti (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994) 326 pp., paper $15.50. Heavy-going for those unfamiliar with postmod-ernist jargon, this book calls for a reap-praisal of "classical rationality" and its role in oppressing women—but it might well offer a case study in the danger of abandoning such rationality when it

Books in Brief

Spring 1995 55