Frank J. Tipler Quotes

[T]he claim that the central concern of religion is nonsense. Throughout human history, the central concern of religion has been human self-interest. In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, all morality has been obtained from declarative sentences of the form "Thou shalt not kill—because you'll go to Hell if you do!" In the Hindu-Buddhist tradition... "...—because you'll be born as a cockroach if you do!" ...In both cases, the appeal is to physics, not to fundamental moral postulates.

The in its counts as a person because, at any time in our future, the collective information processing system will have generated, or will be able to generate, subprograms which will be able to pass the ; high intelligence will be required at least collectively in order to survive in the increasingly complex environment near the final state.

The problem with the Drake equation is that only <math>f_p</math>—and to a lesser degree <math>n_e</math>— is subject to experimental determination... [O]ne must have a fairly large sample; for <math>f_l</math>, <math>f_i</math>, and <math>f_c</math> we have only... the Earth. However, if... any intelligent species... will begin... galactic exploration within 100 years after developing... interstellar communication... the sample size is enlarged... Since <math>f_p</math>—and <math>n_e</math> can... be determined by direct astrophysical measurement, the fact that extraterrestrial intelligent beings are not present in our solar system permits us to obtain a direct astrophysical measurement of an upper bound to... <math>f_lf_if_c</math>, which depends only on biological and sociological factors.

[T]he problem of interstellar travel has been reduced to... transporting a von Neumann machine to another stellar system. This can be done even with present-day rocket technology.

[I]t seems likely that a species engaging in interstellar communication would possess a fairly sophisticated computer technology. ...Sagan has asserted that 'Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence... will require... computer actuated machines with abilities approaching... intelligence'.

It is a deficiency in computer technology, which prevents us from beginning the exploration of the Galaxy tomorrow.

With the introduction into physics of the Dirac/Dyson Eternal Life Postulate, science has taken the last independent stronghold of theology.

It is argued that if extraterrestrial intelligent beings exist, then their spaceships must already be present in our solar system.

The basic idea... is straightforward and... has led other authors, such as Fermi... Dyson... Hart... Simpson... and Kuiper & Morris... to conclude that extraterrestrial beings do not exist: if they did exist and possessed the technology for interstellar communication, they would also have developed interstellar travel and thus would already be present in our solar system.

Only if God is not in any sense contingent can one avoid regress posed in the query, who created God?

[T]he probability of the evolution of creatures with the technological capability of interstellar communication within five billion years after the development of life on an Earth-like planet is less than 10^-10, and thus we are the only intelligent species now existing in this Galaxy.

This argument assumes that the five probabilities... do not vary rapidly with galactic age. The available astrophysical evidence and most theories of the formation of solar systems indicate... this... is valid.

[T]o really test the Theory, we will need the upgrade and either the SSC—the Texas Supercollider—or the European LHC. ...[P]erhaps it would be worth several billion dollars to establish that God exists, and that one day we will all be resurrected to live forever with Him/Her.

[I]s the God (...Person ...) the God? ...the uncreated Creator of the ...universe ...Who exists necessarily ... i.e., the Person's nonexistence would be a logical contradiction.

There is an interesting connection between my claim that the Omega Point is a Person because it contains a Turing-Test-passing subprogram, and the Christian notion of Person, as this word is applied to God. In classical Greek, the word prosopon (πρόσωπον)—persona is the Latin equivalent—primarily meant "face" or "countenance," but the word also meant a mask that an actor wore to indicate the character... By the fourth century A.D. ...this word had come to refer to those innate aspects of the human mentality which differentiate one human being from another. Today the word... refers to the total individual human mind, including the innate and learned aspects... [T]o interact with us human beings as a Person... the Omega Point would be revealing only a miniscule portion... a Person in the original sense and in the fourth century sense... .