Socrates / Podcasts
Posted on: October 29, 2013 / Last Modified: May 28, 2024
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: RSS
Dr. Frank J. Tipler is a physicist and cosmologist perhaps best known for concepts such as the Omega Point or The Cosmological Singularity. He is a professor of mathematical physics at Tulane University and the author of books such as The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, The Physics of Immortality, and The Physics of Christianity.
During our 1 hour conversation with Dr. Tipler, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why he is both a physics imperialist and fundamentalist; the cosmological singularity, the technological singularity, and the omega point; his personal journey from Christian fundamentalism through agnosticism and atheism and back to theism and Christianity; why most physicists are good atheists and bad scientists; immortality; determinism and whether God plays dice with the universe; mind-uploading and [Quantum] consciousness…
The most interesting quote that I will take away from this interview with Frank J. Tipler is:
If the laws of physics be for us, who can be against us?!
As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.
Who is Frank J. Tipler? (in his own words)
I was born and raised in Andalusia, a small farming town in southern Alabama. At the age of five, while in kindergarten, I became fascinated by the work of Alabama only famous physicist, the rocket scientist Werner von Braun, and decided then that I wanted to be an astrophysicist. With this goal, I obtained by an undergraduate degree in physics in 1969 at M.I.T., where I first learned of the Many-Worlds of quantum mechanics, and of the Singularity Theorems of Stephan Hawking and Roger Penrose. In 1976, I obtained a Ph.D. in physics for my proof, using the techniques of Hawking and Penrose, that creating a time machine would necessarily result in singularities in the laboratory. I was hired in 1979, as a post-doc by John A. Wheeler, the great physicist best known for his work on black hole theory, to extend my 1978 proof that in general relativity, time is not relative: a unique rest frame exists. I became Professor of Mathematical Physics in 1981 at Tulane University, where I have been ever since, working to draw the full implications of my earlier work: that quantum mechanics and general relativity require that the Cosmological Singularity – the Uncaused First Cause – consists of Three Persons but one Cause. I have now written up these results for a popular audience, and the book is The Physics of Christianity.