The Fabric of Reality David Deutch

Notes
 
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In 
Freedom and Rationality: Essays in Honour of John Watkins.
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2 
Actually mathematical theorems are not proved by ‘pure’ argument
(independent of physics) either, as I shall explain in Chapter 10.
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3 
Actually it could still be true universally, if other theories about the
experimental set-up were false.
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Tipler replies
 
1 
Tipler replies: In my first paper on the Omega Point Theory (“Cosmological
Limits on Computation”, 
International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 25,
617-661 (1986)), I also used the Turing Principle to derive the OPT.
Subsequently, I’ve generally used the Eternal Life Postulate (Life goes on
forever in the universe) to derive the OPT. But since life is collectively a
Universal Computer (if it goes on forever), the Turing Principle and the
Eternal Life Postulate are equivalent. As I outline elsewhere on this web
page, one can also derive the Omega Point Theory directly from the most
fundamental laws of physics. Thus the laws of physics imply both the Turing
Principle and the Eternal Life Postulate.
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2 
Tipler replies: The Omega Point exists, but indeed He/She is not part of the
physical universe of spacetime or matter. The Omega Point is the future c-
boundary — the future singularity — which is not part of spacetime, but is
instead the “limit” of spacetime (the mathematical term is “completion”). The
irrational numbers such as square root of 2 or pi are equally the limits of
rationals (the technical term is “Dedekind Cut”), but nevertheless the
irrational numbers just as “real” as the rational numbers. As Deutsch points
out earlier in his book, general relativity predicts the existence of
singularities, so following the epistemological rules which Deutsch himself
has laid down earlier in this very chapter, if a corroborated theory like
general relativity says something exists, we have to accept it unless and until
an experiment tells us otherwise. In rejecting the existence of singularities,
Deutsch is being an inductivist. The Turing Principle tells us the Omega
Point exists, and further, some events actually are occurring now in order to
force the multiverse to evolve into the Omega Point. Anything that effectively
acts on matter is 
real.
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 Tipler replies: The Omega Point will know everything that can be 
known. But
the Omega Point will not know the unknowable (such as the Cantgotu
environments), because this would involve a logical contradiction. In
medieval theological terminology, God’s “omnipotence” was taken to mean
that God can do anything 
except something involving a logical contradiction.
In particular, God could not make a stone so heavy that even He could not
lift it. In other words, traditional theology does not consider the inability to do
something logically contradictory to limit God. It so happens that the dispute
between Galileo and Pope Urban VIII involved this point, but both Galileo
and Urban VIII were in agreement that God indeed could not do something
which involved a logical contradiction. See page 166 of 
The Crime of Galileo,
by Giorgio de Santillana (University of Chicago Press, 1959). Deutsch has
discovered that a similar constraint applies to God’s omniscience!
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4 
Tipler replies: I regard Turing Principle as more fundamental than the laws
of physics which apply to this universe and to the multiverse of which it is
just one history. There is no reason to rule out other multiverses with other
laws of physics, in which the Turing Principle also holds. This implies we
should regard the Omega Point, the completion of ALL the multiverses, as
the fundamental entity, and regard each history as “flowing” backwards in
time from the Omega Point. According to Aquinas, this is what is meant by
“God creates the universe”: He is at the end of all causal chains (causal
chains go BACKWARD in time along a history). In each history, life is limited
to the available matter and energy, but ALL histories, with ALL material and
energies (consistent with the Turing Principle), “flow” backward out of the
Omega Point. The Omega Point’s omnipotence is thus absolute.
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5 
Tipler replies: Indeed the people 
near the Omega Point cannot
communicate with us, or work miracles on us. 
But the Omega Point can. The
mechanism which He uses to communicate and perform miracles works as
follows. The Turing Principle is a 
final boundary condition on the universe:
the universe simply 
must evolve into the Omega Point. As Deutsch has
pointed earlier in this extract, intelligent life 
must guide the universe into the
Omega Point. If we decline to do so, some other intelligent life form will. If
necessary, some other intelligent life form will be evolved elsewhere to
replace us when we falter. Since the evolution of the universe is chaotic, the
history of life is unpredictable in detail, but its broad features are predictable:
the universe must evolve into the Omega Point. Thus if a certain historical
event, completely unexpected and unpredictable given the state of life at that
time, is necessary for the evolution of the universe into the Omega Point,
that event will necessarily occur. Such a event, which can be inferred only
from the requirement that the Omega Point exist, is what is meant by the
“direct action of the Omega Point in the world today;” i.e., this is what is
meant by “a miracle”. A miracle is thus an event which is certain given the
Omega Point’s existence (its true probability is 1), but if we ignore the
Omega Point’s existence, we would think the event exceedingly improbable.
For example, evolutionary biologists believe that the evolution of intelligent

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life is very unlikely to have occurred even once in a closed universe of the
maximum size allowed by unitarity. But the evolution of intelligent life is
inevitable. Therefore (if the evolutionists are correct), 
intelligent life is a
miracle, created by the direct action of the Omega Point! Asa Gray, the
Harvard botanist who was Darwin’s chief 19th century defender in America,
argued in his book 
Darwiniana that the “random” mutations required by
Darwinism were merely unpredictable by biological means; they were really
(at least in part) directed by God. Gray’s claim is a necessary inference of
the Omega Point Theory. The fundamentalist leader William Jennings Bryan
and Pope John Paul II announced that they could accept Darwinian
evolution 
provided it is granted that humans qua rational beings are created
by God’s direct intervention. (See Edward Larson’s Pulitzer Prize winning
book 
Summer for the Gods, pages 130-31 (Basic Books, 1997), for Bryan’s
opinion, and the recent encyclical on evolution for the Pope’s opinion.) The
Omega Point Theory says such a miracle — act of God — did in fact take
place (if the evolutionists are correct). Similarly, if “random” fluctuations in a
certain human’s neurons — interpreted by him or her as a “message from
God” — are necessary for the evolution of the universe into the Omega
Point, then that brain event would in fact 
be a message from God. The “I
SHALL BE WHAT I SHALL BE”, “heard” by Moses, may indeed have been
such a message from God.
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6 
Tipler replies: I find it extraordinary that Deutsch would use the opinions of
the average religious person as the touchstone of truth. As a Popperian,
Deutsch should expect a leading theologian — such as Pannenberg — to be
a much better critic of a theological theory than a non-expert. In fact,
theologians and ordinary believers have given quite different meanings to
the expressions “prayer” and “worshipping God”. By “prayer”, the average
person (and Deutsch) means “petitioning a powerful being for a favor”, and
by “worshipping”, the average person (and Deutsch) means “fawning on the
powerful being in hopes that this fawning will induce him to grant the favor.”
But in his circa 200 AD book 
On Prayer, the first great Christian theologian
Origin pointed out that both of these meanings were inappropriate as applied
to God. According to Origin, petitionatory prayer is ridiculous because an
omniscient God already knows what you want, and an all-loving and
omnipotent God will grant it to you automatically if the granting is logically
possible, and if the granting will not mess up the cosmic plan (and/or you).
Origin pointed out that “prayer” and “worshipping” instead mean “opening
oneself to God’s message”. You can’t tell Him anything He doesn’t know, but
He 
can tell you something. Another form of prayer is “thinking about God”,
which is what you are doing as you read this. By “religious faith” Deutsch
appears to mean “accepting a theory without criticism, and/or not permitting
criticism of the theory.” Certainly the people of the far future will be opposed
to faith in this sense, for the reason Deutsch gives. But the core assertions
of the Judeo-Christian “faith” have always been defended by rational
argument. In I Kings 18: 22-39, the prophet Elijah asserted that the question
of God’s existence must be resolved by experiment. In I Corinthians 15: 5-
20, Paul defended his claim that Jesus rose from the dead by appealing to
witnesses. The true core features which a religious person wants in “God”

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are three: (1) “God” must be able to talk to him/her; (2) “God” must
occasionally perform miracles, and most importantly, (3) “God” must be able
to resurrect the dead. The Omega Point has these key properties, so it is
reasonable to identify the Omega Point and the Judeo-Christian-Islamic
God.
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7 
Tipler replies: Deutsch’s mile-high cathedral is poor choice for a counter-
example, because the cost of such a building relative to our current
resources is much too high. Given the fact that no government or
commercial mile-high building has yet been built, in spite of the obvious
prestige going to the builder — and dictators like Saddam like to build
monuments to themselves, and have billions of dollars available for this
purpose — it is clear that constructing a mile-high building would be at the
very limits of current technology. It might even be beyond us today. But
eventually that mile-high cathedral will be built. When he is resurrected,
Deutsch’s ancient master builder could do it himself — as an inexpensive
spare time hobby.
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8 
Tipler replies: At every 
finite point, Deutsch is completely correct. But at the
Omega Point, which is the completion of all knowledge growth, where 
all
criticism has been completed, knowledge is perfect: everything which can be
known, will be known. The Omega Point is omniscient!
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