Book: The Physics of Christianity

Overview
Frank Tipler presents a bold synthesis that tries to bridge modern theoretical physics and traditional Christian doctrines. He argues that the laws of physics, when extrapolated to the far future and combined with plausible assumptions about intelligent life and information theory, naturally yield an entity that has the attributes classical theism ascribes to God. This entity, the Omega Point, is proposed as the key to explaining miracles, the resurrection, and other central Christian claims without abandoning scientific methodology.

Core scientific framework
Tipler builds from general relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and information theory to construct his argument. The Omega Point hypothesis depends on a cosmological scenario in which the universe avoids heat death and instead evolves toward a final singularity where computational capacity becomes unbounded. Using ideas like the Bekenstein bound and limits on computation in a gravitational context, Tipler claims that sufficiently advanced intelligent life could manipulate global conditions to create arbitrarily powerful computational resources at the end of time. These resources would, in principle, be able to simulate or reconstruct every quantum state that has ever existed.

Resurrection and miracles
Resurrection is reinterpreted as a physical process achievable by omnipotent computation rather than a supernatural violation of natural laws. Tipler argues that perfect future information-processing could recover the quantum information comprising a person's mind and body and thereby reinstantiate them. Miracles, likewise, are framed as events that are either low-probability quantum occurrences that become effectively realizable within an Omega Point-directed cosmos or as deliberate outputs of future intelligence exercising near-limitless causal influence through control of global physics. This account aims to preserve empirical continuity while providing a mechanism for events traditionally deemed supernatural.

Theological claims and reinterpretations
Tipler identifies the Omega Point with key attributes of the Christian God, asserting compatibility with divine omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence as emergent from the ultimate physical structure of the universe. He seeks to show that doctrines such as personal immortality, judgment, and even aspects of the Incarnation can be re-cast in scientific language: eternal life becomes preservation and resurrection of personhood by final-time computation, and divine providence becomes long-range physical control wielded by the life that guides cosmological evolution. He appeals to scriptural narratives as pointing toward an eschatological culmination that science can describe in physical terms.

Criticism and reception
The proposal has been highly controversial. Critics in physics have faulted the cosmological assumptions as speculative and not required by current observational evidence; the Omega Point requires a closed, recollapsing universe and specific initial and boundary conditions that are not supported by mainstream cosmology since observations indicate an accelerating expansion. Philosophers and theologians have objected to the reduction of theological concepts to computational terms and to the risk of conflating physical possibility with metaphysical necessity. Many also challenge the plausibility of reconstructing individual persons from quantum information alone and question whether a computational reproduction would preserve personal identity in the morally and theologically meaningful sense.

Significance and implications
Whether embraced or rejected, the argument stimulates dialogue about the limits of scientific explanation for existential and religious questions. It forces rigorous examination of what physics can, in principle, say about information, identity, and the ultimate fate of the universe, and it prompts theologians to consider how eschatological hopes might intersect with naturalistic narratives. The proposal stands as an ambitious attempt to render a theological vision in physical terms, inviting both technical scrutiny and philosophical debate about the boundaries between science and religion.