Omega point
The omega point is the end and destination point in the theological and philosophical consideration of evolution by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Frank Tipler . This end point is named Omega after the Bible verse Revelation 22:13 “ I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. ".
The Omega point at Teilhard de Chardin
Teilhard de Chardin sees life and the cosmos in a creative movement brought about by God that has not yet reached its goal. The hallmark of this movement is the constant increase in organization and organic unity. Striving in this direction, i.e. the engine of evolution , is love for Teilhard. This love , which anticipates the ultimate goal, "the organic unity of all being, already acting and suffering", was completely realized for Teilhard in the heart of a person: in Jesus Christ . He calls Christ with a biblical sovereign title (Rev. 21,6) the omega or the point omega , that is, the goal, direction and engine of evolution.
Tipler's omega point theory
Frank J. Tipler describes a cosmological scenario of the most distant future of the universe.
According to this view, the universe or its intelligent civilizations, before the big crunch in the final singularity occurs, is able to increase its information processing capacity exponentially with the passage of time. A simulation run on this universe computer can perfectly simulate all conceivable realities and thus all existing entities - including all people who have ever lived - and thus resurrect them in a virtual world . Since a perfect copy cannot be distinguished from the original in principle and it is not the substrate of life (e.g. carbon) but the pattern of life that matters, such a perfect simulation (= emulation ) is identical to reality.
Humans as a biological species will die out in the long term, but their culture and their entire information content will colonize the universe in nanotechnological “ Von Neumann probes ” (machines that reproduce themselves). The possibilities of future information processing of these our “cosmic children” will be so enormous that all conceivable universes free of contradictions can be perfectly simulated (see also emulation , i.e. identical to reality). This means that then every (then perfected) person “rises” in a virtual universe. In Tipler's eschatology , the speed and amount of information in the Big Crunch is infinitely great, which is why there is also individual, infinite eternity - paradise - occurring there. “Cheap altruism ” (treat everyone as you want to be treated by them) of the then living intelligent beings will be the driving force for this simulation run. All intelligent, beloved life (people, but also pets) is raised to eternal life because God loves us . The reason for the resurrection is basically the agape (selfless love) of God. The human being then consists of the material of which the human spirit is now made (Aristotle: form in a form).
Since the speed of information transmission increases to infinity shortly before the final bang, there is eternity there in subjective time, although the universe - viewed from the outside - lasts only a limited time. Tipler equates this state of endless information capacity with God . Only when comparing the implications of his omega point theory with the eschatologies of the world religions does Tipler leave his purely physical line of argument and refer to the much-discussed Bible verse Ex 3.14 EU : There, Moses receives the answer to his question to YHWH “Who are you?”: I am that I am or I will be who I will be. The futuristic translation is often preferred today by both Jewish and Christian theologians. According to Tipler, the verse means that God is "He who exists above all at the end of time". He interprets the Holy Spirit quantum mechanically as a universal wave function . Tipler admits that his model only works if the amount of information available in the current universe is unimaginably large, but ultimately limited.
In his robotics and transhumanist theses, the computer scientist Hans Moravec also presents similar visions of teleological interpretations of the anthropic principle .
In the professional world, Tipler's omega point theory is generally rejected as scientifically unsustainable because of its many extremely speculative assumptions and its teleological and religious character. The topic is u. a. explained in "The Physics of World Knowledge" by David Deutsch . Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov described a scenario very similar to Tipler's omega point theory in his classic short story The Last Question as early as 1956.