Day: September 22, 2007

Hominids go Weird

Ancient human ancestors and cousins are a lot more diverse and weird than 20th Century discussions led us to believe. Dmanisi and Flores have shaken up the palaeoanthropological world like a Richter 10 earth-quake. Why so?

(a) Dmanisi blurs the line between Homo habilis and Homo erectus by being a mix of ‘primitive’ and ‘advanced’ features. Almost a perfect example of a transitional population. Old and New at Dmanisi

(b) Flores is a real shaker because the species was so close to us in time, the brain was so small, the tools so advanced, and now it has been revealed the post-cranial material is displaying very primitive features. Hobbits had Archaic wrists

…plus there was the recent find of a very small Homo erectus skull from what seemed to be a fully grown adult. An almost perfect African precursor to hominids like floresiensis and georgicus. Things have gotten weird and may well get weirder. We may find “little people” like the Hobbits almost anywhere.

Tipler’s Main Thesis

The real meat of Tipler’s book is his discussion of the nature of God and physico-mathematical proof of God-as-Trinity, thus proof of Christianity.

Tipler argues that God is the Cosmological Singularity of Feynmann-Weinberg Quantum Gravity, and the development of String Theory, Brane-worlds, Smolin Loop Quantum gravity and so forth are actually the evasion of the FACT of the existence of God by modern physics. Physicists can’t handle the real existence of the Singularity as implied by both General Relativity and the Multiverse of quantum theory applied to cosmology, because Tipler believes they’re in denial about the existence of an entity beyond space-time yet described by the laws of physics (the Singularity is Beyond, but connected to our Multiverse.)

So that’s his basic thesis – God is the Singularity pointed to by Quantum Gravity applied to cosmology. And that Singularity manifests, mathematically, as three ‘hypostases’ – the All Pasts Singularity, the All Presents Singularity, and the All Futures Singularity. He equates these with the Holy Spirit, the Son and the Father respectively. Thus God is a Trinity and (Orthodox) Christianity is objectively true.

Next post: my main issue with Tipler’s argument.