God, Resurrection And Immortality With Technology

[Confused Ape]

Atheism is not an alternate religious faith to convert yourself into, there's nothing going on there, no funny business just the world as it is. Not an easy thing to sell but then you're not selling anything to anyone.

I wasn't saying that atheism is an alternate religious faith. I was just showing that some atheists still hope for things like immortality by mind uploading or resurrection by some kind of super computer in the future. A lack of belief in deities doesn't mean that atheists can't believe in other things which don't involve deities.

I'm asking what atheists here think of the Transhumanits' ideas seeing as most Transhumanists appear to be atheists and secular humanists. Many atheists have the view that once we're dead it's the end. Other atheists, however, don't seem to be happy with that idea but they can't hope for resurrection through believing in Jesus for obvious reasons. They believe that technology is going to be the answer instead.

Frank J Tipler's God isn't a supernatural being - the Omega Point is -

a term Tipler uses to describe a cosmological state in the distant proper-time future of the universe that he maintains is required by the known physical laws. According to this cosmology, it is required for the known laws of physics to be mutually consistent that intelligent life take over all matter in the universe and eventually force its collapse. During that collapse, the computational capacity of the universe diverges to infinity and environments emulated with that computational capacity last for an infinite duration as the universe attains a solitary-point cosmological singularity. This singularity is Tipler's Omega Point.[6] With computational resources diverging to infinity, Tipler states that a society far in the future would be able to resurrect the dead by emulating all alternate universes of our universe from its start at the Big Bang.[7] Tipler identifies the Omega Point with a god, since, in his view, the Omega Point has all the properties claimed for gods by most of the traditional religions.[7][8]

What I find particularly interesting about Tipler's idea is that he then went on to believe that this is what Christianity is all about. He doesn't believe in the traditional monotheistic deity of the Christian religion, though, because his Omega Point singularity just has all the properties claimed for gods by traditional religions. Why would someone who was an atheist come up with such a scenario for the distant future?

What I find even more interesting is that his books are available via a Christian books website. Is it possible that some Christians can no longer believe in a supernatural deity who resurrects people but they don't want to give up their hope for resurrection and immortality? If so, Tipler's version of Christianity would appeal to them because they no longer have to believe in supernatural stuff. They see it as science although Tipler's critics call it pseudo-science.

PS: Someone posted at the same time as me.

I don't think it's really fair to compare the transhumanist idea of immortality with that sold by dogmatic religion, as there is (at least, hypothetically) a sound, physical basis for it.

I wasn't saying that the transhumanist idea of immortality is the same as the one sold by dogmatic religion. It just seems that a hope for immortality is a human species thing which can be shared by atheists and religious people.

Putting my consciousness into rich virtual reality situations? Yeah, I'll take five, if you can make 'em.

Have to admit that it sounds fun.