[ExI] Eternity for Atheists

[Lee Corbin]

Eternity for AtheistsOlga posted the "Eternity for Atheists" article by JIM HOLT.

It concluded with these two paragraphs:

> The most interesting possibilities for an afterlife proposed in recent years are based on hard science with a dash of speculation. 
> In his 1994 book, "The Physics of Immortality," Frank J. Tipler, a specialist in relativity theory at Tulane University, showed 
> how future beings might, in their drive for total knowledge, "resurrect" us in the form of computer simulations. (If this seems 
> implausible to you, think how close we are right now to "resurrecting" extinct species through knowledge of their genomes.) John 
> Leslie, a Canadian who ranks as one of the world's leading philosophers of cosmology, draws on quantum physics in his 
> painstakingly argued new book, "Immortality Defended." Each of us, Leslie submits, is immortal because our life patterns are but 
> an aspect of an "existentially unified" cosmos that will persist after our death. Both Tipler and Leslie are, in different ways, 
> heirs to the view of William James. The mind or "soul," as they see it, consists of information, not matter. And one of the 
> deepest principles of quantum theory, called "unitarity," forbids the disappearance of information. (Stephen Hawking used to think 
> you could destroy your information by heaving yourself into a black hole, but a few years ago he changed his mind.)
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It's sad to see Tipler's scientific analysis stated as though it was
merely on an equal footing with all these other zany views.

The last paragraph is likewise more rubbish:

> If death is not extinction, what might it be like? That's a question the Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, who died five years 
> ago, enjoyed pondering. One of the more rococo possibilities he considered was that the dying person's organized energy might 
> bubble into a new universe created in that person's image. Although his reflections were inconclusive, Nozick hit on a seductive 
> maxim: first, imagine what form of immortality would be best; then live your life right now as though it were true. And, who 
> knows, it may be true. "Life is a great surprise," Vladimir Nabokov once observed. "I do not see why death should not be an even 
> greater one."
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Lee