Omega Point
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Omega Point is a term coined by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) to describe a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which the universe appears to be evolving.
In this theory, developed by Teilhard in The Future of Man (1950), the universe is constantly developing towards higher levels of material complexity and consciousness, a theory of evolution that Teilhard called the Law of Complexity/Consciousness. For Teilhard, the universe can only move in the direction of more complexity and consciousness if it is being drawn by a supreme point of complexity and consciousness. Thus Teilhard postulates the Omega Point as this supreme point of complexity and consciousness, which in his view is the actual cause for the universe to grow in complexity and consciousness. In other words, the Omega Point exists as supremely complex and conscious, transcendent and independent of the evolving universe. Teilhard argued that the Omega Point resembles the Christian Logos, namely Christ, who draws all things into himself, who in the words of the Nicene Creed, is "God from God", "Light from Light", "True God from true God," and "through him all things were made."
Teilhard's term recurs in later writings, such as those of John David Garcia (1971), Frank Tipler (1994) or Ray Kurzweil, as well as in science fiction literature.
See also
- The Footprints of God
- Human Instrumentality Project
- Hyperintelligence
- Noosphere
- Frank J. Tipler
- Elisabet Sahtouris
- Simulated reality
- Supertask
- Technological singularity
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
- Frank J. Tipler
- Ultimate fate of the universe
- Vladimir Vernadsky
- Posthuman God
