![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bktheirregularApparently there was a question posed in a Presidential debate the other day:
"Is God on America's side?"
Okay, I am an avowed agnostic here (not an atheist, mind you), but it seems to me that it's the height of arrogance to assume that God or Fate or whatever higher power is tasked with managing the Universe is going to take sides in petty human disputes.
I mean, with hundreds of millions of galaxies out there, hundreds of millions of stars per galaxy, who knows how many planets, who knows how many different forms of life, wouldn't arguments of one piddling nation-state against another (to say nothing of arguments of sexuality variations, pro and con) kind of sink down into the background noise right alongside "tastes great, less filling"?
And I'm still convinced that the human brain doesn't have the raw circuitry to process anything relating to the concept of God. Higher powers, ultimate intelligence? It'd be like trying to explain the various plot layers of Farscape to an amoeba.
Dire Straits had a song, "Industrial Disease", with a lyric line: "There's two men saying they're Jesus; one of them must be wrong!" I took that sentiment as my core philosophy as regards religion in general. All the contradictory religions in the world can't all be right in every particular, but we do not have the ability to know which one is right. Or if any of them are right. Could be that the Revealed Word is out there, patiently waiting to be properly decrypted.
Looping back to fannishness: in the new Battlestar Galactica series, when the Cylons kept talking about God, might it be possible that artificial intelligence had developed to the point where they were capable of comprehending divinity?
"Is God on America's side?"
Okay, I am an avowed agnostic here (not an atheist, mind you), but it seems to me that it's the height of arrogance to assume that God or Fate or whatever higher power is tasked with managing the Universe is going to take sides in petty human disputes.
I mean, with hundreds of millions of galaxies out there, hundreds of millions of stars per galaxy, who knows how many planets, who knows how many different forms of life, wouldn't arguments of one piddling nation-state against another (to say nothing of arguments of sexuality variations, pro and con) kind of sink down into the background noise right alongside "tastes great, less filling"?
And I'm still convinced that the human brain doesn't have the raw circuitry to process anything relating to the concept of God. Higher powers, ultimate intelligence? It'd be like trying to explain the various plot layers of Farscape to an amoeba.
Dire Straits had a song, "Industrial Disease", with a lyric line: "There's two men saying they're Jesus; one of them must be wrong!" I took that sentiment as my core philosophy as regards religion in general. All the contradictory religions in the world can't all be right in every particular, but we do not have the ability to know which one is right. Or if any of them are right. Could be that the Revealed Word is out there, patiently waiting to be properly decrypted.
Looping back to fannishness: in the new Battlestar Galactica series, when the Cylons kept talking about God, might it be possible that artificial intelligence had developed to the point where they were capable of comprehending divinity?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-03-02 03:36 pm (UTC)It's a silly question. It's unscientific. It's guaranteed to make anyone who answers it in a political arena look bad. Let's move on.
And I'm still convinced that the human brain doesn't have the raw circuitry to process anything relating to the concept of God. Higher powers, ultimate intelligence? It'd be like trying to explain the various plot layers of Farscape to an amoeba.
Quoted!
Looping back to fannishness: in the new Battlestar Galactica series, when the Cylons kept talking about God, might it be possible that artificial intelligence had developed to the point where they were capable of comprehending divinity?
That was my impression. And damn, doesn't it give rise to questions... If you meet all of the Turing requirements for sentience, does that give you an actual living soul? One would think so. But when do you reach that point? It's very weird. :>
no subject
Date: 2004-03-02 07:03 pm (UTC)Yeah, it's a question, all right. One I doubt we can really answer these days. What I was thinking, though, was what if the artificial intelligences were able to understand divinity in ways that natural intelligences are simply too underpowered to manage?
What if, for the Cylons, religion wasn't so much a matter of belief as pure deduction?