From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sun Sep 16 2001 - 18:22:58 MDT
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> "Robert J. Bradbury" wrote:
> >
> > There is nothing wrong with having a "religion" that is based on a system
> > of beliefs that can be rationally justified or one that openly acknowledges
> > its inability to be rationally justified. For example a religion of worshiping
> > "God", the creator of the simulation, seems perfectly reasonable to me
> > if it also acknowledges that there is no way of knowing whether or not we
> > are in a simulation.
>
> "If you build a snazzy alife sim ... you'd be a kind of bridging `first
> cause', and might even have the power to intervene in their lives - even
> obliterate their entire experienced cosmos - but that wouldn't make you a
> god in any interesting sense. Gods are ontologically distinct from
> creatures, or they're not worth the paper they're written on."
> -- Damien Broderick
If you have created the entire universe that is the home of your
create creatures you obviously stand outside that universe and
whatever laws you may have instituted therein. That is about as
"ontologically distinct" as I could imagine.
-samantha
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