From: James Higgins (jameshiggins@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue Jul 02 2002 - 00:40:09 MDT
At 02:12 AM 7/2/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>James Higgins wrote:
>>Actually, that's an interesting angle. Humans seem primarily interested
>>in A God not just because he/she/it exists nor because God is powerful.
>>They seem to be primarily interested in God as their Creator. Even if
>>God does exist, *our* God is not the creator (I'm certain this could be
>>construed otherwise by some religions) of the AI, man is. And more
>>specifically the AI may be able to (virtually?) point to A single
>>individual and say "S/he is my creator". I wonder what effect that would
>>have on its outlook of religion. How relevant would *our* God even be to
>>an AI?
>
>Assuming that atheism is correct, I think you're being waaay too
>anthropomorphic about the relation of an AI to its creator. The
>programmers stand squarely in the middle of the AI's past light cone; an
>AI can and should scrutinize its programmers very closely for that
>reason. But to equate this to human religion is dreadfully
>anthropomorphic. If there is any analogy at all, it would be to humans
>studying evolutionary psychology. After all, the programmers *really did*
>create the AI, just as evolution really did create us.
The argument is boring if you assume atheism is correct. However, in light
of the discussion(s) that have been going on I thought the question was
interesting. If *our* God was proven to exist then how would an AI relate
to it (being likely that *our* god would not be *its* god).
I lean towards atheism. My personal beliefs relating to a "creator" are
mostly limited to concepts like we could have been seeded by another race
or that we could be AIs in a virtual reality. Neither of which can be
proven or ruled out at this point.
James Higgins
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