Re: Re: Extropianism & Theology

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
25 Feb 1999 19:37:40 +0100

ASpidle@aol.com writes:
[human-to-Borg-to-God scenario]

> At this point it/they is/are God. Sort of
> like the Borg with firewalls, and much better looking. More like the Q
> Continuum.

I buy this. This sounds like a great future, well worth striving for. The danger is thinking it is inevitable - if we do that, then we think that we don't need to do much, and eventually nothing gets done. But if we see it as a goal, something noble to strive for (in its many varieties) in a rational manner, then we have a chance of getting there.

> Having control of time means that God is operating now and was
> operating in the past, therefore we can gain knowledge of God by
> studying the nature of the universe. This study I say is worship,
> and is the only worship God expects. He most certainly doesn't
> expect us to prostrate ourselves at his feet.

This is the part I don't buy. Note that you assume time travel, which is a rather big assumption, and also that God will exist in this way, which is another big assumption. It would be nice if it was true, but there are no particular reasons to think that these assumptions hold true.

> In fact. I believe God expects us to join the community of gods that is God,
> when we're good enough, when we deserve it. Frank Tipler tells us how we can
> all be brought back to life in the massive computers of the future. I don't
> think the Omega Point is integral to this theory, so it doesn't matter if the
> Universe will crunch or not.

Well, Tipler did manage to show some interesting limitations on posthuman omniintelligences (or whatever to call the things that are SI to SIs), and without an OP they will still be finite - immense, but with a finite lifetime, computational ability and memory. On the other hand, if you allow time travel you can likely do tricks that make the Bekenstein bound break... but it is a big assumption to make.

> God is our descendent and his nature is an extension of ours.
> We must be worthy!

And Man created God in his image who created Man in his image who created...

Ah, The Church of the Fixed Point: our reality and human nature is the only consistent fixed point for the above process. The Church spends lots of time iterating immense dynamical systems on the holy computers trying to calculate the parameters of love, truth and sacredness. They have already found truth to two decimal places...

:-)

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y