From: David Musick (David_Musick@msn.com)
Date: Wed Nov 13 1996 - 01:54:12 MST
Just when I was getting comfortable being an atheist, the God Meme strikes
again! This time as a mutated, more robust infection.
I can't remember exactly the strange and twisted path my mind was wandering,
but somewhere along the way I was considering the universe as a whole and
existence as such, and I was thinking about the Singularity and what types of
activities those awesomely powerful beings would engage in. It seems like
creating universes and manipulating space-time itself may be child's play for
such powerful beings. Then came up the notion, which I've heard discussed
before, that our universe may have been created by a physicist/hacker from
some other universe. So, the question was, and still is, was our universe
created by a conscious being? Is there some awesomely powerful being creating
endless varieties of universes, tweaking with the parameters and seeing what
happens? Perhaps some of these universes develop in very interesting ways to
this being, and they receive a great deal of attention. Perhaps there are
certain qualities that the being is looking for and hoping to take advantage
of, such as intelligence and creativity. Perhaps as life and intelligence
begin developing in a universe, the being influences the universe, to
encourage that development and help it flourish.
Now I'm noticing the deep similarities to my wandering thoughts and many of
the ideas in religions. Perhaps there is a God who created this universe and
helped encourage the development of life and continues to nourish the growth
of greater intelligence in this universe. When I look at this idea in light
of the ideas I thought of earlier, it does not seem so silly. I'm not
thinking that a lot of the patently absurd ideas that the religions also teach
may be accurate, but maybe the religions are right about a few things...
Perhaps it is possible for sufficiently intelligent beings in our universe
(such as humans) to communicate with this highly advanced being, who created
the universe, and receive some sort of assistance. Perhaps this god has been
busily forming methods of communicating with the intelligent creatures it
helped develop in its experimental universe. Perhaps certain states of mind
facilitate communication with "God".
These are all very big maybies, and I have no evidence for or against the God
Theory or even any reason why it would be useful to explain any phenomenon,
except possibly for the fact of our existence itself. If there is a God,
perhaps It will provide some useful and clear evidence. Or perhaps we are
incapable of understanding such things until post-Singularity? Perhaps God's
main goal right now is to help us advance to the post-Singularity state, so
there can be some sort of meaningful dialogue between us and God. God
probably doesn't care whether we believe in God or not, just that we are
making ourselves more intelligent and creative, so we will be more useful in
God's enormous system which has entire universes as components. And perhaps
God is also in some other GOD's system of universes.... The Ultimate Fractal
Just something to think about.
- David Musick
- question tradition -
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