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CopyRight @ 2005
This is a result of an argument with a friend that was largely carried on in a group email. I think the
other readers mostly were cringing as my friend Brent and I battled it out. It's not what I study. I study
genetics and evolution, but have no problem with religion. He is mad because religion has often been
manipulated to political goals. I can appreciate his logic.
There is something I think should be clarified first though to make sure that communication doesn't get fuzzy.
Nouns and verbs.
Lets make two points (premised on the requirement of the need for artificial selection of any medicine technological/natural selection defeating capable specie): 1. My view is that most technological species will have to use artificial selection and that would naturally lead to a god like specie over a period of time. 2. Most technological species are likely to develop a machine (maybe) based virtual reality that will conquer biological death and most likely be richer than physical reality. This is considered perhaps the analog or origin of the concept of Heaven. This involves two ideas. An afterlife (after biological life) and a very rich virtual reality that could (dangerously) compete with physical reality where biological life exists. The point of the second one mentions physical reality. Brent thinks there is a better way to do things than evolution. In physical reality, I doubt it. My guess is that since we live in a very observable reality, governed by rules that seem very fundamental, God is generally subject to these same physical laws in physical reality. I do not believe in 'nose twitch' magic or that physical reality is the mental reality of some superior being. Nano-technology might be hard to distinguish from nose twitch magic (miracles perhaps) on a macro level, but it would probably be a nuisance to use to manage in a universe system. I suspect that the natural laws of thermodynamics make for a much more easily maintained system. I am theorizing a system that that is the system God evolved in and is very similar to what we live in. That sort of puts the universe in it's place even if God is not from this universe. OK. So here's a way of looking at it. God is an emotional experience. God defined: A god is a specie that has undergone artificial selection (id) for some evolutionary/geologic time period. Arbitrarily greater than 1,000,000 years. They might well be functionally immortal, pretty smart, technologically skillful, philosophically/morally wise, emotionally powerful and quite familiar with spending time in a rich virtual reality/heaven. They would also have a highly developed enough faith to avoid the dangers of virtual reality to biological survival. They may well have developed a plural/group consciousness... Maybe even a God. Now if you want to get Biblical, a God is a god/group of god/god individuals/plurality that works to help an emerging technological species achieve god .... ness by promoting philosophies (love and faith which I have peripherally touched on) that are critical to a species being able to make a transition to a new ecology from a more animalistic one. Who knows what they consider a method to do it, but it would explain a lot about religion stories. (By the way, this is sort of the premise of the Uplift Wars series by David Brin, which was only the first book of the series. The series was just missing my premise about the requirement for artificial selection.) OK. I've figured out a definition of God finally. Rather speculative, but whatever. I don't know if this is true. I interpret what people say and think. I interpret ancient stories the way anthropologists have learned to. They look for the truths among the limits of knowledge and the social milieu of the writer. The Bible is a story many people believe and it contains profound truths. Like other ancient stories, it has a great deal of historical truth to it. Is there alien Gods watching us, trying to help us on the path of evolution (and promising the potentials of heaven/virtual reality afterlife)? I certainly don't know, but the Bible certainly could be interpreted to mean that. Hey, it's a great idea and I have other good reasons to wonder. I tried to fit reason here to the logic and the story. I haven't even presented evidence to support it, because I'm interested in hypothesis making, not proving. Besides, the evidence is not to a standard I accept as proof, unless it is perhaps personally. How might you prove it? You probably cannot prove that god doesn't exist. Can you prove God exists? If God exists, I bet there is an easy way we haven't stumbled on. I've wondered about the possibility of looking for memes that we were given. It might be in the genetic record as well. I'll tell you when I figure it out. I thank you all for your patience and consideration. I sincerely thank Brent for making me think in directions I just don't usually go in. *** Brent raised a lot of points. I'll try to address them to some. My book on my website isn't about God. It starts by saying that humans must create a new stable ecology. That will be achieved by genetic and behavioral adaptations. That is artificial genetic selection and development of new moral system/survival strategies. My projection in my book from 25 years ago is for roughly say 10,000 years when theoretically the individuals of the whole human race have the best accumulated genetic potentials that are now available to the whole human race. We will then maybe have again achieved a stable ecology. The question of artificially engineered genetic sequences, artificial genes, is a question I intentionally avoid, to put manageable limits on the question. Suffice to say the intent is to describe a race that universally has superior health, beauty and brains. The biggest challenge will be disease. It is true that technology might change that and I did not factor in engineered genes, but I think it will be a long time before all humans have superior genes…. ‘Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain’. Still, what is a long time for a person is not so long for a specie. This essay is to think long. The definition that came from Brent, that was basically the MCGC, is a God that is all knowing, all good, all powerful, loving, forgiving, omnipresent, all caring, essentially eternal and can offer life after death. *** If you met God, it would be an emotional experience. If a great big shiny, very silent, incomprehensibly advanced space ship landed next to you and some aliens popped out, you might be impressed, but you probably wouldn't think they were Gods. If they told you that they had been here a billion years ago and left behind some tailored bacteria that was programmed to evolve into humans, which made them your creator, you might be very impressed, but that would not seem to you to be what you think of as a God. If on the other hand, they said that they were very advanced and that they were here to lead humans through the dangers of technology and social development, you might consider that they were Gods, because that kind of leadership is what Gods provide, but still there would be something missing. You're supposed to recognize a God when you meet one. BY definition, a God overwhelms a person. It is an emotional issue. Consider... There is the blind spot. Intelligence has a blind spot... That means you. This email group is composed of very intelligent people. Intelligent people naturally have a blind spot. Intelligence has a lot to do with speed. When you are feeling inspired, your mind accelerates incredibly. Most of the time though, it's going at normal freeway speeds. Well, when you meet people, most peoples minds are moving at freeway speeds. You can't tell how intelligent any person is. But once they suddenly accelerate, you know. So if you meet a normal or slow person, you don't know what speed they can jump to. When they meet you, within a short time, they are likely to see you jump to passing speed. They then know you, even if you slow immediately, they still know that you can blow by them. A less intelligent person can spot a more intelligent person immediately. A more intelligent person cannot accurately judge the other way. There is more toi intelligence than speed and others can perceive that, but speed is the easiest description and the easiest to sense. Emotions are very closely related and intertwined with intelligence. My studies suggest that intelligence is often best considered as an emotion. The point of that is that we, this email group, just don't meet people that often effect us emotionally. Statistically, our emotions are among the most powerful in the world, just as statistically our intelligence is at the end of the curve too. We don't get the emotional perceptions that normal people get. I think that emotional power in people varies less than intelligence. That would make sense in terms that it is a far older trait and more widespread in the population. (I've studied emotion a lot and it's amazing.) Well, experiencing God is an emotional experience. You should know how powerfully emotions can effect people. we, this group, rarely encounter emotions that we perceive as more than 'passing speed'. We rarely get overwhelmed or even strongly effected by other peoples emotions. Yet if you are honest, you may well know that you can have a strong effect on others. Sometimes, embarrassingly so. Have you ever carelessly overwhelmed someone emotionally? Emotions are contagious. Think of humans after 1,000,000 years of artificial selection. They would be intellectually far more powerful than a human now and they would also be extremely powerful emotionally. If you met a being with the kind of emotional power that I suspect long term evolutionary development could produce, you would worship them. your mind would tell you that that is a God with no other evidence. It's that simple. That is not based on religion or reason, it is based on what a human is and how they respond emotionally. The Rest of the Attributes of a God Here is a bit of random mumbling to put this in context some. Well, not all of it. This took a long time to get to. *** There is something special about the word "meme". It is an odd word. It seems to convey something more special than the word "mindset". We must wonder if there is some basic pattern to thought and behavior that is mathematically discernable. Are there discrete objects making up our beliefs and views of reality? Are there fundamental patterns that describe reality, that we just do not understand, but that exist in our brain like the lock and key mechanism of smell? An implication of the word "meme" is the concept that the meme exists independent of the host. It is a complete, integral representation of some feature of reality (or some reality). In any case, if there are other natural symbolic representations that describe reality, I figure that God knows them. Thinking about it, what would you expect God's native language to be? Perhaps memes, symbols that describe reality in a natural enough way to be mathematics. I bet that memes is God's language or at least one of them. I think that will cover wisdom and all knowing. *** As far as God being all loving and all forgiving, I guess this describes a God that is something between a priest and a parent that cares for humanity, but doesn't consider them to be children. .... Rarely have I seen a greater love than between a veterinarian and their charges. ... Anyway, love is a biological trait and would be expected to be greatly enhanced artificially. Gods are very loving in ways that would be difficult for a human to comprehend and they would forgive us because they would understand our limitations. I should mention immortality and eternal again just to be clear. Humans are already talking about beating aging. It seems unlikely that A highly evolved specie would have failed to beat biological death, but it may be far more complicated than that. It must be assumed that an advanced technological species would create a virtual reality where a person could live that was a completely different world from the biological reality that they were born in. It may even be that some species would live and reproduce only in a virtual reality. One can argue many ways about immortality and the place of reproduction in life, but we can only guess. It seems unlikely that any individual would be suited to immortality, but there are a lot of possibilities and it would be largely dependant on the individuals will to survive, their faith. *** Another critical aspect of a God would be faith. Before that can well be referenced in relation to a God or any specie, it must be considered a bit. Faith is many things. It is why people fight to the death over moral systems. It is why people choose between what they think of as right and wrong. It is like other emotions and can be sensed like anger or love. It may develop suddenly or slowly. You may hear of an animals survival instinct that makes an animal struggle against all odds in a trap or fight back for survival even though completely outmatched. We don't generally talk about it that way in humans. Humans are known to be very hard to kill though and will sometimes survive against all adversity, challenge and reason. What it seems to be is that there is a difference between an animal’s will/instinct to survive and humans. The difference is that a humans instinct to survive is now tied to their intellect. We judge things with logic and reason, but we also judge them in terms of morality/survival. We may say something is true, but not truth. It has satisfied reason, but not moral judgment. To be truth, it must satisfy both. Faith is our basic survival instinct connected with our reason and intellect. Part of our survival instinct includes the use of learned survival strategies called moral systems. Still the most powerful aspect of faith is the instinctive drive to survive regardless of anything else. It may be channeled to its goal by intellect, but the goal is instinctive. So what does that have to do with Gods? To be immortal, one would have to have a desire to live. The greatest desire to live comes from the instinct of faith. A God must have a superior faith. This is true for another reason as well, virtual reality. The Greeks mentioned kinetic values, wine, women and song. The pleasant distractions. Our world is afflicted with drugs. These are all just distractions from the mundane issues that make up life. Parents may say that boredom is a good thing. It means that nothing is going particularly wrong. Often survival, especially the fundamental part of it that is child raising, is a bit boring. Exciting things are often dangerous or mean something has gone wrong. Many things like sports and other forms of socializing are very safe and are part of the socializing that makes the communities and families that are the basis of human survival. Some things like drugs are far more likely to serve no purpose for survival and may in fact be a threat to ones survival. More and more, technology is going to make virtual realities. In this sense, the world where reproduction proceeds is called reality. Activities where reproduction does not occur could be called virtual reality. There is a reason for this that will be approached after a little more discussion. Still, in terms of survival, most all virtual reality is a grey area. A computer may be an escape from the world or it may be a place to get an education about how better to deal with the real world. Sports or a hobby can be an escape or a social activity. Intoxicants can be the same, but there are many dangers associated with intoxicants, including that they effect the mind directly mimicking reality and stimulating the mind more strongly than reality. Drugs may also be quite poisonous, but the important point is that while skiing may get a person high, it doesn't get then so high that they disregard the reality of survival. More drugs are going to be produced. Some people have natural resistance to them. Some people are taught to avoid them. They are going to get more powerful, seductive, subtle and insidious. There are various ways to survive the danger of drugs, but the most powerful survival mechanism is faith. It is like anger. It is not a good idea to try to remove normal anger, it must be controlled. We will never remove drugs or other distractions, so a control must be used. That control is our faith, our will to survive that can save us from getting lost in a virtual reality that has no reproductive potential. Where this is leading is another point about Gods. A God would have just about every imaginable distraction immediately available. What is discussed more in another essay is that Gods would have a very rich virtual reality (as we would call it) available to them. Probably it would be far richer than any natural reality. To us, it would be a powerful drug so pleasant and distracting that we would never come back from it. A God must not only have a powerful faith to make the choice over time to continue to survive, but they also must have a faith so strong that they cannot effectively be seduced away from reality by drugs of any kind, including virtual realities. *** So this is a definition of a God. They could be as eternal and immortal as their faith allowed them to be. They would not be limited by the genetics of their ancestors. They would be very wise and knowledgeable. They would be very caring, loving and forgiving. They would probably try to help us become like them. In the next discussion of virtual reality, it suggests that if they wanted, they could offer us eternal life in heaven. Some Comments: Now evolution has been called unimaginably cruel, which is true enough. Also, it seems to select for jerks, but the amazing thing is that it has also led to people deeply devoted to good. In fact, I think that is the majority. I have studied peoples values and I found that values were about the most universal attribute of people. Asking people what their deepest values were showed me that people have values that are generous, honest, truthful and that seek the best. They all in their way, work for a better world. They are nice people. I think that is what we will create, a world where we can be nice to each other. Now to address one more objection that was raised, per raising children. Evolution is nasty. Is that the only way it could have been done. In the larger arena of life, I suspect so. in the macro situation of raising a family, there are important parallels. Those that have everything seem to value little. Those who have noting value everything. Nice platitude, but not without meaning. We try to raise our children kindly, but we do not want to weaken them. I think it is fair to distinguish between challenging children as opposed to abusing them. Abuse is a social behavior and messes a child up socially. Challenges that children have faced daily and through history, that kill and maim many of them are a fact of life. They are different from betrayal by family. Family is the basis of survival. Messing with that is far more dangerous to a child's evolutionary/reproductive survival than all the impersonal dangers of the world. Messing with evolution, even by a God, may be far less sensible than leaving it alone. I've said that God has to stay somewhat hidden or we would just be pets. It would interfere with our natural development. At the same time, the Bible and other bodies of knowledge have pointed the way for those that want it. Most people are pretty good at heart. It seems that people that want to find God usually can. Think of the peoples that have embraced religion. It served them pretty well. All institutions, political, religious and business, have been conservative (except maybe war). They are now all learning the value of innovation. If (still an if) the Catholic Church has also learned to be innovative and is looking for new truths, if they find that God is different than they thought, they may not like it, but they will embrace it and then look out. There will be groups (a la Darlington) that will simply not change. Well, that happens. They may survive, they may not. We will see. The Catholic church accepts evolution. What if religions were to just accept biology and science simply as God's Tao? That could well foster a religiously inspired examination of science and define a scientific knowledge as God's will. It offers a dimension that nothing else does. The Bible is made of stories that made it in and there are stories that didn't. As one case, the story of Abraham and his son made the point that human sacrifice was no longer to be done. Some stories may have been more pertinent to the time and circumstance. They may have been many things. Each story must be examined separately as things that occurred in history, involving people. Still, it is accepted that Jesus brought a new testament, a new law, that superseded all the others before. About worship. I've said it before, I say it again. Worship is good for the worshiper, I doubt it serves the worshipee. Gods come in all kinds. I would seriously say that many people worship money. Worship is an attribute of people, not gods. Not to say that worshipping a God is not honest. There is the argument that since machines develop so quickly and are superior in many ways to biological life. Why not just replace humans with machines. Well, first off, biological life has such a head start that in many ways, machines have a long way to go to catch up. Just artificial intelligence may well be harder to create than many people postulate or biology would probably have taken a similar path. While running an obstacle course is pretty neat, I won't even bother to consider brute force chess competition. Speed isn't everything. Still, the question shouldn't be can we replace humans with some technological wonder. The question should be will we? The books of Dune considers that in great detail. Basically it comes down to faith. The irrational belief that survival is important. If you don't have faith, you see no reason not to be rid of humans. If you have faith, you would fight to the death to prevent it... and who would be inspired to fight to the death back. Religion is like a pair of shoes. Not always comfortable to put on, but when the road gets rough, it's very useful. ... I see only one other point to mention. Are satellites science fiction or science fact? Hey, they started as science fiction and now they are science fact. Same with scuba, space ships and all kinds of things. Many things in science were first in science fiction, that is why I like to call it speculative fiction.
This essay is an odd one. I've always liked reading science fiction and I've thought it would be fun to write
one, but I never did. This is about as close as I have managed to get. I've said before that to clarify my
thoughts, I often write them down. If you have a thought that is not clear, writing it down will usually clarify
it or expose its flaws. This was that kind of exercise, but it was interesting enough not to be discarded after
it showed whether the logic seemed consistent of not. This was actually written after the Artificial Intelligence
ideas, but before any definition of God. This was part of the path between them.
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