
Is There an Artificial God? (1998) - bigblind
http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/
======
mratzloff
This was an excellent speech that was perfect reading for a Sunday afternoon.
Thanks for posting!

Put simply, the argument is that religion may be a kind of emergent
evolutionary phenomena that has a collective value that we may not yet
completely understand, but that nevertheless fills some vital role in a way
superior to any of our conscious attempts. Basically, despite the universe
emerging from bottom-up processes rather than top-down, there may still be a
legitimate coordinating role at the top that we subconsciously fill with our
artificial gods.

It's a longish piece of writing, but I highly recommend reading the full text.

~~~
Razengan
Reposting a comment from a similar discussion here...

Religion might just be the precursor to Science; a sapient species trying to
make sense of their world and consciousness, plugging the holes in their
understanding with whatever means currently at their disposal.

Unless they're born with complete and accurate knowledge about everything in
the universe, I think all intelligent life out there is going to have a
religion or some form of superstition at some point in their civilization.

Hive-mind intelligences or strictly hierarchical biologies (e.g.
queens/workers/drones) may not need concepts like morals or Law or guidance
for social conduct, but they may still invent stopgap explanations on their
way to understanding mortality and the weather and stars and such.

EDIT: "Religion" in this sense need not necessarily involve the concept of
deities either. There are major religions in our own world that do not place a
focus on higher beings.

~~~
zbyte64
This is my personal belief as well. The evolution of monotheism appears to be
a boon for scientific thought: it sets up the idea that the rules are the same
everywhere.

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pmarreck
While sitting on the fence of this whole question, it simply astounds me that
most religious people don't have an answer to this (IMHO) very obvious
question/problem with the popular God conception:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil)

Again, not making a criticism, just an observation that I find oft unanswered

~~~
humanrebar
The problem of evil is difficult to answer in an emotionally satisfying way to
someone who is hurting. Why did God let _this_ evil happen?

Dispassionately, though, the broader problem begs the question. If humanity is
jut a product of time and chance, then evil is as much an illusion as any gods
are.

But, that being said, some theists see evil as the absence of good. Murder,
natural disasters, etc. all result when God leaves the world to its own
devices.

To some degree a "good" answer to this question is very reliant on emotional
and aesthetic components, so it's extremely fair to call it a hard question to
answer.

~~~
andrewflnr
I wouldn't say it's begging the question. Of course evil is an illusion in an
atheistic viewpoint. The "problem of evil" is strictly an attempt to show a
contradiction in the theist position.

As a Christian, my own answer (in short) is that true "good" requires that
people can choose to either do good or evil. The only alternative is a pretty
clockwork. This requires accepting a broader definition of "good" for you to
accept that God is both good and accepts this tradeoff, but it's not a
contradiction. It's just an emotionally significant consequence of believing
God exists.

~~~
6502nerdface
> As a Christian, my own answer (in short) is that true "good" requires that
> people can choose to either do good or evil. The only alternative is a
> pretty clockwork.

This doesn't really address the problem. If god is omnipotent and created the
universe, he could have made things so that evil is simply physically
impossible, with no contradiction of free will, in the same way that I am
physically unable to flap my arms and fly to the moon, and yet I still have
free will. The fact that he didn't means he's either not omnipotent or not
omnibenevolent (a contradiction for those who ascribe both properties to god).
The onus would have to be on the theist to show how "no-evil" somehow
logically contradicts free will; and it must be a truly _logical
contradiction_ if it is to be any constraint on omnipotence.

~~~
andrewflnr
I don't think you get to say "just design a universe such that X" without
actually producing one. In this context, that's a circular argument, since the
possibility of such a universe is precisely what we're debating. And lots of
things that look reasonable turn out to have inconsistencies buried deep
inside. If you're not familiar with computability, "write a program that
figures out if another program will run forever" sounds possible at first. You
can make specific counterexamples to my argument, but just saying "it must be
possible" illuminates nothing.

Anyway, I'll try to do better. Basically, in a universe in which "evil" is
physically impossible, you may have "free will" in some sense to choose which
good, but you cannot choose _whether to do good_ , because all possible
choices are "good". It's specifically _freedom to choose good or evil_ that's
the key ingredient in "good" being a meaningful concept, or at least it's
consistent to so assume. You're back to the pretty clockwork.

I don't know if it's possible to construct a bulletproof argument here. Shaky
foundations are an occupational hazard of metaphysics, for both sides. Saying
"well, he's God so he should be able to figure it out" works just as well as
"he's God and couldn't do it, ergo it's inconsistent". The best we can do is
show our positions are consistent under some set of assumptions.

~~~
humanrebar
The halting problem! Great point. I'll have to remember to bring that up next
time theology comes up in a geeky context.

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mizzao
Even as a Christian, I am still open to the possibility that religion may be
an artificial construct. One important purpose it may serve is to motivate
individuals to advance social welfare (and be happy while doing so) when we
would otherwise only have reason to be selfish. (Never mind for now that this
presupposes that there is an objective "social good" that exists in the first
place).

However, for religion to work, we can't be aware that it is artificial --
otherwise we'd stop following it. So we do have to believe wholeheartedly,
aside from occasional philosophizing of existential questions.

Yet, the existence of an unmoved mover is still an alternative explanation. At
this point, the line between artificial and supernatural is indeed blurred.

~~~
strgrd
How can you believe the story and the purpose of something wholeheartedly when
its premise is scientifically untrue?

Religion is an artifact of one of the most ancient forms of control. Today, it
is an institution used to espouse the morals of the elite.

There is no evidence that bad people will be punished when they die. There is
no evidence that the good will be rewarded. The universe is ambivalent to the
karmic relations we see from our perspective. Karma can be common sense (you
do good, good will follow), but in speaking to the spirit, karma has placated
humanity into believing that mother nature or god is at the controls.

It is time to abandon the belief in the soul, the spirit, and eternity, and
unless evidence presents itself otherwise, embrace the temporal reality before
us.

~~~
mizzao
I'm a scientist (coincidentally, an empirical one) but I still don't believe
that all truth can be discovered scientifically -- that is, through repeatable
data collection and experimentation. You can't prove or disprove the existence
of God by doing experiments.

Your worldview seems to be pretty close to Scientism
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism)),
which I think some would consider a religion in itself.

Sure, the problem of evil is an objection to religion, but follow your premise
to its logical conclusion and good/evil doesn't exist at all. There is really
no reason to want the world to be a better place, preserve the planet, and so
on. Is that really a world you want to live in?

> Religion is an artifact of one of the most ancient forms of control. Today,
> it is an institution used to espouse the morals of the elite.

Do you think so? At least in the United States, religion is generally seen as
the domain of the less educated and impoverished, not the elite. Today, you
and I are free to determine our own definitions of morality.

> There is no evidence that bad people will be punished when they die. There
> is no evidence that the good will be rewarded.

Sure there is evidence. It's just historical and relational. It's not
something that can be tested through the scientific method.

~~~
strgrd
> I still don't believe that all truth can be discovered scientifically --
> that is, through repeatable data collection and experimentation. You can't
> prove or disprove the existence of God by doing experiments.

You can't disprove or prove god because it is a non-falsifiable concept. There
are an infinite number of things that will never be able to be proven by
Science because by nature of concept, they are immune to experiment.

What are we to believe of something that cannot be disproved? I think groups
of people have leveraged this inability to know the truth as a cure for the
universal anxiety of permanent death, and as a vector of population-scale
control. When you take into account the bias humanity has over its own death,
you have to scrutinize worldviews that aggrandize consciousness as a
permanent, if not ethereal entity. The evidence before us shows consciousness
being entirely contained in the life and death of the body. When evidence
presents itself otherwise... then can we start to muse about an afterlife.

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discreteevent
He mentions "The fabric of reality" by David Deutsch. It's a very good book
(IMO) and not primarily about multiple universes so don't let that put you off
if you think it's rubbish. He does a really good job outlining Popper's theory
of science as explanation. Also one thing he notes is that it is really
extraordinary that the universe gave rise to something that can understand it.
We are the universe looking at itself and understanding it at a more and more
fundamental level as time goes on.

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stcredzero
When an entity's power level gets cranked up to god-level, is there a
meaningful distinction between "supernatural" and "artificial" in this case?

~~~
chris_wot
I'm going to choose to be literal. Artificial is defined as "being made by
humans". God is defined as "the one supreme being, the maker and creator of
the universe".

The only way you could have an artificial deity is if human-kind were gods
themselves.

P.S. thinking of these things in terms of video game powerups is something I
find sort of amusing. I can only imagine what Chun-Li vs Jesus would look
like.

~~~
dghughes
Let there be light!

[http://multivax.com/last_question.html](http://multivax.com/last_question.html)

~~~
asimuvPR
I constantly read this piece and talk to people about it. It is quite the
experience to see their eyes open up when they realize that there might be a
hint of a possibility of such scenario being real. Us being the result of some
other intelligent specie flipping the switch ON. Thanks for posting it.

------
spriggan3
If God created us, then who created God?

~~~
smussmann
In at least some religions, [part of] the definition of God is that he is the
uncaused cause. Thomas Aquinas spends a lot of ink talking about this (there's
a more accessible explanation at [http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/first-
cause.htm](http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/first-cause.htm), but I'm pretty
sure you can find the originals on the Internet).

~~~
zbyte64
Just because God can't imagine an existence outside herself doesn't mean it
doesn't exist. She assumes she is the original cause but is unable to test the
hypothesis.

~~~
humanrebar
In other words, what if an all-knowing being doesn't really know everything?

Or are you inventing a new Creator who is merely almost omniscient for
rhetorical purposes? To what end?

