"'My guess is the computer split its attention into a number of parts. One or more to keep track of the wild robots. Two, with no intercommunication, to be rival chessmasters.'"
-NINE, p. 256.
"'A thinking capability like that, with nothing but routine to handle, no new input decade after decade... Our computer rescued itself by creating something complicated and unpredictable to watch.' He paused before adding slyly: 'I refrain from suggesting analogies to the Creator you believe in.'"
-TEN, p. 261.
Years ago, I wrote this verse:
"One energy,
"With many changing forms,
"Builds complicated ordered patterns of itself
"On different psychophysical levels
"And spatiotemporal scales
"And becomes conscious of itself
"Whose body is the universe,
"Whose sense-organs are living beings..."
-copied from here.
A Biblical analogy: "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth..."
Monistic interpretation: "In the first moment of visual perception, the omnipresent and all-pervading One appeared to itself as a ground and a sky separated by an apparently empty space."
To say that you refrain from making a particular analogy is, of course, to make the analogy while trying to avoid discussing it. Years ago, someone said to me, "I don't want an argument but..." and then disagreed with my politics I had to say, "You can't have it both ways. If you don't want an argument, then say nothing. If you do say something, then listen to my response to it."
Flandry laid himself open to a theological argument although he did not get it.
(Sometimes, when I cut and paste, my font size leads a life of its own so I responded by making everything big.)
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But I don't believe in ideas like God somehow being created when the universe "somehow" appeared. Rather, God existed from all eternity and almost certainly created an infinite number of universes. And I have quoted Dante's explanation for why God created beings like the angels, human beings, and probably other intelligent races: because He loved them wanted them to know that they and He exist.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Being always existed but became conscious in time because appearance of other had to precede recognition of self.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But I simply don't believe that makes sense, when applied to God. He is infinitely happy and self sufficient, with no need for anyone else to exist to be aware that He exists. If that was not the case, God would not even BE God.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But that's a circular argument. If "God were not God," then it would be wrong to use the word, "God," at the beginning of that sentence. Objects of consciousness give consciousness its content. I see a tree and thus realize that I am a self seeing a tree. I also identify with one of the objects of my consciousness, this body. If there were no tree, no body and no other objects of consciousness, then what would "I" be?
A form without content.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But God is not a limited being like you and I. He is, logically, in my opinion, He knows and is aware of everything from all eternity. That would show God is a conscious Being.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But can there be an unlimited being? I do not see that this is logical. You might simultaneously affirm the existence of a being yet deny the conditions for its existence, like saying that there is an infinite square without sides. That would be a contradiction and thus illogical.
Paul.
Also, what would there have been for God to know if He had not created anything, especially since He has neither body nor environment? What is a knower with no objects of knowledge?
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