Re: Off topic: Humans, Robots and Religion

[Richard Grandy <rgrandy@RUF.RICE.EDU>]

At 8:42 PM -0400 10/28/99, Herbert H Gottlieb wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:02:05 -0500 Doug Craigen <dcc@ESCAPE.CA> writes:
> > > AS ROBOTS BECOME SMARTER AND SELF-AWARE,
> > > SCIENTISTS, THEOLOGIANS CONSIDER THEIR
> > > HUMANITY
> > Now suppose that I could make a being which nobody could distinguish
> > from a human.  How much would that tell us about the existence or
> > non-existence of any Gods or their purposes for the things which
> > they supposedly created?
> The fact that you are unable to make such a being must
> prove something about the existance of a god (-:  ...
> or does it????

Why are we worrying about such complex beings?  We can't make stars or
planets or bacteria.  That proves that we can't make stars or planets or
bacteria.


 It doesn't prove that those things can't arise from impersonal natural
non-teleological non-theological principles.

On the other hand, if we COULD make beings indistinguishable from humans,
or stars or planets or bacteria, that wouldn't prove that the originals
were not made by a god.

So this whole line of thought seems to be little more than  an attempt to
guarantee continued employment for theologians.

Richard  Grandy
Philosophy Dept.
Rice  University
Houston   Texas