Re: Off topic: Humans, Robots and Religion

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

This is evolving into an interesting thread.

I would respond to Herb, that the fact that we can't make a humaoid
robot now doesn't mean we won't be able to at some time in the future
(doesn't mean that we will, either), and being able to make one
doesn't say much about the existence of a god or gods, either. But it
would pretty much put to rest one of the oldest of the pro-god
arguments: the "god of the gaps" would be shown to not be a viable
hypothesis, if it ever was one. The building of a robot
indistinguishable from a human is about the last gap to be filled
(there are others of course, but none of this magnitude, and none
given the significance of this one by those who want to use that
argument.)

Hugh

> 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


Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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