Re: Off topic: Humans, Robots and Religion

[Doug Craigen <dcc@ESCAPE.CA>]

Zach Wolff wrote:
> I think this discussion has drifted from the central
> idea of the article and the research in question.
> There doesn't seem to be any attempt by the people
> working at MIT to prove or disprove the existence of
> God.  The title of the article states, "As Robots
> Become Smarter and Self-aware, Scientists, Theologians
> Consider Their Humanity."  Notice that the quality
> under examination is humanity, not origin.  I read the
> article as an investigation of ethics from both a
> theological and scientific point of view.  The

theo -- God
ology -- study of

To rephrase what I said before, the things I am capable or incapable of
creating do not prove much if anything about the existence, motives, or
nature of any Gods.  So why do theologians need to consider such
questions?  (Someone else has already suggested that it is an attempt to
justify their employment.) I suspect we are talking here about poets and
philosophers who would rather be known as theologians (liberal theology
schools are full of such).  Such are bound to be in a continual search
for "relevancy" that justifies their existence.

To seriously ask whether a self-aware machine we create has a soul
suggests that we have already rejected the traditional religion-based
definitions of the word... for example, how many people would seriously
think that if you were to uplug such a machine it would then be up
talking to St. Peter at the Golden Gates while we gave its body an
appropriate burial?  If we are merely talking about what redefinition we
should give to the word soul... there is something within me that says
"you can define words to mean whatever you want them to - so call
anything self-aware a "soul" if you wish, but why not go invent your own
word rather than arguing about how to redefine an existing one?".
Considering the how vigororously we defend the physics language, it
strikes me as odd to embrace redefintions where (for instance)
"theology" needn't have anything to do with God.

()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()

Doug Craigen
          Latest Project - the Physics E-source
          http://www.dctech.com/physics/