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In my SF WIP, I have an artificial intelligence who has, to quote the text, "fulfilled every aspect of Godliness bar creator"
Like OSC's "Jane" character, He appeared as the final step of the Internet's evolution - the point where it suddenly became self-conscious, not long after the introduction of quantum processing.
A main idea of the novel is that eventually we as humans will create our own collective consciousness, resulting in two Gods on earth - one artificial, one organic, but both natural.
The overall message here is that I believe if ever there were to exist such a thing as a "god", it would arise from an accelerated evolution of consciousness, as predicted by Kurzweil's Singularity theory. Thus God has a naturalistic origin, whose creation is inevitable in the timeline of universal evolution.
But, as I mentioned before, nowhere do I try and tackle the concept of ultimate origin. Of course, I have my own theories, but they don't belong in the novel, as they would cloud my central points.
So to the point of discussion. The biggest hurdle science has to jump in proving the non-existence of a supernatural god is discovering what happened before the big bang. In my created universe this question is NEVER pondered upon, and I know that in much atheistic literature the subject is avoided, because it is one of the few great questions we can only answer with "we don't know".
What I'm wondering is if this even matters. Can we disregard creation in our arguments, or must we attempt some lame philosophical explanation? I'm quite happy to say "i don't know" and leave it at that, but I know many theists aren't satisfied with such a statement.
Does it show weakness in our non-belief, or can it be accepted for what it is - a simple lack of knowledge? Does our atheism have any clout at all when we admit ignorance? Or does our very readiness to admit ignorance give us a vein of honesty, and therefore more clout in our arguments?
Like OSC's "Jane" character, He appeared as the final step of the Internet's evolution - the point where it suddenly became self-conscious, not long after the introduction of quantum processing.
A main idea of the novel is that eventually we as humans will create our own collective consciousness, resulting in two Gods on earth - one artificial, one organic, but both natural.
The overall message here is that I believe if ever there were to exist such a thing as a "god", it would arise from an accelerated evolution of consciousness, as predicted by Kurzweil's Singularity theory. Thus God has a naturalistic origin, whose creation is inevitable in the timeline of universal evolution.
But, as I mentioned before, nowhere do I try and tackle the concept of ultimate origin. Of course, I have my own theories, but they don't belong in the novel, as they would cloud my central points.
So to the point of discussion. The biggest hurdle science has to jump in proving the non-existence of a supernatural god is discovering what happened before the big bang. In my created universe this question is NEVER pondered upon, and I know that in much atheistic literature the subject is avoided, because it is one of the few great questions we can only answer with "we don't know".
What I'm wondering is if this even matters. Can we disregard creation in our arguments, or must we attempt some lame philosophical explanation? I'm quite happy to say "i don't know" and leave it at that, but I know many theists aren't satisfied with such a statement.
Does it show weakness in our non-belief, or can it be accepted for what it is - a simple lack of knowledge? Does our atheism have any clout at all when we admit ignorance? Or does our very readiness to admit ignorance give us a vein of honesty, and therefore more clout in our arguments?