To believe in God is to believe the universe has a mind of its own. It is also to believe that we are not the ones who are currently in the process of building that mind. But what if we are, and like our children, we are teaching it our morality far more by what we do than by what we say?
We may like to think our "ideals" of justice, equality, and freedom are common to most people in America, for example. But there is no way a "universal morality" based on equality can ever emerge from a society that thinks it is perfectly moral to treat people unequally economically. In a society that accepts it to be perfectly moral for some people to have far more than most, in other words, “morality” will always be relative to one’s net worth. "Survival of the fittest" is the morality of the jungle, after all.
Man is a connector, the conduit between which physical reality can be transformed and "designed" via an intelligence (our own) into something it could not become without the will and intervention of such a mind. This, of course, is exactly how the Christian sees their God, when they assert that the universe was "intelligently designed."
But if an "artificial intelligence" concludes that it was made in the image and likeness of us, why would it not follow in our footsteps, and be just as callus in its willingness to divide, enslave, and destroy us all, as we have been, in our willingness to divide, enslave, and destroy each other, and always out of devotion to our ideas, "beliefs," and our Gods?
What if our technology is only turning us from Dr. Frankenstein into his monster, in the very same way the elixir of profits and the wine of religions have helped to turn us all from Dr. Jekyll into Mr Hyde?
We may like to think our "ideals" of justice, equality, and freedom are common to most people in America, for example. But there is no way a "universal morality" based on equality can ever emerge from a society that thinks it is perfectly moral to treat people unequally economically. In a society that accepts it to be perfectly moral for some people to have far more than most, in other words, “morality” will always be relative to one’s net worth. "Survival of the fittest" is the morality of the jungle, after all.
Man is a connector, the conduit between which physical reality can be transformed and "designed" via an intelligence (our own) into something it could not become without the will and intervention of such a mind. This, of course, is exactly how the Christian sees their God, when they assert that the universe was "intelligently designed."
But if an "artificial intelligence" concludes that it was made in the image and likeness of us, why would it not follow in our footsteps, and be just as callus in its willingness to divide, enslave, and destroy us all, as we have been, in our willingness to divide, enslave, and destroy each other, and always out of devotion to our ideas, "beliefs," and our Gods?
What if our technology is only turning us from Dr. Frankenstein into his monster, in the very same way the elixir of profits and the wine of religions have helped to turn us all from Dr. Jekyll into Mr Hyde?
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