Neil Degrasse Tyson

[hitchcockgreen]

Gotta say, this guy is all sorts of awesome.

[FirBirGir]

Have you seen this? I thought it was a very insightful concept.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qikjljlbTQw

Without meaning to, Neil makes a pretty good argument in favor of a God type being, by saying if a 2% difference in DNA structure between chimps and humans resulted in humans achieving , what if an alien life form was 2% or more above us and how much more advanced they would be. I can't find the link but it was quite a rational dissertation that would explain the existance of a god-like being (from our mere human point of view).

Have you seen this one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlZtEjtlirc

Eddy

[hitchcockgreen]

Have you seen this? I thought it was a very insightful concept.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qikjljlbTQw

Yes I've seen that one and all valid points. A more intelligent species would be, most likely, beyond comprehension and very much god-like. Especially if they were capable of interstellar/intergalactic travel. But the argument isn't for a theistic deity.

I've seen the Ben Stein one as well, but I think Ben Stein is taking some liberties with his interpretation of what Dawkins is saying and the definition of Intelligent Design/Creationism.

Oh, here is the original video from which the above image was generated (just to put it into context):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5dSyT50Cs8

Also: further to intelligent design: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... Sg6j7BF02Q

[Blunt Force Trauma]

God-Like and a God are two very different things.

A man with his choice of 2012 technology would easily appear as a God to a man from the time of the gospels.

I think considering mankind as intelligent is valid. We are self-aware. We can recognize, interpret, act on, and utilize complex imaginary patterns. We have the ability to visualize ourselves and situations well into the future. We can build complex tools to not only adapt to our environment, but make our environment extremely comfortable. . even in some of the worst environments this reality has to offer. Temperatures hundreds of degrees on either side of the temperatures we evolved, zero g, zero atmosphere, places that are hundreds of thousands of miles from water or food. Yes, I think we are "intelligent".

As the singularity approaches, I think about our 'level of intelligence' quite often.

Hugo de Garis, a Australian AI and computer researcher in China sees AI surpassing us in intelligence by trillions of times ... relatively soon (~30 years)... using atomic spin and femto-switching speeds. I think the coming computing power is driving him a little over the edge, as he sees it as coming, not just conjecture. When, and if, man made intelligence reaches the heights he suggests, have we then made our own "God"?

[hitchcockgreen]

Hehe Now I know I read a book or short story along those lines.... a race creates a computer of intelligence vastly beyond theirs and it outlives their civilization (but they do not go extinct) and then becomes their god.

[FirBirGir]

God-Like and a God are two very different things.

A man with his choice of 2012 technology would easily appear as a God to a man from the time of the gospels.

I agree with your example since it simply appears that the man is a god. But let's say we define "God" as an immortal entity that has the power to create pretty much anything including life. How far of a reach is it that some day in the far future, man could evolve to the point that we can be immortal and that we can manipulate the laws of the universe to convert energy to matter and matter to energy. I don't think we're that far away from creating life, albeit artificial at first.

So jump a few million light years away to an alien world with an alien civilization that has already evolved to the point (or beyond) described above. From our current perspective, would that alien being be a God?

If you're focusing on the concept of humans having souls, that's a different perspective on this discussion. Sci-Fi often carries echos of the future, which can be downright scary in how close it comes sometimes. Take a look at the works of Richard K. Morgan. Novels like Altered Carbon has humans evolved to the point that human consciousness resides within a technological "stack" and human bodies are containers for the "stack". We still have brains but the stack uploads consciousness into the brain and downloads all memories back into the stack. Death is an inconvenience but certainly not the end. In that world, is human consciousness our soul or has humanity lost the man vs machine war and now humans are simply vessels for AI brains? His books are well worth reading if you like extreme sci-fi.

Eddy

[Blunt Force Trauma]

I've read my share of sci-fi novels in my life, and the vast majority of novels has homo-sapiens as the central intelligent character or the character at least on similar footing to the alien or altered antagonist. But I am slowly beginning to think the end of bipedal organic 'humans' may be much closer to the end than we could possibly imagine.

When and if full "artilect" (as Hugo coins it) appear, our reality could be changed in a matter of hours to a few years. No one has any clear idea. Science fiction is written by people with IQ's and imagination not much bigger than yours or mine in comparison to the coming AI. No one knows what an entity will do with an intelligence magnitudes larger, let alone millions.

[hitchcockgreen]

If they even manage to survive the nuclear age....

[Blunt Force Trauma]

An article, released today, that IBM is now able to store a bit of information on a 12 atom array. The paper released in late November.

[hitchcockgreen]

Several years ago I recall an article out of the university of Israel that they were experimenting with using frog DNA for computing.

Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk

[hitchcockgreen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn7-fVtT16k

Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk

[Blunt Force Trauma]

Hugo's argument in outline.

Here a few futurist/researches offering their 2 cents on the premise.

[Blunt Force Trauma]

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Science and Faith

[hitchcockgreen]

The Dec-Jan edition of Natural History Magazine has a fantastic rant by Tyson.
It isn't online yet, but should be soon. When it is, you can find it here:
http://naturalhistorymag.com/search/nod ... se%20tyson

Anyway, here's an excerpt:

"What else do we know about China? . . . the upper quartile of China - the smartest 25% - outnumbers the entire population of the United States . . . You've seen the numbers: China graduates about half a million scientists and engineers a year; we graduate about 70,000 - much less than the ratio of our populations would indicate . . . we graduate half a million of something a year: lawyers . . . It tells me we are going into the future fully prepared to litigate over the crumbling of our infrastructure."

[FirBirGir]

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Science and Faith

I thought Neil Degrasse Tyson had said that you can't be a scientist and be religious. Or was that someone else? What he says in this clip is spot on.

When any of you were in school, did the topic of creationism come up in history or science classes? We discussed it but from a detached point of view, acknowledging that some religious beliefs do not align with scientific findings and we spent a small amount of time theorizing on how religious views (as well has mythology and legends) are formed when people cannot comprehend circumstances and they create beliefs that they can accept to explain what they see, hear or feel. This conversation did not compete with the science we were learning nor did it cause conflict among the students. It was simply acknowledging that not everyone has the same opinions and beliefs. I'm not sure if schools today would allow this type of discussion in a science class...

Eddy

[Blunt Force Trauma]

I don't recall discussing creationism at all in high school.

[hitchcockgreen]

No mention of it here, but you know...this is Canada.
Although I took a World Religions course in high school where the discussions sound like the ones you are talking about.
My science classes were just science.

[Ded10c]

When we touched on creationism in Religious Studies, it basically went along the lines of;

Teacher: "Are any of you creationists?"
Class: *silence*
Teacher: "Right, Creationists believe this."
Classs: "These people are stupid."
Teacher: "These people are very stupid."

[Blunt Force Trauma]

I certainly don't see the religious, per say, as 'stupid'. I know many people personally who have proven themselves highly intelligent, deep and quick thinking in a wide range of subjects, that are hard-core religious. From my own experience of having once been fully assimilated into faith-based belief, they cling to threads of ancient anecdotal evidence and loose empirical assumptions. One of the reasons why religious dogma has survived this far into human evolution is exactly because of man's intelligence, mixed with imagination and the need for spiritual comfort.

[Ded10c]

Our class was predominantly atheist or antitheist.