5 ms·

> Well, speaking as an atheist who would like to think that the brain is purely cause and effect, Even if you believe there are souls created by God, you also

by gwd 7y ago

> Well, speaking as an atheist who would like to think that the brain is purely cause and effect, Even if you believe there are souls created by God, you also believe that you can reliably cause (provoke? induce?) God to create a soul and attach it to a specific bit of matter, by merely engaging in a certain pleasurable activity. Supposing that we could create an artificial life form with the same brain structures as a human, God could certainly create and attach a soul if he chose. Given his general willingness to create souls in response to our actions, is there a strong reason to believe he wouldn't imbue a machine capable of human-like thought with a soul? And, how would we know whether this had happened or not? If we can't create a test capable of distinguishing a group of atoms with a soul from a group of atoms without a soul, isn't it safer to treat them both the same?

vidarh 7y ago
> Supposing that we could create an artificial life form with the same brain structures as a human, God could certainly create and attach a soul if he chose. Given his general willingness to create souls in response to our actions, is there a strong reason to believe he wouldn't imbue a machine capable of human-like thought with a soul? I'd say we have no way of telling. "God" or a game engine or whatever is creating those "souls" might be someone looking on with bemusement and enjoying adding souls to anything we want to see what we come up with, or might be someone who takes great offense we're meddling in their business, or might be a dumb rules engine that insists on a specific biological interaction to happen just so before it instantiates another object. Or there might be some weird quantum mechanical interaction we don't understand that gets triggered that happens to interact with another dimension. Or a bored teenager needs to go out and get another USB dongle to upgrade the number of "soul simulators" their game allows. Or an endless number of other possibilities. > And, how would we know whether this had happened or not? If we can't create a test capable of distinguishing a group of atoms with a soul from a group of atoms without a soul, isn't it safer to treat them both the same? Currently we don't. I don't even know if you're conscious. We don't understand intelligence well enough to reliably test for intelligence, and we don't understand well enough how intelligence relates to consciousness or whether there is a meaningful distinction.

by gwd 7y ago

vidarh 7y ago

> Supposing that we could create an artificial life form with the same brain structures as a human, God could certainly create and attach a soul if he chose. Given his general willingness to create souls in response to our actions, is there a strong reason to believe he wouldn't imbue a machine capable of human-like thought with a soul? I'd say we have no way of telling. "God" or a game engine or whatever is creating those "souls" might be someone looking on with bemusement and enjoying adding souls to anything we want to see what we come up with, or might be someone who takes great offense we're meddling in their business, or might be a dumb rules engine that insists on a specific biological interaction to happen just so before it instantiates another object. Or there might be some weird quantum mechanical interaction we don't understand that gets triggered that happens to interact with another dimension. Or a bored teenager needs to go out and get another USB dongle to upgrade the number of "soul simulators" their game allows. Or an endless number of other possibilities. > And, how would we know whether this had happened or not? If we can't create a test capable of distinguishing a group of atoms with a soul from a group of atoms without a soul, isn't it safer to treat them both the same? Currently we don't. I don't even know if you're conscious. We don't understand intelligence well enough to reliably test for intelligence, and we don't understand well enough how intelligence relates to consciousness or whether there is a meaningful distinction.