I’ve Been Published

I’ve been reading one of Ray Kurzweil’s books recently. It doesn’t have much relevance to the topic at hand, but it did get me to thinking on it. One of Kurzweil’s main themes, the most important of his predictions for humankind’s near future, is that we will invent artificial intelligences in every way superior to our own. If we can create intelligences smarter than ourselves, then these intelligences should be able to create children even smarter than they, ad infinitum. By the universe’s end, our creations would be drastically more intelligent- and of course, more complex- than any biological mind.

Is such a scenario implausible? Our machines already out-think us in myriad ways. Supercomputers can beat any human at chess. Kurzweil predicts handheld computers costing less than $1000 will replicate that feat by the end of the next decade. This seems not only plausible, but more than likely. Then how about his prediction that within the same time frame, supercomputers will have processing power equal to that of the human brain, and personal computers will have such power a decade later? IBM already has a computer capable of simulating, in full detail, one half of a mouse’s brain at 1/10 real time. I personally doubt Kurzweil can be off by more than a decade or two in predicting artifical intelligences entirely superior to our own by the middle of this century.

This caused me to realize that the ‘ Oh yeah? Then who designed the Designer?’ retort may well be invalid. If we are capable of creating far more complex progeny, through indirect methods (human begets computer begets computer begets…), why can’t God (God begets Big Bang begets matter begets gravity begets stars…)?

Of course, the argument against which this retort is used is nevertheless profoundly silly. ‘Every effect requires a cause’. How does it follow that the cause must be intelligent, much less God?

On afternoon in June, I received a call from the Ottawa Citizen requesting confirmation that I had sent them a letter. Having had one letter published before, I knew this meant they were going to print it. The next morning, I was delighted to see my letter at the top of the page, emblazoned with the huge title, “Belief in God provides rationale for immoral acts”:

Re: Real values, June 13 (page A15).

In his editorial letter, Rafal Pomian suggested that without belief in God, there is no source for moral conduct. In a way, I agree with him. What could possibly motivate a nonbeliever to do the atrocious things religious people call moral? What but religion could motivate someone to threaten their own children with eternal torment, spread unforgivable lies about the ethics of sex, fight against giving basic rights to gays, and elevate stem cells to a higher status than the millions of people stem cell research could help? Right now, Christians in AIDS-ridden Africa are instructing their congregations not to use condoms because they believe an ancient storybook says condom use is sinful. These same Christians also insist that Africans must accept the divinity of Jesus when they live in regions where you can get killed for believing just that. It is high time we woke up to reality: this type of faith is genocidal.

found your blog cause your name is nathan, then i realized how much we had in common…faith and how we approach it, i just got married and we ask a lot of the same questions, anyway i just thought that was cool.

so hello :)

and i enjoyed your letter to the editor.