> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Doug Pensinger > Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2008 5:15 PM > To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion > Subject: On Godliness > > Not that speculative fiction really influences my personal philosophy, but > in reading Bank's Matter I am reminded why I doubt rather than I am > assured > that there are no gods. If you believe in some sort of technological > singularity, its easy to imagine how an intelligent entity such as a human > being can raise themselves to an existence that is well beyond what we now > experience; sublimation or transcendence. And if one can raise themselves > one level, what's to say that there are not many levels above our own?
> So that set me to wondering; would those of you among us that are > religious consider the possibility that their supreme being(s) was at > one time something similar to what we are today? Well, I think that type of god would be a very poor excuse for God. It reduces God to the mundane, and removes the transcendental nature of God. I think the question and the comments made within this thread of whatever there is needing to part of the universe assume a connection between understanding the universe and understanding what things are really like apart from us that the evidence is tending against. One reference that I find useful in considering this is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_quantum_mechanics which includes a partial table of QM interpretations. Reading through these various interpretations of QM and you get a wide variety of descriptions of reality. I can add a few more descriptions that would also be consistent with QM. This is not to say there have been no advancements in the understanding in the foundation of QM. There have been, including the work on decoherence that offers some hope of a QM theory of QM measurement (works OK as a toy model, but hasn't gone much further....but that's still not a bad thing). However, with all of these advances, the QM "weirdness" has not been eliminated, it's just been pushed to another corner. In the sciam website there was a discussion of a potential experimental test at the Plank limit that might be able to turn at least some interpretations into theories. But, further reading on this subject indicates that the same sorta thing that happens with decoherence will also happen here.....the fundamental interpretation problem is not solved by turning the interpretation into theories....rather the interpretation problem is merely stated in a new way. So, given this state of the mundane, I hope you can see why I do not believe in a God rooted in the mundane. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
