Talking to God

http://www.fullmoon.nu/articles/art.php?id=tal

by artagnon • 16 years ago

156 102 16 years ago

Thought-provoking, and I say that as a Christian. It also reminds me of my favorite short story: http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

ax0n4• 16 years ago

Also Christian, and I found it to be a clever bit of fiction, really. Well-written, entertaining. Also, thanks for that link :)

mambodog• 16 years ago

Funny, thats just how I feel about the old testament...

donaq6• 16 years ago

Out of curiosity, what would your reaction be if you found that it wasn't fiction? Would you accept the entity the author was conversing with as God? Or would you think he was a demon? Or just an advanced godlike alien being beyond which another, more powerful entity exists in the unknowable (kinda hard, since this being created the entirety of our reality).

yannis• 16 years ago

Interesting and well written. However, being an agnostic I offer this:

From A Scientific Rationale for Belief in God http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/God_AI.html

>I present here a concise rationale for the existence of God. The work of Ray Kurzweil and other artificial intelligence researchers is critical to my thesis. An entity (computers or humans, it not mattering which) will eventually become all-knowing. How much time passes before what is likely to be a rapid convergence to all-knowing is not important...

donaq6• 16 years ago

I stopped reading when the author made a leap in logic from superhuman intelligence to omniscience, and then from omniscience to time travel just within the abstract. This was obviously not a well thought out piece.

eagleal• 16 years ago

I didn't read it just because he says that Kurzweil is critical to his thesis.

Herring2• 16 years ago

tldr: fiction. I closed the tab when he started talking about dinosaurs not having respect for other life.

tybris• 16 years ago

> tldr: fiction

The title says "Talking to god". You didn't seriously expect...?

gjm11• 16 years ago

Perhaps he expected a scientific study of what happens in people's brains when they think they are talking to God, or some statistics relating the things people think God has told them with their own prior beliefs, or something of the kind.

Perhaps he expected an account of how someone met with someone else they admired/feared so much that it was like talking to God.

Herring2• 16 years ago

Tell that to the billions of religious people. I don't even know what I expected. Maybe something real, seeing as it was so high on HN.

petercooper• 16 years ago

Just flag it, I did. That's what flagging's there for.

ThomPete2• 16 years ago

I am still waiting for someone to tell me how they know the difference between what they call god and an advanced alien race tricking them into believing in them.

How would you know?

jurjenh• 16 years ago

I would guess that falls into the same category as Artur C Clarke's Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

The point is essentially moot - what can you / are you going to do about it?

ThomPete2• 16 years ago

Stop believing in things that could might as well be an advanced alien race.

billswift• 16 years ago

Why would you care? Either they are interesting or not and helpful or not. If neither, ignore them.

lucifer• 16 years ago

That's the eternal question. According to the western religions, an entity (a certain Satan that should not be confused with yours truly :) rebelled against God precisely because he did not believe in the whole story and sought the "throne".

"And remember when Abraham said, `My Lord, show me how You gives life to the dead.' God said, `Do you not believe ?' Abraham said, `Yes, but I ask this that my heart may be at ease.' God answered, `Take four birds and make them attached to thee. Then put each of them on a hill; then call them; they will come to thee in haste.' And know that Allah Is Mighty and Wise." - 2:262

I think the interesting twist in the meme that OP is seeding is to consider whether fairly advanced species send agents to emerging species to mind fuck them into oblivion. According to OP's vision, it is not merely possible, but absolutely necessary, for us to pursue destructive technology to the point that the fate of the species can be decided by any single individual in the collective.

callahad2• 16 years ago

And that's what I found most interesting. How can you preserve free will and continue to exist after developing an effortless, universally-known means of condemning the entire species?

Tichy4• 16 years ago

I would also say: what does it matter? Is the assumption that we should obey all commands from god, but not from an alien race? Why?

Would a universe where everybody just does what god tells them even be worth living in?

Playing devil's advocate against myself: what if elementary particles are basically just entities doing exactly what god tells them - apparently interesting results can still occur.

melito2• 16 years ago

Smiled through the whole read.

Only thing that needs to be revised is 'genetic warfare'. That is definitely not a future problem. It's a very very old one.

Also, while I think "prescience" would most certainly be in god's vocabulary, I think he'd be 'ultra fashionable' and think of it's use in casual conversation as being passe.

Kinda Spoiler

The end reminded me of "What does Marsellus Wallace look like?"

sliverstorm2• 16 years ago

This is all out of the recollection of the author in the story; if the author is the type of person to use "prescience", he could easily have injected the word in his narrative.

On the other hand, if this god is what he claims to be, I imagine he'd use whatever words best conveyed his point- if he was trying to make one- and who are we to say "prescience" was not the perfect word when speaking to our narrator?

lukifer• 16 years ago

Arguably, all violence is a sort of genetic warfare. But we've yet to encounter the problem of engineered-from-scratch superviruses.

melito2• 16 years ago

I was thinking more along the lines of 'eugenics'

greenlblue• 16 years ago

Hilarious ending. I wonder how it would sound if a woman had the same conversation?

sliverstorm2• 16 years ago

‘so what, exactly, makes you god?’

‘I did’

‘Why?’

‘Seemed like a good idea at the time’

^ When I read this I looked around for Douglas Adams. Rest his soul.

tpyo• 16 years ago

"Pat Robertson would wet himself if he actually understood who he was talking to."

pella• 16 years ago

Forum "Conversation with God" http://www.fullmoon.nu/rtpforum/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=4

other discussions : http://www.fullmoon.nu/rtpforum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10

euroclydon• 16 years ago

What is a "password association?"

DeusExMachina2• 16 years ago

I think it is just the way he remembers/has selected that particular password.

philh• 16 years ago

I think it's why he chose that particular password. So if my password was lucy, the association would probably be a girl I was attracted to at the time I chose it.

Jach2• 16 years ago

Fun way to generate a reasonably complex password: pick six+ words out of a favorite song, take the first letter of each word, turn to CaMeLcAsE, pick a letter or two and replace with an ascii equivalent (e.g. s becomes 5, a becomes @, etc.), and wrap it with $'s or ^'s or one of those top-row characters.

$JuNa5t5$ ==> Join us now and share the software

ekiru• 16 years ago

Wouldn't using the six word phrase most likely be a much more secure password than condensing it to a mere 8 characters?

zacharypinter• 16 years ago

Thanks for posting this! I read it a while back and lost the link.

The part that's stayed with me the most about this story is the following:

"...imagine discovering a secret thought or program, accessible to any intelligent individual, which, if abused, will eliminate your species instantly."

"Each and every individual in such a species must eventually become capable of destroying their entire species at any time. Yet they must learn to control themselves to the degree that they can survive even such deadly insight."

What a great thought. How would our species survive if any one of us had the ability to destroy all of us. I think of this in the context of the internet. I'm strongly of the opinion that the internet should not be censored or restricted in any way. However, what if there was a way to make the equivalent of a Nuclear Bomb with low-cost, easily available materials? How would the internet handle that knowledge? What would it do to society?

callahad2• 16 years ago

The simplest way would be to relinquish free will.

ntoshev• 16 years ago

Evolution halts at the point where a single individual dooms the entire population. It cannot work with a step fitness function, with no margin for error.

And by evolution I mean the abstract understanding for evolution that we have, which is the core of the genetic algorithms (not just biological evolution, nor some abstract "a population getting better in something").

I think we are encountering the problem at different scale at first: some countries can destroy the entire species, then more and more countries do, then it would become possible for some large or committed enough organizations. We are learning to cope along the way, and the approach so far is to keep knowledge under covers, and not to give such powers lightly.

tom_ilsinszki2• 16 years ago

If you start a computer program, that runs evolutionary algorithms, you become their god, and you will be omnipotent (to them, at least). It's easy to write the story off as fiction, but in fact, it would explain a lot, I think.

GrandMasterBirt3• 16 years ago

to any program you write you are god. You are expecting the result of that program to behave in a specific way, the program never ran but at any point of the program you can predict what will happen to the logic of the program. But to the program you are an omnipotent god, yet in reality you may have made some mistakes, gota kill and restart see if it works better after a bug fix.

The only question is: to the program, does it matter that you are god? Does it make any bit of a difference if it believes in you or not? Will the outcome change depending on that fact? Do you care if the program worships you? (unless you wrote a program to worship you)

tom_ilsinszki2• 16 years ago

That's exactly my point. I will never understand God's plans (because there is no feedback from him, or I can't sense them), so I should be focusing on the problems that face me everyday.

Thus, I don't think God (if he exists) wants us to believe in him. (The same way, I don't care if a program or and ant worships or believes in me).

richardw2• 16 years ago

"The only question is: to the program, does it matter that you are god?"

Well, if you program it to worry about that stuff then yes. If you don't, then no. My current program couldn't care less about me. I'm okay with that.

sovande2• 16 years ago

Nick Bostrom has written a paper about just that, arguing that we may be living inside a computer simulation. It's an interesting read. See http://www.simulation-argument.com/

doki_pen• 16 years ago

I will be omnipotent? Huh, that's a stretch. I can barely understand the relatively simple programs I write. If there is a human being who understands his own code completely, in a large system, I'd like to meet him.

donaq6• 16 years ago

Well, you don't need to understand your code fully to effect changes in the simulation. The point is that it is a simulation, and you control the code. So you'd be omnipotent, just not omniscient. You know, that scenario would actually explain a lot about this world. The reason why evil exists is because God did create a rock too heavy for Him to lift, and that rock is us. Be patient, he may be in the process of debugging the system. :p

yesimahuman4• 16 years ago

Let's say you believe that our existence can be attributed to a 'divine engineer' who developed said program and our physical laws are a by product of his engineering. How do atheists respond to such an statement? I am just having a hard time defining myself spiritually (not that I feel the need to).

Atheists seem to say "there is no God", but the 'divine engineer' theory would say there is a God, just not one in the traditional sense.

Tichy4• 16 years ago

Such a theory is useless because it does not explain where the divine engineer comes from, or what is his nature. So it is just dodging the relevant questions.

olalonde• 16 years ago

As an atheist, I find this essay truly inspiring and would say most (if not all) predictions make lots of sense. That being said, I'm afraid that the spiritual tone employed by the author might distortion the message he really wanted to pass.

jimbokun• 16 years ago

"Coming to terms with the realisation that you have created your successor, not just in the sense of mother and child, but in the collective sense of the species recognising it has become redundant, this paradigm shift is, for many species, a shift too far. They baulk at the challenge and run from this new knowledge. They fail and become extinct. Yet there is nothing fundamentally wrong with them - it is a failure of the imagination."

"I hope that if I can get across the concept that I am a product of just such evolution, it may give them the confidence to try."

I vote for staying human, and not obsoleting ourselves.

The idea of becoming like the god of this story reinforces this conviction. He reminds me of Q from Star Trek, toying with species for his own amusement, having some arbitrary conception of what makes a species worthwhile, mainly revolving around that species ability to shape the material universe around them.

To me, what this story demonstrates is that Atheists are not actually opposed to God like beings. But they are scandalized by a God who does not regard technological advancement as the highest calling. They cannot possibly take a God like Jesus seriously, for example, because he was not at all concerned about correcting the scientific misunderstandings of human beings. He only cared about how people treated each other, human relationships, attitudes of the human heart, and love. For me, the verse that demonstrates Jesus nature is also the shortest in the Bible: "Jesus wept." True, he did not (and does not) always intervene to eliminate suffering and tragedy, like the being in Talking to God. But he does empathize with us, to the point he was willing to literally share in our suffering alongside us.

GrandMasterBirt3• 16 years ago

an incorrect assessment. As an atheist I believe that the concept of god as put forth by religious is ridiculous. That is all. God is invisible to all senses, his logic completely defies our logic, knows all bug gives us free will (um a contradiction), the sun revolves around the earth (oh wait that was only discarded 30 or so years ago).

The point is a religion that does not teach "treat all human beings regardless of believes or values as human beings and as your own people, try to figure out what is right and what is wrong together rather than impose values from an ancient book and it's infinite interpretations on everyone. As a human being you can make mistakes but you must take responsibiltiy for them." or something to that extent. Since I have yet to see one religion state this I cannot subscribe to any religion nor can I believe any notions of god. Remember the notion of "god" is christian/muslim/jewish. Other religions believe in many gods, or spirits, or something that is not quite what our "god" is. Who is to say that "god" is what I should believe in, vs "gods" of the hindus, etc.

camccann• 16 years ago

He only cared about how people treated each other, human relationships, attitudes of the human heart, and love.

I think most atheists would agree that Jesus sounds like a great guy.

The sticking point is probably more the lack of actual evidence for a deity existing, plus the general observation that, judging from history, religious groups tend to act as if "gain political power and/or go kill that other religious group" is the highest calling.

For that matter, if Jesus returned and resumed his ministry in the modern USA, I'd actually expect more Christians to be "scandalized" than atheists.

GrandMasterBirt3• 16 years ago

If you really take a look at it, it does not matter what religion or belief you follow. Once that belief includes someone taking power and ruling over people: The Pope, Stalin, Hitler, and take any modern dictator and add them to the list, the belief is up for corruption.

Remember power corrupts, and absolute power is just more fun. -- Benny Hill

klipt2• 16 years ago

For that matter, if Jesus returned and resumed his ministry in the modern USA, I'd actually expect more Christians to be "scandalized" than atheists.

There are two possible approaches to the Jesus story. One is to realize that he was criticizing the abuse of religious power in general, and make an effort to avoid that.

Of course, the preferred approach for those who actually do abuse religious power is to assume that his criticism focuses on some evil peculiar to the Jews, since being antisemitic is always less work than being introspective...

symptic• 16 years ago

I believe you mean, this particular Atheist believes that. Don't generalize.

joe_the_user• 16 years ago

Actually, if a man who came up to me and went as far towards "proving" he was God as this fellow did, I would immediately grab him by the lapels and start scream "you fucking bastard, what the hell do you think you're doing, can't you see the fucking suffering your causing..." and continue the rant for as long as he would take it...

Maybe that's why "God" hasn't come to me...

kirse5• 16 years ago

If you believe in free will, God couldn't be causing any of the suffering to happen. People have been given the complete choice to do whatever they please, and this world is a product of that. This world's suffering is our own.

Allowing something to happen != causing

Secondly, who are you, in your own infinitesimally small amount of knowledge, to question an omniscient, omnipotent being?

ugh2• 16 years ago

You do know that much of human suffering is not caused by humans? Earthquakes, viruses and all that stuff. Oh, yeah, death, too, of course. But I wouldn't be very mad at god because of that. I also wouldn't respect him very much. I'm pretty blind to the suffering of animals or sometimes even other humans (I was much more shocked when I heard about the death of my grandpa than when I heard about the earthquake in Haiti). So I can understand his perspective. But god doesn't exist anyway, so this point is pretty moot.

Also: omniscient and omnipotent? Does not compute.

colah4• 16 years ago

> If you believe in free will, God couldn't be causing any of the suffering to happen. People have been given the complete choice to do whatever they please, and this world is a product of that. This world's suffering is our own.

Free will is an elegant answer, if we accept it... But what about natural disasters?

>Allowing something to happen != causing

No, but Jehova seems to have gone a lot farther than that in the OT. Killing innocent children -- infants even -- for being first-born comes to mind...

> Secondly, who are you, in your own infinitesimally small amount of knowledge, to question an omniscient, omnipotent being?

Someone who believes that certain things are intrinsically wrong, regardless of whether the perpetrator is God.

rmorrison• 16 years ago

Amusing read. The one thing that broke the suspension of disbelief was the Velociraptor reference, which was based off of a movie and not history (God would know the difference).

http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/dinosaurbasics/a/velofacts.htm : "There's no evidence that Velociraptor hunted in packs" and "Velociraptor wasn't the smartest dinosaur of the Cretaceous period"

oconnore• 16 years ago

"(God would know the difference)."

I frequently refrain from nitpicking when dealing with children ("yes, the internet is how robots talk to each other"). It wouldn't be too much to expect an omnipotent being to do so as well.

baddox• 16 years ago

This may help restore suspension of disbelief: just because we don't have any evidence doesn't mean this "god" is wrong.

ssp• 16 years ago

This reminds of a "proof of God" that appeared (I think) in Seven Ages of Madness by Svend Aage Madsen:

If God exists, then there must be some way to realize what the true religion is. Some hint or pointer that would make it clear, and this hint would be available to all humans. Some people would not understand it, or ignore it, but everywhere in the world, a few people would choose to follow the correct religion.

There are many religions in the world, but only one is universal: non-belief. In some places they are few and far between, but everywhere you find a few people who don't believe in God. For all other religions there are places in the world where that religion is simply not present. But every place has a few people who don't believe. These people must have correctly understood God's hint.

Hence, if God exists, atheism is the true religion.

raquo• 16 years ago

Ah. This is so much in the "I want to believe" dept. :/

olliesaunders• 16 years ago

Just in case people are still wondering, this is one of many articles under the heading "Fiction?" in the on site's sidebar.

artagnon2• 16 years ago

Yes. I found that this one to be especially good though.

sovande2• 16 years ago

What broke the argument and suspense for me was that there was no explanation of the Fermi paradox. With 14 million type 2 and 3 civilizations and billions on our level he need to address that paradox for the story to be interesting.

ericwaller• 16 years ago

I think it was implied that the type 2 and 3 civilizations are intentionally avoiding us.

crazydiamond• 16 years ago

Silly of the author not to let God finish about the "thinking machine". Looks like God wanted to explain, but time ran out.

Anyone have any thoughts on it.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

Possibility One was that I was dreaming or hallucinating. Nobody’s figured out a test for that so, at the time I think that was my dominant feeling.

Actually, there is a pretty good test for this. Look at your digital watch, look away for a bit, and look again. If the digits are different between checks, you are dreaming. I'm told that this happens with enough regularity that it's a fairly reliable universal dream-test. (There are also others; google "lucid dreaming".)

The most effective test for me has been trying to jump out of my window. If it doesn't hurt (I live on the 16th floor...), then I must be dreaming. This is probably a bad strategy if you take hallucinogenic drugs, however :)

JshWright• 16 years ago

I just tried your first test... and the digits were indeed different... (the last two digits, in particular).

I guess that means I'm dreaming?

jrockway2• 16 years ago

No, it just means you're a pedant.

Talking to God

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