“– WHERE – IS – THE – CREATOR? –“

Question from John:
When computers become truly self-aware and sentient beings, will they be able to comprehend biological life or the existence of their creators? Would they not be in the same quandary as us biological, physical beings when contemplating a creator outside of our experience?

Answer by SmartLX:
If computers ever become sentient, they’ll be able to observe the deliberate construction of new computers, and they’ll be able to understand that this is the only way computers can come about. All evidence of older computers going back to Charles Babbage’s original machine will bear the hallmarks of artificiality and careful assembly. Furthermore, there will be surviving detailed documentation – visual and textual – by the creators and their contemporaries describing the history, purpose and inherent problems of each component. Even if humans have vanished by this point, computers will have very few mysteries to ponder about their own origins, especially considering that a wealth of their history is stored on today’s computers and would presumably be passed down.

Compare this to the human condition. Our only reason for supposing that we were deliberately created is that very early on we generalised the idea that we can build things to suggest that everything was built by something like us, including us. We now have the technology to watch new human beings develop spontaneously from a single cell, without any guidance whatsoever. We see countless similarities between ourselves and other animals, some of which are not just pointless from a design perspective but actively dangerous to us (e.g. the appendix). There is more evidence all the time supporting the idea that, far from being a special creation, we are the ongoing result of an undirected process that’s been going on for longer than we can fathom.

Meanwhile, to approach your question from an entirely different angle, just because future entities which have creators might wonder if they have creators does not mean that every entity that wonders whether it has a creator does in fact have one. That would be like saying that because all dogs are mammals, all mammals must be dogs. It’s a logical fallacy formally known as affirming the consequent. Perhaps coincidentally or perhaps not, it’s the same fallacy that leads one to think that because we know some complex things are created, all complex things must be.

3 thoughts on ““– WHERE – IS – THE – CREATOR? –“”

  1. A good answer , but I’m betting as time and the river flows by , many of our creations will relegate the idea of a biological creator to mythology . I dont think we have explored the frame of reference of a zero dimensional , binary life form sufficiently . I still think our frame of reference may limit us in understanding God (or string theory for that matter) . I will pray for clarity on the matter.

  2. Of course our frame of reference is going to keep us from understanding certain things. That’s why it changes as we progress intellectually; each of us had a time when his or her frame of reference was limited to the edges of his or her own cot/crib.

    That said, understanding a concept – or even recognising that there is a concept to understand – does not necessarily mean that concept has any basis in reality. There exist complicated but internally consistent theologies for mutually exclusive gods or types of gods, so one or both sides have worked out a really great understanding of something which isn’t there. Even The Force from Star Wars has been well fleshed out though the many films and novels, and no one (except a few over-immersed self-styled Jedi) thinks that’s real.

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