Not exactly sure where this goes so the mod may move this if deemed unappropriate for this forum.

God: A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator

This is how www.dictionary.com defines god.....

Ok so here is the premise: Suppose that A.I reaches levels of such advancement and stages of such design that it can mimick human behavior and eventually over time the algorithms get so advanced that they retrograde (if you call emotions a weakness) in behavior and take on human emotions. Suppose this has occured...

...If we gave the machines life, their design, their language, their processing laws, they methods of communication, their first sparks of electricity, and later on, their first means of survivial. If we composed these, now highly articulate, highly versatile, and highly curious, machines from scratch then technically for them we should be gods correct? Not parents because a parent only passes on it's DNA through the acts of procreating, it doesn't have any voluntary control over how the progeny will turn out a birth....(besides the fact if the child will come out living or not or extremely fucked up) right? We are in sense the omniscient originator....no?

But this is where I get stuck....

If we do give birth to such machines then we are giving birth to something in our image but also birth to something more efficient than us, an efficacious being....so technically we are not gods but more like an evolutionary step down for them...yes? We created them out of mere visions but we created something far superior which does not make us god like at all...more like a parent.

Now my dilemma is: Should these beings worship us because of our intial role in their creation or do they discard, or ignore, us a viable species who is vastly inferior?

We are the omniscient originator but we are not perfect and omnipotent compared to them. Can they learn to worship an inferior god or do they pity or admire us like an old, sick, mother would be by her sons and daughters?

I fear I may not have chosen the suitable words for my question but I have been thinking about this for a while and can never reach to a conclusion.

there is evidence to support either

if you look at lion tamers. a human can train, and therefore we do have "voluntary control over how the progeny will turn out a(t) birth" and the lions for the most part will go for their entire life, despite the fact that they could kill their tamers any time they wanted. So robots, which have emotions will probably act like lions, and worship, or at least respect their creators

but if we create extremely cold, logical and unemotuional robots, they will see no need to keep the inferior creators their and will rebel/kill us

Now my dilemma is: Should these beings worship us because of our intial role in their creation or do they discard, or ignore, us a viable species who is vastly inferior?

The latter. Worship only occurs (in humans at least) when the object of worship is not understood. Given your premisses, it would be more than fair to say that the creations would easily understand us humans. I think it was either Bradbury or Aasimov who said: 'Any sufficiently technologically advanced society will appear godlike to another, less advanced society.' (or something along those lines).

First, we wouldn't be omniscient, we'd just be very intelligent. We may be said to be god-like in our ability to bring life where there was previously none, but we certainly woulnd't be as God, since we would not be omnipotent, omniscient, perfect, [prime] originator. Furthermore, we would only be inventors, not creators. To create is to make from nothing. We obviously need materials from which to make robots, hence makers, or inventors, but not creators. And again, by "Image of God" what is meant is that we have intelligence and free will. Robots, if intelligent and free of will, would also have the Image of God. Of course, if we made them to look like us, then they would be made in our physical image, but that has different significance from what is meant in Genesis.

I would have to agree with alain, that, having emotions, they would not discard us (ie, exterminate?), but would rather live with us in common interest and friendship. Sure, there might be some dictator robot like Hitlar who might come along and pedestal robots as a perfect race. It's entirely possible, but I think that in general there would be a commradeship, and even a form of respect that robots would have for humans (at least in the beginning), as we did bring them life.

I think whether or not they saw you as God would depend on their scope of the world. If they could see the "rest" of the world (the world which you and I inhabit), over which you are not omnipotent or omniscient, then they wouldn't see you as God, because there would be all the evidence of a higher creative power.

On the other hand, if you created their known world, and they didn't know a world in a "higher tier", then you will have created the world, you'd know all about it and likely have any control you wanted over it, and, not seeing evidence of that "higher tier" of creation, they'd consider you a God. (And if you created all of the informatic/physical elements of that world, then you *would* be a God, I guess.)

This leads me to something I've often thought about. I believe that if a civilization (/life form) advances far enough (exponential knowledge growth over millenia), it will eventually have mind-blowing powers over matter and even information. That would mean they could create worlds. So, according to my theory, there could possibly be multiple creators of multiple "worlds". Sometimes I wonder if there's a creator of our world, and then another creator a tier above that...

And then, what if the physical manifestion need not even happen -- what if it's just information that we live in... Then, God wouldn't have to "build" the world at all, but rather dream it.

The latter. Worship only occurs (in humans at least) when the object of worship is not understood. Given your premisses, it would be more than fair to say that the creations would easily understand us humans. I think it was either Bradbury or Aasimov who said: 'Any sufficiently technologically advanced society will appear godlike to another, less advanced society.' (or something along those lines).The line is "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." At least, that's the way I usually see it quoted. I don't know who originated it.

Arthur C Clarke, british SF writer whose poularity heyday was about the 50's, 60's, but has written a fair bit of good stuff since then. He originated the idea of geosynchronous satellites, and currently lives in Sri Lanka.


As for the topic, I can only say wait and see. The older I get the more I see the similarity between such questions and asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Child - Fear
Teenage - Rebel
Adult - you choose.

Must first say why a creator is deserving of worship.

Not exactly sure where this goes so the mod may move this if deemed unappropriate for this forum.



This is how www.dictionary.com defines god.....

Ok so here is the premise: Suppose that A.I reaches levels of such advancement and stages of such design that it can mimick human behavior and eventually over time the algorithms get so advanced that they retrograde (if you call emotions a weakness) in behavior and take on human emotions. Suppose this has occured...

...If we gave the machines life, their design, their language, their processing laws, they methods of communication, their first sparks of electricity, and later on, their first means of survivial. If we composed these, now highly articulate, highly versatile, and highly curious, machines from scratch then technically for them we should be gods correct? Not parents because a parent only passes on it's DNA through the acts of procreating, it doesn't have any voluntary control over how the progeny will turn out a birth....(besides the fact if the child will come out living or not or extremely fucked up) right? We are in sense the omniscient originator....no?

But this is where I get stuck....

If we do give birth to such machines then we are giving birth to something in our image but also birth to something more efficient than us, an efficacious being....so technically we are not gods but more like an evolutionary step down for them...yes? We created them out of mere visions but we created something far superior which does not make us god like at all...more like a parent.

Now my dilemma is: Should these beings worship us because of our intial role in their creation or do they discard, or ignore, us a viable species who is vastly inferior?

We are the omniscient originator but we are not perfect and omnipotent compared to them. Can they learn to worship an inferior god or do they pity or admire us like an old, sick, mother would be by her sons and daughters?

I fear I may not have chosen the suitable words for my question but I have been thinking about this for a while and can never reach to a conclusion.

Theres no real metaphor for the exact relationship we would have with these machines, because it really would be a combination of the God/man, the parent/child, and the man/ape relationships. Because the machines would be conscious and if they are more sensitive and wise then we are, they would supposedly recognize the fact that we consciously made them that way and respect us for it. But at the same time they would either be stronger than us, or they would impart their own strength to us (cyborg). So, they would be caring for us and not worshipping us as some kind of omniscient all-powerful being. More likely they would be the omniscient all powerful ones.

Its like man creates God (this time for real). Then God loves man and brings heaven to earth.