Stephen Hawking Warns That AI and 'Superhumans' Could Wipe Humanity; Says There's No God in Posthumous Book (cnn.com) 733
Stephen Hawking says artificial intelligence will eventually become so advanced it will "outperform humans." The renowned physicist who died in March warns of both rises in advanced artificial intelligence and genetically-enhanced "superhumans" in a book published Tuesday. Hawking also weighed in on god, and aliens. From a report: According to an excerpt of the book "Brief Answers to the Big Questions" published by the U.K.'s Sunday Times, Hawking wrote AI could prove "huge" to humanity so long as restrictions are in place to control how quickly it grows. "While primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have proved very useful, I fear the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans," Hawking wrote. "Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and would be superseded." Hawking wrote about a need for serious research to explore what impact AI would have on humanity, from the workplace to the military, where he expressed concerns about sophisticated weapons systems "that can choose and eliminate their own targets." Hawking also wrote about advances to manipulating DNA, or what he calls "self-designed evolution. Early advances involving the gene-editing tool CRISPR include alerting DNA to create "low-fat" pigs. CNN: "There is no God. No one directs the universe," he writes in "Brief Answers to the Big Questions." "For centuries, it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse that was inflicted by God," he adds. "I prefer to think that everything can be explained another way, by the laws of nature."
"There are forms of intelligent life out there," he writes. "We need to be wary of answering back until we have developed a bit further." And he leaves open the possibility of other phenomena. "Travel back in time can't be ruled out according to our present understanding," he says. He also predicts that "within the next hundred years we will be able to travel to anywhere in the Solar System."
"There are forms of intelligent life out there," he writes. "We need to be wary of answering back until we have developed a bit further." And he leaves open the possibility of other phenomena. "Travel back in time can't be ruled out according to our present understanding," he says. He also predicts that "within the next hundred years we will be able to travel to anywhere in the Solar System."
The Terminators will take out the leftover super m (Score:4, Funny)
The Terminators will take out the leftover super mutants (if they survive the nukes)
Re:The Terminators will take out the leftover supe (Score:5, Interesting)
Well first off, megacorps are the secondary antagonists of both the Terminator and Aliens franchise. They're why the monsters ran amok if the first place.
But we don't need crazy aliens or future tech to step into the Shadowrun setting. We're essentially already there.
No such thing as true artificial intelligence (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
The simple fact is we've made some crude machine learning algorithms that can be trained but this is not true intelligence, that can make intuitive leaps and predictions about things it has never experienced based on first principles.
Humans aren't always very good at those things, either.
In order to be useful, an artificial intelligence doesn't have to be as intelligent as an intelligent person, it just has to be as intelligent as an average (or even below average) person.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Is there a difference between a machine that can mimic intelligence so well that it's indistinguishable from real intelligence? Machine learning has proven it can discover solutions to problems that would have been hard to produce with a first principles approach. A common fallacy with AI is that true AI needn't necessarily be comparable to human intelligence, it will most probably be totally unlike human intelligence. And what do you define as intelligence anyway? A human's ? A dog's? A stick insect? B
Re:No such thing as true artificial intelligence (Score:5, Interesting)
The danger is there regardless of how "sentient" it actually becomes. In fact isn't it more dangerous the less sentient but more "powerful" or ubiquitous we thoughtless allow it to become, meanwhile?
You mean like the same danger with putting any automated software in charge of a critical function? https://www.flightglobal.com/n... [flightglobal.com]
This wouldn't be anything special about AI, or Machine Learning or even software. Any process that isn't properly vetted can lead to people getting killed, such as mismanaged dams that broke. People somehow think that AI will be more powerful but it isn't about the power of the tool but about the criticality of the application is it allowed to automate without oversight. See DO-178b software levels as an example of how this is handled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
The first is "made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, typically as a copy of something natural."
That meaning does not conflict with the possibility of true intelligence being built by us (i.e. made "artificially" out of computers, networks, software).
Stephan Hawking was not ... (Score:3, Insightful)
... trained as a fundamentalist in AI.
It's not his wheelhouse.
I'm an atheist, too, but like Hawking, I don't have any science to support my faith-based world view.
Stephen's thoughts on these matters are as useless as tits on a boar.
Re:Stephan Hawking was not ... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't knock them until you try them.
- LonelySlashdotter
Re: (Score:2)
Parent post is not flamebait by any stretch of the imagination. Looks like the mods got the bad crack again today.
I'm interested in Hawking's views on the subject, as he's a generally smart guy, but he's in no way an expert on "AI". Well, unless of course it's been the chair talking to us for the past 10 years, and not Hawking - but you'd think we'd have figured that out when he died.
Re:Stephan Hawking was not ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Being an atheist is an evidence-based worldview. This obviously isn't your wheelhouse either, and nobody has perfected AI or even come anywhere close. Thanks for your boar tits though, tasty.
Being Agnostic is an evidence-based world view. You cannot prove a negative and therefore cannot prove that god does not exist. The most science has to say about god is that there is no scientific evidence for its existence. There also used to be no evidence for germs or atoms. The best we can say is that we don't know.
Whether or not we are living in a simulation is a hot topic today. If we are, it implies that there is a reality outside our own, and beings that inhabit it to run the simulation. Perhaps when we die here, we exit the simulation and re-enter the other reality. Well, does that sound familiar?
I'm not saying the God of the Bible is necessarily real or described accurately in that book. I am saying that foreclosing the possibility of a greater, unseen intelligence or consciousness existing outside of, or in concert with, our observed reality is not scientific.
Re:Stephan Hawking was not ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Agnostics are Atheists and more common in places where the word Atheist is seen as something negative.
Do you believe in a god or gods? Then you aren't an atheist.
Do you believe gods don't exist? Then you are an atheist.
Do you believe gods may exist but don't believe in one? Then you are an atheist of the agnostic kind.
I can't prove that the world didn't start existing the moment I posted this. But believing that it is possible would be of no use - so I simply say I don't believe in it.
Re: (Score:3)
Heck you can be a theist agnostic.
No you can't.
Your definition of Agnosticism is simply wrong, and the one of gnosticism, as the opposite is wrong, too.
Agnostics is pretty simple: "I believe there are no gods, but I'm not sure about it."
In contrast to that, an Atheist would say: "I'm convinced there is no god".
Gnosticism is parallel religion, more a mystic science than religion, coexisting and overlapping for a while with Christianity, and Judaism and influenced by Mithraism and a few other mono theistic r
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Stephan Hawking was not ... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's rather hard to take a position on the existing of the god of the Deists, the Spinosan Heresy, and similar definitions of god as either a hands-off creator of the universe, or as another name for the universe itself.
The creation of the universe is really an open question in physics. There are a bunch of plausible theories, including brane collisions, Penrose's cyclic cosmology, universe-as-a-simulation, or my own favorite "we're inside a block hole inside a bigger universe". There's also a theory that the universe was created as a result of random fluctuations of the vacuum energy state, but that one's down there with mythology IMO.
Some entity creating the universe on his workbench, whether as a simulation or in some other way, is as good a theory as any other at this point. I'm not sure why it's important to pick one?
If instead you're referring to the idea shared by many religions of "live as if there were a judgemental being that sees everything you do and will hold you accountable", well, that's obviously true. That being is your future self.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The evidence for God is the works He is doing in people's lives today... miracles, healing physical ailments, words of knowledge and wisdom and other works of His Spirit along with His work in changing people's lives and delivering from addictions, come to mind. It's not an all inclusive list.
The problem with science and those who would use science and experimental evidence as a means of proving God doesn't exist is that they demand a reproducible sample. If it can't be made to happen twice, under their c
Said (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
What do you mean? He published this posthumously. That's an amazing feat for someone who is dead, and if he can do that while dead, I don't see a reason to use past tense. Who knows what else he can do now that he's dead!
Hawking is so smart that I, for one, am not going to underestimate him.
Re: Said (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's an amazing feat for someone who is dead, and if he can do that while dead, I don't see a reason to use past tense. Who knows what else he can do now that he's dead!
Travel back in time can't be ruled out according to our present understanding.
Re: (Score:2)
That's actually one of the things he said in his book. I assume he came back from the future to write that to let us know.
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps, just before he died, he loaded his vocoder up with about an hour's worth of speech, and it's still going. We could call that "pulling a Hari Seldon".
We already have the societal problems (Score:5, Interesting)
...gene-editing technology will be used to correct genes leading to diseases like cystic fibrosis, but people won't resist using the technology to make them stronger or smarter. "Once such superhumans appear, there are going to be significant political problems with the unimproved humans, "
True enough, and absolutely inevitable. First, you correct for genetic defects, then you choose features you want. Why wouldn't parents prefer a healthy, attractive, intelligent, athletic child over one lacking those attributes?
We already have the societal problems. As the saying goes: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." [goodreads.com] Even if we raise the averages, the problems remain essentially the same. What do we do now, with the ineducable and unskilled? We don't currently have any good solution...
Meanwhile, imagine the potential* benefits to society, if we could increase average health, and raise the average intelligence by a standard deviation or two.
*Potential. It is also entirely believable that the people who take most advantage of this will - intentionally or otherwise - select for sociopathy or other deleterious traits.
We already have a solution (Score:5, Insightful)
When people have options they don't breed uncontrollably. We're not animals. We're people. In the future the problem is likely to be under population. That is, unless we let the Evangelicals take control. Then they'll ban birth control and sex ed based on a few well chosen passages in their holy books.
What this all means is progressivism vs conservatism. e.g. we need to get folks to favor progress and improvement and stop looking back wistfully at the "good 'ole days". That does mean you're gonna have to take care of some folks who are now obsolete (like coal minors) and get over the fact that they get paid to do nothing because there's no useful work they can do anymore. Another thing folks hate because it pisses people off to have to get up to go to work when somebody else doesn't.
Re: (Score:2)
2nd & 3rd worlders just live with the poverty (Score:2)
None of the groups can really "afford" kids in the sense that they can be sure they can provide for them. But in 2nd and 3rd world countries they do it anyway as a roll of the dice. In a 1st world country you've got options, and that's the big difference.
The takeaway is that when people have options they choose to have fewer
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What this all means is progressivism vs conservatism. e.g. we need to get folks to favor progress and improvement and stop looking back wistfully at the "good 'ole days".
Progressivism isn't synonymous with progress. Change without reason, without a guide, and without a provable end state can lead in any direction. Something being old does not mean it is bad.
Followers of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the Third Reich learned this lesson the hard way.
We all know rsilver posts here every day as a form of grassroots political propaganda. Don't fall for it. Use your education. Use your reason. Don't give him points on political topics. Walk away.
Re: (Score:2)
Why wouldn't parents prefer a healthy, attractive, intelligent, athletic child over one lacking those attributes?
I remember seeing a documentary about this ;-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
True enough, and absolutely inevitable. First, you correct for genetic defects, then you choose features you want. Why wouldn't parents prefer a healthy, attractive, intelligent, athletic child over one lacking those attributes?
And when they don't live up to your design, if your trophy child turns out to be a lazy, obese slob who's neither athletic, healthy or particularly attractive with the snarky kind of wits? I'm absolutely for getting rid of genetic defects, we don't need them any more than we need smallpox but I don't think anything good will come from letting parents design babies like avatars in a game. Let the child be what it wants to be, not what you want it to be. I think it's starting off down the wrong path.
What do we do now, with the ineducable and unskilled? We don't currently have any good solution...
Not to be
Good one... Hawking (Score:2)
Any good troll should include some strong opinion on God.
Since we are on the subject and time travel why does everyone think of God as a Being at the beginning of creation instead of towards the end?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So is he basically like George R.R. Martin? He doesn't live in Westeros himself, but he can still kill of his characters whenever he feels like?
If you believe in an "active" God, yes.
An alternative is a God that set the laws of nature and then leaves everything to take its course. Or, perhaps a better analogy for Slashdot, writes a bunch of code and then runs it (without a debugger).
Um, not really (Score:5, Insightful)
"For centuries, it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse that was inflicted by God,"
From John 9:2:
And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him."
And Stephen Hawking has surely increased our understanding of the Universe.
I suppose it's all in how carefully you read the text, for many books, many authors, many stories are misunderstood.
Prosperity Gospel (Score:3)
The trouble with the Christian Bible is that it was never meant to be read by laypersons. So it's chock full of inconsistencies [google.com]. You can find something in it to support literally any point of view. Want to be a go
Re: (Score:3)
said that afflictions were caused not by diseases but by what they say [biblehub.com]
I see nothing in that quote referring to diseases. It is saying that we can see and hear horribly things and still be pure of heart. But if we speak evil, then we truly damage ourselves. Buddha said the same thing about how lying leads to self-affliction. [accesstoinsight.org]
Re: (Score:3)
with the Bible, you can interpret it pretty much however you want.
No, you cannot. You especially cannot when the meaning of this passage is as plain as day. First, Jesus spoke directly to the Pharisees complaining about the lack of hand washing.
Matthew 15
7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
8 “‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
9 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’”
It is about the heart, not physical health or hygiene. The rest of your ramblings about m
Why I'm worried about predictions like this. (Score:2)
I think we're seeing a powder keg of technology coming to maturity at the same time. We're seeing genetic augmentation, radical life expansion, cloning, and AI all swirling around us, ready to be available to make our lives better, and longer, and more productive. We're also seeing some new techniques in robotics and innovations in farming that asuage a lot of the concerns about overpopulation in a very practical way.
What's concerning about all of it, is that there does seem to be a group of people out ther
Khan Noonien Singh (Score:2)
Certainly no government on Earth would create Russian, Chinese or Iranian Supermen!
Not an AI expert (Score:3)
Even though he's considered a renowned physicist I still wouldn't pay too much attention to his sentiments about AI. You know that's what science is: you don't opine about the things which are not even remotely related to your field of research unless you want to make a fool of yourself.
Also, during the past years of his life he kept fear mongering about AI to the point where you just couldn't take any longer. We still know what intelligence is; we don't know how close we are to inventing artificial intelligence; and our intelligence algorithms easily trip over after being fed terabytes of data. One thing is certain: that's not how natural intelligence works.
I'm a lot more interested in what Jeff Hawkins [nytimes.com] is about to reveal - and if it's not some bluff given that experts from DeepMind couldn't understand anything then we are on the verge of some significant breakthroughs.
God (Score:3)
Interesting that, if I recall correctly, his "Brief History of Time" and other published works mentioned that it allowed for the possibility of a God.
He leaves stating there's no God to be published post-humously.
Hedging his bets? Or just avoiding controversy while alive?
Re: (Score:2)
GOOD! why worry? (Score:2)
Today's humans evolved and replaced our ancestors. Why do we view evolved humans as a horror like "Children of the Dammed"? Perhaps it's because we treat perceived to be lesser humans so bad already and therefore fear that our betters will act as horrible as we do?
AI. I am fine with it taking over. We can't manage ourselves or scale beyond tribalism.
CRISPR is bad; that is true. not only are we hacking code in a system we barely grasp the system and the code we can't even properly test the results. It mak
Re: (Score:3)
Avoiding controversy is my bet.
I must admit that I wonder what the science is behind the statement "there is no God". It's not like there's any way to prove it. It's always seemed to me that a hypothetical God (Creator Of All That Is sort of God, not one of those petty inlaws sorts of Gods like the ancient Greeks had) could, if he existed, make damn sure that there's no paper trail leading back to him (her? it?)....
How do we know he wrote this? (Score:2)
It's common practice for acolytes with their own agenda to claim that the celebrant said something. How do we know for sure that Hawking wrote/thought this?
Re: (Score:3)
KHAAAAAAAN!!!!!!! (Score:2)
Superhumans will be hammy overactors with bad wigs.
From 1994 Macworld Boston Keynote (Score:5, Interesting)
He compared the genome and the information in the genome to the global library of knowledge and then 30 min in said it was inevitable that 1. We will mess with the genome and create a super-race of humans that will make current humanity puny and incapable in comparison (while he sat motionless in his chair) and 2. artificial intelligence will hasten this outcome. He said these were not inevitable because of human frailty, but because that is the whole nature of adaptation and evolution. We would do it because that would speed up adaptation to a rapidly changing world, and because we can. He ended with a statement along the lines of: Get Ready.
A pin drop. It was electric. I haven't read his book, but it sounds like something along the same lines. If anybody has a recording of the 1994 Macworld adress, please let me know! I know it was recorded. It was a top five memorable speech of my life. I'm 58.
alerting DNA (Score:2)
"...alerting DNA"??? How does one alert DNA? Pretty sure that oughta be "altering DNA."
Present tense? (Score:2)
"Warns" and "says"? The voice from beyond the grave is bigger news than theoretical science!
Re:Atheism is pessimism (Score:5, Interesting)
Ironically, from theology came medical care. Without God, the law survival of the fittest is taken to its most extreme interpretation, and there are no cripples, not for long anyway, until they are sacrificed or abandoned as unwanteds.
Medical care is sourced in empathy - a common trait in humans.
Many religions and ideas of God interpret the sick and disadvantage of being cursed by God as noted in the summary above. For example, the The Hindu's have their caste system and the Christians a notion of the "elect" and "reprobates".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Without God there's less chance you'll be dragged out of your house and strapped to a stone altar to be mutilated.
But there's an increased chance to be dragged out of your house and stood up next to a wall to be shot for wrong thinking.
Re: (Score:2)
Ironically, up until recent times, most wars were the result of people fighting over who had the best god or, if they had the same god, the proper way to worship this god.
Religion is a convenient excuse that can be given to the general population in order to get support for starting a war, but most wars are the result of one or both of two things: desire for power/control and resources.
Re: (Score:3)
The ridiculous accounts of Genesis and Revelation, and everything in between, may not stand up to science, but the notion of an outside creator itself? Mr. Hawking advances his atheism with as little evidence as the Creationists.
I thought the same thing. He must have been quite a scientist if he could prove a negative.
Re:No God... disproven by physics? (Score:4, Informative)
The ridiculous accounts of Genesis and Revelation, and everything in between...
Everything in between chronologically? I think you're vastly overestimating how exciting those parts are.
After Genesis, most of the Torah is just descriptions of religious practice and civil law; several chapters of Exodus are just Ikea instructions for putting together the portable sanctuary used during the migration from Egypt to Canaan. Most of the early parts of the books of Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings) read like a history book, though the books of Samuel (primarily covering the period of Saul and David) could make a pretty good TV drama or soap opera. The later prophets get more preachy about how evil the people are, but the beginning of Ezekiel is a good example of what certain mushrooms can do to you.
Re: (Score:3)
Young Earth Creationism... is not science.
Re: (Score:2)
That is probably the dumbest jump of logic I have seen this week.
Re: (Score:2)
The "Earth" did not exist until Billions of years after the BB. Fail.
Re: (Score:3)
Except the Big Bang didn't create the Earth. It created a soup of energy and particles. The earth didn't come along for another 7 billion years or so. The Genesis account is not a scientific theory, and the verse you pull out is so vague that it really doesn't have any scientific utility at all. And the Genesis cosmography myth only gets more scientifically troublesome as you proceed, and requires even more artful interpretations to get past problems like the Earth existing before the Sun.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:I'm pretty sure he believes in God now... alas. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, which of the thousands of gods will you put your wager on?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I'm pretty sure he believes in God now... alas. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good old Pascal's Wager, an act of craven cowardice and an insult to God Almighty. Pascal's Wager is predicated on God being so stupid that He can't tell you're going through the motions out of fear and that you don't actually have faith. I'm sorry, but if God does exist, I'm not going to stand in front of him as a liar and insult Him to His face. And as for "what will you say to God?", there is nothing I can say, no case to plead, nothing to explain because God knows all. He (if He exists) knows why I didn't believe in Him. I will either burn or not, but I will do it with a clean conscience.
Re: (Score:2)
Lol. Jesus agrees with Hawking (Score:2)
Hawking writes:
For centuries, it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse that was inflicted by God," he adds. "I prefer to think that everything can be explained another way"
If we were to look at physics as it was understood several thousand years ago, we'd find probably most of what they thought was wrong. If we conclude from this that physics is all bullshit, that would be a huge mistake. We would ignoring everything learned in the last few thousand years.
Re God, a revolution o
Coveting your neighbor's wife, not covering (Score:2)
I had a typo. That should say "coveting your neighbor's wife" my lead to injury.
Anyway, the point is Jesus was asked directly if the disability was causes by sin, and he said no, it's not.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought it was "coveting your neighbor's ass". Or maybe it was the neighbor's wife's ass, depending on which way you swing.
Re: (Score:3)
Dr. Hawking didn't say or mean that it was because people used to believe disability was caused by sin that he doesn't believe God exists. That was simply an example of something people used to believe which he does not. It is an an analogy of the folly of people who still believe there is a God.
Roman leaders would have little reason to invent X (Score:3)
We know that Roman leaders like Pliny and Tacitus wrote of the disgusting Christians and of Jesus, "their so-called Christ".
We have non-Christian Jewish writers like Flavius Josephus criticizing him.
In a province under Roman rule, where being Jewish was most definitely considered a bad thing, we have Roman records of putting people to death because they wouldn't retract their claims to have known JEWISH king of Kings.
We have Tacitus, a Senator of Rome and no friend of Christians or Jews, writing about the c
Re: (Score:2)
Or he believes in nothing at all.
Unless there is reincarnation then who knows what he would be believing currently.
Reframe it in Hawking belief system (Score:2)
If you assume a Jewish/Christian/Muslim belief system, they sure, he probably believes in god now that he met him in the afterlife.
But it is not Hawking's belief system, Hawking believes in AI and superhumans, not god.
So if we assume post-singularity AIs and advanced genetics, a more fitting variant of his afterlife would be to imagine a future (human?) civilization decides to recreate him with an AI and a new body. Because we don't have any perfect record of his state when he was still alive, the AI would
Your god vs my god vs his god (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody has conclusive information on the existence or nature of a god or gods.
Any time someone tries to point out that they have a belief in God, the correct response is "yea, right. Whatever you loon". A more polite response is "that's nice, good for you" and carefully skirt around the subject. Because religious people are sometimes dangerously unstable.
The safest course is to act as if there is no god, until you have information about the nature of such god(s). Right now there is nothing in the material world that needs god to explain it. Sometimes we don't understand something, but time and time again we've puzzled out some understanding of natural laws of the Universe.
You should believe in God once you can establish a practical purpose to such a belief. If that believe enables you to build skyscrapers, harvest crops, whatever.
Abrahamic religion is preposterous though. The insist on monotheism (one true God). But all of them have lots of extra supernatural beings. The issue is, we have no physical evidence of any of them.
We can just barely detect some very elusive classes of sub-atomic particles. But multiple people can run the experiments and confirm they exist.
Beings that come down and talk to people throughout the ages, providing different stories to different "prophets" so that we fight over which story is the right one? That doesn't seem just or all powerful or even sane. If there is a God, we'd have less strife in the world if never talked to us than whatever he/she/it does today giving conflicting stories. (sorry, but man is evil enough without having to invent a Satan to place the blame)
P.S. I'm going to hell. Assuming Christians or Muslims are right. Which is reasonable if reality were a democracy that we can all vote on.
Re: (Score:3)
"You should believe in God once you can establish a practical purpose to such a belief. If that believe enables you to build skyscrapers, harvest crops, whatever."
This sounds like you are deciding what you believe based on what it can get you. How does that work? I don't think it does. I think it's just self delusion.
There is only one reality. Every proposition must be either true or false. If "believing" something that is false gets one something that is all well and good but it doesn't change what really
Re:Your god vs my god vs his god (Score:4, Interesting)
The safest course is what?
Pascal's Wager is trivially rebutted: not believing in a god is not any more dangerous than choosing the wrong religion assuming god or gods exist. Or choosing the right religion, but interpreting it incorrectly.
For instance, let's assume you're Christian. Also, let's assume your God is real. However, let's assume Judaism is the right religion. Well, both Judaism and Christianity share the Ten Commandments, so you're well aware that "thou shalt have no other gods before me." If Judaism is true, as a Christian your belief that Jesus is God violates that commandment, and now you're fucked.
Out of all the religions out there, and all the contradicting interpretations of the same religious texts, there's no "safe" choice. It's just as easy to be "wrong" being religious as it is being an atheist.
I have nothing against having faith, and if your basis for picking your religion is simply that you choose to believe it's true, more power to you. But do so out of that faith, not out of a belief that you have any evidence to draw a logical conclusion.
Re: (Score:3)
The real question isn't "is there a God?" The question we will ultimately face is "Is God necessary?" It's where my atheism stems. It's not a rejection of the concept, some sort of fist shaking at the Heavens because of what I view as trite complaints about the Problem of Evil. It comes down to my view, as unscientific as it may be, that I simply cannot see a necessity for such a being to exist. If a Prime Mover is needed, and we have to, in Aristotlean fashion, declare that that being be uncaused, primaril
Re: (Score:2)
It comes down to my view, as unscientific as it may be, that I simply cannot see a necessity for such a being to exist.
So to be logically consistent, do you also reject the concepts of good and evil?
Re: I'm pretty sure he believes in God now... alas (Score:4, Insightful)
In what you might call spiritual terms, yes. Morality is largely a human construct. As a social species we need rules of conduct, but the nature of those rules has varied wildly in time and space.
Re: (Score:2)
In what you might call spiritual terms, yes. Morality is largely a human construct.
If morality is a human construct, then it is arbitrary.
As a social species we need rules of conduct, but the nature of those rules has varied wildly in time and space.
Surely there are some rules you like and some you don't. If morality is arbitrary, on what do you base your objections to the rules you don't like?
Re: (Score:3)
If morality is a human construct, then it is arbitrary.
I don't understand this comment. If morality is a human construct then it would not be arbitray (ie random or unrestrained) but directly related to human flourishing and welfare. Not if morality is a Super Being construct... then it might be with respect to us puny humans... arbitary.
Re: (Score:3)
Easy peasy... Evil ->> That which harms human flourishing!
Re: (Score:3)
The truly scary people are the people who think that atheists should have no morality.
I think atheists can live moral lives, it's just that they don't have any objective reason for living moral lives. From an atheistic worldview, it has to come down to personal preference.
Yes they can. Doing no harm to others because you wish no harm to yourself is the sort of moral structure that needs no command from on high.
I don't murder people bacause I would not want to be murdered.
I don't go around having sex with prepubescent cirls because it simply isn't right. They are not physically ready, and they are not mentally ready. It is obviously wrong.
I don't try to boink the neighbor lady because it makes for complications that are painful for my spouse, and the same with her for
Re: (Score:3)
As there has NEVER, EVER, been a single solitary piece of evidence EVER of any gods existence.... people who have believed in the delusion of a god have done a fantastically miserable job of even beginning to scratch the surface of proving him/her/it.
How do you know that? Are you a god who has a tape recording of every human ever living, and did you have enough time to watch all those tape recordings and do you have the expertise to distinguish all the "miracles" that happened to those people as "divine int
Re: (Score:2)
I missed the part where humanity's limited understanding of the universe implies that there must therefore be some omnipotent supernatural being out there who loves us each as individuals while simultaneously allowing all of us to suffer and die.
Also I'm a little confused by how Jesus' selfless love for all humanity is reflected by perpetually butt-hurt Christians' who insult and denigrate people anyone who proposes any other theories about how the universe works.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. Wondering why things are the way they are is only natural and is something humans have been doing as long as we've been capable of it.
The difference between the early days and now is that rather than make up answers to these questions, or believe what others have told us or written without evidence, we (hopefully) require a higher standard of proof. That doesn't mean we have all the answers, it means we know and admit what we do and do not know.
What I know is that there is no evidence of the existe
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No Atheism the absence of belief in the existence of God - not sure how you jump from that to "I have no knowledge" - for example I know a thing or two about programming a computer.
Thanks! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Atheists LOVE to pretend that their F word is Faith
The reason for this is because religionists try to promote "Faith" (belief in things unevidenced) as a positive mental position - indeed the most valuable.
This form of "Faith" is the type usually included in false belief systems (aka meme complex or cult) because of the utility to shutdown reasoning and logic.
Re: (Score:2)
The difference is scientists like Dr. Hawking try to find the answers to the hard questions through experiment whereas theists believe things they've been told without any evidence.
I'll continue listening to scientists.
Re: (Score:2)
consciousness is INDEPENDENT of his physical body
[Citation needed]
This is a common fallacies (Score:2)
Science can't explain it, therefore MAGIC!
A good place to start with a rebuttal would be this [youtube.com].
Next in line search for Aronra and the Genetic Skeptic if you want a more serious and complete rebuttal.
I'll note that Miracles seemed to have stopped right around the time we invented the Jet Airplane and the Camera. My personal favorite "Miracles" was a "crying tree" that turned out not to be Angel's tears but wood lice peeing on people. The people were literally being pissed on an
Re: (Score:2)
In his book Black Holes and Time Warps -- Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, Kip Thorne described a plausible time machine. It relied on exotic stuff (wormholes whose entry/exit points could be moved around) but the description holds up. Briefly, it works like this:
- take a wormhole whose ends can be moved around;
- move one end around with respect to the other, so that the local time of the moved end ages more slowly that the other end (per The Twin Paradox);
- and voilà, you have a time machine: go forward
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Yet somehow we don't feel bad, or think about us having "wiped out" our ancestors. Almost as if fear of change isn't logical.
Unless you're white, then you're expected to bear the burden of every atrocity your ancestors may or may not have been involved in.
I think most people would be satisfied if we just dealt with the atrocities being committed here and now. If you're not involved in them, I don't think you have anything to be concerned about. Don't let some overheated activist tell you how to feel about yourself. You only hear more about white people today because the pendulum is swinging back.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed.
There is a certain kind of magical fantasy that metal machines are better. Well, they are better at some things, particularly physically demanding things. But the evidence they are better at all things is lacking.
The extreme is the fantasy of creating nanobots. Well, for all practical purposes, nanobots have existed for a very long time, albeit we are only beginning to figure out how to "program" them: viruses, bacteria, archaea, fungi.
While we may make smaller and smaller machines, it is entirely
Re: (Score:2)
Yet America voted in a President who discounts the opinion of scientists because he thinks they have a political agenda. And in the UK a leading proponent of Brexit advises "who needs experts" and the UK duly votes to leave against the advice of experts. People are keenly interested in the views of people they regard as leaders. Stephen Hawking was a brilliant thinker and I for one am interested in his conclusions.