Possibly. The reason why people need the concept of a divine being are… varied. It can be everything from that the believer was brought up in the tradition to they tried other things and this is the only thing that worked to it provides them comfort in “knowing” they’ll see their loved ones again. With any of these concepts, it’s possible that the fact we are biological machines mean nothing.
Having said that, the concept of the divine can be seen as a needless redundancy, both unneeded and unwarranted given the lack of evidence, the vagueness of the both the promises and the prophecy contained therein, scientific implausiblility of some of its statements (talking snakes… when they have neither the mouth structure nor the brain capacity to do so), the lack of answers to prayer (how many people have prayed for a disease to be eliminated or war to stop forever?), as well as the stupidity of the commands (if you need a book to tell you not to steal, kill, or rape… you don’t belong in society.)
I make a horrible computer because I still count on my fingers.
I took math classes in college, but only held a 4.0 average because I was allowed to use a calculator in class, and I do everything four times to make sure I get it right. However, anything I learned about measurement went right out of my head out here in life where I don’t use it. In my world Pi are not square. Brownies are square and pie is round. If pie are square then it is a cobbler. Cake can be square or round. Yep. As a computer I would be very poor in quality. My life narrowed when I got out of manufacturing and measurements. It narrowed even more when running a maid service. It narrowed to bookkeeping skills. Now that I am retired, my math skills stop at cooking measurements. That would be a piss poor computer.
As for God? I still need to believe that there is something greater than us, an unknowable essence. It is something that I can mutter to as I go about my day.
“Oh, God, I am dropping food on the floor.”
In that case, a Dog is a good thing to have. Dogs live for the moment I drop food on the floor.
Well, God is an invisible entity and I talk to him more and more, as I get older.
I basically see us as androids. I view free will as an illusion. People operate according to programming instructions given to them by society. God controls their preferences. These are their preferences. To live by a robotic ‘do this, do not do that’ code. Exactly like programming code. (I would know.)
They only believe what they want to believe, based on their preferences. Their preferences are set by many factors, but their experiences in life is a major one. They have no control over that.
So, they have no freedom to believe what they should believe, they have no freedom to believe truth. They only have the freedom to believe what they can, again, based on their preferences.
There is freedom from all of this. It is the ability to perceive. Improved sense.
That freedom makes us robots awake, alive, true living beings. And we find ourselves amongst the sleeping masses: the clock they believe has no maker, the story they believe has no writer.
The irony of this is shocking, as they pay lip service to belief in design. But, it is a child’s conception, they believe there is free will. That they are free to live lives where they are bound to follow ‘do this, don’t do that’, instead of breaking free from the world’s standards.
@five2one if god controls their preferences, then how can people change? Think about it: in the bible god makes it very clear “i change not.” It should be impossible to change because god doesn’t change.
@griz there are a few benefits to this:
if one program doesn’t work, it can be tweaked until it does.
If one format doesn’t work, anpther one may
machines are basically infinitely replacable, though at some point it would be like the ship of Thebes.
And because we would be literal machines, we wouldn’t have to worry about mortality. Just upload the program into the cloud and redownload elsewhere.
We need to do multiple places at once? We can have an infinite number of copies walking around.
@Jear77
What program exists that this has happened for?
It seems to me even the most functional programs/apps are always trashed for something that is flashier, that is a greater hog of resources, but never seems to be as functional as what it replaced.
While I don’t discount that there may be “formats” [for life ideally] that haven’t been tried. But chances are beyond excellent that there truly is “nothing new under the sun”. That is why cautions and advices written thousands of years ago are just as applicable today as then.
Machines are to be used and trashed.
But I refuse to put people in this category. To do so involves slaughtering essential parts of what makes them people with agency.
There are numerous sci-fi memes where the fear of death caused the hapless to give up what turned out to be the most missed . . . for the sake of entrapment in something that turns out to not be what they speculatively imagined it would be.
And I think there is “ancient wisdom” regarding this too: trading away something of great value in the long run, for something that turns out to be anti-valuable in the long run.
You maybe need to read more.
(And yes, even the financially challenged find time to read. Ask almost anyone who has proactively charted a course out of relative poverty).
16 responses to “Human beings as biological computers”
no
Possibly. The reason why people need the concept of a divine being are… varied. It can be everything from that the believer was brought up in the tradition to they tried other things and this is the only thing that worked to it provides them comfort in “knowing” they’ll see their loved ones again. With any of these concepts, it’s possible that the fact we are biological machines mean nothing.
Having said that, the concept of the divine can be seen as a needless redundancy, both unneeded and unwarranted given the lack of evidence, the vagueness of the both the promises and the prophecy contained therein, scientific implausiblility of some of its statements (talking snakes… when they have neither the mouth structure nor the brain capacity to do so), the lack of answers to prayer (how many people have prayed for a disease to be eliminated or war to stop forever?), as well as the stupidity of the commands (if you need a book to tell you not to steal, kill, or rape… you don’t belong in society.)
I make a horrible computer because I still count on my fingers.
I took math classes in college, but only held a 4.0 average because I was allowed to use a calculator in class, and I do everything four times to make sure I get it right. However, anything I learned about measurement went right out of my head out here in life where I don’t use it. In my world Pi are not square. Brownies are square and pie is round. If pie are square then it is a cobbler. Cake can be square or round. Yep. As a computer I would be very poor in quality. My life narrowed when I got out of manufacturing and measurements. It narrowed even more when running a maid service. It narrowed to bookkeeping skills. Now that I am retired, my math skills stop at cooking measurements. That would be a piss poor computer.
As for God? I still need to believe that there is something greater than us, an unknowable essence. It is something that I can mutter to as I go about my day.
“Oh, God, I am dropping food on the floor.”
In that case, a Dog is a good thing to have. Dogs live for the moment I drop food on the floor.
Well, God is an invisible entity and I talk to him more and more, as I get older.
I basically see us as androids. I view free will as an illusion. People operate according to programming instructions given to them by society. God controls their preferences. These are their preferences. To live by a robotic ‘do this, do not do that’ code. Exactly like programming code. (I would know.)
They only believe what they want to believe, based on their preferences. Their preferences are set by many factors, but their experiences in life is a major one. They have no control over that.
So, they have no freedom to believe what they should believe, they have no freedom to believe truth. They only have the freedom to believe what they can, again, based on their preferences.
There is freedom from all of this. It is the ability to perceive. Improved sense.
That freedom makes us robots awake, alive, true living beings. And we find ourselves amongst the sleeping masses: the clock they believe has no maker, the story they believe has no writer.
The irony of this is shocking, as they pay lip service to belief in design. But, it is a child’s conception, they believe there is free will. That they are free to live lives where they are bound to follow ‘do this, don’t do that’, instead of breaking free from the world’s standards.
@five2one if god controls their preferences, then how can people change? Think about it: in the bible god makes it very clear “i change not.” It should be impossible to change because god doesn’t change.
@Jear77
Classic abdication of responsibility thinking.
@griz given you believe in an omniscient god… it’s really not. It’s only logical!
@Jear77
That someone somewhere might know more than me, is no reason to abdicate responsibility in this moment.
Whether to self, to the nurturing/protecting construct, or to reality.
Do you have a responsibility for any reality beyond the one of imaginative speculation where you exist all alone?
@griz at day’s end it matters nothing.
@Jear77
– Pan
Only if we wish to become nothing more than machines!
@griz there is a huge benefit to being a machine. With proper programming, information, machines are perfect.
@Jear77
Can you name one of our creation that is?
To suppose there is might be analogous to that Banach-Tarski paradox where possible “essential parts” are left out and considered “unimportant”.
@griz there are a few benefits to this:
if one program doesn’t work, it can be tweaked until it does.
If one format doesn’t work, anpther one may
machines are basically infinitely replacable, though at some point it would be like the ship of Thebes.
And because we would be literal machines, we wouldn’t have to worry about mortality. Just upload the program into the cloud and redownload elsewhere.
We need to do multiple places at once? We can have an infinite number of copies walking around.
@Jear77
What program exists that this has happened for?
It seems to me even the most functional programs/apps are always trashed for something that is flashier, that is a greater hog of resources, but never seems to be as functional as what it replaced.
While I don’t discount that there may be “formats” [for life ideally] that haven’t been tried. But chances are beyond excellent that there truly is “nothing new under the sun”. That is why cautions and advices written thousands of years ago are just as applicable today as then.
Machines are to be used and trashed.
But I refuse to put people in this category. To do so involves slaughtering essential parts of what makes them people with agency.
There are numerous sci-fi memes where the fear of death caused the hapless to give up what turned out to be the most missed . . . for the sake of entrapment in something that turns out to not be what they speculatively imagined it would be.
And I think there is “ancient wisdom” regarding this too: trading away something of great value in the long run, for something that turns out to be anti-valuable in the long run.
You maybe need to read more.
(And yes, even the financially challenged find time to read. Ask almost anyone who has proactively charted a course out of relative poverty).
@griz my dad did… because he hated reading. But when he did it was with 98% comprehension and retention.