Metaphysic Storm

Vox Day recently wrote a book called The Irrational Atheist. It counters the books written by “The Unholy Trinity” : Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Bertrand Russel. I have no intention of reading Vox’s book. All the arguments I’ve heard for religion are so week, I’ve become rather bored with them. To argue against arguments that are week and then to read a book about why the arguments against are week are week, just sounds like an exercise in futility. But I do agree with Vox that The Unholy Trinity make many insubstantial arguments. Why anyone looks to Darwin as a reason not to believe in god puzzles me. The fact of evolution certainly disproves the Adam and Eve story but there are hundreds of “events” in the bible that are impossible. In fact, one doesn’t even need evolution, art, in and of itself does the job. If I made the painting then god did not, if god did not then he didn’t make everything. Dawkins said it best, “There are literally an infinite amount of things that can’t be disproven.” But just because something can’t be disproven is no reason to believe in something.
I think the “Atheist movement” is doing a disservice to the fight against irrationality. In my arguing against faith I’ve noticed that all I seem to do it reinforce other peoples beliefs. If all a person needs to believe in something, is that it’s written in a book, no amount of logic or reasoning will effect that. The only thing I’m left doing is stating the reasons I don’t believe in god, that I try not to be a bad person and where I derive my ethics from. I don’t think it’s any use attempting to persuade them that their beliefs are unjustified. Doing so only starts a witch hunt, an opportunity for the “good work” or a pity party.

I like arguments against god as god is defined. But after I heard Epicuoious’ argument I felt as though I was done writing about god. It just doesn’t get better than, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” And that argument has gone unanswered for 2300 years. I was reading a review of TIA by an atheist that credited Vox as having the best counter to the trilemma. Not supprizingly, for Vox is a game programmer, he postulates a scenario where god “Big Chilly” is a programmer and the AI (artificial intelligence) is us.

During the demo, Big Chilly and the three AI-controlled members of his fireteam had successfully taken out both the wide patrol and the guards, and they were just beginning to lay the explosives to blow the door that held the prisoners captive when there was a sudden burst of bright laser fire that caused him to jump in his seat and emit a startled shriek loud enough to make everyone else in the room jump, too. While his AI squadmates shot down the intruder before anyone’s battlesuits took too much damage, what shocked Big Chilly was that for the first time in hundreds of playings, an enemy AI had taken it upon itself to circle around behind the rescue force and attack it from an unexpected direction.

But how could this happen? How could a lowly artificial intelligence surprise a lead programmer who was demonstrably omniscient and omnipotent in the AI’s world? How can the created do what the creator did not will? The answer, when viewed in this context, should be obvious.

Surprise was possible because the programmer was not choosing to exercise either his knowledge or his power at that particular point where real-time intersected game-time. While he could have easily provided that particular character with a scripted path and prevented the character from being able to depart from it, he had already elected not to do so… And finally, while he could have been scanning that particular AI’s “thought” processes and known what it intended to do in the very instant the intention was born, instead he refrained and so learned about its actions through entirely “natural” means.

If it is not difficult to accept that an omniscient and omnipotent programmer can reject omniderigence, why should it be hard to imagine that an all-powerful God might choose to do the same? Even human lovers know that the lover cannot control the beloved, so it should not be difficult to believe that a loving God would permit His creatures to choose freely how they will live. (TIA - Pg. 281)

Vox is arguing more against free will than for god with his usage of AI. AI do not make choices. They follow programs and can not deviate from them. Any true randomness in the Demo came from the choices from Big Chilly and how the algorithms of the AI respond. Randomness is one of the philosophical area I have the most difficult time understanding. Why the universe’s nature is lumpy, random and chaotic has puzzled me. I think my problem with that though is a natural bias humans have for seeking and maintaining order. We think it’s actually possible to achieve perfect order, but most likely, a smooth universe is just like zero, impossible.

His argument for an all powerful all knowing god actually parallels the concept I latched onto throughout my twenties. I thought that if god could do everything, then he would have to be able to experience surprise, a difficult number for something omniscient. I thought that god created us to live in the back of our minds, that our minds were all versions of god, and that he experienced his universe through us to achieve ignorance and limitation. But that’s really a version of pantheism not theism. I used to think how boring it would be, to be the everything consciousness. Either you wouldn’t be able to brake your own laws or you could brake your laws and therefor there are no laws. Vox changed the definition of god to fit reality; I changed my view of reality to fit definition of god.

An entity that is at all time is incapable of making any choice. Choice requires being locked into the now and someone that is not, can not elect to do anything. Choice and intent are keystones to being an agent. A god that can not choose is no god at all. A programmer in “real-time” is not omniscient in the “game-time” world, and scanning a mind implies being bound by time. By the very definition of God, he would be a slave to himself. God could never make a law he could not brake.

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