Feb 26
Towards a Reformed Atheism
Religions hold that an advanced alien culture (one or more so called “gods”) had a hand in the development of the human race. Atheism (and sometimes agnosticism) disputes these claims on the grounds that they are implausible: there are no indications that our planet is an artificial structure. For that matter, there are no indications that the universe is even remotely artificial in nature. There are just too many badly designed, woefully inefficient processes in nature, that someone with access to the fabric of the universe could easily optimize. And as for biological development, there is a known process called “evolution”, which can be observed in the real world as well as in simulations, and which explains our presence on Earth to a satisfactory degree.
There are other arguments against the existence of gods, rooted in both observation and logic. I can subscribe to almost all of them, and they appear to suffice for the majority atheists. Not, however, for me. Reformed Atheism (for the lack of a better word) must go beyond probabilities and make a definite statement that no gods exist. Here is the first of many:
The emergence of consciousness was a turning point in the evolution of our distant ancestors. Everything else – philosophy, technology, free will (if one believes in it), the ability to travel through space, even the (hypothetical) ability to create an entire universe with a single thought – may be an improvement on this one key development. But none of these improvements represent the kind of fundamental threshold humans crossed when they experienced self-awareness for the first time: the threshold between existence as chemical machines and personhood.
The insight that anyone who has passed that threshold deserves the same respect, is the first step towards civilization. Is the life of someone who chooses to, or has to, live in a tree hut in an African jungle, and who knows nothing about computers, worth less than mine? To me, and to any other civilized human, the answer can only be a strong no. Anyone who is a person, from caveman to computer wizard, is equal in worth. It is an answer that all humans will eventually have to give.
In the meantime, science and engineering are making remarkable progress. It won’t be long until computers and biotechnology will provide us with the tools necessary to create artificial life from scratch. Primitive life at first, and there are bound to be setbacks: technological problems, political problems, moral problems. Nevertheless, one day we will go beyond primitive and create progressively more complex lifeforms – until one of them becomes fully conscious. If not in 10 years then in 50 years, or in 300 years from now, but it’s bound to happen eventually.
The question then arises as to how we are going to treat this new life. Do we consider it inferior and force it to worship us, serve us, allow us to control it? Or are we prepared to treat it with the same dignity and give it the same opportunities for self-fulfillment that we claim for ourselves? Again, the only valid choice for a civilized person is the latter. Any self-aware being, regardless of intellectual sophistication, physical appearance or origin deserves exactly the same respect as we do. All forms of sentient life are equal in worth and in rights.
All forms of sentient life are equal. This unconditional rejection of one life’s superiority over another, is the beginning of modern atheism. Even if the traditional arguments against religion were false and intelligent aliens did influence our evolution in one way or another (as mentioned above, the probability is extremely remote), reformed atheism would still hold. Because by its very definition, such hypothetical creatures are our fellow sentient beings, not deities. They are people to be contacted peacefully, if possible, not gods to be worshipped; people to be learned from, not prayed to; but also people to be reminded of basic civilized behavior, should they attempt to interfere with our development.
It is highly probable that we are the most advanced – and perhaps the only – lifeform in the local universe. And if other forms of intelligence do indeed emerge on Earth or nearby, then it is highly probable that we will be their progenitors, either through our own evolution, or through the “intelligent design” of engineered organisms. Our treatment of the beings we will one day create, and of each other, will determine the future of life in our part of the universe. If the continuation of humanity and our ultimate legacy are to be founded on civilization, as opposed to savagery, then the understanding that all sentient life is equal – and consequently atheism – becomes a basic and immediate necessity.
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Two problems: first, you make many assumptions that are not based on any kind of law of nature or natural mechanisms, yet you implicitily assume them to be true (e.g. “the only valid choice for a civilized person is the latter”). Second, you are not discussing (against) religion (or theism, to be more precise), but your ideal sort of “sketch” of how the world should be according to some highly disputable principles that you implicitly set up. So if there are gods, we should learn from them and remind them of their duties… right.
The real answer you need to address is: what if God is watching a TV show called “life”? He created everything the way you and I can perceive it, i.e. the mechanism of evolution, the way everything would be (incl. all the presumable “flaws”) etc. And he himself is watching it and knocking one out to it, just because he can. And he’ll kick your ass anytime without you even noticing it. Mind you, this is probably not a very pious answer, but its basis is the same argument every believer would put forward sooner or later; that there simply IS a God who made everything and hence cannot be “dicovered” or explained by you and your science, as he himself created the very faculties which are at your disposal. In other words, maybe, our “consciousness” is limited the way that a dog’s consciousness – though undisputably higher than any insect’s – is. You are moving to much withing the boundaries of human consciousness, but the very definition of God according to almost every religious book is that he is above and beyond what humans can perceive. To cut a long story short: your so called argument does not disprove the concept of God as defined by his inventors and believed by his followers. In German, we call that “God is beyond our understanding” line a Todschlagargument; you can never completely refute it, because even provided that chaces are extremely slim for such an entity to really exist from what we know, it still could.
Yours faithfully
PS: I liked your “hands off my child’s mind or I’ll smash your mug, Reverend” stance much more.
We need to clear up a few misunderstandings here. First and firemost, the proper pronoun for a member of a singleton species (such as your hypothetical “god”) would be “it”, not “he”. Also, society and civilization are emergent properties of what you call “nature”. The article makes its argument within the context of these emergent properties, using their logic to refute theism. It was never intended to approach the subject from a scientific point of view.
Nor did I intend to disprove the simulation hypothesis of the universe in this particular blog post. That’s a topic I’ll discuss in the “gods deconstructed” series I started last month. The point is that even if the universe was a simulation, its operator would still be a sentient lifeform like you and me. Granted, a lifeform with impressive abilities, or simply with impressive technology at its disposal, and humans would be primitives in comparison, but no more than that. Because if we grant the title “god” to another lifeform just because it’s more advanced, then it follows that we’ll have to assume the same title relative to more primitive or younger sentient beings… cavemen, artificial lifeforms created by us and so on.
As for your other argument, I obviously didn’t invent the idea that a modern civilization must be a culture which awards the same respect to all sentient beings, and it is shared by many forward looking people. I’d like to go one step further at this point. Your example of someone who creates real people (as in sentient lifeforms) and keeps them in a cage for its own amusement and to satisfy some childish lust for power matches the definition of a sociopath. It’s the equivalent of us capturing a bunch of pygmies from the African jungle and keeping them in a zoo, having them worship us, torturing and killing them whenever they violate an arbitrary set of rules made by us. Such actions would be considered barbaric by most humans, and for good reason. The being you describe is not a “god” at all, it’s a sociopath with math skills.
Next you’re talking about different “levels” of consciousness. I believe what you mean is intelligence, the ability to store and process information, not consciousness which would be the ability to have first person experience. The latter requires complex abstraction skills, temporal perception and reflexive information processing (to the point where most discrete models I’ve seen lead to an infinite regress). There is no evidence that dog or insect brains for that matter have any of the necessary capabilities. Humans, protohumans and possibly some of the great ape species on the other hand do. Intelligence is something that comes in many degress, something that can even be enhanced artifically (what if I developed a machine that amplified my intelligence to the point where I could create planets? Would that make me a goddess?). First person experience on the other hand is either present or absent, it’s a separate quality.
Finally, the phrase “god is beyond your understanding” in no way affects my argument. My computer is beyond the understanding of a caveman. So what? I’ve never denied the possibility that species more advanced than humans could exist somewhere in the universe (or a possible multiverse). I have no way of knowing that. I do however strongly oppose the idea that such lifeforms should be worshipped as “gods” just because their culture is too complex for me to understand. Because by the same so called logic, a more primitive human would be required to worship and serve me. I do not deserve the subservience of my fellow sentient beings, nor can any of them expect mine. I believe I’m not alone in considering that attitude to be a fundamental trait that makes a person civilized. And I won’t apologize for calling anyone who does not exhibit that trait a savage and a sociopath.