Monday, August 1, 2022

Mammalia, Christianity, and The Singularity

 Thinking a lot about christianity and human nature lately.


Well, “nature” is a bit of a misnomer, but I am thinking about what it means to be human and how this intersects with christianity.


The singularity will come later.


In its essence, christianity purports to turn you, a formerly mortal mammal, into an eternal being. How this is done is not sufficiently explained. Entropy is undefeated in physics; any christian explanation, metaphysical it can claim, will not remedy the problem of parallelism. For example, christianity can claim humans are never mammals but eternal “souls” from the get go. Again, how do souls, eternal, very unphysical, immaterial beings, interact with physical bodies, i.e. mammals?  


So christianity promises to change the nature of humans from mortal mammals to eternal souls. But it doesn’t deliver on its promise. Worse, it has eroded public health in the process.


Perhaps technology is our real savior–salvation being a relative concept, and a very earthly one. Ray Kurzweil claims that in the very near year of 2045, humanity will merge with technology to create a new species. Behold, the singularity. 


See https://futurism.com/kurzweil-claims-that-the-singularity-will-happen-by-2045 for some fun.


Will this suffice for salvation? Is it more realistic than believing a man from 4 B.C. can turn you into an eternal being? 


If one digs into Kurzweil or historian Yuval Harari one will discover that immortality will still lose out to entropy, though life can be greatly extended–Kurzweil talks about uploading your brain/cognitions into various substrates. Kooky.


I may be down for an extended life with some more earthly pleasures like seeing grandkids and being in a band again but if you asked me to bet that I would live long enough to see the Browns win a superbowl, I wouldn’t take the bet.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Featured Post

In The Static

He had about 4 hours and 30 minutes. He, like Jack London, was going to use his time. What else did a man have…but time? Christians hav...