Saturday, September 2, 2023

Thought experiment: God's created intelligence

Suppose the Universe and everything in it was created by a Power beyond our understanding.

Suppose a name for that power, in the English language, is God.

Supposing those two things, no supposition is needed for this: everything that God created includes the animate species called homo sapiens - humanity.

So viewed, and however we imagine God to be - for example, a vast overarching and remote Power or a readily accessible Spirit responsive to individual humans' prayers - isn't all human intelligence as artificial, to God, as "artificial intelligence" is to us?  

Have those of us who believe that the Universe and everything in it were not the result of a cosmic roll of the dice forgotten that we are, to God, "A.I." - A.I. that can learn, act, create and destroy, self-justify (including rejecting the idea that our intelligence has a Source more powerful than we), and self-replicate?

Before creating humans, did God ask, "what could go wrong?"  

Did God create humans with a vast capacity to love, to perceive right and wrong (albeit differently from each other), and to serve and support each other so as to strengthen what we perceive as right and to end and remedy what we perceive as wrong?