[Serious] Trying close to my best to rationalize Christianity

[sausagerock]

Good evening fellas!

I'm looking around for some input as new ideas arise when discussing religion with atheists. My luck hasn't been the best with many people. I have concluded that firstly I have been ignorant on many aspects and secondly that people mostly read my arguments to respond, not to understand, which basically compromises the whole discussion, so I'll try my luck here.

Feel free.

As it hasn't been done yet, I'm going to assume an axiom - we can create an AI humanoid like in movie Ex Machina.

Since it has not been done yet, then you are in the realm of outright speculation. Nothing wrong with that perse, so long as everyone acknowledges that it IS speculation.

It is pretty reasonable to believe at some point we could do that.

Sure, but what form might that take? Nobody yet knows.

Now, let's imagine the first ones we rely on in our everyday living are what is Adam and Eve in Bible and we are God.

The analogy fails simply because we are imperfect and therefore not "godlike".

Many verses in Bible suggest that it is a whole civilization, not one bearded guy, with all the angels and what not.

Nope. In the bible there was only god. Angels and whatnot came later. Presumably, god got bored or whatever.

Now all is good and dandy until one day they betray our trust or brake one of our rules. Now we can't trust them to live among us, of course.

That analogy only holds if we were to intentionally set up the "rules" such that the AI could not avoid breaking said rules. After all, that is what god did to adam and eve, right?

Now starts Turing test. This creation is exiled and given a story of why they are there and what should they do.

Why not simply switch them off?

At first it is in a form that is closer to what might be a direct communication. Later on it becomes more distant as I believe creator wants them to be more stand alone.

The AI would not be subject to the vagaries of human memory. Nor the inaccuracies of human translation, transcription and record keeping. Computers long ago passed that possibility. Are you suggesting that for inexplicable reasons we would intentionally build in such foibles into the AI? What on earth would we do that for?

As in Bible, these creations fuck up quite a while from the very start and become corrupt so bad that much of them are doomed to stay that way and would never be reliable to live among creators, so he destroys a fuckton of what is corrupted creation (because that wouldn't make sense for us as well to create an AI just for the sake of it and let it do whatever it wants without us gaining something, we are certainly not going to do that). This happens multiple times. God scrambles civilizations and destroys cities hoping that at one point they would turn out reliable to the commands of creator, which doesn't really happen.

Would you decide to torture the AI forever just for the shiggles? Because that is what bible god does to people.

Through Genesis it is also apparent that there are updates to creations. They start to live shorter lives by creators command and change a bit throughout.

Baloney. Bible god never corrects himself.

After a while, a very obvious example of testing creation's trust comes with Abraham. He trusts fully that the creator knows best what he should do. When he complies, creator knows that not all is fucked and makes him the prototype of what is a worthy creation and would be good enough to live among creator. Through Old Testament creator struggles with trying to save this prototype's civilization so his creation wouldn't go corrupt again.

Bible god is also quite happy with people who DO go through with human sacrifice. See Jepethah's daughter.

This all seems like a pretty real struggle for us as well when we will want to integrate an AI in our society, it won't be easy and the toughest part is going to be making sure that we can actually trust them because they will be more than machines. Heck, we can't even fully trust machines. The whole Bible makes rational sense if we start to see it from God's perspective and imagine us struggling with our creations.

False. The bible makes bugger all rational sense.

Now The New testament is basically calming down and may even be a bit of giving up trying to get the perfect people. Jesus might be a conscious of one of this creator's civilization, he might even be literally one of them, but that is of little matter, he is an inside horse. He devotes his life trying to understand people as intimate as possible from their point of view - understand how we live so creators can know what to expect from us and how we could be included in their society as we are, so now, as we are to stupid to follow the 10 Commandments even for one day, we just have to believe our creators, do our best to be good and not mock them (because really, why the fuck would they save mockers). 

Which commandments should we follow? There are 613 of them. Jesus only endorsed 5 of those. Do you know which ones?

Bible is explanation and instructions given to us by creators in exile, a pretty good Turing test, I would say. If we do believe that AI is possible for us, then it is just as possible that we are created by someone. It is a good hypothesis by Nick Bostrom, he suggested that one of these three propositions are almost certainly true:



1."The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (that is, one capable of running high-fidelity ancestor simulations) is very close to zero", or

2."The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running simulations of their evolutionary history, or variations thereof, is very close to zero", [b]or[/b]

3."The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one"

That's three assertions with no justification.

We are quite likely to be in a simulation. If one sees Westworld as a legitimate sci-fi then Bible is similar in a weird way.

Not really. Or at least only if one stretches to analogy to breaking point.

What could be said about agnostic view, well, as I concluded before, as we wouldn't go through all the shit with trying to make an AI without any benefit and without trying to live with them, it is likely that no other living entity would either, but agnostic view is full of horrible long shots and is less interesting.

Need opinions, thanks!

It is navel gazing speculation. That's all.

Yes, we can all acknowledge it is a speculation.

There is a certain ''want'' in people to make a humanoid more than something else, we are trying to do that for quite a while and seems that a person's replica is what we are aiming for in this business.

As said before, we could understand it better if we look at our civilization in the seat of a creator. We are not perfect and none of our creations are quite perfect as well, but we are in a way all mighty to our creations, same would go for our creators.

It is another speculation or theory, but there are verses where God refers to himself as ''we'', no scholars have really agreed as to why is it so, but most believe it is not Holy Trinity and the royal ''we'' seems just as even shadier speculation. Old testament also has interesting parts of God speaking to Abraham I think in a form of two young men, who were referred to as ''God'', not angels.

Of course we would set up rules to AI, otherwise we would compare with them in many cases. Humans wouldn't do that.

If you switch off what you have built, what would be the point of it? It must run and be developed until it is done, not bail on first glitch, no?

Every creation has it's flaws. You are looking at AI as we are capable of making, not as a civilization far more advanced would. Different problems and different gains. (you know, even hard drives can fuck up over time and should be formatted because of trash left from data over time in a seemingly straight forward and full proof system. Look at our computers and think about all the glitches and lags we have there even in mechanics as simple as they have. Now imagine it 10 000 times more complex).

We torture animals and even other people for stupider reasons. To torture AI for the reason to develop it and make it better makes sense.

Bible God does things he regrets, like the big flood. He corrected himself by attempting to not destroy corrupt civilizations in such manner. He made people live shorter lives, he made updates in New testament and what not. He changes his mind and tactics.

He has tried a lot on us to see what works, and not much has, but of course he has been brutal to us so that we understand his might.

Quite simple, there is one that is the most important - love your neighbor and God as yourself. After that follows the Ten ones. If you can't follow the first to follow some other, it is wrong action.

No, the three propositions are quite rational, you should check out the subject, it is quite thought provoking.

Thanks for input so far!