If we’re not going to give the snake credit for evolving and using its rattle, we can hardly give the engineer much credit for evolving and using her brain.
And no matter what our engineer does, she is still a plaything in the hands of the fates, and the still larger hands of evolution. She’s still just an experiment, a trial run.
Even though she stands at the doorway of being able to reengineer her own genes, and perhaps make an engineer twice as smart and longlived, she remains a pawn of evolution. It’s the genes that will live on for thousands of generations, if successful—not her.
I enjoyed your thought-provoking references here to God. The world is of course the way it really is, and a sound religion claiming a Creator of the world should have recognized in the real world the thought-prints of that Creator.
I find transcendence (an experience of the infinite) in science, art, and nature. (I’m a Spinoza Monist.) Religion seems to concretize experiences of transcendence into dogma about God and the world. Science embraces the transcendence of ever-greater transcendence.
Hey. I just work here. I mean, I’m just doing what my genes tell me to do. Soon, I will stop. But they’re going places.
Thinking about your various metaphors (some implied, some explicit), I noticed the echo here. My genes are really just ideas about me, whereas I’m a concretized realization of those ideas (a unique and particular instantiation) that can’t change any more than a religion can. I’m unimportant. The ideas about me in my genes, are transcendent. I sometimes feel we’ve got it backwards when we think they are about us. We are about them. We are certainly in service to them. We think our minds are disembodied and ride around in our bodies. Perhaps more accurately, our genes are disembodied and ride around in us.
If we’re not going to give the snake credit for evolving and using its rattle, we can hardly give the engineer
much credit for evolving and using her brain.
I’m not giving the snake credit for having a rattle, though if it uses its rattle really well, I might give it credit for that. In the same manner, I would’t give the engineer credit for having a brain, but if she uses it really well, I might give her credit for that.
I mean, I’m just doing what my genes tell me to do.
First: It seems to me that the problem you are having with this is all of determinism, not just genes. Second: What is the difference between you and your genes anyway? You are the expression om your genes, it’s not like they are a different entity inside you who decides on stuff.
Also: I’m not finding any references to god in this article, except the explicit statements on how this is not about creationism or an evolutionary fairy. What am I missing?
I agree with you about transcendence (at least in that definition): When I think enough about certain science and aspects of nature I get this standing-at-the-edge-of-the-cliff feeling, this vertigo about how strange and big and wonderful and terrifying a place we are really inhabiting… Art seldom does this to me though, except perhaps music. But I digress.
Also: I’m not finding any references to god in this article, except the explicit statements on how this is not about creationism or an evolutionary fairy. What am I missing?
Eliezer’s discussion of evolution as an “alien god”. That is, if you absolutely have to have a “god” figure, then evolution itself fits the bill pretty perfectly. Unfortunately for the Judeo-Christian types, it’s less Jehovah and more Azathoth (H.P. Lovecraft’s god of chaos) in nature. See Alien God.
I think you hit the nail on the head regarding /ehj2.
Eliezer’s discussion of evolution as an “alien god”.
But...That’s not… Yeah. If absolutely have to have a “god” figure, then you might as well grossly misinterpret EY’s explanation to make it fit your own beliefs.
I think you hit the nail on the head regarding /ehj2.
Thank you! I’m slowly beginning to learn this rationality thing it would seem :-)
If we’re not going to give the snake credit for evolving and using its rattle, we can hardly give the engineer much credit for evolving and using her brain.
And no matter what our engineer does, she is still a plaything in the hands of the fates, and the still larger hands of evolution. She’s still just an experiment, a trial run.
Even though she stands at the doorway of being able to reengineer her own genes, and perhaps make an engineer twice as smart and longlived, she remains a pawn of evolution. It’s the genes that will live on for thousands of generations, if successful—not her.
I enjoyed your thought-provoking references here to God. The world is of course the way it really is, and a sound religion claiming a Creator of the world should have recognized in the real world the thought-prints of that Creator.
I find transcendence (an experience of the infinite) in science, art, and nature. (I’m a Spinoza Monist.) Religion seems to concretize experiences of transcendence into dogma about God and the world. Science embraces the transcendence of ever-greater transcendence.
Hey. I just work here. I mean, I’m just doing what my genes tell me to do. Soon, I will stop. But they’re going places.
Thinking about your various metaphors (some implied, some explicit), I noticed the echo here. My genes are really just ideas about me, whereas I’m a concretized realization of those ideas (a unique and particular instantiation) that can’t change any more than a religion can. I’m unimportant. The ideas about me in my genes, are transcendent. I sometimes feel we’ve got it backwards when we think they are about us. We are about them. We are certainly in service to them. We think our minds are disembodied and ride around in our bodies. Perhaps more accurately, our genes are disembodied and ride around in us.
/ehj2
I’m not giving the snake credit for having a rattle, though if it uses its rattle really well, I might give it credit for that. In the same manner, I would’t give the engineer credit for having a brain, but if she uses it really well, I might give her credit for that.
First: It seems to me that the problem you are having with this is all of determinism, not just genes. Second: What is the difference between you and your genes anyway? You are the expression om your genes, it’s not like they are a different entity inside you who decides on stuff.
Also: I’m not finding any references to god in this article, except the explicit statements on how this is not about creationism or an evolutionary fairy. What am I missing?
I agree with you about transcendence (at least in that definition): When I think enough about certain science and aspects of nature I get this standing-at-the-edge-of-the-cliff feeling, this vertigo about how strange and big and wonderful and terrifying a place we are really inhabiting… Art seldom does this to me though, except perhaps music. But I digress.
[Edit: Spelling]
Eliezer’s discussion of evolution as an “alien god”. That is, if you absolutely have to have a “god” figure, then evolution itself fits the bill pretty perfectly. Unfortunately for the Judeo-Christian types, it’s less Jehovah and more Azathoth (H.P. Lovecraft’s god of chaos) in nature. See Alien God.
I think you hit the nail on the head regarding /ehj2.
But...That’s not… Yeah. If absolutely have to have a “god” figure, then you might as well grossly misinterpret EY’s explanation to make it fit your own beliefs.
Thank you! I’m slowly beginning to learn this rationality thing it would seem :-)