>
> If you mean a supreme creator:
> - The exisitence of such would imply its existence... ;)
> - would imply that there is a logic or order at work even if you (the
> created) cannot discern what that plan is. The plan could be active or
> passive participation in its creations' exisitence.
>
Not necessarily...? Right now I cannot think of a religion that would
cite logic as a necessary "quality" of its Deity - and Christianity
seems no exception. But, more to the point:
Let me add to the recent string of VERY hypothetical questions
posed recently on Virus. If technology allowed us to create
virtual (software) worlds populated with THINKING "creatures";
so these worlds would be *really* advanced "simulations" - and,
let's assume for the simplicity of argument that we created
a software equivalent of OUR world, populated with digital
humans who behave, think, feel the way we do. They, of course,
would have no knowledge of their "real" existence as mere
electron gusts inside our hypothetical CPU; for them, the sun
would shine, trees would grow, babies would come from sex, etc.
Now we, the experimenters, would be in the exact position of
a God towards our Digitals:
a) To what extent would you/we feel bound by our logic in dealing
with the creatures we programmed? (I venture to suggest, that this
being an 'experimental' program, we might want to create a multitude
of such cpu-run universes, and act differently on each; use pure
logic on one, while drown another in absurd. Naturally, I am
avoiding here all matters of [im]morality of such experiments.)
b) Would you, would we choose to communicate to them our existence
and their own genesis? Would we stop them from doing too much evil,
or interefere via "miracles"?
c) Crux of the matter... Equipped with enough know-how to be able
to create such simulations as this, we could also "append" to it
another part of the program - the 'afterlife'. We would be in a
position to 'reward' or 'punish' the living, reasoning, feeling
creatures if we chose to do so. To them omniscient, we could
select those that, say, adhered to whatever forms of spiritual
belief they may have originated, and "pipe" them into the
"heaven" computer, while sending others the the "hell" machine.
Or would we reward logic, punish mysticism? Would we, most of
all, feel under any obligation to the creatures we created?
And what if such simulations were bought as Christmas gifts
for kids to play with, much as today flight simulation
games are?
That is to say, I don't feel God is under any obligation to
be - in our sense of the word - logical, or orderly.
Marek.
-- Note: This message originated solely in my brain, which has no authority to speak for other parts of my body.