Reason #2: The possibility of Artificial Intelligence

Current Verdict: Against the existence of God
Certainty (-5 to 5): -2

Ever watched the show A.I by Steven Spielberg? Do you believe that Artificial Intelligence is possible? What I mean is that one day we would be able to create life, real life that thinks and has free will.

I am convinced that one day this is a certainty. This is because I believe that our intelligence came about through natural causes (evolution). I believe that if we recreate the same steps that created us, new sentient life can emerge. My confidence comes from the twin enterprises of genetics and computing. While this process should be much more complicated and take much longer than one usually imagines, I still think that is possible.

Edmond (a philosopher friend) believes that AI is incompatible with Catholic beliefs, for God is the creator of life and we are not God. I think he might be a little too fast in saying this. It is possible that by giving us free will, God has given us the ability to be like God, and thus to create new life. Another possibility is that God has guided our hands in creating this new life. Thus, should AI one day be created, Catholics might still be able to reconcile this with their faith. At this point, the existence of AI appears neutral with regards to the question of whether God exists.

But imagine that we could arbitrarily create life, with varying abilities - some with incomplete intelligences. Imagine a race of slave robots that are semi-intelligent. Imagine that instead of robots they were flesh and blood beings. Remember the restaurant at the end of the universe in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? In it a sentient cow asks the protaganist which part of the cow he wants to eat and starts to promote the different sections of its body. It explains in a bored voice: "Don't worry. I've been bred for this purpose. I'm happy to give up my life for your dinner. Now, the sirlion.. i must say, what a choice.."

Is such a being even possible? If it is, it does goes against the idea of a God that is loving and just. I don't believe that if a sentient race of aliens existed God would prefer Humans over them and give humans dominion over them. Instead, all sentient life appears to be equal in the eyes of God. The possibility of "semi"-sentience and the arbitrary creation of life thus opposes such a concept of God.

Another way of looking at it is to say that the soul appears to be created by evolution. If we understand 'soul' here to mean the same thing as minds having consciousness and rational thought, then evolution does seem able to explain how the human mind, or 'soul', came about. Pope John Paul says that evolution can be accepted as creating the human body, but not the human soul. The possibility of A.I. contradicts the idea that the soul comes from God, since we can create and manipulate these souls arbitrarily.

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Reason #1: The Problem of Evil

Current verdict: Against the existence of God
Certainty (-5 to 5): -3

"Perhaps the greatest obstacle for religious belief met by a christian believer in his or her own reflections and coming also from unbelievers, is the obvious existence of evil in the world evil seems to negate any possibility of a loving God and of a revelation from Him. I am not thinking here of moral evil (sin) Sin is perhaps inevitable considering the fact that man is free to obey or disobey God's commandments Rather I am thinking of things like natural catastrophes (floods, earthquakes, fires, plagues) which apparently destroy indiscriminately the good and the bad alike Plainly this is not a perfect world. If Godi s all-powerful and all-loving, why did God create a world in which there is so much suffering? One answer is that the Creator did not, but suffering came in as a retribution for the sin of the first man ("original sin") when he disobeyed God. While this answer still tries the faith of the Christian believer it offers nothing to the unbeliever. For the , unbeliever a more acceptable answer might be that God created a world good enough to serve as the theater of man's activities, yet imperfect enough to force man to use his own ingenuity and skills to control the forces of nature Including the destructive ones. A third answer, satisfying again only to a Christian believer, is that all sufferings, all injustices and inequities, will be set right in the next life. In the final analysis, the problem of evil in the world remains unsolved."

Ever heard of the silly question: "If a tree falls in the forest and no one sees or hears it, did it fall?" Well, suppose that a tree falls in the forest and kills an ant that happened to be passing by, which I am absolutely sure has happened before. Now, could it not have been that God could have made is such that the tree fell without killing the ant. Surely there are moments when no ants are underneath. The ant need not have died needlessly. Isn't it in some sense evil that it died when it need not have?

But that is the reality of the world that this supposedly perfect God created. Nature is not really perfect. The reality of nature is that many animals die horrible deaths and only a few survive to reproduce and almost none survive to a 'ripe old age'.

For me, there is no satisfactory answer why a God that is all good would make the world the way it is.