Mental 05: What We Know about God through Evolution

    I've had a number of conversations with a friend of mine (let's call him V) about the possible existence of a creator or god, and the evidence/lack thereof. I will frequently say, for instance, that vestigial body parts, harmful errors in duplicating the genetic code, natural disasters, and the like, would not be something we would expect from a beneficent or omniscient god. Similarly, since I am a computer programmer, I am used to working with artifacts created by intelligences (other programmers) and these artifacts tend to have certain properties in common (especially the ones by the most intelligent creators): clean interfaces and parts with readily distinguishable purposes, logically independent functions implemented independently of each other, etc. Biological life is not like this, and so I'm lead to conclude it was not created by an intelligent designer.

    V's counter-argument is almost always a variant of "God works in mysterious ways." God, if it existed,  would be so great and so intelligent that we would have no hope of being able to discern the thought patterns (if we could even say such existed) that went behind making the Universe, so I cannot, he claims, conjecture on what creating might be like by comparing it to artifacts of human intelligence. I find this rather line of reasoning rather irritating, since my friend only seems to apply this level of radical skepticism on claims others make.

    One such of these claims is the possibility that the Universe is a simulation that god is running "for funzies", since it presumably knows what would happen anyway. I was going to ask him why he felt comfortable attributing a human psychological trait (doing something for fun), but I realized that was easily countered. No matter - a much more interesting line of approach opened for me.

    As a programmer, I know a few things about evolutionary algorithms. Specifically, we most often use evolutionary algorithms for situations where we have only a vague idea of what the solution could be. For many problems, the evolutionary algorithm is inefficient and can be sub-optimal - we almost always prefer a direct calculation of the solution, if one is available (or tractable).

    If the Universe is a simulation that some god programmed, the fact that this creator god is using an evolutionary algorithm tells us (if it tells us anything at all) that while god would have to be incredibly intelligent, such a god would not be omniscient, since otherwise it would not rely on an imperfect algorithm. The syllogism runs as follows.

1) God exists and the Universe is a computer simulation that it is running for some purpose, hyp
2) The processes governing the development of life are significant to the simulation in some way, hyp
3) The development of life is almost entirely governed by evolutionary algorithms, obs
4) When we solve a problem in computer science using an evolutionary algorithm, it usually means we don't know how to directly calculate the solution, obs
C) There is a significant possibility that god does not know the direct way to calculate whatever it has in mind by running this simulation, and is therefore not omniscient

    Of course, if god were omniscient, it's possible it wouldn't need to run a simulation or calculation either way, so there'd be no reason to prefer one method of calculation over another. Or any reason to run the simulation at all (that we could discern). Sigh  

Meta 04: Introducing "Ego"; Where We've Been & Where We're Going

    When I started this blog, I hadn't intended for it to be publicly viewable. Instead, I had planned on using it as alternative to journal writing to collect broad trends in my thinking and philosophy. When I journal, I tend to focus on sequences of events and my feelings in the moment, and I realized at some point that I would like to have another form of expression which had a broader and more synthetic focus.

    There were however a few people whom I wanted to read this blog. When I showed it to one of them, they asked me why I had made it private. After some internal debate, I decided what I had to say might possibly be of benefit to others, so I made it publicly viewable.

    My initial schema, and my early posts, don't really reflect this change of focus from the private to the more public, and so I've decided to rewrite some of the earlier posts and introduce a new tag, "Ego", to denote things that are just about myself, such as the posts about my resolutions. While I think these kinds of posts might still be useful for others to read, I am acutely aware that topics like the effects of sugar on the liver, or the problem of identity through time, are much more general than why I've decided to practice meditation three times a day. I'd like for people who don't really care about the later to be able to easily skip past it, if they so desire¹.

    So, what's next for this blog? There are a few topics that have been sitting on the back-burner for me for a while. For "Physical," I plan on writing about confirmation bias, and the effects that religion has on cognitive capacity (and vice-versa, what effect rational thought has on religious feeling). For "Mental" there is still the big one I haven't touched yet - the pre-suppositional "un-argument" - as well as summaries of a philosopher's critique of the New Atheist movement. For "Symbol", you can expect me to gush about "Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask" as being one of the greatest pieces of interactive fiction of all time, as well as post some of my essay over Romantic literature that I wrote in University (when I'm not feeling lazy, I'll even try to address some issues the professor cited when she returned the work to me!). I will also want to write a review of the first "Neon Genesis: Evangelion" rebuild movie, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

    Hope I've given you something to look forward too!


1: Of course, it doesn't really matter, since as of this moment I could only say I have about 5 other people reading this blog, at maximum. In fact, humorously enough, one of my friends has even implied that he is more interested in a blog another of my friends has not written, and does not plan to, than he is in this blog. If I'm competing against all the non-existent blogs out there, then no wonder I have such a small readership!