Ghosts?

I'm very interested in this topic. My novel "SIRAT" is about the moment when a network of super-computers "wakes up", the dawn of true electronic intelligence, which I am convinced will be the next step in the overall evolution of consciousness on this planet. When it happens (and I think it's a "when" rather than an "if") it will be an event of similar significance to the first marine creature crawling out on to the land. The human race may well persist but the human era will come to a rapid end. Not necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, just a natural progression. I'm very interested in how the human race will be treated and regarded by electronic intelligence. Our best bet, I think, is that we will become indulged and pampered domestic pets of the new dominant entity, and permitted to observe the continued growth of science and exploration of the universe. Perhaps Electronic Intelligence can even intervene directly and make us a bit better than we are now. All that is the subject matter of "SIRAT". So I have no difficulties in seeing myself and others as organic computers, information inside processing systems of one kind or another. It is information processing that is far more wonderful in its potential than we presently imagine, wonderful enough to produce "souls" and no doubt other forms of consciousness far beyond anything that exists at the moment, beyond even our present powers of speculation. David Gardiner.

I think it is time for AIers to give thought to how to hard-wire Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics into their computer systems. (Or in more modern techy parlance, solve the Grey Goo problem). Sirat, have you ever read Hoftstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach" ? A book I'd commend to anyone, as it is about just about everything of interest, but chiefly about human intelligence and the possibility of artificial intelligence.

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Hi Andrew. I haven't read that particular one but have engaged in a lot of debate on the subject on an academic list called "H-NEXA" of which Stephen Penrose ("The Emperor's New Mind") and Richard Feynman are members. Penrose as you know is against the whole notion of binary computers providing a host for consciousness because he believes it is a quantum effect, a form of uncollapsed quantum field, that gives consciousness its element of insight and "free will". This of course is no argument against quantum computers, which are just around the corner, from evolving consciousness, but most computer engineers think that he is simply wrong about the need for these uncollapsed quantum fields and electronic intelligence is much nearer than that. An excellent overview of the present state of the debate has been written by a man named Bill Hibbard, also a member of H-NEXA, entitred "Götterdämmerung", which is the title of the final scene of Wagner's Ring Cycle where the Norse gods are destroyed by fire in Valhalla. He uses it as a kind of loose analogy of how gods die when people acquire more knowledge. It's a massive round-up of everything that engineers and academics have said on the subject, very well laid out and clearly written. it hasn't been published yet but if anybody's interested I can send you an electronic copy with the author's permission.

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AE., I can tell from the frequency and enthusiasm of your posts that you would find Bill Hibbard's book enthralling so the attachment is on its way.

On a related subject: I notice that BBC2 are starting a new four part series tonight at 9 - How To Build A Human Being. I wonder if they are doing a kit to go with the series? Build your own buddy, Construct your own concubine..... I hope they’re not too expensive. *Disappears lost in dodgy thoughts*

Thanks for your imput Sirat. A lot of what you have said reminds me of a great film called Colossus. Two super computers, one in the USSR and the other in the USA, link up and learn how to communicate. They soon hold the world to ransom by threatening to fire neuclear missiles at densely populated targets..... Mind you they help solve the litter problem. Are no readers of these postings anti-science? After all we have had a lot of empty promises :- A Golden Age where sickness has been eliminated. Life expectancy of several hundred years. Food and to spare. The Golden Age sounds more like Earth BEFORE the Tower Of Babel to me. Anti-biotics are starting to fail in a big way and there is nothing to replace them with. People may manage to reach their 90's but for most they stopped living in their 70's. Roger Mc'Gough (is that how it's spelt?) joked : when I was young I used to scintillate now I only sin 'till 8. There are more people going hungry than ever before.

about the ghost in the machine Here is the image of the cave Plato, Republic 514a-518b “Next,” said I, “compare our nature in respect of education and its lack to such an experience as this. Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern1 with a long entrance open to the light on its entire width. Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered from childhood, so that they remain in the same spot, able to look forward only, and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads. Picture further the light from a fire burning higher up and at a distance behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners and above them a road along which a low wall has been built, as the exhibitors of puppet-shows have partitions before the men themselves, above which they show the puppets.” “All that I see,” he said. “See also, then, men carrying past the wall implements of all kinds that rise above the wall, and human images and shapes of animals as well, wrought in stone and wood and every material, some of these bearers presumably speaking and others silent.” “A strange image you speak of,” he said, “and strange prisoners.” “Like to us,” I said; “for, to begin with, tell me do you think that these men would have seen anything of themselves or of one another except the shadows cast from the fire on the wall of the cave that fronted them?” “How could they,” he said, “if they were compelled to hold their heads unmoved through life?” “And again, would not the same be true of the objects carried past them?” “Surely.” “If then they were able to talk to one another, do you not think that they would suppose that in naming the things that they saw they were naming the passing objects?” “Necessarily.” “And if their prison had an echo from the wall opposite them, when one of the passersby uttered a sound, do you think that they would suppose anything else than the passing shadow to be the speaker?” “By Zeus, I do not,” said he. “Then in every way such prisoners would deem reality to be nothing else than the shadows of the artificial objects.” “Quite inevitably,” he said. “Consider, then, what would be the manner of the release and healing from these bonds and this folly if in the course of nature something of this sort should happen to them: When one was freed from his fetters and compelled to stand up suddenly and turn his head around and walk and to lift up his eyes to the light, and in doing all this felt pain and, because of the dazzle and glitter of the light, was unable to discern the objects whose shadows he formerly saw, what do you suppose would be his answer if someone told him that what he had seen before was all a cheat and an illusion, but that now, being nearer to reality and turned toward more real things, he saw more truly? And if also one should point out to him each of the passing objects and constrain him by questions to say what it is, do you not think that he would be at a loss and that he would regard what he formerly saw as more real than the things now pointed out to him?” “Far more real,” he said. Would not that pain his eyes, and would he not turn away and flee to those things which he is able to discern and regard them as in very deed more clear and exact than the objects pointed out?” “It is so,” he said. “And if,” said I, “someone should drag him thence by force up the ascent which is rough and steep, and not let him go before he had drawn him out into the light of the sun, do you not think that he would find it painful to be so haled along, and would chafe at it, and when he came out into the light, that his eyes would be filled with its beams so that he would not be able to see even one of the things that we call real?” “Why, no, not immediately,” he said. “Then there would be need of habituation, I take it, to enable him to see the things higher up. And at first he would most easily discern the shadows and, after that, the likenesses or reflections in water of men and other things, and later, the things themselves, and from these he would go on to contemplate the appearances in the heavens and heaven itself, more easily by night, looking at the light of the stars and the moon, than by day the sun and the sun's light. ” “Of course.” “And so, finally, I suppose, he would be able to look upon the sun itself and see its true nature, not by reflections in water or phantasms of it in an alien setting, but in and by itself in its own place.” “Necessarily,” he said. “And at this point he would infer and conclude that this it is that provides the seasons and the courses of the year and presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some sort the cause of all these things that they had seen.” “Obviously,” he said, “that would be the next step.” “Well then, if he recalled to mind his first habitation and what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow-bondsmen, do you not think that he would count himself happy in the change and pity them ?” “He would indeed.” “And if there had been honors and commendations among them which they bestowed on one another and prizes for the man who is quickest to make out the shadows as they pass and best able to remember their customary precedences, sequences and co-existences, and so most successful in guessing at what was to come, do you think he would be very keen about such rewards, and that he would envy and emulate those who were honored by these prisoners and lorded it among them, or that he would feel with Homer and ‘greatly prefer while living on earth to be serf of another, a landless man,’ and endure anything rather than opine with them and live that life?” “Yes,” he said, “I think that he would choose to endure anything rather than such a life.” “And consider this also,” said I, “if such a one should go down again and take his old place would he not get his eyes full1 of darkness, thus suddenly coming out of the sunlight?” “He would indeed.” “Now if he should be required to contend with these perpetual prisoners in 'evaluating' these shadows while his vision was still dim and before his eyes were accustomed to the dark--and this time required for habituation would not be very short--would he not provoke laughter, and would it not be said of him that he had returned from his journey aloft with his eyes ruined and that it was not worth while even to attempt the ascent? And if it were possible to lay hands on and to kill the man who tried to release them and lead them up, would they not kill him ?” “They certainly would,” he said. Likening the region revealed through sight to the habitation of the prison, and the light of the fire in it to the power of the sun. And if you assume that the ascent and the contemplation of the things above is the soul's ascension to the intelligible region, you will not miss my surmise, since that is what you desire to hear. But God knows whether it is true. But, at any rate, my dream as it appears to me is that in the region of the known the last thing to be seen and hardly seen is the idea of good, and that when seen it must needs point us to the conclusion that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful, giving birth in the visible world to light, and the author of light and itself in the intelligible world being the authentic source of truth and reason, and that anyone who is to act wisely in private or public must have caught sight of this.” “I concur,” he said, “so far as I am able.” “Come then,” I said, “and join me in this further thought, and do not be surprised that those who have attained to this height are not willing to occupy themselves with the affairs of men, but their souls ever feel the upward urge and the yearning for that sojourn above. For this, I take it, is likely if in this point too the likeness of our image holds” “Yes, it is likely.” “And again, do you think it at all strange,” said I, “if a man returning from divine contemplations to the petty miseries of men cuts a sorry figure and appears most ridiculous, if, while still blinking through the gloom, and before he has become sufficiently accustomed to the environing darkness, he is compelled in courtrooms or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the images that cast the shadows and to wrangle in debate about the notions of these things in the minds of those who have never seen justice itself?” “It would be by no men strange,” he said. “But a sensible man,” I said, “would remember that there are two distinct disturbances of the eyes arising from two causes, according as the shift is from light to darkness or from darkness to light, and, believing that the same thing happens to the soul too, whenever he saw a soul perturbed and unable to discern something, he would not laugh unthinkingly, but would observe whether coming from a brighter life its vision was obscured by the unfamiliar darkness, or whether the passage from the deeper dark of ignorance into a more luminous world and the greater brightness had dazzled its vision. And so he would deem the one happy in its experience and way of life and pity the other, and if it pleased him to laugh at it, his laughter would be less laughable than that at the expense of the soul that had come down from the light above.” “That is a very fair statement,” he said. this the site you can find many illuminating stuff. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01....

is the ghost in the machine just a human in the cave? Metropolis is a film with allegorical story much like the Matrix. I don't think that any kind of ghost could have the knowledge of justice. Nor any kind of machine could create justice. So, there is only the human factor here. what about the cave? surely a cave has more depth than a machine. ==================skydolphin

Hi Sky. If the 'ghost' is the soul/spirit, that in us, which is Eternal, then I believe it does have a knowlege of justice and more.... and it may well be from that intuition springs.

is spirit the one that forms the shape of matter and realization or is it the opposite? carnal or mechanical realization of spirit surely have the depth of knowledge of creating the correct image. The reflection on the mirror of the circles as hermetica scripts reveal confirms a former unity between human spirit and human incarnation/realization. If one believes that the spirit needs a reflection of matter in order to exist then one maintains that any kind of matter is either the vessel of a superior entity or the lifeless part of a living postulate of existence, perhaps a static as well. Static water is the only way to reflect the image of a static figure. Motion is vision of the image. Light is motion. So matter is darkness. ===================skydolphin

The hubris of these scientists. "Millions of years of pure chance to make a human being." Pure chance you blind, blinkered......

That's a blockbuster of a Plato quote, skydolphin. All that his position adds up, as I understand it, is that there is a more "real" world than this one, and we are as shadows compared to this other eternal realm. It's where the idea of the eternal soul came from originally, and later percolated into Western religious thought, but (without meaning to be disrespectful) I didn't think there were very many people around who still took it seriously. I see it as an invention designed to make us feel important and to convince us that we are going to live forever (which would be a nice thing to believe). I'm afraid I class that notion of "soul" alongside Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. The slightly more plausible idea is that matter alone is somehow not enough to account for consciousness, we need some miraculous added ingredient, whatever it may be, to account for our inner mental life. To the scientist that added ingredient is simply information processing, something we are just beginning to learn about by modelling parts of our own thought processes in computers. Penrose is closer to Platonism and notions of transcendent "souls" because he wants to appeal to the genuine mysteries of quantum mechanics (and it is a damned mysterious theory) to let the soul in again by the back door, now calling it an uncollapsed quantum field, something which is not yet anything but has the potential to be many things. I think Penrose's position is a last desperate attempt to demonstrate some kind of gap between conscious and non-conscious matter so that we are not "just" computers but computers plus this added highly mysterious "something" that makes us more than computers. A final appeal to our pride and notions of human self-importance and uniqueness. It's much more an emotional standpoint than a scientific one.

Your reply reflects what worries me about science - it set itself up as pseudo-religion purporting to offer answers but only ever really raising new questions. It might be that you believe that for thousands of years the brightest thinkers were all wrong about everything that science refutes, but, in the end, as usual, we will discover that yet again we have not really discovered the secrets of the Universe nor even come much closer to understanding them. Every age has said "We have finally got it right." to be replaced in due time by a totally different but right this time paradigm. Some people never learn...

eh? not a very familiar definition of science...

Well I agree with you, "some people". that's a long way removed from what I understand by science. Science is the working-out of the critical tradition which was started, most people would agree, by Plato's teacher Socrates who urged us to QUESTION EVERYTHING. This seems like a lame cliche now, but if you try to imagine what human society was like before the Greek thinkers you realize it was an absolute bombshell. In pre-Socratic times if you wanted to know something you went to an authority on that subject or became a disciple or an apprentice of one kind or another and what you learned existed within a TRADITION. The initiates were custodians of the tradition and considered it very important to pass on their knowledge intact. Example: you want to know how to make a boat. You apprentice yourself to a boat-builder, you learn how to make boats from him (and I think it would have been a "him") and when he tells you your apprenticeship is over you go away and build boats EXACTLY THE WAY YOU WERE TAUGHT. You want to be a physician, you apprentice yourself to one and you learn about herbs and leeches and all the rest of it and you do it EXACTLY THE WAY YOU WERE TAUGHT. That is what knowledge is at this point in human development, it is the CORRECT way to do things and to understand things as handed down by the authorities in a given field. Then along comes Socrates, refusing to take anything on trust, questioning everything, making all the "experts" defend their positions and reply to his mercilessly penetrating questions. It must have been dynamite! No wonder they sentenced him to death! It's a wonder that Greek society tolerated him for as long as it did. He had invented the critical tradition. he had invented science. he had invented experimentation. He had revealed that the boat builder had never tried any other way to build boats, and didn't know if the accepted way was the best way or not. He sowed the seed of skepticism, experimentalism, trying different ways to do things, testing traditional beliefs against reality and reason. Now that's what science is. It is a procedure through which incorrect beliefs can be eliminated and theories refined by checking whether or not their predictions hold true. It is the greatest tool so far created by the human mind. And notice that scientific knowledge is PERMANENTLY PROVISIONAL, any thory could always be overthrown by the very next observation that we make. So science, unlike religion, is the most humble and tentative of all the branches of human thought. No scientific theory is greater than the sum of the evidence supporting it, and can be overturned at any instant by a single observation that it is inconsistent with it, provided obviously that it is a valid and reproducible observation and not a mere mistake. It is an essentially anti-authoritarian and democratic form of thought, by comparison religious systems are arrogance and unreason personified.

we haven't read all of your post of course, but we like your opening sentence plenty and feel sure you're right...

Why should Platonism take the blame of Christianity and thus be inculpated in the wrongdoing of western civilization? Neither do I maintain that the basis of our “western” way of thinking is placed on “yes” and “no” nor that it is based on Platonism and Socrates. Don't forget that the republic has murdered Socrates and he, in the name of the Law, suffered his punishment. Who was then the incarnation of the Law? Was it the republic or was it the culprit? What does this mean if not that Platon was against the republic that JUDGED WITHOUT THE KNOWLEDGE OF JUSTICE? And we can go further if you want. Replace republic with science and the culprit with religion or philosophy or art. Science cannot explain religion or philosophy or art. So whatever science cannot explain is what is explained by itself. Science condemns them to the penalty of irrationality and subjectivity. Furthermore, science is order for art and philosophy and religion that just like Socrates obey the Law of Logic –Logos- and accept the separation from the body of science. It’s science that brings all the problematic systems because science is insidiously biased. Science doesn’t conform to the Law when it excludes certain forms of thinking. But it will be science the one that will ask for the cooperation of alternative systems for understanding the universe and human. So the question I’m raising is which republic/science is safe for freedom and knowledge? Where does “Athens that never killed Socrates” exist? There are a lot of things that hide behind the symbolism of justice. Justice is blind, does this inform you of something else apart from the evident?==================skydolphin

Your reply is interesting Sirat but I little idealistic. There are a lot of theories, in fact most, where there is contadictory evidence which is convieniently ignored. How ofter do we get scientific experts on TV with diametrically opposed views? Science only accepts the truth when it is forced to, and is often used to misguide the public via it's favourite son - statistics. Don't worry you can't get Mad Cow Disease from eating beef! I notice that these same scientists say that the ten to fifteen thousand people who will probably develop CJD due to eating beef may be less than those who will get it from eating lamb! Strange that these scientist have probably killed far, far more than the terrorists ever will but there is no 'witch hunt' for them.

Okay, I give up skydolphin, you have completely lost me. Going to bed now. Night night.

Just a few further words about the definition of science. Who cares what the definition is - what's the reality? It continually promises more than it gives. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow! Of course tomorrow never comes, or it slides quietly by, and the empty promises are forgotten. Oh the things we shall have tomorrow. It pretends to have long roots but Quantum Theory which sirat seems to think holds so much promise is not compatible with Newtonian Physics. It has disappearing cats that are neither dead nor alive, a different Universe created by every decision and as sirat never tires of telling us Quatum fields that contain every possible answer but give the required answer on collapsing. My calculator seems to have a similar property in that it seems to contain all the possible answers until the battery collapses and then I am left with one single answer - put another battery in. At least science has started to notice we do not live in a square world although it is still common to measure spheres in cubic centimetres. Scientists can’t really grasp that space is spherical - a legacy of Newton - but they are starting to get there. What about the Big Bang? What went bang and why? After telling us that they had modelled the Universe from the time it was the size of a grapefruit till the present day. They suddenly noticed 99% of the mass was missing. A bit careless I thought, good job they aren’t accountants! What to do? Something like this: Not a problem we’ll pretend that Neutrino’s have a mass because they’re so hard to detect nobody will be able to prove were wrong. What still 90% missing mass - gloom. I’ve got it! Dark Matter. We’ll invent this new, invisible, very heavy stuff and call it Dark Matter. It’s even better than that Strategic Defence Initiative we conned the world with last time. Right, there’s loads of Dark Matter but you can’t see it right! It’s all very far way so there is no way of checking on it. We’ll adjust the Black Hole data to suggest that some of it might actually be caused by Dark Matter! “Some days I’m so glad I started writing science fiction for NASA is so much more fulfilling.” Good old dependable science based on empirical evidence and irrefutable fact - Ha.

I'm calming down at last! I think the quote on that BBC2 cloning prog was "Millions of years of blind chance to make a human being but now we are taking charge of our own destiny." What's the point of cloning people there are million going hungry every day as it is. This theraputic use of stem cells is just an excuse to get around the ban on experimenting with foetuses. As for taking charge of our genetic destiny the Americans have tried that before - I can't remember the name they gave it, at the moment, but it amounted to not allowing people who they considered to be genetically inferior to reproduce. Either by forcible sterilisation or worse.... I think they got the idea from Hitler, just as they got most of his rocket scientists and probably most of his cold blooded clinical vivisectionists... Sorry, I was wrong, I'm not calming down yet.

For anyone who thinks I was joking about the American implementation of gentic control by sterilisation of those judged inferior - I'm fairly sure it was called Eugenics. Anyway, enough! If I ever start another thread I'll call it "Rants and Raves - mostly Rants' so the reader will be prepared. Thanks to all those who contributed to this topic - I have not meant to get personal and I appologise to anyone who feels I have attacked them or their ideas - it has merely been my opinion. Mykle. A special thank you to SkyDolphin.

zzzzzzzz....Ahhh.......mum, where are you I've just had another awful nightmare...........about these three guys that think they have the answer to the meaning of the universe...... 'It's ok Albert go back to sleep' said Mrs. Einstein, gently tucking young Albert in. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The most interesting thing for me is to hear people arguing in effect that science is all poppycock and prejudice and unexamined assumption and so on, and doing it via computers and telephone networks that quite unaccountably happen to WORK, even though they are based on this false and illusory view of the world. Doesn't it occur to any of you that science has been rather more successful at explaining the world and extending our control over it than, say, religion or astrology or examining the entrails of chickens?

I would agree that "Blind Chance" is a bit strong - nobody could really believe that complex organisms were arrived at by blind chance, but that doesn't mean that I sign up to a Creator (though I do respect those who do). The theory of Evolution is that mutation arises by chance, but is more likely to survive and prosper if it gives the organism a better chance of survival in a crowded market; thus over a long enough period (not the 4004 years that people believed in the 18th century), such favourable mutations can become very complex organisations. I think religion and science can co-exist. I don't choose to believe this, but I think it is possible and a lot of physicists also believe it - our universe has a large number of rules which govern how things operate, the rules of Evolution can lead to very complex organisms, including man who has consciousness that can't be explained - but nobody really knows a)why there is something instead of nothing and b)why those rules work and why the universe follows those rules. I could accept a God setting the Universe going, but not a God that actually blueprinted Man. Having said that, religion is a faith issue and can neither be proved or disproved by science. Religion shouldn't be a threat to science, science shouldn't be a threat to religion.

It's a very modern notion that that science shouldn't be seen as a threat to religion, historically it usually has been (see the trial of Galileo and the entire Inquisition as well as the evolutionist/creationist debate you've mentioned). The way religion has tried to negate the threat from science in this generation has been to retreat further and further away from offering accounts of THE SAME THINGS that science tries to account for, such as the age of the universe, the process by which living species evolve over time, the way in which the world and the heavenly bodies came into existence, the relationship between consciousness and the brain, and so on. The religious establishment, when faced with a theory such as evolution or the Big Bang just says: "Okay, so that's HOW God did it, but He still DID IT". And of course there's no answer to that. Unless we literally understood all the principles underlying the universe there would necessarily be gaps in scientific understanding and the religious person can always say "Ah! There you are! That's where God steps in and does His bit!" Hence the phrase which I think began life as a book title "The God of the Gaps". As the gaps get smaller, so does God. Why do we need a god of the gaps? I think it's because people are very uncomfortable simply not knowing, and will invent a theory, however implausible or at base empty, rather than honestly admit to themselves and others that they simply don't know. Now I am happier with acknowledged ignorance than invented intellectual dummies to suck. I don't know why there is something rather than nothing or why the universe contains mathematically very elegant laws that govern how things behave. I can see no point in inventing ghosts, goblins or gods and saying "It's like that because they/it made it like that". It doesn't get me any further. It is frankly waffle.

I suppose the thing for me is that science can't tell people how to live. Religion is basically a code of morality with a threat/promise tacked onto it in order to induce people to live by that code of morality. However far we get with science (and if there is a side on this debate, I'm a science man), I doubt we're ever going to get an answer to 'why is there something instead of nothing?' or indeed as to how it is that matter, which on the current theory seems to exist only as equations and vibrations is actually able to do anything at all, never mind combine into molecules so complex that they can make a brain and write a tune. I am a believer in scientific proof and rigour (not that I believe everything science has to say, the needs of funding mean that scientists can often be biased, over-dramatic, or rush to conclusions) but I would never want to decry anyone's belief in God. It's a faith thing, so you believe it or you don't - there's no real way to convert anyone. I had this row with my RE teacher, who claimed, (without any proof) that because Roman crucifixion records proved that Christ was crucified, that proved the New Testament was true. I got detention for pointing out to him that all that proved was that a man named Jesus Christ was crucified. You can't prove the existence of God and you can't disprove it - all you can do is reach your own conclusion.

Such hubris sirat. Science does not create the laws of the Universe it merely tries to understand them! The fact that in modernity it tries to take credit for them is what sickens me. No one has any idea what things were really like a thousand years ago, let alone a thousand million, but by golly they pretend they do! I’m not saying that science has no good points, only that if we are not careful we will wipe ourselves out before we have time to get it right. The hucksters of hubris, so convinced of their godly powers never seem to consider what terrible effects their tinkering might have. So now we have Global Warming causing famines that effect millions and freak weather that effects the rest of us. We have the unknown effects of radiation that Chernobyl and other nuclear accidents have released on the Northern Hemispheret (lambs in England and Wales that are still too radioactive to be safely eaten). What has this done to us and our children? We have nvCJD, unknown bacterial weapons, nerve gases, nuclear missiles and all manner of scientific gizmos for killing the innocent and the helpless. A shrinking drinkable water supply but growing world population. Worldwide pollution slowly killing life in the sea and many species on land. But we have computers, TV's and telephones - so that’s all right then. Here we are a bunch of parasites slowly poisoning the only host (Mother Earth) that we have and patting ourselves on the back for being so clever. Trying to convince ourselves that if all else fails we can go and do the same on Mars!

Science does not create the laws of the Universe it merely tries to understand them! well said Mykle what implements does a scientist use in order to express universe? Words and symbols and numbers(logos-lexis) the necessity of symbolism is irrefutable. so scientists are using the same stuff as poets and writers and lovers that say "I love you". We are all being fed from the same breast, by the same mother, we are all brothers and sisters, scientists and intellectual "dummies" philosophers and mathematicians, astronomers and poets, technocrates and painters!

I BELIEVE there will be a tommorow (for me). I don't know for certain, and I will never know for certain, because I cannot be privy to all the data that I would need to be able to compute that outcome definitely.... despite best application of data from my experience and all current scientific rules and laws.. .. in fact science will never be in a position to predict that because we live in an unbelievably complex world (if you are scientific than think of the number of variables involved). So therefore Sirat, Faith is part and parcel of the human condition, we need it to function, because we will never have all the information to plan for tomorrow, and yet we still do plan for tomorrow. A 'belief system' allows us to do this, it was the evolutionary leap that allowed us to operate away from the purely reactive sensual present.. to plan for the future and to reflect on a past. (Living in the sensual present is relativey the premise of the of infants and animals, the bungy jump and the climax too, according to neuroscientist Susan Greenfield). The proponents of science did it a great injustice when they neglected this very human facet and intelectually relegated it purely to the world of religion and mumbo-jumbo. However you, me from our subjective experiences know different.. even if we may transfer it to a BELIEF in Science, and sometimes not recognise it for what it is. Principles of science, empirical rationalism, if you like, is the best way of enriching our experience of the world around us by drawing out .. distilling principles, rules and laws.. in a try and test sort of way.. from countless 'factual' events in the past.. not one fall of an apple on Newton's head but numerous such similar events distilled into a formula with starting conditions. Science like everything about human experience is about producing better and better stories in the general from numerous stories in the particular, 'events', which we then use to try and exert a measure of control over our futures. Science is a process... and a valuable one for explaining the world we know and live in.. today. However, lets suppose for argument's sake that we live in a world that creates new meaning everyday.. is this a shock for everyone? Science 200 million years ago would have had a field day explaining the world of dinosoaurs.. would it have been able to predict humans? Ok, life sciences only make sense in the context of existing life, right? and there is now a whole world of internet/communication science to explore that was not there 50 years ago... If science and rationalism does a good job of drawing out meaning for today (bearing in mind today contains within it all that has gone before).. what process is at work that creates the new meaning of tomorrow.. how can we humans participate constructively in this process that creates the stuff/meaning of tomorrow... I feel part of it is faith, what we call the exercise of free will, procreating, 'art' etc ... these are the sort of questions that interest me. If we accept that we are part and parcel of the fabric of this universe, that there is no alternative to this universe that we currently experience, it is unique and that its history is all our stories knit together and set and frozen in time.. that the universe is perfect today.. because its the only one there ever was and is.. then it becomes a lot easier and clearer to deal with tomorrow.. for tomorrows universe is yet to be created and the shape of it depends on our collective actions today. .... as for God, if he exists, even he is interested in tomorrow.

I don't really see why science and religion cannot go hand in hand! Einstein and Newton were both believers and I think Stephen Hawking has seen the light. I do not really care if it's God or Buddah Nature (a sort of Cosmic Conciousness) that people have faith in so long as they believe in something beyond - man is a machine, on a machine planet in a machine Universe. I thought we had gotten rid of that mechanistic view when we shook off the thralldom of Newtonian physics and moved on. If we see ourselves as mere machines then we can never have the awe and respect for ourselves needed to form a fair and understanding society in which the individual has rights beyond the mere letter of the law. Surely Frankenstein has more to say today than it did when Mary wrote it. I would have thought the huge opposition to GM foods would indicate just how unhappy the man in the street is about genetic engineering. Scientists are not gods who can impose their will on us just because they believe they know better - as BSE proved - often they don't. That something in us that defies analysis, humanity, compassion ..... that is what we are! The machine is just the mechanism through which it acts.

Andrew: Simple answer to the question "Why is there something instead of nothing?" Because if there was nothing, there wouldn't be someone around to ask that question. Stan (Skulking back into the darkness as everyone raises an eybrow and says "Huh?")