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Rogan and Astrophysicist Talk Aliens and UFOs

Are we really the only (intelligent) beings out here?

By David Klinghoffer Our astrophysicist friend Brian Keating from UC San Diego was on the Joe Rogan Experience — for three and a half hours, much as philosopher of science Stephen Meyer was recently. I’ve listened to the whole thing. Very interesting! And with shout-outs to Dr. Meyer on a couple of points that Dr. Keating offers for consideration: that religious faith prepared the way for modern science by teaching the intelligibility and order of nature, and that what really got Galileo in trouble was challenging not the Bible but Aristotle, who had in effect (but not literally) been embraced as a saint by the Catholic Church. Watch and listen here on Spotify. From Another World, or Our Own? The conversation is very wide-ranging, as Read More ›

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Tales of an Invented God

The most important characteristic of an AI cult is that its gods (Godbots?) will be created by the AI developers and not the other way around

A book on the new pop science religion might well be titled “Tales of the Invented God.” Its author would likely be challenged to keep up with all the non-events breathlessly documented. After all, the technocrats who invent their future gods can change, re-envision, replace, upgrade, eliminate them at any time.

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AI as an Emergent Religion

Science philosopher Mike Keas’s new book discusses how AI and ET are merging, to create a religion of futurist magic

Many Singulatarians hold that their soon-to-be-realized technology will be indistinguishable by the rest of us from magic.   Are they serious? Well, in 2005, Kurzweil said that the magical Harry Potter stories “are not unreasonable visions of our world as it will exist only a few decades from now.” when, due to AI, “the entire universe will become saturated with our intelligence.”  Keas warns that this type of thing encourages people “to expect the experiential equivalent of occult phenomena.”

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