[ExI] A science-religious experience

[Jason Resch]

On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 12:05 PM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 19 Feb 2025 at 16:32, Darin Sunley via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> > " This offers a solution to the problem of evil. Infinite computational
> gods can't destroy or change what is out there already, but they can
> provide continuation paths (afterlives) for those beings after they cease
> to exist in their universe."
> >
> > This is the most elegant argument for deism I've ever heard.
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 6:10 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >> Computational capacity provides only the power to explore and create
> (or rather, rediscover what already is in the infinite reality).
> Computational capacity doesn't enable one to destroy other universes which
> already are.
> >>
> >> This offers a solution to the problem of evil. Infinite computational
> gods can't destroy or change what is out there already, but they can
> provide continuation paths (afterlives) for those beings after they cease
> to exist in their universe.
> >>
> >> Jason
> >> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Yes, but it's a pity that Gods don't exist.
> It’s a divine evasion for the gods. ‘Don’t hold us accountable for
> engineering suffering in the first place! We’ll compensate by granting
> you paradise once you’re dead.’ What a generous bargain!
>

What can complicate these discussions is that there are two kinds of things
here, each of which has variously been called "god" by different religions
in different contexts:

1. All of Reality (e.g. Nirguna Brahman, Divine Ground of Being, God the
Father) - that which is responsible for the existence of all universes
(e.g., the set of all program executions existing in arithmetical truth)
2. The Great Programmer(s) (e.g. Saguna Brahman, Demigods, Personal Gods,
The Simulators, God the Son) - are omnipotent over their creations (e.g.
their computer simulations over which the programmer has complete access
and control)

It's been said that the material universe is where God has lost control:

"Matter is the border of the universal mind of the universal person that
the universal (Turing) machine can't avoid to bet on when looking inward
and intuiting the gap between proofs and truth.
This entails two processes: the emanation of God into Souls and Matter, and
the conversion of the Souls, using Matter to come back to God (which is a
sort of universal soul attractor)."
-- Bruno Marchal

So if you are looking for who to blame for evil, it would be the "type 1"
God which you can equate with all of reality -- a reality that is infinite
and comprehensive, and necessitates that all possible universes exist.
There is much evidence for this type of reality, it can be proven
constructively by anyone who presumes arithmetical truths like "2+2=4"
exist independently of the minds who think them or material particles that
instantiate them.

Type "type 2" personal gods have their own will and discretion regarding
what universes to simulate, how to engineer afterlives, which beings to
save, etc. But they can no more override what exists in all of reality, any
more than they could delete the fact that 2+2=4.

You could poetically say God's omnipotence doesn't override his
omniscience. There is no power to forget for a mind that knows
everything, including the knowledge of what it is like to be any of the
beings that suffer or experience evil. Moreover, for the type 2 gods to
find the beings to save, they must still simulate the universes where bad
things happen. You, in your current state (as well as everyone in our
future lightcone) wouldn't exist if WW2 didn't happen, we either would
never have been born or would have a brain with different memories. So
would it be better for WW2 to have never happened, if it meant the
non-existence of everyone who now lives, and and will live in the future of
the history of life on earth? Remember the set of all universes contains
all possible histories of the multiverse, so the people in the
WW2-happened-branch exist along with the WW2-never-happened-branch. The
naive approach to addressing the problem of evil is to prevent bad things
from happening, but note that in so doing, requires wiping out all the
inhabitants of any universe-branch where something unfortunate happened.
Does the goodness of all those people in that universe outweigh that one
unfortunate thing to be avoided? The question becomes more complicated
under the light of the true cost of correcting an evil.

Jason
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20250219/28ab21a0/attachment.htm>