new book about the origins of religion
in [Physics]
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From: nuny on 27 Jan 2010 07:51 On Dec 9 2009, 9:29 pm, Bill Lauritzen <bill360...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HAVE A SOUL? > > In his new book, The Invention of God: On the Origins of Religious and > Scientific Thought, independent scholar Bill Lauritzen traces > religious thought back to the early human search to understand oxygen > and geology. Talk about yourself in the third person much? > Lauritzen says that the search to understand oxygen was the beginning > of the concepts spirit and soul, and led eventually to the array > of chemical elements. The roots of all the major religions trace back > to this, and it is ignored by most theologians and scholars, said > Lauritzen recently. That which we call oxygen today, was known by > various names in various cultures: In Egypt by Ba or Ka, in China > by Qi, in Japan by Reiki, in India by Prana, and in Greece by > Psyche. No. The thing you try to translate as "oxygen" actually translates as "breath". The Greeks called it "pneuma" from which we get "pneumatics. The Romans called it "spiro" from which we get "inspire" as in inhale, "respire", and "conspire". Hebrew has several words for "breath". None of those languages, or the ones you mention, had a word for "oxygen". That word, and the concept it embodies, didn't come along until very recently. I can't imagine how you managed to miss it, but combustion has replaced vitalism. > Thus, robots, or future Artificial Intelligence, have just > as much right to claim a soul as any species, although for them the > mysterious stuff animating them might be electricity. What about AI software running on fluidic hardware? Where's George Hammond when we need him? Mark L. Fergerson |