What is God, Who is God. The necessary being. Maker of all things visible and invisible. Creator of the laws of the physical world, creator of reality. The First Cause and Source of all things. The direct creator of nature and indirect creator of Man’s creations. Creator of the laws of the physical world, creator of reality.
God is the Divine Goodness, Divine Beauty, Truth, Love, and Logos.
How then can we say that one can play God. Even if we take it that playing is not the same as being. Even if playing is merely an imitation. How can we imitate being metaphysically necessary. How can we imitate making a non-illusory reality. How can we imitate being the First Cause, by definition there can always be only one First Cause. How can we play as if we are the creator, the inventor of Man, if we will always stay as Man. How do we imitate creating laws of our universe (more on simulation later).
How can we imitate being metaphysically simple, how do we imitate existing as our own essences. How on earth or in the universe or multiverse, can we be the idea of the Good, Being beauty himself, being Truth, being Love or being Logos.
The answer is impossible, not just because of limitations of our time, of our abilities, but because it is rationally invalid.
To highlight an important example of the usual usage of the phrase playing God, let us look into genetic manipulation. Genetic manipulation may first seem like imitating creation, trying to create a new Man, a Transhuman, a new species. However, this does not come anywhere close God’s creation. Did we rewrite the laws of genetics, of chemical interactions? Can we do manipulation without God’s creations, hence creating something entirely new? Without any blueprints from previous genes, without the idea of the DNA. Are we not merely recycling and fulfilling God’s creation.
Even if we are be able to create life from scratch, we are nowhere near imitating God. For the creation of life is merely an infinitesimal fraction of God’s creation. More so, if we only manipulate genes, even if we manipulate our own genes. These pale in comparison if we compare with the creation of physical laws alone.
How about immortality, is trying to achieve physical immortality playing God? No, God is Eternal not immortal, and our eternal life is nothing like physical immortality. One is merely staying in time, one is being beyond time.
How about artificial intelligence? No, emphasizing the word artificial is enough to prove that our actions differ from God’s qualitatively.
Even if we create the technological singularity, it is still not playing God, for God can smite the tower of Babel in any instance; but us, we will have no power to keep it up or to smite it with a word.
Playing God is impossible. It is rationally invalid. Lord There is none like you, and this is a rational deduction.
“Death is naked before him, and nothingness hath no covering. He stretcheth out the north over empty place and hangeth the earth upon nothing. He createth the forces and keepeth the laws in place.”
Monday, 12 March 2018
Other Writings On the Philosophy of Physics and Mathematics
The Fall of A Republic
The Fall
of A Republic
There was once a republic, built in the image of Plato’s. A
republic where the guardians rule over all with their wisdom, with their
knowledge of the forms; A republic where the auxiliary enforces the guardian’s
rule with their fortitude, their passionate spirit; A republic where the
producers sustained the auxiliary and the guardians for the republic’s sake,
with their temperance. The republic is a soul of a man. A spirit where wisdom
rules over passions as passions rule over appetite. A spirit sustained from
both ends – the world of forms and the world of physicality.
The republic was not always such a Platonic one, in fact the
republic started as an appetitive city. As the city grows, so too does his
appetite. To meet his appetite, a new class of citizens arises, a military
class, the auxiliary. The auxiliary waged wars after wars, to gather up lands
for cultivation, for the producers to work on. They conquered some territories,
gave up others that he deemed unworthy. Some wars were won, others were lost,
but in everything there was chaos, both in victory and defeat. It was as the
days when the Olympians fought against the Titans, when there were no gods,
only wrestlers. Amidst this chaos, the citizens gathered, the citizens debated,
the citizens deliberated. It was not right for the military to wage
indiscriminate and all-directional wars, the citizens concluded. Thus, a new
class is necessary for the survival and welfare of the city. But what class
should they create? What else is necessary? For they had food, they had iron,
timber, stones, weapons, houses, great halls, temples and palaces; they had
colonies, protectorates, allies, they had all the things of this world. They
need all the things of another.
And then came the prophet, the wandering philosopher, the
teacher that taught them knowledge of another world. A world consisting of true
goodness, true justice, true beauty. A world of forms. A certain group of
people, the philosopher’s hearers and pupils emerged as the new class, a class
of guardians of the city. The guardians ruled the city as the republic, with
the wisdom, the knowledge of this world of forms. They ruled with a strong hand,
imposing wisdom on the auxiliary, who then imposes their might on the
producers. The republic at last was stable, as wisdom rules over passions, and
passions rule over appetite.
But the republic fell…
The republic fell at the sight of a tree. A tree of beauty, a
gift from the lady of wisdom and war, the virgin lady Athena daughter of Zeus
Polieos. Why did Athena gifted the republicans with this gift? A gift that
could far surpass anything that Poseidon could give? Perhaps it was because
Athena deemed it good for the city to build itself up with the beautiful fruit
and wood and oil of this tree. Maybe then, the republic would not only be wise
and mighty and prosperous but would be beautiful and pleasant. Perhaps it was a
gift out of her generosity, perhaps it was a trial out of her envy. Perhaps,
Athena was challenging the republic’s guardians, a council of Arachnes in her
sight, for their hubristic wisdom of a world beyond hers, of the forms that
sustained Athena’s own being. No matter the intention, the republic fell
nonetheless, long gone was its wisdom, long gone was its might. Or perhaps the
republic was never wise nor mighty in the first place.
But the tree was truly the incarnation of the beauty herself,
of the Platonic, immaterial, form of ideal beauty, pure and untainted. Or at
least that is what the tree seems to the guardians. Or perhaps it was not the
tree, but the smile or the laughter of the tree. A smile purer than a child’s,
than an unborn child’s. A laughter that is as if it escaped the fall of man,
untainted by Sin. A smile that hints at the world beyond this physicality. A
smile truly from the world of forms. Alas, it is impossible for this to be a
trial from Athena, for this is truly beyond her, beyond the gods of Olympus,
beyond Zeus! If it be a trial, it certainly is not from Olympus. It must be
from the world of forms, if… This tree was in Eden, certainly so. Is it the
tree of knowledge? Is it the tree of life? Or perhaps it was a tree that was
cast out of Eden, yet somehow uncursed? For the beauty of Eden was in this one
tree, the gift of Athena.
How can a republic stand before such a tree. Even Adam fell
for a lesser one! If it be a trial, the republic has failed. For once again I
tell you, the republic fell at the sight of the tree. All its structures
crumbled, and even though the knowledge of the forms remains, the social order
was no longer in place. The guardians, begged the city to allow them to be
producers instead of guardians so that they could cultivate the tree. So too
did the auxiliary, for they could not be passionate about any other thing other
than to be stripped of their military might, so they could be cultivators of
this tree. How can a republic stand when its leaders forgo the whole concept of
duty! Wisdom cried out in the streets together with justice, but the guardians
are deaf now and the auxiliary are blind. Certainly, the republic was not as
wise and mighty as it perceived itself to be. For it was certainly not wiser
than Athena, who gave it a gift or a trial. For it was certainly weaker than
Athena, or even weaker than a tree. Alas, what might the future hold for this
republic? Can it rebuild itself up, set up its just social order once again,
together as it grows together with the tree within its borders? Or would the
tree not have it? I pray to the God of gods, the God of forms, that the republic and the tree may
rise together, building each other up, bring about the truly just order, for
the love and glory of the God of gods, the God of forms, and not for the republic’s.
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