The Edge World Question Center has released the answers to its 2007 head-scratcher, "What are you optimistic about?" The respondents are mostly scientists/technology people, and/so the answers aren't uniformly gripping, but I found this riff, from psychologist Martin E.P. Seligman, pretty fascinating:
I am optimistic that God may come at the end.…
Consider…the principle of NonZero that Robert Wright (2000) articulates in his book of the same name. Wright argues that the invisible hand of biological and cultural evolution ineluctably select for the complex over the simple because positive sum games have the survival and reproductive edge over zero sum games, and that over epochal time more and more complex systems, bulkily, but necessarily, arise.…
A process that selects for more complexity is ultimately aimed at nothing less than omniscience, omnipotence, and goodness. Omniscience is, arguably, the literally ultimate end product of science. Omnipotence is, arguably, the literally ultimate end product of technology. Righteousness is, arguably, the literally ultimate end product of positive institutions. So in the very longest run the principle of Nonzero heads toward a God who is not supernatural, but who ultimately acquires omnipotence, omniscience and goodness through the natural progress of Nonzero. Perhaps, just perhaps, God comes at the end.
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