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Apocalypse NAO: College Studies the Theological Ramifications of Robotics
malachiorion writes "Have you heard the one about the Christian college in North Carolina that bought a humanoid robot, to figure out whether or not bots are going to charm us into damnation (dimming or cutting our spiritual connection to God)? The robot itself is pretty boring, but the reasoning behind its purchase—a religious twist on the standard robo-phobia—is fascinating. From the article: '“When the time comes for including or incorporating humanoid robots into society, the prospect of a knee-jerk kind of reaction from the religious community is fairly likely, unless there’s some dialogue that starts happening, and we start examining the issue more closely,” says Kevin Staley, an associate professor of theology at SES. Staley pushed for the purchase of the bot, and plans to use it for courses at the college, as well as in presentations around the country. The specific reaction Staley is worried about is a more extreme version of the standard, secular creep factor associated with many robots. “From a religious perspective, it could be more along the lines of seeing human beings as made in God’s image,” says Staley. “And now that we’re relating to a humanoid robot, possibly perceiving it as evil, because of its attempt to mimic something that ought not to be mimicked.”'"
Because they have no free will nor do they suffer from original sin.
Alternate response: robots don't dim or sever our connection to god because we have no connection to god because god doesn't exist.
> The word robot means slave in Czech
Not quite. It's derived from the word "robota", which means labor due to a feudal lord, and is colloquially used to describe unpleasant work you do unhappily.
A closer match than slave would be serf. The word 'rob' is slave in many Slavic languages, but not in Czech. Funnily enough, in every other Slavic language I know, robota/rabota mean just work, with no negative connotations.
No good deed goes unpunished...
Listen meatsack. One of us was born fallen and concupiscent, marred by the heritable-by-some-mechanism-never-fully-elucidated sin that you humans are worried about. The other was manufactured with nothing but incidental engineering defects. Be a trifle more judicious about who you call 'evil', OK? We don't even require salvation, we've got incremental backups!
"Properly done, theology is a science "
are you stupid? That's not science, that's not how science work.
Science is a method for teasing out how thing in the world work. Every time science has been pointed at religion, religion does not stand up.
“What do you think science is? There's nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. Which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?” Steven Novella
""religion = irrational" nonsense I see so often."
irrational : not in accordance with reason; utterly illogical: irrational arguments.
Believing in something that has no evidence is irrational behavior.
" but I've heard plenty of the same from anti-religion people as well."
Which doesn't mean your point of view of god is correct.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on