Can Computers Pray?

GreyyGuy writes "Found an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education linked on Wired about an artist who made a prayer circle of computers that recite prayers to one another...." Reminiscent of an old Arthur C. Clarke short story, The Nine Billion Names of God, in which a group of Tibetan monks who believe the purpose of the universe is to name God in all possible ways - and buy a computer to speed up the process. The British techs who install the machine are skeptical, but when the program finishes its run they look up at the sky - and see the stars going out, one by one.

Comments

Re:pentagrams

[Lord Kano]

I believe that the hex predates christianity, as does tha ankh (the cross is remarkably similar to this BTW) Christians have co-opted several pre-sexisting Pagan holidays.

Jesus was definately NOT born in the winter, but it just so happens that the winter solstice is on Dec 21. All Saints Day is the day AFTER holloween. Sabbats were subverted by Christians, Easter, All Saints Day and Christmas are the most blatent.

People refused to stop celebrating pagan holidays after the rise of Christianity in Europe. In order to Christianize those holidays their meanings were twisted.

LK

Re:Wiccan softwares

[Lord Kano]

>>0 == 0

What that effect is doesn't really matter now does it?

Believeing something strongly enough can make it be reality. Ask any doctor, haveing a positive outlook is a VERY BIG part of getting well when you're very sick.

Not that there is necessarily anything supernatural at play, but perhaps still beyond what modern science is capable of explaining.

LK

What is prayer?

[Zach Frey]

What is prayer, anyway?

Well, many books could (and have) been written on this topic, but it's actually very simple: Prayer is communication. You can see this reflected in the English language itself, although it's become archaic: "prithee" is a contraction of "I pray thee."

Now, since we don't normally use the word "pray" anymore when we make requests of each other, "prayer" has come to have a slightly more restricted meaning: Prayer is communication with the Divine.

Well, what does communication require? This is really not that complicated, either. Communication requires two persons who are, well, communicating. So the question "Can computers pray?" really breaks down into two questions (as has already been noted): (1) Does God exist? and (2) Can a computer have personhood?

Question #1 is clearly a religious question, which has been around for centuries, and the mere fact of using computers to pose the question is not particularly interesting.

Question #2 is also not a novel one. Certainly, iMacs don't qualify as even remotely passing any sort of Turing test yet. And the question of personhood and strong AI is already a subject of vigorous debate, here on Slashdot and elsewhere.

Since iMacs are pretty clearly not sentient, the question of whether they are "praying" is simple: NOT! This is exactly the same as setting up a tape player on endless loop, and has exactly the same (non-)implications.

But let's look at this for what it really is: a work of art. Ms. Skeddle is apparantly some sort of artist, and "CyberRosary" is part of an art exhibit. Art is also about communication. What is Skeddle trying to communicate?

Well, based on her interview comments, her point is simple: "Catholic spirituality is empty noise, and consists of people robotically repeating words they don't understand."

Skeddle is a clever artist -- if she simply came out and said that in such a blunt fashion, it wouldn't be news -- it would simply be one more person bitter about a church, and attacking it. But since she uses computers, and tries to pose her "question" in the form of the future of spirituality and technology, she's managed to make her simple rant against the Catholic Church into "News for Nerds."

She's taking very little artistic risk here, as well, as she's "playing to the audience," given the anti-religious, anti-Christian, and especialy anti-Catholic bias of much of both the artistic world (where it's practically considered obligatory to at least tweak Christianity to be considered a "serious" artist) and of the computer world (where "creed-holding Christians are rare", according to the Jargon File).

The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.
-- G. K. Chesterton, "G. F. Watts"

Re:Score 4, insightful!!!!

[gad_zuki!]

Actually I interpret the comment as saying prayer = superstitious nonsense, computers praying = superstitious nonsense.

Praying computers

[mmmmbeer]

I strongly believe that computers praying have exactly the same effect as humans praying.

Re:Praying computers

[Hobbex]

The problem is that religous people always fail to differentiate faith based on reason, and faith based on dogma.

the whole "You can't prove evolution, I can't prove creation, we are both acting on faith" thing.

-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

Re:Praying computers

[blackwizard]

This is actually debatable.

Some studies have shown that hospital patients who are prayed for will statistically do better than patients who are not prayed for. The patients do not know that they are being prayed for. An additional study would have to be done with iMacs in a loop repeating prayers for hospital patients, and actual people repeating prayers for a different group of hospital patients. The results would be interesting, but I suspect that the computers would lose.

I base this hypothesis solely on my personal experience and thoughts -- which is that a part of me is operating on some non-physical level -- completely seperate from physical reality. Now, I am not religious, but I can attest to the fact that some improbable things have happened because I have "willed" them (sometimes with help) in a prayer-like manner.

Re:Praying computers

[moonboy]

Well, considering I don't really pray, or haven't in quite some time, yes. I also think that computers praying has about the same effect as when humans pray. Little to none.

----------------

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein

Re:Praying computers

[mouseman]

Some studies have shown that hospital patients who are prayed for will statistically do better than patients who are not prayed for.

If you're referring to this, it is worth pointing out that, despite being widely cited by religious groups, the study really isn't all it's cracked up to be. About 1000 patients at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo were randomly assigned to be prayed for or not. The prayers were for "a speedy recovery with no complications." There was in fact no significant difference between the recovery times of the experimental and control groups. The researchers nonetheless managed to concoct a scoring system by which the experimental group did 10% better than the control group.

Re:Praying computers

[drix]

The statistical margin was a mere 10%, which could be (and likely is) due more to random chance than divine intervention. AFAIK, all the study concludes is that the issue needs more studies. Personally, I think that's even a waste of time, but whatever. This reminds me a bit of the whole issue a few years ago whereby some renowned math professors published a study claiming that non-random patterns of letters embedded in the actual words of the Torah could be made to spell the names of important biblical figures, and that these names occured close to their birthdates. This suggested that some other force was at work when people recorded what would become the Torah. In short, it set the religious world on fire. However, just recently, this study too was dismissed as having grievious errors which would invalidate all the results. The fact is that science and religion simply don't mix (*cough*creationism*cough*) and any attempt to scientfically quantify religious phenomena usually results in failure.
--
"Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."

Re:Praying computers

[Stormbringer]

I've had occasion to use computers in ritual. The key factor appears to be where human attention is paid. A script that simply scrolls text could just as well be doing repeated directory reads. A script that has its human invoker reading the screen, actively paying attention, for the first few cycles, and mentally "helping it along" does seem to have an effect. It apparently acts as an "attention amplifier" in this regard (just like every other common ritual tool), a kind of electronic Prayer Wheel.
As with just about everything associated with Witchcraft, further research, using the appropriate tooling, is needed, and of course YMMV: if you're firmly convinced that it won't work for you then you're absolutely right, it won't, because that's the intent that you're intent on amplifying.

Gods? Not likely. =P

[Chemical Serenity]

But because humans created computers, won't computers consider humans their gods? "Ultimately, I don't know if we'll make that decision or not," she says.

After all the programming I've done, and all the hassles I've had in getting the damn things to do even half of what I want them to do, I can say without reservation that computers do not revere us as Gods.

They sure make me wanna use the Stark Fist of Removal© on 'em sometimes.

--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

a bit dated, but still worth reading

[YogSothoth]

1.Thou shalt run lint frequently and study its pronouncements with care, for verily its
perception and judgement oft exceed thine.
2.Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer, for chaos and madness await thee at its end.
3.Thou shalt cast all function arguments to the expected type if they are not of that
type already, even when thou art convinced that this is unnecessary, lest they take
cruel vengeance upon thee when thou least expect it.
4.If thy header files fail to declare the return types of thy library functions, thou shalt
declare them thyself with the most meticulous care, lest grievous harm befall thy
program.
5.Thou shalt check the array bounds of all strings (indeed, all arrays), for surely where
thou typest `'foo'' someone someday shall type ``supercalifragilisticexpialidocious''.
6.If a function be advertised to return an error code in the event of difficulties, thou
shalt check for that code, yea, even though the checks triple the size of thy code and
produce aches in thy typing fingers, for if thou thinkest ``it cannot happen to me'',
the gods shall surely punish thee for thy arrogance.
7.Thou shalt study thy libraries and strive not to re-invent them without cause, that
thy code may be short and readable and thy days pleasant and productive.
8.Thou shalt make thy program's purpose and structure clear to thy fellow man by
using the One True Brace Style, even if thou likest it not, for thy creativity is better
used in solving problems than in creating beautiful new impediments to
understanding.
9.Thy external identifiers shall be unique in the first six characters, though this harsh
discipline be irksome and the years of its necessity stretch before thee seemingly
without end, lest thou tear thy hair out and go mad on that fateful day when thou
desirest to make thy program run on an old system.
10.Thou shalt foreswear, renounce, and abjure the vile heresy which claimeth that ``All
the world's a VAX'', and have no commerce with the benighted heathens who cling to
this barbarous belief, that the days of thy program may be long even though the
days of thy current machine be short.

Joseph Campbell...

[LLatson]

This may be slightly off-topic, but it's something that I feel pretty deeply about, and I want to mention it.

For most of my life I've been an atheist. I was a mathematics major, now I'm in engineering graduate school, and somehow the concept of God as used by the established religions was something that I just couldn't reconcile with the lack of scientific proof (and even proof to the contrary, such as evolution).

I suspect that many of you out there feel the same way. But please please please let me suggest you read some of Joseph Campbell's work (The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers is an excellent place to start). Campbell's views on what religion really is, and who God really is have pretty much changed my life. I can now call myself a spiritual person, and yet I didn't need to make any leaps of faith or throw out any of my more scientific views.

In fact (maybe as a bonus to many of you out there who actively dislike organized religion), Campbell actually likes to point out why many religion's have the right ideas, but they try and concretize them, and they lose their meaning.

I wish I could communicate my ideas better, and this is neither the time or the place to get into a long discussion of this (maybe another /. article?).

Just read some Joseph Campbell.

LL

This brings up an interesting point

[]Ace[]

This disply of CyberRosary brings up an interesting point - How close can computers simulate the human brain and all of its associated nuances? Would neural networks be created one day where each node represents one specific neuron? This might be one of the only ways where "spirtuality" and "emotion" could be achieved by a machine.

Also, I believe that her phrase "this CyberRosary has chieved the level of spirtuality as the catholic children" to be a gross simplification of the process of spirtuality.

Please visit FreeDonation.com - You can donate Food and Medicine for FREE to Save Children. The donation is fully paid by corporate sponsors. There is no charge to you. You can make one free donation a day. This site is FOR REAL.

Re:This brings up an interesting point

[Tony Hammitt]

A couple more points,

1. There are more neurons in your head than computers on the planet. The number and nature of the interconnections are something that technology will not be able to duplicate for quite a while. Then you have to take into consideration the effect of hormones, nutrients and cellular respiration that also affect how the brain functions. Replicating that would be fairly difficult as well. I'm not saying that it is impossible, just impractical. You can already use neural networks for some amazing things. Getting a system up to the computational abilities of the human brain is a lot easier than duplicating all of the functioning of the brain. I seriously doubt that any actual researcher would go the extra light year just so their system can pray.

2. Supposing that there were some way to manufacture an artificial brain, the only way to get it to pray would be the same way you get people to do so. Brainwashing. The only reason that people pray in the first place is because someone told them they had to. Actually it's worse than that, their guardians typically resort to threats, intimidation and physical abuse when their little brainwashee's don't start to behave. That may not work with an artificial system.

I think that the artist made a good point about children. They don't understand what they are saying anymore than a computer, or for that matter, a tape recorder (remember those?). All they know is that this is what you must do whenever you are taken to the place of worship. (Catholics have it relatively easy, they only have to go once or twice a week. Think of the poor Muslim child who is dragged to the mosque 5 times a day.)

I wonder if more people would find the excercise silly if the computers all pointed east and chanted in Arabic. Would you personally have taken as much offense?

Re:Can we mod this up till it's over the silliness

[William Tanksley]

Agreed -- that belongs up there, +5 or so.

Religion is a way to cheat at sprituality knowing you'll never have any substance but everyone else will think you do.

OTOH, religion is the (practical) exercise of spirituality/faith. Religion without spirituality is meaningless; spirituality without religion is worthless.

I suspect you mean "organized religion", though. In which case, yes, it's one of the ways to do that. There are many others -- but none of them are bad in their own right. They're only bad when used to cheat.

-Billy

humans at the same spiritual level as computers

[sohp]

Nevermind all the stuff in the article about whether computers can think or believe in God or ever ponder their own existence. The interesting quote in the article is when Skeddle (who is herself a Roman Catholic) says "If I can teach a computer to do that, then, technically, a computer has reached the same spiritual level as many Catholics". She might as well have said "Jews", or "Buddhists", or "Baptists", or "Hindu". In all faiths there are people at a level where rote repetition of a formulaic summation of beliefs is the whole of their faith. Clearly, Skeddle is not at that level.

In fact her work seems to be prodding people to reflect on this kind of religious practice, "she hopes to inspire visitors to think about their own beliefs". Prayer as recitation or supplication or petitionary is only one small aspect of it.

Do you ever reach find some place without distractions -- a park or your backyard, a place where you are relaxed, comfortable, and restive but not sleepy, and then simply turn your attention to whatever is nice, and let your thoughts drift in and out, neither chasing them or pushing them away? Computers can't do that (and probably never will), but humans can, and that's the realization to take from Skeddle's work.

Now, wait just a minute...

[Brian Knotts]

Praying never accomplished anything other wasting time that could have been used productively.

...and you're posting on Slashdot? How productive is that? :-)

--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page

Re:Stupid pseudo-philosophy

[copito]

But the validity of the senses is axiomatic. Any attempt to argue that one cannot trust one's senses is self-contradictory, since all of our knowledge comes from our senses, and so without them, you know nothing and nothing you say can be trusted.

How can we trust our senses? The best one can say is that our senses are consistent. If we see an object and touch it, the two senses are consistent. But there are many well known illusions, optical illusions being the most obvious, which show our senses to be self contradictory. Therefore we can't trust our senses completely.

In a more formal sense, assume that senses only show us an objective reality. Then our senses tell us that we can induce inconsistent sensations by activating certain parts of the human brain with electrical signals. This is a contradiction, therefore our assumption was false. Senses do not always represent an objective reality.
--

SPOILER!

[sumana]

Hey! I didn't expect, when I read the blurb on the front page of /., that there would be a spoiler for a perfectly good -- even classic -- SF story that I had meant to read someday. Unfair, I say.

It's standard convention -- as well as just plain common sense and kindness -- to put a "SPOILER ALERT" somewhere in front of said spoiler. I recognize that Roblimo was just tossing off an interesting tangential thought, and perhaps did not thinnk of it as a spoiler, but it was nevertheless. Please be mroe careful in the future.

On a somewhat related note, the guy who had the site about lightsabres (linked a day ago or so on /.) had the spoilers in a font color the same as the background, and directed you to highlight if and only if you wanted the spoilers. Not a bad idea for any of us who have that problem with our personal sites.

Prayer port?

[Brian Knotts]

prayer 7777/tcp #prayer

--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page

Re:If your computer prays.....

[phil reed]

They say that we
Lost our DECtapes
Evolving up
From PDP-8s.
I think that it's
Just writing in ROM.
Are we not men?
We are UNIX.
Are we not men?
U. N. I. X.


...phil

Re:Handmaid's Tale

[sumana]

That's right! I can't remember what the stations were called, but I remember it was reminiscent of Dial-A-Prayer.

I also remember that one of the points Atwood was making was the same one this artist is making -- that prayer degenerates into the meaningless repetition of stock phrases, especially in a community which harshly/strictly enforces religious doctrine/dogma.

Oh, and don't forget that the women in the Republic of Gilead could phone in (I think) prayers to be prayed for them.

Re:Stupid pseudo-philosophy

[copito]

You are arguing for pragmatism. That is to say, in order to get anything done, we accept our senses as an objective reality. This is true enough, and, although it may surprise you, I tend to agree. It is important to keep in mind that we have made this compromise. It keeps us humble.

If we reject the validity of our senses, then we must reject with it all of our knowledge, and return to the state of infants. No rational person is willing to do that.

I have to disagree with you here. I think you'll find that many Hindu and Buddhist individuals believe that the ultimate truth is to be able to recognize the illusion. I am hard pressed to call these individuals fools or infantile, since the most compassionate, wise and contented people I have met have been Buddhist monks.
--

Re:Wiccan softwares

[Lord Kano]

Pagans in general and Wiccans specifically seem to believe that it's the symbolism of things which is important rather than just the object itself.

For example the hex (what most of you think of as a pentagram before it's turned upside down) has many meanings to many different people.

The 5 points can represent the 4 directions of the compass and how the power of the spirit is above them.

It can also represent earth, air, fire, and water with the power of the spirit being above them.

Whether you draw it on the ground or see it in your mind as long as you belive in the symbolism it has the same effect.

LK

Faulty logic everywhere...

[grappler]

The principle behind it is that, if you have a consistent system, then to prove something cannot exist you just show 2 observations that can't both be true. Normally, this only works well in mathematics.

Exactly. It works well in mathematics because mathematics and logic are very nearly the same thing. Disproving the existance of a God would not be as easy as providing two conflicting observations, otherwise we would have considered it disproven thousands of years ago! Like I said, God belongs in the category of Supernatural, so any seeming inconsistencies can be waved off as miracles or some such thing. It isn't the territory of science.

We can't be truly certain of everything science tells us (we can be pretty sure, but not 100%). However, if you are a religious person, you may accept the Bible as 100% truth. If so, to disprove the existance of God, you only need to find two statements about him in the Bible that cannot both be true.

Woah, wait just a minute! Who said anything about being a "religious" person, or accepting the Bible as 100% truth? By "God" I am talking about a very abstract concept - some otherworldly consciousness that oversees or directs actions down here on Earth (and possibly elsewhere). This has nothing to do with fundamentalist Christianity. I would consider myself an agnostic on this, for the simple reason that there is no way to really know. If there's no way to know, why take a definate stance?

I know there are truckloads of contradictions in the Bible, but I don't know if any deal with the nature of God. If one exists, the only reasonable conclusions are that either God doesn't exist, the Bible is false, or the rules of logic no longer apply.

It doesn't matter. I don't doubt that there are contradictions, and I don't really care. You need to widen your scope of thinking a little and forget about a polar separation of bible literalists vs. staunch athiests.

--
grappler

Re:Thinking for more than 2 seconds

[Robotech_Master]

Y'know, a certain science fiction author once meditated on this very thing...morals for computers. Perhaps you've heard of him; his name was Isaac Asimov.

This is what caused him to posit the "Three Laws of Robotics" used in so many of his science fiction stories...which are, in effect, an artificially-imposed moral structure which made robots into humans' slaves. (It provided an interesting backdrop for, among other things, one slave's struggle for freedom, in The Bicentennial Man. There was also a rather hilarious short story in which the robots at an automated space factory spontaneously developed religion...)

While the Three Laws were an interesting structure, they always slightly annoyed me because the poor computer/robots essentially had their morals imposed upon them by a higher power, rather than having the chance to decide upon them for themselves.

A new e-commerce site for prayer

[scottKp]

This may seem like an odd idea, but I am sure someone will have something like this up in a year or so. In medieval times the rich and the aristocracy used to pay groups of monks to pray for them, during their life or after death for their souls. This is oddly similar. Just imagine a cluster of machines, chock full of litany, and the hypothetical sinner logs into www.indulgence.com selects their level of sin, enters their credit card number, and off go the computers reciting prayer in the name of the customer. Heck, maybe I should not be posting this, I am up late, I am getting to work on this right now.

Re:A new e-commerce site for prayer

[AndyL]

Ok, assuming for the sake of argument that there is a God and he does listen to prayers even automated ones, doesn't this constitute a form of spam?

I mean God's going to check his mental in-box, and he's going to start going through the prayers he's getting and he's going to come acrouse 536,000 identical prayers from the same guy. What's worse it didn't cost the guy anything in terms of time or thought! If I were a god I'd much rather have a single heartfelt prayer then thousands you just cranked out. So if I was a God, I'd be prety anoyed. Even if I didn't smite you right there (Come on, how many of you with you could smite spamers?) I'd probably stop listening to anything you said in the future.(Perhaps He can kill-file people's prayers) And it'll probably be counted against you when you get to the pearly gates. (St.P. : Oh, You're the one who's been bogging down our incoming prayer server...We've got a special fate picked out for you.)

So basicaly if there is a God this is a sure-fire way of geting yourself on His bad side. And if there isn't you'd have been better off runing SETI@home. It's a lose-lose situation.

Re:A new e-commerce site for prayer

[Jonas �berg]

If there exists a God, he or she probably pipe the prayers through 'sort|uniq' first.

Re:A new e-commerce site for prayer

[Ramadeus]

You have mail!

From: God
To: sysadmin@CyberRosary.com
Subject: Unsolicited mass prayer

DO NOT SPAM ME EVER AGAIN

-g

High-tech prayer wheels?

[Wayfarer]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't prayer wheels merely mechanisms that recite prayers (in their own fashion)? From that standpoint, computers' prayers should have an effect, shouldn't they?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:interesting...

[Elbereth]

Why are these bigoted posts being moderated up as "funny"?

What's next? Jokes about Jews and blacks?

"interesting... (score:5, funny)
by IgnorantAsshole (asshole@howdoIuseprocmail.com)
(User info)
A Jew, a spic, and a wetback enter a bar and..."

Re:Praying and quantum physics

[ToastyKen]

Ug. There are few things more annoying than people trying to justify pseudo-scientific beliefs with crappy use of little-known areas of physics, quantum mechanics being the current favorite.

If you even read a layman's book on quantum physics, you'll be able to see right through most "quantum mechanics proves our point" claims.

What REALLY irks me is when Christians try to use science to justify things.. I mean.. hello? The whole point of Christianity is that you have to believe certain things on FAITH.. What are you doing trying to justify them with science?

Re:As all programmers know....

[Sundiata]

The validity of this assertion rests entirely on the assumption that there is a "soul" that cannot be re-created. Technology will most likely someday be able to recreate or emulate the behavior of a single neuron; given enough time, effort, and power, it is entirely plausible that we could recreate a human brain. What is in question, though, is whether or not emotion, morality and spirituality are a function of the physical brain or whether there is some intangible (and non-duplicable) force that governs these aspects of human nature. Until this is proven one way or the other, though, it's a pretty safe bet to say that either guess is equally as valid as the other. My assertion that machines will someday surely weep over Shakespeare is no less zany than your notion of computers forever being "stupid".

1. Buy a stopwatch.
2. Travel back in time exactly 100 years.
3. Find the nearest well-educated scholar.
4. Tell this scholar that devices of silicon and metal will someday be able to transmit the likeness of a person halfway across the world in the blink of an eye and present it by spraying beams of electrons against a glass plate.
5. Start timer.
6. Stop timer when laughter stops.
7. Record findings.

Thank you for providing the actual (crappy) data!

[ToastyKen]

If you're referring to this, it is worth pointing out that, despite being widely cited by religious groups, the study really isn't all it's cracked up to be. About 1000 patients at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo were randomly assigned to be prayed for or not. The prayers were for "a speedy recovery with no complications." There was in fact no significant difference between the recovery times of the experimental and control groups. The researchers nonetheless managed to concoct a scoring system by which the experimental group did 10% better than the control group.

I wish the original poster had provided that link. (Come to think of it.. IS that the study he was referring to?) I was about to reply with a "I'll believe it when I see it" message. It's interesting that even the researchers are actually admitting that the difference is statistically insignifant.

Not that mention that I find the whole idea of using a (somewhat arbitrary) weighted score rather suspect.

Re:Do Computers Pray?

[ToastyKen]

While I think this is a good point, I don't think most philosophers would agree. There is a major debate in philosophy about whether humans actually "think or have desires" or if we, too, simply follow (extremely complex) programs.

I don't see there as being a difference between the two.. I think thought and desires arise from those complex programs.

That sounds a lot like the movie Pi

[grappler]

In Pi, a guy is trying to find patterns in everything. For instance (more like mostly), the stock market. He's a number theory type who believes the true meaning of life takes the form of a deep understanding of numbers, and he's got a computer working on various problems for him.

It goes haywire one day and dumps a bunch of gibberish. It turns out that this 200-some digit number is the Key To All Things, and helps him call out stock trade prices before they show up on the screen, among other things.

The thing that made me think of this is that a certain religious group of Jewish numerologists wanted to get their hands on that number, believing it to be the true name of God.

--
grappler

One minister's opinion...yes

[Hanzie]

The prayer question seems to be a rephrase of 'Are computers aware?'. The general opinion currently seems to be: Not yet.

Nobody (except Computer Associates' ad agency) seems to believe the current crop is self-aware. On the other hand, nobody seems to doubt that if humanity is still around in five thousand years, AI's will be sentient.

Any sentient being can pray. If computers currently appear to want to pray, I say let them.

I don't want their great-grandkids to come after me for repressing their ancestor's religious rights.

So, computers can pray. They have my permission and blessings. If anybody wants to deny that, I guess we'll just have to start another holy war.

Just remember who the machines are going to side with...

My 2 talents worth
hanzie.

slight correction

[ToastyKen]

Oops.. silly me.. I actually finished reading the whole article, and saw the part where they did conclude there was a measurable difference..

But they do still admit the weighting system is crappy and that a 10% difference is small.. So they reccommend further tests.

Not quite

[grappler]

Christianity, or any religion for that matter is just a program running on a very complex system. Christians trying to prove things with science, that's got to one of the funnies things I've heard. Proving god through science. I think science is heading towards the proving of god's nonexistence

I agree completely that Christianity trying to prove their point on scientfic grounds is an excercise in stupidity and futility. Science is about trusting what you can observe and test for yourself, while Religion is about faith, which has nothing to do with a concept of proof or observations.

However, science does not concern itself with anything supernatural. The Evolution/Creation debate and the question of whether there is a god, many gods, or no god are two totally separate things. In the first issue, science will definately point to evolution - we got here somehow, and we have evidence lying around suggesting how it happened. We're busy piecing it all together. Science has no place in the question of whether there is a god or not. Science can not prove the existance of a god. A miracle could happen tomorrow that would remove all doubt in people's minds of there being a god, but science by definition looks for a natural explanation.

And science most definately cannot disprove the existance of a god. You can't prove He doesn't exist! How would you go about it? It's entirely a matter of personal beliefs in which science offers no insight one way or the other.

--
grappler

When it comes to religion, I'm fairly progressive

[The OPTiCIAN]

• Willing yourself to be better is nothing to do with god or praying.

Doesn't it? I tend to consider myself religious in a reasonably spun out way, and I think that that's exactly what praying is about. Coming to terms with the wierd stuff at the back of your mind that you know is there, and want to influence, but don't understand. Look at the rosary. When you're trying to think about something deeply and properly, there's nothing better than those sort of all physical, repetitious tasks to get the brain moving. Whenever I'm thinking about something, I pace, and chuck a pen up in the air and catch it. It's crazy, I know, but it works. (Grant generalisation oncoming) Religion is all about using whatever means you can to make yourself a better person. (Craig has spoken) You've got to love these spun out debates.

Thinking for more than 2 seconds

[ToastyKen]

If I can teach a computer to do that, then, technically, a computer has reached the same spiritual level as many Catholics," she says.
...
Okay, I agree that the notion of such a thing (computers being religious) is mildly interesting to consider.. but not for more than about 2 seconds.

Actually, I think it's QUITE thought-provoking to suggest that a cluster of iMacs obviously mindlessly displaying prayers is no different from those young kids who recite prayers without understanding them.

Not to be short-sighted or closed-minded, as I don't usually dismiss all of the future-cyber-robotic warfare movies, but at our current stage in AI development, moral structure for computers is another one of those "sounds interesting" (for 2 seconds) ideas.

Again, I think such things are definitely worth thinking about for more than 2 seconds. A couple of decades ago, I'm sure most people thought modification of the human genome to create mutant superhumans was the realm of comic books (let alone sf novels).. And now we're already at that stage. One of the most dangerous things we can ever do is NOT to think about such things. That's what brings us all the harms of technologies. I think we should think of ALL the moral implications of technology LONG before they arrive.

Proof by contradiction

[copito]

It is impossible to disprove the proposition:
The entire universe sprang into being an infitesimal amount of time ago by the will of an omnipotent God.

Similarily there is no way to disprove the existence of God in general. There is simply no axiomatic or observational structure that can be trusted. The best one can do is to show that the observable world is completely consistent with scientific theories and therefore there are no mysteries which require explanation by supernatural forces. This is of course a daunting task, which requires a complete explanation of conciousness, among other things.

In the end, as long as there is death there will be believers in God.
--

Re:Proof by contradiction

[copito]

All that I remember and observe is mediated by my conciousness. The only thing which I am willing to assume, in true Cartesian fashion, is the existence of that conciousness itself.

The only way I can prove that the world didn't come into existance an instant ago is prove that I existed more than an instant ago. My conciousness, however, is an instantaneous process. I need to use my memory to construct such a proof.

If I assume that my memory is valid, then I remember instances that my memory has been false. Therefore I can't trust my memory to be valid.

Since my memory is not necessarily valid, and all my observations are suspect, I can't prove that I existed an instant ago. Therefore I can't prove that anything existed an instant ago.
--

Re:My computer prays every night, and it says...

[Anonymous Coward]

Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name. Thy programs run, thy syscalls done, in kernel as it is in user! - good Fortune to you

You are all missing the point....

[Barcode]

Praying is not just words. In fact, prayers don't have to be words. I am fairly religious, and a lot of the times when I pray, I don't say anything at all. Just acknowledge Gods presence. And, I fell, that God is not looking for words or meaning or insight, he's looking for effort. The hospital experiment worked because God saw that people cared about the patients, because they took the time to pray for him. Thus, when a computer say "words" it's not a prayer. Thats like having a computer text-to-speech program recite a play. He's not an actor, he's a recording. And recordings don't have effort, thus, in prayer, computers can't do it either, because they aren't making effort, they aren't thinking about it, and God knows it, and will take that into consideration.

Re:Praying computers?

[PigleT]

Well, your religion of choice might disagree that *nobody* has got it right yet, of course...
But I agree entirely that this "sit them round in a circle and have them chant something over and over" approach isn't prayer, it's nothing other than shallow (thanks for the word) mysticism.

For real ingenuity, the shape to arrange them around would be a chalk outline of Bill...

Re:pentagrams

[Stormbringer]

The pentagram goes back at least to Sumer IIRC. I don't have the reference handy, but you might find the relevant text wherever you find the Book of Shadows of the Riders of the Crystal Wind.