The Trinity and The Singularity

The Trinity.

This is an essential Christian doctrine that has been ridiculed over and over again throughout the last two millennia. According to Francis J. Beckwith, the doctrine goes like this:
Premise 1: The Bible teaches that there is only one God.
Premise 2: The Bible teaches that there are three distinct persons called God, known as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Conclusion: So, the three persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - are the one God.

This is a difficult concept for many people. There are sections of Christianity that reject the concept of the Trinity. There are many large religions who claim to be Christian, yet are rejected by Christian orthodoxy beceause the "sects" don't believe in the Trinity. In fact, many of these rejected sects base a large part of their theology on the rejection of the Trinity. They think it is just too zany of an idea.

But a concept like the Trinity is very easy to understand for Transhumanists, Singularitarians, and Extropians. All three of these groups believe in grand ideas like superhuman intelligence, uploading, group minds, and the coming possibility godlike beings known as "Powers."
To a Singularitarian, the Trinity would be a smaller "group mind." Many science fiction and non-fiction authors have written of group minds of thousands of entities. Three is easy. A group mind like the Trinity is just three concurrently conscience minds.

Other Christian theological themes such as the omnipotence and omniscience of God would be perceived as superhuman or transhuman in nature – in the realm of the Powers. A Power is a term coined Vernor Vinge in, “A Fire Upon The Deep.” It is a being that has transcended normal human intelligence and has become vastly more than superhuman. We are not talking about the intelligence difference as between the intelligence of an early hunter-gatherer and Einstein, rather, Yudkowsky compares human-level intelligence, “With Powers, to a fish…” To these brings, human intelligence will seem to them, as fish intelligence seems to us. Surely such a Power could perceive all and be everywhere at once? Or a Power could create a baby universe and impose its own rules and monitor every particle in every being in that baby universe. I should hope that the Power in question would create a baby universe with a less perfect vacuum than ours!

Read “Staring into The Singularity” by Eliezer Yudkowsky, at http://sysopmind.com/singularity.html it’s a good read.

The other theme that Christianity holds in common with the Technical Singularity Doctrine, is the end of human civilization. Yudkowsky says: “It began three and a half billion years ago in a pool of muck, when a molecule made a copy of itself and so became the ultimate ancestor of all earthly life.

It began four million years ago, when brain volumes began climbing rapidly in the hominid line. Fifty thousand years ago with the rise of Homo sapiens sapiens. Ten thousand years ago with the invention of civilization. Five hundred years ago with the invention of the printing press. Fifty years ago with the invention of the computer. In less than thirty years, it will end.”

Christianity teaches that human civilization will end in a “great tribulation,” as stated in Matthew 24 21: “For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now--and never to be equaled again.” Later, the Earth itself will be wiped out and completely re-formed (2 Peter 3:10) – so both Yudkowsky (Vinge, and Kurzweil) and the Bible claim that human civilization will end.

Both also note that this won’t be the end of all life or intelligence, but the start of a new level of being, that a new, transcendent form of humanity will arise.

Christianity teaches that when a Human dies, he can transcend humanity by becoming a God-like being (I Corinthians 15:42-44, 54). As Tipler indicates in, “The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead,” the nature of information, based on the latest information in quantum physics, is such that it (information) cannot be destroyed. Remember we are information. Information is massless. As Chuck Missler often points out, if you take 10 billion bits of complex information and put it on a 1 ounce flash drive, the mass of the flash drive remains unchanged. As programs to a computer, such is the nature of mind to body. All that makes us who we are, the information in our mind, is massless and timeless. We just need to decide where to store that information for eternity.

Post return of Jesus Christ, the Bible describes transcendent humans who never get sick, don’t reproduce, and who have access to the power of God. It describes vast earth-wide and cosmological changes in Revelation 21 – things that require powerful, superhuman, engineering. It describes the re-writing of the genetic structure of nature itself, and the creation of an improved ecosphere (Isaiah 65: 17-25, Revelation 21).

Read Isaiah 65, Revelation 21 and the book of John at http://www.biblegateway.com/ it is a good read!

The Bible describes God as: “Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come…” in Ephesians 1:21. So if there be any Powers, or transcendent beings, the Bible says that God is above them. He created the very substrate upon which they would theoretically operate.
The Bible also indicates that God is beyond time and physics, that there is no sequence of events for God. Can a post-Singularity Power make that claim?

I guess we’ll just have to see.

The parallels between biblical theology and eschatology, and the Singularity are very close. Perhaps someone is just trying to do an end-run around God?