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[Feb. 2nd, 2009|11:03 am] |
Now suppose that some self-reproducing Universal Turing machines in the Life world were to have a conversation with each other about the world as they found it, with its wonderfully simple physics--expressible in a single sentence and covering all eventualities. They would be committing a logical howler if they argued that since they existed, the Life world, with its particular physics, had to exist--for after all, Conway might have decided to be a plumber or play bridge instead of hunting for this world. But what if they deduced that their world was just too wonderful, with its elegant, Life-sustaining physics, to have come into existence without an Intelligent Creator? If they jumped to the conclusion that they owed their existence to the activities of a wise Lawgiver, they'd be right! There is a God and his name is Conway.
But they would be jumping to a conclusion. The existence of a universe obeying a set of laws even as elegant as the Life law (or the laws of our own physics) does not logically require an intelligent Lawgiver.
The task of the wise God required to put this world into motion is a task of discovery, not creation, a job for a Newton, not a Shakespeare. What Newton found--and what Conway found--are eternal Platonic fixed points that anybody else in principle could have discovered, not idiosyncratic creations that depend in any way on the particularities of the minds of their authors.
-- Daniel Dennett |
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