Thinking to Believe

Science fiction stories are filled with visions of artificial intelligence (A.I.). Recent movies depicting robots with human-levels of artificial intelligence include I-Robot and A.I. Is this pure science fiction, or is it a genuine possibility in not-so-distant future? Peter Kassan answered this question in an article written for Skeptic magazine.

Kassan argued persuasively that the quest for A.I. has been, and will continue to be a dead-end street. Scientists have been unable to duplicate the intelligence of even the simplest of creatures, yet alone human beings. For example, although scientists have studied and mapped the neural patterns of the simple C. elegans worm, no one has been able to duplicate its base level of intelligence. C. elegans possesses a mere 300 neurons, compared to the human brain which contains 100 billion (100,000,000,000). Our cerebral cortex alone contains 30 billion neurons, and 1000 trillion synapses (1,000,000,000,000,000). That is 100 million (100,000,000) times the number of neurons, and 100 trillion (100,000,000,000,000) times the number of synapses of C. elegans. In light of such figures it becomes painfully obvious why developing human A.I. is nowhere on the horizon.

Advocates of A.I. retort that the task of replicating human intelligence is only a problem of time. They observe that computers double in capacity and speed every 18 months. Based on this they argue that given enough time, computers will be large enough and fast enough to create A.I. comparable to the human brain. But as Kassan points out, computational speed of computer processors is not the problem! The problem is the software. A.I. would only be as good as the program being run by the computer. While computers double in performance and capacity every 18 months, computer programs don’t. They increase in complexity at a far slower rate. Furthermore, experience has shown that the larger software programs get, the slower they become. Additionally, the larger the program the more room for error. A software program simulating the human brain would contain 20 trillion errors at a minimum. Kassan describes this “programming problem” by way of analogy:

If each synapse were handled by the equivalent of only a single line of code, the program to simulate the cerebral cortex would be roughly 25 million times larger than what’s probably the largest software product ever written, Microsoft Windows, said to be about 40 million lines of code. As a software project grows in size, the probability of failure increases. The probability of successfully completing a project 25 million times more complex than Windows is effectively zero.

What I found so interesting about the article was not so much what it had to say (although it was very interesting), but who was saying it. While I do not know Kassan’s precise beliefs about God, the fact that he wrote an article for Skeptic magazine tells me he is probably an atheist and advocate of Darwinian evolution. As such he does not believe the universe is the result of a designing intelligence, but rather blind, unintelligent, random chance processes. As part of the universe, human intelligence must have been produced by the same chance processes. Herein lies the absurdity of Kassan’s worldview.

Kassan recognizes the near-inconceivable complexity of human intelligence, and argues persuasively that intelligent designers (humans) will never be able to re-create it artificially. While I agree with Kassan this invites a question: How can time + chance create what time + intelligence cannot? If time + intelligence cannot produce anything similar to the complexity of human intelligence, surely time + chance would fail as well. Kassan would have us believe time + chance is better equipped to create complex intelligence than time + intelligence; that blind, unintelligent, random chance processes are better designers of intelligence than the most intelligent beings on the planet. That is a rational absurdity! How is it possible for chance to be better equipped to create an extremely complicated machine than human beings? How do natural processes create something that is 25,000,000 times more complex than the most complex program created by intelligent beings?

When Kassan boots up Microsoft Windows on his personal computer, does he ever think for a second that this extremely complex program consisting of 40 million lines of coded information was produced by unintelligent, random chance processes? Of course not! It is far too complex for that. How, then, can he look at something 25,000,000 times more complex than Windows and say it was created by time + chance? The disconnect in Kassan’s worldview is so glaring that I cannot understand how he can miss it. While atheists pride themselves on being rational, believing time + chance can produce complex intelligence whereas time + intelligence cannot is anything but rational.

This is just one more example demonstrating that atheists’ problem with Christianity is not one of the intellect, but one of the will. Christianity is not only intellectually plausible, but explanatorily superior to atheism. It is rejected, however, because people do not want to bend the knee. They want to be their own lord. Rationality takes a back seat to their perverted will.

It has been awhile! I should have made a post informing you that I would not be blogging for a period of time, but I had no idea I would be taking a break as long as I did. I moved from Long Beach to San Jose at the end of August due to a new job. With the move, long work hours, a long commute, making week-end trips back to L.A., email problems, and a broken computer, blogging has not been possible. But I am back. I hope to be blogging on a daily basis again (or every other day).

So much to talk about! Where do I begin?!?! I’ll start off easy, and then hit you with some heavier thinking. I would like to make a few comments regarding the charge that religion is responsible for most of the world’s wars and bloodshed.

Those antagonistic toward religion generally blame religion and religious belief for all the wars and violence throughout history. They argue that if people did not embrace religious beliefs there would not be so much cruelty in the world. J. Budzizewski responds to this charge by pointing out that “cruelty isn’t caused by believing things; it’s caused by believing cruel things.”<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–>[1] Aptly said. The problem is not that people have religious beliefs, but rather what it is they believe to be true. If one’s religious beliefs contain cruel content, they will act cruelly. But there is nothing inherent in religious belief itself that causes people to act cruelly.

Not only is this charge logically flawed, but it is historically mistaken as well. The fact of the matter is that atheistic ideologies have been responsible for more deaths than all the religious wars throughout history combined. In the 20^th century alone approximately 115-120 million people were killed by Communist regimes and totalitarian governments: Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Hitler, Mao Zedong, and the Khmer Rouge. So contrary to popular belief, the charge of cruelty and destruction lies at the feet of atheism, not religious belief.