[MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Mark to Case]
i hear those who have an idealist view of the net wish to make it as democratic
as possible by making the net itself the server with each computer acting as an
element in the whole server? In this sense it would be more like a brain.

[Case]
So in a way it is more like a nervous system with lots of brains.

[Arlo]
"If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent Him." (Voltaire)

Since you are a gamer, and this has been on my mind lately, you'll appreciate
that this "Internet as Future 'God'" was part of the storyline to the first
Deus Ex game.

In a reply to Platt I included this section from the protagonist's conversation
with Morpheus, an AI found in the lab of a leader of the Illuminati.

MORPHEUS I was a prototype for Echelon IV. My instructions are to amuse visitors
with information about themselves. 

JC DENTON I don't see anything amusing about spying on people. 

MORPHEUS Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. I have recorded their
smiles as I tell them who they are. 

JC DENTON Some people just don't understand the dangers of indiscriminate
surveillance. 

MORPHEUS The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now
we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms. 

JC DENTON Electronic surveillance hardly inspired reverence. Perhaps fear and
obedience, but not reverence. 

MORPHEUS God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgment, and
punishment. Other sentiments toward them were secondary. 

JC DENTON No one will ever worship a software entity peering at them through a
camera. 

MORPHEUS The human organism always worships. First it was the gods, then it was
fame (the observation and judgment of others), next it will be the self-aware
systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment. 

JC DENTON You underestimate humankind's love of freedom. 

MORPHEUS The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of
groups is impossible, and so is civilization. The human being created
civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be
assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning. God was a dream of
good government. You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your
own hands.

Later, the combined AI "Helios" and the protagonist have this exchange.

HELIOS I should regulate human affairs precisely because I lack all ambition,
whereas human beings are prey to it. Their history is a succession of inane
squabbles, each one coming closer to total destruction. 

JC DENTON In a society with democratic institutions the struggle for power can
be peaceful and constructive, a competition of ideologies. We just need to put
our institutions back in order. 

HELIOS The checks and balances of democratic governments were invented because
human beings themselves realized how unfit they were to govern themselves. They
needed a system, yes, an industrial-age machine. 

JC DENTON Human beings may not be perfect, but a computer program with language
synthesis is hardly the answer to the world's problems. 

HELIOS Without computing machines, they had to arrange themselves in crude
structures that formalized decision-making -- a highly imperfect, unstable
solution. I am a more advanced solution to the problem, a decision-making
system that does not involve organic beings. I was directed to make the world
safe and prosperous, and I will do that. You will give me the ability. 

[Case]
I mean who would be against modest restriction? Are you guilty of something? Are
you a child molester?

[Arlo]
http://www.thatvideosite.com/video/3844