Regardless of which religion is considered, the concept of God as creator is tied to the origin of the universe and everything in it.
This means that if our scientists had a quantum gravity recipe for the ingredients and heating process that resulted in the birth of our universe through the womb of the Big Bang, they would be on their way to gaining the professional expertise of God. The missing piece could be a particle collider that could create the necessary conditions for creating a baby universe. Are there alien scientists in the galaxy with this knowledge?
At this point, we have limited clues about the actual process that created our universe, and so the endless possibilities remain a matter of faith. The basic principles underlying quantum gravity are unclear because the enormous energy density realized at our cosmic beginning cannot be replicated in the observable universe. Our only hope is to… gravitational wave signal of cosmic inflation or a thermal graviton background from the Planck period.
A higher level of intelligence that processed much more data about the universe could have come closer to the idealized wisdom of God. For the first time in human history, we are about to encounter superhuman intelligence in the form of AI, short for artificial intelligence – our technological product, or extraterrestrial intelligence – of extraterrestrial origin. The commercial benefits of the first form of AI are widely recognized, as it is a tool that could outperform humans in processing large amounts of data in a short time, without suffering from the psychological weaknesses of humans.
The second idealized quality of God is omnipresence. If the universe was created by quantum gravity scientists and it allows for the birth of quantum gravity scientists, the cycle of universes being born within universes can, in principle, continue forever.
In the context of longevity, repairing our body from damage or malfunction so that it would never die sounds like an easier problem to solve than creating the Planck energy density to give birth to a baby universe in the laboratory. In fact, the synthetic biologist, George Church, suggested in my recent conversation with him that the two of us might never die and that we could plan follow-up conversations in a thousand or a million years. Longevity is a favored trait of Darwinian selection for ‘survival of the fittest’. The most advanced scientists in the Galaxy are probably the ones who never die.
If astronauts could live for millions of years, they could make interstellar travel using conventional rockets based on chemical propulsion.
Cosmic time is measured in billions of years. When Enrico Fermi asked, “Where is everyone?” in the summer of 1950, he based the question on the knowledge he had gathered from just 49 years of living on this earth. Fermi-like astronauts traveling through interstellar space and visiting exoplanets would be much better informed about answering this question.
They can find many microbes in alien swamps, animals climbing on the vegetation of exoplanets, but also ruins of technological civilizations that have lost their livelihood in a nuclear or biological war, due to the loss of their atmosphere, due to an impact of an asteroid or by a natural victim of their guest star’s clarification. Living longer has the advantage that we collect more data about our cosmic environment, allowing us to better adapt to it. A Fermi-like astronaut with millions of years of cosmic experience might say, “Here’s everyone!”
During a recent meeting with a group of theologians, I was asked about the religious implications of finding extraterrestrial intelligence. I noted that I have two daughters and that my love for the second born daughter does not diminish the love I have for the first. It would be humiliating to think of God as a parent who can only care for one child. Knowing your siblings and recognizing those who are better than you should only increase your sense of awe and appreciation for your parents.
Sorting out our cosmic roots, knowing more about our cosmic home and its inhabitants, and not dying will bring us all closer to the idealized mindset of God as described in traditional religious texts.
What we do with the enormous power this knowledge brings is up to us. Once scientists mastered nuclear physics, it became clear that we could use it for good – as a source of clean energy, or for evil – as a weapon. Likewise, AI can be used as a tool to improve our quality of life or as a weapon with devastating consequences for mental health or national security.
Life can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, so it’s better to remain optimistic about the future. We could do better if we focused on what really matters: wisdom based on data and longevity. These are worthy replacements for the popular “likes” that many seek on social media and for attempts to undermine the happiness of other people who disagree with us. From a cosmic perspective, these toxic pursuits are a waste of our feeble life on this planet.
Are future humans more likely to be kind and generous if they live forever and benefit from augmenting their intelligence with AI? This is not a philosophical question. A Fermi-like astronaut could take a lucky poll and quantify the statistics of civilizations like ours over the past few billion years. Are those who have acquired longevity and wisdom happier?
My guess is a definitive “Yes!” This is why I maintain a healthy lifestyle and look up instead of down Galileo project observatories. I hope that finding a smarter student in our class of technological civilizations would inspire us to do better.
