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I would like to suggest a way to scientifically prove that people should follow God. By follow God, I mean that people should follow the basic rules and moral principles of the Bible. And by scientifically prove, I mean the process described in Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery which says that a scientific theory should include a description of experiments that qualify to falsify that theory. A theory that has been subjected to such experiments and not been falsified will, over time, be accepted as true.
I will not say anything about the existence or non-existence of God, both of which are unprovable. In my personal opinion, this question is irrelevant anyway because what matters is what people do, not what they believe.
Multiplayer video games provide a virtual environment where people can express instincts that are normally suppressed in modern culture. In particular, men are naturally tribal, so teenage boys enjoy cooperating with each other in a tribal fashion and fighting common enemies. I believe that this provides a unique opportunity for anthropologists to study human behavior. Anthropology is currently a soft social science because it does not meet Popper's criteria of a true science. Anthropology simply studies what is. It does not conduct controlled experiments. But multiplayer video games could provide a means for anthropology to construct experiments about social behavior which would make anthropology into a hard science.
For my experiment, I would like a multiplayer video game with programmable gods. Any player can create a god by programming it. All gods would be open source, meaning that their source code is public and gods can be copied and modified. Players can follow/worship any gods they wish. The gods that a player follows is public information. A god only has power over those players who follow that god. The only powers of a god are to observe its followers, to punish its followers, and to "speak" to its followers or speak publicly. These limitation would be enforced by the functions made available when programming a god.
In this game, players would compete to conquer territory and things of value. Players would be able to kill each other and steal from each other just as in real life. Since gods can only really punish players, not help them, you may wonder what good a god is. The answer is that gods can enforce morality by punishing players who follow them for violating moral rules.
My hypothesis is that in such a game, players would initially have no gods. Then as gods are created, there would be a period of paganism where players follow several gods based on the gods that their friends follow. And then as players see which attributes of the various pagan gods work best, they would program monotheistic gods who insist that their followers follow no other gods. These monotheistic gods would compete until the ideal god is found. When this ideal god is found, everyone would eventually follow this god which would end the game in a similar way to end-time prophesy in the Bible. And furthermore, this ideal god would be basically the same as God in the Bible. If my hypothesis proves correct, what this would show is that following God is the ideal human behavior.
Now let's consider whether such a game is a reasonable representation of reality. I think it is obvious that gods in the real world are open source. The nature of gods are public and anyone is free to start a new religion by modifying gods. The issue of the power of gods is a little more complicated. Clearly gods have the power to inspire their followers. Virtually all gods have some kind of expectations regarding the behavior of their followers. These expectation are usually enforced by the followers themselves in a religious community by punishing violators. So gods in the real world have the indirect power to punish their followers. In my game, I simply make this power direct. I believe this is a reasonable approximation of reality. I also restrict gods to only having power over their followers because, without an assumption of the existence of supernatural gods, gods cannot affect people who do not follow them. And I do not believe that the assumption of supernatural gods (whether true or not) is required to prove that people should follow God.
As I said, I would expect the game to end in a similar way to end-time prophesy in the Bible, with everyone following the one true god. But here there is a basic difference with reality. As I explained in Human Evolution, empires tend to cause genetic decay which in turn destroys the empire. Following God tends to lead to success which leads to empire which leads to decay which prevents end-time prophesy. The game doesn't have this problem, obviously, because it is not played over many generations. I believe that the only way to actually achieve end-time prophesy in the real world would be to replace empire with some other structure that avoids evolutionary decay, but I don't know what that would be.
Returning to Popper, my criteria for a valid experiment is any game that allows players to form competing groups and program gods as I described. The details of the game can vary greatly, but I would expect in all cases the result to be the same, namely that a god resembling God in the Bible would eventually take over the world. This god would have rules that closely resemble the Ten Commandments which would include:
- Do not follow other gods.
- Adhere to some regular ritual like the Sabbath in order to develop self-discipline.
- Do not murder other followers of this god.
- Do not steal from other followers of this god.
- Do not compete for women with other men who follow this god.
- Do not tell lies against followers of this god.
- Avoid gross inequality among followers of this god in order to prevent coveting and jealousy.
Since I am a programmer, I would like to actually conduct this experiment eventually, maybe in a few years. I emphasized the idea of proving that people should follow God in this post, but such a game would have a lot of other benefits. It would teach teens to program. It would force teens to think about morality. It would teach the relationship between religion and morality. And I think it would interesting and fun to play.
I would like to suggest a way to scientifically prove that people should follow God. By follow God, I mean that people should follow the basic rules and moral principles of the Bible. And by scientifically prove, I mean the process described in Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery which says that a scientific theory should include a description of experiments that qualify to falsify that theory. A theory that has been subjected to such experiments and not been falsified will, over time, be accepted as true.
It is an interesting idea, but a difficult one. I think you are right to disassociate the social frameworks being tested from specific deities, because your postulated gods are indistinguishable from social forces. It keeps it simpler to just work in these terms.
A lot of work has been already been done on these kind of problems in the field of game theory. The trick is that this simulation would be enormously complex. You would need to account for the natural environment, economics, politics both secular and religious, and a host of other factors that would need to be abstracted. I would suggest if you are serious, that you drastically limit your scope, and start with a single aspect of society to be tested. Once you get somewhere with that you can add stuff.
The other issue is that while this would be enoumosly interesting, it really doesn't prove much. The predictions of your simulation are only as good as your models and utility functions. For this to mean much you would need some way to correlate your models to the real world.
All that being said, it would certainly be very interesting to develop some sort of Prisoner's Dilemma like game based on competition and cooperation.
I would like to suggest a way to scientifically prove that people should follow God. By follow God, I mean that people should follow the basic rules and moral principles of the Bible. And by scientifically prove, I mean the process described in Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery which says that a scientific theory should include a description of experiments that qualify to falsify that theory. A theory that has been subjected to such experiments and not been falsified will, over time, be accepted as true.
I will not say anything about the existence or non-existence of God, both of which are unprovable. In my personal opinion, this question is irrelevant anyway because what matters is what people do, not what they believe.
Multiplayer video games provide a virtual environment where people can express instincts that are normally suppressed in modern culture. In particular, men are naturally tribal, so teenage boys enjoy cooperating with each other in a tribal fashion and fighting common enemies. I believe that this provides a unique opportunity for anthropologists to study human behavior. Anthropology is currently a soft social science because it does not meet Popper's criteria of a true science. Anthropology simply studies what is. It does not conduct controlled experiments. But multiplayer video games could provide a means for anthropology to construct experiments about social behavior which would make anthropology into a hard science.
For my experiment, I would like a multiplayer video game with programmable gods. Any player can create a god by programming it. All gods would be open source, meaning that their source code is public and gods can be copied and modified. Players can follow/worship any gods they wish. The gods that a player follows is public information. A god only has power over those players who follow that god. The only powers of a god are to observe its followers, to punish its followers, and to "speak" to its followers or speak publicly. These limitation would be enforced by the functions made available when programming a god.
In this game, players would compete to conquer territory and things of value. Players would be able to kill each other and steal from each other just as in real life. Since gods can only really punish players, not help them, you may wonder what good a god is. The answer is that gods can enforce morality by punishing players who follow them for violating moral rules.
My hypothesis is that in such a game, players would initially have no gods. Then as gods are created, there would be a period of paganism where players follow several gods based on the gods that their friends follow. And then as players see which attributes of the various pagan gods work best, they would program monotheistic gods who insist that their followers follow no other gods. These monotheistic gods would compete until the ideal god is found. When this ideal god is found, everyone would eventually follow this god which would end the game in a similar way to end-time prophesy in the Bible. And furthermore, this ideal god would be basically the same as God in the Bible. If my hypothesis proves correct, what this would show is that following God is the ideal human behavior.
Now let's consider whether such a game is a reasonable representation of reality. I think it is obvious that gods in the real world are open source. The nature of gods are public and anyone is free to start a new religion by modifying gods. The issue of the power of gods is a little more complicated. Clearly gods have the power to inspire their followers. Virtually all gods have some kind of expectations regarding the behavior of their followers. These expectation are usually enforced by the followers themselves in a religious community by punishing violators. So gods in the real world have the indirect power to punish their followers. In my game, I simply make this power direct. I believe this is a reasonable approximation of reality. I also restrict gods to only having power over their followers because, without an assumption of the existence of supernatural gods, gods cannot affect people who do not follow them. And I do not believe that the assumption of supernatural gods (whether true or not) is required to prove that people should follow God.
As I said, I would expect the game to end in a similar way to end-time prophesy in the Bible, with everyone following the one true god. But here there is a basic difference with reality. As I explained in Human Evolution, empires tend to cause genetic decay which in turn destroys the empire. Following God tends to lead to success which leads to empire which leads to decay which prevents end-time prophesy. The game doesn't have this problem, obviously, because it is not played over many generations. I believe that the only way to actually achieve end-time prophesy in the real world would be to replace empire with some other structure that avoids evolutionary decay, but I don't know what that would be.
Returning to Popper, my criteria for a valid experiment is any game that allows players to form competing groups and program gods as I described. The details of the game can vary greatly, but I would expect in all cases the result to be the same, namely that a god resembling God in the Bible would eventually take over the world. This god would have rules that closely resemble the Ten Commandments which would include:
- Do not follow other gods.
- Adhere to some regular ritual like the Sabbath in order to develop self-discipline.
- Do not murder other followers of this god.
- Do not steal from other followers of this god.
- Do not compete for women with other men who follow this god.
- Do not tell lies against followers of this god.
- Avoid gross inequality among followers of this god in order to prevent coveting and jealousy.
Since I am a programmer, I would like to actually conduct this experiment eventually, maybe in a few years. I emphasized the idea of proving that people should follow God in this post, but such a game would have a lot of other benefits. It would teach teens to program. It would force teens to think about morality. It would teach the relationship between religion and morality. And I think it would interesting and fun to play.
I would put my $$ on the Hindu warrior who worships and preaches the ministry of the Rider from Rev19 and throws the false prophet, Moses into the lake of fire where he belongs. Game over. YHWH's days are numbered.
Last edited by Rider's Pantheon; 09-19-2013 at 05:02 PM..
For maybe 6 years,?, I have followed Instructions, clues, advice or the directions
of Jesus'...and by golly....they ALL work perfectly.
I mean it and people get bored with me always saying it...but GEE, it's just
so wonderful to practice, test, experiment or just simply do them...
Never to worry about anything ever again...
To give God your burdens...
Cast your cares...
Delight in Him...
Be anxious for nothing
Seek the Kingdom of Heaven first.....
Have no fears...
Treat others as yourself...
And watch....how everything is given to you...all works out....right down to the
minutia of life...never worry about finding your keys, or what to make for dinner....
it always works out ...there is never a reason to worry like he instructed or suggested.
I think the idea of creating your own god and following it would appeal to many in this day and age.
That is essentially what we do here on line. We create our own digital deity, here on this site, into whatever we wish. We all have our own personal pantheons of digital warrior deities. Spirits that represents who you are or who you wish to be. Rider's Pantheon is my digital representation of the spiritual force I am and/or wish to be.
I think you guys are missing the real point of this idea. It really has very little to do with gods or religion, it is essentially a culture simulator. Given N societies, each with a specific set of rules and weighting functions that affect political stability, level of internal violence, level of external violence, trade, absorption of ideas, and such, how do societies evolve and play out over time?
The specifics about gods and such is really just sensationalism to try to pitch the idea...
I think you guys are missing the real point of this idea. It really has very little to do with gods or religion, it is essentially a culture simulator. Given N societies, each with a specific set of rules and weighting functions that affect political stability, level of internal violence, level of external violence, trade, absorption of ideas, and such, how do societies evolve and play out over time?
The specifics about gods and such is really just sensationalism to try to pitch the idea...
All historical cultures that I know of were tied to their religion, especially during the growth phase. Western religions all had gods, so the god concept perfectly fits. Eastern religions weren't based on gods, but it seems that these religions are now dying, so god-based religions seem more effective. I personally strongly support the religion of the Old Testament because I like its morality. Machiavelli well understood the connection between religion and culture as he explains in "Discourses on Livy".
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And whoever considers well Roman history will see how much Religion served in commanding the armies, in reuniting the plebs, both in keeping men good, and in making the wicked ashamed. So that if it were discussed as to which Prince Rome should be more obligated, Romulus or Numa, I believe that Numa would (rather) attain the higher rank; for where Religion exists it is easily possible to introduce arms, but where there are arms and not religion, it (religion) can only be introduced there with difficulty. And it is seen that for Romulus to institute the Senate and to make the other civil and military arrangements, the authority of God was not necessary, but it was very necessary for Numa, who pretended he had met with a Nymph who advised him of that which he should counsel the people; and all this resulted because he wanted to introduce new ordinances and institutions in that City, and was apprehensive that his authority was not enough. Moderator cut: deleted
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Last edited by june 7th; 09-22-2013 at 01:44 PM..
Reason: Reformatted to adhere to CD copyright rules.
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