Spiritual Machines?
To be human...
Spiritual Machines?
A wired species?
Sentient computers?
virtual life?
To be human...
More questions than answers
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What does it mean to be human? Does the concept allow "humanity" to be anything other than the "naked ape" or the "Son of Adam"?

The Book of Genesis says "God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them." St. Thomas Aquinas described the image of God as referring to those characteristics that we have in common with God. Primary among these divine characteristics is the ability to know and to act freely. That is, intellect and volition are divine traits found in human beings. Indeed, in moral theology a human act is one in which a choice is made freely through the appropriate use of one's intellect. It seems then that what makes us most human and most divine is our ability to think, which includes all intellectual functions, memory, reason, symbolization, emotion, and so on, as well as our ability to act as free moral agents under the guidance of our thought process.

David Bohm, a respected theoretical physicist, argues that thought is an inherent qualityof existence, as natural as matter and energy.  According to Bohm what makes us the image of God is not our physical nature but the relatively high order of thought that is explicate in us.

Evolutionary biologist Kenneth Miller argues along the same lines as David Bohm. He sees God's creativity at work in evolution. The emergence of abundant diversity through evolution is God's use of natural laws to bring about a means for the expression of consciousness in a material universe.

The Human Genome Project presents the possibility of engineered, human controled evolution of humanity. This could bring about radical changes in our physical abilities and capacity for processing perceptions and ultimately thought. Imagine how our relation to the world would differ, and ultimately our thought processes, if we were able to perceive lines of geo-magnetic force as do dolphins or perceive higher and lower frequencies of  light, as do many other species!

Bohm and Miller are not alone in seeing the process of evolutionary biology as God's way of allowing conscious and thinking beings (us) to emerge from the chaotic process of natural selection. An implication is that thought can be equally manifest in us, little green men from Mars, and Data the android from Star Trek. This also raises the possibility that our ability to direct the evolutionary process through genetic engineering is also part of the divine plan--or a perversion of it!

In his March 1996 message to the Pontifical Academy of Science, Pope John Paul II acknowledged that evolution was more than just an hypothesis but a legitimate scientific theory with a large body of credible evidence in its support. At that time he also asserted that no matter what mechanism God may have used to bring about humanity there is a qualitative and ontological leap that sets humanity apart from its evolutionary relatives. The Pope saw this difference in the human soul.

Is the ability to think --knowingly and freely act as moral agents--expressive of the presence of human soul? If the human soul is present, does it matter what form--natural or engineered--is used to allow that soul expression?

The March 2001 meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Science heard a talk by Pope John Paul II on the role of science in our emerging understanding of human nature.