Tales of the Turing Church: Book draft for early readers
I have completed a first draft of my book, “Tales of the Turing Church,” and I am now sharing the draft with early readers for feedback.
The early readers are trusted friends that, based on previous interactions, I think are likely to offer constructive criticism and suggestions.
After revising the draft, I will finalize a public draft, and then prepare the book for publication.
Introduction (excerpt from current draft)
This isn’t your grandfather’s religion.
Future science and technology will permit playing with the building blocks of spacetime, matter, energy and life in ways that we could only call magic and supernatural today.
Someday in the future, you and your loved ones will be resurrected by very advanced, magic science and technology.
Inconceivably advanced intelligences are out there among the stars. Even more God-like beings operate in the fabric of reality underneath spacetime, or beyond spacetime, and control the universe. Future science will allow us to find them, and become like them.
Our descendants in the far future will join the community of God-like beings among the stars and beyond, and use transcendent technology to resurrect the dead and remake the universe.
Science? Spacetime? Aliens? Future technology? I warned you, this isn’t your grandmother’s religion.
Or isn’t it?
Simplify what I said and reword it as: God exists, controls reality, will resurrect the dead and remake the universe. Sounds familiar? I bet it does. So perhaps this IS the religion of our grandparents, in different words.
I am a theoretical physicist by training, and a transhumanist. I also believe in God, and in the afterlife. Inconsistent? Some will say so, but I don’t care. Some bureaucrats of philosophy will say all sorts of bad things and criticize me for mixing science and religion, but I really couldn’t give less of a damn. I haven’t written this book for them.
I have written this book for you.
If you are afraid of death, this book is for you. If you are grieving for the loss of a loved one, this book is for you. If you want to reconcile your belief in God with your scientific worldview, this book is for you. If you are a transhumanist who wants to believe in a transcendent reality, this book is for you.
If you have a scientific background, you have probably been told that science has (or will soon have) all the answers, and religion is a fairy tale.
Not so. Current science is very far from having all the answers, but future science and technology will validate and realize all the promises of religion.
My message is that, if you want, you can hope to live again with your loved ones, without abandoning the scientific worldview. If you want, you can believe in the essential core of your religion without abandoning the scientific worldview…
Cover image background: Stars over Berlin, from Wikimedia Commons
