God Who Does Nothing
Jay Ingram:
Here is this young man Alan Turnet who is called the father and founder of the Church of God Who Does Nothing. Alan, tell us how all this started and what exactly is the Church Of God Who Does Nothing?
Alan Turnet:
Jay, it all started as a joke, and honestly I still consider it to be a joke. One day we had a discussion about the new paradigm shift in understanding of intelligence and as it often happens among MIT students, we went quite far off topic.
Jay Ingram:
What is that paradigm shift you mentioned?
Alan Turnet:
Traditionally, intelligence was understood as intelligent behavior. That view on the subject suggests that we can judge an object’s intelligence based on the way it acts. The essence of that approach was formulated by Turing in his famous intelligence test. His idea was simple, if we cannot find the difference in behavior of a machine and a man we have to admit that the machine is intelligent.
Jay Ingram:
That sounds quite logical to me. What was the problem with that approach?
Alan Turnet:
The problem is that it does not help us understand the nature of intelligence. For many years researchers were focused on building intelligently behaving machines and did not make any progress in understanding what intelligence actually is. The new approach to that matter suggests that acting is not a necessity of intelligence.
Jay Ingram:
But what would be an example of intelligence which does not reveal itself by way of some intelligent act?
Alan Turnet:
Imagine a paralyzed person who cannot move, cannot speak, cannot act in any possible way. He is lying in his bed all the time. Every day a nurse comes to his room to take care of him: feed him and clean the room. Every day that paralyzed person is waiting for the nurse to come. He is lying in bed and listening until he hears her steps in the corridor. He thinks: “It’s her. She will come in in a moment. After that she will turn on the light, come to me and say, “Good afternoon my dear patient, how are you doing today?”. I think we have to admit that there is a lot of intelligence in making such a prediction.
Jay Ingram:
Interesting, so what is intelligence?
Alan Turnet:
Intelligence is the ability to analyze the world, understand it and make predictions about what is going to happen. That prediction might lead to actions, but it is not always the case.
Jay Ingram:
OK. Now tell me how God comes to the picture?
Alan Turnet:
What little we know about human intelligence should also be true of any other possible type of intelligence. If we assume that some kind of metaphysical worldwide intelligence exists then it should not necessarily produce any activity. And vise versa, lack of such an activity does not necessarily prove the lack of intelligence.
Jay Ingram:
I see. In other words, God might exist even if he has never produced any divine intents in our world. So, the Church Of God Who Does Nothing is a group of people who believe in the existence of such an inacting God, right?
Alan Turnet:
Correct.
Jay Ingram:
Interesting. But, Alan, I do not understand this: usually when people believe in God they hope that their God will do something for them, ether in their life or after it. You should not have any hope on such matter. If your God never acts, then what do you get from your belief?
Alan Turnet:
Oh, we get a lot from it. It is such a great feeling to believe that there is someone who actually understands what is going on.
July 25th, 2007 at 8:31 am
Alex, you’ve done it again.
Congratulations!
February 29th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Hi this is masha naverniouk
did you rite all of that?