Posthuman God
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Posthuman God is a hypothetical future entity descended from or created by humans, but possessing capabilities so radically exceeding those of present humans as to appear godlike.
One common variation of this idea is the belief or aspiration that humans will create a God entity emerging from an artificial intelligence. Another variant is the hypothesis that humanity will create or evolve into a posthuman God by itself; for some examples, see technological singularity, and Omega point.
The concept of a posthuman god has become common in science fiction. Arthur C. Clarke, world-renowned science fiction author, said in an interview, "It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him."
Clarke's friend and colleague, the late Isaac Asimov, postulated in his story "The Last Question" a merger between humanity and machine intelligence that ultimately produces a deity capable of reversing entropy and subsequently initiates a new Creation trillions of years from the present era when the Universe is in the last stage of heat death. In Frank Herbert's science-fiction series Dune, a messianic figure is created after thousands of years of controlled breeding. The Culture series by Iain M. Banks represents a blend in which a transhuman society is guarded by godlike machine intelligences. A stronger example is posited in the novel Singularity Sky by Charles Stross, in which a future artificial intelligence is capable of changing events even in its own past, and takes strong measures to prevent any other entity from taking advantage of similar capabilities. In the science fiction world-building project Orion's Arm, most if not all terran species (species originating from the Earth) live in the omnipresence of god-like machines called Archailects and smaller AI gods, whose motives and actions even modern day humans would fail to comprehend.
