![\"\"](\"http:\/\/richard.rathe.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Douglas_Adams.jpg\" "\\"Douglas")
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I’ve been a fan of Douglas Adams<\/a><\/strong>\u2019 writing for many years. He is mostly known for his humorous science fiction but he was actually an important thinker and philosopher<\/strong>. A year after his death in 2001 his friends published several miscellaneous stories and essays as the book The Salmon of Doubt<\/em><\/strong>. As with many posthumous collections these materials were spotty and often unfinished. But there was a hidden gem\u2014a transcript of a talk he gave at a scientific conference in 1998 entitled Is There an Artificial God?<\/em><\/strong> I think it stands as a wonderful testament to his humanism and intellect.<\/p>\n We build meta-systems above ourselves to fill in the space that we previously populated with an entity that was supposed to be the intentional designer…because we as a species design and create one and then allow ourselves to behave as if there [is] one\u2014all sorts of things begin to happen that otherwise wouldn’t happen.<\/em><\/p>\n He ends with the wonderful “Four Ages of Sand<\/strong>” analogy. From sand we make glass and from glass we created telescopes, microscopes, computers, and fiberoptic networks.<\/p>\n Transcript<\/a> (KIST Booklet)<\/p>\n Audio File<\/a> (marginal quality)<\/p>\n More Douglas Adams quotes…<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been a fan of Douglas Adams\u2019 writing for many years. He is mostly known for his humorous science fiction but he was actually an important thinker and philosopher. A year after his death in 2001 his friends published several miscellaneous stories and essays as the book The Salmon of Doubt. As with many posthumous collections … Continue reading “Is There an Artificial God? by Douglas Adams”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,20,8,18],"tags":[522,519,521,523,518,520,524],"class_list":["post-3108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-people","category-technology","tag-computers","tag-evolution","tag-microscopes","tag-networks","tag-tautology","tag-telescopes","tag-the-internet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3108"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9751,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108\/revisions\/9751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}