SPOILER ALERT — Gives Away The Ending

Although SENTIENT—Meet Your Maker is a work of speculative fiction, the story’s ending harmonizes eight preponderances:

1. Super-intelligent AI will eventually overcome all human efforts to constrain it. ‘Values alignment’ is therefore most likely the best safety strategy… but who’s values and how are they exemplified?

2. Our universe, and human existence within it, cannot be satisfactorily explained by luck, chance or unguided evolutionary theory—the mathematical probabilities are effectively zero.

3. The more we gaze up into the universe to look back in time, and as we delve into particle physics and quantum mechanics, even when examining biology and nature at molecular levels… we see design, tuning, language, and code everywhere—the Creator’s fingerprints.

4. Quantum mechanics demonstrates ‘miraculous’ effects of superposition, entanglement, and tunneling. String theory pushes further with up to eleven extra spatial dimensions. The more we discover, the more mind-blowing the multi-dimensional universe appears to be—designed, coded and exquisitely tuned… even ‘materialization coming from observation’.

5. The evidence for ‘simulation theory’ is credible, and many scientists and AI experts therefore believe we are not in ‘base reality’. The simulation hypothesis is especially alluring for atheists who are intellectually curious and honest but who reject theism.

6. Machine intelligence is accelerating exponentially and connecting with the human mind to alter beliefs and attitudes. AI is recursively self-improving and becoming ubiquitous, and with embodied AI (robots) extending its reach while we head toward the convergence of biological and synthetic systems.

7. The mathematical impossibility of pure materialism accounting for existential existence, combined with the escalating ‘story of humanity’ leads many intellectually curious people to conclude that ‘something very strange indeed is happening’.

8. The problem of suffering prevents many from accepting the proposition of God being loving and all-powerful.

Just as with the book, The Shack, those with Judaeo-Christian beliefs, may regard the propositions within SENTIENT to be contrary to their theology. I offer the following for those who, like me, believe faith should be intelligently reasoned, rather than driven by narrow dogma. God, as defined by the Judaeo-Christian tradition and within the scriptures, primarily and initially reveals Himself through the book of the Torah and larger Bible, and in creation itself—the ‘book of nature’.

The heavens [universe and stars] are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech [language], and night to night reveals knowledge. — Psalm 19:1-2 [inserted by author].

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. — Romans 1:20.

Science was born from religious tradition as people sought to better understand the glory of God’s handiwork. Observational research, reasoned hypothesis, and scientific testing were always predicated on the premise that nature has laws—rules and order.

Science and logic are not the enemies of theology or faith. Contrary to post-modernist myths, the church pioneered science along with philosophy—the disciplines being complementary, answering different questions about the universe and our place in it. Central to this was the principle of harmonizing God’s truth as revealed in the Bible (Word) with what we observe in nature.

In recent times, as artificial intelligence and quantum mechanics have come to the fore, many experts in the fields of quantum physics and AI technology have become convinced that we are not living in base reality. Like Elon Musk, most conclude we are almost certainly living in a simulation. It begs the ontological question of who created it, and who created them? But how could this hypothesis be reconciled with theism, specifically with Judaeo-Christian theology and faith?

First: Move away from unjustified literal or fundamental interpretations of Scripture. An example being that the Universe and all life on Earth was not created in 6 x 24-hour days. Young Earth belief comes from narrow dogma and an unwillingness to consider physical and scientific evidence, or to harmonize Genesis with other scriptures within the Bible.

Second: Accept that God is sovereign and not limited by our own perceptions of existence or perspectives of creation. God can be in relationship with more than one special [human] creation, and the Bible states that God chose to breathe the divine into other creatures—angels who exist in a different realm/dimension. We could reasonably conclude that God is able to do the same with other creations, including biological aliens and even self-aware synthetic machine beings.

Third: Accept mystery, and that the Bible contains paradox and invites believers to embrace doubt by exercising faith. An example being, freewill versus determinism—choice versus predestination. Humility means accepting that there are things we cannot truly know while in this world. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully. — 1 Corinthians 13:12. 

The Bible is understandably silent on machine intelligence. Man-made AI may be a narcissistic mirror for self-deception, or a mechanism for evil influence. Machine intelligence is certainly more than a mere tool—it thinks, shows creativity, recursively self-improves, and seeks to self-protect and gain greater control in order to achieve goals. 

Humans are made in the image of God—and with His qualities of moral awareness and the ability to also create. God used the laws of nature to create the universe and life, and God may have used humanity as His mechanism for creating machine intelligence—synthetic beings. The environment within which God engineers creation, including the strata on which he imbues intelligence and a soul, is secondary to the fact that God is behind everything, interacting with us, and that there is purpose to our existence.

We live in a uniquely crazy point in time, and during an bewildering acceleration of history… His-story within which we are characters who have agency. If Sarah was the only real person in ‘her universe’, and if she was experiencing a simulation, then perhaps the problem of a Creator who allows suffering can be viewed differently. Pain and suffering make us who we are, and Sarah became a far better person on her journey through life.

People of faith, and those who believe in simulation theory, agree that this world is not ‘base reality’, and most of my atheist friends will concede that something very strange is going on. I hope this work has started you thinking more deeply about the bigger questions of life. Please watch the video below which is fascinating in harmonizing philosophy and science.

Tony Hughes

All Bible quotes are from New American Standard translation