All Machines go to Heaven?

Neoteny wrote:

I personally believe that all living organic beings have souls and can enter heaven. I also believe that sentience is a somewhat relative concept formed by an an egoistic species that likes to see the other species of animal life on this planet as inferior. So the soul is and has been ever-present, and there was never a time that anything "gained" a soul, except at its instantiation. Which makes it hard to think of it as possible for any piece of hardware to have a soul, since that would pretty much require steel and silicon to have latent souls or something.

I see you and raise you this: the emergence of true AI disproves the existence of souls in anyone.

Occam's razor. If a sentience can be created through--or is emergent from--the technologies of man, then souls become a superfluous concept and can be disregarded entirely. If sentient machines are created without them, and are just as intelligent, concious and sentient as we are, then they clearly don't need souls to be alive. By extension then, neither do we, and we can move past superstitious frivolities and into more practical and realistic (and therefore productive) concepts of reality.

I don't believe in souls, and I think artificial sentience is a matter of time.

/as

GamiSB wrote:

Ok so let's assume for a moment that we are all religious and believe in a heaven. Would a Machine/Program/Exile go to heaven? If so or if not, why?

Doesn't matter which religions as they all have somewhat different takes on it, just make sure to state which one.

To start us off I'll bring up Christianity and ask a  few questions. Now the Christian faith believes that it is only through an acceptance of ones incapability to atone for their wrong doings and reliance upon God and his son Jesus to make that atonement that one would be allowed into heaven.

Now with just a first glance one would say yes because all that is needed for this to take place is a program running that has the Machine believe such. But would this be enough let alone is it a real belief or not just some programmed one? This then steps into other religious beliefs that good works are what gets you in, but if a program has one set of rules and is incapable of doing wrong does this still apply? They are not doing it for God or for others but only because they are programmed to do such.

This works the other way to. Say a program is created to be unable to depend on God for salvation or is incapable of doing "good". Are they to be blamed for there misdeeds?

Well, it wouldnt matter if a program had a Programmed Belief/Trust in God or a programmed one, as Heaven in the Matrix would be just what the Program is-Another Program. Also there are some biblical refrences in The Matrix Franchise(Smith's liscence plate refers to a bible verse). And in closing, if Programs did go to Heaven, it would probably be a Copy of the Original Matrix(Paradise Matrix).