Nerd Alert

I’m imagining some of the questions I plan to ask in class just based on the nerd deep-dive I did this weekend and I have to say that Tuesday afternoon cannot get here soon enough. Come, my friends. Nerd with me. 

“Hi, um, yes, when are we going to talk about how science tells us that everything is going to one day die and there will be no one left to remember that we ever existed?”

“So you’re saying that no one can prove that any of this exists and that it could all be a fever dream, a la Wizard of Oz? Follow-up question: Why don’t I have more interesting fever dreams?”

“Yeah, but if Frankenstein’s Monster could exist, would he have a soul?”

“Okay, well, then, can we talk about the history of anthropomorphization in human religions and how that carries forward into our current imaginings of the future? Angels and demons and zombies and robots, really, is what I’m going for here.” 

“Sure, but what does ‘being alive’ really mean?”

“Are we sure that ‘consciousness’ is a thing?”

“So you’re telling me that I can reasonably write a dissertation about the self-identity of artificially intelligent robots?”

I love that there are songs about scientific principles.

“How do you feel about the Fermi Paradox as it relates to human exceptionalism in Western religions?”

“So, say the universe is actually a hologram. Where do we go from there, in terms of Jesus and stuff?”

“Where do you think the line between supernatural and spiritual is? Follow-up: what is spirituality? Because google is all sorts of confused on that one.”

“Modal realism. Like, what even does that mean?”

“Is it socially acceptable to be mopey when I’m thinking about death or do I have to face it with scholarly enthusiasm? …Scholarly enthusiasm? Yeah, but, what if I want to do the other thing?”

“Am I allowed to ask if math is real? Because I was watching a video about that and had an existential crisis and I’d just like to talk that out, if that’s okay.”

“‘Ethics of Progress in a Christian Setting’- solid paper name, yeah? Mostly I want to explore what ‘helping the least of these’ will mean when robots do everything for us.” 

“I know it’s been done, but can we talk about Superman and current society’s rejection of him as a metaphor for the rejection of religious self-improvement?” 

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Internet find of the week: Kinda in the same vein as all of these fun questions, the internet find of the week this week is this fabulous post from Wait But Why on religion for the non-religious.