Some of the Greatest All Time Philosophical Questions, Answered

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? If a tree falls in the forest and there’s nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound?  Can God make a stone so big that he can’t lift it?

(cartoon lifted from quora, via Yahoo images)

The correct answers are: the egg, 42, yes and no, and of course.

Dinosaurs laid eggs.  Pretty darned big ones, I’ll bet, but they were eggs.  Therefore, by the time dinosaurs had evolved (or devolved, there’s no reason that can’t work in both directions) into birds, eggs were already a long-established fact.

42 because it’s a stupid question, there’s no such thing as angels and, if there were, they wouldn’t be having dance-a-thons on the heads of pins because that’s really terribly limiting.  You might as well say “how many angels can you fit inside a phone booth?”  Also, Douglas Adams.

Yes and no on the tree falling sound experiment because it depends on your definition of sound.  If you are talking about the sound waves, the vibrations in the air, then yes.  If you are actually talking about the perception of sound, the hearing of sound, then, obviously no.

But it’s the godly stone hefting question I would like to address.  Like with the angels, I do not believe in the existence of God, so this is just a what if, to entertain the question (invite it in, give it a couple of drinks).

If there is a God, then God is greater than man, having created man.  And man can certainly create things greater than himself and has been doing so for millenia.

First, man created God, an imaginary being who is greater than himself.  (Well, maybe first he created Gods, but Zeus and Thor and even minor Gods like Pan and Popocapetl where somewhat more powerful than your average hunter-gatherer).

Then, man created civilization.  Books, statues, paintings and buildings that far outlasted the mortal span.  Civilizations that grew and spread like weeds, covering whole regions, eventually continents.

Now, man has created the internet.  It is, indeed, a form of artificial intelligence.  Still rudimentary, of course, as a brain it is about as developed as a 12 year old boy, mostly concerned with making smutty jokes and finding ways to increase its own power.  But, it’s growing and it’s growing up.

Eventually, if we are smart, we will pose the question: “How can we build a utopian paradise for all human beings, eliminate war and poverty, and guarantee immortality for the human race?”  And the internet will give us an answer.  Maybe a whole bunch of answers.

I’m not saying I expect it within the next 6 months, but changes are happening fast and I expect to see it in my lifetime.