[alicebot-aiethics] The bot and religion

[Christopher Fahey [askrom]]

> > Which one?
> There is only one God.
>
> > What's his name?
> His name is Rich.
>

> What is the first commandment?
> 1.  I am the Lord thy God, which have brought 
> thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house 
> of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before 
> me.

It's funny how a chatbot conversation about God can so quickly turn into
absurdity or even blasphemy because of the bot's reliance on fallback
patterns like the one that generated "His name is Rich." Frankly, I'm
surprised that the standard AIML still contains anything about religion
at all. IMHO, that stuff should have been the absolute first things to
go in a project that was supposed to be about building an AIML set that
was devoid of individual personality and opinion.

Interestingly, the Ten Commandments came into existence (either by God's
will or by a monumental creative act of humanity, depending on how you
look at it) in a historical time period when the Israelites were *not*
yet really monotheistic. The First Commandment does not even say that
other gods do not exist - it merely says that the Israelites should
worship Him (Jehovah) instead of any other gods. This was the beginning
of the Jewish innovation of monotheism. 

In the same way that cities like Athens had a 'favorite' god (Athena,
the goddess of wisdom) from among a broad pantheon of other deities, so
did the Israelites have a patron god (Jehovah, who is thought to have
been something like a god of war).

At the time of the Ten Commandments, there was a very real inclination
on the part of the tired and starving Israelites to turn to another god,
Baal, a fertility deity. This is the story of the Golden Calf. The First
Commandment simply says "I am your god, the one who helps you, the
Israelites. Don't pay any attention to the other ones." It's  *halfway*
towards saying "There is only one God", but it's not all the way there
and there's no way any Israelites at the time would have interpreted it
that way.

Christianity came about in a time when the Jews had pretty much
forgotten all the other gods and God/Yahweh/Jehovah had become the de
facto only God, omniscient and omnipotent. But Islam is the religion
that, thousands of years after the Ten Commandments, finally codified
monotheism: "There is no God but God." 

-Cf

[christopher eli fahey]
art: www.graphpaper.com
science: www.askROM.com