Irrespective of which religion is being considered, the concept of God as the creator is linked to the origin of the Universe and everything within it.
This means that if our scientists had a quantum-gravity recipe for the ingredients and the heating process that resulted in the birth of our Universe through the womb of the Big Bang, then they would be on their way to acquiring the professional expertise of God. The missing component might be a particle collider that can create the necessary conditions for making a baby Universe. Are there any alien scientists in the Milky-Way with this knowledge?
As of now, we have limited clues as to the actual process that gave birth to our Universe and so the endless possibilities remain a matter of belief. The basic principles underlying quantum-gravity are unclear because the enormous energy density that was realized at our cosmic beginning cannot be replicated in the observable Universe. Our only hope is to detect a gravitational wave signal from cosmic inflation or a thermal graviton background from the Planck time.
A higher level of intelligence that processed much more data about the Universe might have gotten closer to the idealized wisdom of God. For the first time in human history, we are about to encounter superhuman intelligence in the form of A.I., an abbreviation for either artificial intelligence — our technological product, or alien intelligence — from an extraterrestrial origin. The commercial benefits of the first form of A.I. are widely recognized, as it represents a tool that could outperform humans in processing vast amounts of data over a short time without suffering from the psychological weaknesses of humans.
The second idealized quality of God is omnipresence. In principle, if the Universe was created by quantum-gravity scientists and it enables the birth of quantum-gravity scientists, then the cycle of Universes born within Universes may continue forever.
In the context of longevity, repairing our body from damages or malfunctions so that it would never die sounds like an easier problem to solve than creating the Planck energy density so as to give birth to a baby Universe in the laboratory. In fact, the synthetic biologist, George Church, suggested in my recent conversation with him that the two of us might never die and could plan on follow-up conversations in a thousand or a million years. Longevity is a favored trait by Darwinian selection for “survival of the fittest.” The most advanced scientists in the Milky-Way galaxy are likely to be those who never die.
If astronauts could live for millions of years, they would be able to engage in interstellar travel using conventional rockets based on chemical propulsion.
Cosmic time is measured in billions of years. When in summer 1950 Enrico Fermi asked: “Where is everybody?”, he based this question on the knowledge he harvested from merely 49 years of life on this Earth. Fermi-like astronauts who travel through interstellar space and visit exoplanets would be far more knowledgeable in addressing this question. They might find plenty of microbes in extraterrestrial swamps, animals climbing on exo-planet vegetation, as well as ruins of technological civilizations that lost their livelihoods in a nuclear or biological war, through the loss of their atmosphere, through an asteroid impact or as a natural casualty of the brightening of their host star. Living longer brings the benefit of acquiring more data on our cosmic neighborhood, allowing us to better adapt to it. A Fermi-like astronaut with millions of years of cosmic experience might say: “Here is everybody!”
In a recent meeting with a group of theologians, I was asked about the religious implications of finding extraterrestrial intelligence. I noted that I have two daughters and my love for the one born second did not take away from the love that I have for the first one. It would be degrading to consider God as a parent who can only attend to one child. Knowing about your siblings and recognizing those who are better than you, should only enhance the sense of awe and appreciation of your parents.
Figuring out our cosmic roots, knowing more about our cosmic home and its residents, and not dying, will all bring us closer to the idealized mindset of God, as described in traditional religious texts.
What we do with the immense power that comes with this knowledge is up to us. As soon as scientists mastered nuclear physics, it became clear that we can use it for good — as a source of clean energy, or for evil — as a weapon. Similarly, A.I. can be used as a means for improving our quality of life or as a weapon with devastating consequences for mental health or national security.
Life can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, so it is better to stay optimistic about the future. We could do better if we focus on what really matters: wisdom based on data and longevity. These are worthy substitutes for the popular “likes” that many seek on social media and for attempts to degrade the happiness of other humans who do not agree with us. From a cosmic perspective, these toxic pursuits are a waste of our feeble life on this planet.
Are future humans more likely to be kind and generous if they live forever and benefit from augmenting their intelligence with A.I.? This is not a philosophical question. A Fermi-like astronaut can conduct a happiness-poll and quantify the statistics of civilizations like ours over the past few billion years. Are those who acquired longevity and wisdom happier?
My bet is a definitive “Yes!” This is why I maintain a healthy lifestyle and look up rather than down with the Galileo Project observatories. My hope is that finding a smarter student in our class of technological civilizations would inspire us to do better.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
