What sets us apart?

I love reading a good paperback book at the beach, and having just spent nearly a week there, I got to finish Footprints of God, a fairly interesting book about the implications of Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Theory, and religion (oh yeah, it's actually a thriller. .. a pretty well written one, the theology part is pretty. . . uh . . . well let's just say it's kind of weak.)

In the book, the scientists use a "Super MRI" which can scan a human brain and then create a perfectly detailed model of all of a person's memories, knowledge, urges, and instincts. Then they work really hard to create a computer powerful enough to store all of this stuff, and -- viola! -- they have in some way eternally extended a person. Yes, there is eternal life! Only now the "person" can learn stuff in seconds, process knowledge in seconds -- and is now "superior" to the original person.

Of course this premise begs a billion questions, and it's a thought-provoking book. The one idea that the book really raised with me was this: I know that a human and a computer are somehow distinctly different. And even if it was possible to "backup" all of our memories, our knowledge, and urges, and instincts to a computer, and then have that computer proceed logically based on that stored information -- to me that computer is not now human. But why?

To be human is more than possessing "human" intelligence. We don't need a fictional supercomputer to demonstrate this -- chimps are "smarter" -- utilizing logic and problem solving, etc -- than human babies, yet aren't more "human" than babies. Mentally challenged individuals -- who are lacking in their logical and intellectual abilities -- are no less "human" than was Aristotle.

You can't say it's the intellect.

Is it emotions? Artificial Intelligence researchers consistently have the hardest time creating emotions in computers. .. and it's been said that humans are the only animals that cry (actually, a lot of animals will cry -- in an effort to elicit an immediate response, but humans probably are the only ones that weep -- ie crying for the sake of being sad, of mourning). But you can find other kinds of emotions all over the animal kingdom -- anger, sadness, happiness, jealousy, etc. . . so I'd say it doesn't really set us apart very well.

What about creativity? There are animals that kind of "create" things -- like spiders and spiderwebs; birds and their songs, etc. But you can certainly argue that these are more just the carrying out of the instictual programming within, not a truly new creation, in the sense that humans consider creativity. Spiders have been around for a long time, and the "technology" of webspinning hasn't changed substantially. Yet look at the human advances in flight in the last 100 years. Bird songs, while beautiful, are also fairly predictable. Compare them to the wide diversity you find in "human music" -- from Blues to Classical to Rock to Pop to Motown to Disco to Folk and all the subgenres within. Clearly, humans have a special kind of creativity. I know it's been discovered that humans aren't the only animals that use tools, as was previously believed, but they are the only kind of animal that come out with brand new kinds of tools every year, more and more advanced.

But could a super computer, somehow loaded with all of the "principles of creativity," be as creative of humans? Maybe, but then I would argue that if it did, it's creativity was a reflection of the human creativity that created it, not really possessing any essential creativity that it possessed itself.

But still, you'd have to argue that from all appearances, that super computer was creative. I don't think you can say it's creativity alone that sets humans apart. Plus, again, there are many humans that for some reason or other, are not from appearances creative at all. Are they not human?

What can I conclude then? I think I'm going to have to reach outside the bounds of the material for an answer. . . the definitve answer doesn't exist in the material world.

I think it's spirit. It's the breath of God. Consciousness, emotions, and creativity all are pathways of the spirit, so I think that's why all of these things are clues to what sets us apart. But really they are just symptoms of what truly makes us different. If one does not believe in spirit, I think a natural, logical conclusion is that we really aren't all that different from the animals or the computers, at least not qualitatively so. To put it another way, if someone wants to believe that humans are different than computers or animals, then you have to believe in more than the material world. . . Am I missing something?