Eliezer Yudkowsky: Darwin discovered God

In a way, Darwin discovered God—a God that failed to match the preconceptions of theology, and so passed unheralded. If Darwin had discovered that life was created by an intelligent agent—a bodiless mind that loves us, and will smite us with lightning if we dare say otherwise—people would have said My gosh! That’s God!”

But instead Darwin discovered a strange alien God—not comfortably ineffable”, but really genuinely different from us. Evolution is not a God, but if it were, it wouldn’t be Jehovah. It would be H. P. Lovecraft’s Azathoth, the blind idiot God burbling chaotically at the center of everything, surrounded by the thin monotonous piping of flutes.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pLRogvJLPPg6Mrvg4/an-alien-god

a hydrothermal vent

quote eliezer yudkowsky evolution religion