In 1990, on a boat trip back to Ireland from Europe, my travelling companion and I had a few drinks and inevitably managed to get into a conversation on religion.
“Do you think”, said he, “that one day we will one day be able to build robots that will think, feel and behave like humans?”
“Yes”, I responded, “it’s quite likely”.
“OK then. What if you turned one of those robots off for good? What if you destroyed the robots so that you couldn’t possibly rebuild it? What if you just took a sledgehammer to it? Would it go to heaven?”
That was the exact moment my house of cards fell down.
I had no answer to his question, apart from the blindingly obvious. One day we probably will build robots that will behave and feel a lot like us. When they die, they won’t go to heaven. And neither will we. They will just turn off and fade out. And so will we.
I had a miserable night that night, as I considered the implications of what this meant.
But it soon enough faded away. My house of cards, that had been teetering for years, had finally given up under the strain. I stopped going to Mass and I got on with my life.
So then what happened?
(You can’t leave us hanging like that!
)
Oh the rest of the story is kind of boring!
I didn’t punch my friend or anything.. My world didn’t really collapse after all and I had a happy enough life after it. Just no God sitting on my shoulder any more telling me how I should think..
I remember that night, thinking about how all that time I was simply longing for a strong all-knowing guide to my life.
It’s a banal story enough, but significant in terms of how it changed my outlook on things. For years I wouldn’t let anything get through my defences. Little by little they were being broken down though. and then all of a sudden it happened, one night, after a few beers. Not a bad way to deconvert really, is it?