[Billthedrill]

Ray Kurzweil, in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, calculates that there have been 32 doublings since World War II and that the singularity point--the point at which total computational power will rise to levels so far beyond anything that we can imagine that it will appear nearly infinite and thus be indistinguishable from omniscience--may be upon us as early as 2050.

Silliness, IMHO - our ability to distinguish computational power from omniscience also increases over time. Imagine what Charles Babbage would think of my abilty to look at a colored piece of glass and utilize the computational resouces of the internet - he might consider it omniscient but my 6-year-old nephew will come to consider it primitive. I believe this assertion suffers from the same weakness as a similar one (also Clarke?) - "technology at a sufficient level is indistinguishable from magic." That one also assumes that our ability to make that distinction is static, and, in fact, it is not.

Anyway, I already know that ETs aren't God - what in the world would God want with all those cow genitalia?

[Roscoe]

...our ability to distinguish computational power from omniscience also increases over time.

Excellent point!

[Doctor Doom]

what in the world would God want with all those cow genitalia?

Udderly ridiculous.

[backup]

Imagine what Charles Babbage would think of my abilty to look at a colored piece of glass and utilize the computational resouces of the internet - he might consider it omniscient

Actually, I don't think he would.

He'd recognize it as a very impressive machine. But certainly not 'magic'.

Indeed, I have always disagreed with Arthur C. Clarke's "second law". The only people who mistake a phenomona for 'magic' are those who believe in magic. The others will always look for an explanation and try to figure out how it works.