Personally, I've been open with my friends and family about my lack of religion and the disdain I have for organized religions in general. I've been that way my whole life, and some people still give me flack for it. I look at such occasions as "teaching moments," when I can help bring a little light into someone else's muddy thinking.
But that's just me. If the question is, what advice would I give to a person that is surrounded by religious influences, and for whom religion makes up a major component of their social support system, then my ...
I think that the reason that I find Brooks' ideas interesting is because it seems to mirror the way that natural intelligences came about.
Biological evolution seems to amount to nothing more than local systems adapting to survive in and environment, and then aggregating into more complex systems. We know that this strategy has produced intelligence at least once in the history of the universe, and thus is seems to me a productive example to follow in attempting to create artificial intelligence as well.
Now, I don't know what the state of the art is for th... (read more)
Do not copy the Blind Idiot God, for it lives much longer than you, and is a blind idiot.