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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Godhood.. [View all]
An implication and slight rephrasing of Clarke's third law, an implication Asimov wrote into his story "The Last Question".
Technology can confer vast powers, today we can talk to, see or even kill people on the other side of the world without ever setting foot out of our own country. We would be like gods to someone transported straight from the middle ages.
If an advanced civilization were to show up here at Earth how would we be able to determine that the manifestation was not a god or gods, assuming the aliens were trying to get us to believe they were a god or gods with technological tricks far beyond our own understanding?
Edited to correct a brain fart on my part..
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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Godhood.. [View all]
Fumesucker
Feb 2015
OP
I wrongly attributed TLQ to Clarke in the OP and then edited when it was pointed out to me..
Fumesucker
Feb 2015
#22
In Childhood's End some idiot tried to fire a nuke at the alien guardians, and promptly disappeared.
leveymg
Feb 2015
#7
I think this feeds into an evolutionary defense mechanism; our predisposition to faith.
AtheistCrusader
Feb 2015
#9
He wrote quite a bit of stuff that's not in that subgenre, I don't read fantasy either any more
Fumesucker
Feb 2015
#25