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The strangest thing about this imaginary world is that it is exactly the kind of world we would expect ours to become if it had evolved along a pathway in which consciousness and awareness were functionless epiphenomena and morality, goodness, and altruism were mental aberrations that have no effective function in real behavioral responses--as is claimed by so many behavioral scientists.
Taking our imagining one step further, why would altruism evolve or exist anywhere in any universe if no force or power of any kind pre-existed that would somehow foster its eventual appearance? Supposedly machines like us do as we do because we cannot do otherwise. What then drove robots such as us to 'imagine' all these things that have no reality. What could be the source of such imaginings?
Wright accepts that the embarkation of biological and social evolution on pathways appearing to have an arrow of direction is not proof for the actual existence of an altruistically inclined architect. But surely, he says, it is more suggestive of there being such a divinity than the competing alternative--a world devoid of any meaning or value, having no direction, no valid differentiation of right from wrong, no good or bad, no love, no beauty, no altruism, no consciousness, and no self-awareness!
In such a world, the likes of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot are incapable of evil, can inflict no suffering or unhappiness, and are behaviorally indistinguishable from a Mother Teresa or a Florence Nightingale.
An alternative scenario is a world in which organic and cultural evolution do have direction, a direction even suggestive of benign purpose. In it, from its beginning, life simulated being a machine to generate and process information and meaning that finally deepened to become a machine that creates the potential for good and evil but raises the ratio in favor of the good.
Along the way consciousness and self-awareness appear, perhaps as a response to non-zero-sumness that arises concomitantly with the socialization of the higher species. Consciousness is what it feels like not to be a robot. Self-awareness is what it is like to know you are not a robot. Both characteristics are profound, possibly eternal mysteries that are suggestive of having origin at a higher level than us earthlings--which opens the way for other unsolved questions like free will.
With subtlety and humility, Wright places the reader in many imaginary situations in which the only rational answer is that there really is, or at least ought to be, a transcendent Creator out there somewhere. Only a stubborn mule-head could answer otherwise.
Wright concludes with this comment: "Whether or not you believe that the story of life on Earth indeed has a cosmic author, one thing seems clear: it is our story. And as its lead characters, we cannot escape its implications.
References
1.Wright, Robert (2000) Non-Zero. The Logic of Human Destiny. Pantheon Books.
2.Dawkins, Richard (1976) The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press.
3.Dennett, Daniel (1991) Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown.
4.Hazan, Robert, M (2001) Life's Rocky Start . Sci. Am. 284 (4) 62.
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