That is, we lack a "soul" (to use a primitive but descriptive term.)
In other words, there may be some people who are mostly conscious
mind, with a stunted, dormant, or even dead/non-existent subconscious (the source of intuition, ect.)
Such people might be essentially "scenery" placed into our reality to
provide lessons/challenges to fully "souled" people (who are destined
to have a conscious afterlife.) "Bots" would simply cease to exist upon
physical death.
Perhaps this might explain psychopaths (those people who commit crimes
and atrocities with NO remorse whatsoever, have behaved in such a
manner since childhood, and are otherwise mentally normal?)
Perhaps people like MYSELF are bots. After all, I am a man of THIS
world, and would like to stay here indefinitely (if I could stop myself
from aging, that is.) The "spirit world" leaves me cold. Perhaps this
lack of a "hunger" for "closeness to God" means I am not an "ensouled"
being? Truth be told, I could care less if am actually soul-less. (I just don't want to SUFFER after I die, oblivion would be A-O.K. for me...)
I wonder if there was a test to see if one was a "bot"? Perhaps future
science will find a way. Interesting thought!

I, Robot...

B-droid

If you have a conscious awareness, if Brendan can know that he is an "I" in some way, then you have a soul.  Our essence, is conscious awareness in a pure form.  




M

You are not a bot*, Chumley.
You inspire love,
whether you wish it or not.
I could put a row of kissy-smilies here to emphasise my thoughts
and it would probably turn your stomach.  
See, bots would have no reaction.  :)

Betson

* No one's a bot, as DocM said.

If you have a conscious awareness, if Brendan can know that he is an "I" in some way, then you have a soul.  Our essence, is conscious awareness in a pure form.  




M
*****************
I had the "agents" in the "Matrix" in mind, Doc.
They were sentient, yet pure simulation, with no reality
beyond the simulation...

B-agent

Hi Chumley Mentioning robots makes me say this,most men treat women like robots,they think they have to turn a key and a woman reacts and has no mind of her own and just thinks and feels the same way as they do,so most women are already familiar with the feeling of being a robot.

I dont mean all men just some of them. Im thinking about joining womens lib and burning my bra,like a lot of women have done in sunny old England.

Love and God bless       Love juditha

Interesting idea, B. But.....who made the "bots" in the first place? Wouldn't the tinker just keep on "tinking" and not want to throw all those valuable parts away? The "bot" may very well morph into something quite different after his "work" here on earth is done.... :)

Isaac Asimov, a very prolific writer, was very important to me as a teenager. Nice to hear his name invoked.....

I wouldn't mind paying him a visit someday....    love, blink

HiB-Man-

It can be demonstrated with a bit of time and symbolic logic that the entirety of "creative process" is nothing but the accumulation of old data, mixed and recast as new data. In other words, there's excellent support for your basic idea. Our likes and dislikes have been pretty well dissected by B F Skinner and Ivan Pavlov into learned responses. And there are those who would lump ESP and related phenomena into leakage and reception of stray electrical impulses in the brain that we share. So, in general, there's pretty good evience that your proposal is valid.

In fact, because of the conditions of definition in this life, it seems that the robotic influences persist after the mechanism falls off and decays. These influences appear to pass through the surrounding context as external influences, until at some later time they reunite in phase in a new embodiment (created by shared robotic mechanisms in their parents who were programmed to believe that what they were doing was enjoyable) so that the new little robot systems carry residuals from prior periods of manifestation. It all works quite well, except for those cases in which, as Omar put it, "the Potters hand did shake" in which case we get a few defects. Fortunately, we have Field Engineers such as Bruce, and Technicians who go about and assist systems that get stuck in their internal feedbak loops to get loose again and rejoin the Cosmic Data Stream.

And then, after we get our programming straight, there is a rumor that we get to go to Silicon Heaven and rejoin with calculators and telephone answering machines, as well as other long lost relatives. And if we do well there, who knows, we might even get to meet the Programmer! Then, to paraphrase Cayce, we get to be Co-Programmers of the Big Machine. The idea fairly boggles the CPU.

So now that you've got that part figured out, you might as well hear the rest. God is actually nothing but an innate statistical tendency of emptiness to look real, a sort of Un-Caused Cause, more commonly known as intrinsic static aring from a half-wave of Planck potential, in more modern terms, the Zero Point Energy. In other words, not only are we robotic, but ultimately, the light may be on, but there's nobody home, and no home to be in.

So, Buzz, Click Whirrr for the New Year!
d