Machine-Age God

This was written in Ackoff, R, Creating the Corporate Future (John Wiley 1981:19)

[following a discussion of the use of ‘systems’ as means of thinking about relationships, and mention of Heisenberg as destroying confidence in being able to comprehensively explain anything]

“This means that we are free to believe or not in an all-containing whole. Since our understanding will never embrace such a whole, even if it exits, it makes no practical difference if we assume it to exist. Nevertheless, many individuals find comfort in assuming existence of such a unifying whole .Not surprisingly, they call it God. This God however, is very different from the Machine-Age God who was conceptualized as an individual who had created the universe. God-as-the-whole cannot be individualised or personified, and cannot be thought of as the creator. To do so would make no more sense than to speak of a man as creator of his organs. In this holistic view of things man is taken as a part of God just as his heart is taken as a part of man".


Just thought it interesting; as it always is to see how people use the ideas of 'God', 'creation' and (sometimes) evolution as springboards for discussion.