This years Edge Foundation question is “What are you optimistic about?”

What is the Edge Foundation?

The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society. Edge Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

160 really smart people answer. Contributors include TCAL favourites Richard Dawkins and Ray Kurzweil.

Dawkins’ answer:

The Final Scientific Enlightenment

I am optimistic that the physicists of our species will complete Einstein’s dream and discover the final theory of everything before superior creatures, evolved on another world, make contact and tell us the answer. I am optimistic that, although the theory of everything will bring fundamental physics to a convincing closure, the enterprise of physics itself will continue to flourish, just as biology went on growing after Darwin solved its deep problem. I am optimistic that the two theories together will furnish a totally satisfying naturalistic explanation for the existence of the universe and everything that’s in it including ourselves. And I am optimistic that this final scientific enlightenment will deal an overdue deathblow to religion and other juvenile superstitions.

I disagree. I believe the deathblow to “religion and other juvenile superstitions” will not be a grand unified theory in physics. Rather, it will be driven by socio-politcal forces, and facilitated technologically. At some point this century, sectarianism will become redundant as technology facilitates true global collaboration. Human religion, in its sectarian form, will down tools and set aside its isolationist and oppressive components and we’ll realise that we operate much more productively as a collective. A final theory of everything in physics will go a long way in supplanting human tendencies to spiritualism and a desire for meaning but it won’t be the final nail in the coffin. If time is on our side, perhaps we’ll be the ones spoiling the prize for other intelligent species elsewhere in the universe.

Previously - the 2005 question.