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On Religion in the Transhumanist Future

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Thu, 2011-02-03 11:15
TBRMInsanity TBRMInsanity's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
I agree with a lot of the people here. Religion doesn't have to be supernatural. It is a set of beliefs. A large majority of religions have supernatural elements in them but it is not a requirement.
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Thu, 2011-02-03 12:43
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
Religion is more than just 'a set of beliefs', otherwise the McDonald's marketing strategy is a religion. The "definition" provided by wikipedia is not a full definition. In fact, there's probably a page worth of text describing how to define religion which goes well beyond the blurb included there. Definitions of religion - "a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny; "he lost his faith but not his morality" an institution to express belief in a divine power; "he was raised in the Baptist religion"; "a member of his own faith contradicted him"" (Princeton Wordnet) "A religion is a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a supernatural agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs." (Wikipedia) "b (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance 2: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices 3archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness 4: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith " Merriam-Webster "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. 2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion. 3. the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions. 4. the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion. 5. the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith. 6. something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience: to make a religion of fighting prejudice. " American Heritage Dictionary Yes, you can say religion is just "a body of beliefs", but understand you are redefining the term and ignoring what the authorities on the English language have determined is the definition, and in doing so you invalidate any attempt at serious discussion.
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LDS members believe that all things in this universe are governed by laws and priniciples ... God is not "magic" or supernatural in our belief (I happen to be one of these per capita Mormon science guys).
One definition of supernatural is pertaining to god, so god is, by definition, supernatural. A transcendent God, which is what I believe the LDS faith adheres to, is also supernatural in that it transcends the natural laws of THIS universe, even if it is bound by the laws of another.
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There are atheist that hold an almost reverent view of science and have even hijacked and dogmatized some scientific theories to further their meme.
This I would agree to. Atheism CAN BE a religion, if it is pursued hard enough. But I don't think it's the average (and it's not something I would argue for for fear of causing insult - how do you tell someone they've taken science so far it's no longer science?)
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The problem with EP (don't get me wrong, I think it is a very cool game) is that Atheism is the only "real" religion presented. Sure there our other faiths mentioned but most of them are, at best, a strawman that is easy to beat up on.
I would agree with this as well. Atheists and anarchists seem to get a free pass at the expense of everyone else.
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Thu, 2011-02-03 16:25
root root's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
root@On Religion in the Transhumanist Future [hr]
nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Religion is more than just 'a set of beliefs', otherwise the McDonald's marketing strategy is a religion. The "definition" provided by wikipedia is not a full definition. In fact, there's probably a page worth of text describing how to define religion which goes well beyond the blurb included there. [...] Yes, you can say religion is just "a body of beliefs", but understand you are redefining the term and ignoring what the authorities on the English language have determined is the definition, and in doing so you invalidate any attempt at serious discussion. [...] Atheists and anarchists seem to get a free pass at the expense of everyone else.
It's not that often that I find myself on the receiving end of such a thorough rhetorical beatdown. I will have to put some more thought into my argument before I can try to defend it again. To further your argument about a free pass for anarchists and atheists, I find there is no reputation network dedicated to philosophy, religion, and sociology. nezumi.hebereke y-rep++
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Thu, 2011-02-03 16:54
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
I'm sorry!! I'm not trying to be rough. I do enjoy a good debate though (and yes, it gets me into trouble). I'm actually a moderator on a religion debate 'game' on RPoL, so I've been talking about this stuff for a long while now. But I do like to stir it, and sometimes it gets me in trouble. I was thinking it might be better for me to avoid threads like this just so I keep my fat mouth shut and maintain what local rep I have :P
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Thu, 2011-02-03 18:26
root root's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
root@On Religion in the Transhumanist Future [hr] I think you misunderstand me. I'm not upset at all, I'm impressed. I enjoy rhetoric and argumentation, and there is something artistic about a counterargument that takes the feet out from under the original argument quite as cleanly as you did. The lack of a reputation network related to religion and philosophy is something I noticed awhile ago, and this line of argument is just making it clearer that there needs to be one. Keep it up; you are currently the only one with any rep in that network. Not only should you not stop, you get to award rep to people who do a good job of making their arguments.
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Fri, 2011-02-04 00:28
emaughan emaughan's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
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To further your argument about a free pass for anarchists and atheists, I find there is no reputation network dedicated to philosophy, religion, and sociology.
Yes, and it is not just the mechanics of the game, it is the tone of the game which places atheisim front and center. Religions have to go sit in the back. Here is why I think that limits the potential of the games atmosphere. From a secular POV where there is no afterlife, the idea of good and evil are extremely abstract and no moral arguments can be based on such terms. This in turn weakens potential plots and the motivations driving characters in the story. Let me back up and clarify why atheism, by its own standard of beliefs means that there is no good or evil (legal dislaimer - I do not mean that atheist are amoral hedonist out to live a life of pure anarchy. Only that a mathmatical understanding of atheism demonstrates that good and evil do not really exist). Using calculus, and taking an intergral from 0 to infinity, compare any constant (1, 10, 250, 100,000,000). The answer is always the same - ZERO. If the constant your looking at is the number of years one lives, and the zero to infinity is the timeline starting at your birth, then no matter how long you live your life is nothing. No afterlife means that in relation to an infinite future there is no meaning to your existance. Let's take Mao and Washington as an example - both strong leaders with historical significance. Mao was not a nice guy and murdered more of his own people than Hitler or Stalin; Washington was great man who refused to be king and helped create the greatest nation on Earth. What does it matter to either of them if there is no afterlife? They are out of existance - no thoughts, feelings, sorrow, joy... nothing. So what they did in their life has no meaning to them. To Mao there is no good or evil because there is no Mao. Washington has no sense of doing a great good because there is no Washington. No afterlife, no meaning to life, no good or evil because we are all going to fade out of existance forever! Faith in an afterlife changes everthing because what one does in mortality can have eternal effects. Good and evil can once again have meaning because life has meaning. In game terms individuals can have a much wider range of goals and that can add variety to the setting. That evil AI can really be an "evil" AI because good and evil have meaning. Fighting for the survival of man is noble goal when one views each person as a being with an eternal soul. You can have the religious PC who feels that working for firewall is a divine calling to protect his brothers and sisters (religious use not literal), but this same individual is hesitant to resleeve as he views it as suicide - agianst his beliefs. The believer who believes God has abanded mankind because of our sins who takes it upon himself to find out how to help uplift man into a more rightous state. Communities in space that live a united order doing their best to make sure there are no poor among them - a twist on the rep system - the more you follow that belief's tenets the more rep you get in that faith. Gatecrashers that view the gates as a means to reach true Narvana. Questers who look for signs of their faith, even if it only is remnants, on other worlds. Faiths that look for interconecting patterns of beliefs found amongst other civilizations to build their own doctrines. There are many stories that can become far more interesting when adding motivations to the PCs and NPCs that include deep convictions based on a variety of different faiths. You can still have those atheistic characters who view things as nothing but shades of gray, but it is more interesting to also have characters that see things from a clearer black and white prospective (at least to them).
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Fri, 2011-02-04 08:42
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
I say let's steal the term "R-rep" and let the argonauts sit on it :P I sort of understand the decision to move religion to the back seat. The idea of this is trans-everything - moving beyond what is now. And there are few things as well established as religion. And in fact, as someone with some religious background I almost prefer they say "there is no religion" rather than do what they did with the Jovians and make religion, as the old institution, into the big bad guy. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that none of the designers are especially religious, and honestly, it's very hard for a non-religious person to write about religion (just like it's hard for a religious person to write about atheism or agnosticism), so theirs may have been the wiser choice. Of course, there's nothing stopping us from writing about it ourselves, putting it into the wiki and so on. Maybe one of the writers will see it and wrap it into future releases ;) re: Emaughan's post - what you're asking is 'if there a purpose in life if things are necessarily impermanent?' It's a legitimate question, but not a proof. Religion is convenient in providing several answers to 'what is the purpose of life', but non-religious people still manage to find purpose, even if it's as simple as 'the moment has value, and therefore investing in the moment is a moral good'. Any philosophy which finds value despite impermenance, or which challenges the idea of impermanence (which transhumanism does, to a degree) is a counterargument against your proof.
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Fri, 2011-02-04 13:28
GreyBrother GreyBrother's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
Hmmm. Something kicked my gears here, nezumi. Why not move religion to a state of trans-everything? Imagine, how religions evolve and new ones evolve. The corebook gives some ideas (basically acknowledging the existance) about Xenotheism and Neo-Buddhism. There may be faiths from today thriving or some die out. Most assume that christianity dies out. Well, maybe the church does, but adaption is a strong meme with us humans (and possibly every sentient life), so why not a Neo-christianity. Add another testament, declaring the Fall to the Day of Judgement and that everybody who survived to be considered pure enough by god to live on and prosper. You could even split them in half, one side persistent to the idea, that only those who survived with their original body are the blessed ones, and the others counterarguing. I can also imagine worship of the forefathers. People remember their dead, so i think it could thrive. Interesting twist could come up with the fact of virtual immortality and people claiming to be forefathers before they died. I see some plots there... Or do something completely from scratch.
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Fri, 2011-02-04 14:09
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
Not bad. I would argue though that, given what we're constantly exposed to, the survivors aren't the 'pure in spirit'. Perhaps God has taken mercy on us and given us additional time to repent before the apocalypse is permitted for real.
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Fri, 2011-02-04 14:34
root root's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
root@On Religion in the Transhumanist Future [hr]
nezumi.hebereke wrote:
I say let's steal the term "R-rep" and let the argonauts sit on it :P
R-rep covers argonauts, technologists, researchers, and scientists. For religious discussions to count under r-rep, they need to be secular Religious Studies or Philosophy discussions. F-rep covers socialites, artists, glitterati, and media, so any discussions about religion that are less rhetorical and more similar to missionary work should get f-rep. E-rep covers nano-ecologists, preservationists, and reclaimers, so any religious factions that consider particular soil to be sacred will likely end up using this reputation network. X-rep covers gatejumpers, as well as (I assert) exhumans and singularity seekers, so there will be plenty of self-declared prophets in this reputation network.
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Fri, 2011-02-04 17:55
emaughan emaughan's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
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Any philosophy which finds value despite impermenance, or which challenges the idea of impermanence (which transhumanism does, to a degree) is a counterargument against your proof.
I'm not saying that people who do not believe in an afterlife preceive their life as worthless. I'm saying that, based on their belief, logically, mathmatically, there can be no meaning. Any meaning that they feel their life has is an illusion, good and evil have no real basis. So an atheist can live a full life that they find meaningfull - but this is a false preception if indeed they're nothing more than a bag of chemical reactions that will come to a halt some day. The rest of eternity, they're out of the picture; life in comparison is nothing. As for transhumanism increasing the "life" of an individual, it matters not whether it is 65 years or 65,000,000 years. Once that life ends, it is over forever (the intergral from 0 to infinity means all constants are zero in comparison). Because of this, I am very impressed with those atheist that do not go off the edge into a life that is hyperhedonistic. The moral atheist is someone to be admired.
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Fri, 2011-02-04 18:43
root root's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
root@On Religion in the Transhumanist Future [hr]
emaughan wrote:
I'm not saying that people who do not believe in an afterlife preceive their life as worthless. I'm saying that, based on their belief, logically, mathmatically, there can be no meaning. Any meaning that they feel their life has is an illusion, good and evil have no real basis. So an atheist can live a full life that they find meaningfull - but this is a false preception if indeed they're nothing more than a bag of chemical reactions that will come to a halt some day. The rest of eternity, they're out of the picture; life in comparison is nothing.
If you compare a finite lifespan to an infinite afterlife, the theists life as a ratio to their afterlife is still zero. If you divide an atheists lifespan by their afterlife, you are dividing by zero. This nicely demonstrates the limits of arithmetic over the real numbers as a religious metaphor. The point being that once you take the afterlife out of the picture, any entities moral actions in their lifetime become their primary reason for enacting goodwill, rather than a fear for their actions being projected onto eternity.
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Fri, 2011-02-04 20:36
Quincey Forder Quincey Forder's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
Have you noticed that "true" atheist, those who are actively working against religions or thoroughly resisting any and all of their converting arguments, are generally resistant to viral marketing and social engineered stuff? I don't remember if it was Joss Whedon or Geoff Johns who wrote that Wonder Woman issue, in which Diana says to one of her mortal friends that "you can't defeat a god like that, they are self conscious ideas". Could it be that she meant that gods are sentient memes? that would mean that an atheist is someone who can resist memetic programing much better than anyone else. And that's something powers-that-be don't really care for, someone who can resist culturally ingrained ideas of obedience and/or fanaticism. Am I anti-religious? damn right I am! but I respect people's choice to believe in something, and I expect that courtesy in return. Faith ain't faith if it's beaten into you, either the hard or the soft way
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Fri, 2011-02-04 22:22
emaughan emaughan's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
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If you divide an atheists lifespan by their afterlife, you are dividing by zero.
Actually using the integral of 0 to infinity is more like dividing by infinity - not zero. This is why calculus is needed to work problems that approach limits.
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The point being that once you take the afterlife out of the picture, any entities moral actions in their lifetime become their primary reason for enacting goodwill, rather than a fear for their actions being projected onto eternity.
The choice of the word "fear" is telling - it is perhaps the outlook of few religions and how they see the afterlife, but many others do not. I see the actions in this life as simply affecting the vector into eternity. Small changes here can have enormous effects further downstream.
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Could it be that she meant that gods are sentient memes? that would mean that an atheist is someone who can resist memetic programing much better than anyone else.
Now the question is can you prove that atheism is not itself a meme - by all definitions it is a meme. So to claim special status that atheist are superior to resisting memes makes no sense. Also not all memes are created equal, some are week, some are strong, some are beneficial some harmful and others neutral. Memes are not all bad or good. The most resistant person to memes that I can imagine would not be an atheist - since that is a meme - but someone who did not have much mental capacity to process any information such as someone who suffers from Trisomy.
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Faith ain't faith if it's beaten into you, either the hard or the soft way
Agree with the first part, the second part "the soft way" made me smile remembering a girl I used to date. I've had both atheist and evangelicals try to brow beat me with the "superiority" of their beliefs - never had much effect. I'm not sure if I would be considered meme resistant or just stuck my current meme. Would you view yourself as meme resistant, or just stuck in your current meme? The first sounds quite noble - the second just plain stubborn.
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Fri, 2011-02-04 22:38
root root's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
root@On Religion in the Transhumanist Future [hr]
emaughan wrote:
Quote:
If you divide an atheists lifespan by their afterlife, you are dividing by zero.
Actually using the integral of 0 to infinity is more like dividing by infinity - not zero. This is why calculus is needed to work problems that approach limits.
An atheist would have no afterlife. Hence the zero. Do tell me about limits as applied to religion though, I'm curious about where this line of reasoning can end up.
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Fri, 2011-02-04 22:44
Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
emaughan wrote:
I'm not sure if I would be considered meme resistant or just stuck my current meme.
Memes are like viruses; they require hosts to be spread and reproduce, and their "fitness" is determined by how well they do so. Things like Farmville are perfect examples of how an otherwise terrible, unpalatable meme can bypass people's usual defenses.
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Fri, 2011-02-04 23:56
emaughan emaughan's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
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Things like Farmville are perfect examples of how an otherwise terrible, unpalatable meme can bypass people's usual defenses.
Axel - you the MAN! (or whatever gender you may be). It is a pleasure to have you in these forums. I busted up at that and it hit very close to home. One day, visit friends, Katie was "planting strawberries"... click, click, click, click, click... Ya, not sure how such a nice girl like her fell for that one.
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Do tell me about limits as applied to religion though, I'm curious about where this line of reasoning can end up.
Which religion? I'll apply it to what I think you may be referencing. What was God doing for the eternity before he created the Universe? Integral of negative infinity to time of creation. He would never reach that point. Combine this with the belief of creation ex nihilo this would mean He exisisted in either pure void for an infinite amount of time or He did not create all matter and there was something there before he created other stuff. My faith does not believe in creation ex nihilo, nor does it believe that God was alone before the creation. This still does not make it easy to wrap one's head around the concept of eternal time frames when we are so subject to temporal time. Both believers and non-believers have trouble understanding (if they really try to think about it) how it all came to be. To say God just popped it all into existance leaves open the question - what was He doing before??? To say there is no God and everything just popped into existance from nothing runs into the slight problem that we have no evidence that you can create mass from nothing, let alone enough mass to equal our universe. Nothing was hanging around doing nothing and decided to do something and create something from nothing. Stating that the mass has always existed in one form or another is great - except it makes my head hurt when I try and think about why it always existed. So - good point, but needs to be more specific. Second, the difference between a mathmatician and a construction worker. The mathmatician can prove that one can never hit a nail with a hammer by going 1/2 the distances towards the nail each moment. 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 etc... you will never hit the nail. The construction worker, while the mathmatician is proving that it is impossible, builds the house.
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Fri, 2011-02-04 23:52
Quincey Forder Quincey Forder's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
I could almost imagine how Farmville would have evolved in the future: wife: "No, dear, I can't go to Sky Ark with you for our 30th wedding anniversary, as my yearly pilgrimage to the Holy Farmville simspace is scheduled precisely that weekend. Now please hang up, I have to drain my sacred virtual cattle!" hubby, after cutting the com:" Fifth Wave frackin' Damn!" I'm wondering how you would define Duncanites (THS) and Unitologist (DSverse) in EP terms. Funny enough, I have made up a cult to oppose/ally my players' character in Mind the WMD that is like a blend with the two philosophies
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Sat, 2011-02-05 00:36
root root's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
root@On Religion in the Transhumanist Future [hr] Ok, I looked up creatio ex nihilo and looked over some of the arguments there. My question to you is what, exactly, do you look for in an argument to be persuaded by it? Is it a matter of who makes the argument, or the conviction put into making the argument, maybe? This creatio ex nihilo seems to be an argument concerning the beginning of reality, and the bit and pieces needed for that to occur. Some people want to argue that reality popped into existence when Yahweh rubbed His Yesod all over the place, while others claim that since we haven't seen any matter spontaneously appear, the Creator must have had material to work with. Is that about right? I see where there may, potentially, be an issue or two with regards to that particular line of reasoning. This sort of argument doesn't seem like it has a point to me. We are here now, so things started somehow. If you aren't worried about an afterlife, and you won't live to see the end of time, the particulars of why and how reality started are interesting academic concerns that physicists puzzle over by looking at very tiny things with very big things. While this research may net us some interesting new technologies over a few generations, it mostly isn't relevant for day to day life.
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Sat, 2011-02-05 10:29
Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
emaughan wrote:
Axel - you the MAN! (or whatever gender you may be). It is a pleasure to have you in these forums. I busted up at that and it hit very close to home. One day, visit friends, Katie was "planting strawberries"... click, click, click, click, click... Ya, not sure how such a nice girl like her fell for that one.
Heh heh, thank you. It's true, though, Zynga's incredibly good at just expanding on what salesmen have been doing for ages: Building obligations. They provide a really cheap product, one that costs them basically nothing, but they do all sorts of things to bypass mental defenses through constructing obligations and disguising intent. If you want to read more on that sort of thing, I suggest looking into Robert Caldini. I have a copy of his Influence book on my shelf, it's a great book. If you want more specifically on the power of Farmville, [url=http://www.cracked.com/article_18709_6-devious-ways-farmville-gets-peopl...'s an article from Cracked that takes a funny poke at it.[/url] Now, I believe I'm off topic, so I'll let you all get back to religion.
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Sun, 2011-02-06 01:22
emaughan emaughan's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
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My question to you is what, exactly, do you look for in an argument to be persuaded by it?
The quality of the data, whether there exist a null hypothesis, and finally how much information has been gathered on the topic. Does it create a repeatable pattern. That's for science and economic theory. Who recorded the data. Is the source first hand, second hand or third hand. Who is presenting the information now and what biasis do they hold. If the issue is contriversial, what do the opponents say. That's for history and news. Are the beliefs consistant or contradictory. Does the doctrine presented have a means of personal verification without having to depend on the opinions of men. A religion that claims divinity is worthless if the individual can not experience personal revelation. Does following the doctrine have positive benefits in my own life and the life of those around me. That's for religion.
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Sun, 2011-02-06 12:29
nick012000 nick012000's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
emaughan wrote:
Quote:
Things like Farmville are perfect examples of how an otherwise terrible, unpalatable meme can bypass people's usual defenses.
Axel - you the MAN! (or whatever gender you may be). It is a pleasure to have you in these forums. I busted up at that and it hit very close to home. One day, visit friends, Katie was "planting strawberries"... click, click, click, click, click... Ya, not sure how such a nice girl like her fell for that one.
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Do tell me about limits as applied to religion though, I'm curious about where this line of reasoning can end up.
Which religion? I'll apply it to what I think you may be referencing. What was God doing for the eternity before he created the Universe? Integral of negative infinity to time of creation. He would never reach that point. Combine this with the belief of creation ex nihilo this would mean He exisisted in either pure void for an infinite amount of time or He did not create all matter and there was something there before he created other stuff. My faith does not believe in creation ex nihilo, nor does it believe that God was alone before the creation. This still does not make it easy to wrap one's head around the concept of eternal time frames when we are so subject to temporal time. Both believers and non-believers have trouble understanding (if they really try to think about it) how it all came to be.
Firstly, integrals don't work the way you think they work. Secondly, God exists outside of time; all of eternity is as an instant to him, and an instant is as of all of eternity to him as well.
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Second, the difference between a mathmatician and a construction worker. The mathmatician can prove that one can never hit a nail with a hammer by going 1/2 the distances towards the nail each moment. 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 etc... you will never hit the nail. The construction worker, while the mathmatician is proving that it is impossible, builds the house.
That's [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradox]Zeno's Paradox[/url], and if you actually understood integrals, you'd know why it doesn't work that way, because that's how you solve it.
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Sun, 2011-02-06 21:33
emaughan emaughan's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
Yes Nicko - I understand itergrals, also the idea proposed of God existing outside of time and space. Intergrals, allow us to understand what happens when one is approaching a limit such as 0 or infinity or any number range that can form the boundry of an equation. I was asked to apply the math (that I was using to show why with no afterlife there can be no meaning to life) to religion (very broad question) and I did so in a way that shows some of the quandries that can be created. That is why I ended - to keep prospective - with the carpenter building the house while the theorist said it was impossible (of course given calculus he would have a more realistic answer). Now with God out of time and space - pure speculation but a possibility - that still does leave us to ponder what that means. If I draw an infinate time line into the past, what was occuring for that "infinity" before we got here? To say time does not go infinitely into the past raises the question as to what was happening before time. Bringing God into the mix - what was happening at all these other points in the timestream and what was He doing. So yes we can say he is out of time and space - but what does that really mean? To me it is more of a dodge that is unsupported by any evidence or scripture. Other than, "My ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts", what state God exists in is pretty much unknown even counting revelations given. Kicking Him out of time and space still leaves open a whole bundle of puzzles for us mere mortal minds. I made sure to note that these are not just questions for believers in God, but atheist as well run up to some tough issues when it comes to creation of this universe.
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Mon, 2011-02-07 10:46
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
emaughan wrote:
Using calculus, and taking an intergral from 0 to infinity, compare any constant (1, 10, 250, 100,000,000). The answer is always the same - ZERO. If the constant your looking at is the number of years one lives, and the zero to infinity is the timeline starting at your birth, then no matter how long you live your life is nothing.
Why does calculus apply here? Calculus would be appropriate for say calculating the acceleration of an object. I've never heard anyone trying to apply mathematics, muchless calculus, to the value of life or moral actions. You're going to have to make a compelling argument as to why we can measure the value of moral actions mathematically, then why applying an integral to them is relevant, before I can accept the remainder of this line of reasoning.
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What does it matter to either of them if there is no afterlife?
This is another way of explaining it - if there is nothing left after the fact, what value is there? But like I said, you are asking how does one determine the purpose of life. It sounds like your definition is that purpose is tied to how long the effects of your life last. If the effects of your life last forever, then your life will always have had a purpose. Once those effects are out of existence, that life no longer has meaning. However, your integral proof above has several fatal errors, which keep it from being conclusive, and I've seen several compelling arguments as to why a life can have eternal value even if the effects of that life are not eternal. This also assumes that time works only in the way that seems most obvious to our senses - future to past, always moving. It fails to account for a universe where time in fact always exists, and we are constantly travelling - i.e., the past is always 'happening', and we are moving from moment to moment. In those cases, as the past is always in existence, the events of a life always have value, even though our line of consciousness may move too far from those events to recognize them. I do agree though with your statements regarding more religious people as characters. I do think that religious hard-liners are more interesting as characters than more pragmatic people who always pursue the 'optimal' choice. Regarding memetics, I don't think memetic resistance is unique to atheists. I've met quite a few Christians who say "I believe in this, and anything which disagrees with it is from the devil". That makes them EXTREMELY resistant to competing memes, moreso than the atheist holding the 'falling for memes without rational thought is bad' meme.
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Mon, 2011-02-14 08:22
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Why does calculus apply here? Calculus would be appropriate for say calculating the acceleration of an object. I've never heard anyone trying to apply mathematics, muchless calculus, to the value of life or moral actions. You're going to have to make a compelling argument as to why we can measure the value of moral actions mathematically, then why applying an integral to them is relevant, before I can accept the remainder of this line of reasoning.
Maths is uncommon in ethics arguments, but it does show up from time to time. A friend of a friend has a paper crammed with integrals of suffering and probability that he uses to argue why one should be a vegetarian. And Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord have an amazing paper using hyperreal numbers to deal with the question of how to do consequentialist ethics in an infinitely large universe. Different kinds of ethicists have different views on the utility of maths in ethics. The consequentialists, and especially the utilitarians, tend to be happy with it (although they acknowledge a lot of limitations - to a large degree the math is an idealization rather than the underlying reality). Virtue ethicists rarely see the point. Deontologists are more interested in using logic than calculus, since they tend to think in absolutes (ought/ought not) rather than shades of goodness.
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I do agree though with your statements regarding more religious people as characters. I do think that religious hard-liners are more interesting as characters than more pragmatic people who always pursue the 'optimal' choice.
A great NPC that I improvised was the bad-ass Martian Mormon missionary: tough, but always trying to act morally and help others do so too. The truly fun part was the interplay between his faith, the internal doubts and conflicts of the PCs, and his own problematic attraction to one of them ("I sincerely hope Gao is a girl's name..."). Especially in a crisis it is very good for your mental stress rolls to have an ordained minister giving you on-the-spot psychotherapy. He was well on his way of converting the PCs when that particular mini-campaign ended. Maybe a good idea during character creation is to ask what their religion is, and then how much they believe in it - which of course can include actively disbelieving it, not thinking about it at all or just being post-religious, beside the degrees of positive belief. That way one can flesh out the style of character and their subconscious. Knowing that someone is a post-protestant tells you something about them: they might not believe in God, but they have been brought up within a culture valuing certain things.
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Fri, 2011-02-18 02:54
nick012000 nick012000's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
Arenamontanus wrote:
nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Why does calculus apply here? Calculus would be appropriate for say calculating the acceleration of an object. I've never heard anyone trying to apply mathematics, muchless calculus, to the value of life or moral actions. You're going to have to make a compelling argument as to why we can measure the value of moral actions mathematically, then why applying an integral to them is relevant, before I can accept the remainder of this line of reasoning.
Maths is uncommon in ethics arguments, but it does show up from time to time. A friend of a friend has a paper crammed with integrals of suffering and probability that he uses to argue why one should be a vegetarian. And Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord have an amazing paper using hyperreal numbers to deal with the question of how to do consequentialist ethics in an infinitely large universe. Different kinds of ethicists have different views on the utility of maths in ethics. The consequentialists, and especially the utilitarians, tend to be happy with it (although they acknowledge a lot of limitations - to a large degree the math is an idealization rather than the underlying reality). Virtue ethicists rarely see the point. Deontologists are more interested in using logic than calculus, since they tend to think in absolutes (ought/ought not) rather than shades of goodness.
Of course, this only matters when the mathematics they're using is sound to begin with. emaughan's mathematics aren't; I don't think he understands what an integral is, since the integral of any non-zero positive constant from zero to infinity is infinity (since the integral from 0 to x of a constant k is k*x), not zero like he claimed.
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Sat, 2011-02-19 09:43
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
emaughan wrote:
Athiesm is a religion based on the belief that there is no god or soul. No way to prove it, but it can be a strong belief for that individual. Ironic that many atheist state religion is just a product of evolution (are the non-religious products deevolution?).
*Cringe* Atheism is not itself a religion. Atheism is a label for a person's personal answer to a specific question: Do you believe in a god(ess) or a number of god(desse)s? If yes, you are a theist. If no, you are an atheist. That is not to say there aren't atheistic religions. Buddhism is atheistic. Buddhism is a religion. Therefore, Buddhism is an atheist religion. There are other atheistic religions as well. Shintoism is atheistic, depending on how you define "god". The Huns were an atheistic, but very spiritual and religious, culture. The terms are exclusive. But not all atheists are religious. In that same vein, not all theists are religious. Deism is a theistic philosophy that does not actually espouse a real religion in any discernable way. In fact, many deists shun the very practice of religion. Others often go by the term [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_But_Not_Religious]SBNR[/url], but some of them may be atheistic as well. Just needed to get that off of my chest.
emaughan wrote:
As for the belief in God or the belief in no God - neither can be proven and as was stated in an earlier post, only the agnostics have a safe position on this one. Everyone else is religious - but that also makes things more interesting. Sorry agnostics, but your position is kind of boring. Even though I firmly disagree with them, at least atheist are willing to take a leap of faith and stand up for their firm "non-belief" ;-).
*Sigh* Atheism/theism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive. Agnosticism, like atheism, is a label for a person's personal answer to a specific question: Do you believe in the concept of absolute certainty (the idea that you can be 100% positive that something does or does not exist)? If yes, you are gnostic. If no, you are agnostic. You can actually fit under both labels. If you do not believe that there is a god, but acknowledge that you don't know this with 100% certainty (as pretty much every single person generally does in the world), then you are an agnostic atheist. If you are 100% sure there is no god, then you are a gnostic atheist. You can also be a(n) (a)gnostic theist. Do note that just because someone says "there is no god" does not mean they are gnostic; with extremely low odds of likelihood, people will often just say that it isn't there. Take Santa Claus, for instance. It is possible that there is a fat guy living in the North Pole that flies around the entire planet over the course of a single 24-hour period at high speed on a sleigh carried aloft by magical caribou. However, current evidence dictates that he isn't there. Perhaps he has successfully eluded detection. Perhaps he has sworn the people who have witnessed his existence to secrecy to such a great degree that the farce of his non-existence has been kept. Perhaps his magic sleigh exploded in the early 20th century, and was the cause of the infamous Tunguska incident; he has spent the rest of his life in the Russian wastes living as a fat drunk named Nicolai Rapeinsky. These are all possibilities... but the odds are so infinitesimally small that I can comfortably say "he does not exist" while still maintaining that I am philosophically agnostic on the issue. I believe that absolute certainty is an impossibility, but infinitesimally small chances of success or failure do not necessarily need to be factored when one makes a judgment. Okay then, moving on.
Quincey Forder wrote:
I don't remember if it was Joss Whedon or Geoff Johns who wrote that Wonder Woman issue, in which Diana says to one of her mortal friends that "you can't defeat a god like that, they are self conscious ideas". Could it be that she meant that gods are sentient memes? that would mean that an atheist is someone who can resist memetic programing much better than anyone else. And that's something powers-that-be don't really care for, someone who can resist culturally ingrained ideas of obedience and/or fanaticism.
Actually yes. As a whole, most of the concepts inherent in religion are memes. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that the Bible is the single most powerful meme to ever exist in the history of man. And I don't just mean the King James Version: even knowing that any given book is some version of the Bible gives it a degree of influence in this world that is unmatched. Nations have been built around it, religions have been created of it, and politics have been manipulated through it. The real beauty of it all (and ugliness, as well) is the fact that the Bible has been used through the ages to basically back up every single possible opinion that could ever exist. Slavery, abolitionism, pro-life, pro-choice, monarchism, democracy, love and hate... you can find a passage [i]somewhere[/i] in the Bible that supports your conclusion. The Catholic Church has even declared that the first chapters of Genesis contain an analogy of evolution... all while the conservative right use those same passages to prove that it is a lie! The Bible is a testament to just how potent memes can be. I now feel bad that this response was smaller than my other two....
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Mon, 2011-02-21 17:06
adept42 adept42's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
I'd like to second Decivre's point that atheism is not a religion; let's move on to other issues: As a Gamemaster, you can customize your campaign world however you like. However, you'll probably need to do a lot of homebrewing to create an EP game with God (or Gods) in it. A player who reads up on the setting is not going to anticipate that God will exist in their campaign, and will probably be very surprised if their character receives a message from a divine being or if a miracle occurs. This is because EP is presented as a sci-fi game, and that sort of thing is fairly rare for the genre. Assuming that you aren't going to homebrew in a God that provides direct in-game benefits or guidance, a Gamemaster could try more modest changes to make religion relevant to their game. One major hurdle is that The Fall places the Problem of Evil front and center: if God is good and God is omnipotent, how could he allow evil to exist? RPGs don't tend to confront hard questions like that because they're a finite sequence stories designed to end with a satisfying conclusion; when you read a mystery novel, you expect to find out whodunit. So how do you end a campaign where the characters have been struggling to understand God's purpose in allowing The Fall? I'm interested to hear if anyone has tried running campaigns in EP or other systems that address those kind of questions.
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Tue, 2011-02-22 21:15
Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
The Fall is no more a serious question of the Problem of Evil than humans needing to eat. A kind and perfectly benevolent creator doesn't mean the non-existence of hardship; the existence of things besides them confirms it, if anything. Their absence would, by definition, create imperfect harmonies by dint of them being the only perfect being, but such is the tradeoff for existing. There's also arguments of free will, suffering being necessary for appreciation, and the whole "best of all possible worlds" things to be thrown in. The Problem of Evil hasn't been a problem since it was first ever posed; any theist with a brain can think up an answer for it. Meanwhile, if we're talking about any non-omnipotent deity (as is the case in any sort of animistic, pantheistic, or ancestor-worshiping groups), the answer is easier still. I once pondered the idea of the ETI being God, but I sort of passed over the idea because I couldn't think of any satisfactory way to use it so openly. Frankly, the idea of miracles and the whole Divine Plan are best used as a corollary to horror; the two are very similar in that they are both more powerful working as unknowns. People are more faithful, and more scared, when they are uncertain. Players knowing supernatural intervention will solve the problem no matter what they do makes it pointless, but some roleplayers will have their characters break down and pray for a miracle if they're uncertain.
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Tue, 2011-02-22 21:51
Enigma32 Enigma32's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
Honestly, the ETI remind me a lot of Cthulhu, Azathoth, and the other Great Old Ones and God-entities from Lovecraft's works (I'm sure this is intentional, too). They're a vast, uncaring entity with power far beyond what we can comprehend. What is the difference between a god and an sufficiently advanced enough entity, with basic knowledge of how the universe works that we can't begin to comprehend? The short answer is that there isn't one - so you probably could get away with saying the ETI is a "God" of sorts. Just one heavily inspired by the Cthulhu mythos. I don't see the old religions going anywhere. The more fundamentalist sects will fall away, but there's no reason they wouldn't stick around. Baha'i faith would do pretty well in this environment, too, because it actually fulfills a number of their tenets (men and women being equal, unity of man kind, a step towards eliminating all forms of prejudice, a step towards the elimination of the extreme wealth and poverty gap, among other things). What truly surprises me, though, is that Gnosticism wasn't mentioned once in the core book. This setting BLEEDS Gnosticism in all the ways that the Matrix and other settings like it did; There would certainly be a revival of it, with the ETI as the Demiurge in some, and the ETI as the a Prophet bringing enlightenment in others.
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"If we succeed, we're geniuses for doing it. If we fail, we're stupid for trying it. If we succeed beyond our goal and our dreams, we're insane for reaching so high and getting there."
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Tue, 2011-02-22 23:01
Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
Fundamentalism holds on sometimes more readily than the mainstream. As for the ETI as amoral or uncaring, it doesn't have to be. If its understanding of the universe is greater than ours, what of its compassion? Perhaps the Exsurgent Virus is its way of bringing an entire species to join its galactic harmony all at once? If we can suggest their knowledge of science is expanded, why not their understanding of compassion? Not to say that your interpretation is wrong, I'm just saying that there's wiggle room. Also, Gnosticism is awesome like that. It could be that some people view the TITANs as the Demiurge or its creations, as it continues to try and outdo the True Creator.
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Tue, 2011-02-22 23:49
root root's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
root@On Religion in the Transhumanist Future [hr] What makes you think that an ETI would give a crap about transhumanity any more than we give a crap about the plight of non-cute endangered animals. For instance, transhumanity has the capability for unbounded language acquisition and uses this to draw a line between "intelligent" humanity and "unintelligent" everything else. If the ETI has a different definition of intelligence based on something we wouldn't understand, then the best we can expect is the ETI equivilant of hippies chaining themselves to the Sol system. Hmm... Maybe the Factors are part of the ETI and are here to protest the use of the Exsurgent Virus on this precious and delicate intelligence system. Another question. Are animals Turing complete?
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Wed, 2011-02-23 05:45
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: On Religion in the Transhumanist Future
Enigma32 wrote:
What truly surprises me, though, is that Gnosticism wasn't mentioned once in the core book. This setting BLEEDS Gnosticism in all the ways that the Matrix and other settings like it did; There would certainly be a revival of it, with the ETI as the Demiurge in some, and the ETI as the a Prophet bringing enlightenment in others.
Religions don't ever really resurrect, in the sense that they come back in the same way they used to be. Usually, an old religion's tenets are absorbed by a newly found religion. This is what happened with the classic paganistic faiths and neopaganistic faiths like Wicca... the tenets of the latter were absorbed and used to create new faiths based on, but not even close to identical to, older faiths. If gnosticism were to make a comeback, it would be largely unlike the classical gnostic faiths. In fact, there are a few churches today that identify themselves as gnostic, but are still quite different from those very classic gnostic churches. The Ecclesia Gnostica is based in LA, if you want an example of one I've heard of (and visited).
root wrote:
root@On Religion in the Transhumanist Future [hr] What makes you think that an ETI would give a crap about transhumanity any more than we give a crap about the plight of non-cute endangered animals. For instance, transhumanity has the capability for unbounded language acquisition and uses this to draw a line between "intelligent" humanity and "unintelligent" everything else. If the ETI has a different definition of intelligence based on something we wouldn't understand, then the best we can expect is the ETI equivilant of hippies chaining themselves to the Sol system. Hmm... Maybe the Factors are part of the ETI and are here to protest the use of the Exsurgent Virus on this precious and delicate intelligence system. Another question. Are animals Turing complete?
The obvious answer is "the fact that they aren't human". To assume that the ETI do have the same sort of personality traits that humans might have "on a grander level" is to effectively anthropomorphise them, and try to refer to them in human terms. This may or may not be an accuracy. Remember, one of the key elements that make the ETI such a useful tool within the game setting is the fact that we have no clue what their intentions are. That's what sets the air of mystery. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few motivations which would portray them as something far less malicious and perhaps even benign. Perhaps the exsurgent virus was created to prevent advanced races from becoming too complacent in the face of reaching a point in which further discovery becomes unnecessary for continued existence; its plant here in the Solar system intended to observe and influence us along what they consider "the correct path". The "aggression filter" and "enlightenment" motivations given in the core book implies a benign motive. The possibility is there. As for animals being Turing complete, we don't know. To be honest, we don't even really know if human brains work using similar functions to computers. Our minds might not have anything akin to logic gates, and may use a completely different process to produce deductive reasoning. We haven't detected anything akin to software within our minds. So until we do, the answer is... shrug?
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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