From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Jul 07 2001 - 14:56:06 MDT
Brent Allsop wrote:
>
> "J. R. Molloy" <jr@shasta.com> answered why we should want
> to "debunk" religion with:
>
> > Because we won't move into a better future until we defeat
> > religiosity, which is the most regressive force now operating in
> > society.
>
> To me, religion is simply "a way of life" so everyone has one.
> Mine happens to be extropianism.
>
> But this is all probably just semantic differences. To me all
> theistic religions should definitely be "debunked", fought against,
> considered evil and hopeless. It's for the simple reason, that if
> there is already a God (or any powerful ET out their hiding from us),
> then what extropians want to do (eliminate all bad [or evil>]) cannot
> be done, even if we become as powerful as these Gods. For if they
> can't, or shouldn't, or don't help us overcome it faster/sooner we
> can't or shouldn't or won't help our children and others we find in
> the universe the same way.
This is a very strange line of reasoning. That powerful SIs or
other types of Being, various Powers, are out there changes not
a thing about our own goals or our ability to transcend where we
are and for all we know continue to transcend. There may or may
not be some endpoint of that process. We simply can't know from
here. That other Powers are there and have not done what we
think we wish to do (to the fuzzy level we grok it so far)
doesn't mean anything about what we can and cannot do. Now, if
you think it all isn't worth it unless this bunch of
transcending intelligences controls every single bit of
Everything that is or will be, then you might have a problem.
But then again, you might discover these religious memes had a
lot of insight in what happens to *you* along the way to
becoming the Everything or the Intelligence behind it all.
Maybe these other Powers are simply working out the consequences
for themselves. Who knows? The only way to find out is to go
forward and to go forward without believing we already know it
All.
Who the heck says that Extropians even gorc what all "bad" or
"evil' is much less that we can't be Extropians without
"eliminating" all of it?
>
> My definition of God is simply: That for which when it exists,
> there will be no more evils like isolation, suffering, dieing... To
> believe there is already a "God" while there is still such evils
> cannot be "faith" or "hope" but instead is the ultimate in giving up
> in faithless despair. For that means something like God is impotent,
What makes you think all of this suffering is much more than the
adventures of developing intelligences within a VR and the
intelligences themselves are no more harmed by it than you are
by walking into something mind-numbingly brutal and even more
pointless like Quake or Everquest? You assume a lot about what
a Power can or can't do from a point of view far different than
is likely when you get there. Why should your conclusions be
believable from such a place? Why should they bound what an
Extropian can or cannot believe and be an Extropian?
>
> Only an atheist can have true faith an hope. Believing in
> God is not only "faithless", but it results in many other
> fundamentally evil beliefs and behaviors like hate and so on (as in
> Christians hate their devil, the people that crucified Christ...).
> You cannot, thereby, both believe in God (or ETs or anything else that
> is powerful and out there hiding from us) and be an extropian. The
> two are logically mutually exclusive.
I have been an atheist. I have been a theist. I have been many
other things besides. Hope is not a matter of what you believe
or do not believe about Powers. It is a matter of what you
believe about possibilities and what you are willing to work on
making real.
Your blanket statements about Christians are as pointless as the
rest of your blanket statements.
I believe that a being very much like GOD will be and because of
what that Being is it is Now and always has been. If this is
not so then such a being, a being many of us aspire to in many
respects, cannot be. That is how I see it now.
Have fun.
- samantha
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