From: Joe Jenkins (joe_jenkins@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Jun 25 1998 - 15:37:10 MDT
---Brent Allsop <allsop@swttools.fc.hp.com> wrote:
>
>
> Cori <Fireeye978@aol.com> commented:
>
> > Heinlein once had a character remark that "one can bask in the
> > warmth of religion, or stand in the cold light of reason."
>
> No! NO! This view so many rationalists and extropians and
> people like you take is so infuriating to me. To me this is such a
> lie and so many extropians and others are just playing into the
> religious fundamentalist's hands by regurgitating it.
I originally filtered this meme as a keeper. After reading your reply
and re-filtering, I realized I originally registered "cold light of
reason" sarcastically. That is, I knew full well it is really warmer
than can be imagined. Now, realizing this meme would not propagate
through most minds the same way - I agree, it should be trashed. I am
now more aware that most memes should be filtered by running a
simulation of how they propagate through most minds rather than just
my own. Thanks for increasing my awareness.
> You don't
> die to get to heaven! You Live! Our minds are so polluted and
> twisted with so much blatant irrationality! It is our mortal
> ancestors that lived their short lives that we might live better and
> longer ones! They are the ones that lived to gave us everything we
> have including our lives. Soon, because of what our ancestors have
> given us and by our living, we will be able to give to our children
> immortal lives. We are the ones doing the work, making real
> sacrifices, and creating heaven for our children! And the heaven we
> are creating will eventually be a naturally real heaven unimaginably
> better than all the contradictory, incomprehensible, neither world
> heavens ever described and claimed by the many religions which are
> really all hells at best.
Thanks for saying aloud what I've been thinking to myself for so long.
>
> If you honestly think about it, even in the "cold light of
> reason" there can be the possibility or hope of a resurrection. How
> can any truly rational person deny the possibility that after another
> billion years of the continued progress which we have seen so far,
> that our children will not eventually evolve to be true Gods that
> finally discover some way to resurrect all people that have ever
> lived?
The gods are the descendants of our ancestors. They may not exist in
our space-time but thay may exist in our space or time. Your view on
resurrection above does not mix well with the principle of dynamic
optimism. All we have to do is sit back and have faith. But
enlightened faith is infinitely better than blind faith. I think
every time you have used this word it has refered to the former. But
isnt enlightened faith close to being an oxymoron? As extropians
treading the head waters at the deep end of the meme pool, having
completed our defiant adaptive walk through the rugged memetic fitness
landscape (sorry, couldn't help mixing metaphors within the same
sentence) we now sit high on a peak of local maxima. But we see the
horizon beyond the fitness deserts all around us and we know the
engine of spontaneous order will deliver us to that higher peak. Does
this mean we have faith in reaching that peak, or just an understanding
via forethought of its inevitable existence?
A month or two ago, I tried to start a thread called "PIP-tech" that
applied the principle of dynamic optimism to the idea of future
resurrection. I was hoping to spark an idea in some of the space-time
engineering types on this list but to no avail. I'm sorry I do not
have the inclination to develop the idea further.
Joe Jenkins
Joe_Jenkins@yahoo.com
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:49:13 MST