From: Matthew Gream (matthew.gream@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Dec 26 1999 - 15:40:04 MST
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James Rogers wrote:
> In the denotative sense of religion, maybe, but the connotation is a
> very poor match. Ascribing a religious significance to science seems
> to be most popular with those people who are unable to conceive of the
> possibility that someone might not be religious. These are the people who
> are sure that religion is an inseperable part of human nature, so they
> spend their time looking for the "true religion" of those who claim to be
> non-religious.
I agree with you, there's poor communicaton on my behalf. I believe that
science is not inherently religious, but like many other things, sometimes
practiced as a religion, or made religious by particular individuals. Also,
groups can attempt to legitimise themselves by indicating that they are
based on or around science (e.g. "well, their ideas are based on science,
seems pretty sensible to me, i guess they're not stupid then!" -- well, no,
very smart in fact).
As for religion being an inseperable part of human nature, it's my general
belief that relgion basically satisfies a failure of many individuals to
internalise a framework of meaning (i.e. so they connect it into something
outside of them, look outwards for a god rather than realise that god is
within them).
> I don't think everyone wants to be the perfect human; indeed, I suspect
> that some aspire to perfect sentience, which is quite a different goal.
> It is arguable that the human form (in a very broad sense) is not
> perfectable, and depending on how bold the transhuman, one has a choice of
> the lesser status of being a "perfect human" and the possibly unattainable
> goal of being a "perfect" sentient entity. From a public relations
> standpoint, far more people are afraid of the ability to lose one's
> humanity than to lose one's imperfections.
By 'perfect sentience', you mean, pure and ultimate awareness and
consciousness
of everything and anything in the near and far vicinity ? To perceive all
things
as they are in their true and particular form ? If so, then this is similar
to
the goal of perfected cognitive ability (of all forms of process and
knowledge).
To me, this resonates with the ultimate goal of plato in his education of
philosopher
kings (the republic): learn all there is to know, constantly engage in
dialetic to
arrange and perfect awareness and the arrangement of knowledge, to
eventually see
all truths as they are. There's possibly something meditative in this
process as well.
I would agree that the human form is perhaps not perfectable, which is maybe
why
we are developing so many technologies to supercede the human form, and aim
towards
sentience (e.g. as all forms of information coalesce and aggregate into a
universally
accessible medium, and humans continue to play a peripheral role, encoding
all knowledge
into such a medium, acting as a cognitive agents on the edge of the medium,
developing
mechanisms to allow the medium to process and actualise itself, subverting
themselves
to a larger collective entity, etc).
matthew.
- --
matthew.gream@pobox.com
Cambridge_UK/2000
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