[extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Samantha Atkins wrote:
> 
> An alternate view is that some parts of religion were an attempt largely gone 
> awry to influence us toward changes within our consciousness leading to a 
> less violent singularity and us even arriving there at all.   It is not too 
> far-fetched for me to consider that the future SI and posthuman society runs 
> countless sim experiments toward understanding how the entire transition 
> could have been a lot less painful or get to more interesting conclusions 
> more gracefully.    It would not surprise me if we are in such a sim.
> 
> Sometimes I think religions are remnants of a much more advanced past or a 
> brush with a much more advanced reality that have degenerated into 
> superstition and dogma to a large degree.    But I don't find 
> religion/spirituality utterly bankrupt as many do.

Samantha, you have too damned little faith in humanity if you think that 
the tiny fragments of light to be found in religion *must* have their 
origin *somewhere*, *anywhere* outside the ordinary evolved human spirit. 
  Why must Buddha be the mouthpiece of a future civilization to be 
respected?  Why can't he be an ordinary human, absolutely no different 
from you, in the midst of squalor and ignorance, who decided *on his own 
and without any help* to be nice to people?  Isn't this truth more tragic 
and heroic and beautiful and, above all, true, than any bad science 
fiction that might be written about it?  Why must the explanation sound 
mystical to be accepted?

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence