[extropy-chat] Atheism in Decline: meme map

[Adrian Tymes]

--- spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Cool, thanks Adrian, I was hoping someone would bite
> on this idea.  I would agree that of all the
> religions
> that I know of, Buddhism seems to be the most likely
> place to look for allies.  Assuming you classify 
> Buddhism as a religion, as opposed to something more
> general, like a philosophy. 

If atheism qualifies as a religion, so does Buddhism.
In general the "religions" of the East seem a bit more
amenable to our beliefs, but that may be in direct
proportion to how little they rely on revealed wisdom
as opposed to, say, actually learning about the world.
(Then again, there is a tendency to encourage, when
doing long-term planning, the belief that others
either think as you do or are worthless barbarians.
This tends to clamp down on creativity.  Although that
may be just my personal experiences with certain
aspects of their culture.)

I've also been playing around with how to subvert
the beliefs of the anti-science, anti-tech religions
to be pro-science and pro-tech.  Mostly just general
ideas so far; the core problem seems to be that people
retreat to these religions to "get away from" the
complexity of the real world (as if one can reliably
find moral truths by ignoring the complexities of
reality), so even if we could turn some of these
churces into bastions of our position, the people
would just go elsewhere.  It would at least reduce a
major reinforcing agent of their anti-us beliefs,
though that may just be simply replaced.

> Hey we missed you at the devourgasm yesterday bud.

I thought I apologized in advance that I wouldn't be
able to make it.  I had another function to attend at
the same time, and I have not yet figured out how to
upload myself so I can send a second me (and more
importantly, integrate the two experiences
afterwards).