[extropy-chat] Re: Athiesm in decline

[Dirk Bruere]

john-c-wright at sff.net wrote:

>Kevin Freels asks: 
>
>  
>
>>Religion changes over time. Which religion would be the easiest to change to
>>something more transhumanistic? Or would it be better to create a new
>>religion? What would it take to do that? Can a set of beliefs be created
>>that can meld any partivular religion into something more extropian?
>>    
>>
>
>I might suggest something like "Adventism" appearing in HARVEST OF STARS by Poul
>Anderson. In that book, the inevitable supremacy of the Sophotects (as he called
>his artificial intelligences) was greeted with pleasure and anticipation by a
>politcal group devoted to the advent of a super-human mode of consciousness. One
>of the characters daydreams that one day his loyalty to the coming super-race of
>pure intelligences will be rewarded by an upload into an eternal computerized
>fiction of bliss and perfection: a robotic paradise. 
>
>What is interesting here is that the author takes reasonable political faction,
>(the por-reason, pro-progress group) but shows how the natural human hunger for
>the lording it over others turns them into tyrants; and the natural human
>longing for the supernatural turns their political philosophy into a religion,
>complete with a promise of life eternal in the New Garden.  
>
>  
>
I suspect that we will be engineering ourselves genetically for quite 
some time before true AI appears, so there will be a considerable 
'enhanced' faction ready to greet it.

>...
>Serious students of the matter might be advised to adapt Transhumanism to an
>existing faith, rather than invent one whole cloth. This has two advantages:
>one, God may spare you, despite your hubris, if you unwittingly do His work for
>Him. Two, you have a pre-sold market. 
>  
>
Well, I'd say that Transhumanism in itself could well become a religion. 
It has all the features of one.

-- 
Dirk

The Consensus:-
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