[extropy-chat] Religion Rant

[The Avantguardian]

     You all have been patient with my rants recently
regarding the bioethicists attack on my profession.
With that in mind I will now rant one more time. I
would like to get some things off my chest with
regards to this list.
      It has not escaped my notice that some very
general and very overt
anti-religious-spiritual-paranormal sentiment on this
list. I don't see any reason for this. If personal
freedom is truly an extropian principle, then you must
realize that no matter how accurate or "true" your
paradigm might be to YOU, it stops at the tip of your
nose. 
     I have had an amazing life and I have seen,
heard, and felt some really extraordinary things in my
travels. I am also a professional scientist and so I
have to balance skepticism and credulity on the edge
of Occam's razor on a daily basis. And I tell you
this: I have seen things that no textbook can explain.
     Scientific theories and the world-views built on
those theories last only so long as nature complies.
There is funny thing I have noticed about science and
its predecessors alchemy, philosophy, religion,
shamanism, and before that, fear of the dark. And that
is this: for most of human history we have walked this
planet thinking we know 99% of what we think there is
to know about it. But inevitably sooner or later that
1% comes around and catches us by surprise. 
      After nearly a million years, we now know a
terrabyte more about nature than we did back in those
days of fearing the dark. That however is a
quadrillion times more than we THOUGHT there WAS to
know about nature back then. With a track record like
that, I would not be laying any bets on your current
paradigm.
      So lighten up and humor people who wants to talk
about the UNKNOWN. God may hide in the gaps these days
but deeper we dig, the bigger the gap gets. I will
tell you one thing, aside from the unexplainable
things I have EXPERIENCED and that is this: From my
biological studies, I have gathered that our brains
evolved as biochemical computers to simulate the
universe. As that simulation got better and better, we
became increasingly intelligent. Why are you all so
sure that the universe our brains are simulating
ISN'T. Chew on that one for a while.
     On a brighter note, even as a professional
scientist with numerous colleagues, I have not come
across a bunch of minds broader and deeper than yours.
So as a favor to your own magnificent intellects don't
cheat yourself of the kernal of truth that lies at the
heart of EVERY myth.
         

The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson


		
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