[extropy-chat] Edge: Thank Goodness! By Daniel C. Dennett

[Samantha Atkins]

On Nov 6, 2006, at 3:45 AM, Lee Corbin wrote:

> Russell writes
>
>> Religion worked for survival. Look at what happens to modern
>> cultures where religion is gone: they fall apart into self-hatred and
>> nihilism, birth rates plummeting below extinction level, their people
>> rapidly headed for oblivion. The greatest civilization that ever  
>> existed
>> on this planet is dying, in what should have been its hour of  
>> triumph -
>> dying not of any external threat, but of its own parasite memes;
>> and who will pick up the torch once we are gone?
>

Civilization rise up and die in certain predictable political and  
economic, especially economic patterns.  Many countries in Europe have  
already risen, fallen and managed to rise to some extent again.  Just  
because the US is rounding the cusp toward a downturn does not mean it  
is TEOTWAWKI.   It certainly does not mean that the cycle reaches this  
point because religion has lost its hold.  That is a laughable theory.

> You bring up the gravest problem of all, a real one that is not  
> going away,
> unless a technological miracle happens quickly.
>
> Europe is finished.  A Muslim civilization will replace it.
>

No way.  This is utter nonsense.  The Muslims can't manage to come  
into the 21st century.  Science and technology is too hard to  
reconcile with the faith, especially as it blends with law and  
politics.  Without that the Muslims will never be strong enough to  
prevail.   There is too much admiration for blind fate and utter  
vengeance toward all who seem to threaten it.   I am saddened to see  
it here of all places.

> But in North America, the situation is less clear.
>
> An elite in North America can continue to "run things" for a very long
> time yet.  This is because as the class structure of the country  
> becomes
> more pronounced, the lower classes shall respond to direction, just as
> they do in Mexico today, whereas in Europe, the Muslims have superior
> cohesion and superior will.
>

Really you think Muslims are superior?  In what way?  They band  
together?  The threaten, kill and destroy when angered?  This is  
superior in a way that matters in this time of accelerating change?   
How so?  The Muslims as Muslim statists are a dying culture unable to  
cope with the speed and type of changes around them.  The must either  
transform into something quite different and far less religiously  
based or become irrelevant.   This seeming belief in  raw human mass  
and unreasoning zealotry is very unsettling.

> Now, more and more people in the west are coming to see the danger,
> and so resistence, even in Europe, may mount, and in interesting ways.
> Prognostications, anyone?
>

Yes.  Religion will be seen more and more in Europe especially as  
senseless and not to be afforded automatic respect.  Religious based  
violence and intolerance will come to be opposed vigorously.

>

- samantha