[ExI] The void left by deleting religion

Fri May 4 14:26:32 UTC 2007

I am one of these fools you speak of. That is to say, I've been
thinking about how we can best fill the void left by deleting religion for
some time.

However, I see no reason why it should be impossible to design an
up-to-date, rational worldview to fill the roles that ancient religions
currently play in many peoples lives, without violating rationality. The
awesomeness of existence in-it-self, and the inherent beauty of the
universe, from sub atomic to cosmological scales is nothing short of poetic.
To me, this is worthy of ten thousand hymns...

Hey, the answers provided by existing worldviews are so feeble when viewed
from an enlightened 21st century viewpoint that if such a project were to be
undertaken today, it would probably yield better answers almost by default,
seeing how we have several thousand years of
collective experience to learn from. We can provide better answers to
"the great questions in life" than what was possible some-thousand
years ago.

Community-building is obviously the tricky part, and it would be cool to
have some off-list input on this.

Some of the philosophically inclined people on this list probably have the
mental horsepower to have a reasonable chance to pull of such a project.
Updating peoples
world-views with the last couple of thousand years of cultural and
scientific progress,
and facilitating the transition to a post religious society seems like
a worthwhile project to me.

Humanity as a whole has come incredibly far in our understanding of Life,
The Universe and Everything,
when compared to the level understanding attained by average people through
going to church and watching television.

I'd be happy if you guys would be so kind and provide some input on the
subject. My pet post-religious alternative is available at
WWW.KHALA.NET<http://www.khala.net>
PS: Bonus points if you guys succeed in playing the devil's advocate, and
shooting this thing down, so I can free up time for other projects.

-TT

*"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience at pobox.com>* wrote:
>
> Samantha Atkins wrote:
> > On May 3, 2007, at 9:32 PM, spike wrote:
> >
> >> Fred, something I left out of my post is that religion for me was
> >> an extremely positive experience. I cannot even think of a
> >> negative part of it. The family aspects of religion, my friends,
> >> the music, the scholarly aspects, all of it was good to me, more
> >> positive for me than for anyone else I know. I loved my church
> >> and my church life. My friends and acquaintances were absolutely
> >> astounded that I could ever give it up, thought I had gone
> >> insane. I had gone sane however. I had no choice: I realized I
> >> could not control what I believe, and I no longer believed the
> >> doctrine to be true. True matters more than happy.
> >
> > I know very much what that is like. It was very difficult for me
> > to let go of my religious life. But try as I might, and I tried
> > mighty hard, I couldn't make it out to be true. I also could not
> > abide the places of blindness within my religious community to much
> > outside of importance and value.
> >
> >> So, into the old bit bucket with it, all of it. I miss it to
> >> this day I confess.
> >
> > There are considerable parts that I miss too.
>
> Samantha, Spike, what do you miss?
>
> Fools try to build "rational religions" but because they are just
> blindly imitating religion, they only invent sad little mockeries;
> hymns to the nonexistence of God. You have to start by accepting
> "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be" as a
> non-negotiable requirement, and then consider the desires that
> religion grew up organically to satisfy. You have to create a vision
> of what humanity would have been if we had never made the mistake of
> religion in the first place, never believed in anything supernatural,
> never departed the way of rationality, but had still had the same
> desires and grown up other organic institutions to fulfill them.
>
> The humanity that never made the mistake would write hymns, when they
> saw something worth writing a hymn to; but it wouldn't be a hymn to
> the nonexistence of God, because they wouldn't have the idea of God in
> the first place. Would this world still have marriages and funeral
> ceremonies? Yes, but they would be different marriages and funeral
> ceremonies. They certainly would not be performed "in the name of
> Bayes" because nobody wants to hear about bloody probability theory
> while they're trying to get married - that's an example of the blind
> imitation that usually gets done by fools who set out to invent
> "rational replacements for religion". But even human beings who don't
> have heads stuffed full of blatant nonsense will still want to
> celebrate marriages. They just won't invoke invisible sky wizards to
> seal the deal. Even a rationalist still feels a need to find
> something to say when a friend or family member dies. It just won't
> be false comfort.
>
> If you have a need that can be satisfied without believing in false
> propositions, maybe we can get it back for you, one of these days. If
> it was satisfied by a church in the old days, it may take a while to
> construct the community, though.
>
> What I miss most myself is comfort, the reassurance that there's a
> higher power watching over you and that everything will turn out all
> right. But I know I can never have *that* back this side of the dawn,
> and maybe not even then. That feeling of comfort falls directly under
> the non-negotiable prescription: That which can be destroyed by the
> truth should be.
>
> --
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
> Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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