[ExI] The void left by deleting religion

Fri May 4 17:00:10 UTC 2007

Torstein writes

> I am one of these fools you [Eliezer, below] 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,

In your urge to re-design, are at all or have you ever been dismayed at the
mess made by some of your predecessors who tried their hands at
redesigning economic systems, nations, governments, or even housing projects?
It is for absolute sure that Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, and
American urban planners of the 1950s beyond number also believed that it
would be, at least conceptually, "a simple matter" to design an up-to-date
rational economic system, or urban neighborhood system, or what have you.

I advise extreme caution and humility in the face of thousands of years of
evolved systems that work, however badly from our points of view.

Lee

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whatever needs are being psychologically met by the world's religion, I predict
that it will be flatly impossible without superhuman assistance, to design rational
up-to-date replacements.

 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
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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