[ExI] Human extinction

[Stefano Vaj]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 3:36 AM, Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm definitely an Atheist, yes. But we all live on an amount of faith,
> so of course I have experience of it from the inside like all people.
> Even if that faith is something along the lines of "the universe
> behaves in a generally self similar way from moment to moment", it's
> still faith in a sense. I'd argue there's a qualitative difference
> between that and "there's a big guy running the show who loves us all
> and wants to punish us for our sins".
>

I do not think that the main difference is in the object of the belief. The
difference is that "believers" - but it would be more  appropriate to say
"adherents to biblical religions" - think that you have an *ethical duty* to
believe, say, in the existence of the proverbial  Invisibile Pink Unicorn,
if necessary against evidence to the contrary.

The rest of humanity is not faith-impaired, but simply think that factual
opinions are not the object of ethics, whose scope is restricted to acts and
values (statements with "ought" rather than "is").

As an atheist, a pagan, a Zen guru, you remain well free to have "faith" in
your good luck or the isotropy of the universe or in the final victory of
transhumanism, but the first two examples reflect mere assumptions, the
third a choice of values (you want it to happen, irrespective of the
probability of its actual happening). Not any "faith" in the judeochristian
or islamic sense.

Stefano Vaj
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