[ExI] call for soteriology and eschatology papers that mention h+, was : CALL: H+ call for papers

[hkhenson]

At 10:07 PM 2/19/2009, spike wrote:

> >...On Behalf Of hkhenson
>...
> > We could make a case they might accept that Transhumanism is
> > Sacerdotal machine religion, that is a religion based on the
> > belief that machines are the way for humans to experience God.
> >
> > Keith
>
>I commend you Keith.  The notion itself is sheer brilliance.

I came up with it in the context of the novel I worked on while in 
jail.  The leader of a southern California cult was using trans 
cranial magnetic stimulation (over the temporal lobe) so he and his 
follower really did experience god through a machine.  They were 
driven quite mad by frequent applications.

In the course of the story they are motivated to recover depleted 
U238, from he mid east and suborn nuclear reactor staff to turn the 
DU into pure Pu 239.  The character Dr. Formoq (only slightly less 
mad than the cult leader) designs and builds implosion weapons based 
on a shell of explosive detonated by a light flash in an elliptical 
reflector.  They nuke a zoning board meeting and other places to make 
it look like a terrorist attack.  The story (with an admixture of 
real terrorism and much interaction between a president and a 
California governor) goes downhill from there.

>Really I think what this organization is looking for is a way to map
>transhumanism onto religious thought-space.  They want to determine if there
>is any essential contribution that can shed light on their own religious
>notions.

I think this is a correct analysis.  Of course to do so they have 
wedge transhumanism into being a religion.  It's easy to see how we 
(speaking broadly) came to their attention.  The old line extropians 
stayed below their radar, but the folks in the WTA make a point of 
stepping on their corns.

>Before this makes any sense, first consider that religion professors are
>extremely sophisticated in their analysis, all based on an assumption which
>cannot be proven but which must be accepted by faith: that the bible is the
>revealed word of god (if christian or jew).  When pressed, they will freely
>admit that if this assumption is incorrect, then all the notions built
>thereupon are mere tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying
>nothing.

They are not alone.  Most of sociology is in the same boat with their 
assumption of "the blank slate."

>If presented with transhumanism for instance, they would map the memeset
>onto religious thought space as taking an extreme form of reductionism of
>the human, whereas most religious thought views humans in a holistic way.
>Religion incorporated thinks of humans as more than the sum of the parts,
>transhumanism thinks of humans as exactly equal to the sum of the parts.  If
>equal to the sum of the parts, then new parts can be substituted, making the
>sum greater than before.

Hmm.  Personally I consider emergent culture as more than the sum of the parts.

>Cryonicists also must view humans as reductionist, a machine that can be
>preserved and later simulated, or theoretically possible to create an exact
>copy given sufficient technology.  Otherwise cryonics makes no sense, for
>the religionist would argue there is a separate soul that has fled during
>the freezing process.

Oddly there are some deeply religious people signed up for 
cryonics.  The ability of people to compartmentalize their mental 
processes has no known bounds.

>Parting shot: the transhumanist memeset when mapped onto religious thought
>space would have a puzzling next-door neighbor: Seventh Day Adventists.
>These also see the human from the point of view of a reductionist.  The
>human is a machine with no separate parts, no ethereal spirit or soul,
>rather a machine that can be completely destroyed by fire or by time, then
>later rebuilt as an exact copy, with all the same ideas, memories,
>attitudes, etc.  This was a remarkable insight for the 1850s, ja?

That's most interesting because the Seventh Day Adventists.*and* the 
JWs are both are historically derived from brain injuries.  (Perhaps 
the Quakers too, but the historical evidence is not as strong.)

Keith

>spike