[ExI] remind me again.. why not a religion?

[Samantha Atkins]

What?  NO!!!

But wait..

We need deep affirmation through action, through conscious focus, through fully feeling into and binding with our emotion and  holding in deepest esteem such a radically positive future.  It is much more difficult to achieve and in all aspects possible affirm that consistently, all the way through, without a community of those who also have the same deep focus and willingness to deepen it even further.   It is much easier to do if in community - a place to recharge, to contribute, to draw from, to be inspired by and to inspire, to help and be helped.

There needs to be a consistent pure message, a vision, compelling and full of heart as well as mind.   We can discuss possibilities endlessly and indeed must continue to ever more constructively do so.  But we need to unify into a shared dream - shared goals that we polish to greater and greater clarity, conviction and effective manifestation.

We need many of the powers and privileges of religion.  We need to have an open untaxable means of donating to the cause we hold dear and its spread and most importantly its achievement.  Religious tithes and offerings and normal non-taxable status of religious institutions should do nicely.   

We need to pull on not just reason but all the heart, on hope, on belief in things not yet, and perhaps many decades from being, seen.  This does not throw open the door for simply believing whatever we wish.  That which is believed in must be scientifically plausible.  The Good News is this leaves more than enough room for the extraordinarily good best dreams of humanity and more.

We will need that kind of large group cohesion to have a chance of moving these dream goals forward as quickly as possible.  This kind of cohesion is also essential to become “one people” separate from (but membership extended to) others.   We include others as they affirm our creed, on the basis of knowledge of and agreements with our goals and enough of our methods to be part of the work in whatever way suits each person’s gifts and interests.

The question is not:

Can we do this?

Or even:

Should we do this?

The question is:

Will we do this?

Or will we stay lone brilliant quirky cats howling into the cosmic night?

On May 4, 2011, at 4:47 AM, Amon Zero wrote:

> 2011/5/4 John Grigg <possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com>
> Amon Zero wrote:
> >In short, transhumanism appears to be splintering. That's not to say that the various facets of transhumanism do not heavily overlap, >but that the wheel simply seems to be turning once more.
>  
> The Mormon Transhumanist Association comes to mind (you can tell where our booth is at a H+ conference, by listening for the sounds of irritated voices and grinding teeth)...  
>  
> http://transfigurism.org/
> 
> 
> Hi John -
> 
> I must say I've found you guys (i.e. Mormon Transhumanists) quite intriguing for some time. There are people within ZS working to adapt its principles into a religion of sorts (known so far as "the praxis" - small p - or "transhuman praxis", where Praxis - capital p - refers to ZS as a whole), which gave rise to one of the more interesting early discussions / debates. Basically, a slim majority of early ZS members were opposed to any 'religion' or 'spiritual philosophy' angle whatsoever, *even when* they agreed with every single tenet of the proposed belief system. So it was the label, the word 'religion' itself, that was making them squeamish.
> 
> Anyway, we went for a compromise in the best distributed-networks tradition, allowing the religion project to go ahead, but emphasizing that it is just one way in which people may choose to engage with the ideas and action of offer, which all members are equally free to determinedly ignore.
> 
> If anyone is wondering why we'd bother with a religious aspect at all, let's just say that some of our members know a large number of sympathetic 'fellow travellers' who are some shade of pagan or spiritualist and would more naturally grok transhumanism presented that way. If the details and principles are the same, I don't see a problem myself.
> 
> Best,
> A
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