[ExI] Humanity+ Talk Religion & transhumanism (not the usual!)

[Stefano Vaj]

2011/9/7 Amon Zero <amon at doctrinezero.com>

> Yes - and if people who recognised the non-existence of Ponzi returns were
> also advocating denial of the existence or danger/importance of Ponzi
> schemes, that would be something of an issue, wouldn't it?
>

Besides the fact that Ponzi returns *are* real in most senses for the
participants, as long as the pyramid does not crumble (but how are our
economies any different, when debts for capital and interests obviously
exceeds the entire monetary mass), I am pretty much persuaded that naive
"realism" does not cut it, psychologically or epistomologically. We live in
the reality we live in, and discussions on what is "really" the reality
behind it are ultimately idle as those on Kantian noumena.

Only, the real issue is what beliefs are about. Now, at least in my reality,
for all its shortcomings, a certain scientific paradigm has been
spectacularly successful in the "technologies" that allowed it to compete
against opposite worldviews. And monotheistic superstitions are not just
incompatible with what I am, they also feed obscurantism by definition.

This should not, however, be generalised to anything which be a-"scientific"
or pre-"scientific".

Greek paganism, for instance, seems to have had a clear enough perception of
the difference between the empirical and the mythical spacetime, so that an
ancient Greek could simultaneously "believe" to different, and mutually
exclusive, versions of the same myth while obviously basing his or her daily
life with the assumptions deriving from the non-contradiction principle.

And, for that matter, I do not see how Confucianism, Shinto, Hinduism or Zen
would conflict with the pursuit of technoscientific excellence, either from
a motivation or from a "belief system" POV.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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