[ExI] BICEP2 and the Fermi paradox

[John Clark]

On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 1:22 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> A few years ago on this list I used this very argument against Nick
> Bostrom's anthropic argument in favor of us being in a simulation -
> although at that time inflation was more of a hypothesis rather than a
> theory slouching towards becoming a fact, as it is doing today. There are
> so may more young civilizations than older ones that no matter how popular
> ancestor simulations are, you are vanishingly unlikely to be in one of them
>

And that was a very very good point!

> what we are seeing here is evolution of a religion.  The successful
> modern religions are catching on to an important aspect for their survival:
> don't fight science.  Rather, spin it to an advantage, regardless of which
> way science takes us.  Religions which fight science are always going to
> lose in the long run, because science has evidence on its side.
>

The trick that religion needs to do is what so many intellectuals have done
when the God theory became untenable, abandon the idea of God but not the
English word G-O-D. Just fuzz up the word so much it could mean anything
and then religious people get to say all sorts of vacuous but pleasant
sounding things like "I believe in God because there are things more
powerful than myself". Of course that means that a bulldozer is God, but
never mind.

  John K Clark
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