[ExI] Existing as stored data (Was: How many current members of ExI?)

[William Flynn Wallace]

I don't believe in pushing back against religion.  I believe in pushing
empiricism and skepticism.  You can do that without challenging a person's
beliefs.  Of course you are challenging his whole system, but that's his
worry, I think

bill w

On Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 11:27 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> ...> On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Existing as stored data (Was: How many current members
> of
> ExI?)
>
> On 19/04/2020 00:53, Spike wrote:
> > Second thing in SDA: that religion holds that when a person perishes,
> > they are on hold, no conscious existence in any form.  They exist as
> > stored data until they are re-assembled at a later time.
>
> I'm curious, Spike: Where or in what form what do they think this stored
> data is? I'm presuming this is not thought to require any particular
> actions
> on behalf of the person in question (apart, possibly, from membership of
> the
> SDA), but just happens magically?
>
> --
> Ben Zaiboc
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Eh, I don't know that it is commonly pondered Ben.  The religion was
> invented before computers were a thing.  They might be asking that question
> now, but it has been over 30 yrs since I had any deep philosophical
> discussions with true believers.  I do not wish to challenge their belief
> system, for good reason: salvation in most religions requires belief in
> that
> religion.  If you damage their faith, you could cause them eternal
> damnation.  I wouldn't want to be responsible for even fictitious eternal
> damnation.  I would feel so bad about that, even if my religion is right
> and
> I managed to get an upload existence in a holodecky kind of simulated
> reality, knowing that I mighta caused some true believer to go to eternal
> destruction, regardless of the fact that the feared eternal destruction
> doesn't exist.  If it did exist, I mighta contributed to the bastard going
> there, because I contributed to his disbelief.
>
> ...emmm... OK so perhaps that whole thought paradigm needs some work.
>
> In any case, I like to help people and encourage people where they are,
> never mind trying to convert them to atheism.  Atheism works for me, for I
> am a person who cannot stand cognitive dissonance, not a trace of it, not
> one nanoparticle of internal conflict.  I do know smart people who are
> built
> differently from me psychologically.
>
> I know personally a civil engineer who I went to school with, who is a
> literal recent creationist.  Part of his job is to do core samples and map
> out historic mud flows in the Seattle area, so they know where are the best
> evacuation routes in case the mountain blows and dumps a wall of snow and
> mud on the towns north and west of there.  He has to look at the mud cores,
> and calculate dates on the various features and fossils they find in the
> cores.  He can clearly see evidence that life is old.  But he has two
> different hemispheres, each capable of its own belief system, and he uses
> both.  He fully recognizes he believes two different things which are
> mutually incompatible, and has done that for over 30 years, but... on he
> goes.  This is a calculus I cannot do.  But if he can, then it isn't my job
> to disabuse him.
>
> Ben I have wandered far from your original question.  So here's the answer:
> I don't know
>
> spike
>
>
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