[ExI] Muslim and Supermuslim: Toward Islamic transhumanism?

[William Flynn Wallace]

You are assuming that beyond a certain level, enthusiasm turns into
fanaticism, which is always bad, right?  Just how does that happen?  A
desire to blow things up?  Obsessiveness?  Narrowness of focus?  Anger with
those opposing?  Delusions of grandeur? (saving the world, etc.)  Note how
these factors are also those that start wars

I would add pollution and education to the list.

bill w

On Sat, Feb 29, 2020 at 3:10 PM Giovanni Santostasi via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> We should not do any super fanatic anything.
> This why I so dislike super christians or super muslims.
> Transhumanism should make us less fanatics, more universal, more accepting
> and embracing (not of death). The only fanaticism should be reserve to
> fighting aging and death.
> Giovanni Santostasi
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 28, 2020 at 1:39 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> On 28/02/2020 07:34, Giulio Prisco wrote:
>>
>> No trolling intended Ben, sorry if my post came across that way.
>>
>> I consider some expressions of atheism as a religion, because they
>> exhibit many defining features of organized religions: Certainty of
>> having all the answers, us against them, intolerance of those who
>> disagree, at times open hatred. These are the bad features of
>> organized religions, so in a certain sense atheism (of the militant,
>> intolerant sort) is worse than traditional religions, because it has
>> the bad features of religion without the good ones. I often say that
>> atheism is the only religion with a really boring mythology.
>>
>> Of course this applies to **some expressions** of atheism (of the
>> militant, intolerant sort). I consider open-minded, live-and-let-live
>> atheists as fellow seekers.
>>
>>
>> You're talking about two different things.
>>
>> As Richard Dawkins has said, atheism is a religion in the same way that
>> not collecting stamps is a hobby.
>>
>> If someone asks me what team sports I participate in, I don't (usually)
>> reply "not playing football".
>>
>> If I try to stop other people from playing football, that's not a
>> consequence of my not playing football, it's a consequence of my being an
>> arsehole. Not playing football doesn't require one to try to prevent
>> football-playing in others. In fact, it doesn't require (or, in itself lead
>> to) anything except the lack of personal football-playing.
>>
>> On the other hand, most religions do require their subjects to suppress
>> other religions, in various ways, up to and including killing
>> 'non-believers', in the more extreme (usually 'fundamentalist') versions.
>>
>> So if someone is an atheist, and a bigot, those are two different things.
>> Atheism does not require one to be a bigot. Christianity, for example (in
>> most of its forms), does.
>>
>> You may hold up the example of Jainism as an example of a non-intolerant
>> religion. Good for Jainism. That does't make atheism a religion, though.
>> Jainism is still a set of beliefs.
>>
>> Getting into the actual definition of the word 'religion' is a rabbit
>> warren, with no real satisfactory conclusion. Some people have even
>> concluded that the word is not really meaningful at all, but most people
>> have something in mind when they use it. And all of the various somethings
>> that they have in mind are not applicable to atheism, because they refer to
>> the *presence* of various factors, not the lack of them.
>>
>> This is the core concept that it seems many people have trouble
>> understanding about atheism, and is maybe why it gets misrepresented so
>> much. It's not a belief, not a religion, not a social movement, or a club
>> or a political stance, or even a world-view. It's simply the lack of a
>> belief in supernatural beings and phenomena.
>>
>> The fact that some people who lack such beliefs are also bigots is beside
>> the point, and calling someone a 'fundamentalist atheist' is meaningless.
>> It's like talking about a temperature below absolute zero (without any
>> exotic physics, please). Similarly, calling someone a 'militant atheist' is
>> like calling someone a violent non-golfer. They may be a violent person,
>> but they cannot violently not play golf, it's simply not possible. And if
>> they violently try to prevent other people from playing golf, well, they're
>> just an arsehole.
>>
>> --
>>
>> Ben Zaiboc
>>
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