[ExI] us

[spike at rainier66.com]

.> On Behalf Of Max More via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] us

 

Perhaps one reason that church attendance is down is that the Green religion
has gained so many followers and they don't have churches (at least in the
usual sense).  The Green religion has its own original sin (humankind's
separation from nature due to intelligence and technology), its own god or
goddess (Gaia/the Earth/Nature), its own indulgences (carbon offsets), its
sacrifices (give up your inexpensive cars in favor of expensive electric
vehicles -- and pretend that the latter are powered by "green energy"), its
own prophets (Al Gore, Bill McKibben, Michael Mann, and many others), and it
follows authoritarian, faith-based modes of thinking -- believe The Science
(TM), combined with apocalyptic pronouncements and predictions that are
adjusted every time they fail. 

 

Especially for young people (first three or four decades), Green/extreme
environmentalism/catastrophism has replaced standard religions but meets
most of the same "needs".

 

--Max

  _____  

 

 

Max this is the best post I have seen here in months.

 

Evolutionary psychology would suggest we are fooling ourselves if we think
we can just give up gods.  Human society emerged from murderous chaos by
inventing deities who become angry with us if we fail to adhere to social
mores which lead to stable societies, leading to human cooperation and
emergence from the rest of the beasts which were never able to invent such
deities.  We, our minds, or social structures, our ethics systems, all
evolved through the worship of supernatural beings.  The moral constraints
such evolution puts on us still works just fine, even if we know the
supernatural beings controlling our minds are a product of our minds.

 

Punchline: we cannot just give up that invention.  We are programmed to
worship something.  The green movement is a perfect example of substituting
new gods for the old ones.

 

spike

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