[ExI] A science-religious experience

[efc at disroot.org]

On Tue, 25 Feb 2025, Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat wrote:

> > If you think science is the best tool to refine, improve, discard, and
> > revise ideas, why not apply it to refine, improve, discard,
> 
> and revise ideas that originated in the sphere of religion?
> 
> That's pretty much what I have done, for myself. With the inevitable result:
> No religion left. Try this with most of the population of the world, though,
> and see how far you get. In quite a few parts of the world, you probably
> wouldn't even survive the attempt.  

This is very interesting, because like you both, I also have toyed with this
concept of deconstructing religion to see what pieces we should keep and what
pieces we should discard.

My personal conclusion is that religion contains some sound ethical advice, but
that ethical advise can be put in a more clear way, and grounded much more
intelligently and coherently with the help of modern philosophy, informed by
science. So that would lead to discarding all of the ethics and rules. They can
be used as a starting point, but upon philosophizing a bit, they can be given
better foundations. A lot of weirdness and superstition goes out the window at
the same time, which is good!

When it comes to the rest, there are "spiritual" techniques such as
meditation/prayer/mantras which have psychological and health benefits. Even if
we strip them of their divine garb and deconstruct them, they still have been
shown to provide psychological benefits, such as meditation, zazen, mindfulness,
and depending on how broadly or narrowly you want to define the category you can
throw in other things as well such as visualization, hypnosis, self-hypnosis,
progressive muscle relaxation etc. The benefits might not be huge, and are
dependent on the person, but there are various amounts of benefits there.

A third aspect of religion which I think can profitably be deconstructed and
stripped of its divinegarb is deep, spiritual meaning and the feeling of a
fulfilled life. This is covered by positive psychology that teaches us the
importance of thankfulness, belonging to a community, having friends, being
physically active, eating in a healthy way etc.

You also have an off-shoot in the form of transpersonal psychology which
studies the the spiritual and transcendent human experiences within the 
framework of modern psychology. 

We have learned that for some, eating magic mushrooms or other substances in a
controlled way, with experienced guides, can heal psychological traumas, can
create feelings of being connected deeply with the universe, and these
experiences are ranked by many as profound and transformative experiences of
immense value.

These subtances and protocols make them available even to us hardened scientists
and transhumanists, _if_ we feel the need for it. In fact, I am very curious
myself about the effect of such a "trip" on me, who is lacking the religious
background for it. On the other hand, I am fairly happy with my life as it is, I
do feel awe at times, when contemplating the universe. Is that a spiritual
feeling? I don't know. Does it increase my life satisfaction? Sure does!

These have been my results of applying science to religion, and picking the
cherries, will leaving the rest.

Would be interested in your thoughts on the subject Jason.

Best regards, 
Daniel