[extropy-chat] Putting God to Rest

[Keith Henson]

At 10:07 PM 4/23/2007 -0700, samantha wrote:
>Anna Taylor wrote:

snip

> > I agree but simply saying Religion and the existence
> > of God is bullshit will not convince people of faith.
> > The main point of my post was to imply that I don't
> > believe in judgement and that I respect other people's
> > choice of belief.
> >
>Is it our job to convince them?  I don't think it is.  Are they more
>likely to find the truth if we do not state the truth we have found
>without beating clearly and strongly?  I don't think so.

I don't think so either.  For reasons that are not clear *yet* religions 
are "ROM" like; once religious type memes have occupied a brain (what I 
called 20 years ago the religious meme receptor site) they are usually hard 
to dislodge.

I admit it is retro for concerned-about-the-future transhumanists to push 
evolved-in-the-stone-age evolutionary psychology understanding of humans, 
particularly about why they have religions (or religions have them).  But 
speaking as an engineer, if you want to improve something, you darn better 
know what it is before you start "improving" it.

Right now I can't tell if the capacity for humans to have religions is a 
bug or a feature.

Keith Henson