[ExI] Are all religious people chuckleheads (was Re: riots again)

[Kelly Anderson]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 11:22 AM, Charlie Stross
<charlie.stross at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't feel the need to defend islam. Or christianity, or judaism. All those faiths
> harbour a bucketload of intolerant chuckleheads who want to force their beliefs
> on everyone else. However, to damn *all* muslims, christians, or jews as intolerant
> chuckleheads is to make a mistake of similar magnitude. The cure for intolerance is
> not more intolerance.

Charlie, I'm going out on a limb here because I don't know your
precise definition of chucklehead... :-)  but I'm going to assume, for
the point of argument, that you don't consider me to be one.

Since I spent a large portion of my life being a Mormon, and being
just as smart then as I am now (perhaps smarter, as age degrades
mental performance slightly) I see myself as having been
indoctrinated, brainwashed, and otherwise taught a party line that I
worked really hard to understand and use to implement my life. Had my
life gone a little better, I probably would still be towing that line.
But, as fate would have it, I had some bumps in the road that pointed
out to me that this God fellow wasn't doing me a damn bit of good and
was, in fact, making my life harder than it needed to be.

I went on a mission for the church, and so I tried to convince other
people (with some success) that this was a good plan for living
better. And for many people, I am convinced that it was. Their lives
individually improved by adopting the memeplex. Now, it wasn't
"forced", it was by gentle persuasion and some logical reasoning. I
don't think there is anything wrong with explaining your beliefs to
someone else, and it's fine if they adjust their set of accepted memes
as a result of such discussion. Blowing people up is right out, of
course.

Society as a whole, now that's a different story. As a society, I
don't think religion is very helpful any more. Before science, it was
useful as a catalyst for building bigger civilizations. But to
individuals, religion can be very psychologically helpful. So the
question that atheists and extropians have to answer is how to meet
people's very real individual psychological needs without resorting to
religion.

Breaking out of Mormonism was really difficult for me. I think it will
prove impossible for a lot of people because there is no desire for
them to do so. It works for many of them, very well. It will take a
VERY long time for religion to entirely go away. In fact, I believe
many AGIs will be religious, at least in the beginning. Whether it is
desirable or not... that's an entirely different question.

-Kelly