Everyone, There is an important point that everyone here is missing:
Believers actually do better in our world than do non-believers. Why? Because others know that believers think God is watching them, so others expect believers to be more trust-worthy than non-believers are. Hence, with greater trust, believers are trusted with more, they build bigger fortunes, have more wives, and sire more believers. Looking around, most people can see that believers usually have more than do non-believers. Why? "Obviously" (if you believe the hype) because God has rewarded them for their belief!!! My longtime friend Dan, a Baptist minister with a DD degree, related his impressions when he first met my family, where no one had even the slightest hint of religious leanings. Dan had "learned" that you can't trust non-believers, yet we literally saved his life from a downward spiral, with no expectation of any sort of direct reward. This turned into hours of discussion about the cold hard logic of some forms of altruism, e.g. seeing how little it takes to turn someone else's life around, to potentially be used in the future to turn our own lives around. In short, the value of what we learned exceeded the cost of saving Dan. There is a COST in non-belief that isn't exacted by God, but rather it is exacted by society in the form of a sort of social tax that keeps away many valuable contacts. Sure, you might think that a devout believer is a little nuts, but that is better than their belief that you, a non-believer, are untrustworthy and will steal anything you can get away with. Hence, reject the meme of God at your peril. There is a good reason why everyone on this forum is too broke to fully fund their interests - because your "God", AGI, isn't their God. Steve ============== On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 8:51 AM, Piaget Modeler <[email protected]>wrote: > > Whether their host is biological or synthetic, I think memes will always > find a way to reproduce. > > ~PM > > ------------------------------ > Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2012 10:20:52 -0600 > Subject: Re: [agi] Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Religious > belief > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > > > It would be interesting, though, PM, to see if the AGIs humanity > eventually produces are sufficiently similar to us to be susceptible to the > same parasitic exploitation. > > > > *AGI* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/10443978-6f4c28ac> | > Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;>Your Subscription > <http://www.listbox.com> > -- Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a six hour workday. That will easily create enough new jobs to bring back full employment. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-c97d2393 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-2484a968 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
