The main point of the article was that transhumanism would do well to not simply despise and denigrate all of religion and religious people. It was not about uploading or even about the Singularity being some second coming of Jesus. There are parts of religion I consider important as I listed in my comment:
Religion includes many features that I think are very important and especially to movements towards high ideals. These include - strong community - efforts to build a people united by shared agreed strong ideals - seeking the best in others - Seeing the other as yourself as explicit spiritual exercise and wishing for their greater growth and well-being as you do your own. - regular inspiration - coming together on a regular basis physically or virtually to receive inspiration and see one another for a while from the perspective of mutual uplift and hope - focus on ideal[s] - generally raising the core focus of the person to be more aware of and more comprehensively attempting to manifest the held ideals - infusion of ideal - Casting the common occurrences of every life in terms of or associating them with the ideal. Possible means include recasting of meaning and adding reminding rituals (e.g. prayer or short meditation before eating). I don't think we want to dissociate ourselves from many of these highly positive functions religion can and to some degree does fulfill. At the least we need to form our own equivalents or better for many of these functions. I will argue that religions, at least some sub-parts of some of them, have developed a great number of techniques to change focus, psychological state, control oneself better, employ more self discipline, etc. There are things we can learn from them and benefit from learning and deploying. On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 1:02 PM, Matt Mahoney <[email protected]>wrote: > On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 7:03 AM, Ben Goertzel <[email protected]> wrote: > > > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zoltan-istvan/are-we-heading-for-a-jesu_b_5002863.html > > I guess where the article says "Many experts, including Dr. Ben > Goertzel", what they really mean is "Dr. Ben Goertzel". Why should > they do any more research than they have to? > > But let's ignore the fact that no congress-person would ever admit to > being an atheist. Few would even dare to claim that humans evolved > from monkeys, for fear of pissing off some percent of their voters. > How many politicians do you know that will say anything at all that is > the least bit controversial? > > That said, I really doubt that there will be a "Jesus Singularity". > Religion does not have anything to say about modern transhumanism. It > says your soul will go to heaven or hell. It doesn't say that when you > die, your soul will transfer to a robot that sort of looks and acts > like you. > > -- > -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] > > > ------------------------------------------- > AGI > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/2997756-fc0b9b09 > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
