In a message dated 6/18/00 12:32:33 AM Central Daylight Time,
altamira@ecpi.com writes:
> > >From: GBurch1@aol.com
> >that we can expect a "withering away of the faith".
> > Nano-enabled religious
> > >fundamentalism is among my two or three worst nightmares for the 21st
> > >century.
> >
> > Religious fundamentalism is fear No. 1 to me. If anything ruins
> > the party
> > of the future, my money says it will be religion.
> >
> > -Zero
>
> I'm having a difficult time imagining what nano-enabled religious
> fundamentalism might be like. Or any nano-enabled mass movement, for that
> matter. When I put on my "future binoculars" I keep getting pictures of
> more individual-to-individual or small group-to-small group types of
> combat--rather like in the old days of sword fighting. Am I having a
failure
> of imagination?
I think so. Religious institutions have adapted new technologies that suited
their goal of maintaining and spreading their power. Just because
Protestantism was spread with the new invention of the printing press, the
Catholic Church didn't avoid using it: Instead they instituted the
Inquisition and the practice of the Imprimatur. The armies on both sides of
the religious wars of the 16th and 17th Centuries both used the latest
technologies (although the Protestants seemed to be slightly quicker to do
so).
Sure, individuals will be empowered by full-blown nanotech, but they've been
empowered by the printing press and the automobile, too. The only antidote
to religious fundamentalism and the intolerance - and ultimately violence -
that it breeds is reason. Getting an "anything box" won't automatically make
people more reasonable. Which was one of the roots of Damien's question.
Want glimpses of what nano-enabled religious fundamentalism might look like?
Think goo-powered jihad. Think nanobots tailored to attack people of a
specific ethnicity, or triggered by the utterance of certain "blasphemous"
words. Think people so consumed by their desire to BELIEVE that they
willingly submit to neurological microsurgery to reform their brains to make
doubt impossible. Bad. Very Bad.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
ICQ # 61112550
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:13:39 MDT