From: Nicq MacDonald (sehkenenra@netzero.net)
Date: Sat Aug 16 2003 - 12:56:59 MDT
> It would be interesting to speculate how much the "run-up" to
> the singularity might be driving people into a "haven" of
> ancient ideas because they fear the unknown of the future.
I attend a college affiliated with the ELCA, and I've also noticed this
"death" of the Christian intellectual tradition. It's amazing how many of
the professed christians among my fellow students (the majority being ELCA
Lutherans) have no grasp of the most prominent theologians of their faith,
such as Paul Tillich and Karl Barth. I recently took a bioethics class in
which I presented a case defending stem cell therapies, genetic
manipulation, cryonics, uploads, and essentially the whole transhumanist
package using Lutheran theology, yet the class was more taken by the purely
emotional and Kassian arguments presented by one of the nursing majors
against reproductive cloning. An example of a dialogue that commenced:
Me: So, what are your views based upon? In final analysis, what is wrong
with this procedure?
Student: I just feel that it's wrong.
Me: What is that feeling based upon?
Student: It's based upon god.
Me: So you have a direct channel to god? You know exactly what god thinks?
I don't believe that such "religious" defenses are valid in an argument.
Student: {no comment}
All too often, it seems that "god" becomes little more than an apotheosis of
an individual's prejudices.
Sad, really, but I can understand their feelings. While I largely agree
with Tillich's theology, in the end I found it largely irrelevant- one is
left with a religion that there is essentially no reason to practice, and
for that reason I abandoned my Lutheran upbringing and moved on to Zen,
which presented both a religious view that I found intellectually satisfying
and a meaningful practice. But it seems that "intellectual satisfaction"
isn't an essential component of religious belief these days.
-Nicq MacDonald
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