Emlyn wrote:
> Firstly, all this "mysticism" stuff. Gag me with a spoon! Special spiritual
> insight, grokking the nature of reality; where does that really get you? You
> feel like it does something positive, but I think it's really just feelgood
> crud; I'd say you'd be hard pressed to show any measurable benefit of such
> epiphany. It sounds suspiciously like the idea of psychedelic drugs
> "expanding your consciousness". The idea appeals (at least under the
> influence of them, as far as I recall), but it's pretty much meaningless in
> any tangible context. In the end, this stuff is the enemy of rational
> thought, basically by definition.
This far, I mostly agree...
> Secondly, and more importantly; this idea of building God for ourselves is
> downright dangerous. The god meme has appeal; it's nice to believe that
> there's a point to the universe, after all (delusional as that may be). By
> extension, when you decide there isn't a God (or a Sysop), then it can seem
> like a good idea to make one, or become one.
>
> What does that mean, though? If you are going to build a do-it-yourself
> guardian (in the sense of Plato - it was Plato, wasn't it?) then I think
> that's bad news; the best outcome we can hope for is failure. It's also
> bloody arrogant.
How so? Was it arrogant, and the best that people could hope for was
failure, when [insert spectacularly sucessful and revolutionary
engineering project of choice here *]? Ok, granted, maybe there was
some arrogance, but it did not fail...
(* Something on the order of the Apollo missions, the Wright Brothers'
airplane, and/or the eradication of smallpox.)
> If you are going to become one, you either envisage being such a guardian,
> or maybe raising everyone up to equal status. In the guardian case, the same
> arguments apply as above. In the egalitarian case, where is godhood? It's
> more powerful beings, sure, but a society of such. So the concept of God is
> not useful in that context.
No, actually it is useful. The concept of God defines a target for one
to reach towards, while one is reaching. Granted, the concept may still
seem out of reach when one decides to reach elsewhere, but in the mean
time, one has progressed enough that more things can be reached for.
(Put another way: just because one trillion units of value - money,
intellect, energy, years in average lifespan, et cetera - is not an
infinite amount of such, that does not mean that starting with one
hundred and obtaining one trillion is necessarily useless, nor does it
mean that one trillion can only be put to the same types of uses as one
hundred.)
> Basically, the concept of God is all about authority, control, dominance.
> The ideas of benign rule, divine right, perfection. If you have any kind of
> individualist streak, these are anathema.
One concept of God, yes. Is it so wrong, in and of itself, to have
control over more non-sentient resources than one currently does? (Many
means of achieving said control may be questionable, but I'm asking
about the control itself. I also freely acknowledge ducking the issue
of lording over other people...but, in many versions of God, mankind's
free will makes humans the one thing God can not absolutely control.)
> Gods will not help us where we are going. But they could seriously stuff
> things up.
If I build a God, and what I have created lifts me up to be a trans-it,
that I might in turn lift it up even higher, and so on in a never-ending
cycle, does that not count as helping?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:38:20 MDT