Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] TransColloquium Meeting: Dealing with New Pope's Campaign

From: Adrian Tymes <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 11:04:47 -0700 (PDT)

--- Natasha Vita-More <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Friends,
> 
> Extropy Institute is calling for a meeting at the TransColloquium for
> Transhumanist organizations to discuss strategies for dealing with
> the 
> potential for conflicts that might arise from the Pope's declaration 
> concerning the moral relativism and the "cultural wars". This is a
> global 
> issue for transhumanity.

I won't be there, but an idea for consideration: perhaps treat the
Pope's call like a call to make morality more like science.
Specifically, science is about explaining objective measurements; if a
theory disagrees with the evidence, then the theory is wrong.  However,
scientists also know that while there probably are objective truths,
they can at best only ever get better and better approximations to
them; we can not know for sure that we know the absolute and final last
word.

Thus, yes, there may be objective moral truths.  The Pope just happens
not to be following them.  (For instance, the idea that any one human
being, even the Pope, is always infallibly correct has long since been
disproven.)
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---

From: Amara Graps <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 12:20:11 +0200

Natasha wrote:
>  Transhumanist organizations to discuss strategies for dealing with the
>  concerning the moral relativism and the "cultural wars". This is a global
>  issue for transhumanity.

Did anyone actually hear Ratzinger's inauguration speech? That
would be the 'official church view'. (I didn't hear it)

Even though I've been on travel for large chunks of the last two
weeks (I was much more concerned if my plane would be permitted to
land at the main Rome airport on the day of his inauguration), of
the bits and pieces I've picked up from the English press, the new
Pope is seriously backpaddling to his own personal views and
offering conciliatory gestures. He gave that 'moral relativism
speech' on his way to the electoral process, _before_ he was elected
as the official Church mouthpiece.

So while I agree that this discussion is good preparation, and I
think that a person who has as strong of views as he does is
unlikely to change (but who knows?), until his 'moral relativism'
idea is given as the official Church doctrine, I think that the
Extropy Institute should not assume too much (yet) about what are
the new Church policies.

Amara

P.S. I tried to listen to the NPR radiocast that spawned this
discussion, but the sound file at their website gives many errors
to my computer, and I didn't succeed to hear what they said. The
NPR might have more current data about the 'New Pope's campaign'
than what I've picked up in bits and pieces in the last couple
weeks, so is there a written account somewhere (NPR or not-NPR)
of the campaign?

-- 

********************************************************************
Amara Graps, PhD          email: [email-masked]
Computational Physics     vita:  ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers         URL:   http://www.amara.com/
********************************************************************
"The universe is big: it doesn't fit in one viewgraph."
-- Carlos Frenk [showing the VIRGO Consortium Hubble volume simulation]
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