Subject: Re: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion

From: "Lee Corbin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 10:00:10 -0700

Torstein writes

> I am one of these fools you [Eliezer, below] speak of. That is to say, I've been
> thinking about how we can best fill the void left by deleting religion for some time.
>
> However, I see no reason why it should be impossible to design an up-to-date,
> rational worldview to fill the roles that ancient religions currently play in many
> peoples lives,

In your urge to re-design, are at all or have you ever been dismayed at the
mess made by some of your predecessors who tried their hands at
redesigning economic systems, nations, governments, or even housing projects?
It is for absolute sure that Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, and
American urban planners of the 1950s beyond number also believed that it
would be, at least conceptually, "a simple matter" to design an up-to-date
rational economic system, or urban neighborhood system, or what have you.

I advise extreme caution and humility in the face of thousands of years of
evolved systems that work, however badly from our points of view.

Lee

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whatever needs are being psychologically met by the world's religion, I predict
that it will be flatly impossible without superhuman assistance, to design rational
up-to-date replacements.

 without violating rationality. The awesomeness of existence in-it-self, and the inherent beauty of the universe, from sub atomic to 
cosmological scales is nothing short of poetic. To me, this is worthy of ten thousand hymns...

Hey, the answers provided by existing worldviews are so feeble when viewed from an enlightened 21st century viewpoint that if such a 
project were to be undertaken today, it would probably yield better answers almost by default, seeing how we have several thousand 
years of collective experience to learn from. We can provide better answers to "the great questions in life" than what was possible 
some-thousand years ago.

Community-building is obviously the tricky part, and it would be cool to have some off-list input on this.

Some of the philosophically inclined people on this list probably have the mental horsepower to have a reasonable chance to pull of 
such a project. Updating peoples world-views with the last couple of thousand years of cultural and scientific progress, and 
facilitating the transition to a post religious society seems like a worthwhile project to me.

Humanity as a whole has come incredibly far in our understanding of Life, The Universe and Everything,
when compared to the level understanding attained by average people through going to church and watching television.

I'd be happy if you guys would be so kind and provide some input on the subject. My pet post-religious alternative is available at 
WWW.KHALA.NET
PS: Bonus points if you guys succeed in playing the devil's advocate, and shooting this thing down, so I can free up time for other 
projects.

-TT

"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <[email-masked]> wrote:
Samantha Atkins wrote:
> On May 3, 2007, at 9:32 PM, spike wrote:
>
>> Fred, something I left out of my post is that religion for me was
>> an extremely positive experience. I cannot even think of a
>> negative part of it. The family aspects of religion, my friends,
>> the music, the scholarly aspects, all of it was good to me, more
>> positive for me than for anyone else I know. I loved my church
>> and my church life. My friends and acquaintances were absolutely
>> astounded that I could ever give it up, thought I had gone
>> insane. I had gone sane however. I had no choice: I realized I
>> could not control what I believe, and I no longer believed the
>> doctrine to be true. True matters more than happy.
>
> I know very much what that is like. It was very difficult for me
> to let go of my religious life. But try as I might, and I tried
> mighty hard, I couldn't make it out to be true. I also could not
> abide the places of blindness within my religious community to much
> outside of importance and value.
>
>> So, into the old bit bucket with it, all of it. I miss it to
>> this day I confess.
>
> There are considerable parts that I miss too.

Samantha, Spike, what do you miss?

Fools try to build "rational religions" but because they are just
blindly imitating religion, they only invent sad little mockeries;
hymns to the nonexistence of God. You have to start by accepting
"That which can be destroyed by the truth should be" as a
non-negotiable requirement, and then consider the desires that
religion grew up organically to satisfy. You have to create a vision
of what humanity would have been if we had never made the mistake of
religion in the first place, never believed in anything supernatural,
never departed the way of rationality, but had still had the same
desires and grown up other organic institutions to fulfill them.

The humanity that never made the mistake would write hymns, when they
saw something worth writing a hymn to; but it wouldn't be a hymn to
the nonexistence of God, because they wouldn't have the idea of God in
the first place. Would this world still have marriages and funeral
ceremonies? Yes, but they would be different marriages and funeral
ceremonies. They certainly would not be performed "in the name of
Bayes" because nobody wants to hear about bloody probability theory
while they're trying to get married - that's an example of the blind
imitation that usually gets done by fools who set out to invent
"rational replacements for religion". But even human beings who don't
have heads stuffed full of blatant nonsense will still want to
celebrate marriages. They just won't invoke invisible sky wizards to
seal the deal. Even a rationalist still feels a need to find
something to say when a friend or family member dies. It just won't
be false comfort.

If you have a need that can be satisfied without believing in false
propositions, maybe we can get it back for you, one of these days. If
it was satisfied by a church in the old days, it may take a while to
construct the community, though.

What I miss most myself is comfort, the reassurance that there's a
higher power watching over you and that everything will turn out all
right. But I know I can never have *that* back this side of the dawn,
and maybe not even then. That feeling of comfort falls directly under
the non-negotiable prescription: That which can be destroyed by the
truth should be.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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From: "Torstein Haldorsen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 21:21:28 +0200

Hi Lee, thanks for your reply! Actually, I have given this some thought.

While I do not in any way consider my self in league with Marx or Lenin,
the unfortunate fate of their cause serves to prove that the road to hell
may very well be paved with good intentions.

The penultimate rule for any effort must to do no harm, or at least
to try and minimize the potential for suffering.

Now all the examples you cite have in common that they impose a relatively
fixed model from the top down. This is akin to creating a static, "better"
model, and imposing it on a national level, say.. This model may have faults
that one at the time of design is unable to percieve.

What I'm suggesting is that we try to create a rational, modular, and
dynamic open worldview that may be adopted on an individual level as an
ALTERNATIVE to the existing "religions", or to non-religious atheism for
that matter...

This may preserve and cultivate the positive aspects we find in existing
religions, for instance
the deep sense of meaning, a deep sense of belonging, and the
communal aspects of religion, while at the same time concentrating our
factual knowledge of the world, and trying to approximate the truths of life
to the best level of accuracy possible. I suggest that we try to create an
ever-improving open source alternative to the existing worldviews and put it
on the "religious marketplace".

If it were to prove memetically fit for survival it could, over time diffuse
or be adopted by a portion of the global population,
for instance rational atheists and others who currently do not subscribe to
any existing organized worldview.

Again, that which can be destroyed by truth should be. In the 21st century,
we cannot provide supernatural explanations to natural phenomena. We can
however try and find the best explanations we currently have, our best
approximations to the truths of life, the universe and everything, and try
to structure and organize these truths into a humanly cognizable framework.

Now, to contrast this with Marx and Lenin and the others.. Boy, they failed
on a lot of counts.

Among these: Having fundamental flaws in the model. Not seeing or improving
upon these flaws.
Allowing for coercion and the supression of democracy, engaging in
groupthink, eliminating dissent, violating human rights,
and last but not least; requiring the defeat of of the prevailing paradigm
(market capitalism) in order to suceed.

This means that from the outset they created adversaries with a vested
interest in their demise.

No bloody revolution is needed in this case fortunately, although
fundamentalists of all creeds and nationalities tend to prove ever so
slightly unsupportive of anything new. We do not need to upend the existing
organized worldviews in order to put a rational alternative on the market.
Co-existence is a good thing, the more we can influence existing
alternatives with rational, scientifially sound ideas, the better.

One problem with _the existing_ organized worldviews is that they have no
safeguards against beeing abused.
This results in political leaders declaring war in the name of God, and
doing other wicked things in the name of the greater good.

Now, having political leaders with a faith that includes and accepts the
philosophy of eye for an eye was never a very good idea,
but it becomes a potentially catastrophic existential risk when such people
are in command of a significant nuclear arsenal,
not just sticks and stones as was the case when the prevailing paradigm of
monotheistic religion evolved.

Principal safeguards against beeing misused could, should and must be
developed, and applied at the very top level.
This would be one of many significant funtional improvements upon the
existing alternatives.

I think it is possible to carefully design safety-valves to disencourage
abuse, and reduce potential negative outcomes.

I think it is possible to harness and amplify the positive features of
existing religions without resorting to fairytales.

I also believe that it is time to cautiously and with great humility start
to lay the groundwork for a creating a vastly better post-religious
worldview for a significant portion of the worlds population. Wouldn't it be
ethically wrong not to do so, letting things remain as they have for the
last several hunded, if not thousand years?

Things have been at a virtual standstill, for a looooooooong time. Way to
long. It's time to see some progress...

We shouldn't necessarily limit ourselves to sharing our ideas with a tiny
sub-fraction of philosophically inclined tech-geeks.
Proactionary extropian values could have a significant part in such a
philosophy / post-religion / what-you-wanna-call-it.

-TT