The language around AGI is proof, in my mind, that religious impulses don't die with the withering of religion. A desire for a totalizing solution to all woes still endures.
I'm increasingly convinced that spirituality is a vital part of the human experience and we should embrace it, not reject it. If you try to banish basic human impulses, they just resurface in worse, unexpected forms somewhere else.
We all need ways to find deep connection with other humans and the universe around us. We need basic moral principles to operate on. I think most atheists like myself have quietly found this or are in the process of finding this, but it's ok to say it out loud.
For me it means meditation, frugality, and strict guidelines on how I treat others. That's like a religion, I guess. But that's OK. I embrace it. By owning it and naming it, you have mastery over it.
I've come to conclude that the problem isn't "religion" in the abstract, it's that the current institutions are unhealthy and sometimes toxic. IE, it's easier to be an atheist, even in name only, when one realizes that the religion they participated in as a child has more problems than benefits.
I sometimes wonder how people like us could create institutions that replace religions, yet generally agree with our beliefs and needs.
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BTW: I've seen plenty of toxic behavior from atheists too. Aggressive evangelizing ones' beliefs, (or lack thereof,) IMO is a toxic behavior.
What on earth is "unorganized" religion? How is such a concept distinct from the concepts of "worldview" or "ideology"? When people use the term, I assume automatically they're referring to abrahamic faiths—especially in contrast to "atheism".
Right, but I don't know what is referred to by "practice" that is at all distinct from "worldview" or "ideology".
This is my informal understanding; I am not a religious scholar
We need more spirituality.
But surely, anyone who's talking about atomic weapons must be invoking religious imagery and the old myths of divine retribution! They can't be talking about an actual technology capable of vaporizing cities and burning people into the walls as shadows - what a ridiculous, impossible notion would that be! "World War 3" is just a good old end-of-the-world myth, the kind of myth that exists in many religions, but given a new coat of paint.
And Hiroshima and Nagasaki? It's the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, now retold for the new age. You have to be a doomsday cultist to believe that something like this could actually happen!
Yes. And the people talking about "bringing the power of the Sun to Earth" are usually either full of shit or expect so little from their audience that they are effectively talking shit (or are making clickbait, what's the same). (And yes, there's a lot of fraud around fusion too.)
The people doing actual work don't use phrases like that in normal conversation.
If I understand his idea correctly, these societies that were developed with a religious justification, and a huge religious component, are of course losing it in the scientific age. The first stage they go through is "zombie religion" where people don't pretend to believe in the religion any more, but still insist that they share all of its values, and often become even more fanatical in the functions that the old religion served. The second stage is "zero religion" where both the belief and the functions are gone, and all that's left is a religion shaped hole that is filled with nihilism: the strong preying on the weak, self-indulgence, and an elite retreat into often paranoid fantasy.
These stages are shaped by the particular religion that disappeared, so the Zero Catholicisms aren't the same as Zero Protestantisms aren't the same as the Zero Islams. Science, being about what works rather than why you should be doing anything, simply didn't fill up these holes that once held morality and justification. For him, it seems, the Western world is primarily in a moral crisis, and we're seeing it in the mental decay of an elite that doesn't have to justify itself to anyone, ever (after religion has died.)
Personally, I can also see this in the deep desire of some people to obey AI, but I can't see it being fruitful at all. "Because the AI said so" is not particularly inspiring or ecstatic. It's just an extension of middle-class materialistic money as grace and job as devotion, which is notoriously unfulfilling. Will AI help you succeed if it can't tell you what it means to succeed?
An article in Illustrated London News, April 26, 1924 by G. K. Chesterton
> religious impulses don't die with the withering of religion
Religions have of course come and gone throughout human history. The preceding deities, temples, and artwork are called mythology by people inside today's temples of fervour.
But let's be clear, disparate local tribal practices and beliefs are only formalised by a power structure for the masked purposes of the power structure.
What springs eternal is the maintenance of control in political and tribal hierarchies.
> A desire for a totalizing solution to all woes
The fact that our species exhibits astonishing credulity is illustrated throughout history to the present day, not just in religious activities but in every context of economic scams and demagoguery.
[1] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusion...
If your intuition told you that there ought to be some evidence for grand claims, you would be right to be suspicious of the continuing absence of suitable evidence.
[1] _ http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/110/Sagan.pdf
Any technically superior solution needs to have a built in scam otherwise most followers will ignore it and the scammers won't have incentive to prosthelytize, e.g. rusts' safety scam.