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What Comes After Religion

AthenaAwakened

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Joined
Sep 17, 2003
Messages
5,339
Location
Right behind you so ... BOO!
Basic Beliefs
non-theist, anarcho-socialist


The debate between believers and atheists usually goes nowhere. The real issue is: what should fill the gaps created by the end of widespread belief? What should fill the God-shaped hole?
 
We will probably have strong AI before we get rid of religion. I wonder if the AIs will be susceptible to religion? That would be an interesting Sci-Fi premise, has anyone done it yet?
 
We will probably have strong AI before we get rid of religion. I wonder if the AIs will be susceptible to religion? That would be an interesting Sci-Fi premise, has anyone done it yet?
Asimov.
One of the I, Robot short stories. The robot decided he was the perfect being God wanted to create after he identified all the flaws in humans.
 
I don't really understand why this is a question. Topics like this always seem like a false dichotomy to me.

We fill the gaps with actual experience and finding meaning and ongoing stories about that in the form of culture. This is what we do and have done and will continue to do.

Just because we label aspects of our misbeliefs and myths (as in lies about reality and as in symbols) and social structures "religion" doesn't actually indicate a real line there. We still engage the world in terms of group identity, personal identity, beliefs, experiences, and assumptions, etc. With or without organized religion, we still ask questions about existence and others will still try to answer them and we will still fall prey to fear, ignorance, pleasure seeking, ego, bias, and all manner of cognitive distortions. Out of some of this group activity arises systems we call religion.

Even within organized religion, it's all pretty much anarchy, just like everywhere. No two heads are alike in the mental framework of beliefs about what the world looks like or should look like. No matter how much anyone wants to insist that their beliefs don't change and that they are uniform across the members of the denomination, this is not the case at all. Mental realities and belief systems will continue to change and morph and sometimes collapse with ongoing experiences. Holding the delusion that our stories and artifacts are the source of our conscience, goodness, security, "civility" or our very existence doesn't actually make it true. All of our ideologies and history combined can't change that. They can impinge back on us and reshape our entire life stories - and the ongoing conversations about how religion impinges on human minds and groups help us to possibly shape ourselves into something better moving forward - but they are not the source of our decisions or experiences or happiness or understanding. However, it's easy to understand why even suggesting this might be frightening to a lot of people under such a delusion.

Already our world views incorporate the entire earth, all cultures, all life on the planet, and even possible life on other planets. Everyone's world view must change to accommodate new imagery and knowledge, whether they like the new information or not, it must be incorporated in some way. What we call religion is really just a picture of our understanding of the world at certain places and times, mashed together over centuries, and spread to others all while the belief system is squished and filtered and bent through culture after culture and through other belief systems. But we tend to only call it religion when it involves claims of absolute truth or an unchanging nature.

So perhaps what might be "replacing religion," i.e., what is changing in our cultures and behavior, is exactly what we see when we look around the world right now - the same thing it's always been: stuff we knew before getting mixed with stuff we learn as we go and us telling stories about it.
 
We will probably have strong AI before we get rid of religion. I wonder if the AIs will be susceptible to religion? That would be an interesting Sci-Fi premise, has anyone done it yet?
Asimov.
One of the I, Robot short stories. The robot decided he was the perfect being God wanted to create after he identified all the flaws in humans.

The Battlestar Galactica robots were ate up with religion.
 
If AI minds are as riddled with perceptive and cognitive whirlygigs as human minds, then yes, AI minds will likely be something like religious.
 
The Battlestar Galactica robots were ate up with religion.
Must be the remake.
In the 70's, they were more of a collective...of really bad shots.

Yeah, I watched both versions. Can't believe you didn't watch the remake. The bots had gotten religion in the 20 years between the original conflict and their return.
 
The average guy walking down the street is going to have a headful of mental hang-ups and delusions to deal with long after religion. Eradicating belief doesn't mean eradicating delusion, so life will be about the same as it is now, just people won't do things like show up at Church.

In other words, it doesn't need to be replaced, it will just go away.
 
The debate between believers and atheists usually goes nowhere.

Ha. Yeah.

The real issue is: what should fill the gaps created by the end of widespread belief?

A cold vacuum of thoughtless fear of retribution?

What should fill the God-shaped hole?

The word God. Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, English means anything or anyone considered mighty, inasmuch as the atributor considers might, or venerated. It, uh, is sort of ironic that the godless don't recognize that and so are doomed to repeat whatever dominant propositions should arise as a substitute.

[laughs] its sort of sad, in a way [sigh] but poetic justice in another.
 
Ever since I left religion, I've spent my time raping, murdering, stealing and jaywalking because there was no reason not to.
 
Ever since I left religion, I've spent my time raping, murdering, stealing and jaywalking because there was no reason not to.

Keep flipping that coin fella. You'll come to realize, just after your throat is slit for no reason, that you needed to make decisions taking into account the fact you are a social being if you wanted to fulfill three score and ten.
 
It was this reason I joined this

http://syntheism.org/
Ehh... didn't you make that up, on the intertubes, with a few friends, just like Jesus (G's US) did (xianity) in the 1880s, prior to the great wars to cover up the existence of the intertubes (I mean Babel) so the next generations would learn not to act like assholes?
 
The average guy walking down the street is going to have a headful of mental hang-ups and delusions to deal with long after religion. Eradicating belief doesn't mean eradicating delusion, so life will be about the same as it is now, just people won't do things like show up at Church.

In other words, it doesn't need to be replaced, it will just go away.

To add to this, life without religion is actually what's happening in the area I live in now.

There are still Christians, churches and the like, but they're dwindling and in the vast minority. Most people who aren't Christian or what have you don't identify themselves with atheism. I mean, if you asked them what they felt about religion they'd say something like 'atheist or agnostic, I guess', but in general there isn't atheistic militancy in Canada like there is in the US. People aren't anti-religious, or atheistic, or worried about the state of the world with a lack of God, they are just non-religious. Religion doesn't take up a part of their life and everything else is fine. They watch tv shows, occasionally smoke pot, have babies, download music, and the like, just as people did before, but now Christianity has no effect on their lives.

In a sense you could say the lack of religion has made us all much, much better off, because fewer of us are living in fear of fairy tales, and are becoming more rationalist.
 
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