Is everything a religion?

[grumbler]

Grumbler, other parts of the world (outside of the West) have had the printing press for some time without adopting our mentality. Of course, they've also had Protestantism, but I'd argue that it hasn't played as central a role. But China, for example, has only started to atomize recently. Now, the issue may be technological, in that modern technologies smash up communities by making populations more fluid. But the "thinking for themselves"? Religious diversity, and controversy, were common as dirt for a long, long, long time before printing presses came along.

I don't believe that parts of the world (outside the West) HAVE had the printing press for some time. The printing press was a government monopoly in many countries. I'd argue that religious diversity was far from the norm in history. Empires like the Persian and Roman were notable precisely because they tolerated religious diversity, unlike their peers. And China has not been a monolithic culture (i.e. has actually been atomized) for most of its history. The Mandarin/Han variety was simply what we most heard about.

Incidentally, Muslims believe their religion was the original form of monotheism, not an update. Abraham was originally a Muslim, the story goes, but the truth was garbled in transmission and contaminated by polytheism. Muhammad simply restored the original truth.

I've never heard of a Muslim who did not believe that Abu Bakr was the first Muslim. Got a source for this assertion about Abraham?


I am enjoying the conversation, by the way. Thanks for engaging me.

[Kidlicious]

Actually, none of them do, because it is a logical impossibility. The claim that Christians "understand the trinity" is the original Fake News.

The Trinitarian view that it is possible to have "one God in three Divine Persons" is manifestly a humbug. Because if Jesus is god, then he made no sacrifice and his "resurrection" was not a triumph over death, but just an immortal god being immortal. If he was a man who suffered, died, and resurrected, then he cannot be a god consubstantial with the other two (for they would have existed before he did). You cannot logically divide an apple into three parts, call each part a complete apple, and also insist that the original apple is also complete.

It's not impossible at all, logically or otherwise. I'm a spiritual person and a physical person. These two persons are one yet they are very much different from each other. They are a synthesis. The same is said about God.

Now when my physical body dies my spiritual self will continue on and I will still be Kidicious.

I'm not surprised that this is hard for you just like it is hard for muslims.

[ZEE]

I dare anybody on this entire forum to argue the point Kidicious just maed. It is literally impossible.

Ming, lock the thrade. It's over.

[Kidlicious]

Grumbler, other parts of the world (outside of the West) have had the printing press for some time without adopting our mentality. Of course, they've also had Protestantism, but I'd argue that it hasn't played as central a role. But China, for example, has only started to atomize recently. Now, the issue may be technological, in that modern technologies smash up communities by making populations more fluid. But the "thinking for themselves"? Religious diversity, and controversy, were common as dirt for a long, long, long time before printing presses came along.

Incidentally, Muslims believe their religion was the original form of monotheism, not an update. Abraham was originally a Muslim, the story goes, but the truth was garbled in transmission and contaminated by polytheism. Muhammad simply restored the original truth.

It's amazing that you fail to understand that thinking for yourself is the only way to think. There is no thinking for other people.

[Elok]

No problem. I've been imprecise; I'm not sure whether Abraham would be considered a Muslim per se--there's a bit in the Koran that says something like "Muhammad, say: 'I am the first Muslim,'" IIRC--but my point was that Muslims do not think of their revelation as superseding Christianity the way Christians think Jesus supersedes the OT; they think all the Abrahamic religions used to believe the same stuff they did, and it was lost, so God set the record straight with Islam (which is ironic, given the severe Biblical errors in the Koran). I suppose it's a fairly pedantic little point, in the grand scheme of things.

I would draw a distinction between religious or cultural diversity and actual atomization. The former is not that exceptional throughout history; the medieval world had plenty of religious diversity, it simply wasn't officially condoned or recognized as desirable. The sheer number of (long, arduous) fights over doctrine and practice should attest to that. To say nothing of my absolute favorite local medieval practice, the Feast of the Ass! Hee-hawwww!

Atomization, AFAICT is a strictly modern phenomenon. By "atomization" I mean the peculiar extent to which modern humans do not form permanent or even long-lasting associations. In every premodern civilized society I've looked into, there have been layers and layers of organized groupings, and groups endured for a lifetime. Guilds, livery companies, parishes, leagues, societies, thiasoi, mystery cults, what-have-you. In ancient Athens, you would belong to some subset of a deme, be active in government, and participate in the cult appropriate to your craft as well as the normal religious rites of the city. Your marriage would be for life, and you'd be heavily invested in producing an heir to carry on the family name even if you'd be more interested in going after little boys. All this is in addition to normal ties of kinship and friendship, which would endure longer because people simply stayed in place longer. Likewise in prerevolutionary France, society was a mess of local customs, inherited rights and privileges, and time-honored arrangements. In the middle ages between, much of the time there hardly was a law at all outside of formalized relationships between people.

Now, we have families, but they're smaller and don't always carry any particular obligations. Work has been shifting towards the temporary and at-will for some time, even before the rise of the "gig economy." Religious membership is optional and increasingly shunned in favor of self-defined beliefs with no attached duties. Civic groups are declining in membership drastically, though this has waxed and waned in the past. Even marriage is increasingly viewed as optional. Life is centered around the individual to an extent never seen before, and I think people react to the weirdness of it by attaching passionately to things like political attachments or outre scientific beliefs, even though these can and do change. At some level, we want structure and commitment, even though it's no longer practical, and the ideology to justify this weirdness is rooted in the Enlightenment, which in turn is rooted in Protestantism.

I think it's fair to argue over to what extent this is just beliefs following changes caused by technology, population growth, economics, what-have-you.

[grumbler]

It's not impossible at all, logically or otherwise. I'm a spiritual person and a physical person. These two persons are one yet they are very much different from each other. They are a synthesis. The same is said about God.

Now when my physical body dies my spiritual self will continue on and I will still be Kidicious.

I'm not surprised that this is hard for you just like it is hard for muslims.

So your argument is that there is not a trinity, but just one god who has a physical aspect and a spiritual aspect? Great, but you are now denying the Trinity, because you don't understand the logically impossible. That's precisely my point, so thanks for conceding that.

PS: learn what the word "synthesis' means before you misuse it again.

[Kidlicious]

[grumbler]

No problem. I've been imprecise; I'm not sure whether Abraham would be considered a Muslim per se--there's a bit in the Koran that says something like "Muhammad, say: 'I am the first Muslim,'" IIRC--but my point was that Muslims do not think of their revelation as superseding Christianity the way Christians think Jesus supersedes the OT; they think all the Abrahamic religions used to believe the same stuff they did, and it was lost, so God set the record straight with Islam (which is ironic, given the severe Biblical errors in the Koran). I suppose it's a fairly pedantic little point, in the grand scheme of things.

I would draw a distinction between religious or cultural diversity and actual atomization. The former is not that exceptional throughout history; the medieval world had plenty of religious diversity, it simply wasn't officially condoned or recognized as desirable. The sheer number of (long, arduous) fights over doctrine and practice should attest to that. To say nothing of my absolute favorite local medieval practice, the Feast of the Ass! Hee-hawwww!

Atomization, AFAICT is a strictly modern phenomenon. By "atomization" I mean the peculiar extent to which modern humans do not form permanent or even long-lasting associations. In every premodern civilized society I've looked into, there have been layers and layers of organized groupings, and groups endured for a lifetime. Guilds, livery companies, parishes, leagues, societies, thiasoi, mystery cults, what-have-you. In ancient Athens, you would belong to some subset of a deme, be active in government, and participate in the cult appropriate to your craft as well as the normal religious rites of the city. Your marriage would be for life, and you'd be heavily invested in producing an heir to carry on the family name even if you'd be more interested in going after little boys. All this is in addition to normal ties of kinship and friendship, which would endure longer because people simply stayed in place longer. Likewise in prerevolutionary France, society was a mess of local customs, inherited rights and privileges, and time-honored arrangements. In the middle ages between, much of the time there hardly was a law at all outside of formalized relationships between people.

Now, we have families, but they're smaller and don't always carry any particular obligations. Work has been shifting towards the temporary and at-will for some time, even before the rise of the "gig economy." Religious membership is optional and increasingly shunned in favor of self-defined beliefs with no attached duties. Civic groups are declining in membership drastically, though this has waxed and waned in the past. Even marriage is increasingly viewed as optional. Life is centered around the individual to an extent never seen before, and I think people react to the weirdness of it by attaching passionately to things like political attachments or outre scientific beliefs, even though these can and do change. At some level, we want structure and commitment, even though it's no longer practical, and the ideology to justify this weirdness is rooted in the Enlightenment, which in turn is rooted in Protestantism.

I think it's fair to argue over to what extent this is just beliefs following changes caused by technology, population growth, economics, what-have-you.

I think we are in agreement as to the relationship of Islam to Judaism and Christianity: that Muslims believe that all the prophets spoke the truth, but that humans kept misunderstanding it, and thus god kept sending prophets to correct the record, of whom Mohammed was the final one.

I am not sure whether the phenomenon you call atomization (a word I hadn't seen used in this context, as far as I know) was a result of technology, but it seems to me to have a parallel in how modern societies approach work. Like relationships, work has become much more specialized (atomized?) and temporary. More divorced from an individuals identity. I haven't thought that out yet, since your idea is new to me, but thought it might provoke some further interesting discussion.

[Elok]

I'm not particularly concerned about the work aspect in and of itself, labor arrangements have varied over time. The marriage one is somewhat more troubling, but I guess I could see this eventually stabilizing into some bizarro social arrangement that's actually a stable childrearing environment. Can't think of one offhand, but maybe. But in general, humans have been communal animals longer than we've been strictly human. I don't think it's good for that to go away the way it has. Have you read Arendt's Totalitarianism? IIRC it was the first place I encountered the concept of social atomization (she calls it a prerequisite for totalitarian government). I also liked Putnam's Bowling Alone, though frankly I think he drowned it in supporting statistics. Which I guess is a good problem to have.

[ZEE]

Elok is a nerd.

[Kidlicious]

Elok thinks protestants are transmitting messages into our heads.

[Kidlicious]

Jesus was not a traditionalist. *Elok's head explodes.

[Proteus_MST]

I'm deeply skeptical of the whole idea that you can create something that functions like a human with nonhuman structure.

It depends what you mean.
If we ask whether we will be able to create an AI that thinks like a human (and is able to pass a Turing test without problems) I am actually very positive, that we wiill be able to do so in the future (with additional knowledge of human brain structures/processing and additional advances in microprocssor technology (increasing their processing power).

AI research already now emulates natural neural neworks ... and with the newest versions of artificial neural networks (like DCNNs (deep convolutional neural networks) with LSTM (long short term memory)) they are able to come close to (or even beat) humans in fields, that formerly were believed to be core competencies of humans ... for example visual and auditory discromination task ... or even playing go at Pro Dan levels.

The only thing that it is lacking is in learning new things on the go.
With artificial neural networks you have different phases of training (where they are trained with lots (hundreds, thousands) of cases, and phases where it is applied (to do the things it is trainied for). But unlike a human, during its application phase, it doesn't learn new things ... only during the training phase.
But that actually is one thing that can change, with better computing power, as well as intelligent algorithmic design.

Therefore, the step from artificial intelligence to artificial sentience IMHO definitely is among technically realistic future visions.

And of the whole idea that hard limits of mortality can be escaped. We have, in essence, an immensely complex machine that runs day and night for roughly seventy years, the last forty or so in continuing decay, under optimal conditions. All scientific progress to date has tweaked the upper limit of those seventy years gradually upwards, but without halting the decay process. I suppose you could see exponential growth in longevity/durability AND exponential growth in complexity/performance, but there's going to be a hard limit to both, the two are to some extent contradictory, and we're approaching the limits of what the biosphere can sustain with rootstock humanity, let alone the intense resource requirements of an artificial lifeform.

When it comes to "putting your brain into a computer" and live forever as a machine then I have to agree.
Even if you ere able to do a thorough brain scan and fully emulate your thinking/personality in a computer, it would just be a copy of ourself (just like in "Transcendence" with Johnny Depp).
You would still be caught in your own mortal body and, if we killed you (after creating an AI according to your neuronal setup in a computer) it would be YOU that would be killed, whereas what lives on, would only be a copy.

On the other hand, biological near immortality (or,, at least, expanding the human lifespan to centuries insted of decades, may not be impossible, consideringg that there are higher species tthat live so long without any of the problems that are asssociated with high age (lobsters for example, who only grow bigger, but even at high age are as virile as younger specimens).
The only question is, if such along lifespan would be a good thing

[Elok]

1. Those are things humans are typically good at, but not what most of us value humans for. Humor comes to mind, and other aspects of personality. The ability to construct hypotheticals. Free-associating curiosity. Hobbies. Creativity. Compassion. Variable moods. Things like that. The goal here is not something quantifiable, it's a particular set of traits displayed by a lot of biological systems working together.

2. I think a lot of lifeforms live for a long time mostly because they're very simple or have slow metabolisms/lifestyles. The human brain is an absolute furnace of activity every time outside of very deep sleep. How active and lively is a lobster?

3. Extending the human lifespan to centuries would induce sheer Malthusian hell even if you could accomplish it cheaply and on a mass scale.

[Lorizael]

Life on Earth has been evolving for billions of years. Of course it's really good at what it does. AI has been around for .00000005 billion years and has already surpassed humans in a wide variety of ways. Declaring at this stage that a lack of total success is indicative of a hard limit on AI seems a little premature.