I am dying of pancreatic cancer—the God squad is out in full force, in the chemo room, with my friends, a the store.

when I told my friend this weekend that when I die, I am dead.  Nothing. Nada. No spirit, no re-incarnation, etc.  I found as I did in the hospital after surgery, to say I am a naturalist (I do not like atheist as a term it smacks of a religion), is to have violated some social rule of significant magnitude.

The number of religious people in medicine, stun me.  One doctor after talking about my options said something like: Get good with…and point up.  I was tempted to say “Homeland security?”  But resisted the temptation to be my normal smart ass self..

But there should be somewhere that I could celebrate the mystery and joy of being here.
I have had a good run.  I was hoping for more (ah capitalism) but this is how it is going to go.

I find little support for dying as an person who thinks all this god talk, religion talk is irrelevant, boring, and a waste of time.  (Do not misunderstand me, I am scared of these people—right now some of the atheist groups are taking almost as crazy as the religious groups.)

Here is a review his new book from the New York Times..

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/books/who-owns-the-future-by-jaron-lanier.html?_r=0

Here is an interview with Mr Lanier on the subject of his book:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j71nj07p_7s

On a bit of a snarky level, Mr. Lanier may not have grokked (tapped into)
the technology trend of radical life extension coming out of the Singulitarian-Transhumanist
movement down the road in San Jose at the old Moffett Field, (Now Singularity University)
or he would be in better shape at this point. Of course, that could all change quickly.
I hope it does.  He is such a creative and inventive person.

As always, I could be wrong.

r.

The topic title should probably read, ‘RELIGION - BEDTIME STORIES FOR AN INFANT SELF-CONSCIOUS SPECIES’.

I suspect that what we call the will to live evolved with self-consciousness into fear of death and the will (desire) to live forever.  It seems to me that religion evolved to assuage that fear, telling us bedtime stories so that we could fall asleep like a child listening to their favorite fairy tales, or other fictions.

Notice how many religious stories resemble children’s stories about magic and miracles, angels, fairies and all kinds of supernatural events.  In your opinion how long will this phase of our evolution last?  How long will we need this balm of Gilead?  (with all the attendant ills and calamities that come when the collective mind is caught up in fictions, the illusions they inspire, and the deadly conflicts that break out with competing bedtime stories).

balm of Gilead 2 :    an agency that soothes, relieves, or heals -  (Webster)

Originally money was a convenience, a way for humans to allocate and trade
things and store the resources of that trading in a concentrated form.
What has now happened is that there are almost unfathomable disparities
between how much some have accumulated and what others strive and struggle
for every day.
The whole 99 percent discussion in the west, and of course the cliche of people
billions living on less than $1 a day.

Some say, that the information revolution will help solve this, by turning wealth
into an electronic entity that is so cheap and efficient, you can buy a melon
on the streets of Lagos, Nairobi, and pay it with your earnings on selling tomatoes
earlier in the day on the same cell phone.

What do you think?  Has $ achieved the status of a “religion”.

A few months ago, I wrote to ask if anyone had advice on research on the New Atheism for my master’s thesis in history on the Four Horsemen. Some of you asked me to post again when I was done writing. Now I am.

I have looked to place the Four Horsemen ideas and arguments into a contemporary sociopolitical context. You can read the essay here:

http://issuu.com/danielnord/docs/daniel_nord_masters_thesis_final2/1

Cheers,

Daniel

It could happen this way. Or maybe the world’s wheat and rice crops are globally infected with ergot and a humanity-wide religious amnesia ensues and we think cathedrals and mosques are bars and brothels. The cause doesn’t matter.  The fact is we wake up tomorrow without religion.

How will the world be post-religion? Will we implode in an orgy of rape, murder and mayhem? Would the sort of basic morality that most humans adhere to – don’t kill innocent people, don’t steal, don’t fuck your daughters etc – disappear globally?

Or would we all fall back on an inherited, pre-religious evolutionary morality residing in our genes; a moral instinct akin to the language instinct we have inherited and which becomes apparent when a group whose members all speak mutually incomprehensible languages are isolated together and yet manage to communicate?

Would we be able to negotiate the moral landscape successfully without religion?

My point, obviously, that Religion is based on the information available at the time.
The drafters of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus et al, could not possibly have known that
the Universe is approximately 17 Billion years old, and the earth between 4.5 and 5.0
Billion.  That we have evolved from coacervates, formations of cells in a warm primordial
soup in the abundant earth Oceans.

For the most part, Religions will remain critical to us, because they are a connection to
our past, what our forefathers learned, observed and can “takeaway” from their existence
on earth.

My father was a Christian Pastor (now deceased), and it wasn’t until his 80s that he finally admitted
that I might know things he did not, simply because of the later date of my birth, and the
availability of more information to my generation.

An interesting fact, and support of my “work in progress” is the fact that the Papacy paid for
and owns a fairly sophisticated telescope high in the mountains of Arizona, to make sure they
don’t make the “Copernican-Galileo” mistake again.

There is a quiet branch of Islamists online trying to implement gay rights within Islam,
I kid you not.

Anyway, you get my point.  Religion will always be with us, because it helped give birth to us,
but for the most part these days, I am a transhumanist Singulitarian, and I believe we do
need to colonize Mars, because the reality is we have only 3 to 5 Billion years left until
the Sun will either Super Nova or collapse into a black hole, at which point this planet
is astronomical history.  We had best be on our way to some younger galaxies by then,
or baby, our stay in the Universe will become a footnote in some other species archaelogical
note books.

As always, I could be wrong.

r.

Probably a tough choice right?