Temple to Atheism

[Aggie]

This is the problem with religion in general, even if they were started as a complete fraud. Later on, as with scientology, many adherents truly believe that what they are following is real, with some adherents become so fanatical as to enter madness. Are some people so unhappy with their life and the truths that science has uncovered, that they are willing to exit reality completely, or is it something completely different?

IMHO, science is rich in facts and barren of truths, and that's the way it's supposed to work. Knowing the mechanics of how things work can be a source of wonderment, but there's really not much of a framework for discussing the larger meaning of the whole picture. You can have a complete mechanical and metallurgical understanding of an automobile, but what is the meaning of the automobile? is another question entirely, and arguably more important.

Technocracy has done a fairly good job of reducing the level of authentic experience in our lives, and I personally see the trend accelerating along with the rate of technological change. Don't doubt the extremes people will go to in order to regain some perceived authenticity in their lives, whether it's risking death to climb Everest or just spending thousands of dollars to move up the Scientology ranks. Willing to exit reality completely? Hell, it's one of my major goals in life! Beats office work, frozen meals, reality TV and cooing over the latest app on your smart phone. I'll be damned if I'm going to do it according to someone else's recipe, though.


FWIW, Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling does a pretty good job of exploring Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac.

[Roland Deschain]

Nice response, Aggie. Semantics on interpretation of fact/truth aside, I pretty much agree. When you say that science does not give us meaning, i'm not too sure that it doesn't give that in some cases, although definitely nowhere near all. This is what we have philosophy for, and is why we reason with one another.

As an example, I can say that science brought us the automobile in answer to the question of getting from A to B faster and easier, or to be able to travel greater distances, so the meaning is in the question that science answered. Not everything has meaning further than that, although we do assign meaning to these things ourselves, such as allowing us greater freedoms and more convenience in the case at hand. Thus, the meaning of an automobile is dependent upon the individual, and is generally grounded in very basic concepts without the need for philosophical discussion.

Another example is "What is the meaning of medicine?", which science can answer with "It's to improve the lives of people", but again this is something that doesn't go beyond its immediate remit. When we bring larger questions into play, such as "Why are we here?", things get a little more complicated. This could be answered by science, looking at our parents reproducing, evolution selecting for our species, an accretion disc forming from a gas cloud, a supernova producing said gas cloud, etc, all the way back in time to whatever the big bang actually was, but it cannot answer the simple question, "But why does anything exist at all?" There will always be one more question to answer, and I think this lies at the heart of the matter.

I say that ultimately there is no meaning for our existence but what we decide there is. Several theists have accused me of having a very nihilist attitude due to that, but they miss the point completely (never convinced any of them with my arguments). They see an existence without their god as completely pointless, which leads me to believe that in fact, they are the nihilists, and are covering that with god. I say we make our own reason, as you so nicely point out, marching to the beat of our own drum, regardless of what others may or may not think. Whether that reason is to pass on genes, gain knowledge, love, experience happiness, fear, loathing, hate, indifference, or apathy, or simply nothing at all makes no difference. Reason is what we decide it is. We are born, we grow, and eventually we leave the nest and go out into the world. What we do from there is our choice, and our choice alone.

I'm with you on exiting reality, but the difference I perceive between the average, or not so average, theist and myself is that I know precisely where reality and fantasy meet (I agree that this can be a very subjective concept). The lines do get a little blurred from time to time, and that can be so much fun, but that's just being human. What makes a rational being is knowing when to leave fantasy and come back to reality.

Thanks for the Kierkegaard. I've not read him at all, so I may keep an eye out for that particular book.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I -in my existentialist view- agree with Roland in that meaning is given by the subject, and it can go from absent to vain to transcendental depending on the individual, regardless of the actual very elemental meaning of life to perpetuate it self. 

Now this:

Technocracy has done a fairly good job of reducing the level of authentic experience in our lives, and I personally see the trend accelerating along with the rate of technological change.

What exactly is 'authentic experience' and who (and when) experiences it? Is authentic experience the feeling of wonder when we can look to an unpolluted clear night sky and see the billions of stars around us, or when we have the opportunity to commune with nature in one way or another? I for one am convinced that that such appreciation (and respect) is thought, and that simple exposure does not guarantee the experience; I say this because I've heard the attitudes of farmers or locals who live in places where the wilderness is all around and they rarely value that existence or do so when they (start to) lose their access to it. We may miss the contact with nature, but many of those who live in nature don't appreciate it as much and some are actively destroying through ignorance, necessity or simple greed.

Technology may help destroy or restore, may help to alienate or educate, the same way it may cure or kill. Are we more willing to spend more time in front of a screen than outside? Possibly, but then again it's generally cheaper* and easier to access than the closer rain forest, and then the beauty of the rain forest can be subjectively diminished by a night filled with humidity and insects**.

Also I'm under the impression that more people appreciate nature now than before even if more people attach themselves to a device now than before. Perceptions may be incomplete as shorter lives, longer work hours, higher levels of stress, etc were the norm the further back you go in time, so the alienation of the internet and video games may seem more pronounced now than the one around TV or the old radio days, but what was the majority of the population doing before that? In urban areas they were likely spending their meager earnings in bars, and the farmers would likely go to bed early as the cows needed to be milked before 5.

Remember that the romantic scenes of wonderfully dressed couples listening to the clave/piano or poetry were for the 1% of the population who had the time and wealth to stop to smell the roses.

*Even an expensive device ends up costing just a few dollars a day and sometimes less considering the amount of use.
**My experience last year when I went to see the Mayan ruins of Calakmul in the middle of a biosphere reserve was wonderful, but my wonder for the jungle (and the city in the middle of it) wasn't shared as much by my wife and inlaws who complained about the bugs in the hotel we used.

[Aggie]

Perceptions may be incomplete as shorter lives, longer work hours, higher levels of stress, etc were the norm the further back you go in time, so the alienation of the internet and video games may seem more pronounced now than the one around TV or the old radio days, but what was the majority of the population doing before that?

Actually, I fear that this is becoming the new norm as we go forward in time, too. 

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Long term I don't believe that will be the case, more stress, quite likely for a good portion of the population, but as automation takes away many jobs, higher unemployment will be the norm even if many goods will be even cheaper. If anything people will have more free time even if unwillingly.

As for shorter lives, the trend remains for longer ones in average. As more people will be poor in the first world that percentage may remain static or go down but overall I still think it will go up. If you consider global trends, emerging markets will raise those averages quite a bit (more middle class with access to modern medicine), so nope, unless you have a drastic fatalism (I sometimes do) and think that the resources crisis will push for a genocidal 'cleanup' of the poor, but it would have to be incredibly massive to have a real effect on statistics.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

It must be incredibly massive-- because longer lives is happening on a global scale.  Sure, not nearly as dramatic in the Congo or other areas if primitive technological base.  But even these people benefit a little bit from technology-- a few years added onto their average lifespans is not trivial-- not to them, I would wager.

What we need here?  Is cheap energy on a global scale.

Alas, that's not even on the horizon.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

There are easier and cheaper ways, just stop having babies, perhaps not in the draconian Chinese way but one child policy sounds very reasonable, perhaps with incremental fees per child as in one of A.C. Clarke books.

[Roland Deschain]

What science essentially says is nothing. Science makes no social comment, nor does it moralise. Science just is. When it does good and bad, it does so in the hands of humans. We are responsible for our reliance on oil, which is why there isn't a far cheaper source of fuel available at the moment, at least not a viable one, and why we are polluting the world we have to live in.

The problem as I foresee it is that there are far too many vested interests in the oil business who also just happen to be powerful in relation to the economic and political situations in the world. These people know that if an alternative power source suddenly came onto the market, then their power and money would virtually disappear overnight. Fusion power is becoming a reality, but could still be many decades away from fruition. It can use seawater, which just so happens to be very abundant on our planet, to make deuterium, which is used in some fusion reactor models. There is enough deuterium in the sea to last us 150 billion years, and nobody could gain a monopoly on it, only on the process of manufacture through patents. This is an incredibly powerful threat to the oil-producing companies, not to mention OPEC.

A discovery of that magnitude would vastly alter the distribution of wealth, not to mention power, so is it not in their best interests to allow this to come too quickly. Say, after the oil has run out, or near enough. There is not enough funding for fusion power research to be realised within any decent amount of time, but with more money invested in the research, which is currently being conducted by some very dedicated scientists, it may not be too late for our planet and for us. Altruism does not appear to be a priority amongst those with the power.

This does not handle the problems of overcrowding, food shortages, poverty, and anything else which may occur, and it definitely doesn't handle the issues in the third world, or the number of oppressive regimes many live under. What's needed is an incredibly large seismic shift in the attitudes of society at large, and a number of very powerful people gaining a conscience. Unfortunately, this is also not on the horizon, and may not even occur within our lifetimes without some drastic event. Who really wants a drastic event large enough to cause this, though?

[Swatopluk]

The problem with fusion is that is not very likely to get a small scale technical solution. The fuel would be easy to get but the plants would still be huge and therefore expensive and those prone to become monopolized.
The easier to obtain the fuel the more likely it is that someone will try to block the free access for commoners (that was even true when it was wood in the shape of dry twigs). If the means to use the fuel are beyond the commoner's range this is not necessary.
Big Fuel will stay with us (but not on our side).
Channeling my inner Marx-Engelist here

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Fusion is not viable, or at least not in the medium term, not due to politics or businesses but due to technical issues, Tokamaks are so far the more successful designs and supposedly ITER will be a net producer of energy (so far it takes more energy to start the fusion than the energy generated), but the successes with the design haven't been able to do so in a sustained form, and the materials will be bombarded with high energy neutrons that despite absorbent materials outside the magnetic confinement, will start attacking the materials of the containment area itself making them brittle. As we so far don't know a material resistant enough to neutrons for the job, commercial applications are pie in the sky at the moment.

The other design in consideration is inertial confinement, that uses fuel pellets and a laser to create the fusion, but not only making the pellets is incredibly hard, energy intensive and expensive, but the fusion isn't completely efficient, therefore the amount of energy produced is far from being a net producer of energy.
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These people know that if an alternative power source suddenly came onto the market, then their power and money would virtually disappear overnight.

Actually I don't believe that, the people who owns fossil fuel energy, are at the same time investing in renewables because that is indeed the future and they will be a part of it. The reason for their reluctance to move forward is that they already invested an incredible amount of money in infrastructure to exploit fossil fuels and they're not going to shut those off until they extract the last bit of money out it.

As for altruism, psychopaths have no understanding of what that is (they can actually use it as a tool but they don't understand it), and those in power are in a large proportion psychopaths, so only when those individuals are removed from positions of power you'll see a more altruist society.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

My inner cynic agrees with you Zono, in that the majority of those in power are indeed, sociopaths.

[Roland Deschain]

I've never liked the idea of private companies supplying me with my fuel, power, and other utilities. I know that governmental control isn't perfect by a long shot, but it's a darn sight better, as a private company looks for one thing and one thing alone: profit. This automatically pre-disposes them to abuse and corruption, and, as you say, they want their money's worth before they introduce the next new thing.

[Griffin NoName]

Totally agree with you Rolly. I think utilities for profit is actually quite evil, similarly royal mail wannabee.

I have regular arguments with my son about this. My last stab was to ask if refugees in camps in Africa should pay for water......... he said yes......... I deduced from that, I have an insane son.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I totally agree:  natural monopolies such as power, fuel-gas (to homes) and other utilities should never be for profit.

I don't much like gub'ment, but the not-for-profit co-ops seem to be a good compromise:  by being a chartered not-for-profit, they can focus on quality of service, instead of whatever is cheapest...

... we have a few co-op electric companies left in Oklahomer, but the giant always-evil mega-corps are always trying to force-buy them out...  I hate mega-corps... I really do.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

While I do believe that public institutions have a better track record than private corporations, the main problems on both paradigms are the result of lack of oversight. Monopolies and size are also a problem, while there are economies of scale, I am convinced that a smaller company has a larger interest in the individual customer than a large one, that's why the larger the corporation the worse their customer service is (in the US, companies like ATT or Comcast are perfect examples of that).
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My romantic self believes that the basics of life should be provided to all the population by the state or non-for-profit organizations: basic housing, health, utilities, education, and capped to reasonable amounts when possible*, but from the cap on, private for profit institutions should be able to provide the same services, that way society at large is covered but extra (ab)use is a responsibility of the individual. I don't expect to see it happening in my lifetime though.