Religion
Related: About this forumElon Musk Isn’t Religious Enough to Colonize Mars
Silicon Valley wants to explore space as tech entrepreneurs. We should be traveling as pilgrims.
BY JAMES POULOS
OCTOBER 10, 2016
At a technology conference this summer, Elon Musk suggested that if humanity is not yet living in a computer simulation, it is probably already doomed. The only alternative, he explained, was so-called base reality (what most of us would refer to simply as reality), where some calamitous event whether climate change, nuclear war, or an asteroid was eventually liable to snuff our existence on Earth once and for all. Either were going to create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality or civilization will cease to exist, he said. Those are the two options.
Of course, Musk has also mentioned a different alternative to extinction: the possibility of leaving this planet and decamping for another. As CEO of SpaceX, Musk is deeply involved, and financially invested, in developing plans for a human colony on Mars in about seven years. But, strangely, Musk hasnt yet explained whether or not he sees interplanetary life as an alternative to living in a simulation, not just to dying on Earth.
Its telling that Musk has also elided one crucial aspect of building a Mars colony: who precisely ought to be sent to build it. And that omission bears directly on his recent musings on technological advancement and the earthly apocalypse. Musk, and his Silicon Valley backers, are right that humanitys destiny might be to extend life to other planets. But Musks seeming belief that were already stuck in a simulated world leaves only dubious reasons to endorse his understanding of what destiny means and who ought to fulfill it.
The key is in distinguishing two versions of destiny. The first is relatively more detached from (what seems to be) base reality that is, the natural world. According to this version of destiny, the purpose of space colonization is fully tied up with the purpose of scientific progress in general, complete with transformational changes to our bodies and minds that dont just augment or twist our experience of being human but break with nature completely, turning us into post-humans. People dreaming this dream have good reason to prefer that our first Mars colonists would see themselves as being on the frontier of such technological progress and committed to pushing it forward to making the post-human dream as much of a reality as possible, as quickly as possible.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/10/10/elon-musk-isnt-religious-enough-to-colonize-mars/
anoNY42
(670 posts)he would have miracled our asses up there. (to paraphrase FMJ)
rug
(82,333 posts)DetlefK
(16,423 posts)DetlefK
(16,423 posts)The author postulates an anthropocentric point-of-view that no longer works once you go into space. How are we supposed to even define the destiny of mankind if there are alien races with rivalling destinies? How can we postulate a destiny of colonizing space when mankind depends on a very specific environment to survive?
The author also talks about religious traditions but doesn't realize that they are essentially cultural traditions. Picking and choosing religious traditions would mean picking and choosing the cultural premises on which the civilizations of space-based mankind would be built.
The sheer thought that mankind needs Mars for a mental rebirth, for inspiration, is ridiculous. It is possible to see beauty and sense in the small things. Some swath of pure nature that only exists for your inspiration... That's simply arrogant and, again, anthropocentric.
"would we be best off if our first Martian colonists were religious observers?"
No. Because religion means sticking to explanations even if they don't make sense. With believers there is always the risk that they will do something irrational because their religion says so.
I wouldn't entrust a multi-trillion-dollar-project and the survival of mankind into the hands of people who operate on premises that only exist in their heads.
Religious freedom is nice and all, but that freedom should end where it influences the lives of other people.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,368 posts)"what was begun with the exodus from Egypt" - which is a myth
"the founding of Rome" - well, a confused start, perhaps an alliance of people on the edge of 2 or 3 existing societies. It has a weird myth about it too
"the Pilgrims arrival on Plymouth Rock" - a group leaves one religiously rigid area to set up their own religiously rigid area, much to the detriment of the people already living there
"Abraham Lincolns new birth of freedom, " - a line from one speech. That's a "sweeping journey of civilization"?
"You dont have to be pious to think of human history in these essentially religious terms" - no, you do have to be pious. You're taking one particular religion's myth, adding the start of one society among many for no apparent reason, then a religious tiff, then one moment in one country's history, and saying that represents the "sweeping journey of civilizations"? It's just blinkered American Christian "mainfest destiny" nonsense.
rug
(82,333 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)Nitram
(22,890 posts)Columbus sailed to the New World in the name of the Catholic church, but ended up enslaving and murdering the Native Americans he encountered. I would suggest that the initial pioneers to other worlds should be better versed in science and technology than religious dogma of one kind or another.
rug
(82,333 posts)religious or otherwise.
http://bestsciencefictionbooks.com/religious-science-fiction.php
Nitram
(22,890 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)Any exploration of space beyond robotic probes will be a human endeavor. We are not easily categorized or contained.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)Unfortunately I couldn't access the site without registering, but judging by the title of the article and your excerpt, that was my understanding.
rug
(82,333 posts)But no, I don't think he was proposing a religious test. I think he was objecting to a primarily technological, almost transhumanist, motive for space exploration.
If I can find a workaround the registering page I'll post it. Looks like they slap on the registration page after 12 hours or so.
bananas
(27,509 posts)A dream is just a simulation:
Carl Sagan On Hindu Cosmology, "The Great Cosmic Lotus Dream"
Hindu religion is the only one of the worlds great faiths dedicated to the idea that the cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite number of deaths and rebirths.
It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt, by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the earth or the sun and about half of the time since the big bang. And there are much longer time scales still.
There is the deep and the appealing notion that the universe is but the dream of the god who after a 100 Brahma years dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep and the universe dissolves with him until after another Brahma century he starts recomposes himself and begins again the dream the great cosmic lotus dream.
Meanwhile elsewhere there are an infinite number of other universes each with its own god dreaming the cosmic dream
These great ideas are tempered by another perhaps still greater it is said that men may not be the dreams of the gods but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)But many Christians, too, once considered this world to be of little significance and placed all their hopes into a vision of the afterlife.