Re: Fermi's Paradox

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2006 11:30:57 -0700

Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Le 06-juil.-06, à 07:38, Norman Samish a écrit :
>
>
>>Anyway, all this is beside the point I wanted to make, which is that
>>True Believers, whether Muslim, Christian, or heathen, cause harm,
>>destruction or misfortune, and are therefore evil.
>
>
>
> I am not so sure. Perhaps I am just over-optimistic but I would say
> FALSE Believers cause harm, destruction ... Faith is not a problem, and
> someone who as genuine faith in some fundamental value will not try to
> impose it or to institutionalize it.

Faith usually refers to some belief independent of evidence. Personal values are evident to whoever
holds them. Of course saying that others hold these values might be a matter of faith. But the
problem with faith, and I assume that means genuine faith, is that there is no compromise or
reasoning with it. Christian fundamentalist have faith that God wants them to behave in certain
ways in order to achieve immortality in heaven; this is infinitely more important than what happens
on Earth. So, for example, many believe that the return of the Jews to their homeland and a great
"time of tribulation" are necessary harbingers of the second coming of Jesus. Thus they act to
bring about Israeli expansion and war in the mideast. That this is contrary to the interests of the
rest of us who think it is nonsense and would like peace in the mideast is irrelevant to them -
because they have faith.

>I would say that it is mainly
> those who have "bad faith" who will try to impose it to others if only
> to convince themselves.

But if you really have faith that whether your children will go to heaven instead of hell depends on
believing in a certain God, praying to him, etc., then you are perfectly, rationally justified in
preventing atheists or other religionists from speaking. It might cause you child to go to hell
through disbelief.

>Something like that.
> For exemple, I separate more and more christianity from its "roman"
> abuse.

Faith is not only the source of the Roman Catholic abuses, but also of Protestant Christian abuses,
and Muslim abuses - to say nothing of the cults (i.e. small religions) like Heavens Gate, The
Peoples Temple, AUM Shinryko, etc.

>>
>>My principal question is this: Is this evil inevitable in intelligent
>>life?
>
>
>
> Yes. More generally it is the "fate" of any Universal Machine to
> discover some form of "evil" (type of lies), or the possibility of
> "evil", when just introspecting herself deeply enough.

Is that the only evil possible in computationlism - lies?

Brent Meeker


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Received on Fri Jul 07 2006 - 14:31:59 PDT

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