Loading ...The failures of modern day atheism
I’ve been meaning to post something for awhile and this is a topic that I felt was worth discussing. Some of the things I’m about to say I suspect many will disagree with, and by posting this I’m opening myself to attack; however I feel that brutal honestly allows us to address the problems in the atheist “culture” head on.
Unlike popular religions, atheism lacks any sense of formal structure. Now, I’m not saying to be an non believer one must have any form of structure (people don’t need organization to understand their existence and stance on issues). What I am saying is that a lack of community, and traditions makes atheism a tough “sell”. Lets review some of the reasons that people choose organized religion and discuss how modern atheism falls short.
Community: The sense of community is by far one of the greatest benefits to joining a religion. You find other like minded people who participate in the same traditions as you, wish to raise their families with the same beliefs, and find people who help each other out when times are hard. I am myself not a religious person, but wish that non believers had places they could go and socialize about life, fixing up the community where they live, and helping the less fortunate (on a small and large scale). If such places were to exist I think many people who aren’t necessarily religious (or even those that are) would attend and participate with peers.
Tradition, holidays, celebration, rights of passage, and days of reflection: While one can debate specific traditions, the idea of participating in an activity that has spanned the ages of time has a certain allure. Group activities that like minded people participate in can be intellectually stimulating, beneficial socially, economically (business contacts/job prospects), and spiritually. Traditions include acknowledgment of a life milestone, days of reflection on a given topic, and sacrifice and humbleness. The idea of abstaining from an activity in order to reflect on a particular subject (such as the death of a family member or loved one) is something that all human beings generally accept, religion aside. Typically these concepts are tied to a nation, or organized religion. Atheism lacks these concepts making it a lonely choice.
Too many “elitists” and militant atheists: I think that many people see/experience atheists as snooty people that look down upon them for having a set of beliefs involving a god. People such as Bill Maher (who I find extremely entertaining) often talk down to those that are religious on tv, and this is often the sole type of association people have with atheism. I myself admit that I’ve said some things that would fall into this category. I think that one of the “atheist culture’s” biggest issues is that this is how many people see atheism. It is hard to open the eyes of people if you are constantly attacking their current stance, it is seen as an aggressive stance of ‘you’re either with us or against us’. In my experience I’ve never seen a warm *sales pitch* and I think that something as simple as a tone shift could go a long way.
In closing I am not saying “atheism culture” must do these things, or have large scale organization to succeed. Atheism has no ‘leader’ and is instead made up of many people (with varying degree’s of belief/involvement), and many spokespersons. All of us must take a serious look at the shortcomings of our “culture”, doing so will open debate, enriching us as a whole.
Furor Erupts Over Atheist Display At State Capitol
“A conservative activist and Illinois comptroller candidate was escorted from the Illinois State Capitol building Wednesday when he tried to remove a sign put up by an atheist group.
William J. Kelly announced Tuesday that he planned to take down the sign put up by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and on Wednesday, he tried to make good on his plan.
But Kelly said when he turned the sign around so it was face down, state Capitol police were quick to escort him away.”
…
“The sign reads: “At the time of the winter solstice, let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is just myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”
Read more: http://cbs2chicago.com/politics/capitol.atheist.display.2.1387754.html
‘Anonymous’ hacker pleads guilty to 2008 attack on Scientology sites
“According to a news release from the Justice Department’s Los Angeles office, Dmitriy Guzner of Verona, N.J., pleaded guilty to computer hacking charges related to the 2008 distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) on Scientology websites. That’s where hackers get so many zombie computers to visit a site that the server overload becomes crippling and the site crashes.
The department’s release mentions that Guzner said he “participated in the attack because he considered himself a member of an underground group called ‘Anonymous.’ ” But when asked whether Guzner was one of several participants or the main culprit, agency spokesman Thom Mrozek responded, “He was the guy.”
Mrozek also noted that the church was cooperative in the investigation.”
UN Human Rights Council Attacks Free Speech involving religion
“Freedom House condemns the UN Human Rights Council for undermining the universal right to freedom of expression by once again passing a resolution that urges members to adopt laws outlawing criticism of religions.
The “defamation of religions” resolution, introduced by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC), passed today by a vote of 23-11, with 13 abstentions. Muslim nations have been introducing similar resolutions since 1999, arguing that Islam-the only religion specifically cited in the text-must be shielded from unfair associations with terrorism and human rights abuses.”
So the UN is against free speech, but they are perfectly ok with countries basing laws on myths and the traditions surrounding those myths…… This is a giant step backwards for advancing the human race against nonsense partisanship.
Read more: http://newsblaze.com/story/20090327170413zzzz.nb/topstory.html
Anonymous relaunches fight against Scientology
The Anonymous group is calling for disillusioned former members to return to the fold ahead of a new phase in its battle against the Church of Scientology.
A video posted on YouTube on Friday said it was time for the original founders of the protest movement to return in time for a “shift to more subtle and shocking tactics”.
Anonymous has staged demonstrations against Scientology around the world over the last six months as part of Project Chanology. Members of the loosely-knit group have demonstrated outside Scientology offices worldwide, often wearing V for Vendetta-style Guy Fawkes masks and other disguises to safeguard their identities.
Other tactics have also included running denial of service attacks on Church of Scientology websites or making prank calls to Scientology offices.
The loose-knit group is protesting against the church’s alleged financial exploitation of members as well as its hostility towards critics. The protests sprang up in response to attempts by the Church of Scientology to force websites to pull a video clip of Tom Cruise expounding some of the more colourful tenets of his beliefs. Anger at this move expressed on the 4chan discussion board and elsewhere provided the initial impetus behind Anonymous but has led to problems, according to the video.
“Those who answered the call outnumber the number from the motherland… This has resulted in Project Chanology becoming polluted by people who are judgemental of our ideology and serve the interests of special interest groups. The time for making allies at the expanse of our ideals is over,” the video states.
The time for the movement’s original creators to “return and reclaim” it has come, the video states. This will mark a “shift to more subtle and shocking tactics” as part of phase three of the operation. What these tactics are remains to be seen but the video warns the leaders of Scientology that their “card is marked” and promises new (unspecified) initiatives, starting on 8 August.”
Article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/04/anonymous_versus_scientology/
World first biological brain robot
“Meet Gordon, probably the world’s first robot controlled exclusively by living brain tissue.Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon’s primitive grey matter was designed at the University of Reading by scientists who unveiled the neuron-powered machine on Wednesday.
Their groundbreaking experiments explore the vanishing boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and could shed light on the fundamental building blocks of memory and learning, one of the lead researchers told AFP.
“The purpose is to figure out how memories are actually stored in a biological brain,” said Kevin Warwick, a professor at the University of Reading and one of the robot’s principle architects.
Observing how the nerve cells cohere into a network as they fire off electrical impulses, he said, may also help scientists combat neurodegenerative diseases that attack the brain such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
“If we can understand some of the basics of what is going on in our little model brain, it could have enormous medical spinoffs,” he said.
Looking a bit like the garbage-compacting hero of the blockbuster animation “Wall-E”, Gordon has a brain composed of 50,000 to 100,000 active neurons.
Once removed from rat foetuses and disentangled from each other with an enzyme bath, the specialised nerve cells are laid out in a nutrient-rich medium across an eight-by-eight centimetre (five-by-five inch) array of 60 electrodes.
This “multi-electrode array” (MEA) serves as the interface between living tissue and machine, with the brain sending electrical impulses to drive the wheels of the robots, and receiving impulses delivered by sensors reacting to the environment.
Because the brain is living tissue, it must be housed in a special temperature-controlled unit — it communicates with its “body” via a Bluetooth radio link.
The robot has no additional control from a human or computer.
From the very start, the neurons get busy. “Within about 24 hours, they start sending out feelers to each other and making connections,” said Warwick.
“Within a week we get some spontaneous firings and brain-like activity” similar to what happens in a normal rat — or human — brain, he added.
But without external stimulation, the brain will wither and die within a couple of months.
“Now we are looking at how best to teach it to behave in certain ways,” explained Warwick.”
Very cool.
Article: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080813192458.ud84hj9h&show_article=1
San Jose Professor Fired for Answering Question about Genetics and Homosexuality
A former San Jose City College biology professor is suing the college after she was fired for answering a student’s question on the relationship between homosexuality and heredity.
On June 21, 2007, June Sheldon, an adjunct professor teaching a human heredity course, answered a question about how heredity affects homosexual behavior by citing the class textbook and a well-known German scientist. She noted that the scientist found a correlation between maternal stress and homosexual behavior in males but that the scientist’s views are only one set of theories in the nature-versus-nurture debate mentioned by the textbook. Sheldon then explained that the class would learn in a later chapter of the textbook that homosexual behavior may be influenced by both genes and the environment.
The school launched an investigation after a different student in the class lodged an informal complaint that deemed Sheldon’s comments “offensive and unscientific.” Sheldon was later recommended for removal from the adjunct seniority rehire preference list and terminated by the district’s board of trustees on Feb. 13, 2008.
The Alliance Defense Fund, a public-interest law firm, has filed the lawsuit on Sheldon’s behalf.
“Teachers shouldn’t be punished for doing their job as educators. They know that students can’t be expected to make good, well-informed decisions if they’re only hearing part of the story,” said ADF Litigation Staff Counsel David Hacker. “College officials have stripped a professor of the right to discuss competing theories and ideas in the classroom, something which represents the foundation of higher education.”
“Firing a teacher for responding to a student’s question with the truth is ridiculous,” said Hacker. “The textbook itself points out that the causes of homosexual behavior are a subject of debate in the scientific community. This teacher did nothing more than explain this fact. She is a dedicated and highly qualified professional who has been horribly wronged.”
Laura Schulkind, the college’s lawyer, told The Mercury News that she had not yet seen the lawsuit, but added, “I am aware of [Sheldon's] allegations. I believe them to be factually and legally incorrect in every respect.”
Un-fucking believable. What century is this again?
What duplicating or backing up your mind really means: Mind snapshots
Shortly after writing the The challenge of mind duplication/transfer post I went seeking others to chat with about this topic. I hoped on irc and had an interesting conversation in a neuroscience channel. It was a great conversation that lead to some very interesting possibilities being discussed.
People typically think that duplicating the mind means that they can live forever or continue their existence indefinitely. The reality is that *if* in the future we can duplicate the mind we’ll be creating snapshots of the mind when the copy was made. We’ll likely not be able to take snapshots from people immediately before they die and instead may have snapshots from various phases in their life. You may decide to ‘backup’ at important moments in your life at various ages.
The use cases are fairly interesting for when you’d use this.
- Reverting to a saved mind snapshot when you’ve experienced a trauma
- Editing a snapshot to remove memories
- Restoration for medical purposes such as:
* Restoring backups to multiple bodies to study environmental effects on mind development
* Restoring backups to multiple bodies to study physical affects on the active state of the mind
- Restoring your pets mind into a cloned copy
- Restoring a human mind to a cloned copy to gain from their perspectives
- Restoring a mind to a cloned copy to utilizing their knowledge and thought patters to solve complex problems
- Restoring an ‘aged mind’ into a younger cloned instance of the body
The possibilities are endless and certainly make for a decent scifi book 
New map IDs the core of the human brain
“An international team of researchers has created the first complete high-resolution map of how millions of neural fibers in the human cerebral cortex — the outer layer of the brain responsible for higher level thinking — connect and communicate. Their groundbreaking work identified a single network core, or hub, that may be key to the workings of both hemispheres of the brain.”
Very cool!
Modeling Conciousness: what do we do with AI?
We’ve heard that AI will be the future and change our lives. We’ve seen movies where robots have human personalities and can interact with us as interact with each other. In order to achieve these “AI use cases” you must first understand what it means to be human and more specifically what mimicking our behavior means.
- Communication: Humans have extensive ways to communicate (verbal, written language, physical expressions)
- Emotions: Humans like other animals have some emotions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion) (fear, anger, love, rage)
- Feelings: Humans have Feeling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeling)
- Mental State: Human minds have various states (certainty, confusion)
- Beliefs and Principles: Humans typically have some baseline beliefs and principles (don’t kill, etc..)
- Social Intelligence: Humans have social intelligence
- Perception/Awareness: Humans have awareness to their own existence
- Creative Abilities: (Ability to improvise)
- Motives
Understanding these components can help us better focus particular traits for specific tasks.
Therapy: Some people have a difficult time interacting with others due to specific disorders or trauma’s they’ve experienced. In the future AI ( in robots) likely will become a part of our lives. We already have robots in our homes, like the Roomba Vacuum cleaner which we’ve accepted as normal. We know that certain personality types clash with each other and certain mental disorders amplify these frictions to the point where one personality types may avoid another. Picture robots that can communicate with us and for the purpose of therapy mimic certain human personality types. Say you’re a right winged republican and have anger issues with left leaning hippies, communicating with a artificial ‘hippie’ personality can allow you to explore frustrations and reactions to those frustrations with no accountability or consequences.
Policy Making: Policies are sets of rules defined for a particular topic. Policies when created are influenced by the perceptions, experiences, and motives. Creating software that can be provided with data and create policies for a given topic without bias or personal motives likely will be something we’ll consider normal. Anyone know of any research here?
You get the idea. One thing I haven’t been able to find is a model of the human mind/classification of the traits that make up consciousness. Does such a thing exist?
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