How to build a religion: “FANCY founding a religion? Keen to reform a flagging faith? Here a few tips on how to attract and retain followers, thus ensuring that your gospel spreads far and wide, affording spiritual solace to as many souls as possible.

At the outset, you must realise that success is unlikely if you go wholly against the grain of human nature. Granted, religion is all about forging the perfect man, or at least ensuring that, as far as possible, he lives up to divine expectations. But preternatural power has forged man in such a way that he will swallow some of your ideas about how to achieve this more easily than others. [...]” http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/04/science_and_faiths

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God as a General: Passover’s Lessons for Warfare http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/04/god-as-a-general-passovers-lessons-for-warfare/

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“The rise of artilects (artificial intellects, i.e., godlike massively intelligent machines with intellectual capacities trillions of trillions of times above the human level) in this century makes the existence of a deity (a massively intelligent entity capable of creating a universe) seem much more plausible. [...]” http://www.kurzweilai.net/from-cosmism-to-deism

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Evaluating Extraordinary Claims: Mind Over Matter? Or Mind Over Mind? http://norvig.com/prayer.html

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“P.15: Wiener’s problem: What is the ontological status of information?

Most people agree that there is no information without (data) representa- tion. Following Landauer and Bennett 1985 and Landauer 1987, 1991, and 1996, this principle is often interpreted materialistically, as advocat- ing the impossibility of physically disembodied information, through the equation ‘‘representation5physical implementation.’’ The view that there is no information without physical implementation is an inevitable assumption when working on the physics of computation, since computer science must necessarily take into account the physical properties and limits of the carriers of information. It is also the ontological assumption behind the Physical Symbol System Hypothesis in AI and cognitive science (Newell and Simon 1976). However, the fact that information requires a representation does not seem to entail that the latter ought to be physically implemented. Arguably, environments in which there are only noetic entities, properties, and processes (for example, Berkeley and Spinoza), or in which the material or extended universe has a noetic or nonextended matrix as its ontological foundation (for example, Pythag- oras, Plato, Leibniz, and Hegel), seem perfectly capable of upholding the representationalist principle without also embracing a materialist inter- pretation. The relata giving rise to information could be monads, for example. So the problem here becomes: Is the informational an indepen-
dent ontological category, different from the physical/material and (assuming one could draw this Cartesian distinction) the mental? Wiener, for example, thought that ‘‘information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day’’ (1948, 132). If the informational is not an independent ontological category, to which category is it reducible? If it is an independent ontological category, how is it related to the physical/ material and the mental? Answers to these questions determine the orientation a theory takes with respect to the following problem:

P.16: The problem of localization: Can information be naturalized?

The problem is connected with P.4 – Namely, the semanticization of data. It seems hard to deny that information is a natural phenomenon, so this is not what one should be asking here. Even elementary forms of life, such as sunflowers, survive only because they are capable of informational processes. The problem here is whether there is information in the world independently of forms of life capable of extracting it and if so, what kind of information is in question (an informational version of the teleological argument for the existence of God argues both that information is a natural phenomenon and that the occurrence of environmental informa- tion requires an intelligent source). If the world is sufficiently information rich, perhaps an agent may interact successfully with it by using ‘‘envi- ronmental information’’ directly, without being forced to go through a representation stage in which the world is first analyzed informationally. ‘‘Environmental information’’ still presupposes (or perhaps is identical with) some physical support, but it does not require any higher-level cognitive representation or computational processing to be immediately usable. This is argued, for example, by researchers in AI working on animats (artificial animals, either computer simulated or robotic). Ani- mats are simple reactive agents, stimulus driven. They are capable of elementary, ‘‘intelligent’’ behavior, despite the fact that their design excludes the possibility of internal representations of the environment and any effective computation (see Mandik 2002 for an overview; the case for nonrepresentational intelligence is famously made in Brooks 1991).

So, are cognitive processes continuous with processes in the environ- ment? Is semantic content (at least partly) external (Putnam)? Does ‘‘natural’’ or ‘‘environmental’’ information pivot on natural signs (Peirce) or on nomic regularities? Consider the typical example provided by the concentric rings visible in the wood of a cut tree trunk, which may be used to estimate the age of the plant. The externalist/extensionalist, who favors a positive answer to P.16 (for example, Dretske or Barwise), is faced by the difficulty of explaining what kind of information and how much of it saturates the world, what kind of access to, or interaction with, ‘‘in- formation in the world’’ an informational agent can enjoy, and how
information dynamics is possible. The internalist/intentionalist (for example, Fodor or Searle), who privileges a negative answer to P.16, needs to explain in what specific sense information depends on intelli- gence and whether this leads to an antirealist view.
The location of information is related to the question of whether there can be information without an informee, or whether information, in at least some crucial sense of the word, is essentially parasitic on the meanings in the mind of the informee, and the most it can achieve, in terms of ontological independence, is systematic interpretability. Before the discovery of the Rosetta stone, was it legitimate to regard Egyptian hieroglyphics as information, even if their semantics was beyond the comprehension of any interpreter? I’ve already mentioned that admitting that computers perform some minimal level of protosemantic activity works in favor of a ‘‘realist’’ position about ‘‘information in the world.’’ Before moving to the next problem, it remains to be clarified whether the previous two ways of locating information might not be restrictive. Could information be neither here (intelligence) nor there (natural world) but on the threshold, as it were, as a special relation or interface between the world and its intelligent inhabitants (constructionism)? Or could it even be elsewhere, in a third world, intellectually accessible by intelligent beings but not ontologically dependent on them (Platonism)?

P.17: The It from Bit hypothesis (Wheeler 1990): Can nature be informationalized?

The neologism informationalized is ugly but useful to point out that this is the converse of the previous problem. Here too, it is important to clarify what the problem is not. We are not asking whether the metaphorical interpretation of the universe as a computer is more useful than mislead- ing. We are not even asking whether an informational description of the universe, as we know it, is possible, at least partly and piecemeal. This is a challenging task, but formal ontologies already provide a promising answer (Smith 2003). We are asking whether the universe in itself could essentially be made of information, with natural processes, including causation, as special cases of information dynamics (for example, information flow and algorithmic, distributed computation, and forms of emergent computation). Depending on how one approaches the concept of information, it might be necessary to refine the problem in terms of digital data or other informational notions.

Answers to P.17 deeply affect our understanding of the distinction between virtual and material reality, of the meaning of artificial life in the ALife sense (Bedau 2003), and of the relation between the philosophy of information and the foundations of physics: If the universe is made of information, is quantum physics a theory of physical information? More- over, does this explain some of its paradoxes? If nature can be informa-
tionalized, does this help to explain how life emerges from matter, and hence how intelligence emerges from life? Of course these questions are closely related to questions listed in section 5: ‘‘Can we build a gradualist bridge from simple amoeba-like automata to highly purposive intentional systems, with identifiable goals, beliefs, etc.?’’ (Dennett 1998, 262).”

OPEN PROBLEMS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF INFORMATION
LUCIANO FLORIDI
METAPHILOSOPHY Vol. 35, No. 4, July 2004
pp. 554-582

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“This is the full text of the speech that I [RICHARD DAWKINS] planned to give at the London rally against the Pope, 18th Sept 2010″: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/521113-ratzinger-is-an-enemy-of-humanity

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“Why is a Catholic obliged to vote for the parliamentary list of Adolf Hitler?

Because in the National Socialist state intrinsically and through the Reichskonkordat

1. the Faith is protected,

2. peace with the Church is assured,

3. public morality is preserved,

4. Sunday is hallowed,

5. Catholic schools are maintained,

6. the Catholic conscience is no longer burdened,

7. a Catholic has equal rights before the law and in the life of the nation,

8. Catholic organisations and associations, insofar as they exclusively serve religious, charitable and cultural purposes, can operate freely.

Therefore a Catholic is obliged on 12 November [1933] to vote thus:

Referendum: yes

Parliamentary election: Adolf Hitler”

http://www.secularism.org.uk/hitlers-election-poster-uses-the.html

Cf. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/pope-atheism-causes-nazism

[Via Peter Foldiak]

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“Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny”” http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2010/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20100916_incontro-autorita_en.html

Cf. “[...] as well as religious fanaticism that in some contexts impedes the exercise of the right to religious freedom, so too the deliberate promotion of religious indifference or practical atheism on the part of many countries obstructs the requirements for the development of peoples, depriving them of spiritual and human resources. God is the guarantor of man’s true development, inasmuch as, having created him in his image, he also establishes the transcendent dignity of men and women and feeds their innate yearning to “be more”. Man is not a lost atom in a random universe: he is God’s creature, whom God chose to endow with an immortal soul and whom he has always loved. If man were merely the fruit of either chance or necessity, or if he had to lower his aspirations to the limited horizon of the world in which he lives, if all reality were merely history and culture, and man did not possess a nature destined to transcend itself in a supernatural life, then one could speak of growth, or evolution, but not development. When the State promotes, teaches, or actually imposes forms of practical atheism, it deprives its citizens of the moral and spiritual strength that is indispensable for attaining integral human development and it impedes them from moving forward with renewed dynamism as they strive to offer a more generous human response to divine love. In the context of cultural, commercial or political relations, it also sometimes happens that economically developed or emerging countries export this reductive vision of the person and his destiny to poor countries. This is the damage that “superdevelopment” causes to authentic development when it is accompanied by “moral underdevelopment”.” http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html#29.

vs.

“The notion that it was the atheism of Nazis (who were mostly not atheists in any case) that led to their extremist and hateful views or that somehow fuels intolerance in Britain today is a terrible libel against those who do not believe in god. The notion that it is non-religious people in the UK today who want to force their views on others, coming from a man whose organisation exerts itself internationally to impose its narrow and exclusive form of morality and undermine the human rights of women, children, gay people and many others, is surreal.” http://www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/647

Cf. “Why was the line “(who were mostly not atheists in any case)” removed from your article [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11332515 ]? Even if that line had not been in the quote (which it was) surely it is your duty and obligation to the public to make it clear that Hitler and the majority of the Nazis were Catholics? Are you trying to distort the facts and lead people to believe the Nazi’s were atheists? Surely comparing any group to Nazis is the worst insult which can be made. If you think about it why would atheists want to kill only Jews, homosexuals, intellectuals and non-whites?” http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/519631-bbc-unfair-reporting-and-bias

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The Ethics Of Creating Synthetic Life “Craig Venter’s team have succeeded in producing a synthetic bacterium capable of self-replication. The group synthesised from scratch a variant of the Mycoplasma mycoides genome, which they then transplanted into a different Mycoplasma species to produce a bacterium controlled by the synthetic genome. The resulting bacterium could be regarded as the first truly synthetic organism. Earlier forms of genetic engineering have involved modifying the genome of an existing organism; Venter’s group have produced an organism whose genome was instead pieced together from chemical building blocks. [...]

In synthesising novel organisms from scratch, synthetic biologists are ‘playing God’, and doing so much more effectively than earlier genetic engineers. They are not just tinkering with life, they are designing and creating it. [...]

Venter’s work also challenges the common sense distinction between living things and machines. [...]

[...] synthetic entities will be misused, for example, in bioterrorism or biological warfare. [...] Synthetic biology means an end to the age of innocence for the life sciences.”

http://www.practicalethicsnews.com/practicalethics/2010/05/venter-creates-bacterium-controlled-by-a-synthetic-genome.html

“One of the most widespread and longstanding moral beliefs is that there is an important difference between living organisms and inanimate machines. [...]

By contrast, nobody thinks that it is wrong to destroy, create, or tamper with a machine — even if the machine in question is exceedingly complex. This moral distinction is put in crisis by the synthetic biology projects of Venter and others. Going forward, we will need to find a more meaningful moral distinction than the line between the animate and the inanimate.”

http://www.practicalethicsnews.com/practicalethics/2010/05/synthetic-biology-eroding-the-moral-distinctions-between-animate-and-inanimate.html

“We have come up against similar problems in other domains—most notably, in work on nanotechnology and gene transfer technology—but synthetic biology poses them especially sharply and pressingly.” http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-05/thc-mir052010.php

“What that literally means is the capacity to be a creator. [...] [GLENN MCGEE, FOUNDER OF AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BIOETHICS AND FRANCIS PROFESSOR IN BIOETHICS]

So far we have seen [elsewhere] the construction of polio and mouse pox but these are just small fry compared to what might happen when you can go down the path of engineering organisms that could never naturally exist. [...] [JULIAN SAVULESCU, HEAD OF OXFORD UEHIRO CENTRE FOR PRACTICAL ETHICS]

We don’t think you can create life. One can modify and manipulate already existing biological material. No-one [is] able to create life from scratch. There have been claims before that life has been created. [...] [JOHN HAAS, PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC BIOETHICS CENTER]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8696046.stm

[Update:] Ongoing Q&A with one of the creators of the synthetic bacterial cell: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c6kd6/i_am_one_of_the_creators_of_the_first_synthetic/

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We fit the first criteria, but it is unclear whether we are of the second or third type of mind. There is also a fourth type, which follows the third:

4) A mind capable of generating a greater mind which in turn itself creates a greater mind, and so on. [...]

Recently, in conversations with George Dyson, I realized there is a fifth type of elementary mind:

5) A mind incapable of designing a greater mind, but capable of creating a platform upon which greater mind emerges.

Kevin Kelly

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