[FRIAM] God

[Prof David West]

The book i promoted at vFRIAM - Excellent Beauty by Eric Dietrich does a good job of dealing with the question "why religion" AND "why science?" Pretty much the same question.

Anyone aware of a religion that claims an afterlife that is other than "eternal damnation" or "eternal bliss." Some kind of existence that is not basically static. I have been looking and yet to find one. Different nuances of course, but all basically claiming a static state. BTW this includes the static state of "nothingness."

Mormonism is an exception, but I and trying to find if it is the only one.

davew


On Sat, May 23, 2020, at 9:59 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi Russ,

> 

> Hawking my wares again. I am sorry but SOMEBODY has to read this crap. The argument of this paper <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311349078_The_many_perils_of_ejective_anthropomorphism> is that the flow of inference is actually in the other direction. We model our view of ourselves on our experience with others. 

> 

> Nick 

> 

> Nicholas Thompson

> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

> Clark University

> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

> 

> 

> 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Russell Standish
> Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2020 9:39 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] God

> 

> The theory which makes some sense to me is that we humans (as social

> creatures) have evolved to anthropomorphise. This make sense for dealing with other humans, who might be competitors, or compatriots. And the modelling makes use of a remarkable trick - observe one's own mind, and use those observations to model somebody else's mind. This explains why we have self-awareness, if not consciousness.

> 

> The thing is, the same trick also works quite well with other animals, who may be predators or prey, irrespective of whether other species actually have minds or not.

> 

> So it makes sense that when some relatively rare phenomenon occurs, perhaps a thunderstorm, that the alpha male stands up and makes threatening noises. And it seems to work when the thunder goes away

> 

> 

> eventually. And so the thunderstorm has been anthropomorphised. This got extended to other phenomenon, eg famines get blamed on angry gods who can be appeased by making the appropriate offerings. Eventually con-artists exploited this with ever more elaborate stories that leveraged this innate tendency to anthromorphise. I'm sure astrology started out as a cunning plan to garner research funds for early astonomers from ignorant kings.

> 

> Like most evolutionary stories, this is a "just so" story. But I think it has a grain of truth.

> 

> Cheers, Russell

> 

> --

> 

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)

> Principal, High Performance Coders hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au

> http://www.hpcoders.com.au

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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