[FRIAM] God

[Gary Schiltz]

Not a religion per se, but reincarnation seems anything but static.

On Sun, May 24, 2020 at 7:39 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
wrote:

> 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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