Why can't we just be "excellent" to each other?

[Waitingforthemothership]

Some folks cannot distinguish between coral snakes and king snakes. Does that inability mean no differences exist?

Of course not.

An excellent analogy. Very helpful!

Yes, you're right. It IS true that coral snakes and king snakes are indistinguishable to some people-- perhaps to most people-- yet one will kill you and the other is harmless. If such a person sees a banded snake and doesn't get bit by it, then as far as that person is concerned, the two varieties of snake are indistinguishable. They are indistinguishable, but they are not the same. (If this person is bitten by a coral snake, and it injects a substantial amount of venom, they will, of course, immediately distinguish the difference.) The latent difference is that one is poisonous and the other is not.

Applied to gods and extremely technologically-advanced extraterrestrials, the latent difference is that one is magical or supernatural, and the other is not. Most dictionary definitions of the terms "god" and "deity" make use of the term "supernatural" or a synonym of "supernatural," such as "magical." Dictionary definitions of the word "extraterrestrial" or "alien" don't use this term. Additionally, it is traditionally assumed that the technological powers of extraterrestrials are a function of their ability to exploit their scientific understanding of natural law (as humans do), not an ability to break natural law. Clearly then, these are two different animals-- as different as coral snakes and king snakes. One is magical and the other is not.

Language is a slippery thing-- as slippery as a greased bullfrog. There are clear differences between a dachshund and a collie, yet they are both dogs. There are clear differences between a mechanical pencil and a non-mechanical one, yet they are both pencils. There are clear differences between a Lamberghini and a Subaru, yet they are both cars. Conversely, there is virtually no zoological difference between a dove and a pigeon, yet these are popularly defined as being two extremely different birds.

So, you're right, and your point is well-taken. Traditionally, gods are supernatural, and extraterrestrial beings are not. This is an almost universally-recognized distinction. No matter how technologically-advanced an extraterrestrial race is, they are not gods because their powers do not defy natural law.

I am suggesting, however, that this traditional distinction between gods and sufficiently technologically advanced extraterrestrials is mistaken; it is naive. It kinda-sorta made sense once, when humans axiomatically took natural law to be a thing which could not be altered by natural means. But the word "supernatural" becomes meaningless as soon as we seriously consider the idea of applying technology towards breaking natural law. Not just taking advantage of it, as we have done in the past, but breaking it-- literally altering it, at will.

"That's not true," one may protest, "because the breaking of natural law that you're suggesting would be done by purely natural means, not by MAGIC!" "You're interpreting the term "supernatural" to mean "that which breaks or defies natural law," but that ISN'T it's real meaning! It's real meaning is MAGIC! Gods are MAGICAL, and extraterrestrials are not!"

Okay. Here is where I admit defeat. I can come up with no retort to this argument because, quite frankly, I don't understand it. I'm not afraid to admit my ignorance, nor the limits of my cognitive faculties. I don't appear to have the intellectual capacity to understand this notion of "REAL MAGIC." I surrender.

In my mind, REAL MAGIC isn't possible-- any more than an omniscient God who makes mistakes in His creations is possible, or an omnibenevolent God who kills almost every living thing with a flood and sends children to burn in Hell eternally for not believing in Him is possible. In my mind, since REAL MAGIC isn't possible, taking it seriously enough to bother arguing that there's an important distinction to be made between REAL MAGIC and parlor magic is silly. In my mind, the only kind of magic there is is parlor magic, and therefore parlor magic is "REAL MAGIC." In my mind, the only gods which exist are those which CAN exist. I admit that I am confused and perplexed when rational-minded, scientifically-knowledgeable atheists insist, passionately, that the only gods which are REAL are ones which can't exist, and gods which CAN exist-- no matter how similar to genuine gods they may appear-- aren't "REAL GODS." They aren't "REAL GODS" because the only "REAL GODS" are those which can't possibly exist.

Yeah. I don't get it. It seems to make sense to A LOT of smart people, but I (personally) don't get it.

To me, if zoologists were to discover a new species of horse which was white, had a single horn in its forehead, and whose blood had amazing medicinal properties, I'd call it a unicorn. Even if it wasn't MAGICAL, I'd still call it a unicorn because it would be indistinguishable from every single unicorn in existence. Even if unicorns were traditionally believed to have impossible characteristics, such as having invisible green poop, I'd still call this newly discovered creature a unicorn-- and my reason would still be that:

it's the closest thing to a unicorn that actually exists.

But that's just me. I know that others see things differently, and I readily admit that I find that fact puzzling. I don't mind it at all; I just find it puzzling.

[The Valkyrie]

It would be nice, but humans are stupid, ignorant, bigoted, animals.

[dyresand]

It would be nice, but humans are stupid, ignorant, bigoted, animals.

You mam are very excellent.

[Waitingforthemothership]

It would be nice, but humans are stupid, ignorant, bigoted, animals.

I agree 100%.

I still do feel obliged to point out that, unlike most other stupid, ignorant animals, humans often feel bad about not being excellent to each other. A lion will eat a zebra alive while it's still wriggling and struggling, utterly oblivious to the animal's suffering. Some humans, with a comparable level of self-awareness, would do exactly the same. Others would recoil in shock and become vegetarians on the spot. Most of us, however, would go on eating the poor beast, feeling really badly about it until they found a way to rationalize the act: "Damn zebras! These disgusting creatures DESERVE to be eaten alive! Makes me furious just to think about i! God, damned stripes!!!"

It depresses me deeply to realize just how few humans aren't stupid, ignorant, bigoted animals, but the very fact that it does-- the very fact that you and I are both disgusted by our species' pathetic limitations-- really should be encouraging. Other animals are utterly incapable of moral self-loathing and, after all, we ARE animals, just like them.

[CapnAwesome]

New to this forum, and thanks for all the welcomes in the Introductions sub-forum.

I'm curious about something. I understand that religions were created in the absence of science; it helped "explain" why certain things occurred, and to drive behaviors to satisfy a deity or deities. Now that science explains so much, we should be able to look back and snicker at how wrong religion really is.

But what I've observed could be considered reflexively following the habits of previous generations, partly to honor their beliefs, but also to not take any chances (i.e., "they might be right after all"). Not to single any religion out, but some orthodox religions are hardcore about ritual and continuing the beliefs of their predecessors. I know for a fact that some younger followers are told they are a link in a chain going all the way back to some figure they consider historic, and it would be a grave sin to break that link.

So why can't we simply accept what science has exposed to us, and huddle around core behaviors that represent civil society? This could be thought of as the new ten commandments, but there would be no higher power to administer and forgive. That would be the role of society. Could it be as simple as unifying behind simple "laws" such as:

1. Be nice to each other
   
2. Pay it forward: be generous by giving your time, money, and stuff to the less fortunate
   
3. Help out each other
   
4. Live a life you can be proud of, and tell others of those who lived well
   
5. Leave the earth in good shape while you're here
   
6. Support leaders and fellow citizens who live according to the above, and punish those who do not
   

I'm sure there are more, but all of those transcend religion. We don't need to carve out an hour every Sunday with ritual, decorative garments, and pomp and circumstance, do we?

I think a scarcity of resources and/or an inequitable distribution of them pretty much precludes all your rules. It's hard to be nice to people when your kids are hungry and the local warlord or whatever has 10 hummers.

[Aroura]

Party on Dude!

Behaving as you are advocating could just be thought of as "being nice." However, it could also be defined as "being spiritual," in the sense of transcending the ego and (evolutionarily-defined) selfish and self-centered instincts. Even when people use the term "spirituality" in purely secular terms, they're typically talking about nothing more than warm/fuzzy feelings. Yet, the warm/fuzzy feelings that one experiences watching a beautiful sunset have little real value.

Modern science has provided us with unequivocal evidence that everything in the universe is interconnected and interdependent, that fish and rice plants are our relatives, that the entire biosphere is a single organic system, and that the physical universe can only really be understood in terms of field theory. If we ever do discover a unified field theory, it will only work because the entirety of the universe is one big super complex meta-fluctuation in the very fabric of space-time.

As humans, our perceptions and cognition are thoroughly defined by our genetic programming. No living organism can survive without a sense of self and other, or self and environment. Even a single-celled blob of protoplasm needs this convenient fiction in order to move across a lab slide, run from predators, chase after food, etc. Natural selection has used two principle strategies in shaping human interpersonal behavior. One is selfishness and the other is altruism. It continues to use these logically-incompatible strategies because both work extremely well, and because natural selection has no interest in logical constancy. So long as our altruism is primarily directed at individuals who are most closely related to use genetically, and our selfishness is primarily directed at less closely genetically-related people, they work extremely well.

Rationally-driven human spirituality is essentially an attempt to find harmony between these two, apparently logically incompatible, evolutionary strategies. That harmony is probably to be found in the fact that selfishness and violence work well when individuals and tribes are only loosely-connected and generally independent. Altruism and compassion work best among individuals who are tightly-connected and interdependent. Human "tribes" now contain hundreds of millions of individuals, and the world is rapidly moving towards becoming a single global tribe. War, exploitation, and cruelty just don't work as well as they used to. When one economy crashes, they all do; we can't afford to go to war with China because they make all our stuff. In functional, practical terms, selfishness and exploitation just aren't as effective as altruism and cooperation these days.

As a species, we're also too scientifically aware to continue to believe that such a thing as a "single human being" exists in any meaningful scientific way. A "single human being" exists in the same way as a "single human cell" or a "single tree leaf." Examine the DNA in the nucleus of a tree-leaf cell and you won't find instructions for making a leaf. You won't even find instructions for making a tree, because natural selection depends on POPULATIONS and GENE POOLS to work. The DNA inside a tree leaf contains instructions for making a forest, and the DNA inside a human cell contains instructions for making the human race. That's what we humans are-- leaves which can walk and talk and write poetry. We are organic vortices-- sucking in air, water, animal/plant matter, heat, information, and expelling gaseous, liquid, and solid waste products, heat, and information. A vortex doesn't have any real border; it's only a qualitatively-differentiated region of a larger system-- a larger whole. Though the convenient fictions that our instincts thrust upon us lead us to think of ourselves as separate, independent, autonomous and unchanging objects, the truth is that we are no more a separate object than a tornado or hurricane is. Tornadoes and hurricanes are regions of the atomosphere. They ARE things, but only in a very particular sense, and their region-ness far outstrips their thingness.

The point that I want to make is that there is a rational, logical, scientific foundation for altruism, ego transcendence, and spiritual experience. Religions would be ideal institutions for exploring and manifesting rational, logical, scientific altruism and self-transcendence, if only we humans weren't so frickin stupid and irrational. Religion doesn't have to be dumb or unscientific. "Faith" can be secular-- as in "I have faith that my country isn't going to allow itself to go down the drain" or "I have faith that the human race won't destroy the planet and itself." Faith doesn't have to be psychotic rejection of reality. It can just be FAITH.

The problem isn't religion. There's nothing wrong with religion. The problem is that they're all doing it wrong. And, by the way, gods exist. Lots of 'em. It's almost certain that the universe is full of them. But that doesn't really change anything, and we're still all going to die.

I would like to say for the record I agree with your points on gods, but disagree on religion. As Thump pointed out, religion can be harmful, though it isn't necessarily so. Some encourage more independent thinking than others. The worst discourage it.

I will not be one to go so far as to assume humans have been visited by advanced extraterrestrial life, nor that this is the first cause of belief in gods as some propose (even though Childhoods End is my all time favorite Sci_fi novel), it is almost certainly out there, as you say.

I forget who said that sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic, but there is truth there. By some definitions of the word god, of which there are many definitions, humans are now gods.

I always think Gene Roddenberry was trying to make a rather important point with Q. How exactly does his race differ from a traditional definition of the word God?

[Thumpalumpacus]

I am suggesting, however, that this traditional distinction between gods and sufficiently technologically advanced extraterrestrials is mistaken; it is naive. It kinda-sorta made sense once, when humans axiomatically took natural law to be a thing which could not be altered by natural means. But the word "supernatural" becomes meaningless as soon as we seriously consider the idea of applying technology towards breaking natural law. Not just taking advantage of it, as we have done in the past, but breaking it-- literally altering it, at will.

Then you'll have to tolerate my disagreement. One is explicable by natural laws, and the other isn't, and in the context of discussing atheism, the latter is a god and the former is an alien, and they aren't exchangeable. You say that language is slippery, but it isn't. Words have meanings. Those meanings are in use daily. They do evolve, it is true, but they don't change meaning from one person to another in one conversation, because at that point communication is pointless. You can call an alien "god". You can call your dog "God". You can call a fish taco "god", for all I care. But that doesn't mean gods exist.

And if you cannot tell the difference between a dog and God, or a fish taco and God -- or more to the point, aliens and gods -- then why should I extend credence to your viewpoint? If you mean "aliens", say "aliens", and if you mean "gods", quit shilly-shallying and say it. There are two different words for those two different concepts for a reason. One is of the natural world an limited by the physical laws of the universe; the other isn't. If you'd like citations from holy books to clarify the matter, I'll grudgingly do your homework; but surely you can understand the difference between abilities gained by technological innovation which utilize the laws of the universe, and inherent abilities which defy those same laws. Surely you can.

As for "seriously consider[ing] the idea of applying technology towards breaking natural law", I'd be interested in seeing any serious consideration of such an event you have in mind. I know of no technology in the works which aims to violate natural laws rather than utilize them. Perhaps you would be so kind as to link to some of those projects?

[henryp]

So why can't we simply accept what science has exposed to us, and huddle around core behaviors that represent civil society? This could be thought of as the new ten commandments, but there would be no higher power to administer and forgive. That would be the role of society. Could it be as simple as unifying behind simple "laws" such as:

1. Be nice to each other
   
2. Pay it forward: be generous by giving your time, money, and stuff to the less fortunate
   
3. Help out each other
   
4. Live a life you can be proud of, and tell others of those who lived well
   
5. Leave the earth in good shape while you're here
   
6. Support leaders and fellow citizens who live according to the above, and punish those who do not
   

I'm sure there are more, but all of those transcend religion. We don't need to carve out an hour every Sunday with ritual, decorative garments, and pomp and circumstance, do we?

This is effectively the same as a religion.  You make up a bunch of rules, many of them based on definitely not scientific notions, and try to apply them to everyone.

[thool]

This is effectively the same as a religion.  You make up a bunch of rules, many of them based on definitely not scientific notions, and try to apply them to everyone.

Are they rules or guiding principles?

[henryp]

This is effectively the same as a religion.  You make up a bunch of rules, many of them based on definitely not scientific notions, and try to apply them to everyone.

Are they rules or guiding principles?

Fine guiding principles.  Here's how I see our conversation going from here based on the other times I've had this conversation:  

Me: I don't believe in your principles.
You: But they are what's best for society.
Me: I don't care about what's best for society, I care about what's best for me.
You: But what's best for society is what's best for you!
Me: That's frequently not the case.
You: Well, that's why we have principle #6.
Me: What happens when a group of people who think your principles are stupid inevitably form within the society and amass enough power to nullify #6 like they always do in every society in the history of ever?
You: Well they're jerks.
Me:  Jerks off getting bjs on their private jets while you're off in a field picking potatoes.

You: ???