Subj : Re: Neuralink
To   : Tracker1
From : Andeddu
Date : Sat Aug 29 2020 09:57:57

  Re: Re: Neuralink
  By: Tracker1 to Dennisk on Fri Aug 28 2020 11:01 am

 > I would say that humanism in general isn't necessarily a religion,
 > because it doesn't have an innate higher power beyond the self.  But
 > it's definitely similar, and far more dangerous imho.

Christopher Hitchens on Communism and Religion...

"You're Joseph Stalin, you've taken over Russia. You've been educated in a
seminary in Georgia, by the way. Up until 1917, for hundereds of years,
hundreds of millions of Russians have been told that the head of the state is a
God. The Tsar is above power, ordinary secular power, that he's the head of the
Russian orthodox church as well. You shouldn't be in the dictatorship business
if you can't take advantage of a deep well of credulity and servility like
that. It's your golden opportunity, what does he do? Heresy trials, witch
hunts, miraculous discoversies, such as Lysenko's biology. The worship of the
leader from all whom all blessings flow, as I describe North Korea, the most
religious state I've ever seen. This would also apply to Mao's China, with the
same background of superstition and servility. Now for there to be a fair test
about this, you'd have to do the following, and no one I've ever debated with
has even tried it - you'd be the first. You find me a state, or society that
threw off theocracy and threw off religion and said "we adopt the teachings of
Lucretius, and Democritus, and Galileo, and Spinoza, and Darwin, and Russell,
and Jefferson and Thomas Paine" and we make those what we teach our children,
and we make that scientific and rational humanism our teaching, and you find me
a state that did that and fell into tyranny, and slavery, and famine and
torture and then we'll be on a level playing field. As it is, all you've done
is show that the idea of worship and the idea of credulity and the idea of
servility and slavery to religion is a bad idea in the first place."

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