filed under: politics, religion, reviews

Posted 285 days ago

This is pretty amazing. Click through and watch it. Now! Really, I’ll wait. And you don’t want to miss it.

As I have mentioned before, my feelings about how we should hire a president don’t exactly match those of the rest of the country. To summarize: we should think of the election as hiring the president, and we should hire him or her on the basis of his ability to lead, not based on the issues he believes in. The president’s job isn’t (supposed to be) to set policy – it’s to execute it. As such, I want to vote for the candidate who will be the best leader, regardless of what their policy opinions are.

That makes my decision very difficult, because the campaigns focus mostly on issues, so it’s very hard for me to tell who the best leader is. This song may have introduced me to a side of Obama that shows the leadership. I’m going to have to chase it down.

A relevant side note: I’ve tried a number of those “which candidate should I vote for?” tools, and each one as focused on how well my beliefs match up to the candidates. They make me sad, for two reasons. First, they’re a sign that we’re doomed to always elect a president for the wrong reasons, which makes it a toss of the coin whether they’ll actually be a good leader. Second, when I use those tools, the strongest match is usually around 45%. So even if I wanted to vote by the issues, I’d have nobody to vote for.

I thought it was obvious in the last election that Kerry could be a good leader, and Bush could not. We elected Bush anyway, which is what made me realize how badly-skewed our presidential elections really are. I like to think that I’ve been proven right about Bush over the last four years, so maybe all of you who voted for him last time can take a long hard look at why you made that mistake, and try to learn from it? All the signs were there during the election season, so please don’t think that you couldn’t have figured it out.

And by the way, I’m probably slightly more a republican than a democrat, so I’m not necessarily urging you to vote for a democrat. I’m urging you to vote for the best leader, whomever that may be. If they’re a democrat, that scares me somewhat, because they’ll probably try to restrict my gun rights. But if they’re the better leader, I’d still prefer to have them in office.

Updated: Matt sent me a link to a (40-minute) speech by Obama about politics and religion. It is a strong clue that Obama is a reasoning, thoughtful leader. I am starting to have hope :)

Add a comment [4]

filed under: christmas, family, life, religion

Posted 713 days ago

I occasionally ask myself why I celebrate Christmas, because I don’t really focus on it as a celebration of the birth of Christ. The general answer that I give myself is “Christmas is about people,” and I’m very happy with that idea. But I’ve never thought it out, or written it down.

My mother, on the other hand, has. She apparently got into an email conversation with someone who isn’t giving gifts for Christmas because they feel that it is too commercial / expected / etc. (I don’t know the details.) Mom replied with a detailed writeup of how she felt about Christmas, and then forwarded bits of it on to me.

It’s quite impressive, so (with her permission) I’m quoting it here, for anyone who needs it. (She’s a teacher, so she mentions the school(s) that she teaches at occasionally.)

Read more...

filed under: religion

Posted 950 days ago

Ray Kurzweil and I share the same belief about “God¹.”

This is surprising to me because I’ve had a pretty firm idea of what I believe about God for eight years or so, but I’ve never seemed to be able to explain it to anybody, and I’ve never found anyone else who seems to believe the same thing.

For those of you who haven’t talked directly to me about it, my basic summation is: “God is all life, made up of life, the same thing as life. He/She/It is not a separate entity, and is not consciously directing things, but does influence things on a bigger-than-individual level.”

I found Ray’s belief in a made-up dialog in The Singularity is Near, his book about the future of humanity². I’m going to quote Ray’s dialog here, even though it’s going to seem a little strange out of context³. The dialog is floating way up in abstract-thought space, so you may want to prepare yourself for it by reading one of Amitai’s extraordinarily dense compositions – it will get your mind into the appropriate state.

Molly: So, do you believe in God?
Ray: Well, it’s a three-letter word – and a powerful meme.
Molly 2004: I realize the word and the idea exist. But does it refer to anything that you believe in?
Ray: People mean lots of things by it.
Molly: Do you believe in those things?
Ray: It’s not possible to believe all these things: God is an all-powerful conscious person looking over us, making deals, and getting angry quite a bit. Or He – It – is a pervasive life force underlying all beauty and creativity. Or God created everything and then stepped back…
Molly: I understand, but do you believe in any of them?
Ray: I believe that the universe exists.
Molly: Now wait a minute, that’s not a belief, that’s a scientific fact.
Ray: Actually, I don’t know for sure that anything exists other than my own thoughts.
Molly: Okay, I understand that this is the philosophy chapter, but you can read scientific papers – thousands of them – that corroborate the existence of stars and galaxies. So, all those galaxies – we call that the universe.
Ray: Yes, I’ve heard of that, and I do recall reading some of these papers, but I don’t know that those papers really exist, or that the things they refer to really exist, other than in my thoughts.
Molly: So you don’t acknowledge the existence of the universe?
Ray: No, I just said that I do believe that it exists, but I’m pointing out that it’s a belief. That’s my personal leap of faith.
Molly 2004: All right, but I asked whether you believed in God.
Ray: Again, “God” is a word by which people mean different things. For the sake of your question, we can consider God to be the universe, and I said that I believe in the existence of the universe.
Molly: God is just the universe?
Ray: Just? It’s a pretty big thing to apply the word “just” to. If we are to believe what science tells us – and I said that I do – it’s about as big a phenomenon as we could imagine.
Molly: Actually, many physicists now consider our universe to be just one bubble among a vast number of other universes. But I meant that people usually mean something more by the word “God” than “just” the material world. Some people do associate God with everything that exists, but they still consider God to be conscious. So you believe in a God that’s not conscious?
Ray: The universe is not conscious – yet. But it will be. Strictly speaking, we should say that very little of it is conscious today. But that will change and soon. I expect that the universe will become sublimely intelligent and will wake up in Epoch Six⁴. The only belief I am positing here is that the universe exists. If we make that leap of faith, the expectation that it will wake up is not so much a belief as an informed understanding, based on the same science that says there is a universe.
Molly: Interesting. You know, that’s essentially the opposite of the view that there was a conscious creator who got everything started and then kind of bowed out. You’re basically saying that a conscious universe will “bow in” during Epoch Six.
Ray: Yes, that’s the essence of Epoch Six.

Ray and I are saying the same thing: God is the universe, and He/She/It is only in control of the universe in so much as He/She/It is conscious – and He/She/It is only just starting to wake up into that consciousness. Ray and I both think that humanity will evolve to become that God. Ray thinks it will happen in our lifetimes. Before his book, I didn’t agree – I figured it would be our descendants.

Amusingly, you’ll find echoes of this same idea in a few quotes on this website, from a book that took a far more psychological/spiritual/sociological approach than Ray takes, but reached essentially the same conclusion.

There are echoes of this belief in major religious beliefs… I think. I know that a certain male member of my extended family has a belief in reincarnation, and that each go-around we come progressively closer to becoming one with God. I see that as essentially the same concept. I also think that this is a Buddhist teaching, but I’m not sure.

Finally, I find that this philosophy is very much in line with most major religions. I believe that I am some small part of a much larger God, composed of all life, and therefore my actions influence the lives of other people. We’re all part of the same being, and in order to survive, we all need to work together. That idea leads directly to the golden rule, rough versions of the ten commandments, and many of the behaviorial doctrines of major religions. I find that if I substitute “life” for “God,” I mostly agree with religious teachings. And I find that my beliefs enable me to live a satisfactory life, comfortable with myself and my understanding of the world around me.

P.S. – after a night’s reflection, I want to clarify one point. My belief that God is not yet conscious does not preclude the idea that there are transcendental behavioral/social/(spiritual) patterns that are beyond the control or understanding of any one person. The appropriate analogy might be the perspective of an individual cell or organ in a newborn’s body – even though the cell/organ doesn’t understand why, there is something directing all the activity around it… even if that something isn’t fully self-conscious.

¹ This is the third time I find myself describing my opinion in the words of someone else. I’m going to have to think about that.

² The book, by the way, is amazing… and it’s going to have to be the subject of another post. For now, you should read it. And thanks, Steve, for setting me onto it.

³ If you really must have it, the context is essentially that humanity is going to gradually (but quickly) convert itself into a machine/computer-based civilization, and spread intelligence throughout the universe.

⁴ Epoch Six, by the way, is a part of this sequence:

1. Physics and Chemistry
2. Biology and DNA
3. Brains
4. Technology
5. Ther merger of human technology with human intelligence
6. The universe wakes up

Add a comment [8]