They look at the indifferent, hostile environment they live in and since they can’t make sense of it, they begin behaving as if the environment itself is conscious. Similar to how they try to outsmart each other and anticipate each other’s motives, they try treating reality like it’s human! They think that if they make gifts and structures, dedicated to the Sun, that the clouds will go away or not become ‘angry.’ They think that if they punish themselves, they can gain a more favorable standing with their environment; that the environment is conscious and will grant them mercy.

Are you starting to see, through an objective lens, the problem with the humans? Their thinking and behavior is not only based in fear but it has been evolved to be. Their brains account for fear by means of coping mechanisms grounded in vain anthropomorphic thought. “If I act good towards others and my environment, my environment with act kindly towards me as a reward.” This is an anthropomorphic delusion. This is antithesis to the way natural selection works. This is antithesis to how reality works.

Reality is not conscious, there is no reward or consideration for how you think and behave in the face of an indifferent and deterministic structure; the Universe. There is only the consequence of your actions, eroding the well-being of our species, based on your vain speculation. There is no god who loves you. It’s a lie and false comfort that has been plaguing our minds (and the minds of the other hominids that are now extinct)

Anthropomorphic thinking flat lines the Abrahamic god in total; it’s proof against god!
How can we take the idea of god seriously when it’s just a mirror for vain thinking?
“That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” – Christopher Hitchens.

If you are an adult male living in 2015, you have no excuse if you are able to understand this. Quit excusing faith! Call it out for the bulls~~~ it is.

The limitless potential of our species, the clear genius in our progressive discourses. Just one little glitch in our software making it all useless.

Oh well.

Taoism S~~~ happens.
Buddhism If s~~~ happens, it’s not really s~~~
Islam If s~~~ happens, it’s the will of Allah
Protestantism S~~~ happens because you don’t work hard enough
Judaism Why does this s~~~ always happen to us?
Hinduism This s~~~ happened before.
Catholicism S~~~ happens because you’re bad.
Hare Krishna S~~~ happens rama rama.
T.V. Evangelism Send more s~~~
Atheism They’re all full of s~~~
Jehova’s Witness Knock knock, s~~~ happens
Hedonism There’s nothing like a good s~~~ happening
Christian Science S~~~ happens in your mind
Agnosticism Maybe s~~~ happens, maybe it doesn’t
Rastafarianism Let’s smoke this s~~~
Existentialism What is s~~~ anyway?
Stoicism This s~~~ doesn’t bother me.
Janeism: Don’t hurt or kill s~~~
Mormonism: Multiple marriage s~~~
Olympic Gods: Seriously Anthropomorphic s~~~
Amish: Horse s~~~ and buggies
Satan: Self-gratification s~~~
Deism: Hands-off s~~~
Scientology: L. Ron got filthy rich off this s~~~
Unitarian: All this s~~~ is Twue

I added Janeism, Mormonism, Olympic Gods (Greco-Roman), Amish, Satan, Deism, Scientology, and Unitarian to the classic list. And changed Atheism from no s~~~, to ‘they’re all full of s~~~’, but perhaps ‘prove your s~~~’ would be better?

In Ancient Greece and Italy, Gods were even MORE anthropomorphic than now.  If you look at, say, Zeus, he was depicted in statues as a MAN — a head, two arms, two legs.  He had supernatural powers, but was a man – albeit, not a mortal man — he had gender and liked to have sex with women other than his wives!  So the Greco-Roman Gods acted like mortals too.  Of course, Zeus was great at disguises (Leda & the Swan, etc), amongst his other super-human powers.
What makes religion unbelievable to me is simply lack of evidence.  This, and internal contradictions within their sacred texts/beliefs/dogmas.  Also, their history and prophecies are often wrong, and their science, particularly cosmology, is wholly defective.  Most religions are products of syncretism – drawing from other faiths to create a new one.
It seems to me a lot of it is about getting wealth, power, and women – or, in simple terms: dickery by the High Priest.  Look at Joseph Smith and the Founding of Mormonism.  If that is not a PERFECT example of this with copious documentation, I don’t know what is.
I don’t think anthropomorphism proves there can be no Abrahamic God.  The Christians will just argue God created US in his image.  And whenever a fact is inconvenient, it becomes ‘metaphorical’. Doctrines in the Bible are followed selectively.
Religious people will not apply Occam’s razor to religions: Instead of believing they religions were created to explain natural phenomena, entertain, enrich a priesthood, for political or social reasons, etc, they instead believe one is literally true, and all the others, all false.

Thanks brother! Keep feeding me this stuff. You keep posting the most useful videos. Thanks.

Douglas Adams nails the failed thinking anthropomorphic nature of god in the first 10 mins, then goes on to amaze me with his thinking.

Thanks

However, he is correct to a certain degree. Anthropomorphic tendency is instinctive in hominids, it’s our fascination with ourselves since no other species in our immediate area are as smart as us (not to mention smarter). The anthropomorphic delusion (religion) had its place in helping men find admirable virtue (citation needed) but like a diseased limb, we need to cut it off or it will kill us. We can not delete wish-thinking, superstition and anthropomorphic delusion (religion) out of people. We could ban it and burn all the books, delete the religious literature off hard drives. This would help get rid of the religions we have along with causing widespread murder and war. But in the end, new forms of theism would arise because the delusion arises from our fearful and vain psychology. Just like we’ve seen before with religion, it evolves and changes into new denominations that accuse the old versions of heresy. Normally this would expose the unplausibility of the initial premise but the monster survives on memes and genes. It would all begin again if we could wipe the slate clean.

The solution is to correctly identify and educate people about the problem not settle for delusion. Douglas Adams would have us praying to false alters for false comfort.

His idea of an artificial god is interesting. Considering that stars are too far apart for our kind to traverse, even with a few more thousand years, its just not likely we will be star faring. This is a reality we have to face despite our love of Science Fiction movies and theoretical physics. What is more likely is that our machines will become star faring. Remember the movie AI Artificial Intelligence? After the human race is long extinct, our AI inventions have kept evolving and have become star faring. They would be able to begin life on habitable worlds. They would be able to wait out the millions of years it takes to seed planets and transit star systems. They could even wait out billions of years of evolution.

When you understand that extremely probable outcome in regards to our future here as humans; combine that with the fact that out of billions of stars and billions of galaxies all containing billions of stars–the presence of intelligent beings like us to exist is very probable. Even if life like us only sprang up 1% of 1% of 1% of stars. That would mean that dozens of sentient life forms reside in this galaxy.

Now you have to estimate what is more probable, based on Earths young age; are we the first to develop AI that’s destined to go stellar or has it been done before–meaning, are we the seeded offspring of interstellar AI robots that were created by intelligent beings several billion years ago?

In the end you have to admit, based on deductive logic, that the likelihood of Earths life originating this way is big enough to take seriously. There is no god but that doesn’t mean that single cell organisms weren’t purposely put on Earth.

This theory is similar to those other theories that we’re all running as a simulation on a computer. LOL.

‘Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.’

-Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — a great book — I remember reading it as a young teen.

These are some relevant Adams theism quotes: http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/douglas.htm

BTL: I don’t agree that religion will necessarily kill us — though a clash between radical Islam and the West (OR the East) could — a clash of civilizations.  I think religion has, however, limited and slowed our progress.  By that, I mean wasted and diverted resources that might otherwise be expended on advancing technology and improving human welfare.  I would also make a case that religions such as Roman Catholicism have contributed to corruption and bad governance in numerous countries where the faith dominates, such as the Phillipines and Latin America — just as Islam has contributed to bad governance where it has absolute domination.  That is obviously a very controversial statement, but I think it has some merit.  Personally, I find religion and religious beliefs facsinating, but only from an academic standpoint.  None of it gives me any ‘burning in the bosom’.  Religion is far, far less damaging, in my opinion, in countries that aren’t dominated by one religion — and by that, I’m including denominations that help keep each other in check as you have in the USA.  Contrast this to countries with absolute domination of one faith — or to Christendom in medieval times — there was a lot more abuse then, than now.  Don’t get me wrong, though, religious persecution is still going on today — Islamic State, Yugoslavia in the 90’s, and partitioning of India after WWII — lots of deaths there — that was huge, etc.  And obviously, the Roman Catholic sex scandal was disgraceful, with high churchmen (bishops and cardinals) moving pedophiles around and shielding them from civil prosecution.

Also, religious persecutions long predate Christianity; the persecution of Socrates occurred in ancient Greece wherein he denied the Greek Gods.  Although there, it was a democracy, so the citizens voted, rather than priests, so quite different than the Roman Catholic Inquisition. Oddly, we do not use the same adjectives to describe different things; we call WW II Germany Nazi Germany, but we don’t attribute the Inquisition to the Church, e.g. the Catholic Spanish Inquisition or the Catholic Portugese Inquisition.  I attribute that to political correctness.  This may be a subtle difference in language to others, but to me it’s a big deal.

Yes, it’s much more likely for machines than men to traverse interstellar space with current technology.  But so much of it is speculation; futurists often get it wrong.  We actually COULD send probes to the closest stars using technology developed in the 1960’s (Project Orion), but it would take decades for them to reach their destination.

——————————————————————————-

I am a marvelous housekeeper.  Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.  – Zsa Zsa Gabor

FrankOne wrote:

We actually COULD send probes to the closest stars using technology developed in the 1960’s (Project Orion), but it would take decades for them to reach their destination.

Based on what I read about Project Orion here, (http://www.universetoday.com/15403/how-long-would-it-take-to-travel-to-the-nearest-star/) I quote from that article, “…but unless we make a breakthrough in interstellar travel (and science fiction become more like science fact)..”

Basically, that technology doesn’t exist, nor does anything close to it. We’re talking about sending machines out into space at 5% the speed of light. That’s unthinkable brother, they’d disintegrate. I’d be thrilled to learn we could do that, but in reality, another 500 years of advancements in technology isn’t going to yield that Lost in Space pipe dream. 500 years from now, whether manned or machine, the trip will still be over 20,000 years long, just to get to one star. As they say in the severely fictional movie Interstellar, that doesn’t even qualify as futile. By the way, I love that movie, probably my favorite movie next to Solaris but it’s completely full of s~~~ as far as plausibility. The plot makes me tear up though, its an emotionally charged movie about how depressing these numbers really are. We’re alone in a dark rift. </span></span>

It would take more like hundreds or thousands of decades to explore the stars in our “immediate” area. Our current (fastest) shuttles/probes speed limit is 36,000 miles per hour. (http://www.space.com/24701-how-long-does-it-take-to-get-to-mars.html) Proxima Centauri is only 4.24 light years away. Since light travels 186,000 miles per second we can do the math.

186K x 60 for secs x 60 for mins x 24 for hours x 365 for a year x 4 for four years.

Our nearest star, Proxima Centauri is over 23,462,784,000,000 miles away! So our fastest probe today would reach it  after 75,000 years! 

Even with hypothetical technology we haven’t invented, and the hypothetical tech that would come after that, and the tech that would come after that….we’ve hit a wall and are unable to get bodies across those rifts.

I used to be more optimistic about star faring life as a kid, but when I matured and understood the numbers, and then grew up even more and got more humble and serious, the numbers look even worse. its probably never happened. But what probably has happened many times, is machines crossing these unimaginable distances.

Nice Fractal Frank!
FrankOne wrote:
We actually COULD send probes to the closest stars using technology developed in the 1960’s (Project Orion), but it would take decades for them to reach their destination.
Based on what I read about Project Orion here, (http://www.universetoday.com/15403/how-long-would-it-take-to-travel-to-the-nearest-star/) I quote from that article, “…but unless we make a breakthrough in interstellar travel (and science fiction become more like science fact)..” Basically, that technology doesn’t exist, nor does anything close to it. We’re talking about sending machines out into space at 5% the speed of light. That’s unthinkable brother, they’d disintegrate. I’d be thrilled to learn we could do that, but in reality, another 500 years of advancements in technology isn’t going to yield that Lost in Space pipe dream. 500 years from now, whether manned or machine, the trip will still be over 20,000 years long, just to get to one star.

Thanks for the complement on the fractal!  I wasn’t suggesting Project Orion would yield a Lost in Space pipe dream.  I do believe it is a viable means to send a probe (no people) to the nearest star system.  The acceleration for Project Orion would only be about 1 g.  Freeman Dyson’s design had a bit longer transit time of about 133 years without accounting for deceleration, to Alpha Centauri.  The acceleration would occur over 1 week with discrete bombs detonated at 3 second intervals behind the pusher plate.  This was calculated to be below the maximum acceleration the structure could withstand so it would not disintegrate.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29 Significant experimental work was done, for instance, ablation was dealt with by oil-coating the pusher plate.  There is/was still some question about damage done by interstellar dust.  Unfortunately, it was tested only with conventional explosives.  So durability of the plate isn’t known – it would need to survive hundreds of thousands of successive explosions.  To get high specific impulse, an Orion vessel needs to be huge – the momentum-limited design with 133 year travel time/0.033c speed, is 330 ft diameter.  So, while it gives huge heavy lift capability, specific impulse drops significantly with a smaller diameter.  Von Braun was a proponent of this for a Mars mission; several Saturn missions would ferry the components for an Orion rocket into orbit; it would be assembled, and make the round trip in an astounding 125 days.  And that is with an enormous, 100 ton payload.  The reason Orion didn’t receive further development was the partial test ban treaty prohibiting nuclear explosions in the atmosphere.  The other downside is as ship diameter/ablation plate diameter decreases, it becomes less efficient; in the case of the Mars mission, the ablation plate could be no larger than ~30’ dia.
There was considerable fear about a rocket explosion on ascent, either conventional or nuclear, spreading radionuclides into the atmosphere – an issue even if a conventional chemical rocket was used to boost an Orion rocket into orbit for assembly.
It also isn’t known how much damage impacts with interstellar dust would cause.  It was also expensive.  Dyson’s estimate, $376 Billion.  What makes Project Orion so interesting is that much of the technology to realize it, already exists.
Cost is infrequently discussed, but for comparison, all Apollo missions combined cost about $170 billion in their totality.  Considering a US population in 1970 of ~200 million, then, about $850 per citizen – quite a massive Big Government undertaking.  In contrast, the Soviet Union spent far less, lost Korolev, and didn’t have von Braun.