Intergalactic Summit

To our ancestors there was much in Nature to be afraid of—lightning, storms, earthquakes, volcanos, plagues, drought, long winters. Religions arose in part as attempts to propitiate and control, if not much to understand, the disorderly aspect of Nature.

And when we first look at this Universe, there is much which seems to be design. Animals seem to be perfectly crafted to fit into the ecological niches, and the orderly turn of the heavens could not be anything other then the hands of a master clockmaker.

But then when we look deeper, we repeatedly discover that natural processes—collisional selection of worlds, say, or natural selection of gene pools, or even the convection pattern in a pot of boiling water—can extract order out of chaos, and deceive us into deducing purpose where there is none. The pleasant outward face of nature was precisely that--only an outward face. Underneath was perpetual struggle, species against species, individual against individual. Life was ruled by death...destruction was the key to reproductive success.

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

Purpose is a human construct. Stars aren't made for us, to light up our worlds, they exist because gravity pulled in clouds of dust and gas until the pressure and temperature squeezed the core material into fusion fire. When we create something, we're doing it for a reason, when we make a fork, its purpose is for eating. But things that create themselves don't need a purpose, they simply are.

If we want to find purpose, we should not be looking outward, trying to find it written somewhere in the cosmic microwave background, or etched into subatomic particles, if we want to find purpose, we should look within ourselves. Purpose comes from us, it is something we create as humans, and carry with us. My meaning, my purpose, was not scribed onto my body by some deity, it was something I chose for myself.

A point of distinction, Mademoiselle Riordan...I was not speaking of religion but of faith, which are two very different things. A religion is a construct of order, a system of laws and rites or a code of behavior or belief. It is orthodox, systemic.

Faith is a different entity altogether and does not rely on a religion. Many times a religion may be built around a faith, or faith can be placed in a religion itself; but that does not make them one and the same.

Also, to be completely fair to both sides of the discussion, you are describing your deductions based on observation; a personal inference, not objective fact - just as I was.

This brings us to a greater dilemma in the discussion; attempting to prove or disprove the existence of a spiritual (metaphysical) being through observation of the physical universe. Even with honest intent, one would necessarily have to acquit oneself of all predispositions in observation in order to draw a fair conclusion and still would only have an observational understanding of the physical realm. Any conclusion made regarding the spiritual realm (if there is such a thing) would then have to be drawn from the understanding of the physical and cannot, in any honest scientific field, be used as scientific evidence.

That is where the line is drawn. That is why a faith system can and will continue to exist despite all of the empirical evidence you seek to throw at it, why they are impervious to scientific discovery and why no matter how many conclusions can be drawn based on advances in science and observation; faith will remain.

You look at a universe such as ours and see "blind, pitiless indifference" because it possesses the qualities you would expect to see from such a state.

The faithful look at a universe such as ours and see order and structure pointing to a designer and understand that the "blind, pitiless indifference" you see is nothing more than the designer testing his design and watching it adapt and overcome as a result. Just as a parent does not always protect a child from harm or hardship but must let that child experience both in order for them to grow and develop, so too does the designer.

Neither can be absolutely, undeniably, incontrovertibly, inexorably proven wrong because one is based on physical observation, the other is based on metaphysical faith.

Both have merit and wisdom, intelligence and guidance can be gleaned from both. Looking inward and outward to gain a full perspective is wiser and more honest than doing one to the exclusion of the other.

This is rather pointless pedantry. Creating a whole new reality to the eyes of the subject is directly taking control of them. How do you think it creates that new reality? By altering the ways neurons fire in the brain. Just because it's focusing on the senses does not mean it is not mind control.

Especially when it repeats the exact same day over and over again and the person isn't even aware of that because their memories are being rewritten every single day.

That is a question of definitions, and where it starts to become interesting, isn't it ?

You draw a clear line between vitoc and TCMCs, but refuse to draw it between TCMCs and True Slave Implants. Er... I mean, are all those Khanid Holders no better than Kuvakei to your eyes ?

Does the spiritual realm exist though? I feel that's a fair question to ask. Or, to put it another way, how would the universe look different, if it lacked an external spiritual realm? Think very carefully about the answer, because if such a universe would resemble our universe; that is, a universe without a spiritual realm is indistinguishable from one with a spiritual realm, then you have made your claim of an external physical realm unfalsifiable. There is literally no way to determine if it exists or not.

So then you say, 'take it on faith, that's what faith is' but that's a pretty bad answer in my mind. To return to the analogy I used with Ms. Kernher earlier, faith in one's ability to fly will not stop them from plummeting to their death if they jump off a cliff. It takes knowledge of flight to make it possible, not faith. How does faith help us? What benefit to we gain from believing something despite a complete lack of evidence?

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but you believe that faith is a good thing, and that is where you run into trouble.

There's an old story, it goes like this. A man comes up to me and says, "I have an alien in my hanger" And I say, "Okay, take me to see it." And we get there, and gasp and shock, there's no alien. "Oh its there," says the man, "Its an invisible alien"
The silliness of that notwithstanding, I would then say, "Okay, lets get a heat sensor so we can detect its impact on the air temperature."
"Oh no that won't work," The man says, "The alien doesn't emit energy."
Getting a bit frustrated now, I say, "Well, why don't we throw some flour over it so we can see its outline."
"No, the alien is permeable to flour." Says the man.

Here's the trick, at some level, the man expects the hanger to behave in exactly the manor it would if there was no alien present. He has to, in order to predict the negative outcome of all my tests and explain the reason for their failure. If you ask this man if he believes there is an alien in his hanger, he will probably say yes. But, he can't entirely believe it, or he wouldn't be able to explain away all my attempts to test for the alien. The man must have an accurate model of the situation somewhere in his mind, because he can anticipate, in advance, exactly which experimental results he'll need to excuse.

The man clearly does not anticipate seeing anything unusual upon opening the hanger bay; otherwise he wouldn't make advance excuses. It may also be that the man's pool of propositional beliefs contains 'There is an alien in my hanger.' It may seem, to a rationalist, that these two beliefs should collide and conflict even though they are of different types. Yet it is a physical fact that you can write "The sky is green!" next to a picture of a blue sky without the paper bursting into flames.

The rationalist virtue of empiricism is supposed to prevent us from this class of mistake. We're supposed to constantly ask our beliefs which experiences they predict, make them pay rent in anticipation. But the alien-claimant's problem runs deeper, and cannot be cured with such simple advice. It's not exactly difficult to connect belief in an alien to anticipated experience of the hanger. If you believe there's an alien in your hanger, then you can expect to open up the hatch and see an alien. If you don't see an alien, then that means there's no alien in your hanger. This is pretty straightforward. You can even try it with your own hanger.

No, this invisibility business is a symptom of something much worse.

As cognitive philosopher Daniel Arkaid observes, where it is difficult to believe a thing, it is often much easier to believe that you ought to believe it. What does it mean to believe that the Ultimate Cosmic Sky is both perfectly blue and perfectly green? The statement is confusing; it's not even clear what it would mean to believe it—what exactly would be believed, if you believed. You can much more easily believe that it is proper, that it is good and virtuous and beneficial, to believe that the Ultimate Cosmic Sky is both perfectly blue and perfectly green. Arkaid calls this "belief in belief".

And here things become complicated. For one thing, if you believe in belief, you cannot admit to yourself that you only believe in belief, because it is virtuous to believe, not to believe in belief, and so if you only believe in belief, instead of believing, you are not virtuous. Nobody will admit to themselves, "I don't believe the Ultimate Cosmic Sky is blue and green, but I believe I ought to believe it"—not unless they are unusually capable of acknowledging their own lack of virtue. People don't believe in belief in belief, they just believe in belief.

While I disagree with Arkaid on some details and complications, I still think that his notion of belief in belief is the key insight necessary to understand the alien-claimant, and by extrapolations the reasons that religious people hold so tightly to their cherished beliefs.

What do you believe Mr. Antollaire? And why do you believe it?

Sir, what ever your beliefs, I would request that you not refer to Hunan beings as "Product" thank you.

There is nothing humane about mind control. The mind is the one thing that slaves are allowed to keep free, and you would rob them of that.

If you have to use TCMCs to manage your slaves, then your methods are lacking. At least in the Empire, there are Labor Reeducation Centers for people who are too hostile for the general workforce. Those are far more humane than simply sticking a chip into their heads and turning them into a flesh drone.

Honestly Ms Riordan, if the concept of God is comparable to aliens in the hangar, I do not really know what to add...

Hrm...

I express some disappointment, really.

You've either willfully ignored the point being made regarding the reliance on empirical observation as the final authority on the matter, or failed to understand it entirely.

Either way, I doubt much will come of continuing the discussion.

Be well, Mademoiselle Riordan.

Mademoiselle Riordan,

You have a particularly nasty habit of interjecting all of my supposed answers for me. You seem more interested in having a conversation with yourself than with me.

I am content to let you do so.