I appreciate that you have reached out to me. I would be happy to tell you my spiritual story, etc. But, it sounds to me like you are not looking for a confrontation about your beliefs right now. And I think you would find what I have to say pretty confronting.

My "spiritual story" is not a story about my personal experiences, which are not really relevant. It is a story about what I have learned and how I know it is true. I thought you might find that confrontational. But, I guess I'll let you decide.

___________________________________________

I was raised secularly in no particular religion. I survived early adulthood and eventually met my husband, who introduced me to a very secular Buddhism.

Buddhism is about what, exactly, is the case. Over the years I have come to see that guessing games produce nothing. Nothing is known of gods, aftelives, divine interventions, etc. So why pretend?

I could see that gods, or any things about which nothing is known, are not known to be important. What is important is what can be known, like what is real and how to live. This can be determined by looking. That this works is abundantly demonstrated by the explosion of knowlege and ability achieved by humans since organized looking began.

But, in learning about Buddhism and many other religions, I saw that religion can be very useful. It brings people together in common culture and cause. It uses a story to bring together facts and values. When facts and values align it creates personal wholeness and social cohesion.

Most of the ancient religions attempt to do this with ancient stories. But, the ancient people who made those stories did not understand what we, today, understand.

So, in the interest of starting from scratch, unbeholden to any previous tradition, I decided to invent a completely new religion from the ground up, based on truth and the reality that any person today will unavoidably experience. If religion is to serve to provide social cohesion and personal wholeness, I thought, there should be a completely true religion available for that purpose.

That is how I conceived Neoism.


Neoism is based on the tenet that what is real matters, and that the truth is the best guide to navigating reality. It utilizes some spiritual and moral technology for creating human well-being. I feel comfortable declaring the claims of Neoism to be true because they can be verified by anyone.

For example, the cosmology of Neoism states that the universe began about 13.75 billion years ago. That this tenet is true can be verified using the Lambda-CDM concordance model, strongly supported by recent high-precision astronomical observations such as WMAP.

Neoism also states that meditation is a tool which works for transcending suffering. This is strongly supported by data showing that learning to meditate helps people to be calmer and have better moods.

So, my "spiritual journey" has been a quest to find out what is real, and how to know, and see if a life of happiness and rich spiritual fulfillment could arise from accurate understanding of reality. And, I have found that it does.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

That's really all there is to it, but I am happy to answer any questions that you have. I don't feel that if we don't agree, or even if we could never agree, that means we can gain nothing from the interaction. I gain every single time I have the opportunity to learn or be challenged.

Well, I am not really "an atheist," but I can certainly see a lot that anyone can gain from having an accurate understanding of reality. It allows what we think to align closely with what can be observed. This provides a great deal of understanding about what is happening which can be used to make sound decisions, among other things.

Are you serious? If I was able to convince a person to honor truth and get on board with reality, that would be a rhetorical triumph I could celebrate, and the development of a rhetorical skill which I could then employ to further all humanity. So, fun for me. And, there would be another voice for truth and reason in a world sorely lacking in them. That would be pretty good too.

I think the distance between unverified claims about reality and how reality actually is creates a lot of error.

Katz, the opportunity to write out "my story" is priceless to me. Thank you again so much for sharing with me and allowing me to do the same. It is a great honor to speak with you. Please let me know if you would like to speak further. I am interested in anything you have to say.

__________________________________

I thought you might.

It is not personal experience. Nothing is known for certain about these things at all, to any person. No fact can be demonstrated to be true about gods, afterlives, etc. Nothing, not one thing, is known of them. Conjecture, yes. Knowledge, no.

Again, not "to" a person. Important in general, as in, having great effect or consequence. There are no known effects of gods. If gods exist, they are not "doing" anything apparent. Their role is so insubstantial that it cannot be verified in any way. So, not really important for understanding what is happening and how actual things work. At least, not demonstrably more important than any other unsubstantiated conjecture.

A lot of people say a lot of things. Just saying something is meaningless.

Easy. One or both of them is wrong.

You may not be able to tell which. Sometimes the truth is that we can't tell what really happened. "I don't know" is a true answer too.

However the "witnessing an accident" kind of looking is not organized looking, which is what I specified. Organized looking is examining over and over and testing and recording and comparing results and revising the hypothesis to match the observation and examining again and comparing and publishing the data and having others point out the errors and correcting them and over time becoming more accurate.

After an accident you might have to admit that you can't tell which description is more accurate. After organized looking you can very often show which descriptions are the most accurate and refine them for even more accuracy.

We have learned how to live by a similar process of looking at what works and what doesn't, in the laboratory of history. For example, we figured out a couple of centuries ago that institutionalized slavery was not working, and a century or so before that we figured out how to work a constitutional representative democracy, modeled on previous examples. The learning process continues through trial and error...particularly error.

Not much, but what is known and how to check have changed a lot. And that has changed everything else.

This is the one I am using. It is from dictionary.com.

re·li'·gion
[ri-lij-uhn]
noun
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.


Neoism is a set of ideas concerning the cause, nature and purpose of the universe, moral conduct, etc., especially (but not necessarily) when concerned with gods.

Concern with gods is not required for religion.

I disagree that religions have to be concerned with the supernatural. In any case, I am going to continue to use the term as per definition 1 above.

People can say anything.

Truth refers to statements that correspond accurately to what they are describing. The source of accuracy in statements is checking.

Methods for spiritual and moral achievement. Meditation is technology for achieving the spiritual goal of inner peace, for example. For another, you might have heard of the question, "What would Jesus do?" This is a kind of moral technology - it is a protocol, a technique for figuring out the right thing to do. Neoism describes a simple mnemonic aid you can run as an app right on your hand for figuring out moral action in any circumstance.

Meditation, I learned about from Buddhism. But the Mind App I made up myself.

The result of meditation is that you learn how to be calm and alleviate suffering. More calm and less suffering allows for greater happiness.

The result of using a moral rubric is better, or at least more thoughtful, decisions.

__________________________________

Please do not insult yourself by failing to read to the end of the sentence. I said, because the claims can be verified by anyone.

The part you ignored is the important part.

My comfort is not the reason the claims are true. The claims are true because they are accurate descriptions of reality which can be verified by anyone.

Wow, I can't believe you even suggested this. Are you seriously not aware that people in the time of Columbus did not think the earth was flat? They knew the earth was round, because it could be observed to be round. What they thought was that voyage West to India by sea was too far. What they didn't know was that North America was in between.

Anyway, that was not "in science," and people who claimed the earth was flat, or whatever, were NOT doing organized looking and they were NOT basing their claims on data. They were just repeating dogma.

The claims of truth which work are a result of organized looking and are supported by data - observations of actual reality which can be verified by anyone. That is different from repeating dogma.

Comfort is not the proof and I did not suggest it was. The astronomical data is the proof. The studies of brain activity and increased happiness are the proof. That is the part that can be verified by anyone. If you go all the way to the end of the sentence you get to the part about what makes it truth.

Oh, not so much. We are all mammals. We are all falling to the earth at about 32.2'/sec². We can all verify the claims that this universe is approximately 13.75 billion years old. Almost everything we share.

By being an accurate description of the reality we are all in.



Kasz, thank you again, from the bottom of my heart, for sharing this discussion with me. I understand our schedules - and outlooks! - are very different, but I appreciate the time you have taken to speak with me. Please let me know if there is anything else I can clarify or if you have any further questions, or feel free to tell me more about your ideas. I am enjoying the discussion very much.

With warm regards,

Raver

Do you think they should be rewarded proportionately? Do you think there are some people who are working fourteen billion times smarter than others?

What exactly did he do that was a billion times smarter than anything any other person has ever done?

Please. A lot of people start their own businesses. That doesn't make them billions of times smarter than anyone else.

Bill Gates was hired to provide an operating system. He did not invent or create one himself...he just bought one (MS DOS). MS DOS was clunky and stupid and not superior in any way to the other OSs of the day, like the one developed by Xerox Park, but it just happened to be the one chosen by IBM, and IBM already had a large share of the business market at the time because of a long history of providing tabulating machines which used punch cards. Bill Gates just happened to be in the right place at the right time, nothing more. So Bill Gates was not smarter, he was just luckier.

Computer power users will tell you that Unix, SUN, and even Apple had far superior products available, but Microsoft crushed all competition with unfair business practices. Steve Jobs did far more to actually advance computer technology than Bill Gates did. But since the Apple was adopted primarily by academia ("smart people") and PCs were adopted by business ("rich people"), in those days they never had a chance to fairly compete.

Microsoft did not develop word processing - Word Perfect did. They did not develop spreadsheets - Lotus did. They did not invent the web browser - Mozilla did. They did not invent desktop publishing - Harvard Graphics and Corel did. Microsoft did not develop the hardcore high level programming languages like C, Fortran, Cobol, Pascal or Basic. Microsoft was a day late and a dollar short on every important productivity software development. But because they had the business market, they were able to use financial pressure to drive every single competitor out of business. They put a stranglehold on the market place which has prevented competition and held back innovation in every field for decades.

Microsoft has been hauled into court many times on anti-trust challenges. Microsoft became wealthy by having a monopoly on infrastructure, which even our government concedes is unethical and crippling to a fair marketplace.

Real computer experts know that Microsoft products are crap which barely work. They rush their products out before they are even finished and charge businesses massive fees in updates, patches and support. It's like a doctor who infects you with a disease and then charges you for the cure.


Furthermore, from what I understand, Bill Gates is personally a toad without a shred of ethics. He never lifted a finger to contribute a dime to anyone other than himself until after he married Malinda. Apparently she told him that history would not view him a very good light unless he did something to clean up his image. So, like J.D. Rockefeller before him - another monopoly toad - he devoted himself to charitable works in an effort to polish his PR. Malinda makes up every bit of compassion or charity in that union.

If you have never heard of the true innovators in the computer world - Jobs & Wozniak, Dan Bricklin, Andy Hertzfeld, Conway & Mead, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Andy Bechtolsheim, and the team at Xerox Park, it is because Microsoft has endeavored to crush all memory of the people who invented and created our computer world under the weight of the monopoly who contrived to sell it to us.

Only if you insist on equating smart with rich. They are hardly the same. Many unsung geniuses, people who actually had extremely high levels of intelligence, are the ones who actually thought of the ideas we use every day. But Bill Gates gets the credit - and the money.

Bill Gates is a swindler and his wealth is largely made up of ill-gotten gains. If that's "smart," it's not the good kind of smart.

Mine likes to say that there is a special room in hell where Bill Gates will be slapped once across the face for every time somebody gets the blue screen of death. Should keep him busy for all eternity.

Unreason is a matter of great concern. It is destroying the ability of our society to make wise choices.

The point of mentioning proof is to demonstrate the unreason.

Unreason is hurting you as much as anyone.

We are Utopians compared to previous ages. The future, unless we totally screw it up, will have great ideas and inventions and systems that work better than anything we have thought of yet. It won't be Utopia, but it could be healthier and more fun.

Even if you think it is impossible, what would you like to see?

That's inspiring!


But seriously - unavoidable? If so, what would you prefer to see?

Some people like it. And it's very natural. So, we should have voluntary Thunderdomes.

The purpose of imagining the future is to determine HOW to make life work well. Based on how humans act now, and how they have always acted, and how we are evolved to act, some people enjoy violence. That makes sense; you would have to have some individuals in your tribe who could act with violence for sustenance or protection, or your tribe would die out. Of course it still exists as part of human nature today.

That is only a problem if the violent involve the unwilling. We can create outlets, ranging from American Gladiators (where nobody gets hurt) to Thunderdomes (where people voluntarily fight to the death if they choose) and people can exercise their natural proclivities, and indulge in whatever level of violence they enjoy, without harming the innocent or unwilling.

As long as all involved are doing it by informed choice, the violent can wallop the crap out of each other for all I care. I'm not utopian enough to think we can change human nature. I am trying to think of ways we can keep the jungle behavior we evolved from damaging the civilization we are trying to create.


Thanks so much for asking Little Lizzy!

It looks like raves, lol. The opposite of war is not peace. It's partying!

I'd like to think we could be like the first season of Dr. Who, where the whitest actress in London had an AA (AB?) boyfriend and beings of every color and form and species mixed it up in every way and no one even noticed anything weird about it. There have been real places and times - ports, mainly - which looked like the Cantina in Mos Isley with so many different types of people coming together. I know we can do it.

But, people are tribal will always enjoy rallying around groups. I hope in the future it is confined to entirely optional and self-selecting groups. Down with racism, up with football hooliganism!

I agree that to work the society of the future would have to support basic self-determination for all.

Agreed, we don't need equal outcomes, but we need fair outcomes, and an impenetrable bottom.

Providing for health and education is providing infrastructure. Without them you get a sick and ignorant society. In the future they will be free at delivery, but all everyday things will be, in the invisible economy.


Your ideas are compassionate and informed, thanks again for the response Selena!

Artificial busywork is destroying the planet. We have to stop or we will be stopped.

These are skills which can be taught. They will be basic to future curricula.

Equality means that everyone has equal enfranchisement, no matter what they "have." In fact, I would like to see a future where "having" is meaningless to most.

Humans are very competitive and we just love to hierarchically rank ourselves. There will always be structures in which people can compete for rank, which produce winners and losers. As long as this is voluntary and completely separate from a) subsistence, and b) enfranchisement, it will harness our competitive spirit without crushing the losers.

We already care so much more about preventing abuse and neglect than any humans ever have. We will care even more in the future and have even better ways to help prevent it.

Humans are both horrid and amazingly wonderful. So much of what you envision is already true, better now than ever before. Barring disaster, we will continue to error-correct and improve.


RePete, it has been a delight to speak with you, thanks!

You will make a great uploaded human.

That's what my blog is for. ;-)

Good Plan A!

We have taken over for every other sizable animal. Plus, we have a very generic form, much like the small mammals who survived the end of the dinosaur age to fill every ecological niche. If we do not die off, we may be the progenitors of many different kinds of lifeforms. Particularly if we integrate with AI - that is Plan B.

Still no guarantees. If that's possible, how come no one else in the universe has visibly done it? But, we got this far by surviving and we are evolved to survive, so we will keep trying until there is nothing left of us. So, see Plan A!

Anything is possible - see Plan B!


I have really valued reading your contributions over the years, Turtle, so thank you so much for replying!

I was just thinking that this site was concrete proof that it is happening. Our country is currently divided ten ways from Sunday, but this forum is no silo, where people only engage with their own cheering section. On CM, people started talking and kept talking across the aisle, across the divisions...without even killing each other, the way people used to settle arguments. This is evidence of human progress.

We are such a young civilization. We just haven't quite got the hang of everything yet.

There is something irresistible about imagining it, lol. Yet I think it's really important for some people to try to imagine how things could work better. We have mostly inherited systems, full of flaws. We could be proactive and imagine how it would be if we designed our own systems, based on what really works.


You are a force of nature, Space, and I hope you continue to have great power in your life wherever you go! Thanks again!

How much time do you have? Both, or whichever would be more fun to describe.

You have both dismaying and uplifting vision. It's up to us which one happens.

I will make sure your beautiful vision is valued in every way I can. If enough people want it, and we clear a path to there from here, it can happen.


Thank you so much for your frightening and inspiring post! I hope to run into you someday, working alongside for your better vision!

Garden Earth

Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere just passed 410 parts per million. 350 per million was considered the maximum that civilization could withstand just a few years ago. Getting control of earth's climate will be our #1 priority. Vast spaces of land will need to be terraformed and reforested and reherded to restore their capacity to function as ecosystems. But, most of it will be 'tended' in some fashion. Truly wild spaces will not exist because we will domesticate every square inch, but we will harness it for verdancy.

If few wild species survive the current exinction event, the verdant spaces will be populated with bizarre, interesting creatures of our genetic manufacture. I don't fear for the future of pandas; we can now just make a panda. But why stop there?


Automation will bring to an end what will later be known as the Toil Age - when people had to toil to survive. It will be replaced with an invisible economy. The basic needs of life will be met automatically, unquestioningly, for all. With JIE (Just Intelligent Enough) AIs and robots doing the toil, humans will be free to create meaning for their lives through pursuing their passions and enhancing their capacities. Without toil, people will be able to pursue art, invention, service, science, education and philosophy to a heretofore unheard of degree.

If only a small fraction of those people create great art, or great invention, or great cures, it will be worth it to have unleashed everyone's potential. And it would be worth it for people to spend their lives pursuing goals of their own choosing.


It's not soon enough to have this in the future. We are destroying the planet with overwork. It's also destroying the human spirit - about half of workers in this country have Bullshit Jobs., without meaning. The fact the people are longing to contribute, to work in ways that matter instead of for a buck, is a great sign for the future.

I am pretty certain history will consider Roddenberry a visionary. He dared to dream that humans could have what they want. So few people even give themselves permission to imagine a future that works!


I'd like to make an important point about Gene's vision, though. Gene was adamant that in his fictional future society, they would not have money. For all of the original series with Kirk and for the first couple of seasons on The Next Generation, the characters in the Federation were unconcerned with matters of exchange.

However, rumor has it that the show's writers didn't like this dictum at all. They wanted to write scripts where objects had relative value, and where characters could be motivated by acquisition. So, when Gene Rodenberry died and his head writer, Rick Berman, ascended to assume creative control, he eased Roddenberry's dictum. He allowed the writers to develop an imaginary currency, called "gold-pressed latinum," which eventually came in slips, strips, and bars. This gave them more flexibility to create dramatic tension over material value, depicting some things as worth more and others worth less.

Of course, this currency wasn't used primarily by The Federation. It was the domain of the Ferengi, a "Yankee Trader" race who care only for money and live by a constitution called The Rules of Acquisition. This race is depicted as a bunch of primitive, greedy little weasels who are concerned only with more. They are shallow schemers who are clearly missing out on what is really important in life, not to mention all matters of galactic significance. They might have lots of latinum, but they are regarded practically as second class citizens.


Back in our real world, the titans of capital remind me of the Ferengi. My answer to what to do about them is the same as how Starfleet handled the Ferengi: Let them. Let them strive to out-fortune each other and amass ever-larger numbers on computer screens. Modest percentages scraped off their fortunes in the form of financial transaction taxes will pay for creating an infrastructure in which to operate. Anyone who wanted to could join in the brutal race for capital. Some love it; let's harness their greed.

However most people would never have to be concerned with any of that. It would run behind the scenes, important only to those doing it. At delivery, what would be produced is adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare, entertainment, worthwhile pursuits and cultural uplift for everyone. They could spend their lives in pursuit of their interests and talents, with no fear that it might not pay the rent. People would not do busywork. They would just be, in splendor.

We have plenty of Ferengi, and they should take turns gracing the cover of Richest magazine, which only they buy because only they care. As long as "money" does not interfere with access to infrastructure and enfranchisement, we don't need to think about it. I call it an invisible economy, and I think that is really what Rodenberry had it mind.



Thanks for bringing up one of my heroes, and for being an all-around wonderful person. Hope to catch you around!

Love, Raver

I agree. In many ways we have created a toxic, dysfunctional society, where people suffer. Yet, we punish them for struggling against this system, or for lashing out in frustration. Sure they are wrong, but so is imprisoning people. That is a crime against humanity. And two wrongs don't make a right.

In the future, instead of being put in cages, people who don't know how to act morally will be taught to act morally, and cured of physical and social ailments that cause them to act wrong. Only those who cannot be repaired, and are a danger, will be confined, and not as punishment, but only as a matter of public safety.

I agree in principle but I'd like to clarify. I don't think wealth needs to be shared evenly. But, it needs to be allotted fairly. And, wealth cannot be allowed to determine access to infrastructure - that is, what is needed to get by, or enfranchisement - that is, a say in what happens. As I mentioned in the Gene Rodenberry post, the "wealthy" can pose for pictures in front of piles of gold to show off how shallow they are. As long as everyone else has what they need, hoarded gold matters only to the hoarders.


Thanks again Jondayla!

Wotcher, Madeye! So wonderful to speak with you on such an important topic!

I agree this would be a better world if most of the current religions were quaintly left behind us, like we did with Zoarastrianism and astrology. For one thing, we don't turn to people of the bronze age for instruction on how to construct a plumbing system, or a university, or a rocket ship, or a democracy. We should not be worshipping their advice on how to think and act. Much of it is just plain wrong, and we have learned so much since then! We can do better now.

For another, the ancient religions are largely concerned with the supernatural. We can't blame the bronze-age tribesmen for this. "My god is better than yours" was a hugely successful strategy for tribal survival. But, having morality and social norms and behavior dictated by ancient superstitions doesn't work. What the tribesmen thought, while understandable, is just too different from how things really are. We cannot wring a working system from their ideas.


We are seeing the symptoms of this all around us. I have been arguing for years that the difference between what religions say, and how things really are, is untenable. It requires undermining reason, the system that does work for determining truth. And so what has happened? We are in "post-truth" and nobody knows what information can be trusted. Maintaining supernatural religions into the modern era requires such low epistemic standards, we have now reached an epistemic crisis.

So, you are not wrong.



With all that said, though, I'd like you to consider why humans invented religion in the first place. A professor of religious studies wrote a book called Religion is Not About God. He says it is really about therapy and politics, or personal wholeness and social cohesion. This five minute clip explains his views. He says that humans invented religion to bring together facts and values in a coherent whole. I think at least some humans still need systems of ritual and appreciation and moral instruction, and ways to bring together facts and values, maybe more than ever.

The key would be replacing ancient religions, full of whatever, with deliberately-designed religions based on reasoned truth. That is, based on real facts and real values, derived from observation of reality. If that seems impossible, consider Zen Buddhism. The central tenet is that humans have suffering caused by natural mental activity, and changing the activity changes the experience. Simple, testable, no supernaturalism; just a system for improving the quality of human life.


In the future, I can picture a world where some people meet regularly before a beautiful altar, to think deeply about their place in the universe, to take instruction on how to be better, and to honor the passages of life in fellowship, with the comfort of time-honored rituals. If it is a system that is true and works, I see no problem with this. I think the future could be vibrant with humanistic religions.


Thank you for letting me sum up years of thinking on this topic. I have enjoyed your bright personality and I always look closer when I see your name on a thread. Best wishes! ~Raver

I think, like all the other dangerous things we come hardwired with, we can harness and channel it.

For one thing, we do need leaders for some things. So, it's actually a good thing that some people like to step up and be the ones to make the decisions. As long as they have a mandate and there are checks and balances on their power, leader-types can exercise some control while they serve society.

For another thing, we can have all kinds of systems, clubs, teams, orders, institutions and social structures where people compete with each other to climb in the ranks. To continue the Roddenberry analogy, consider Starfleet, a martial organization where officers work and study to try to win limited numbers of command positions. It is depicted as a pure meritocracy, where positions of authority are awarded to the deserving by dint of their hard work, talent, grit, etc. The struggle produces winners and losers, with a few admirals and captains at the top and a lot of lieutenants and ensigns below.

But, unlike our real system, their Starfleet rank is utterly unconnected from their ability to live in comfort and security and have their needs met. As long as access to infrastructure and enfranchisement is not connected to rank, our natural tendency to order ourselves into hierarchies will not be a problem.

The answer is to have a very good system of laws, with checks and balances and oversight, so that leaders are answerable to the rest of us for how they lead. Then when bad leaders come along, as they do from time to time, the system will reject them and continue.

Thanks so much to everyone for participating! Best wishes for your future, Ladies, and I hope to see you around!

There is nothing about the Buddha that is important to prove. Maybe he never even existed...it makes no difference.

What is important is, does the system really work? This can be determined by verification.

I appreciate the humor, but supernatural religion is very problematic. There are very few opportunities to discuss it. The differences between Buddhism and Christianity can be the difference between having this problem and not having it.

I would agree that most religion is supernatural based. However not all religion is, and it doesn't have to be. Religion was invented by humans to maintain personal wholeness connected to social cohesion, and it is important for that purpose. Early people filled their religions with supernatural claims, because they didn't understand what was happening around them (and they didn't yet know what a bad idea that is.)

We don't have to make that mistake today. It is possible to have a system that works for wholeness and connection without making supernatural claims. Zen Buddhism is one of these. We could create others. Religion is important, it shouldn't be left to the chance of history and geography.

It's hard to prove anything about specific people from so long ago, and usually it doesn't matter. But ironically, the Buddha could have been created by a committee of writers, and it wouldn't change the working principle of Buddhism, that learning to focus your attention can alleviate suffering. On the other hand, if Jesus was just a committee, that kind of calls into question the whole 'salvation' thing. :-)


Thanks again Sleestax!