|
This page is full of material posted to various newsgroups, particularly
ALT.MEMETICS. My words, as usual, are in black on white. Other contributors
are in other colour combinations.
I am not a believer in aliens in the sense that I believe that reports
of UFOs are true sightings of extra-terrestrial vehicles and I certainly
scoff at the idea of a global cover-up. I find the X-Files to be
more disturbing than a convent school education. There is such a thing
as truth, and it is never to be found via fiction.
I do believe in the power of replication and the evolutionary algorithm,
so I expect that life is likely to emerge wherever the conditions allow
it. However I believe that by far the most common form of life will be
the simplest, bacterial level or equivalent. Complex life will be rare,
intelligent life even rarer.
|
Willett's Wager
This is no metaphysical proposition. This is a straight forward
cash bet. The stake:- One week's income. The bet IF and when ALIEN,
extraterrestrial INTELLIGENT life makes contact with us, or vice
versa, the said extraterrestrial intelligence will be a mixed community
of atheists and theists or deists. They will NOT be in possession
of knowledge or proof of either the definite existence or non-existence
of a god or creative supernatural force. Some of the intelligent
beings will exhibit FAITH without proof. That is the wager. It is
based on my firm contention that memetic transmission of faith and
religion is literally inevitable within any community of intelligent
beings. I do not have any other predictions to make about the nature
of alien civilization. They could be silicon based octopoids with
IQs in the 2 and a half billion range but some of them will believe
in the bogeyman.
I am certain that any intelligent species can only exist as a direct
or indirect result of evolution. They must have either evolved or
been made by entities that evolved. Given that basic premise I also
think that it is inevitable that memetic evolution will have occurred.
Ideas will have spread because communication is inevitable within
an intelligent species. Ideas will spread because the vectors for
those Ideas feel reasons to spread them. Religion is inevitable
once a base level of communication skills and intelligence has been
achieved. The memetic adaptations required to keep an idea going
within a particular community will arise. If the community has an
IQ of 80 then a simple religion will emerge with simple memetic
hooks, simple rewards and simple defences against contrary ideas.
If the community has an IQ of 180 then the brighter minds will be
able to come up with better ideas, more fiendishly complicated religions
with more cunning reasons to believe in them. Ideas like the afterlife,
religious tolerance, freedom of expression, faith.
I see no reason to believe that brighter minds in a brighter community
would not be free of religion. Their religions would be much more
infectious and powerful, they will have developed better defences
against logical arguments than are capable of thinking of. There
is one little fly in the ointment of all this religion, it is all
bullshit. In every community infected
by religion would be intelligence capable of appreciating the power
of religion and also capable of resisting it. The pendulum will
swing between belief and doubt across the aeons but neither will
be able to win in any community, at any given level of sophistication.
That is my contention. And I'll put money on it.
|
|
I would like to add that regardless of the
philosophical sleight-of-hand the aliens would use to justify their
religion, the bottom line will be that they too will twist themselves
into philosophical knots to avoid the need for objective proof.
|
|
Absolutely. Thinking further on the subject gave me the coldest
feeling in my gut, imagine an alien race discovers intelligent life
here, they have not discovered faster than light travel but some
decide to come here. Why? There is only one possibility, they will
send the equivalent of MISSIONARIES. Just imagine a super-intelligent
alien Jesuit or Conquistador. Let's hope that instead they just
want to eat us.
|
|
Hmm - as we on Earth have matured (and grown
more experienced in meme warfare), the nature of such irrational
memes has changed, from predominantly religious memes, to UFOs,
telepathy, cold fusion, and so forth. Perhaps at increased levels
of intelligence the memes which are most successful don't simply
become more complex and sophisticated, but radically change in character.
Way back in time, we didn't even believe in gods, but just had superstitions,
without rationalisation. Just as religious memes suppressed superstitious
memes, so later memes might be expected to suppress religious memes....
|
|
Good point. New memes are emerging. But they don't *replace* religion.
The catholic church is still very strong after absorbing and deflecting
every scientific advance since the iron age.
Newer stuff, new age bullshit, fills a need in many people who
can't cope with reality and a rational Universe. Try selling a book
called "Twenty great solved mysteries", people want mystery and
the magical, and controversy and competing faiths not consensus
building scientific inquiry. People will believe anything. And memeplexes
that have survived the enquiries of all the scientific brains of
twenty centuries are not just going to fade away to be replaced
by beliefs in alien abductions and Feng Shui. Just name me one religion
based on Christianity that has survived three generations and then
died. I can't think of any. Cults and churches die young or are
immortal.
|
|
Of course one of the greatest arguments for
Christianity v Evolution is that according to evolution there should
be billions of other worlds which have life, because there are endless
possibilities for life. We are listening Hello hello Hello hello....if
any life exists it has not in 16 billion light years. We send out
radio and micro-waves so we would know even if anyone was within
a billion years of contacting us ..nothing...nothing...nothing...you
should listen to the NASA probes (dead boring) The latest findings
say there is no extraterrestial life - so life on Earth is special
- so presidents reinvent themselves and start talking about God.
|
|
Our signals can only be detected by sensitive tuned-in receivers
within the suitable distance. Earth is emitting a "shell" of radio
signals which have been modulated in a non-random way (laughably
known as intelligence). These signals are travelling at the speed
of light. To be detected there has to be an intelligent alien civilization
within 100 light years of us who is also listening to those frequencies,
and doing so with very sensitive equipment. I speculate that the
earliest truly detectable signals were not emitted by man until
high power VHF and UHF transmissions of television began in the
mid twentieth century.
I think that life is inevitable. Complex life is common. Intelligent
life is extremely rare, and it may well be only a brief interlude
in the story of life. Through all our planet's four billion or so
years as a life supporting planet there has been just fifty or so
years of detectable signals from an intelligent civilization. The
chances of us actually meeting or even noticing aliens is very slim.
That is why I feel safe to wager money on what these aliens (don't
call them creatures, they would not have been created, they will
have evolved) actually think. I expect that they will be just as
much infected with religious memes as we are.
Science cures ignorance, but it doesn't stop anybody believing
in God. It never has, I strongly suspect that it never will and
never could, ANYWHERE in the Universe. If you ever feel complacent
about life just consider the possibility that as we sit here having
our own lives, starting wars and watching Jerry Springer, there
may be a batch of aliens in suspended animation in a space ship
travelling at near light speed, headed our way. With one goal, to
CONVERT YOU to their own peculiar idea of the only way to heaven.
They know they are on a one way trip. They can never return. Religious
zeal is the only motivation that could get an intelligent being
to do something like that. Just think, they could have three arms,
breath methane, carry guns and spout puerile dogma...
|
|
huh.. first of all, lets look at "religion".
would an alien race that is NOT mamal and primate in nature have
"religion" as we understand it? doubtful. if you inspect
all forms of relions -panteism, polytheism, and monotheism you would
notice they begin with blind nature forces and gradute to "big daddy"
principle. A Big daddy is observed among primates ONLY. True, asians
managed to go above it with monism but they were the onyl ones.
Funny huh?...No, I dont think religion is "unversal" and unstoppable.
What a thought! Read Neil Stevenson's Snow Crash and get re-educated
|
|
I do not predict that every alien will believe certain things.
What I predict is that any alien civilization, if it exists, must
be based on evolution and must be open to the spread of memes. An
idea like religion does not need to be reinvented every time an
alien reaches the age of majority, sentient beings do not work like
that, they catch ideas from their culture. Religion only needs to
be invented once. Just as biological replication does not have to
happen anew constantly, which is just as well, the spontaneous assembly
of a self replicating molecule is fantastically unlikely, but it
seems that it has happened at least once.
Once it has happened evolution of biological replicators will
begin. Similarly I believe that religion only has to be invented
once, then it evolves. There is much more proof that memetic transmission
of religion is inevitable than there is for the belief that biological
replication is inevitable. Everywhere we find man we find religion.
We have found multiple independent theologies, but only one biology,
every piece of replicating biological tissue seems to have the same
single ancestor. There are hundreds of examples to show that religion
is universal, no negative examples. We cannot say that this proves
the case but it does put the onus on those that doubt the proposition
to come up with some reasonable explanations as to why it is wrong.
I do not want it to be true, I am not wishing it. But I believe
that it is true.
Memetics is replication science. Replication science is a branch
of mathematics, it is not limited to a real universe. Arithmetic
would work without space and time, so would replication science,
it is a matter of logic. Once an idea begins to spread it will meet
other ideas, it will either be subsumed or emerge stronger. My contention
is that this process will be universal within any communicating
community, whether or not they are primates, mammals, carbon based
lifeforms or even whether they exist in a universe with any given
number of dimensions. The universality is with the memes, not their
vectors. Eventually a community of intelligent communicating beings
will come up with some bullshit story that has got what it takes
to survive in that particular memepool. The idea will be communicated
because of the power of it's memetic hooks. The aliens will want
to spread the ideas and they will spread. The ideas will meet hostile
responses and the ideas will emerge with protective packages such
as the faith meme, the religious toleration meme and the blasphemy
meme.
Meme complexes will emerge that protect the central ideas and these
complexes can then be hijacked by other memes to become their survival
machines. Just as Islam and Mormonism borrowed the survival machines
of Christianity, which had borrowed ideas and protective strategies
of earlier religious memes and meme complexes. This holds true of
religions outside the Asian tradition too, the central American
religions of the Aztecs and Incas were not built on bedrock, they
were built on foundations of previously successful religions. Certain
ideas have travelled through time across hundreds of generations.
For me this is almost self evident. Ideas travel once there is a
reason to pass them on. My contention is that any community that
has the intelligence to both communicate and speculate about the
nature of reality will find itself thoroughly infected by virulent
religious memes. The virulence of the memes will be determined by
the *aggregate* intelligence of the community involved.
We are just as smart or dumb as our ancestors who first walked
out of Africa. As individuals and as communities our average intelligence
is no higher, but our aggregate intelligence is now much higher.
In Newton's wonderful phrase we are standing on the shoulders of
giants. Unfortunately we are standing on the shoulders of religious
giants.
I do not believe that an alien community that is smart enough to
make contact with us must be smart enough to have left religion
behind. Religion will not want to be left behind. Religion will
"want" to keep up. Just as the Roman Catholic church has taken on
board heliocentrism, the true age of the Earth and the theory of
evolution but still manages to cling on to the doctrine of the trinity
and the immaculate conception. Catholics are not stupid, they are
just infected by very powerful memes that will not allow themselves
to be lost. I see absolutely no reason to assume that this process
of absorbing and neutralizing science cannot continue indefinitely.
Nobody gave up religion when the Wright brothers flew, why should
anybody do the same when a functional starship is built?
|
|
Exobiology is the study of biology of aliens. I am interested in
their beliefs, hence Exotheology
Do any of you memetically aware people have any ideas on what kind
of ideas are inherently universal? What kind of ideas are likely
to occur to any species with the intelligence to communicate? I
have been thinking about it recently and I have graduated from a
belief that religion is both universal and unstoppable to an even
worse conclusion. I have been thinking what would motivate a sentient
being to ride a spaceship that will take a journey of many years,
with no possibility of return. I assume that the speed of light
is a true barrier. Just because previous barriers have been broken
doesn't give me the confidence to extrapolate this as an inevitable
trend, eventually a barrier will be just that. So what would provide
sufficient motivation to make such a trip? The answer is the most
spine-chilling thought I have ever had, alien spaceships will be
full of deep frozen, hand picked volunteers with one driving ambition;
to convert our souls to their religion.
Sorry to launch such an idea. Anyway, comments would be most welcome.
|
|
Well until we meet any aliens, it will be
tricky to determine what we have in common. Given that we are limited
in this fashion there doesn't seem to be any way of determining
that anything we know about communication would apply at all in
other worlds.
The team that put together the records that
went on the voyager satellites went on the hunch that mathematics
would be universal enough, and tried to build a mathematically decodable
message about us, our world, and how to build a record player to
listen to the record, but it's anyone's guess whether it'll ever
be found let alone decoded.
Please tell me why you think religion is
universal. I understand why it's a somewhat natural consequence
of the human condition ( of our biology ?? ) but I can't see why
this should necessarily be applicable to other races.
|
|