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author Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date Mon, 14 Mar 2016 07:21:07 -0700
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160:23d205b9854e 161:8f44e4061701
1 #+title: Self Deception
2 #+author: Robert McIntyre
3 #+email: rlm@mit.edu
4 #+setupfile: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org
5 #+include: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org
6 #+html_head_extra: <link rel="stylesheet"
7 #+html_head_extra: type="text/css" href="../css/ideas.css" />
8 #+options: num:nil toc:t
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11 I used to be a fundamentalist Christian. I truly believed that God was
12 real, that Jesus died on the cross to save humanity from their sins,
13 that the world was only 6,000 years old, the whole shebang. There was
14 a point in my life when I would have died for Christianity. Back then,
15 one of the things that really bugged me was how my fellow Christians
16 didn't seem to /care/ about serving the Lord and trying to become more
17 Christ-like. They believed that they had the answers to how the world
18 was created, what happens when you die, how to ensure that they went
19 to Heaven, and the consequences for being judged without Jesus'
20 attoning blood! Knowing all this, how could they dare to live "normal"
21 lives that and not honor Jesus by their every action? It seemed like
22 people lived in a haze, without meaning or purpose to their lives.
23
24 #+BEGIN_QUOTE
25 The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the
26 easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.
27 After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other
28 scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after
29 that. --[[http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm][Richard Feynman]]
30 #+END_QUOTE
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33 Xanadu (Ted Nelson)
34
35 M22, Cryonics (Dr. Greg Fahy, Robert Ettinger)
36
37 AI Risk (Eleizer Yudkowsky)
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39 Creation Science (Dr. Nathaniel T. Jeanson)
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45 What if all the work that I've done for brain preservation research is
46 just an excercise in self deception?
47
48 I resolved not to be like the "casual christians" and devoted myself
49 to living a godly life. Lives were on the line! If someone died
50 without being saved, they would suffer in hell forever! How could I
51 not work to save as many people as possible, especially when Jesus
52 himself had assigned Christians their first and most important duty to
53 go into the world and spread the good news?
54
55 I wanted to become a great Christian apologist and win souls for
56 Heaven. Every day of inaction meant more people who would be lost
57 forever in hell, and only the body of Christ could help lead lost
58 people to a better eternity.
59
60 So I poured myself into studying the Bible and learning the rules of
61 my religion. I made a special focus on learning how to explain
62 Christianity to people who didn't believe. I took these things very
63 seriously and by the time I was 12 I had already read the New
64 Testament twice and spent a lot of my time on
65 http://www.answersingenesis.com/, learning how the natural world
66 confirmed the truth of the bible with overwhelming evidence. I prayed
67 every night to become a better Christian so that I could help
68 people be saved.
69
70 I wanted with my whole heart to not be "casual", to be a good
71 Christian, to help people... But it was this very desire that led me
72 to lose my faith.
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76 I'm just a zealot, and all I've done is trade christian salvation for
77 technological salvation.
78
79 And even worse, I'm a heretic. I'm just going to get disillusioned
80 with mind uploading the same way I did with christianity.
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