Mercurial > thoughts

     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" />

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    10 

    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

    31 

    32 

    33 Xanadu (Ted Nelson)

    34 

    35 M22, Cryonics (Dr. Greg Fahy, Robert Ettinger)

    36 

    37 AI Risk (Eleizer Yudkowsky)

    38 

    39 Creation Science (Dr. Nathaniel T. Jeanson)

    40 

    41 

    42 

    43 

    44 

    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.

    73 

    74 

    75 

    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.

    81 

    82
author	Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date	Sat, 23 Apr 2016 18:01:05 -0700
parents	8f44e4061701
children