Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

A guide to the theology behind Evangelical Dominionism while Andrew Wommack thinks killing your neighbors will bring him closer to his imaginary god. It’s almost like asking a murderer to kill your friends.

Meanwhile Mike Johnson is busy casting out demons. I have no doubt that these crusading Christians are so deluded that they are a threat to democracy.

World of Woo: 340 apples a day can keep the doctor away.

Environment: An alarming change in Antarctica’s past that could spell devastating future sea level rise.

How AI could change our relationship with religion.

Animals that use tools.

The Strongest Neuroscience arguments in the Free Will debate.

Humans are living longer than ever no matter where they come from but have we created a society that’s too complex to survive?

The biggest questions about the Universe’s beginning.

Long Reads:  The impact of religion on mental distress during the pandemic. Metaphors, what are they like! The new car batteries that could power the electric vehicle revolution. Does a Classical education instill the skills and habits most sorely needed in society today? The plane spotting student who angers Taylor Swift and Elon Musk.

Sunday Book Club: No Apologies.

Some photographs taken last week.  Wildlife photos of the year.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Video:  Freethought Matters – Harrison Mumia of Atheists in Kenya. The Problem of Evil when your god is not benevolent.  When fake Archaeology uses fake Science.

 

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Remember folks Lent starts on Valentines Day.  I am torn between having stale bread and cold tea or a meal out with fine food and wines. I will use my new Super Bowl prayer app to decide!!

[_Robert_Participant]

Reg, that prayer app should be called “Hollow” instead of “Hallow”. You even get to try the app for free!

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Robert, Jesus still has not replied to me so it looks like I will have to survive on fine food and wine while the Catholics can get cigarette ash stains on their abject foreheads to display their piety in public.

 

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

Remember folks Lent starts on Valentines Day. I am torn between having stale bread and cold tea or a meal out with fine food and wines. I will use my new Super Bowl prayer app to decide!!

Have any Atheists you know ever gave up Theism for Lent? That would be a fun read. 😁

I am tempted to download the app where James Earl Jones reads The Holy Bible just to hear if he actually reads gross things like Ezekiel 4 or the sexy passages in The Song of Solomon or all the horrors of Leviticus and The Book of Revelation. Hearing the voice of Darth Vader and CNN reading from the book of Grim Fairy Tales would be a trip and a half! 😁

• This reply was modified 9 months, 4 weeks ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: A addendum

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg and Fellow Unbelievers,

How AI could change our relationship with religion.

This isn’t a well-thought-out article. For example:

However, with the possibility of the creation of deepfake images and voice cloning through AI costing as little as £10 (using existing online tools such as Eleven Labs and D-ID) we might not be too far from more worrying cases. Imagine extremist organisations using this technology to create propaganda videos with the faked words of religious leaders or to misrepresent religious symbols.

Similarly, language models trained on extremist views could create outputs at scale to spew venom against particular faith groups, leading to hate crimes and community tensions.

How is this any different than what humans do already with religion? How could AI possibly do any worse? And if AI is only programmed with religion, is it really intelligent?

Then there’s this Cubic Zirconium gem:

In the next 50–100 years, AI is likely to become a co-pilot for all human endeavours including decision-making. For maintaining righteousness or dharma in the world, the algorithm and AI language models must be trained on data that is truthful and morally right.

And he, of course, wants to be the Guru to decide that.

This won’t be guaranteed unless we build this into regulatory frameworks currently being drawn up for AI. The advancement in AI will naturally accelerate humanity’s attainment of artha, or economic prosperity, as we enter a world of abundance with multiple technological convergences.

Not if AI is programmed with Hinduism, if the economic state of India is any indicator.

Based on the clamour for solutions to the growing problem of societal inequality, we could see forms of universal basic income become the norm globally. This will free up a lot of time – now spent on day jobs – for humanity to take up other pursuits. This would in the first instance be more time spent on pleasure or kama activities.

With more quality time on our hands, we could even see a revival in spiritual and faith-related pursuits (moksha activities). That would be an interesting outcome of AI’s growing influence on the world.

Any AI programmed with basic Economics and news events after the COVID-19 “Stimulus” would know and tell you that paying people to just exist means they will do just that and exist even worse than they did previous to the “Stimulus.”.

That AI would also know, like a functioning Human Intelligence, that the only real Universal Basic Income is that provided by work that produces goods and services that other intelligent beings are willing and able to buy.

On that note, here’s my answer to the question:

Humans are living longer than ever no matter where they come from but have we created a society that’s too complex to survive?

The world is too complex for humans to live as a species if the world is ruled by either a Theocratic or Technocratic elite with pretensions of Omniscience who are in fact beings of limited knowledge. Friedrich Hayek’s words on “the fatal conceit” of central planning still apply no matter what technology we use.

• This reply was modified 9 months, 3 weeks ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum
• This reply was modified 9 months, 3 weeks ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Grammar

[StregaModerator]

Thanks, Reg!

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Today is Darwin Day.

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