Quote from: Jacqul on October 16, 2014, 07:58:51 AM

Hi,

The topic you posted about is quite interesting to me.

Unfortunately it is a very hard one to discuss and the reason why I considered to directly message you rather than posting on the board: there are too many people in the world with very strong emotions and not enough vocabulary to discuss the topic of religion and existentialism.

I would like to offer my opinion on you uncle's dilemma.

I think he is both right and wrong.
In a way any endevour that tries to enhance humanity could be seen as Satanism. Or at least Luciferianism.
Lucifer was after all the light and knowledge bringer. The first sin in the bible was where humans wanted to have knowledge and become more like God.
When they all banded together to build a tower, God punished them and broke them up by confusing them and their language to stop them "from becoming like us."

Your uncle works as a doctor. This could be interpreted more as working in the realm of Lucifer than of old testament God.
Reason I say this is because in this interpretation anything that goes against the natural order of things is working against God and using science to fight disease is one of those things. If he uses the internet this is the same as taking a bite from the fruit of wisdom. (In fact if he uses an Apple product it even has a symbol of a fruit with a bite taken from it.) If he has published any medical literature, it is the same as helping build the tower of Babel.

That is why the Amish live the way they live. It explains a lot of why some groups of people do what they do.
Unfortunately most people don't actually think about it deep enough and accept all the implications of their chosen ideology.

A true follower of the Abrahamic old testament god would be entitled to live like an animal in the way that they perceive that god created them. It is the epitome of survival of the fittest and in that world the vulnerable die of disease and the weak suffer at the hands of the strong. This is the natural order.
In a transhumanist idealogy we aim to become more than animals and we see the potential. This comes with its own dangers and we risk (and in fact aim for) losing our humanity. As you can see from bible stories, we are warned against trying to do this again and again. Floods, calamities etc.

Jesus was quite different and reinterpreted the old testament for us. In Jesus philosophy we look after the weak and care for the sick. This is contrary to the old testament god. Loving each other and forgiving enemies is not what the old testament was about. You could see Jesus as the messiah who gave us the ideology to transcend our previous animal instincts, him being a transhumanist himself then. This might be one of the reasons he was killed by the ancient Jews who lived in the old system.
On the basis of Christianity, the western world was built which includes airplanes, ipads and wifi.
This is a spirit of cooperativeness and better communication and caring. It goes against our baser human instincts. It seeks to end war.
Bitcoin is a part of that and so I see it as in line with Christian teachings.
But as I said earlier, it is also against the old testament god and in line with actions that our ancestors warn us about.

With everything comes risk.
With international travel and airplanes we run the risk of pandemics. Like Ebola.

How I personally reconcile these two points of view:
I see Bitcoin as a positive force in the world. It is not evil. It is unifying and empowers the weak and poor. It is in line with the philosophy of a doctor.
I realize that humanity is a system that we don't understand. Reality is something we don't understand. We make mistakes and civilization have been wiped out before. This might happen again and if it does it is meant to happen and the will of God. With this uncertainty we carry on.

lol
fail