Accelerating Future

George Carlin on Religion Wednesday, Nov 25 2009 

humor and videos Michael Anissimov 7:58 pm

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11 Responses to “George Carlin on Religion”

1. Memester Says:
   November 25th, 2009 at 11:15 pm

   I like Daniel Dennett’s suggestion: teach every child every religion. You can teach your own but you also have to teach everything else too. That’ll teach them what a religious memeplex (AKA bullshit) looks like: they’re all about equally nonsensical stories by our ignorant, scared, conquest-death-sex-obsessed ancestors.

   Primitive memes by primitive people.

   Of course the best option would be to give young humans a right to a healthy, meme-free, clean mind and make religions an adults-only hobby. But I don’t see that happening, when the “Human” in Human Rights excludes the rights of children to a free mind and grants parents an unlimited right to fill it with whatever crazy memes they are infected with.

2. Ryan Says:
   November 26th, 2009 at 6:56 am

   Memster,

   You make an interesting point; parents or guardians do not have unlimited rights in how they raise their children, or what ideas they can give them. It is always important to remember that parents do not own their children; children are people with rights who can’t yet implement those rights.

   These are very dangerous ideas, though, when you start considering government coercion. The possibility of abuse is always there (wouldn’t it be terrible if certain political or philosophical ideologies where seen as child abuse? This is not so different then what happened in the major statist governments of the 20th century.)

   I also wanted to make a more point about religion and how it affects the mind:

   People seem to be able to compartmentalize their mental lives pretty well, and religion in America rarely becomes too much of a burden. Atheism is also no standard of rationality.

3. reexpthetai Says:
   November 28th, 2009 at 12:00 am

   How about the Carl Sagan Baloney Detection Kit?

   What do we call it?

   “How people can lie”

   Or

   “What you don’t know is that people want to take advantage of you verbally”

   Ah, saint carlin, not mr.darwin,

   They rhyme..

4. Sulfur Says:
   November 28th, 2009 at 12:40 pm

   Memester: first of all, there is no such thing as meme. Something that you can’t see and does not manifest phisically does not exist, or at least such “invisible” condition hurts it credibility, as Carlin said.
   Secondly, if religion is bullshit and memes do exist, putting all of them at once into children heads would be most undesirable.
   Thirdly, by definition it is not possible to maintain “meme free” mind and still receive a human being, trans-human being or whatever. By the same token you cannot use computer without software. The “meme” is not useless, its just selfish.
   And at last: humans are programmed machines, therefore children are machines without higher set of instructions. How are you going to respect their right to decide what should be in their heads when you don’t have intention of putting anything in their heads? How uncounscious object can decide about itself?

5. Memester Says:
   November 28th, 2009 at 9:05 pm

   S: Yours is a classic misunderstander’s reply. You mistunderstand just about everything as much as possible. Here’s some advice: It’s useless. It doesn’t get you far in life. Except perhaps in politics. I trust that intelligent people are able to get my meaning without hand-holding. If you really do misunderstand what I say, my condolences.

6. Sulfur Says:
   November 29th, 2009 at 3:04 am

   That’s quite possible-I don’t claim that I can’t make a mistake. Or-a bunch of them. Even in one sentence. However, is there really a point in teaching religion? Since it is, well-as you said-bullshit. Teaching bullshit make as smuch sense as let’s say teaching creationism in schools. Complete waste of time-at least it should be from your veiw point as I understand it (but again-mistakes can happen). But you forgot of something. Religion does not play only role of “bla bla bla and then jump three times, it will bring you food from bla bla bla”; but it is important cultural factor which constitutes most of person cultural background, even if this person is a total atheist. Norms are accepted even if someone rejects religion. The transhumanist philosophy is proof in that matter-it derives directly from need to improve each individual condition. From individual improvement to society improvement. And this view started long time ago in minds of christian thinkers. Funny. Meme has evolved. (it started as soul and heaven, now it ends as uploading and Singularity)
   Persoanlly I think that you are right. Of course, all religions should be tached in schools, as well as philosophy and other quite boring stuff. And churches around the world should do the same-teach about their religion. But this time seriously. Which they don’t necessairily do (actually “the need money”->again Carlin, so they concentrate on that instead of explaining reason why somebody should believe in pure nonsense or tor eofrm pure nonsense ). Once everyone is educated and counscious about all problems with and flaws of religion(s) it would be much easier to eradicate superstition and build science-friendly idiot-free faiths. Utopian, right. But hell, it’s transhumanist blog.

7. Sulfur Says:
   November 29th, 2009 at 3:46 am

   Just for claryfication: I happened to be on side of author of this text:
   http://www.scientificblogging.com/rationally_speaking/difference_between_science_and_philosophy
   Thereofre I don’t see the need of destroying something, beacuase I think it’s bad. People already tried, it never worked. So, instead of destruction I suggest evolution, discussion and somehow-unification of both science and philosophy. Even religion. Trough natural process everything that is utter nonsense will vanish. That’s why I partially agree with you, Memester. But you wrote that religion as a whole is bullshit. Therefore it just puzzles me, how teaching bullshit can help if you don’t want to actually learn something form it, you just want to proove its bullshit quality. So isn’t it simplier and better to just learn critical thinking or something like that?

8. Memester Says:
   November 29th, 2009 at 7:32 am

   Dennett’s suggestion has a chance of being adopted.

   But the optimal solution ‘don’t lie to children, preferably don’t lie at all, but if you must keep your right to lie to people, lie to then when they’re older’ has about the chance of a kid in a Catholic church of not learning about the various (bodily) functions of the priests…

9. Sulfur Says:
   November 29th, 2009 at 1:12 pm

   I feel prejudice in the air. Actually a lot of my friends are Catholic, none of them had any experience with bodily functions of the priests. It reminds me of stereotype that all homosexuals must have AIDS, since they are-well-homosexual. Simply speaking non sequitur.

10. Khannea Says:
    November 30th, 2009 at 12:22 am

    Here is one with more explicit language.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjO4duhMRZk

11. Big Willie Says:
    December 6th, 2009 at 7:14 pm

    Makes more sense than anything I’ve heard in church but my dad was saying the same thing back in the 60’s just wasn’t funny about it .

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