Religion and Ethics Forum
Religion and Ethics Discussion => Theism and Atheism => Topic started by: Sriram on August 02, 2019, 05:43:13 AM
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Hi everyone,
Here s a recent article I came across.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190801-tomorrows-gods-what-is-the-future-of-religion
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If religions have changed so dramatically in the past, how might they change in the future? Is there any substance to the claim that belief in gods and deities will die out altogether? And as our civilisation and its technologies become increasingly complex, could entirely new forms of worship emerge?
One notorious answer comes from Voltaire, the 18th Century French polymath, who wrote: “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” ...he was being perfectly sincere. He was arguing that belief in God is necessary for society to function, even if he didn’t approve of the monopoly the church held over that belief.
One recurring theme is social cohesion: religion brings together a community, ....Under this argument, any religion that does endure has to offer its adherents tangible benefits.
..the Pew Research Center modelled the future of the world’s great religions based on demographics, migration and conversion. Far from a precipitous decline in religiosity, it predicted a modest increase in believers, from 84% of the world’s population today to 87% in 2050.
Perhaps religions never do really die. Perhaps the religions that span the world today are less durable than we think. And perhaps the next great faith is just getting started.
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Cheers.
Sriram
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In the long term, we are all dead
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In the long term, we are all dead
Isn't that something religions address?
Anyway, in the future, death may be a matter of choice.
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Isn't that something religions address?
Anyway, in the future, death may be a matter of choice.
If death becomes a choice, I suspect that will have a more profound effect on us than all of religion. Religion is essentially a symptom of what we are, the singularity would change us to something different.
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Singularity...?!
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Singularity...?!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
See in particular the section on Immortality
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
See in particular the section on Immortality
Thanks..
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
See in particular the section on Immortality
But it is all far fetched..isn't it?! 2005 is long gone.... We are more likely to be back to basics due to climate change IMO.
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Hi everyone,
Here s a recent article I came across.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190801-tomorrows-gods-what-is-the-future-of-religion
**********
If religions have changed so dramatically in the past, how might they change in the future? Is there any substance to the claim that belief in gods and deities will die out altogether? And as our civilisation and its technologies become increasingly complex, could entirely new forms of worship emerge?
One notorious answer comes from Voltaire, the 18th Century French polymath, who wrote: “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” ...he was being perfectly sincere. He was arguing that belief in God is necessary for society to function, even if he didn’t approve of the monopoly the church held over that belief.
One recurring theme is social cohesion: religion brings together a community, ....Under this argument, any religion that does endure has to offer its adherents tangible benefits.
..the Pew Research Center modelled the future of the world’s great religions based on demographics, migration and conversion. Far from a precipitous decline in religiosity, it predicted a modest increase in believers, from 84% of the world’s population today to 87% in 2050.
Perhaps religions never do really die. Perhaps the religions that span the world today are less durable than we think. And perhaps the next great faith is just getting started.
**********
Cheers.
Sriram
Hi Sriram
Couldn't you condense it into bullet points , I can't be bothered to read all that bollocks !
Have a nice day 😃
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Hi Sriram
Couldn't you condense it into bullet points , I can't be bothered to read all that bollocks !
Have a nice day 😃
If you can't read four sentences...you are too far gone, Walter! So...don't trouble yourself. :)
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If you can't read four sentences...you are too far gone, Walter! So...don't trouble yourself. :)
Aww thanks , I hate doing homework 👍
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But it is all far fetched..isn't it?! 2005 is long gone.... We are more likely to be back to basics due to climate change IMO.
Whether it is 'far fetched' doesn't affect the point that were it to be achieved it would have more import in terms of change than religion. It would change everything and would make climate change moot.
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Whether it is 'far fetched' doesn't affect the point that were it to be achieved it would have more import in terms of change than religion. It would change everything and would make climate change moot.
Then there will be a new 'species' on earth...and we will be their gods!!
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I've always wondered how a super computer, or whatever you want to call it, could think for itself (something that would be needed for the singularity to happen) because computers rely on input from humans. How could a computer therefore exceed the human brain? I don't know. My knowledge of these things isn't great. Maybe someone here can explain it better.
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I've always wondered how a super computer, or whatever you want to call it, could think for itself (something that would be needed for the singularity to happen) because computers rely on input from humans. How could a computer therefore exceed the human brain? I don't know. My knowledge of these things isn't great. Maybe someone here can explain it better.
I don't know how many of these Quantum computers there are around at the mo but I did read that they have something like a million times a million more computing power, (memory), than the average modern home computer.
It's probably quite good start to perhaps finding the answer?
ippy
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If death becomes a choice, I suspect that will have a more profound effect on us than all of religion. Religion is essentially a symptom of what we are, the singularity would change us to something different.
ISTM that the underlying question "to be or not to be" would remain unchanged.
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I don't know how many of these Quantum computers there are around at the mo but I did read that they have something like a million times a million more computing power, (memory), than the average modern home computer.
It's probably quite good start to perhaps finding the answer?
ippy
Nowhere near except in theory so far, I'm afraid:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/02/quantum-supremacy-computers
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People have been predicting the dying-out of religion for a century or more. It hasn't happened yet.
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Nowhere near except in theory so far, I'm afraid:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/02/quantum-supremacy-computers
I heard the U S has had this for some time maybe I've got it wrong, I have also got a nephew out in Australia the is somewhere up with the flyers in the computing world an he seems to think they're about too.
I noted your article came from the Guardian?
ippy
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People have been predicting the dying-out of religion for a century or more. It hasn't happened yet.
Yes I can't see any superstitions in general dying out that soon either but having said that does it worry you that much if a black cat crosses your path anymore?
ippy
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I heard the U S has had this for some time maybe I've got it wrong, I have also got a nephew out in Australia the is somewhere up with the flyers in the computing world an he seems to think they're about too.
It's not that quantum computers don't exist, they do, it's that they are in their infancy and are yet to do anything very useful.
I noted your article came from the Guardian?
Seriously? What's wrong with that?
Here's something from Scientific America: The Problem with Quantum Computers (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-problem-with-quantum-computers).
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It's not that quantum computers don't exist, they do, it's that they are in their infancy and are yet to do anything very useful.
Seriously? What's wrong with that?
Here's something from Scientific America: The Problem with Quantum Computers (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-problem-with-quantum-computers).
I'm not looking for a fight but I have heard what I say I've heard, I'm not a computer expert by any means and I did think although I may be wrong I think I heard these quantum jobs need seriously sub zero temperatures to be able to perform.
ippy
P S I had a look at your article it reminded me of the research being done looking for the solution to cold fusion, both the quantum and fusion seem to have exponential problems the more they look into either.
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I don't know how many of these Quantum computers there are around at the mo but I did read that they have something like a million times a million more computing power, (memory), than the average modern home computer.
Just to note: computing power isn't memory. Memory is just how much data you can store, computing power is how fast you can do sums. Comparing the (potential) speed of quantum computers with conventional ones isn't straightforward - quantum computers can (potentially) do certain types of calculations considerably faster.
I'm not looking for a fight but I have heard what I say I've heard, I'm not a computer expert by any means and I did think although I may be wrong I think I heard these quantum jobs need seriously sub zero temperatures to be able to perform.
Yes - that's certainly how most of them work. There has been talk of room temperature devices but I'm not sure if anybody's got one working yet. The big problem is decoherence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence) and running at very, very low temperatures helps. You have to stop whatever you're using as qubits from interacting with the wider environment otherwise it messes things up. It's like Schrödinger's cat - you need to keep it in the dead and alive state - the problem being that any interaction with the wider environment counts as opening the box.
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I'm not looking for a fight but I have heard what I say I've heard, I'm not a computer expert by any means and I did think although I may be wrong I think I heard these quantum jobs need seriously sub zero temperatures to be able to perform.
ippy
P S I had a look at your article it reminded me of the research being done looking for the solution to cold fusion, both the quantum and fusion seem to have exponential problems the more they look into either.
As Stranger said quantum computers do exist already. The largest so far has 50 qubits although Google is about to announce an advance to 70 qubits. These systems can be (and are) made available on the internet so that you can send programs to be executed on them and collect the results - it is a bit like the way we used to send programs to be run in batches on mainframes in the 60's - although you only have to wait a couple of minutes for the results rather than a couple of days.
Work is also progressing on the decoherence issues and in maintaining temperatures low enough for superconductivity.
You seem to discount reports by accredited journalists in the MSM and rely on random gossip as your sources of information - if so, I can't see how you can have a clear understanding of any issue!
Anyway, to get back to ad_o's question: The idea is that any self-thinking supercomputer will need to be able to simulate the trillions of synapses in the human brain. Then, when we understand what thinking is, we can send it a program to do the same - but much more reliably and faster.
However it may be that "thinking for oneself" requires making lots of small mistakes and correcting them - and may inevitably be slow.
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If religions have changed so dramatically in the past, how might they change in the future?
Religions have changed as the culture in which they exist has changed - as we've learned more, so religions have been forced into a smaller and smaller corner of the unexplained. How they will develop will depend on what cultural developments come next, and if you could predict that you'd be ready to make millions :)
Is there any substance to the claim that belief in gods and deities will die out altogether? And as our civilisation and its technologies become increasingly complex, could entirely new forms of worship emerge?
Either is feasible, I suppose. The current trend is for religion to diminish with formal education, but for religious populations to grow where formal education is lacking; given that the world is moving towards a more service oriented economy (there being a practical limit on how much physical stuff even an 11 billion populace can make/want/use/buy) that speaks to a future of at least some level of formal education, so I'd say the former is perhaps more likely right now, but we'll have to wait and see.
One notorious answer comes from Voltaire, the 18th Century French polymath, who wrote: “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” ...he was being perfectly sincere. He was arguing that belief in God is necessary for society to function, even if he didn’t approve of the monopoly the church held over that belief.
In Voltaire's time he might well have been right. Now?
ne recurring theme is social cohesion: religion brings together a community, ....Under this argument, any religion that does endure has to offer its adherents tangible benefits.
Yeah, I've heard that claim, too. Look at Northern Ireland, or the anti-Semitism of the Labour party, or the Islamophobia of the Conservative party, or the state of affairs in Israel/Palestine at the moment and try to argue that religion brings social cohesion.
Religion is just another classification of sub-group in that argument, perhaps one with a more protracted history of enforcing in- and out-group identities and fostering disharmony through it. Religion brings social cohesion like the Chinese Communist party does - by taking absolute control and not allowing dissenting voices. Otherwise it's just another opinion in the clamour, and whether those voices discuss, debate, argue or are drowned out by gunfire is a matter of the broader cultural context of which religions are a part.
[quote[..the Pew Research Center modelled the future of the world’s great religions based on demographics, migration and conversion. Far from a precipitous decline in religiosity, it predicted a modest increase in believers, from 84% of the world’s population today to 87% in 2050.[/quote]
If it's the review I saw, it failed to account for any changes to demographics beyond population size, so poorer countries wouldn't get any richer (which is associated with less religiosity), poorly educated countries wouldn't invest in schooling etc.
Perhaps religions never do really die.
Just ask (Marvel's) Thor?
Perhaps the religions that span the world today are less durable than we think.
Religions are shared ideas - with the advent of the internet, all religions are global now.
And perhaps the next great faith is just getting started.
And perhaps there never were any great faiths, just some naggingly persistent misunderstandings with catchy hymns?
O.
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I've always wondered how a super computer, or whatever you want to call it, could think for itself (something that would be needed for the singularity to happen) because computers rely on input from humans. How could a computer therefore exceed the human brain? I don't know. My knowledge of these things isn't great. Maybe someone here can explain it better.
The same way humans - which are, so far as we can tell, just an alternate medium of computer - think for themselves. Humans rely on input from their surroundings, humans have base code that is intrinsic to the operating system. They way a computer can think for itself is if that's what it's built to do (and, arguably, if the hardware is sufficiently complex).
O.
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I've always wondered how a super computer, or whatever you want to call it, could think for itself (something that would be needed for the singularity to happen) because computers rely on input from humans. How could a computer therefore exceed the human brain? I don't know. My knowledge of these things isn't great. Maybe someone here can explain it better.
What about self-driving cars ? The whole point about them is that they don't rely on input from humans.
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What about self-driving cars ? The whole point about them is that they don't rely on input from humans.
Of course it does. It's programmed to do what it does, to use it's sensors in a certain way, what to do in certain situations.
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ao,
Of course it does. It's programmed to do what it does, to use it's sensors in a certain way, what to do in certain situations.
Only to an extent. They're also programmed to be self-learning, probably from many linked in car systems as a sort of neural network such that they produce properties that no programmer designed at the outset.
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Only to an extent. They're also programmed to be self-learning, probably from many linked in car systems as a sort of neural network such that they produce properties that no programmer designed at the outset.
I'm not sure that's the case for self-driving cars (probably a bit risky and too computationally intensive) but that's how more advanced "artificial intelligence" is done. The trick being to program it to learn rather than to do something specific. We're still some way (people argue about how far) from making a computer that can really "think for itself" in the way ad_orientem was asking about. Google's AlphaZero is one fairly recent example of where we are. It learnt chess with no specific human input except for the rules, and then beat the best specifically programmed chess playing program in the world.
DeepMind’s superhuman AI is rewriting how we play chess (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/deepmind-ai-chess)
AlphaZero AI beats champion chess program after teaching itself in four hours (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/07/alphazero-google-deepmind-ai-beats-champion-program-teaching-itself-to-play-four-hours)
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Hi Stranger,
I'm not sure that's the case for self-driving cars (probably a bit risky and too computationally intensive) but that's how more advanced "artificial intelligence" is done. The trick being to program it to learn rather than to do something specific. We're still some way (people argue about how far) from making a computer that can really "think for itself" in the way ad_orientem was asking about. Google's AlphaZero is one fairly recent example of where we are. It learnt chess with no specific human input except for the rules, and then beat the best specifically programmed chess playing program in the world.
DeepMind’s superhuman AI is rewriting how we play chess
AlphaZero AI beats champion chess program after teaching itself in four hours
Yup, sounds about right - I was referring there to learning systems that update intermittently from a networked knowledge source that's constantly self-learning rather than to machines that would "think" in real time. The whole field of AI and ethics is fascinating though - if the car "knows" it must hit either one child or two pensioners, how does it decide what to do etc.
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ISTM that the underlying question "to be or not to be" would remain unchanged.
Maybe but if 'being' is changed to such an extent, I would suggest that the question itself changes meaning.
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Hi Stranger,
Yup, sounds about right - I was referring there to learning systems that update intermittently from a networked knowledge source that's constantly self-learning rather than to machines that would "think" in real time. The whole field of AI and ethics is fascinating though - if the car "knows" it must hit either one child or two pensioners, how does it decide what to do etc.
Only two pensioners?
ippy
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPTOY8FrvNw