CopyRight @ 2007

03/07/07 -This is almost a place holder. It is the discussion of what religion may have to teach us about survival. This is not anywhere near complete. Heck, it's not well started... I'm working on it....., but it is a chalk board and I want it to be the end of this book

At this point it is time for some puddle of consciousness work. This is not stream of consciousness, because a great deal of consideration has gone into this before writing it.

Note that just as the MCGC described the Impossible God, a number of other words are used by religion in terms to mean impossible. Please don't bother me with divine or supernatural. Those are just more words used to mean impossible. For that matter artificial selection could be defined as supernatural as it is beyond natural. Divine, well as I said before divine may be a networking problem. Perfect is another word used to describe God, but it has no meaning to humans except in terms of God. God is perfect, so the definition of perfect, is God. I don't pay any attention to word game logic or arguements.

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As I keep saying, this is difficult to describe. This is about try number five, so I'm going to do something different. A

t this point there is a natural dichotomy. I've used reason and science to show that a god or gods could exist and that there is actually a fair probability that they do exist. There are two natural routes from this. One is to say that they don't exist and that this model of future human evolution is a dandy conclusion to my book. I don't have to do a whole lot more, because conjecture on that topic has to be considered speculative fiction. The other route to follow is to make the hypothesis that gods exist and look into history to find out what we can, particularly hints about advanced moral/survival systems and hints about things like immortality, virtual realities, emotional evolution, artificial selection, meeting primitive alien races, etc. I started following the second path partly out of curiosity and because the stated purpose of this book is to find advanced survival strategies. I have examined religion and religious views from a number of sources already, but never systematically or in detail. I wanted to look at the teachings of Jesus, because that is where there are obviously many moral lessons. I figured out though that I should go in some kind of order and start with the Ten Commandments. How does a pragmatic researcher try to get much accurate information about topics that are so emotionally, ideologically and dogmatically loaded? I could get it from the sources, religions, and I have looked at them some, but that would take a lot of time, analysis and luck. Wikipedia seemed the answer. It gives a rather neutral view that is very accessable. In the case of the Ten Commandments, it gave the views of the Catholics, various Protestants, the Latter Day Saints, Muslims and a number of insightful observations. I had already looked at the Wikipedia entry about the Jesus Project and considered that to be an excellent source for when I got to that part.

So I read about the Ten Commandments for what they represented in terms of advanced survival strategies, what they might tell about an advanced specie or what they might indicate about how Biblical ideas change and get interpreted. They are laws about how humans should interact with God and they are laws about how to act in society. They show a God that wants a lot of strict respect. Parents get a lot of power over children from them. Also they show something I was looking for, a potentially counter intuitive statement was to keep the Sabbath Holy or not to work on the Sabbath. I call this counter intuitive, because I have seen this before. The purpose may not be what it looks like. It may well be about enforcing a day of rest rather than whorshipping a god. This is common in social laws and may make it hard to interpret them. It may be out of respect for God or it may be for the very human and practical purpose of enforcing a day of rest for human and beast. They may say that social rules are because a woman is unclean at a period of the month, but in practice the likely is to give them a break. You have to watch out for that. In any case, it seemed that the best way to interpret what I saw from the Ten Commandments were what I said, human relationships to God and human relationships with other humans. It seems straight forward and practical. The best thing to do is advise the reader to look at the Wikipedia entry. Besides, it is explicitly stated that Jesus stated two laws that superseded and replaced those laws, love God above all else and love your neighbor as yourself. The importance of these two laws in terms of survival has already been discussed.

Normally the next step would be to look at the parables of Jesus or other parts of the Bible that seemed to fit the criteria I was looking for. It's not so easily done though. My knowledge of human survival is good, but right away it falls to speculation. Even the Ten Commandments are hard to judge. Again it is the problem of the chimpanzee designing a human. Chimpanzees are not smart enough to make that judgement. It is easy to say that a society cannot prosper if lying or stealing is acceptable, but according to the way this analysis is done, the first three commandments requiring respect and worship of God, may be more important to human survival than pleasing to that God. That is a major point, if you include the counter intuitive meanings, maybe call them the counter obvious simplest logical conclusion, then reason is going to fail to analyze this problem. This applies to almost everything involved in religion and a lot of human survival. Otherwise, simple Machiavellian, dog eat dog, principles would lead to survival. A more complicated knowledge is required. That is where I am at right now. I know that the process I have been using up to now is going to take me no further in this analysis. Reason is still going to be valid, but deductive logic will not be much help.

There are some obvious points of reason. I will only mention one before going to the jumping off point. What is the purpose of religion? It is to benefit humans. It inherently cannot do much for any God. It does provide social organization, but is there more? If its source is some advanced aliens, what would be the purpose? Lets jump.

As discussed before, the human mind is designed to allow a human to believe multiple contradictory things at the same time. What a person believes about Gods may have very little to do with what they think about science, even if the two seem contradictory to the individual. To me they have never been contradictory, but then I never focused greatly on religion. Usually when I have compared the two, I have seen little conflict anyway. (I suppose I'll have to cover that topic at some point as well.) Up to now, this has all been based on reason working with science as building blocks. It has taken me this far and described the situation of human genetics. I have explained why that will take me no further in the examination of morality and survival strategies, but I think there is still great room for progress. Now though I must apply my reason to my belief in God rather than my belief in science.

My belief in God has had no part in this so far. There has been no need. Discussions of God are not generally considered aprapo in discussions of genetics. As a matter of fact, many people interested in genetics would consider mention of God in the context of genetics as innapropriate as fundementalist preachers consider a discussion of the evolutionary ascent of humans. Besides, bringing my belief in God into the discussion might not offer a great deal as most organized religions would call me non-religious or a definate heretic. Still, the religious teachings I know about, viewed in the context of what I have said so far about artificial genetic selection give a fascinating view. Let me explain. There is more than one way to solve problems. Reason based on logic is one way and probably the best known because it is the most easily explained as a mathematical process. Also it is one of the few method widely accepted in the methodology of science. Still, there are other ways to solve problems and it is quite well known that they have been used to advance science. From strength comes weakness, from weakness comes strength. Logic is such a powerful tool. Reliance on the binary mathematics of logic may be a weakness in that it allows one to not use more difficult methods. It demands the simplest answer. Who knows? Whatever the case, from here on out, I am going to use the hypothesis that God exists to get a picture of the meaning of another belief system. It is time for some new thinking. It is time to add up the data and see what it shows.

Emmanual Kant would have just loved this as he pointed out the fallacy of using logic based on the assumption that God exists.

We clearly live in a world of reason, whether there is a God or not. So if there is a God, they either value a world based on reason or live in one. This hypothysis includes artificial selection, which is very reason based, so I will stick with that underlying assumption.

I have shown that logically speaking artificial selection would start an evolutionary path that leads to a specie that we would recognise as Gods. What if religion were examined in that context. What if God was a product of evolution? I'm sure that that will get some people upset and I'm sorry, but that's what the hypothesis is.

God is a product of evolution, natural and artificial. Think of a specie like humans, but that have achieved "the next stable ecology". That is they have moved on past the current state of humanity where we are seriously at risk of making ourselves extinct or making it impossible for us to retain a nature that is more than advanced animals. A specie that knows how to match it's population to its resources. A specie that controls its own genes and evolution. (By the way, that is the most accurate description of super-natural I have ever come across.)

This interpretation of religion includes that God's goal for humans is for them to develop along the lines that God followed long ago. Eventually we either join a community of God species or be absorbed into the a larger god entity. We just don't have nearly enough knowledge to make sense of this.

Religion is a gift from God.

While there is no current evidence for an alien specie manipulating human evolution, there is a lot of room for it to have not been noticed. On the other hand, the universe is so unusually benign for life, that it looks created.

It is said that God has always been and always will be. Knowing even the little bit we know, it would not be surprising that an advanced being would have a far different view of time than the linear view of time that humans are aware of. It would not be surprising if that being could see from the beginning of time to its end.

The soul is a recording device that was part of the covenant God made when he said that humans were more than animals. He said that they would be held to a higher standard than animals, but also they would be greatly rewarded with the potential for immortality. A soul is an artifact. It is a gift. I have no idea if all humans have it or when they get it, but note the importance of Baptism and water in all the western religious stories.

The stories of heavens all sound like virtual realities to me.

One of the notable things about the stories of western religion is that God is a King in a rather literal sense. Examination of this looks like it is the original menaing. God is the executive and it doesn't just seem to be based on a statement made to be easy to understand at the time. That is data. Like all other statements about God, logic does not directly apply. What follows is a consideration of this, with the assumption that it is accurate. There is nothing that says God can't lie all he wants, especially if it is necessary for his goal.

There is the essay about God being a created AI. It was the only way I could express the concept (and still is), but I say that I am a biologist so I naturally think that anything a machine can do, a biological organism can potentially do as well or better. I recognise that for prejudice. If you were to build a virtual reality like I am describing, there is a cybernetic problem. Object design is a reflection of the real world. Objects make up the real world. It has been pointed out that the resource demands of making a synthetic entity that could encapsulate a beings conciousness would be impossible. I doubt it would be impossible, just very difficult and resource demanding. So if humans build one or some other specie already has, it will probably be based on object design. That is you make an infrustructure and you have would instances of conciousness in that. Think of an individual a data, DNA and experiences. It is a fair statement. Everyone wouldn't have their own machine to process that data. One machine would facilitate many instances of conciousness. (data plus behavior is an object)

Another question about this God is that if it is a product of evolution, that implies a specie.

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Still, I strongly suspect that much of my knowledge might have come from an un-natural source. Consider that I have been working on this project for 35 years. I think that that qualifies as unusual. You see, as I have written elsewhere that when I was 14 I had an unusual experience. I was frusterated by my schoolmates as adolescents frequently are. I said to myself that I would pay anything to know what this was about. Oddly, at the time, it was as if I distinctly heard someone say "OK". It was many years later that it struck me as anything more than odd. It was only recently that I realized that the question I was asking about was heredity. I was asking why people were different. Within 3 years, I had all the basic questions about the genetic problems you see expounded upon in this book so far, including genetic load and the problem of disease. So for the sake of arguement, I will make the arguement that I did hear someone say "OK"

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It came as a great surprise to me that examining the data, especially based upon my premises about artificial selection, that it seems rather likely that natural evolution would lead to beings that we would perceive as Gods. Is there any way that this suggests that the ancient stories may hold some truth and how could they be confirmed. Generally most oral histories are believed to carry a good deal of truth. The question would be, do any of the ancient stories sound like they were passed on to us by a specie at this kind evolution describes? Unfortunately, at this point, this seems little direct indication that, but at the same time that was predicted because they would be a good deal of danger in much direct knowledge of that fact. I said though that this was something that had been thought out. This is leading to something in particular. Perhaps it is unfortunate that my knowledge of religion is quite limited to Western traditions and some knowlege of Islam. Perhaps it is good because it will limit this examination. While I would really like to find some hint about virtual realities or artifically manipulated evolution, because that would be a strong indication of one of these advanced races, there is another body of knowledge available that may be just about as indicitive and even more useful. Besides, as mentioned before, heaven may well be a description of a virtual reality. By some descriptions, it certainly is. What I hope to find in an examination of the Bible, expecially the New Testement is a description of an advanced social system. I have already commented that long ago I figured out the importance to survival of Faith and a moral system based on love. Before I started this examination of religion at my friend's urging, I said I was working on what I called the "Morality Monographs". These were essays on various topics in survival, that is moral issues. Most were discussions, not conclusions. It is very hard to reach moral conclusions with any certainty. We just don't have the knowledge in this changing world. It's just difficult in any case. Clearly the Biblical scriptures did offer conclusions and they seem pretty good. They told to avoid social Machiavellianism and promoted survival by less obvious ad less aggressive strategies to promote family and society. So the next step is to examine and summarize the scriptures some to see what that reveals about us, our potentials for survival and possibly their source.

Now for some caveats. I know something of the Bible, but realistically not that much detail. I don't want to spend a lot of time on it. It has been worked through by better informed scholars than myself. I am looking for specific ideas related to morality and survival. For good reason, most of the Old Testement is only touched on lightly. It is largely just Jewish history for one thing. Genisis is to obscure to make a lot of sense of though a non-literal interpretation is a pretty accurate account of evolution. The adventures of Noah tell us little about social survival. While it is interesting and might be important that God liked the Jews, it can only have one relevant meaning here, though I suppose I should mention the 10 Commandments. Perhaps Ezekial saw chariots of fire, but I'll never know and it isn't something I care about here. Mostly I will focus on the lessons taught by Jesus. Was he more than human or perhaps he was just the Nicola Tesla of sociology? I don't know and doubt I will figure it out. My preliminary examination has suggested my primary source will be Wikkepedia. The interpretations there come from varied, valid sources. This is not meant to be a spectical. It is meant to be a rational examination. My interpretation will be selective and I expect to annoy pretty much everyone, but I am going to be as honest as I can and examine this the way I was trained by instructors I highly respect.

One other point is worth mentioning here. Interpretation is bad enough, which I am going to do in a directed way. Worse than that is simply the question of transmission. Were these ancient stories transmitted with enough accuracy for them to have any meaning? Archeology suggests that the stories have not undergone great change especially considering that they were translated from one language to another. The changes I know of are not critical to what I am looking for. Then there is the question of whether they were changed in large part by Constantine when he set in motion the replacement of the Roman Empire with the Catholic Church? Again that does not seem to be the case. One early surprise for me was that the idea of God as KING (keep in mind the word "divine, it may have an important meaning related to King) was from Jesus. It was not grafted on later for political convenience.

The hypothesis is laid down. Were non-humans on Earth and did they leave survival advice? So starts the task of accumulating data..... This is going to be as much of a summary as I can possibly make it and since it is going to be written as an exploration, I assume it will be summarized, but this version will be retained for more examination and the reasoning I will use in the end.

The first point I will mention though comes from the Pharoahic Egyptians. Their concept of the soul was that it was a recorder of a person's life. When a person died, it told their story. It sounds like a great thing to have if you expected to have another life in a virtual reality after you died. They had a highly developed concept of an afterlife. It's probably another good place for me to make a quick examination to look for anything interesting.

The 10 commandments. They are pretty well known. There are many bodies of ancient law, but few are ascribed to God. The 10 Commandments were.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_commandments

the first four statements concern the relationship between God and humans, while the next six statements concern the relationships between people.

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