apocalyptic faithSam Harris:
In conclusion let me say that I think civilization in the twenty-first century is passing through a bottleneck of sorts, formed on the one side by twenty-first century destructive technology and on the other by Iron Age superstition.
We will either pass through this bottleneck more or less intact, more or less painfully, or we’ll destroy ourselves.
Perhaps this fear sounds grandiose to some of you, but the truth is that civilizations can end. In fact virtually every civilization in human history has ended.
Over and over again in history some unlucky generation has had to witness the ruination of everything they and their ancestors had worked hard to build.
We are part of history. There is no guarantee that things can’t go spectacularly wrong for us.
In fact it is an article of faith in many religious communities that things will go spectacularly wrong and that this is a good thing.
Seventy-nine percent of Americans think that at some point in history Jesus is going to come down out of the clouds and rectify all of our problems with his magic powers.
Twenty percent of Americans claim to be certain that it will happen in their lifetime.
This is precisely the sort of thinking we do not need.
I think it should be rather obvious that prophecies about the end of the world could well be self-fulfilling.
The uniqueness of our circumstance with respect to the growth of technology should not be ignored. Not only is technology growing but the rate at which technology is growing is also growing.
Futurists have said that the rate is doubling every ten years. We went from a bow and arrow to the internet in 20,000 years. Imagine seeing this much change in a single century.
Let's be utterly conservative, let's just say we are going to have as much change in this century as we did last century. Even this is sobering when you recognize who is going to have access to this kind of technology.
Just look at how the internet has facilitated the global jihadist movement among Muslims. Look how difficult it is proving to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
If we accept the quite reasonable premise that it's going to remain easier to break things than to fix them or defend them, the growth of technology is quite sobering in the way that it is interacting with religion especially in a world that has been shattered into competing religious and moral communities—
Especially among communities who think that death is an illusion, that this world is fit only to be consumed by God's fury, and that the destruction of every tangible good will itself be the highest good because it will be the gateway to eternity.
These are explicitly religious ideas, they have no basis in fact, and yet they are amazingly well subscribed. It seems to me that it is everyone's responsibility to help break this spell.
In conclusion let me say that I think civilization in the twenty-first century is passing through a bottleneck of sorts, formed on the one side by twenty-first century destructive technology and on the other by Iron Age superstition.
We will either pass through this bottleneck more or less intact, more or less painfully, or we’ll destroy ourselves.
Perhaps this fear sounds grandiose to some of you, but the truth is that civilizations can end. In fact virtually every civilization in human history has ended.
Over and over again in history some unlucky generation has had to witness the ruination of everything they and their ancestors had worked hard to build.
We are part of history. There is no guarantee that things can’t go spectacularly wrong for us.
In fact it is an article of faith in many religious communities that things will go spectacularly wrong and that this is a good thing.
Seventy-nine percent of Americans think that at some point in history Jesus is going to come down out of the clouds and rectify all of our problems with his magic powers.
Twenty percent of Americans claim to be certain that it will happen in their lifetime.
This is precisely the sort of thinking we do not need.
I think it should be rather obvious that prophecies about the end of the world could well be self-fulfilling.
The uniqueness of our circumstance with respect to the growth of technology should not be ignored. Not only is technology growing but the rate at which technology is growing is also growing.
Futurists have said that the rate is doubling every ten years. We went from a bow and arrow to the internet in 20,000 years. Imagine seeing this much change in a single century.
Let's be utterly conservative, let's just say we are going to have as much change in this century as we did last century. Even this is sobering when you recognize who is going to have access to this kind of technology.
Just look at how the internet has facilitated the global jihadist movement among Muslims. Look how difficult it is proving to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
If we accept the quite reasonable premise that it's going to remain easier to break things than to fix them or defend them, the growth of technology is quite sobering in the way that it is interacting with religion especially in a world that has been shattered into competing religious and moral communities—
Especially among communities who think that death is an illusion, that this world is fit only to be consumed by God's fury, and that the destruction of every tangible good will itself be the highest good because it will be the gateway to eternity.
These are explicitly religious ideas, they have no basis in fact, and yet they are amazingly well subscribed. It seems to me that it is everyone's responsibility to help break this spell.
