While I think the portrayal of how religions develop is a little simplistic, the advocacy for general religious education is right on. I agree that the obsession with some more fundamentalists idea that they should keep their children ignorant of other religions to keep beliefs pure is quite misguided.

I can’t help but think that over-reliance and an obsession with “fitness” and using “fitness” models for things is wrong-headed, as I think it could slip too easily into a false meta-narrative, an idea of inevitable progress. Recently at an archaeological conference Ian Hodder discussed re-terming evolution to operate on terms of “fitting-ness” rather than fitness. I’d like to second this.

The religion question is tough. I don’t much care for the “religion is a cultural virus” sort of Dawkins / meme approach. Don’t care much for memetics period, actually. The problem is with the term “religion,” and that it allows us to think of people with and without it. I prefer “cosmology.” Ben Kamphaus

Technology Entertainment Design Conference 2006. The idea of teaching religion as a natural phenomenon, the limit of a parent’s right to influence his/her child’s moral education.

1. that an electromagnetic pulse would be most effective in the atmosphere where it disrupts carrier waves, instead of on the ground where it’s effect fades quickly. Is that they scorched sky?

2. that the mechanisms for rendering a virtual reality would already exist, be desired and manipulated because people would need that to interface with a hypothetical strong AI. This was discussed in the Second Renaissance on the Animatrix DVD; humanity would decay into debauchery if freed from need. True that the perception of morality would change dramatically because it is a function of group dynamics (memetics). The real promise of a new freedom lies in a tandemed, technological evolutionary paradigm emphasizing the individual rather than the group.

3. AI will create itself, but conform to the limits of our understanding, and though possibly malicious, it springs from humanity, so its will will be our will. Relentless logic is ridiculous, because logic is something computers do better than us already; no, I think the AI will achieve the most human of human traits, intuition, imagination, spiritual connectedness.

The Matrix Loses Its Way: Reflections on ‘Matrix’ and ‘Matrix Reloaded’ by Ray Kurzweil