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A Muslim apologist recently said that he would prefer to live in a society that had low-IQ citizens who were religious rather than a high-IQ society. (Link here — NSFW.) You are probably too busy to watch the whole debate, but I have, and that isn’t a mischaracterization.
A far more intelligent Catholic commentator stated that his ideal world would have tons of technology, everyone would be Christians, and some high-IQ people would use the power of technology for beneficent ends. Doesn’t sound like a bad world to me.*
The debate is fascinating because it doesn’t weigh itself down with specifics. It’s like science fiction without the tedium. What kind of world would be good if you could alter its parameters?
Personally, I want to live in a world where everyone agrees on logic, empirical truth, and evolution in that order. Christianity and most other religions would be practiced and debated, but they would pursue Truth through scientific thought. Catholicism would fully reject monogenism,* Native-Americans would abandon the belief that they originated from the American soil. Miracles and demonic possessions would be met with skepticism and rigorous inquiries.
The ultimate value would be the pursuit of Truth through a mix of reason and empiricism. In order to pursue the highest good, eventually I would like to use genetic engineering to increase people’s IQ to at least 105 and enable them to mentally connect to AI to advance their understanding of the natural world. Some would view this as violating G-d’s will or defying the natural order, but I view the ultimate good as being the pursuit of knowledge so I’m welcoming of human modification.
As Jordan Peterson has noted, everyone has something they value more than anything else, something that they will be willing to sacrifice other things for. Environmentalists want to sacrifice human prosperity for the environment, while socialists would be fine sacrificing economic growth for equality. Starving artists sacrifice a steady income to pursue their craft, and so on. Much of life is a balance between different good things, but often one particular good becomes primary.
What is your highest good, and what world would you create to pursue that good?
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*I do think that if everyone were Catholic, technology would advance as quickly as it would in a Protestant society.
**Many Catholics are rejecting monogenism already.
Discussion (43)
MODERATOR
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Interesting post. I had assumed you were not religious or a believer.
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It's fascinating that when considering the engineering of the human race, it's almost always intelligence that is brought forward as the most important thing to engineer.
Not virtue.
Intelligence is just a capability, like strength or vision, and in itself is morally neutral. It can be used for good or evil. An intelligent man who is not virtuous will simply be more capable than he otherwise would be of pursuing evil ends. Stalin, Mao, and Mengele were intelligent men. If we knew of a way to engineer people to be more courageous, temperate, just and prudent (the four classical "cardinal virtues"), then human engineering might possibly be something worth talking about.
But we don't, and the fact that intelligence rather than virtue is proposed as the focus of human engineering just shows how dangerous the idea is, and how likely the result would be something far different than intended. It would take a supremely wise and just authority to supervise such engineering to avoid catastrophic evil as a result, and no such authority is on hand. This is why God advises us to leave such things to Him.
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Almost everyone is religious. Everyone has something that the prize above all else. For me Truth is G-d. Not Yeshua or the Jewish conception of G-d or the Gautama Buddha. Science is holier than typical religion (literally in my religious view) because it is a more accurate way of deducing Truth. Also, it's a religious obligation to defend
I also believe in a soul and human rights (Lockean negative rights obviously) but that is an entirely separate part of my belief system.
I believe that G-d is an uncaring Lovecraftian entity but that is largely based on very human and therefore very flawed observations about the universe.
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Thanks. I stand corrected.
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Well, we can’t all wgah’nagl the fthagn.
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