"Yuval Noah Harari, is an atheist gay Israeli author with an Oxford PhD in Philosophy who practices buddhist vipassana meditation two hours a day.....Harari published Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow....How does he define religion?
"Religion is any all-encompassing story that confers superhuman
Harari says humans replaced one religion with another, replaced God-centered belief with a new belief in humanity. That is, that humans shifted from the worship of God to the worship of self.
Who then is the greatest threat to this worship of self? Harari’s words:
"Throughout history, prophets and philosophers have argued that if
humans stopped believing in a great cosmic plan, all law and order would vanish. Yet today, those who pose the greatest threat to global law and order are precisely those people who continue to believe in God and his all-encompassing plans."
Harari subdivides humanism into three branches: liberal humanism (LH), socialist humanism (SH), and evolutionary humanism (EH), corresponding loosely to what we might call liberalistic, socialistic, and evolutionistic ways of thinking.
In socialist humanism the party makes the decisions that matter; think USSR. Wisdom resides with the leaders of the collective.
Then there is evolutionary humanism. Harari says:
"Hitler and the Nazis represent only one extreme version of evolution or humanism. Just as Stalin’s gulags do not automatically nullify every socialist idea and argument, so too the horrors of Nazism should not blind us to whatever insights evolutionary humanism might offer…. Auschwitz should serve as a blood-red warning sign rather than as a black curtain that hides entire sections of the human horizon. Evolutionary humanism played an important part in the shaping of modern culture, and is likely to play an even greater role in the shaping of the twenty-first century."
Harari sees the future as evolutionary humanism, or more accurately, transhumanism.
In the final section of his book Harari sets out to deconstruct the value, even the concept, of the individual. According to Harari, man is not an individual, he is a bundle of algorithms.
And so he states the superiority of the new religion.
"When you read the Bible you are getting advice from a few priests
and rabbis who lived in ancient Jerusalem . In contrast, when you listen to your feelings, you follow an algorithm that evolution has developed for millions of years, and that withstood the harshest quality-control tests of natural selection. Your feelings are the voice of millions of ancestors, each of whom managed to survive and reproduce in an unforgiving environment. Your feelings are not infallible, of course, but they are better than most other sources of guidance.”
We didn’t ask for the changes Harari predicts to happen, and we won’t be asked.
"Throughout history, prophets and philosophers have argued that if
Harari subdivides humanism into three branches: liberal humanism (LH), socialist humanism (SH), and evolutionary humanism (EH), corresponding loosely to what we might call liberalistic, socialistic, and evolutionistic ways of thinking.
In socialist humanism the party makes the decisions that matter; think USSR. Wisdom resides with the leaders of the collective.
Then there is evolutionary humanism. Harari says:
Harari sees the future as evolutionary humanism, or more accurately, transhumanism.
In the final section of his book Harari sets out to deconstruct the value, even the concept, of the individual. According to Harari, man is not an individual, he is a bundle of algorithms.
And so he states the superiority of the new religion.
"When you read the Bible you are getting advice from a few priests
We didn’t ask for the changes Harari predicts to happen, and we won’t be asked.
We are being directed onward as rats in a maze. Powerful persons who literally do not understand reality are bent on changing the world right underneath our feet."
Larry Kirkpatrick/Fulcrum7