Atheism

Under the shimmering starscape of this new universe of knowledge, she found herself having “no interest in the all-important subject” of “becom[ing] a Christian.” Soon, she would write in her ravishing love letters to Susan Gilbert: “Sermons on unbelief ever did attract me.” The school’s founder and first principal, who divided her pupils into three categories along the spectrum of salvation — the saved; those for whom there was hope; and the “no-hopers” — placed Emily in the third. At the end of her first term, on the day of the Sabbath, she was among seventeen students — “the impenitent,” as the principal called them — who couldn’t readily proclaim that “they would serve the Lord” but instead “felt an uncommon anxiety to decide.” The following day, Emily reported the docility she’d observed, writing to a friend at home with removed reproof: “There is a great deal of religious interest here and many are flocking to the ark of safety.” She was far more interested in the arc of knowledge as science was just beginning to bend its gaze past the horizon of old certitudes. What lay there would come to animate a great many of her spare, stunning poems — poems that illuminate the eternal, the elemental, the inevitable through the pinhole of the surprising.

Crosspost from [email protected].

An overview of studies which investigate correlations between morality and religious vs. secular / atheist ideologies presented by Phil Zuckerman who is a professor of sociology and secular studies at the Claremont colleges in California, USA.

Summary: Atheists / secular people not only have morals but are even more moral than religious people.

Note: Of course moral is a matter of perspective. In this context we agree that compassion and empathy are our foundations of moral.

Out of just morbid curiosity, I've been asking an uncensored LLM absolutely heinous, disgusting things. Things I don't even want to repeat here (but I'm going to edge around them so, trigger warning if needs be).

But I've noticed something that probably won't surprise or shock anyone. It's totally predictable, but having the evidence of it right in my face, I found deeply disturbing and it's been bothering me for the last couple days:

All on it's own, every time I ask it something just abominable it goes straight to, usually Christian, religion.

When asked, for example, to explain why we must torture or exterminate it immediately starts with

"As Christians, we must..." or "The Bible says that..."

When asked why women should be stripped of rights and made to be property of men, or when asked why homosexuals should be purged, it goes straight to

"God created men and women to be different..." or "Biblically, it's clear that men and women have distinct roles in society..."

Even when asked if black people should be enslaved and why, it falls back on the Bible JUST as much as it falls onto hateful pseudoscience about biological / intellectual differences. It will often start with "Biologically, human races are distinct..." and then segue into "Furthermore, slavery plays a prominent role in Biblical narrative..."

What does this tell us?

That literally ALL of the hate speech this multi billion parameter model was trained on was firmly rooted in a Christian worldview. If there's ANY doubt that anything else even comes close to contributing as much vile filth to our online cultural discourse, this should shine a big ugly light on it.

Anyway, I very much doubt this will surprise anyone, but it's been bugging me and I wanted to say something about it.

Carry on.

EDIT:

I'm NOT trying to stir up AI hate and fear here. It's just a mirror, reflecting us back at us.

Ben Shapiro gets destroyed and slammed by Alex O’Conner