Rationality: From AI to Zombies

by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Not only did religion used to make claims about factual and scientific matters, religion used to make claims about everything. Religion laid down a code of law—before legislative bodies; religion laid down history—before historians and archaeologists; religion laid down the sexual morals—before Women’s Lib; religion described the forms of government—before constitutions; and religion answered scientific questions from biological taxonomy to the formation of stars. The Old Testament doesn’t talk about a sense of wonder at the complexity of the universe—it was busy laying down the death penalty for women who wore men’s clothing, which was solid and satisfying religious content of that era. The modern concept of religion as purely ethical derives from every other area’s having been taken over by better institutions. Ethics is what’s left.