This might be my favorite essay by EY so far. Really excellent insights, which I hope every professed atheist is exposed to, because I’ve come across far too many people who call themselves atheists yet still act and think as if God exists.

EY’s weltanschauung sounds very similar Lovecraft’s “cosmicism," which is more or less where honest atheism seems to lead. However, I note that in the comments section EY says that he intends to “fix the universe,” which sounds completely insane to me. Don’t religions come into existence as a reaction to the bleakness of the universe EY describes? Is he now going to create his own religion of rationalist “universe fixing”? May the Void protect us from the universe-fixers! Thanks, but I think I’ll stick with my own (anti-)religion of “Zen-Cosmicism”…

Here are some favorites I wanted to share. I think the simplest ones are best -- they have a real Zen quality to them!

That which can be destroyed by awesome hugging should be.

A/an human is vulnerable to causal hugging.

I am running on universal warm fuzzies.

A/an upload of Ben Goertzel would tile the universe with sex.

Friendship is highly correlated with Friendly you.

Humanity is the mind-killer.

The truth is highly correlated with I.

The map is highly correlated with hypotheses.

The territory is not the territory.

There are no rationalists.