As for the Book of Mormon… try to think of it this way.
Imagine that, tomorrow, you meet aliens from a faraway star system. The aliens look like giant jellyfish, and are in fact aquatic; needless to say, they grew up in a culture radically different from ours. While this alien species does possess science and technology (or else they wouldn’t make it all the way to Earth !), they have no concept of “religion”. They do, however, have a concept of fiction (as well as non-fiction, of course, or else they wouldn’t have developed science).
The aliens have studied our radio transmissions, translated our language, and downloaded a copy of the entire Web; this was easy for them since their computers are much more powerful than ours. So, the aliens have access to all of our literature, movies, and other media; but they have a tough time making sense of some of it. For example, they are pretty sure that the Oracle SQL Manual is non-fiction (they pirated a copy of Oracle, and it worked). They are also pretty sure that Little Red Riding Hood is fiction (they checked, and they’re pretty sure that wolves can’t talk). But what about a film like Lawrence of Arabia ? Is that fiction ? The aliens aren’t sure.
One of the aliens comes to you, waving a copy of The Book of Mormon (or whichever scripture you believe in) in its tentacles (but in a friendly kind of way). It asks you to clarify: is this book fiction, or non-fiction ? If it contains both fictional and non-fictional passages, which are which ? Right now, the alien is leaning toward “fiction” (it checked, and snakes can’t talk), but, with us humans, one can never be sure.
a) I would tell them it’s non-fiction. Are Yudkowsky’s posts fiction or non-fiction? What about the ones where he tells clearly made-up instructional stories?
b) No need to bash the Book of Mormon. I’m fully aware how you people feel about it. But—
It was not my intent to bash the Book of Mormon specifically; I just used it as a convenient stand-in for “whichever holy scripture you believe in”. Speaking of which:
The alien spreads its tentacles in confusion, then pulls out a stack of books from the storage compartment of its exo-suit. “What about all these other ones ?”, it asks. You recognize the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, Enuma Elish, the King James Bible, and the Nordic Eddas; you can tell by the way the alien’s suit is bulging that it’s got a bunch more books in there. The alien says (or rather, its translation software says for it),
“We can usually tell the difference between fiction and non-fiction. For example, your fellow human Yudkowsky wrote a lot of non-fictional articles about things like ethics and epistemology, but he also wrote fictional stories such as Three Worlds Collide. In that, he is similar to [unpronounceable], the author on our own world who wrote about imaginary worlds in order to raise awareness his ideas concerning [untranslateable] and [untranslateable], which is now the basis of our FTL drive. Sort of like your own Aesop, in fact.
But these books”, -- the alien waves some of its tentacles at the huge stack—“are confusing our software. Their structure and content contains many elements that are usually found only in fiction; for example, talking animals, magical powers, birds bigger than mountains, some sort of humanoids beings that are said to live in the skies or at the top of tall mountains or perhaps in orbit, shapeshifters, and so on. We checked, and none of those things exist in real life.
But then, we talked to other humans such as yourself, and they told us that some of these books are true in a literal sense. Oddly enough, each human seems to think that one particular book is true, and all the others are fictional or allegorical, but groups of humans passionately disagree about which book is true, as well as about the meaning of individual passages.
Thus, we [unpronounceable]”—you recognize the word for the alien’s own species—“are thoroughly confused. Are these books fiction, or aren’t they ? For example”, the alien says as it flips open the Book of Mormon, “do you really believe that snakes can talk ? Or that your Iron Age ancestors could build wooden submarines ? Or that a mustard seed is the smallest thing there is ? Or that there’s an invisible person in the sky who watches your every move ?”
The alien takes a pause to breathe (or whatever it is they do), then flips open some of the other books.
“What about these ? Do you believe in a super-powered being called Thor, who creates lightning bolts with his hammer, Mjolnir ? Do you think that some humans can cast magic spells that actually work ? And what about Garuda the mega-bird, is he real ?
If you believe some of these books are truth and others fiction, how do you tell the difference ? Our software can’t tell the difference, and neither can we...”
As for the Book of Mormon… try to think of it this way.
Imagine that, tomorrow, you meet aliens from a faraway star system. The aliens look like giant jellyfish, and are in fact aquatic; needless to say, they grew up in a culture radically different from ours. While this alien species does possess science and technology (or else they wouldn’t make it all the way to Earth !), they have no concept of “religion”. They do, however, have a concept of fiction (as well as non-fiction, of course, or else they wouldn’t have developed science).
The aliens have studied our radio transmissions, translated our language, and downloaded a copy of the entire Web; this was easy for them since their computers are much more powerful than ours. So, the aliens have access to all of our literature, movies, and other media; but they have a tough time making sense of some of it. For example, they are pretty sure that the Oracle SQL Manual is non-fiction (they pirated a copy of Oracle, and it worked). They are also pretty sure that Little Red Riding Hood is fiction (they checked, and they’re pretty sure that wolves can’t talk). But what about a film like Lawrence of Arabia ? Is that fiction ? The aliens aren’t sure.
One of the aliens comes to you, waving a copy of The Book of Mormon (or whichever scripture you believe in) in its tentacles (but in a friendly kind of way). It asks you to clarify: is this book fiction, or non-fiction ? If it contains both fictional and non-fictional passages, which are which ? Right now, the alien is leaning toward “fiction” (it checked, and snakes can’t talk), but, with us humans, one can never be sure.
What do you tell the alien ?
a) I would tell them it’s non-fiction. Are Yudkowsky’s posts fiction or non-fiction? What about the ones where he tells clearly made-up instructional stories?
b) No need to bash the Book of Mormon. I’m fully aware how you people feel about it. But—
you did in fact ask.
It was not my intent to bash the Book of Mormon specifically; I just used it as a convenient stand-in for “whichever holy scripture you believe in”. Speaking of which:
The alien spreads its tentacles in confusion, then pulls out a stack of books from the storage compartment of its exo-suit. “What about all these other ones ?”, it asks. You recognize the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, Enuma Elish, the King James Bible, and the Nordic Eddas; you can tell by the way the alien’s suit is bulging that it’s got a bunch more books in there. The alien says (or rather, its translation software says for it),
“We can usually tell the difference between fiction and non-fiction. For example, your fellow human Yudkowsky wrote a lot of non-fictional articles about things like ethics and epistemology, but he also wrote fictional stories such as Three Worlds Collide. In that, he is similar to [unpronounceable], the author on our own world who wrote about imaginary worlds in order to raise awareness his ideas concerning [untranslateable] and [untranslateable], which is now the basis of our FTL drive. Sort of like your own Aesop, in fact.
But these books”, -- the alien waves some of its tentacles at the huge stack—“are confusing our software. Their structure and content contains many elements that are usually found only in fiction; for example, talking animals, magical powers, birds bigger than mountains, some sort of humanoids beings that are said to live in the skies or at the top of tall mountains or perhaps in orbit, shapeshifters, and so on. We checked, and none of those things exist in real life.
But then, we talked to other humans such as yourself, and they told us that some of these books are true in a literal sense. Oddly enough, each human seems to think that one particular book is true, and all the others are fictional or allegorical, but groups of humans passionately disagree about which book is true, as well as about the meaning of individual passages.
Thus, we [unpronounceable]”—you recognize the word for the alien’s own species—“are thoroughly confused. Are these books fiction, or aren’t they ? For example”, the alien says as it flips open the Book of Mormon, “do you really believe that snakes can talk ? Or that your Iron Age ancestors could build wooden submarines ? Or that a mustard seed is the smallest thing there is ? Or that there’s an invisible person in the sky who watches your every move ?”
The alien takes a pause to breathe (or whatever it is they do), then flips open some of the other books.
“What about these ? Do you believe in a super-powered being called Thor, who creates lightning bolts with his hammer, Mjolnir ? Do you think that some humans can cast magic spells that actually work ? And what about Garuda the mega-bird, is he real ?
If you believe some of these books are truth and others fiction, how do you tell the difference ? Our software can’t tell the difference, and neither can we...”
Funny, I could swear someone already asked me that, and I gave them an answer. I’ll see if I can find the specific thread...