From Stewart Brand's The MIT Media Lab: Inventing the Future:
After a dinner of take-out dim sum, Minsky, who had been reading
the Koran with some dismay at its violent inquiry-blunting formulae,
sermonized, “Religion is a teaching machine— a little deadly loop for
putting itself in your mind and keeping it there. The main concern of
a religion is to stop thinking, to suppress doubt. It’s interested in solving
deep problems, not in understanding them. And it’s correct in a sense,
because the problems it deals with don’t have solutions, because they’re
loops. ‘Who made the world?’ ‘God.’ You’re not allowed to ask, ‘Who
made God?’”
“Science feels and acts like a kind of religion a lot of the
time.” Minsky had heard that one before: “Everything is similar if you’re
willing to look that far out of focus. I’d watch that. Then you’ll find that
black is white. Look for differences! You’re looking for similarities again.
That way lies mind rot.” That lively loop has been cycling in my mind
ever since!
After a dinner of take-out dim sum, Minsky, who had been reading the Koran with some dismay at its violent inquiry-blunting formulae, sermonized, “Religion is a teaching machine— a little deadly loop for putting itself in your mind and keeping it there. The main concern of a religion is to stop thinking, to suppress doubt. It’s interested in solving deep problems, not in understanding them. And it’s correct in a sense, because the problems it deals with don’t have solutions, because they’re loops. ‘Who made the world?’ ‘God.’ You’re not allowed to ask, ‘Who made God?’”
“Science feels and acts like a kind of religion a lot of the time.” Minsky had heard that one before: “Everything is similar if you’re willing to look that far out of focus. I’d watch that. Then you’ll find that black is white. Look for differences! You’re looking for similarities again. That way lies mind rot.” That lively loop has been cycling in my mind ever since!