Man, if he's a computer guy like me then we're totally stuck because the handwritten notes I keep in my pocket aren't exactly coded, but I'll be damned if even I can decipher them!
Will our consiousness always end with the death of the meat sack? I doubt that will be true forever - I don't see the Singlarity coming soon, but unless there's some truth to this "soul" business, it's only a matter of time.
I am not convinced that this is the case. We are pretty sure that there are things we can't do, such as travel faster than light. What if consciousness is something similar, something that actually requires a "meat sack," or at least requires something almost, but not quite entirely unlike a computer?
Belief in the SIngularity rests on belief in the Computational Theory of Mind, a theory that is very popular but as of yet completely unfounded. It stems mainly from two sources: 19th century physicalism, refusing for the most part to even consider that more modern developments such as QM could affect the mind's operation; and Alan Turing's firm belief that humans are Turing machines. Despite our best efforts, no system other than the organic has even come close to passing the Turing test or giving off signs of consciousness. Our understanding of the mind-body problem has made next to no progress since the early 20th century: the best we've come up with is seeing parts of the brain light up when someone is poked with a stick, and there is a very possibly unbridgeable gap between that and understanding how the experience of self and existence is possible.
I get the "analog instead of digital does not necessarily mean not a computer" thing--there were analog computers before digital ones. However, when I say "computer" the overwhelming majority of people, including those who know that analog computers exist, automatically assume "computer" is synonymous with "digital computer."
If you care to expand upon the other "misunderstandings, irrelevancies, and falsehoods" you see instead of simply stating that to be the case, I will read and respond. The points are meant to be taken in concert, not individually, and that first one is there mainly to dispel the myth that neurons are simple "on/off" components--a myth that anyone who has taken a cursory look at neural networks understands but is otherwise rarely conceived.
No, that is another misunderstanding. There are at least three different major views taken by Christians about the Bible.*
There is "inerrant," the belief that the Bible is literally true in every aspect. This must of course be taken with a grain of salt, since when Jesus says things like "I am a door" it is understood that he is speaking in metaphor. This is the view taken by most fundamentalist Christians.
There is "infallible," the belief that although not everything that is biblical is factual, the spiritual advice given is all accurate. This view in my opinion is taken only to fix obvious mistakes like "the mustard seed is the smallest of all the seeds."
Finally, there is "inspired," the belief that the people who wrote the books that later became part of the Bible, and even the process by which they were accepted into or rejected from the Bible, are inspired by God, and though human error is present to some greater or lesser degree it is still the best thing we have to go on. This view obviously has the most wiggle room.
Any scholars, Christian or not, who seriously study the writings contained within the Bible recognize the different types of literature, though it's not always clear what's what (or who wrote what despite signatures, for that matter--see 2nd Timothy for one example). In fact, most fundamentalist Christians, the loudest of the bunch, reject this informed study, as I mentioned in my first post. I certainly won't try to stop you from arguing against Christianity--it is by no means perfect--but you should at least do so from an informed perspective. That is entirely my goal: I am not trying to convert anyone towards or away from the thing; I just like to see more intelligent discussion. It is sadly telling that there is such a lack of it from within the church itself, and it is just as sad that the "arguments" from outside are equally facile.
*Really, if I remember correctly, there are at least four, but I can't recall the fourth or where it lies in the continuum.
For you, causality, this may be preaching to the choir, but I recently finished reading an out-of-print book entitled "Science: The Glorious Entertainment" by Jacques Barzun. Half a century old, its critiques are as accurate today as they were when it was printed. Science the practice is unquestionably one of mankind's greatest ongoing achievements; the problem is that it is being practiced less and less frequently and is instead replaced with the ideology of scientism--a religion for the irreligious. It's a great read and has sharpened my awareness of when a consensus is reached before enough (or any!) evidence has been examined--see my sig for an illustration of how this is the case in the belief in the Singularity and strong AI.
I am tempted to believe that the situation is beginning to change for the better. Perhaps it's only confirmation bias, but I think I see more posts with your mindset here on/. than in previous years. I hold out hope that we as a race will start looking deeply and with the eyes of true science again at the hard questions that are currently glossed over and obfuscated by fancy terms.
Arguing "God must not exist because I stubbed my toe once and it really hurt" is a bit shallow, don't you think?
Yeah. It gets more difficult when you start discussing deep human suffering--the pain of losing a loved one, the trauma of being sexually assaulted, the sting of betrayal, the violent death of millions through war and auto accidents. These are things that happen all the time, and it is quite hard to reconcile the really ugly stuff with an all-good God who, according to the big 3 monotheistic religions, cares deeply about us. You could cut your second paragraph down to "the Inquisition happened" and it's plenty compelling.
There are as many variations on what God is like as there are people. Not everybody thinks God is all-powerful. Not everybody thinks God is all-caring. Forget about God--there are a LOT of people who aren't convinced that the universe is deterministic, and for good reason.
If you think the only reason people believe in God is because "they just haven't spent enough time thinking about it," then you have a lot to learn about the diversity of human experience and belief. I speak here not solely of God but of politics, philosophy, morality...anything that is not a hard fact is subject to differences in belief (including scientific theory--ask people here about string theory or dark matter for instance). There are very few ideas when it comes to how one lives or thinks that can be said to be "the right way" or "the wrong way." Believing that everyone would see things your way if they thought enough about it is incredibly egotistical and small-minded. I'm not suggesting you re-evaluate your position on God or communism or what have you, only that you recognize that there are better reasons for believing differently than you appear to credit.
Here's the thing about Genesis chapters 1 and 2: they are poetry. It wasn't meant to be a play-by-play description of How We Got Universe. The most obvious clue is the repetition of "And there was evening, and there was morning, the x day." Scholars I am willing to trust because they know Hebrew say that it's still more obvious in its original tongue.
Too many Christians (led by the institution of the church) and also people in general are ignorant of the different kinds of literature found in the Bible. Psalms and Proverbs and Song of Solomon are pretty obviously song, poetry and...well, proverbs; but there is also history, which includes incidents most of us find far-fetched but also accounts with corroborating evidence from other historical documents. There is also apocalyptic literature, the most famous being Revelation. That, too, was never meant to be taken literally but was more of a sort of pep-rally for the Christians of the time to give them encouragement to persevere knowing that they win in the end. St. John may have also eaten some funny mushrooms.
There is a willful ignorance among many American Christians* that doggedly claims "read it literally!" without consideration for the genre within which a particular piece was written and makes those who practice it into fools. There is a willful ignorance among many opponents of Christianity, and religion in general, who do the same thing.
*I will not speak about trends in other countries because I don't have experience with the Christians in them.
This is actually very insightful. Wish I had mod points. I think my GP is correct in saying that "creationist" usually means "young-earth creationist" because those tend to be the people who self-identify with the label, but I'm glad you responded because the central paragraph is poignant.
Are there any trusted URL shorteners? The link in my sig is shortened because it's too damn long to fit otherwise. I never thought about people avoiding it for fear of a ninja link.
I would rather have a well programmed predictable computer program controlling my spacecraft vs a brian modeled after humans which may decide to go on strike or otherwise act unreliably.
Hey, I know Brian and he's a real stand-up guy. In fact, he'd be offended at being called unreliable if he wasn't so damned amicable.
By that logic the human brain outclasses the calculator as well, not to mention that without the ingenuity of the human mind neither the calculator nor the car would exist.
The dose of realism injected by a real live neuroscientist ought to be paid attention to. Most CS types know too little about neuroscience and psychology to have a worthwhile opinion about the viability of human-level machine intelligence and what it takes to get there. I used to believe we'd have a strong AI by oh, 2040 or so until I started really looking into the fields I mentioned, and every informed post like the one I'm replying to reaffirms my belief that we have a very, very, very long way to go--if it is in fact possible at all.
I read somewhere that saying we are on our way to strong AI given our current achievements is like saying we are on our way to the moon after climbing a tree. Sure, we've made some progress, but not nearly as much as is commonly portrayed.
What you want is impossible unless you are on a very minimal system. There are some legitimate gripes in there, like the Windows7 effects nonsense, but there's no way to present EVERYTHING on a system at once. The best you can do is to give someone a meaningful layout that makes navigation easy and the opportunity to rearrange it so the things they use often are a small step away, which usually means a desktop shortcut. I personally hate a cluttered desktop, but that just means I rarely use it; I see no need to start a crusade (or is jihad now the preferred nomenclature?).
LiveSearch from Microsoft and Spotlight from Apple don't take away from that at all, they give you another tool to get you where you're going if you want to make use of it. In fact if you don't use it then you still end up searching, only by directory trawling instead of keyword guessing. Either way, if you already know what you are after then there's not really a search involved; at that point you are following a series of steps to get at what you want--and it's hard not to see search-as-you-type as a clear winner here against everything save perhaps a desktop icon.
The same is true with opening attachments from emails--you can take the extra step to save to disk and open manually if you want to, but why? Allowing a user to open an attachment that he may bother to look at only once and then trash immediately makes sense. Allowing a user to instead save it for later without opening now also makes sense. Removing one of those choices really doesn't.
We should be able to be lazy while using computers. The whole point of a tool is to let us be lazier where we can so that we can do more of whatever the real task at hand is. A construction worker can be proud of his skill with hammer and saw, but his hammering and sawing is at the service of building something else and not an end in itself. I think a lot of people are just uncomfortable that our magic staves have been slowly but surely transforming into common hammers.
What constitutes disrupting others? Should protesting at a funeral be illegal in addition to tasteless?
I like how good-hearted people step in to neutralize WBC protests. Most of the time it's a dedicated group of flag-waving bikers who stand in between the protesters and the funeral-goers, screening them from view. My favorite countermeasure has to be the group who dressed up like angels with huge wings, formed an outward-facing ring around WBC, and sang songs that drowned out their nonsense.
Just goes to show you that the force of law isn't always required--the community can step up when it wants to.
Thank you for linking that book, I think I'm going to have to buy it. I was a little interested at first because it sounded similar to The Holographic Universe, then I saw how your sig looks remarkably close to mine, then I looked at the book itself and William James, a hero of mine, was mentioned in the first paragraph...
Looks to be a bit pricey, but it also looks like there is much more substance to it than Talbot's book, which to its credit does contain lots of fantastic anecdotes of mind-over-matter phenomenon. It seems that the Kellys have taken things up a few notches. I look forward to reading it.
Religiosity is mainly just a predisposition to value things like group solidarity and the stability that comes from enforced conformity and hierarchical authority.
Interesting. Those things sound very much like the ideal American liberal government. Yet most hardcore Christians are right-wing, wanting a return to rugged individualism and small government.
Is it because they don't want any competition from the state?
Does that mean that American liberals, who are more correlated with atheism, are predisposed to the same values, just preferring a secular to a religious institution?
I can't speak to the IQs of Daoists and yogis, but you're greatly oversimplifying things in the middle paragraph.
What you have seen, and what you are basing your theory on, I am going to guess is conservative Christianity in the United States. I am positive, having grown up in the tradition, that what you think is stupidity on the part of practitioners is mostly the failure of the church as a responsible institution. It is quite similar to the Catholic church prior to the Reformation in that people are being told what to believe without any real justification being given, and it is quite simliar to fundamentalist Islam in its hatred of anyone that does not conform to its beliefs.
There are few converts to fundamentalist Christianity who are not older than adolescents or teenagers; this is because that group is awash in hormones and it's easy for them to get caught up in the emotional spectacle of a speaker who is saying, "Yes, I have the answers to all your questions, the solutions to all your problems!" The side-effect is that just about everyone in the tradition was either raised in it from birth or from an age where they were still quite impressionable. One of the things the American church does is to discourage "temptation," in this case that means "reading or listening to or discussing ideas that run counter to our beliefs." So your "evolution means monkeys birth humans" folks are ignorant, and willfully so, but not necessarily stupid. Most people just aren't that curious about the world around them, and that's a trait that knows no theological or cultural boundaries.
The reason I assume you mostly have contact with the American church is because the church in Europe, by most of the accounts that I have heard, is far less fundamentalist in nature. There are far fewer instances of evolution denial, and there is a greater interest in science and a greater degree of tolerance of other beliefs.
Also, it is not just religion that breeds conformity. That's a consequence of any tradition, including the scientific and political. It's just a heck of a lot easier to spot conformity when you're outside of the group you're examining for obvious reasons.
Until the 19C, most of the people we remember for their advancement of knowledge were religious, from Socrates to Galileo to Descartes to Newton. A smaller number were irreligious. The reverse is true nowadays. The implication is that whatever cultural forces are in play will shape the views of the population correspondingly, and intelligence or stupidity has little to do with it.
Most people who are atheists are just as stupid as those who are religious because most people simply have an average intelligence. The polarizing caricature that you so wittily displayed merely shows that you are a full participant in the "us good them bad" oversimplification that many if not most folks of average intelligence fall prey to.
What if they aren't anything like what we would classify as an organism? What if the rough equivalent of what we call a "brain" was manifested in a gas giant's weather system, or, as I think was posited in some SF book, a massive forest whose brainwaves were fire fronts?
OTOH, what if they are post-Singularity, living decades of simulated realtime during our lunchtime?
Time scale is a smaller barrier than being able to recognize truly alien life. Modes of communication are likely to be equally incomprehensible as such. It's entirely possible that there is virtually nothing but life in the universe; it's just too varied for us to recognize any kind significantly different from our own. It's sometimes been quite difficult historically to discern what's alive and what's not on our own planet, especially in environments different from those we are used to like caves (where speleothems can look eerily organic) and oceans (where some corals can look like plain old rock).
Slashdot Mirror
Man, if he's a computer guy like me then we're totally stuck because the handwritten notes I keep in my pocket aren't exactly coded, but I'll be damned if even I can decipher them!
Will our consiousness always end with the death of the meat sack? I doubt that will be true forever - I don't see the Singlarity coming soon, but unless there's some truth to this "soul" business, it's only a matter of time.
I am not convinced that this is the case. We are pretty sure that there are things we can't do, such as travel faster than light. What if consciousness is something similar, something that actually requires a "meat sack," or at least requires something almost, but not quite entirely unlike a computer?
Belief in the SIngularity rests on belief in the Computational Theory of Mind, a theory that is very popular but as of yet completely unfounded. It stems mainly from two sources: 19th century physicalism, refusing for the most part to even consider that more modern developments such as QM could affect the mind's operation; and Alan Turing's firm belief that humans are Turing machines. Despite our best efforts, no system other than the organic has even come close to passing the Turing test or giving off signs of consciousness. Our understanding of the mind-body problem has made next to no progress since the early 20th century: the best we've come up with is seeing parts of the brain light up when someone is poked with a stick, and there is a very possibly unbridgeable gap between that and understanding how the experience of self and existence is possible.
I get the "analog instead of digital does not necessarily mean not a computer" thing--there were analog computers before digital ones. However, when I say "computer" the overwhelming majority of people, including those who know that analog computers exist, automatically assume "computer" is synonymous with "digital computer."
If you care to expand upon the other "misunderstandings, irrelevancies, and falsehoods" you see instead of simply stating that to be the case, I will read and respond. The points are meant to be taken in concert, not individually, and that first one is there mainly to dispel the myth that neurons are simple "on/off" components--a myth that anyone who has taken a cursory look at neural networks understands but is otherwise rarely conceived.
No, that is another misunderstanding. There are at least three different major views taken by Christians about the Bible.*
There is "inerrant," the belief that the Bible is literally true in every aspect. This must of course be taken with a grain of salt, since when Jesus says things like "I am a door" it is understood that he is speaking in metaphor. This is the view taken by most fundamentalist Christians.
There is "infallible," the belief that although not everything that is biblical is factual, the spiritual advice given is all accurate. This view in my opinion is taken only to fix obvious mistakes like "the mustard seed is the smallest of all the seeds."
Finally, there is "inspired," the belief that the people who wrote the books that later became part of the Bible, and even the process by which they were accepted into or rejected from the Bible, are inspired by God, and though human error is present to some greater or lesser degree it is still the best thing we have to go on. This view obviously has the most wiggle room.
Any scholars, Christian or not, who seriously study the writings contained within the Bible recognize the different types of literature, though it's not always clear what's what (or who wrote what despite signatures, for that matter--see 2nd Timothy for one example). In fact, most fundamentalist Christians, the loudest of the bunch, reject this informed study, as I mentioned in my first post. I certainly won't try to stop you from arguing against Christianity--it is by no means perfect--but you should at least do so from an informed perspective. That is entirely my goal: I am not trying to convert anyone towards or away from the thing; I just like to see more intelligent discussion. It is sadly telling that there is such a lack of it from within the church itself, and it is just as sad that the "arguments" from outside are equally facile.
*Really, if I remember correctly, there are at least four, but I can't recall the fourth or where it lies in the continuum.
Spot-on.
For you, causality, this may be preaching to the choir, but I recently finished reading an out-of-print book entitled "Science: The Glorious Entertainment" by Jacques Barzun. Half a century old, its critiques are as accurate today as they were when it was printed. Science the practice is unquestionably one of mankind's greatest ongoing achievements; the problem is that it is being practiced less and less frequently and is instead replaced with the ideology of scientism--a religion for the irreligious. It's a great read and has sharpened my awareness of when a consensus is reached before enough (or any!) evidence has been examined--see my sig for an illustration of how this is the case in the belief in the Singularity and strong AI.
I am tempted to believe that the situation is beginning to change for the better. Perhaps it's only confirmation bias, but I think I see more posts with your mindset here on /. than in previous years. I hold out hope that we as a race will start looking deeply and with the eyes of true science again at the hard questions that are currently glossed over and obfuscated by fancy terms.
Arguing "God must not exist because I stubbed my toe once and it really hurt" is a bit shallow, don't you think?
Yeah. It gets more difficult when you start discussing deep human suffering--the pain of losing a loved one, the trauma of being sexually assaulted, the sting of betrayal, the violent death of millions through war and auto accidents. These are things that happen all the time, and it is quite hard to reconcile the really ugly stuff with an all-good God who, according to the big 3 monotheistic religions, cares deeply about us. You could cut your second paragraph down to "the Inquisition happened" and it's plenty compelling.
There are as many variations on what God is like as there are people. Not everybody thinks God is all-powerful. Not everybody thinks God is all-caring. Forget about God--there are a LOT of people who aren't convinced that the universe is deterministic, and for good reason.
If you think the only reason people believe in God is because "they just haven't spent enough time thinking about it," then you have a lot to learn about the diversity of human experience and belief. I speak here not solely of God but of politics, philosophy, morality...anything that is not a hard fact is subject to differences in belief (including scientific theory--ask people here about string theory or dark matter for instance). There are very few ideas when it comes to how one lives or thinks that can be said to be "the right way" or "the wrong way." Believing that everyone would see things your way if they thought enough about it is incredibly egotistical and small-minded. I'm not suggesting you re-evaluate your position on God or communism or what have you, only that you recognize that there are better reasons for believing differently than you appear to credit.
Here's the thing about Genesis chapters 1 and 2: they are poetry. It wasn't meant to be a play-by-play description of How We Got Universe. The most obvious clue is the repetition of "And there was evening, and there was morning, the x day." Scholars I am willing to trust because they know Hebrew say that it's still more obvious in its original tongue.
Too many Christians (led by the institution of the church) and also people in general are ignorant of the different kinds of literature found in the Bible. Psalms and Proverbs and Song of Solomon are pretty obviously song, poetry and...well, proverbs; but there is also history, which includes incidents most of us find far-fetched but also accounts with corroborating evidence from other historical documents. There is also apocalyptic literature, the most famous being Revelation. That, too, was never meant to be taken literally but was more of a sort of pep-rally for the Christians of the time to give them encouragement to persevere knowing that they win in the end. St. John may have also eaten some funny mushrooms.
There is a willful ignorance among many American Christians* that doggedly claims "read it literally!" without consideration for the genre within which a particular piece was written and makes those who practice it into fools. There is a willful ignorance among many opponents of Christianity, and religion in general, who do the same thing.
*I will not speak about trends in other countries because I don't have experience with the Christians in them.
This is actually very insightful. Wish I had mod points. I think my GP is correct in saying that "creationist" usually means "young-earth creationist" because those tend to be the people who self-identify with the label, but I'm glad you responded because the central paragraph is poignant.
Are there any trusted URL shorteners? The link in my sig is shortened because it's too damn long to fit otherwise. I never thought about people avoiding it for fear of a ninja link.
I would rather have a well programmed predictable computer program controlling my spacecraft vs a brian modeled after humans which may decide to go on strike or otherwise act unreliably.
Hey, I know Brian and he's a real stand-up guy. In fact, he'd be offended at being called unreliable if he wasn't so damned amicable.
By that logic the human brain outclasses the calculator as well, not to mention that without the ingenuity of the human mind neither the calculator nor the car would exist.
The dose of realism injected by a real live neuroscientist ought to be paid attention to. Most CS types know too little about neuroscience and psychology to have a worthwhile opinion about the viability of human-level machine intelligence and what it takes to get there. I used to believe we'd have a strong AI by oh, 2040 or so until I started really looking into the fields I mentioned, and every informed post like the one I'm replying to reaffirms my belief that we have a very, very, very long way to go--if it is in fact possible at all.
I read somewhere that saying we are on our way to strong AI given our current achievements is like saying we are on our way to the moon after climbing a tree. Sure, we've made some progress, but not nearly as much as is commonly portrayed.
That is also assuming that consciousness is computation in the first place, which is nowhere near certain.
Every military rifle ammunition that pops into my head gets at least 2000 feet per second.
How are you still able to post, man?
What you want is impossible unless you are on a very minimal system. There are some legitimate gripes in there, like the Windows7 effects nonsense, but there's no way to present EVERYTHING on a system at once. The best you can do is to give someone a meaningful layout that makes navigation easy and the opportunity to rearrange it so the things they use often are a small step away, which usually means a desktop shortcut. I personally hate a cluttered desktop, but that just means I rarely use it; I see no need to start a crusade (or is jihad now the preferred nomenclature?).
LiveSearch from Microsoft and Spotlight from Apple don't take away from that at all, they give you another tool to get you where you're going if you want to make use of it. In fact if you don't use it then you still end up searching, only by directory trawling instead of keyword guessing. Either way, if you already know what you are after then there's not really a search involved; at that point you are following a series of steps to get at what you want--and it's hard not to see search-as-you-type as a clear winner here against everything save perhaps a desktop icon.
The same is true with opening attachments from emails--you can take the extra step to save to disk and open manually if you want to, but why? Allowing a user to open an attachment that he may bother to look at only once and then trash immediately makes sense. Allowing a user to instead save it for later without opening now also makes sense. Removing one of those choices really doesn't.
We should be able to be lazy while using computers. The whole point of a tool is to let us be lazier where we can so that we can do more of whatever the real task at hand is. A construction worker can be proud of his skill with hammer and saw, but his hammering and sawing is at the service of building something else and not an end in itself. I think a lot of people are just uncomfortable that our magic staves have been slowly but surely transforming into common hammers.
You know you read too much Slashdot when you read "IANA" and your internal parser breaks because it isn't followed by a noun. =(
What constitutes disrupting others? Should protesting at a funeral be illegal in addition to tasteless?
I like how good-hearted people step in to neutralize WBC protests. Most of the time it's a dedicated group of flag-waving bikers who stand in between the protesters and the funeral-goers, screening them from view. My favorite countermeasure has to be the group who dressed up like angels with huge wings, formed an outward-facing ring around WBC, and sang songs that drowned out their nonsense.
Just goes to show you that the force of law isn't always required--the community can step up when it wants to.
"And oh yeah...they HATE it when you do this!"
Thank you for linking that book, I think I'm going to have to buy it. I was a little interested at first because it sounded similar to The Holographic Universe, then I saw how your sig looks remarkably close to mine, then I looked at the book itself and William James, a hero of mine, was mentioned in the first paragraph...
Looks to be a bit pricey, but it also looks like there is much more substance to it than Talbot's book, which to its credit does contain lots of fantastic anecdotes of mind-over-matter phenomenon. It seems that the Kellys have taken things up a few notches. I look forward to reading it.
Religiosity is mainly just a predisposition to value things like group solidarity
and the stability that comes from enforced conformity and hierarchical authority.
Interesting. Those things sound very much like the ideal American liberal government. Yet most hardcore Christians are right-wing, wanting a return to rugged individualism and small government.
Is it because they don't want any competition from the state?
Does that mean that American liberals, who are more correlated with atheism, are predisposed to the same values, just preferring a secular to a religious institution?
I can't speak to the IQs of Daoists and yogis, but you're greatly oversimplifying things in the middle paragraph.
What you have seen, and what you are basing your theory on, I am going to guess is conservative Christianity in the United States. I am positive, having grown up in the tradition, that what you think is stupidity on the part of practitioners is mostly the failure of the church as a responsible institution. It is quite similar to the Catholic church prior to the Reformation in that people are being told what to believe without any real justification being given, and it is quite simliar to fundamentalist Islam in its hatred of anyone that does not conform to its beliefs.
There are few converts to fundamentalist Christianity who are not older than adolescents or teenagers; this is because that group is awash in hormones and it's easy for them to get caught up in the emotional spectacle of a speaker who is saying, "Yes, I have the answers to all your questions, the solutions to all your problems!" The side-effect is that just about everyone in the tradition was either raised in it from birth or from an age where they were still quite impressionable. One of the things the American church does is to discourage "temptation," in this case that means "reading or listening to or discussing ideas that run counter to our beliefs." So your "evolution means monkeys birth humans" folks are ignorant, and willfully so, but not necessarily stupid. Most people just aren't that curious about the world around them, and that's a trait that knows no theological or cultural boundaries.
The reason I assume you mostly have contact with the American church is because the church in Europe, by most of the accounts that I have heard, is far less fundamentalist in nature. There are far fewer instances of evolution denial, and there is a greater interest in science and a greater degree of tolerance of other beliefs.
Also, it is not just religion that breeds conformity. That's a consequence of any tradition, including the scientific and political. It's just a heck of a lot easier to spot conformity when you're outside of the group you're examining for obvious reasons.
Until the 19C, most of the people we remember for their advancement of knowledge were religious, from Socrates to Galileo to Descartes to Newton. A smaller number were irreligious. The reverse is true nowadays. The implication is that whatever cultural forces are in play will shape the views of the population correspondingly, and intelligence or stupidity has little to do with it.
Most people who are atheists are just as stupid as those who are religious because most people simply have an average intelligence. The polarizing caricature that you so wittily displayed merely shows that you are a full participant in the "us good them bad" oversimplification that many if not most folks of average intelligence fall prey to.
What if they aren't anything like what we would classify as an organism? What if the rough equivalent of what we call a "brain" was manifested in a gas giant's weather system, or, as I think was posited in some SF book, a massive forest whose brainwaves were fire fronts?
OTOH, what if they are post-Singularity, living decades of simulated realtime during our lunchtime?
Time scale is a smaller barrier than being able to recognize truly alien life. Modes of communication are likely to be equally incomprehensible as such. It's entirely possible that there is virtually nothing but life in the universe; it's just too varied for us to recognize any kind significantly different from our own. It's sometimes been quite difficult historically to discern what's alive and what's not on our own planet, especially in environments different from those we are used to like caves (where speleothems can look eerily organic) and oceans (where some corals can look like plain old rock).
And why did they come to the US to invent things?