On 08 Feb 2017, at 20:15, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 2/8/2017 9:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 08 Feb 2017, at 04:53, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 2/7/2017 9:12 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Which is exactly why I'm explicit in defining what the theism is
that I consider preposterous and what other god ideas I'm merely
agnostic about. Then Bruno criticizes me for "supporting" the
former; rather than help him muddy the meaning of "God" so he
can call the truths of arithmetic "God".
Let us try to agree on some definition of God. Most people, after
and before Christ agrees on this: it is the origin of everything,
it is what everything proceeds of, unnameable and transcendent,
that is beyond us.
Are you OK, with it. Don't hesitate to improve it.
No, I'm not "OK" with it because it is a misleading appropriation
of a common word that is used to denote a superpowerful and
knowledgable person who not only created everything, but cares
about human beings and demands certain conduct and who acts in the
world in response to prayer. Your definition doesn't even rise to
the level of a deist god. Even a deist god is supposed to care
about human conduct.
The definition I gave is more general, and let such question open.
All atheists, christians and muslims I met do agree that their God
satisfy my definition.
So what? The Big Bang also satisfies your definition - which means
it's not at all definite.
That is exactly the point. yes, the physical primary cosmos, and a big-
bang conceived as an origin of all are god(s), and are based on
Aristotelian religion. Then, it violates mechanism, so those are
consistent religion with some string form of non-mechanist hypothesis.
But there are no evidences that such things are god, and all evidences
for mechanism are evidence against that idea.
Why adding the controversial attribute?
I don't "add" them. They are part of the meaning of "God" as used
by Christians, Muslims, Jews, and some other sects.
Things are much more nuanced than that. The three religions have many
different internal school of thought, including some neoplatonist one.
They are not numerous only because at some point they have been
exploited by terrestrial power, which is a blasphem from the point of
view of genuine spiritual inquirer. That happens to any science when
exploited by special interests.
Even the Greeks always meant a person by "god".
This is completely wrong. The question of the personhood of the outer
God or the One is on the contrary a topic of many discussions and
chapters in the neoplatonist literature. It is perhaps the reason of
the notion of "inner god", which is a person-aspect of the outer god.
The outer god itself is more akin to the eastern Tao, which is
conceived as having so will, nor thought.
Don't confuse the greek legend with the greek theology, which is a
science, and ask no act of faith. Only definition and reflexion, and
observation.
We are already know that atheists do not believe in those
attribute, and I am agnostic on it.
You're agnostic about Yaweh and Zeus? Have you adopted radical
agnosticism like Telmo?
In science, we do not commit oneself in any ontological commitment.
And we keep our religious beliefs, if any, for oneself, even in the
theological field (I would say: especially with the theological field).
When we do science, we search the axioms on which more people agree
and then do the reasoning and see where we are driven. Why use a so
peculiar special theory, given that almost nobody in this list
agrees such a god does not exists,
Because this list is a very tiny sample of world population.
I have never met a christian who believes in the literal bible. Most
abramanic theologian are aware of platonism and open to the idea that
science might add evidence for the platonist theology. Note also that
the three abramanic religion are already closer to Plato than the
materialist religion.
When people tell me that they are communists or Christians or
vegetarians and I ask them what they mean by that - I take them at
their word. Christians and Muslims and Jews all say that they
believe in God who is an immortal powerful supernatural PERSON who
created everything and who cares very much about how people behave
(especially with their clothes off). So who am I (or you) to say
that's not what "God" means.
But the scientific attitude has been forbidden for them, and here we
do science, because we are lucky to live in a quasi free-world. It is
just astounding than you defend the pseudo-theories of those who have
banished or burned at the stake all the reasoners and skepticals in
the field since Justinian. Why do the atheists defend so much the
theology of the charlatans? In science, we *never* use any word in
their common popular sense.
or even that, if it exists, we do not yet have evidences for it?
Just to say I don't believe in it? This is completely weird. You
could as well say that science has guven evidence that Earth does
not exist, by making earth flat by definition. This is not how
science works. Why insisting that we use the notion of God which
has been imposed to it by terror and violence for a very long time?
You are completely illustrating what Einstein said on the atheists
and "free-thinker"(*): they are completely unable to leave the
religion they hate so much, up to the point of hating even more the
religion which use different notion of God, like the original
scientific one of the greeks and Indians (and chinese ...).
Many religious people believe that the idea that God cares more on
humans than on spiders (say) is just utter arrogance, vanity, and
delusional.
"Many"? That's the fallacy of the dangling comparison. Many
compared to what? Not compared to the number who believe the
contrary.
Read Aldous Huxley, or read the Platonists (before and after JC), or
read the texts of the mystics.
Then, also, science is not a question of the number of people
believing this or that. All new ideas are taken seriously by a
minority when they are discovered.
No one serious would postulate that, even if some will continue to
hope it, but there are no evidences at all, so let us be agnostic,
and not put this in the definition.
You have a fetish to avoid putting anything in the definition that
would rule out using the word "God", even though your meaning is
quite different from 99% of the people in the world who use the word.
This is simply false, and again, in science, we don't discuss
vocabulary issues. Also, you will not find the word God in any of my
publications. I do use the word "theology" in my more recent
publications, and in "conscience et mécanisme", yet, I have never had
any problem with any scientist except fundamentalist gnostic (mainly
the gnostic atheists).
Some seem to be nervous, not about the possible use of the term "God",
but about the doubt which is raised about the existence of a primary
physical universe and physicalism or (weak) materialism.
The original antic question was not on the existence of the outer-god,
which is a triviality, but on the existence of a primary physical
universe. That is the doubt which was at the origin of science. The
fake aristotelian authoritative view on nature brought by Aristotle,
and very appealing to our intuition, has been the beginning of the
Middle-Age.
Bruno
Brent
“People are more unwilling to give up the word ‘God’ than to give up
the idea for which the word has hitherto stood”
--- Bertrand Russell
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