Le 30-janv.-06, à 17:25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tom) wrote :
Bruno wrote:
I think everyone has religious faith...
Amen, Bruno, and Ben also! This is of course a searing statement,
Its consequences are no less searing I'm afraid. It means that an
atheist is someone who has some religious faith, for example in
Aristotle Nature or in a material universe, but has lost the ability to
put it in doubt, making him/her unaware of the dogmatic character of
what he/her has faith in.
This prevent progress in research. I think.
which goes back to why the word "theology" is taboo. As it's commonly
said, the two topics to stay away from in conversation are religion
and politics.
I think "theology" is taboo because it has been appropriated by politic
power about 1600 years ago (Emperor Constantine).
But, without using the word religion, we can safely say that we all
have some basic belief that we hold to in order to make the decisions
of our practical living, whether they are every-day decisions like
holding a grudge against someone (or not), or bigger decisions about
our course in life such as getting married (or not) etc. The modern
(and leading up to the modern) reductionist philosophy has split these
particulars apart from our musings about universals, so that people
typically no longer see any connection between them. (Talk about
going in the opposite direction from "Everything"!) In a way it is
rather convenient because we can live out "personal" lives the way we
want to. But the reality is that in being set totally free from
universals, we become enslaved. The ultimate destination of
rationalism in a totally closed system is something like pan-critical
rationalism, where we end up in a swirl of confusion. Even then, we
really are having faith that somehow the "system" is set up such that
things will work out OK. If we didn't, then what are we left with?
In order to have freedom we need at least some constraints. For
example, take the axiomatic system. This applies also to the
"Mathematics: Is it really..." thread. So there needs to be a faith
that something is fixed, even if we don't yet know, or perhaps believe
that we can never truly know, what is it. This something is what is
called truth.
Yes. And Truth is the first primary hypostasis of the machine which
looks inside herself.
Now, what the machine really discovers is its own Abyssal Ignorance.
Truth is what we are or feel to be ignorant of. We need it to be able
to doubt our "theories", as you say.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
