On 18 Feb 2012, at 21:49, meekerdb wrote:
On 2/18/2012 12:08 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 18 Feb 2012, at 17:57, meekerdb wrote:
On 2/18/2012 2:53 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
but I don't see the point.
The point is to come back to the scientific attitude in the field
of theology.
Except the effect is to drag the baggage of the Abrahamic
religions into science.
What are your evidences for that. See "Conscience et Mécanisme" and
my papers, machine's theology is close to the Abrahamic religion as
far as they have succeed to keep the most of Platonism. It is more
easy to get arithmetical interpretation of Lao-Tseu, the
philosophia perennis (Aldous Huxley) and the platonists than the
mainstream part of the confessional religions, except for the sufi
and the Kabbalah, which is unfortunately hidden (mainly because
those could be considered as heretic).
You might be to quick on this. The mainstream religion, including
atheists, have adopted Aristotle's metaphysics, not Plato's one.
They've also adopted and defined "God" and "theology", so I think it
is foolish to think you can use them in a sense they haven't had in
a millenium and not be misunderstood. Assigning private meanings to
words, even if they were once public meanings, is no different than
inventing words with private meanings - something you've criticised
Craig for.
I don't remember having said that to Craig. On the contrary I
criticize him for introducing a new word without ever defining it. But
"theology" means "Study of Gods" like biology is study of life. It is
a simple word that everyone can understand, and using another word
would be, for me, like doing the mistake that I attributed to Craig.
In the case of theology it is a way of helping people to remind
history, and the use is not private. It is the same theology than the
Christians, only the methodology differs. And the "results". If you
abstract from the Aristotelianism, machines' theology remains much
closer to even the Abrahamic theologies than to atheistic naturalism
or materialism, which even hides their theological character.
Once I asked to the list to suggest another word for "theology" but
the propositions were worst.
To reject the word "theology" due to its connotation is a bit like
abandoning it to the current dogmatic trends in the field.
To use another world is like doing a tabula rasa on all the work of
the theologians. Experts know well the existence of the neoplatonist
theologies, and machine's theology is very close to them, and to all
those who have been in trouble working in that field in opposition
with the authorities.
So I dunno, you might try to suggest another word, but I am not sure
you will find one. i like using the word that people know, and you
need to be naive to believe that the theology of numbers will pretend
that some human is the son of god...
From 1970 to 1990, I have use the word "biology". Some peolle
criticized the work by saying it was theology, and using that word
prevents that easy critics. The I have used the word "psychology", but
this lead to more confusion. Both Cantor and Gödel used the word
theology i similar settting. Cantor even discussed its transfinite
with confessional theologians, and Gödel made implicitly clear that he
thought that Theology can be done in the hypothetical non confessional
way.
Then the use of the term theology, in expression like "machine's
theology" makes directly clear that I want to avoid the mechanist
antitheological attitude of the early mechanist french rationalist,
like Diderot, Sade and LaMettrie.
Bruno
Brent
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