On 07 Mar 2012, at 18:24, meekerdb wrote:
On 3/7/2012 5:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 06 Mar 2012, at 18:59, John Clark wrote:
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
...
>> God needs to be a person.
> In some tradition, and it is a mystery why you stick on those
tradition, given that you criticize them so vigorously.
Because "God" is just a word
It is not *necessarily* just a word. There are common pattern in
the use of that word.
But the common pattern is that "God" designates a person. Those who
have used it to mean some pervasive force or impersonal ground of
being have generally done so to avoid persecution for being a-
theists. But I doubt that is a problem in Brussels.
Indeed. Some atheists persecutes or harass agnostic people, here.
Since I used the word "theology" it is bit harder, because they
pretend publicly to be open minded (which they are not). Some belongs
to non transparent sort of sects.
and morons fools and some of the most evil people who have ever
walked the Earth have mutilated that word far beyond any hope of
repair.
That's your opinion.
Language evolves and like biological Evolution it almost never
goes backwards and retraces it's steps, let me give a example: The
word "gay" means happy and until just a few decades ago that's all
it meant, but today if I use that word just to indicate that
somebody is happy I am issuing a invitation to be misunderstood. I
have a even better example, technically the word "pedophile" means
a lover of children, well there is nothing wrong with that in fact
it's a virtue, people should like children, but today
it means more than that and its far too late for the word to be
rehabilitated, so I would never dream of calling someone a
"pedophile" unless I had rock solid evidence they were a monster.
In the same way the word "God" has gone too far, it has much too
much baggage to be rehabilitated now. So use another word, there
are lots to choose from.
I follow often Plotinus, which "already" avoided bot the term "God"
and the term "theology". I use "ONE" instead, and I have used the
word "biology" and "psychology". But atheists (from some club) were
not glad with the result, and critize the wholme field, so it
motivated me to do the same thing than the student of Plotinus, to
use the word that people use in the field. You make your point for
everyday word like "gay" and "pedophile", but not for the technical
field "theology".
I don't know of anyone besides you who considers "theology" a
technical field or works in it as such. My dictionary of philosophy
defines "theology" as "the study of God and God's relation to the
world." It defines "God" as the "the highest ultimate being,
assumed by theology on the basis of authority, revelation, or
faith" [Dictionary of Philosophy, Dagobert Runes].
Good definition. They forget logic, though.
They also assume that we don't need faith to believe in a primary
physical reality, which means that your dictionary take for granted
Aristotle metaphysics. By not using the word theology, when doing
theology, I would become an accomplice of those who, by mocking the
field, let it in the hands of the political authorities, including the
atheists one, which are less transparant.
I might be a neoplatonist believer, Brent, or a neoneoplatonist
believer, where neoneoplatonism is neoplatonism reconsidered through
comp and Church thesis. Plotinus chapter on "Number" announces already
that type of move, like Proclos' notion of henads.
> some, like Richard Dawkins presents science as if it was a sort
of alternative, which makes science into pseudo-science
I have no idea what your complaint with Richard Dawkins is, I've
read all his books and think he's terrific.
My problem with people like Dawkins and Stenger, which I have read
more recently, is that they oppose science to theology, but by
doing that they avoid the theological question, which means that it
is the field, and not the word, which makes problem fro them. It
shows also that they have (unconscious, perhaps) theological
interpretation of their field. For example, they never say that
they *assume* the existence of a primary physical universe, they
dismiss the mind-body problem, they dismiss the mind problem, and
the body problem.
There is some truth in that. Stenger sometimes muses that maybe
consciousness doesn't really exist -
Brr...
and I think he is motivated to consider this because it's hard to
fit into his preferred model of "atoms and the void".
Yes, that the problem with the physicalists. They hide or minimize
data since 1500 years, when they don't fit with their intimate
religious, I mean pseudo-religious, convictions.
They talk like if science as decided between Aristotle and Plato
kind of theology. This is just arrogant.
in fact, books like Stenger's and Dawkins' one, fuel not just the
pseudo-religion, but its naive and fundamentalist components.
I don't know Dawkins, but I do know Vic Stenger and have helped edit
his books, so I will come to his defense. Vic is quiet explicit
about what God he argues against: "In the present book I will go
much further and argue that by this moment in time science has
advanced sufficiently to be able to make a definitive statement on
the existence or non-existence of a God having the attributes that
are traditionally associated with the Judeo-Christian-Islamic
God." [God the Failed Hypothesis, Stenger 2007]
Science cannot make statements about what exist and what does not
exist, still less definitive statements.
I might accept a work comparing two theologies, like aristotelian
physicalism and platonist mathematicalism, not a work comparing and
opposing science with theology, because that hides the fact that
theology was, and can be again, a science. It is just a question of
modest attitude, curiosity, and attempt toward clarity.
They makes people believe that the debate is between atheism and
religion,
No, it's between atheism and theism. Religion is too broad and ill-
defined to debate.
I am OK with this. I feel to be near Plotinus who was rather cold
about theurgy. His student introduced theurgy but it seems to me this
was a move to gain some mass popularity against the rapidly growing
influence of the Christians. Before Roma.
But, like Plotinus, I don't condamn it. It might have a social role,
and would the greek introduced this at the start, they might have been
more prepared to resist against the use of authoritative argument. But
they could have also fall in the theological trap of bringing
themselves such type of argument (or letting other do that). So I
don't know yet what to think about this.
but they agree on the theological main point,
I don't think so. Dawkins has said that theology is a discipline
with no subject matter.
And not Stenger? Once you said that God is a failed hypothesis, like
he says in the subtitle of his book, and once you agree that theology
is the science of God(s), then you don't leave much place for the
subject matter.
and hides the more serious question of choosing between Plato's
theology and Aristotle one. Not only atheists do theology, but they
defend the same theology as their opponents, except on the
superstition.
Refer to the definition above. God is superstition and He is the
subject matter of theology.
In our culture. For political reason.
My work did annoy some fundamentalist atheists nearby, well before
I use the term "theology".
Why?
Because they are dogmatic believer in Aristotle primary matter.
They don't allow any doubt on the subject.
It is more because I have problem with atheists that I use that
term than the contrary.
So you agree it is misleading that is why you use it!?
No, because before people understand the work, they confuse it with
atheism. Mechanism is the traditional mind theory of the materialist,
and they can take a long time to get the point that I try to explain
(at least), that is, that mechanism and materialism are not compatible.
By saying at once "machine's theology", things are definitely clearer,
and this prevents the main surprises in the reasoning process.
many people who believe they were atheists understood better they
were not atheists but agnostic. This helps a lot.
It depends on that god(s) your talking about. I used to tell
everyone I was an agnostic because I could think of gods that might
exist. But this caused trouble because they always assumed I was
agnostic about their God, a magical father figure. So I started
telling people I was an atheist, except in philosophical debates
where "god" could be defined.
If you accept it in philosophical debate, why not accept it even more
in technical scientific research.
It makes even more sense when you see that science can bring back the
original notion of God or the greek: the truth we bet on and research .
To understand the mind-body problem it is necessary to be agnostic
on both the first and the third Aristotelian Gods (the Initiator,
and Matter).
Also, it is by reading good books in Theology, that I made sense of
what the ideally correct universal machine explains already about
itself, like the book by Jean Trouillard "L'Un et l'âme selon
Proclos" (the ONE and the Soul according to Proclos). I read
Proclos' treatise on theology before reading Plotinus.
In fact, almost all so called atheist, become agnostic, or realized
they were agnostic, when understanding that with comp the mind body
problem is a scientific problem. We just don't know the answer, and
atheists are often dishonest by pretending that science is on their
side.
Or they may just have a different meaning of "theism" than you - the
one that's in all the dictionaries.
To be in a dictionary is relative to culture, and constitute a sort of
argument per authority. That might only reflect a trend, which is the
one I deplore, and which is the one which perpetuates the lack of
rigor in the fundamental science.
Honest scientists just don't know, and before we get a solution of the
mind-body problem, it is simpler and less damaging to use the words in
their largest sense possible, and not in the sense imposed by
politicians (like the pope) since a very long time.
Stenger and Dawkins are right in their critics of the naive answer to
some deep question, but why to abandon the questions?
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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