On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > I feel like you give credit to the definition of theology given by the > Roman Church, instead of using the term in its more general sense, which is > well illustrated by the non necessary exclusively christian history. >
I was a firm believer in that church until the age of 12 and even now I don't think it's significantly stupider than most other religions, it may have brought more evil to the world (although Muslims are working very hard to catch up) but that is mainly just because its been around longer than most. > Theology is the search of truth > Not if the truth is something the theologian does not like, such as the truth that a omnipotent omniscient being (aka God) does not exist. Like scientists theologians are often wrong but unlike scientists theologians are always certain; science has humility theology has none. > Atheism is a respectable belief. But it is dishonest to pretend that it > is not a religious belief. > That is true provided of course that you are free to define the words "God" and "atheism" to mean anything you want then to mean, but if you do that then atheism is also a banana. > Atheist accepts the definition of God given by the Church, > Before you can have a meaningful argument with someone you have to at least agree about what you're arguing about, otherwise the discussion degenerates into mush; that's why the endless debates over the "free will" noise never leads to anything, people go on and on about whether people have "free will" or not but never stop to ask themselves what exactly they're talking about. I say that "God" as defined by Christians or Muslims or Jews or any other Church franchise does not exist and that's why I call myself a atheist. If you redefine the word "God" to mean something very very different from what those enterprises do (something more powerful than me, a higher power, the unknown, the universe, a oak tree, a vague mystical blob, etc etc) then I may or may not be a atheist depending on which of the potentially infinite number of redefinitions of the word "God" you are using. For that reason and in the interests of clarity I generally don't say things like "a yellow God knocked down that tree" instead I say "a yellow bulldozer knocked down that tree". > All propositions about machines can be translated into proposition about > numbers. Yes, including a machine that keeps talking about a omnipotent being who delights in tricking the human race by pretending he does not exist. > > You can defined science, or terrestrial science, by the set of provable > proposition, and (proper) theology by the set of true arithmetical sentence > (non provable by the machine). > So theology is the study of stuff you can't study. If theologians ever went on strike how could you tell? John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
