Le 17-juil.-12, à 19:42, John Clark a écrit :
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
My parents were atheists during my high-school, but eventually became
agnostic, notably because they discover that most atheists around here
were quite dogmatic, and that they wereimitating the worst of the
clergy (in some private secret club).
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.
Mystic christians, jewish Cabbala, muslims sufi, are on a par with the
neoplatonists. The others, and most atheists, have followed Aristotle
theology, with a real creation and a variety of creators (including no
creator).
The real theological debate is on that distinction.
> 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.
That is a symptom due to the separation of science and theology. And
the atheist "scientists" I met, who were probably manipulated (which
makes things more complex) made clear that physicalism is not something
you can reasonably doubt about. That is a total lack of humility. They
never accept to meet me even for a second, so I find them also quite
irrational. They never wrote any report, and seems to defame my
contribution by attributing to me statements, under my back, that I
have never done, like the usual "there is no physical universe" for
example.
Of course real scientist (agnostic) exists and the work has been
presented without any trouble. Troubles came back when I got a price in
Paris, which trigger the defamation, and not the possible refutation
and critics I was expecting for.
> 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.
Let g be the proposition that God exists. And let me be the proposition
that Matter (primitive matter) exists.
Then, by the most common definition of atheism, atheists are doubly
believer as they verify, with B for "believes": B~g and Bm.
Science is or should be agnostic on both ~Bg and ~Bm (and ~B~g, and
~B~m).
> 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.
Well ... you are the one who continue to mock free-will, despite many
of us have given new precise, and compatibilist, definition of it, and
you do this without making precise that you limit yourself to the non
sensical notion.
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.
But even among them many different conception exists.
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".
OK. So I tell you that I am using Plato's conception of God, as he
handle it in the Parmenides and Timaeus, and that Hirchberger sums up
by saying that Plato's notion of God is "Truth". The theology of the
machine M is the set of all true arithmetical sentences involving M, as
opposed to the only sentences involving M that M can prove. It is the
accessible truth by a machine that a machine cannot prove. This
provides an arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus (look at my paper
on my front url page) for more on this. It makes sense to better
appreciate how comp is closer to Plato than to Aristotle in theology.
Bruno
PS I have connection troubles, so I might take time to comment.
Yes, including a machine that keeps talking about a omnipotent being
who delights in tricking the human race by pretending he does not
exist.
So theology is the study of stuff you can't study. If theologians ever
went on strike how could you tell?
John K Clark
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