On 7/18/2012 3:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Not for the atheists nearby. They vindicate that the believe that
there is no God.
You need to distinguish what you mean by "God". When written
capitalized as a proper noun it refers to a person/being who created
the world and wants to be obeyed and worshiped, i.e. the god of
theism.
But that is the problem, indeed. Atheists nearby disagree with
themselves on this.
What you describe is simply agnosticism. I know in the US that some
atheists includes the agnostic in their camp, but it makes the
position confusing.
No, what is confusing is your redefining "God" to mean whatever is
fundamental - a theological move made popular by Paul Tillich.
Yes, there is a long tradition to look at theology in a way which does
not refer too much to the authoritative use of the words.
"Agnostic" means inability to know. It is the position of those who
claim that it is impossible to know whether God exists or not.
I disagree with this. You are right, historically, but it is not the
sense commonly used today.
So technically I am both an agnostic (since I allow that it is
possible that some deist-like god might exist in an unknowable way)
and an atheist (because I am reasonably confident that no theist God
exists). But I usually tell people I'm and atheist, because if I
tell them I'm an agnostic they assume that I am agnostic about their
theist god and they proceed to try to convert me.
In such context I can do the same, but to explain how physics arise for
the numbers, I use and refer to more serious contribution of
theologians.
"God" as "truth" is very useful (although it has its problem), because
almost everyone agree that "truth" might encompass their own belief. Ig
od has creates the world, then "God has create the world" is TRUE.
Likewise, if "the physical universe" is all there is, then "the
physical universe is all there is " is TRUE. Both proposition are
theological/metaphysical. But again, that word "true" is just a pointer
too.
In computer science theology is given by Tarski minus Gödel, and it
gives a testable theory because matter is defined as a particular sort
of hypostases (in a sense slightly more general than in Plotinus).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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