On 06 Aug 2012, at 16:31, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/6/2012 1:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I agree. In fact denying God is a way to impose some other God. I
don't think we can live more than one second without some belief in
some God.
I disagree. We live very well just assuming 3-space and time and
material bodies and people (including ourselves). That is what we
all bet on and evolution has built into us. We may hypothesize
different fundamental ontologies, but it's not necessary and it's
certainly not necessary to *believe in* them.
We have a problem of vocabulary. I define "belief" by assumptions and/
or derivation from assumption.
I say that all self-observing machine has to be theological for they
are confronted to truth which are not at the level of the basic
assumption, but that they can still, or have to, assume to be true at
some meta-level, with some faith. Like when saying yes to a
computationalist doctor, or just praying/hoping for our own sanity.
The trick is probably in the "including yourself", which is richer
than a basic local assumption like space and the moon.
And the question is not about believing this or that, but in making a
theory coherent with the facts and our currently favorite theory,
comp :). Once you agree that physicalism is problematic, God is a good
name for whatever is the reason of our conscious existence. You can
call it the ONE, or the Tao, you can call it how you like, because by
definition, it has no name, no definite pointer, nor definitions (like
the physical universe, btw).
Only Atheists and Christians define GOD by the Christian or Abramanic
GOD, but the notion is much older than that, and has always been
discussed by reasonable people, even if they needs to hide, or to be
cautious, for cannabis-like reasons (i.e. the exploitation by some
others of lies and the fear selling).
And the Atheists and Christians take for granted the "creation", which
is not a rational nor justifiable scientific attitude (just a good
methodological simplification).
No problem if atheists could agree that they are doing theology or
metaphysics, in case they reify the object of that methodology, when
situating the creation in the primitive realm. The problem is only for
those who seem to ignore that fact. They confuse truth and opinion.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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