On 09 Jan 2013, at 01:01, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/8/2013 12:25 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
Le me add some meat here
Nah. It's just your wishful thinking that everybody has to believe
in God.
All correct and self-introspective machine will believe in (some)
"God". Keep in mind that atheists usually believe in some primary
matter, which is a god-like entity, or a metaphysical hypothesis.
We can not reduce the concept of God to a boring principle that we
need to put somewhere. Like a ugly furniture inherited from the
grand-parents which for its sentimental value we have to keep and
locate somewhere, so that the familly visits show that you are a
well educated and respectful person. God is like the refligerator.
if you drop the old one, you need another.
That will come as a shock to ten million atheists in the U.S. as
well as those in Europe where they constitute a plurality of
religious opinion.
?
Why? because religion -or an extended notion of religion and
divinity- is deeply embedded in human nature. An objective study of
God includes an explanation of the subjective reality or the
resulting description is incomplete. if the reality is overall,
mental and divinity a neccesity, then the divinity is part of reality
For reasons that I detail below, God must be the absolute source of
meaning in all aspects. therefore it embodies the causation and
direction of what is "physical" as well as what is mental, personal
or moral and any else. Therefore, for the believer, God must be
personal, among other things, or else, the believer lacks a
foundation for the aspects that God does not includes.
Sounds like you've studied John Clark's "How to Become a Liberal
Theologian".
As I tried to show in robotic Truth, religion is a neccesity for
the operation of social beings. If there is no agreed meaning, that
is, goals, there is no inequivocal rules for social action. if
there are no inequivocal rules for social coordination,
descoordination and internal decomposition of the group follows.
For that matter religion is the core social instinct. it is as
deeply embedded in social nature as is other unique human traits,
like the white in the eyes, another social adaptation (facilitates
the reading of the emotional states and intentions of others).
I agreed with your point that social robots would develop social
values. But that doesn't mean they would have to invent a
supernatural robot who defined the values.
They will need some non sharable notion of truth to give a value to
values.
Probably the first religion was a cult of the person of the
recently dead leader of the tribe that was an example and a guide
to all the other members by emulation. That's why by history and by
neccesity a god, must be personal .
Actually the first religions embued animals and weather with
agency. There was no sharp line between science and religion
because agency, which could be manipulated by prayer and sacrifice,
was ubiquitous. Only later did the voice of the dead leader and
dreams become the basis of spiritualism and eventually religion with
shamans and priests.
A society with a impersonal Principle is full of smalller personal
gods in conflict, sometimes violent.
Which was the case in Mesopotamia around the time Judaism
developed. Yaweh at first insisted on being the top god, over all
the personal and household gods. Then later he evolved into the
only god - as explained by Craig A. James in "The God Virus".
Philosophers, Demagoges, scientis, rock stars, Soccer clubs. This
politheism becomes salient and agressive when there is no personal
God, or, at least, no Cesar or Zeus that make clear who is the
ultimate authority. A dialectic materialist society need a Lenin
and a Stalin because its impersonal Principle is not personal. The
abstract and incognoscible Allah need a ruthless political Mahoma.
The cult to the blood, the leader and the territory. These are the
almost mathematically inexorable traits of the primitive tribal
religion that we have by default in the genes. In the origin, the
cult to the leader, the public rites, The bloody sacrifices, All
are devoted to strengthen coordination and ensure collaboration,
and mutual recognition between the members. And the sharp
distinction between us and the others.
Yes, it must be sad for theists who long for the good old days of
the Aztecs, the Holy Inquisition, the Albigensian Crusade, the
unifying force of The Cultural Revolution,...
It is an intrinsic weakness of the theological field: to be perverted
by politics. But this is not a rational reason to abandon the field.
On the contrary, it is even more politicized when it is abandoned by
the academicians.
A membrane separates the entity from the outside and defines an
living unit that perdures in time, be it a cell or a society, in
the latter case, the membrane is created by religion, the physical
territory and the blood ties. In this sense, primitive religion
may be exigent, very exigent and dangerous. The bloody mesoamerican
religions, which grew unchallenged during centuries, with his
pyramids of skulls illustrate how a primitive religion evolves in
itself when not absorbed or conquered by a superior civilization.
That´s why the belief in a all transcendent God that created all
men at its image and dignity and incarnated in a person, Christ to
imitate, is the best use of this unavoidable and necessary part of
us called religion. In this sense, Christianity free us from the
obedience to the dictatorial earthly leaders, the bloody
sacrifices, the cult to the lebensraung (vital space) of the
tribe , or the supertribe, with its psycopathic treatment to "the
others".
And it gave us Hitler and The Final Solution, the slaughter of the
Cathars, the burning of witches, the Crusades,... "What shall we
do with...the Jews?...set fire to their synagogues or schools and
bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will
ever again see a stone or cinder of them." ---Martin Luther
Because nihilism is unbearable except as a self-steem booster by
means of a self-exhibition of strength for a certain time, as the
young russians did in the early XX century. If hihilism would not
be painful it would not be a matter of exhibition. Sooner or later
the nihilist has to choose between the suicide, that has a perfect
evolutionary sense, since someone isolated, with no guide to help
others in society is a social burden, and suicide is the social
apoptosis, by means of which the social body re-absorb the useless.
What makes you think an atheist is not part of a society (however
much you may wish it were so). 93% of the members of the National
Academy of Science are atheists. They don't seem much prone to
suicide or isolation or not helping others. In fact they are far
more help than those theists who prayed to cure polio and small pox.
Keep in mind that atheists are believers. Indeed, they share most
parts of the Aristotelian theology with the christians. Atheism is
only a slight variant of christianism, especially compared to the
mystics or the Platonists.
Bruno
Or else the , guided by its simple instints and devoid of the
experience and traditions of the past, and therefore with no
vaccine for the recurrent errors of humanity,
So Christianity is a kind of vaccine, one that activates the
skeptical immune system to save us from infection by theism. I can
buy that, although I think Santa Claus works too.
the unbeliever will reinvent again and again the primitive cults to
the earth the tiranic leader and the blood. Of course with the
fashionable decorations of our time; Probably some eco-globalist-
aborto-eugenesist cult with a greath leader that would suspend our
rights, for the good of humanity and the planet, of course.
The only recent eugeneist cult was that of the Nazis, founded by a
good Catholic boy. No wars have been fought or pogroms instigated
for ecological reasons or to allow women to choose abortions; but a
great many have been fought over theist dogma.
Brent
"Once you have backed into the faith corner, you have no
recourse against terror and repression in the name of religion,
no recourse against bigotry, demagoguery, misogyny, or abuse
posing as religion. You have no basis for criticism of cruel
religions. This is precisely because faith is not a matter of
evidence and analysis, not a matter of argument and criticism."
--- Patricia Churchland
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