On 09 Jan 2013, at 20:17, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/9/2013 2:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
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.
That is dishonest in two ways. First, primary matter is not "god-
like" except in your idiosyncratic redefinition of "god" (c.f. John
Clark's "How to Become a Liberal Theologian").
Why? Nobody has "seen" primary matter, but the believer in it usually
attribute it a fundamental role in our existence. It was the third God
or many Platonists (the most famous one being Aristotle).
Of course it is not like the Christian God. Now the christian God is
already very different for some american and european Christians.
That atheists usually believe in some primary matter, is
irrelevant. It is not a necessary part of being an atheist. You
might as well say atheists usually drink beer - which is equally true.
I was just saying that many, if not all, atheists are already
"believer" in some sort of God (in the greek sense, not in the Roman
sense).
When atheists judge that there is no "God" (none at all, not even
taoist one, in my neighborhood) they implicitly make primary matter
into "the" God, and worst, they believe this explains everything,
which can make them quite sectarian, arrogant and impolite (and acting
like in the inquisition (actually much worst)).
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.
What does 'truth' have to do with values? Do I love my children
because of some 'truth'?
Yes. the truth that you have children, for example.
A sharable notion of 'true' is needed in order to communicate and
cooperate and effect changes in a shared world.
OK.
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.
Have you not considered that this is because it is a wholly
imaginary field invented especially to augment politics and social
control (c.f Craig A. James "The God Virus")?
I have actually done that in my youth, but I have stopped to believe
this. All field can be perverted, but more so for the theological
field because it touches deeply our global view on reality, and is
full of non-communicable propositions.
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.
It is political by construction and it attracts academicians who
want to have political effects.
In the university based on a conventional religion. Scientific
theology is simply not part of the curriculum since 1500 years, in
*any* university.
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.
Thatæ„€ 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.
Mere assertion. I'm an atheist
I think that american put "agnostic" in atheism. If you are a real
atheist, believer in primary matter and believer in the non-existence
of any God, then you are an Aristotelian believer.
and I'm quite willing to consider your ontology based on computation.
That's nice, and show that you are agnostic on primary matter, which
makes you a very special sort of "atheist". You should meet my
"friends".
Some atheists describe my work as super-atheism, as all Aristotelian
Gods are refuted, somehow. But they are usually not even aware of the
other conceptions of God and reality.
Other physicists I know like Tegmark's idea or Wheeler's "It from
bit" and many work on information based physics. None that I know
hold primary matter as dogma that they "believe" even if they think
it's the best current model.
Tegmark and Wheeler are the closer to comp, and are rather exceptional.
You seem to be unaware of the many atheist sects. Many are secret and
non transparent. I think you might never have met fundamentalist
atheists.
Those that are atheists, and that's almost all of them, assume there
is no personal agency controlling the world, as a working hypothesis
- but they would give up that if there were good evidence. All this
is in strong contrast to Christianity and the other theisms, which
require dogmatic belief in a personal superbeing. You are just
slandering straw men.
You oppose atheism and christianism. I oppose Aristotle and Plato
theologies. From that points of view, European Atheists are more
fundamentalist than European Christian, because they pretend that
science is on their side, and they mock (to say the least) and hide
any argument which might generate a doubt on this. They don't allow
the doubt and the scientific attitude on the fundamental question.
They already "know".
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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