On 1/10/2013 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
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.
It's not a person, it didn't create the world, it doesn't care what people do, it has not
dogma, no temples, no priesthood, no sacred writings. It's not like any god, except the
liberal theologians god which can be anything.
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).
But you've redefined 'God' (in the greek sense) so that anybody who believes anything is a
theist?
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,
How do you know that? Do they worship at a shrine of primary matter? Do they quote
primary matter as a reason for legislation?
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)).
It is arrogant and impolite to attribute implicit beliefs to those who disagree with you
in order to discredit them.
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".
I'm agnostic on everything if you mean not being absolutely certain. I just gave up
telling people who asked, that I was an agnostic because then they would assume I was
uncertain about the existence of their god, Yaweh, Jesus, Allah, Zeus,... when in fact I
was pretty certain their god didnt' exist. Since most of these people were theists, I
found it easier to just say, "I'm an atheist", because that succinctly conveys (to those
who respect the meaning of words) my lack of belief in their theist gods.
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.
No, they are not. Of course most physicists don't worry about 'what's fundamental,
mathematics or matter'. But among those that do think about it, I'd say more are close to
Tegmark than to Aristotle.
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.
I belong to the Ventura County Freethinkers, which has some fifty members almost all of
whom call themselves atheists. I'd say a only two or three match your idea of believing
in 'primary matter', but most of them haven't thought of it that deeply anyway. They just
know they don't believe in theism, the belief in a personal God. For many of them the
reasons more moral and ethical than epistemological or philosophical.
I think you are inventing secret opposition.
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.
Sure, because Christianity is a theism, as is Islam and Judaism and
Zoroastrianism.
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.
I don't know what 'their side' means. If it means Christianity is wrong, I think science
is on their side.
They don't allow the doubt and the scientific attitude on the fundamental question. They
already "know".
It's quite possible to know answers are wrong without knowing the right answer.
Brent
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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