On 2/4/2013 7:12 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 2:04 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 2/3/2013 7:20 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On 2/3/13, meekerdb<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
On 2/3/2013 8:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
It simpler to generalize the notion of God so that indeed
basically all
correct machines
believes in God, and in some theories question like "is God a
person" can
be an open
problem.
But you have a vocabulary problem related to the fact that you
cannot cut
with your
education which has impose to you only one notion of God.
Why should there be more than one notion designated by "God".
Do you not agree that there are multiple religions and each is free to
designate its own God or Gods? To choose one sect of one religion's
God as the standard God for all atheists to disbelieve in is
favoritism. Why do the atheists choose the Abrahamic God over the God
the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Zoroastrians, the Deists, the Platonists,
or any of the myriads of religions since lost to history?
Because that's the god of theism - hence a-theism.
So are you also an a-deist? What about an a-Brahmanist, or
a-Hyper-intelligent-simlatorist?
Probably - although I'm not informed on the latter.
You say it
is because it is the most popular. Even if that were so, Atheism
isn't about rejecting one God, it rejects all Gods.
Not at all. All the atheists I know allow that a deist god is more likely
to exist
than a theist god.
They still (I would think) put that probability less than 50%.
No doubt. Dawkins only places himself at 9 on a 1-to-10 scale of disbelief in the god of
theism.
You would have to
be quite an expert to disqualify every religion's (and indeed, every
person's) notion of God.
I don't have to 'disqualify' them (whatever that means); I just fail to put
any
credence in them.
How do you differentiate yourself from agnostics, who also fail to put any
credence in them?
Agnostic may mean giving equal roughly equal credence to every position. Agnostic may
also mean the position that nothing can be known about the existence of god(s).
The Abrahamic
religions use
the word to designate a particular notion: an omniscience,
omnipotent,
benevolent creator
person who wants us to worship him.
Not all do, which you failed to account for in your below probabilities.
Not all what do?
Not all Christians define God as an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent creator person
who wants us to worship him.
So what makes the Christians?
I just took the proportion of the world population that self identified as
Christian, Muslim, and Jew. The major remaining portions are non-believers
and Hindus.
Together their adherents constitute 54%
of those who
believe in a theist god. And if we take your view that atheists and
agnostics use the
same definition,
That is not my view. I am trying to ascertain what is the God that atheists disbelieve
in, and if it is one in particular (and not all of them, which is what I thought
most atheists believed (e.g. Richard Dawkins and John Clark say they believe in zero
Gods)), why have they chosen some particular religion's God instead of others? Are
there Gods atheists believe in but do not tell anyone about?
You seem to be confounding "disbelieve in" and "failing to believe in". To "believe in
zero gods" is ambiguous since it might mean asserting "There are no gods" or "There are no
gods that I believe in." Compare "There are no aliens on other planets" and "There are no
aliens on another planet that I believe in."
then 70% of people use that same meaning. If there's some
other notion,
why not call it something else.
The discordians have their own notion of Pope, as do the Catholics.
Who is anyone to say there is only one meaning of Pope?
That's not two different meanings any more that king is two different
notions
because there is more than one king.
They have different properties though. As is the case between Gods of various
religions. There are some nearly universal characteristics, but no two are identical.
You could even say, every Christian has a different understanding and view point of
what God is. Perhaps there are Gods in some religions which are not only consistent or
probable, but real. Should science not have some interest in their investigation
(especially if they are part of reality)?
Why then,
should there be only one meaning of God?
Because then we wouldn't know what "God" meant. Of course like many words
it may
refer to more than one thing and there may be some variations.
"Automobile" refers
to lots of different things, but they all have wheels, motive power, and
carry
people over surfaces. That doesn't mean you can call an aircraft carrier
and
automobile.
So then what are the universal properties of God? You seem to shy away from them and
prefer your own overly specific, self-inconsistent definition, because it is the one you
can most comfortably admit you disbelieve in.
And you seem to cling to an almost infinitely flexible non-specific and amorphous
application which can hardly even be called a definition (i.e. that which makes definite).
This is trivial though and I think we can do better. It is like a mathematician proving
there are no numbers that are prime and even and greater than 2, so the mathematician
decides he has proven all there is to prove and gives up deciding to advance the field
by proving anything else.
In showing that an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent God cannot exist, you end up
doing science and advancing the field of theology. You could prove logically some
possible properties of God are mutually inconsistent (e.g., God cannot be both
omnipotent and omniscient, or both omnipotent and omnibenevolent).
You can only prove it of God because it holds Fluberlast as well - it holds of anything
because the attributes are mutually inconsistent. So it's not specifically about "God".
And with that advancement in understanding you gain new insight into what God can be and
can alter the notion of it, just as the notion of Earth as a flat plane has changed.
This is not to say the word is meaningless. There are commonalities
between different religions and belief systems. In nearly all, it can
be said that God serves the role as an ultimate explanation. Whether
it is the Platonic God,
Can you cite Plato referring to such a being?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge
the Hindu God, the Sikh God, or the Arbrahamic
God, this property is almost universal. In this respect, it is
perfectly natural for Bruno to say under the arithmetical/CTM belief
system, God (the ultimate explanation) is arithmetical truth. Under
Aristotelianism, the ultimate explanation is matter (The buck stops
there), and so matter is the God of Aristotelianism.
Except that all those gods are persons. Arithmetical truth is (a) ill
defined
It cannot be defined.
and (b) not a person.
Bruno says this is not settled.
Then he shouldn't use a word that implies that it is.
Brent
Would we be better off had we abandoned the word "Earth" or "World"
merely because we discovered it is round instead of flat, instead of
amending our notion of what the "Earth" or "World" really is?
The Earth is defined ostensively. If we could define god(s) ostensively
then it
would make sense to say we discovered it's properties were different than
we had
supposed.
Which we would if theology were treated with a scientific attitude. Do you have any
objection to a scientific treatment of theology?
Not at all. I'm happy to have Mt. Olympus explored for signs of Zeus. Also I'm happy to
pursue knowledge of things more fundamental that may give a more comprehensive theory of
the world - but I don't call that 'theology' because that word has been defined by common
and academic usage to refer to the study of gods that are persons and religions that
worship them.
Brent
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