John,
On 08 Jul 2013, at 23:03, John Mikes wrote:
After some million years of 'mental' development this animal arrived
at the 'mental' fear. Usurpers exploited it by creating superpowers
to target it with assigned intent to help, or destroy. The details
were subject to the 'founders' benefit of enslaving the rest of the
people into their rule.
Such unquestionable tyranny lasted over the past millennia and it
takes a long, hard, dangerous work to get out of it. The USA
Constitution (18th c.) stepped ahead in SOME little political and
economical ways, yet only a tiny little in liberating the people
from the religious slavery: a so called 'separation' of state and
church (not clearly identified to this day).
The problem is that once we separate religion from state, people still
continue to be "religious" (authoritative) on something else. But it
was a progress. Now we know that we have to separate also health from
the state.
Th French revolution similarly targetted the religion, yet today -
after numerous vocal enlightened minds - the country is still
divided between Christian and Islamic fundamentalist trends.
Yes (even more clearly when including atheists in the christians).
In my view an 'atheist requires a god to disbelieve (deny?).
Indeed. Many atheists seems to take more seriously the Christian Gods
than most christians theologians, who can seriously debate on the
Aristotle/Plato difference.
Matter is figmentous and the 'origins' are beyond our reach.
It is certainly beyond any form of certainty, but simple theories
(conjecture, ides, hypotheses) might exist. In particular the idea
that we are machine can explain the origin of mind and matter
appearances, in a testable way, except for the origin of the natural
numbers which have to remain a complete mystery beyond reach of all
machines.
Physical is a level of human development and there is infinite
unknown - unknowable - we don't even guess.
OK.
Just musing
Thanks for that,
Bruno
John M
On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 4:03 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 08 Jul 2013, at 19:53, meekerdb wrote:
On 7/8/2013 1:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 08 Jul 2013, at 02:45, meekerdb wrote:
On 7/7/2013 6:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 07 Jul 2013, at 07:28, meekerdb wrote:
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/06/god_is_not_great_christopher_hitchens_is_not_a_liar/
I love Christopher Hitchens. I agree with many points. He is more an
anticlerical than an atheist to me ...
Everybody called him an atheist. He called himself an atheist. I
think you just don't like the term.
"atheism" is different in America and in Europa, although I have
realized now that some atheists in America might be similar, but not
Hitchens. Many people confuse agnosticism and atheism. Some atheists
maintains the confusion to hide that they are believers (in "matter"
and in the non existence of God).
I don't know any atheists who are shy about their belief that matter
exists and God doesn't.
That is the problem.
Many people, and dictionaries, confuse agnosticism="that whether or
not God exists is unknown"
That's the usual mundane sense of the word.
with agnosticism="that whether or not God exists is impossible to
know".
That's a technical view by some philosophers.
I agree with Sam Harris that "atheist" is not a very useful
appellation because it only describes someone in contrast to
"theist". It just means they fail to believe in a God who is a
person and whose approval one should seek.
Pebbles and chimpanzees fails too, but are not atheists in any
reasonable sense. Most vindicative atheists really believe that god
does not exist, and then they believe in a primitively material
universe, even a Boolean one (without being aware of this in
particular).
Also, many religions and theologies have other notion of Gods.
As Harris points out we don't invent words like awarmist to describe
one who fails to believe there is global warming or anummerist to
describe someone who's not sure about the existence of numbers.
Yes. I heard a catholic bishop, taking about a book written by a
Belgian atheist, saying that the atheists are "our allies", "they
keep advertising for us and (our) God" Then, at least around here,
"Matter" is such a dogma that you can get problem when you dare to
doubt it, "apparently" --- because they don't practice dialog, and
ignore the embarrassing questions.
They don't practice science in the matter. For them you are just mad
if you doubt ... basically the same theology of matter than the
christians. Greek theology is allowed to be studied by historians,
not by mathematicians. The atheists I know fight more the agnostic
(in the mundane sense) than the radicals of any religion. Political
correctness makes easy to defend 2+2=5, and impossible to defend
2+2=4.
We are all believers, and when a machine pretend to be a non
believer, it means "I know", and she will impose her religion to
you, by all means.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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