On 24 Nov 2013, at 21:08, John Mikes wrote:
Liz: your precise version (with Bruno's rounding it up) makes me
evoid to call myself an atheist:
An 'atheist' requires god(s) to DENY.
In my (rather agnostic) worldview there is no place (requirement)
for supernatural (whatever that may be) 'forces' to control "nature".
Especially that the idea that God controls everything might be a
prejudice or simplification. Most serious theologians, confesional or
not, are convinced by St-Thomas that God cannot be both omniscient and
omnipotent, and today good argument exists that God cannot be even
just omniscient. So Abramanic theologian can concentrate on some limit
toward omniscience, and if we restrict ourselves to arithmetic, this
leads to an interesting "non computational theory", which still can
play some key role in what machines can discover when looking inward
(in the 3p and 1p ways).
But the East and the neoplatonists provided less "Abramanic" God(s).
the most "non Abramanic God" is the inner God, which is a local
incarnation of the "outer God". It is the God who lost Itself in his
creation, and indeed get quickly to what it cannot control (like the
FPI), which will constitute Matter (*the* Indeterminate, in both
Aristotle and Plato, according to Plotinus).
I am so much agnostic that I find the statement 'God does not exist"
mainly impolite, as you never really know to whom you talk.
I feel reluctant to draw conclusions about 'nature' (everything -
beyond the physicists' view) based upon "what makes sense to us"
today. And I would ask Bruno to add to his 'Christian God' concept
Allah and the Jewish god(s?) -
Hmm... At the level of generality we are, we can simply by saying that
they are probably the same God.
John, as a scientist I am an agnostic, although I have to admit that
if we apply Theaetetus' definition of the knower to aritmetical or
mechanical provability, we can interpret the self-referential
discourse of the machine as an implicit act of faith.
What I mean is that, as a scientist I have to remain agnostic on God,
but "less agnostic" on the fact that machine's might believe
"correctly" in some God, in a very large sense of "transcendental
unknown truth".
he mentioned the Hindi ones briefly. All 'gods' are culturally
benevolent - preferring the 'good' and 'useful' for the praying
ones, e.g. annihilate their enemies, while THE SAME GOD is asked by
those same enemies to annihilate the prayee - both hoping to be heard.
Venezuelans, who discovered Tobacco, smoked to invoke the Canabo
Gods , which are the Gods of Anger, that you invite to annihilate your
enemies, with caution as they can annihilate you in the process.
Are those Gods *Good*? Well, in case your enemies are *Bad* that might
be helpful.
Here is the societal input:
murder is a sin, unless it is in the interest of society (war) when
it is the ultimate heroism (or: if it is to retaliate against the
infidel, when it paves the way into heaven.)
You kill one man, you are a murderer.
you kill thousands of men, you are a great soldier.
You kill all men, you are a a God.
(according to a french poet)
You know my God, John. It is just "truth". Not the one we might know,
but the one that we might be able to search, under the lamps.
I like Spudboy's argumentation.
Afterlife? I sent a little snap to Brent about two fetuses arguing
in the womb
whether there is life beyond birth?
Brent replied with Mark Twain's bon mot: 'Since he was in that
'afterlife' world for billions of years before he was born and did
not carry any adverse memories from there, he is not afraid to go
back after death.'
It is all in the same imagination where my mistake has its roots
when I said "if something "exists" in our mind then it surely DOES
exist (there). Accepting (in Bruno's sharp view) the existence of a
mind.
I am adversive to a court-like processing of an 'eternal(???) soul
based on a short life-span (maybe only 10 years? or 1 day?) with a
verdict similar to how the injustice-systems work in the diverse
societal setups and 'imagined' for my belief-system the complexity
of 'us' (all living/non living creatures) falling apart at death -
maybe into portions only - and joining other complexities not fallen
apart.. Elements may stay and act in the new environment - a source
of spiritism experienced. It embraces the reincarnation and all
ghost stories without the usual explanations that may scare us. No
demons haunting.
Some says that if you don't love their God you are sent in Hell. But
how can we love a God spontaneously in that case. It like a confession
under torture: it is invalid (like all argument based on authority).
God, the scientific notion, is the "reality" we hope for, which I call
truth, not knowing if that exists or make sense. That's why I search.
Evolution? Not in my views with a connotation of striving for
'better' or 'final'...
Hmm... "evolution" is just a way to be locally satisfy, this means in
general a life with some quality, usually related to a promise of such
life, or better, for your kids. There is no "better", but there is an
expansion and exploration of physical and non physical realities (like
the arithmetical reality).
Changes occur to comply with given ci5rcumstances and capabilities
in RELATIONS (unknown). Whatever can - will survive and the changes
- better or worse - go on. If a 'god' pre-planned an evolution, why
are we not started with the end-product? Why the zillion
extinctions? Why the unfathomable variety?
Logicians can explain why an unfathomable (by humans, but also by all
consistent or correct machines) variety appears in arithmetic.
After Gödel, Platonia, to make sense, cannot be perfect. There are
infinite branches of self-correcting procedures with uncomputable
limits.
(Again a human-logic stance - ha ha).
My wife, however, embraces the view of 'us' kept by 'zookeepers' in
this universe for purposes unknown - does not share my ignorance
and dreams about a 'purpose' of our being here. Not only by nice
dreams.
I think your wife has a good intuition, at least with respect to
computationalism. It is consistent that some of our possible
descendant kept their ancestor experiences emulated in their machines,
and other one, in this coherent dreams, for purpose unknown.
And with comp, consistency is enough to belong to the indeterminacy
domain. (Indeed, there are a priori too much dreams, and we have to
understand the presence of some arithmetical renormalization (like the
[]<>p should provided for those who followed a bit of the "machine's
interview")).
With comp, many infinities can be useful fictions for the machine,
where the "use" might be related with universal self study of the
"Universe" or "God".
There are reasons why arithmetical truth can lead to infinite ladders
of machines first person surprises (good and bad).
Bruno
John Mikes
On Sun, Nov 24, 2013 at 4:06 AM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote:
To be exact it's the belief that no gods exist, i.e. that "theism"
is wrong. But otherwise it does seem to echo Aristotle and Plato, at
least as far as I understand them.
On 24 November 2013 04:56, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 23 Nov 2013, at 14:05, Roger Clough wrote:
Atheism is wish fulfillment.
Yes. Notably. I agree.
It is the fuzzy belief that the Christian God does not exist,
together with the belief in the Christian "Matter".
The debate between Atheists and Christians hides the deeper debate
between Aristotle and Plato.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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