On 30 Nov 2013, at 23:33, meekerdb wrote:
On 11/30/2013 10:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Brent,
I hope you don't mind I re-answer this.
On 28 Nov 2013, at 21:19, meekerdb wrote:
I can conceive of (with apologies to H. L. Mencken), Agdistis or
Angdistis, Ah Puch, Ahura Mazda, Alberich, Allah, Amaterasu, An,
Anansi, Anat, Andvari, Anshar, Anu, Aphrodite, Apollo, Apsu, Ares,
Artemis, Asclepius, Athena, Athirat, Athtart, Atlas, Baal, Ba
Xian, Bacchus, Balder, Bast, Bellona, Bergelmir, Bes, Bixia
Yuanjin, Bragi, Brahma, Brent, Brigit, Camaxtli, Ceres, Ceridwen,
Cernunnos, Chac, Chalchiuhtlicue, Charun, Chemosh, Cheng-huang,
Clapton, Cybele, Dagon, Damkina (Dumkina), Davlin, Dawn, Demeter,
Diana, Di Cang, Dionysus, Ea, El, Enki, Enlil, Eos, Epona,
Ereskigal, Farbauti, Fenrir, Forseti, Fortuna, Freya, Freyr,
Frigg, Gaia, Ganesha, Ganga, Garuda, Gauri, Geb, Geong Si,
Guanyin, Hades, Hanuman, Hathor, Hecate (Hekate), Helios, Heng-o
(Chang-o), Hephaestus, Hera, Hermes, Hestia, Hod, Hoderi, Hoori,
Horus, Hotei, Huitzilopochtli, Hsi-Wang-Mu, Hygeia, Inanna, Inti,
Iris, Ishtar, Isis, Ixtab, Izanaki, Izanami, Jesus, Juno, Jehovah,
Jupiter, Juturna, Kagutsuchi, Kartikeya, Khepri, Ki, Kingu, Kinich
Ahau, Kishar, Krishna, Kuan-yin, Kukulcan, Kvasir, Lakshmi, Leto,
Liza, Loki, Lugh, Luna, Magna Mater, Maia, Marduk, Mars, Mazu,
Medb, Mercury, Mimir, Min, Minerva, Mithras, Morrigan, Mot, Mummu,
Muses, Nammu, Nanna, Nanna (Norse), Nanse, Neith, Nemesis,
Nephthys, Neptune, Nergal, Ninazu, Ninhurzag, Nintu, Ninurta,
Njord, Nugua, Nut, Odin, Ohkuninushi, Ohyamatsumi, Orgelmir,
Osiris, Ostara, Pan, Parvati, Phaethon, Phoebe, Phoebus Apollo,
Pilumnus, Poseidon, Quetzalcoatl, Rama, Re, RheaSabazius,
Sarasvati, Selene, Shiva, Seshat, Seti (Set), Shamash, Shapsu,
Shen Yi, Shiva, Shu, Si-Wang-Mu, Sin, Sirona, Sol, Surya, Susanoh,
Tawaret, Tefnut, Tezcatlipoca, Thanatos, Thor, Thoth, Tiamat,
Tianhou, Tlaloc, Tonatiuh, Toyo-Uke-Bime, Tyche, Tyr, Utu, Uzume,
Vediovis, Venus, Vesta, Vishnu, Volturnus, Vulcan, Xipe, Xi Wang-
mu, Xochipilli, Xochiquetzal, Yam, Yarikh, YHWH, Ymir, Yu-huang,
Yum Kimil and Zeus. But I see no reason to believe any of them
exist.
So the question is: do you see a reason to disbelieve all of them?
I didn't say I "disbelieved", I said I saw no reason to believe in
them.
But that is agnosticism. Not atheism. We might have only a vocabulary
problem. All the atheists I know are typically NOT agnostic.
I *fail* to believe in them. I think of "belief" as admitting
degrees. I disbelieve in them FAPP, i.e. if I have to act I will
act as if they didn't exist. But I cited the list to contradict
your idea that conceiving of gods makes it harder to disbelieve in
God.
I have never develop that idea (did I made a typo?). I am saying the
exact contrary. It is NOT conceiving a God, which makes harder to
disbelief in it.
I think it is the other way around; it's harder to disbelieve in
something undefined.
That's my exact point, and that is the reason why science should be
agnostic before having more light on the mind-body problem and on the
origin of the physical universe.
Which makes me wonder how you can be so dogmatic that fundamental
matter does not exist?
I am not dogmatic. All I do is providing an argumlent that IF comp is
correct, then Aristotelian primitive matter becomes a phlogiston-of-
the-gap. I show that such a notion of matter fails to explain the very
knowledge that we can have of matter (and mind). I am only reducing
the mind-body problem, or the "hard problem of consciousness" to the
problem of justifying the belief in physics from the belief in
arithmetic (or Turing-equivalent).
What if the list just missed the one that exists?
As far as I know, honestly, it seems to me that only Ganesh, or
Ganesha, is incompatible with comp.
I really love Ganesh, though, perhaps for that very reason. When
kid, Ganesh made his father angry and the angry father cut Ganesh's
head, and threw it away. Her mother was *very* angry, and ordered
the father do find a new head quickly, and the father, in the
hurry, cut the head of of the first elephant passing by, and that
is why Ganesh has an elephant head (which reminds me of the
cuttlefish which I love even more).
I guess you see the problem with comp. It is a version of the brain-
exchanged thought experience. But is it really contradictory with
comp? That's needs the thought experiences with (degrees of)
amnesia, and addressing the question who are we and how many person
really exist.
But how could I argue about Ohyamatsumi or RheaSabazius, Tlaloc? I
would need to study their stories to conclude.
Also, it looks that list misses the divinities that you can met by
smoking some herb, like the four kanobo Gods, and Daunarani, ...
with tobacco, or simply Maria, you know, the Mother of God, that
you can meet with Salvia (according to the Christian Mazatecs).
There is no algorithm capable of deciding of two machines computes
or not the same function, so you can imagine the difficulties with
the nameable non machines, or gods and goddesses.
And the big one, cannot be in such a list, I guess.
We might try to decide on a definition of "atheism", as that
notion is very unclear, and I have rarely obtain a definition
on which atheists agreed.
It's as clear as the negation of 'theist'.
But "theist" is not clear.
My point exactly.
But if you agree that "theist" is not clear, you agree that
"atheist" is not clear either.
But "theist" is only unclear because you suppose that you can cite
some ancient philosopher as *really* defining "theism". I accept
the modern theory of dictionaries that meanings are defined by
usage; and the usage of "God" is a superperson who created the
world, wants to be worshipped, and judges, rewards and punishes.
The "modern" definition is done in a obscurantist period where science
and theology have been artificially separated by people for reason of
power. I take the definition of those who invented science, and which
included all from of fundamental reflexions, including the reflexion
on the origin of "reality".
It creates an opposition where I see beliefs everywhere, and good
willing people trying to understand each others, mixed with people
who insult instead.
I have many sympathy for many atheists, and I share with them
important ideas, like no artificial magic, occam razor,
rationalism, and the anticleralism, and the "anti-autoritarism" (of
the first one), but they get trapped in* believing* they have
solved the theological question, or trapped in the deny that there
was even a question, leading to a form of "don't ask", which slow
down the possible progresses, and becomes an autoritarist meme by
itself.
Some identify "God" with the God of their own culture. In
science, we try to get a concept as independent of human and
culture as possible.
I use "God" in the greek sense of Truth (the one that we can
search about us, or hope or fear, in life and afterlife,
whatever it is).
Except nobody here is speaking Greek. And the Greeks had plenty
of gods that had nothing to do with truth; in fact they were
given to deception.
I was of course alluding to the greek (neo)platonists. They did
invented the God used by both the abramanic cultures (even if
terribly deformed, notably by the abandon of science about it,
and the use of authoritative arguments, by Christians, Muslims,
and perhaps by the Jewish (with Maimonides, to some extent).
Christianity, specifically Aquinas and Augustine, tried to merge
Greek philosophy into the Jewish Messianic religion of
Christianity. But the abrahamic religions owe far more to the
Babylonian, Egyptian, and Zoroastrian religions than to Greek.
OK. But let us not confuse the terrestrial implementation of the
religious process and the true relations that machines can have
with truth.
But you are exactly the person confusing them in your writing (if
not your thoughts) by using language of religions to express simple
mathematical ideas.
because since Gödel we have discovered that arithmetical truth
transcend all machines. before we were thinking that eventually we
might identify provable and true, but today, as the greek intuited, we
know that truth (even in the apparently limited domain of the numbers)
escape *all* theories and all *machine*. So with comp, the simple
"truth" get a necessarily transcendental character, and this explain
that Plato was right on this: truth is a transcendental (theological)
notion.
I cannot meta-identify truth and God, because those notion are a
priori different. It just happens that IF we assume comp, THEN truth
behaves like Plato's notion of God. Only the day the vast majority
practice or believe in comp, we might use "truth" in the place of God.
Before that it would be dishonest. Likewise, if comp is refuted, and
some solid argument is given that the material reality is fundamental,
we can use "physical universe" instead of "God", but doing that before
would again be preposterous.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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