On 12/3/2013 10:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 02 Dec 2013, at 19:11, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/2/2013 1:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
wants to be worshiped, judges people and rewards and punishes them.
That's a legend used to put people in place so that they will be worshiped, so that
they can judged other people, reward and punish them.
Why do you credit such things. Why can you believe that we should listen to them? You
are the one giving them importance, and by arguing against a scientific approach to
"God, souls, afterlife, meaning, etc." you will maintain the current fairy tale aspect
in theology, and you will contribute in maintaining them in power.
I don't credit such things.
So why do you come back on it? Why not abstract ourself from the fairy tales, once and
for all, if we don't credit them.
Because billions of people believe (or pretend to believe) the fairy tales and want to
make public policy based on their book of fairy tales. In the U.S., before some courts
ruled that leading prayers in public schools was unconstitutional, the fundamentalist
churches did not participate in politics. The held themselves to be concerned with an
unearthly, spiritual realm that transcended politics. But the prayer in school ruling
caused them to become activists and they were seen as resource by the conservative
Republicans that had taken over southern politics after the civil rights act of 1964.
Since then they have campaigned politically to outlaw abortion, stem cell research, gay
marriage, teaching evolution, deny global warming, and expand Israel.
But the idea is important because so many people believe it
And they are wrong on many things, but perhaps not on everything, so why not try to show
them a less naive approach? Their own theologian are not that naïve. And their are many
approaches and conception of God, Gods, and Goddesses, It or That.
Which theologians? There is no agreement among theologians. And large sects reject even
the idea of relying on theologians; they believe that they should only rely on their own
reading of their holy books (remember the protestant reformation?). And even among those
who do rely on a priesthood to interpret for them, I don't see that the priesthood has
communicated the God of your theology.
Also, to be sure, I know Christians who are real atheists. They keep the label by
solidarity with the community or the family or tradition.
I let God counts the genuine believers :)
- and you are the one that gives them support by writing that God is really an
important rational concept, using the name of the bearded man in the sky they believe
in when you really mean something completely different.
Only the "fairy tale" aspect is different, but if you read the theologians, you might
revise that opinion.
I think you only read theologians that you agree with. I googled "famous theologians" and
find Christian and Jewish apologists, not seekers for ur.
So it is important to say the idea is a fairy tale.
Not the idea of God, as used by theologians., only the idea of God, as used in "don't
ask" by the demagogs.
If your read the theologian or the mystics, you get a different picture. Probably
different of what those using religion to control people want you to not see at all.
For you religion connotes with Jesus, the Churches, etc. To me it is more a probably
sumerian idea, (?), Pythagorus, Plato, Plotinus, and it did not end but lives dissipates
in a large part of the abramanic religion, and then looks close to what the
self-referentially correct told us about the possible truth about themselves.
The scientific approach to "Gods" is to say they are a failed hypothesis - not to
redefine the word.
Only retarded creationists would use God as an hypothesis to explain the facts, as God
is usually considered as what we can understand the less. To refute creationism is like
to answer to a spam.
Like consciousness, god is not useful as a starting hypothesis.
The god = matter failed to. You might define God by the reality beyond or behind matter.
Then it is interesting that when you do the math in the comp theory we understand that
the overlap is big with the talk of theologians, even if the fairy tales disappear
completely (the same with salvia, despite it has its own fairy tales).
I realize that science redefines common words too, like "energy", but those new
definitions subsume the common terms.
Which means almost abstract from the popular misconceptions.
Your "God" has no overlap with the common usage of the Big Daddy in the sky.
I think it has enough common points, I think, especially from the points of view of
comparative theology.
Of course it is an open problem if it is a Daddy or a Mommy or even if that question
makes sense. With comp, it is not clear if X can be a person, or can be conceive by a
machine as being a person.
The common points are, that God is a X such that
- X has no name, no description,
- X is responsible for your life and lives, the biology, the psychology, the
physics,
What does 'responsible' mean? It can be simple causality: The wind was responsible for
the tree falling. Or it can imply an ethical choice: Madoff was responsible for the
deception. The latter meaning slips in the idea that X is a person.
- If X get a name, Lies happen and its name multiplies,
Lies happen anyway.
- X is not computable,
- X is not arithmetical,
Those may be true of lots of things.
- X attracts or repulse Souls,
You're using "souls" in a definition of "God"? Definitions should be in terms of things
that are better understood than those defined.
- etc.
Then we can look in arithmetic, and around, if something match and try questioning the
(Löbian) machine, like "is God competent (like in Plotinus, and most religion) or is God
incompetent (like with the Gnostics)?". And many other questions.
Cantor took the pain to explain to the Pope that, if he did indeed give name to
infinities, he was still unable to name the infinity of infinities, and that he was not
naming God. I don't think he meant a "big Daddy in the sky".
But you think you're naming God as the unprovable truths of arithmetic.
Scientist modesty in machine theology forces us into agnosticism and cautious, about the
relation between Truth and Machines.
A TOE is necessary a theology, as it must let open or decide if there is 0, or 1, or 2,
... gods, with this or that definition of gods.
You can call it theonomy (by the assocation theonomy/theology being
"astronomy/astrology"). But that would be a sort of error similar to lifting the
theology of the correct machine on ourself, like if we could know publicly that we are
correct.
Changing the vocabulary would be like taking the words too much seriously.
Then why not use "Zeus"? You seem to argue both ways: Really serious theology should use
"God" because really serious theologians use it. But using less misleading language would
be taking words too seriously.
Brent
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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