Hi Richard,
On 03 Dec 2013, at 21:54, Richard Ruquist wrote:
Bruno: 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 :)
Richard: A too friendly priest told me that I was an atheist when I
was in college and I agreed.
I stopped going to church and he got in trouble.
I remained an atheist for almost two decades, mainly because I could
not see anyway I could have an afterlife, until I read about OBE. So
then I came to believe in the supernatural- that's all background.
I don't believe in the supernatural, because I don't believe in the
natural to begin with.
"supernatural" is like added artificial magic to correct the defect of
the natural, which is naturally person and consciousness
elimininativist.
Now coming from atheism, no one religion seemed just right for me
although the eastern religions, even the atheistic ones, were most
appealing. But by then I had married a former jewess and conversion
to Judaism seemed most appropriate, you know, for the family. So I
began 3 years of study in a Reform Temple under a wannabe-orthodox
rabbi a couple of towns away.
The point of this little story is that when I and my wife joined the
Reform Temple in our home town (Lexington, Massachusetts) my new
friends were amazed, esp since I was a "rocket scientist", that I
was a believer (in the supernatural-not necessarily god). Turns out
that the entire membership was atheistic as far as I could tell,
although it was not PC to mention it.
Atheists or agnostic? Many people make the confusion, and some
atheists vindicate it, and distinguish weak atheism (agnosticism) and
strong atheism (belief that God = Matter, and no possible other God).
I think Judaism, and probably Islam, are slightly less incorrect than
Christianism, but their mystic parts (Cabbala, Sufi, Augustin) are
closer to neoplatonism and so, to comp (if you can agree with the
definitions or meta-definition).
Unfortunately they have secret doctrine, and it is hard to delineate
what is secret for absolute theological reason (like in the comp G*
minus G, or like in any "negative theology"), and what is secret to
avoid trouble with the local authorities, and ... the family ...
Bruno
On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
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.
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.
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.
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,
- If X get a name, Lies happen and its name multiplies,
- X is not computable,
- X is not arithmetical,
- X attracts or repulse Souls,
- 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".
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.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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