On 10 Oct 2014, at 20:37, Samiya Illias wrote:
On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 10:43 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 10 Oct 2014, at 00:21, John Mikes wrote:
Samiya, I did not participate in the sequence about your wisdom on
the list, because you did not refer to my question: WHAT, WHEN, and
HOW did it occur that you first thought of the existence of God? (I
suggested tha it was your Mummy and at your age as a baby when you
were taught to pray, giving you the overtone of your thinking.
Later on you may have expanded into the wisdom your father was
studting.) I am not a Bible-scholar, consider the
Jewish Bible a compendium of earlier tales from (mostly mid-
eastern) people - then the
Christian Bible a second tier leaving out things and adding Jesus-
related stories, (attached some modifications from reform-
thinking), while
some hundred years after Jesus the Prophet Mohammad presented the
Quran as the work of Allah.
We are not capable of thinking otherwise than in our human logic
PLUS restricted to our 'knowledge-base' we (to date) accumulated
and believe.
Teleology - the AIM of the World - is beyond that.
What I believe in my gnostic thinking is a "WORLD" of infinite
complexity of which we got only limited glimpses - even those not
correctly understood.
That's exactly how the arithmetical truth looks like from the
perspective of the universal numbers.
Of this 'treasure' of "knowledge" we THINK we know the World. Well,
we don't.
Nor do they. But the wisest know they don't know.
We don't know what is good, or bad,
I agree if you mean the moral good or moral bad and other theories,
but basically we know very well what is good and bad. I agree that
if we look at the details, it can look a bit like the Mandelbrot
set, but for the main things I think all the mammals knows the
difference between good (like eating, mating, dancing, ...) and bad
(sick, desperate, broken, burning, etc.).
Now the good divides into the good good and the bad good, and the
bad divides into the good bad, and the bad bad.
Amateur of wines and beers knows things around this.
what (so far) unknowable factors do influence whatever happens in
addition to those we (think) we know. If there is a 'Godly'
teleology, our human logic asks: Why did a 'Creator' not create it
as it is to be finally, but that would go into your prohibition of
questioning God.
Samiya, does the Quran prohibits questioning God?
Do you think we can avoid questioning when praying?
No, rather it exhorts us to think deeply.
[3: 191=192 Translator: Sahih International] Indeed, in the creation
of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and
the day are signs for those of understanding. Who remember Allah
while standing or sitting or [lying] on their sides and give thought
to the creation of the heavens and the earth, [saying], "Our Lord,
You did not create this aimlessly; exalted are You [above such a
thing]; then protect us from the punishment of the Fire.
Prophet Abraham's faith is greatly praised in the Quran. Consider
the following verses about him:
[2:260 Translator: Pickthall] And when Abraham said (unto his Lord):
My Lord! Show me how Thou givest life to the dead, He said: Dost
thou not believe? Abraham said: Yea, but (I ask) in order that my
heart may be at ease. (His Lord) said: Take four of the birds and
cause them to incline unto thee, then place a part of them on each
hill, then call them, they will come to thee in haste, and know that
Allah is Mighty, Wise.
[6:74-78 Translator: Pickthall] (Remember) when Abraham said unto
his father Azar: Takest thou idols for gods? Lo! I see thee and thy
folk in error manifest. Thus did We show Abraham the kingdom of the
heavens and the earth that he might be of those possessing
certainty: When the night grew dark upon him he beheld a star . He
said: This is my Lord. But when it set, he said: I love not things
that set. And when he saw the moon uprising, he exclaimed: This is
my Lord. But when it set, he said: Unless my Lord guide me, I surely
shall become one of the folk who are astray. And when he saw the sun
uprising, he cried: This is my Lord! This is greater! And when it
set he exclaimed: O my people! Lo! I am free from all that ye
associate (with Him).
OK, that is a bit of platonism. Truth is beyond all representations,
and the physical might be a representation, in fact an unknown sum on
infinities of representations.
PS: in 6:76, the word that's translated as star I think should be
translated as planet.
And I think the following verses partially address the question John
Mikes hesitates to ask:
[33:72-73 Translator: Pickthall] Lo! We offered the trust unto the
heavens and the earth and the hills, but they shrank from bearing it
and were afraid of it. And man assumed it. Lo! he hath proved a
tyrant and a fool. So Allah punisheth hypocritical men and
hypocritical women, and idolatrous men and idolatrous women. But
Allah pardoneth believing men and believing women, and Allah is ever
Forgiving, Merciful.
But is it not idolatrous (I ask) to pretend that one book got it all,
and all others are wrongdoers constructions?
Human are easily credulous. They can believe that the best medicinal
plant is a dangerous product which has to be made illegal!
You can use the Quran as a guide to the truth, but you cannot equate
it with the truth, you can't appropriate the truth, only share
experiences, and, if only to be able to listen genuinely to others,
you need to be able to doubt, perhaps not the root of your belief, but
the shape the beliefs can take for some possible other believers or
hopers.
Some truth go without saying. Some truth become falsities once
asserted. The theological is full of things like that.
Bruno
Samiya
I disagree with Brent's "random" - I deny the concept at all -
changes are all deterministic whether we know the details, or not.
In the big picture, I agree. from inside, the frontier between the
deterministic and the non deterministic is infinitely complex.
I don't repeat the chorus: who created the Creator?
A swarm of numbers.
(Again a point way beyond our mental capabilities).
To be sure, yes, to grasp as a possible theory, it is different. You
can't use an argument for something beyond our mental capabilities
as a refutation of a theory. This would no more be agnosticism, but
use of a metaphysical principle to discard a class of theories,
without argument.
The point being here that numbers can see their own limitations, and
grasp that truth extends properly their justifiability abilities.
Human science works on theories - explanations of the unexplained -
axioms - necessary conditions for the theories to work - and
consequences - reduced to the level of the up-to-date functioning
of our mental capablity.
Evidence is in the eye of the beholder.
Absolutely so :)
Bruno
I find it remarkable that your Quran-quote extendes to geography
discovered way after (into?) Hedzhra also the cosmology formulated
during the recent times and chemistry of the last 100 years (ozon?)
- maybe they are included only in the paraphernalia.
I would love to read about the other animals as well including non-
terrestrials.
Have a good time, and forgive my interruption
John Mikes
On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 11:35 PM, Samiya Illias <[email protected]
> wrote:
What is your position on teleology? Do you think that there is a
cause or purpose for everything?
Also, what do you think of this:
http://signsandscience.blogspot.com/2014/08/teleology-purpose-built-universe.html
Samiya
On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 7:30 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 10/8/2014 5:07 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 2:50 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 10/8/2014 10:40 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 07 Oct 2014, at 20:17, meekerdb wrote:
On 10/7/2014 1:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 06 Oct 2014, at 20:15, meekerdb wrote:
Here's an interesting interview of a philosopher who is
interested in the question of whether God exists. The
interesting thing about it, for this list, is that "God" is
implicitly the god of theism, and is not "one's reason for
existence" or "the unprovable truths of arithmetic".
How do you know that? How could you know that.
I read the interview. For example
D.G.: I'm not a believer, so I'm not in a position to say. First
of all, it's worth noting that some of the biggest empirical
challenges don't come from science but from common features of
life. Perhaps the hardest case for believers is the Problem of
Evil: The question of how a benevolent God could allow the
existence of evil in the world, both natural evils like
devastating earthquakes and human evils like the Holocaust, has
always been a great challenge to faith in God. There is, of
course, a long history of responses to that problem that goes
back to Job. While nonbelievers (like me) consider this a major
problem, believers have, for the most part, figured out how to
accommodate themselves to it.
It's obvious that Garber is talking about the god of theism. If
he were referring to some abstract principle or set of
unprovable truths there would be no "problem of evil" for that
god.
On the contrary, computationalism will relate qualia like pain
and evil related things with what numbers can endure in a fist
person perspective yet understand that this enduring is ineffable
and hard to justify and be confronted with that very problem.
But under computationlism it's not a problem. The is no
presumption that a computable world is morally good by human
standards.
Under computationalism, all possible worlds and all possible
observers exist and there's nothing God can do about it. God can
no more make certain observers or observations not exist than make
2 + 2 = 3. However, a benevolent theistic god under
computationalism (with access to unlimited computing resources)
could nonetheless "save" beings who existed in other worlds by
continuing the computation of their minds.
You say "could" as though he had a choice, meaning He's not part of
the computable world and is not one of the "all possible
observers". Seems to me that he will have to both save everyone
and also torture everyone in hell.
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to everything-
[email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to everything-
[email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to everything-
[email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
