On 10/16/2014 12:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 16 Oct 2014, at 05:28, meekerdb wrote:
On 10/15/2014 7:25 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 4:00 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Bruno seems to think that if you fail to believe in the existence of Santa
Claus
you must have a definite idea of what "Santa Claus" refers to and therefore
you do
believe in Santa Claus. A curious inference for a logician.
That's just fancy language, wherein semantic of "Santa" is mapped to "fictitious
entity, old, fat, gift giving etc"; so you applying belief predicate to it results in
believing untrue fiction.
What's more curious than this is why you choose "Santa" instead of "house" or "Brent"
in your example.
But roughly I'd say yes, to negate some proposition you have to know semantic it
refers to and point to/represent that idea, with all its possible flaws, and note said
negation. And that isn't curious, I'd call it normal because I can't think of some
inversion before I have a grasp on some usual state of affairs. PGC
I works with "house" and "Brent" too. What's curious is that failing to believe in
anything implies that you do believe in it.
Precisely: atheists does not fail to believe in God: they believe that the notion of God
has no sense, but they use only the christian God to make their point.
And to believe that something does not exist, you need a precise version of it.
No, you just need a definite version. The god I don't believe in is the god of theism,
which, as I've written many times, is a person who created the universe and cares about
how we behave and wants to be worshipped.
So atheits, like christian (the fundamentalist one) believe that they have the right
notion of God.
The theist notion, which I've explained once again above, is not just a fundamentalist
god. It's also the god of every religion that believes in worshipping and obeying their
god (which is almost all of them).
the fundamentalist christian believe it exists, and the atheists believe it does not
exist, and as you see, both share the same concept,
Of course if I I say I don't believe something exist I'd be a fool not to have a concept
of what I was talking about.
and defend it up to the point of not studying the field which exemplifies the subtlety
of the concept. for the greeks: god is defined by the ultimate reality that we search.
Not "for the greeks". The greeks killed Socrates for teaching his students to doubt the
gods. When you write "the greeks" you mean a few greek philosphers. And then you
criticize me for using the common meaning that would be understood by 99% of the people I
would meet on the street, instead of the meaning adopted by a few mystic greeks.
It is a pointer of what we don't know about the reason why we are here.
I suppose it goes along with the spirit of "everything". If I can think of it clearly
enough to fail to believe it exists then it must be among the the everything that exists.
The concept exist, but both fundamentalist christian and atheists believe that there is
no other concepts or definitions possible.
Of course there are. And there are many other words that can be used to describe them.
Plotinus called the concept "the One". And failing that you could make up a new word for
the concept.
You see the point?
No, I don't. You want to use the word "God", but for no reason I can discern. I once
thought you wanted to win a Templeton prize - which I think you would deserve. But you
said you didn't want to and declined my help in applying. So I guess it is some personal
reason you don't want to share. Maybe your mother would disown you. ;-) So it's OK with
me, just don't criticize me for my use of common language. I know what I'm saying and I'm
expressing myself so as to be understood.
Brent
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