On 16 Oct 2014, at 18:43, meekerdb wrote:
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]>
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.
My opinion today is that "the god of theism" is not that far from the
ONE of Plotinus, with some key difference. But modern catholic
theologians are aware of that, and shows a pretty deep understanding
of the neoplatonist philosophy. Th greeks distinguishes the Outer God
from the Inner God. I doubt the Outer God want to be worshipped,
unless we interpret "worshipped" in some relation of satisfaction from
model theory.
Obviously much more work needs to be done on this. Theism might be
like 65% correct, we just don't know. It might be 100% correct, and
also 0% correct, but then changing one word would make it completely
correct again. I mean; the text written by the theologians (mainstream
or not in their beliefs).
You might have a too much rigid interpretation of the texts. Not all
believers takes the sacred text in a literal sense, which should be
obvious (pace Samiya) given that God is usually considered as having
no name, no description, beyond comprehension. John Mikes is right, it
related to pointing on ignorance (that's the case in comp).
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).
Let the children grow. This is just superstitious behavior, although
not entirely, because it can helps for the moral and the confidence, +
placebo effect, etc. (But this is related to other topics: is the
belief in God good for the health, and the social life, etc. and there
are as many answer as there are notion of God).
When we stop worshipping the clouds, they did not disappear for that
reason.
By the lexicon I gave, you can translate Plotinus in arithmetic. And
yes. It is not so much Christians, but when you look at the details,
some christians are closer, other are farer.
And the Pltinus lexicon is testable, given that such type of
theologies include physics, or the lattice of observable truth.
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.
The problem is not god. Neither this god, nor that one. The problem
are the people which imposes their God on others.
Many strong atheists imposes their god to others, sometimes not
realizing that they believe in a god, in the large sense I gave.
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.
I have a similar problem. I have been criticized for polluting the
mind of the student by making them doubt on primary matter.
When you write "the greeks" you mean a few greek philosphers.
I mean the scientists from Pythagoras to Damascius.
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.
QM has not changed the use of matter, despite we can't reconcile the
mundane view with the theoretical. There is no unanimity how to do that.
Why would we need to change the terms. I use "god" to be understood by
99% of the people, because they do agree with my axioms. They have
just more particularization axioms, but that is the same for matter,
energy, etc.
A set is already not the same thing for a mathematician, a
mathematical logician, a layman, etc.
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.
Plotinus called it "the one", but he called it also "God", and even
"God the Father". Yet it discuss rigorously if it is a person or not,
if it is conscious, and if it has some will. The answer are subtile,
but tend on the negative.
God is the word use for that concept by almost all people on the
planet, including atheist philosopher when they say that they
disbelieve in God (but digging on this you always get that they
disbelieve in the notion of god of some culture during sometimes).
You see the point?
No, I don't. You want to use the word "God", but for no reason I
can discern.
What word do you suggest.
You knwo that with comp, the machine will not been able to distinguish
God from the Arithmetical Truth. But this makes sense only because the
machine cannot define "arithmetical truth", yet can point on it, and
approximate it.
I once thought you wanted to win a Templeton prize - which I think
you would deserve.
Thanks. but the last time I got a prize, instead of promotion I got
defamation, so I am a bit cold with things like prize.
But you said you didn't want to and declined my help in applying.
I don't remember. I am still interested. I am always anxious that
people misunderstand.
So I guess it is some personal reason you don't want to share.
No, I love nothing more than sharing all this. I don't know why I
would have decline the offer. may be I have been persuaded that the
attempt would be futile, after seeing something like the fact the want
a dialog between science and theology. Usually people who advocates
such dialog does not like the idea that theology can just be done with
the scientific attitude, but this does not preclude a relation with
the community, nor even a theurgy (but this is not obvious).
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.
If you are still OK, I accept your offer, with pleasure. Now, vague
memories about what I read about Templeton is makes me doubt they will
appreciate, but we can try. You might have to push me a bit. I have
never submit anything anywhere. All papers I published where ordered
by people patient pushing me to write something. I don't know why.
Probably related to what happened in Brussels and Paris.
Bruno
Brent
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