On 19 Oct 2014, at 22:13, meekerdb wrote:
On 10/19/2014 8:12 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
I don't recall Bruno ever csaying if you don't believe in something
then you believe in it.
What he's said is that atheists defend/support/reinforce the same
idea/conception of god that the literalist or fundamentalist
abrahamic religions use.
Atheists can't say there is no God without defining what they mean
by God,
Yeah, they tend to be rational like that.
and invariably they choose some variant of an omniscient omnipotent
creator who answers prayers and judges us, rather than any of the
myriad of other conceptions of god.
Maybe it's because they speak the same language and that's what
"theism" means.
In this way, atheists pretend there is only one acceptable
definition and will usually fight to say that it is only
definition, or the one everyone means, or believe the one all
believers believe in.
That's a perfect case of defending the idea of what God is or can
be, even if it is only to then attack the idea. Honest theistic
reasoning would use logic to say, "okay perhaps God cannot be
this, but we have not ruled out these other possibilities which are
as far as we know not inconsistent",
Other possibilities for *what*? What is the thing? What are its
essential properties? What is its definition? They start with a
word, a few attributes, and an emotional attitude and they seek a
definition they can attach them to. Which would be OK, except they
insist that the word "God", which already has millenia of baggage,
must apply. That's my complaint with Bruno. He explicitly
renounces all that baggage, but he still wants to use the word "God".
I do not renounce all that baggage. I believe in the God of Einstein,
and in the theology of Gödel, that is the idea that we can make
precise some notion, and reason on them (Einstein was neutral on this,
yet seems to get the Gödel point that mathematics can be used for very
fundamental inquiry, as I discovered in the book of Yourgreau.
You might read the nice book by Jammer on "Einstein and religion".
All his life Einstein will insist that he is not an atheist, yet that
he disbelieve, with variours degree along his life, the traditation
which can get attacehd with such beliefs).
And Gödel proved the existence of God, using Anselmus definition, in
the alethic philosophy, that is in the Leibnizian modal logic S5 (S4 +
<>p -> []<>p) (Kripke: R is reflexive, transitive and symmetrical,
which is about equivalent with no accessibility relations at all).
That proves nothing, of course, but about reality, nothing proves
anything. To distinguish the terms reality = universe = god = truth =
etc. are, when we start from zero, is a sort of 1004 fallacy.
The abstract definition of the (unique) god is the creator of the
universe, or the reason of the universe, etc. but in a large sense of
creation. It is the (apparently) transcendental "reason" of your
conscience, and perhaps some stable neighborhoods.
Einstein insisted that it was not a personal God, meaning a God-
person. But with comp, like with Plotinus, a non personal fundamental
truth can take personal aspects when filtered by persons and their
(infinities) of brain (bot in QM and arithmetic).
rather than "we have ruled out this definition of god, and it is
the only definition, therefore there is no god"
Yes, that's exactly the approach taken by theologians.
I am not sure of that. I mean no more than in biology and health, when
health is politicized. I have tuns on book on ancient philosophy and
religions.
I mean, as long as theology does not come back in academy, you have to
guess the meaning of the text hidden from the presentation of the
local coersive institution(s). That was the case for all science +
theologies before the Light period. Why is it that we continue the
argument of authority in that field?
First they take a word "God" and then they see if they can give it
some meaning that makes them feel good.
It might not be good. usually the idea that God is good is advertizing
for a church or a tradition.
We just don't know, and as scientist we must be able to say: we are
still searching.
Physics is a science.
But physicalism is only a science when he put the axiom on the table:
God = the physical universe.
That is not physics, that is a theology, and rather unprecise because
the "universe" is not so easy to define in physics, per se.
Is that God a person? Even this is not an easy question.
Is that god coherent with mechanism? Not without adding magical non
Turing emulable actual properties of the "primary matter".
So what? With comp, whatever Reality is, we can't distinguish it in
the immediate first person ways from the arithmetical truth, but on
the long run it is another matter, and we can make a distinction.
Saying that there is no theology is like saying that we do have the
theory of everything. But we don't, and the "physical" one are still
concentrating on the measurable and communicable aspects on it.
In the fundamental, physics and computer science are ally, and can be
competitors for the primary character.
Is God a person? In some tradition, if someone come up with the idea
that he is God, the other burned him alive or sent him in an asylum.
In other tradition, if someone come up with the idea that he is God,
the other says "at last! It was about time" ...
But notice that they capitalize it already, implying it is a
person. "Honest theistic reasoning" is like "faith based evidence".
You have to study neoplatonism, to have a monotheist religion as an
attempt to get a theory of everything, independent of "revelation",
which are authoritative at the start.
Brent
The political discourse matters, and explains a good deal. But
there's something beneath it, something we don't want to look in
the face: namely, that in India, as elsewhere in our darkening
world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion
intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating
around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable
language of "respect". What is there to respect in any of this,
or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around
the world in religion's dreaded name? How well, with what fatal
results, religion erects totems, and how willing we are to kill
for them! And when we've done it often enough, the deadening of
affect that results makes it easier to do it again. So India's
problem turns out to be the world's problem. What happened in
India has happened in God's name. The problem's name is God.
--- Salman Rushdie 2002
No. the problem is not God. The problem is when God is abandonned to
politics which will use it to exploit supersitition,credulity and fears.
The problem is not God, it is our lack of seriousness around that
notion.
The christian stolen the legend to the jews, and the theory to the
greeks, among two.
If computationalism is correct, it might be that they choose the wrong
one.
But that is not the bigger problem for religion. The problem are the
possible literalism, the dogma, the use of violence, the lack of
listening the community of believer, the lack of democracy in some
community, and the lack of seriousness due to the discarding of the
role of the academical research on the subject (at least explicit
research).
Only bad faith fears reason, experiments and experiences.
Bruno
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