On 10/20/2014 9:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
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,
Some notion of *what*?
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).
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious
convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do
not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but
have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be
called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the
structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
---Albert Einstein, 1954, "Albert Einstein: The Human Side"
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.
But some things provide evidence.
To distinguish the terms reality = universe = god = truth = etc. are, when we start from
zero, is a sort of 1004 fallacy.
Or also reality = illusion = hope = ignorance = falsity = delusion = etc. Fortunately we
don't start from zero. We start from 350yrs of science and a billion years of evolution.
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.
A very large and very flexible sense, so that we can keep the word "creation" (in order to
keep the baggage implying a Creator).
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).
I think Dan Dennett would call that a deepity.
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?
Yes, that it a point on which we agree. Let theologians publish or perish, in the
Physical Review.
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.
It's part of that baggage you don't renounce.
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.
I've never heard that said nor seen it written. I've seen, "God is love." Which is a
better definition from which to prove God exists.
That is not physics, that is a theology, and rather unprecise because the "universe" is
not so easy to define in physics, per se.
It's not precise because physics depends on operational and ostensive definitions - not
semantic ones.
Is that God a person? Even this is not an easy question.
But it has an easy answer for Christians, Muslims, Jews and their theologians.
Is that god coherent with mechanism? Not without adding magical non Turing emulable
actual properties of the "primary matter".
?? Persons are not "coherent" with mechanism? What's that mean?
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.
I'm never sure how to take pronouncements that start "with comp..." I don't know whether
you mean what follows directly from "yes doctor" or what you claim must be the case if the
world is the computation of a UD, even if you haven't worked out the details.
Saying that there is no theology is like saying that we do have the theory of everything.
Don't you have a theory of everything, i.e. CTM + UD?
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" ...
"In some tradition"!? In some tradition blacks are subhuman, the Earth is flat, disease
is caused by sin, heretics are burned, apostates are beheaded,... You can find almost any
idiocy in some tradition.
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).
In other words, no true religion would do those bad things and no true theologian would
accept revelation as evidence.
Brent
Only bad faith fears reason, experiments and experiences.
Bruno
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