On 09 Dec 2014, at 18:29, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/9/2014 2:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 08 Dec 2014, at 16:50, John Clark wrote:
On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 5:59 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
>> At one time the human race was knowledgeable enough to
construct the Antikythera Mechanism, but 200 years after it was
made Jesus was born and started a major world religion, and 630
years after Jesus Mohamed was born and started another major world
religious; and by the time Mohamed died we'd lost over 90% of our
smarts. Actually there is some truth in what you say, certainly
during Mohamed's lifetime nobody on the planet knew how to make
something like the Antikythera Mechanism, a device that was made
nearly a thousand years before.
I said it before I'll sat it again, religion makes people stupid.
> Not religion, but the imposition of a religion to others,
Until just a couple of centuries ago the 2 things were virtually
synonymous, and even today it remains true for hundreds of
millions of people, especially in the Islamic world.
Yes, but the same for science. We have separate science from
politics (very approximattely), and religion is still a problem
because we don't have separate it from the argument of authority.
You can't separate religion from authority.
Putting back theology in the academy would help.
Religion is institutionalized Platonism.
Only institutionalized religion.
From prehistoric times every tribe had their shaman who explained
the world and predicted things based on his visions and revelations
(often chemically aided) of a greater, mystical world beyond the
senses. They explained why the tribe had to paint themselves blue
or women had to sleep apart during their menstruation or why they
couldn't eat the meat of cloven hooved animals. This bound the
tribe together and distinguished it from those other, inferior,
barbarian tribes that painted themselves red and ate beans. It was
the invention of religion and it was an evolutionary step in
cultural Darwinism.
The shaman was the scientist of the day. Science, religion and
politics were not separated in the beginning.
Plato was just the most famous shaman of the Greeks. His ideas were
incorporated into Christianity by St Augustine.
Christianity took Aristotle philosophy first. Judaism and Islam will
do the same 500 years later.
Augustine was already a going back to Plato, like Kabbala and muslims
neo-platonism will do later, but Platonism has not suppressed the
Aristotelian basis of today's abramanic religion, and today's science.
> that is made possible by the separation of religion from science
Religion is made possible by the separation of critical thinking
from the population,
Bad science is made possible by that separation. You confuse
religion and the use of religion by people wanting to control other
people.
That has always been the role of religion. Without the
institutionalization it's just mysticism. In polls of peoples
religion one of the most common answers in the U.S. is, "I'm
spiritual but not religious." There can't be a one person religion.
because religion is institutionalized mysticism, which of course does
not make sense, except for some political power to control other people.
I agree with you if you replace "religion" or "theology" with
"institutionalized religion/theology". That is why I insist
Whenever someone "insists" you know they have no argument.
Or that someone's feel his message is not read with enough attention.
Come on, that is wordplay.
that we have to separate "theology" from any form of temporal
power, except the academies, where we can question everything and
adopt methodological questionning, make theories, etc.
You can have a one-person theology - which is what those people mean
by saying, "I'm spiritual, but not religious."
Mysticism alludes to personal experience, but theology is (or was)
science: it needs many people: the one writing the paper, and the
peers reviewing it, or the discussion and the blackboard.
that's why critical thinking was illegal and punishable by death
in the past, and still is in many places.
Yes. Again this is true for all branches of science, including
theology.
Yes we all remember the inquisition that burned all those scientists
at the stake for not accepting the geo-centric theory of the
universe - except they were burned for incorrect theology.
Like geneticist were send to the Goulag by atheists philosophers who
got the power. The situation is the same, but last a longer time as
theology as attempt toward the theory of everything is a hotter subject.
You seem happay that we can use critical thinking, so why not
promote it in all field, including health and religion.
I am very happy to promote critical thinking AND empiricism in
health and religion. Health had benefitted greatly from
empiricism. But religion dare not allow critical thinking because
it is contrary to its basic function of binding together the tribe.
Institutionalized religion.
> You have never refute my argument that (strong) atheism is de
facto ally with the Churches against reason.
Let me see if I understand you correctly, you believe I have not
spent enough time refuting your monumentally silly "argument" that
atheist is just a slight variation of Christianity. Did I get that
right?
Yes. Just saying "silly" is not an argument. It is just plain
obvious that as long as we don not promote reason in theology, we
let the field to those who promote the use of violence (verbal or
not).
You keep switching between Christianity, which is a religion, and
theology which is an academic field of study of the supernatural.
These are two very different things.
Which *should* be an academical field. But things like roman
christianity has put theology out of the academy: that is the problem.
So strong atheism maintains the religion in the hand of the
irrationalist.
It must be irrational. If its beliefs and practices were wholly
rational then anyone could adopt them and they would have no
significance in distinguishing the tribe.
If people were rational, we would not use petrol but hemp, because the
consequences were known at the start.
But you are right, religion are based on non provable intuition, like
the "saying yes to the doctor" of the computationalist, or like the
assumption of the primary physical universe of the physicalist.
Fundamental assumption are irrational in that sense. Then, admitting
those are hypothesis (belief, with interrogation mark) makes them into
modest science.
Try reading Scott Atran, David Sloan Wilson, or Loyal Rue. These
are your scientists who actually study religion.
They wrote their text in a context which has already put theology out
of the academy. What they say works for all branches of science, which
were also political at the start (and still is in some proportiopn as
the cannabis, and perhaps the climate change, illustrates.
Then most strong atheists believe in primary matter in a dogmatic
way. They say you are mad if you doubt it, for example. In thats
sense they share the main metaphysical axiom of the christian, and
obliterate the fact that science is born from taking a distance
with that dogma. Then atheists share the definition of God taken by
the Christians-Jews-Muslims, even if it is used to ass
And Platonists deny it dogmatically.
Not at all. Even in Plato's academy, this was debated and discussed a
lot.
The difference is materialists can point to what they think exists
while Platonists have private dreams of it.
Which gave mathematics. Those dreams were sharable and shared. Science
os born from this.
ert its non existence, forgetting buddhism, hinduism, taoism,
platonism, neoplatonism. except that some string atheists asserts
those gods does not exist, but those are the one who believe the
most in primitive matter, without providing any evidence for it.
You always throw in the word "primitive" to make the materialist
seem dogmatic.
*primitive* has nothing to do with dogmatic. It means that the
materialist have to assume matter, and abandon the problem of
justifying it from something else (be it a God, mathematical truth, or
whatever).
But I don't know of any materialist who thinks they know what
"primitive" matter is. It's just working hypothesis that whatever
is found to explain or experience will obey some comprehensible,
mathematical laws. That it won't include any supernatural agency.
No. In place like ULB, I was declared "mad" by biggot atheists who
declared we cannot doubt primary matter.
Yes, atheism, seen from Plato, is a variant of christianism: same
God, same Matter, same mockery of the entire field of theology,
same attempt to hide the mind-body problem under the rug, etc.
Plato "solved" the mind-body problem by just assuming thoughts (of
philosopher/shamans) and the soul were real and bodies were
illusory. He assumed that nothing transient could be real so the
soul was eternal. Both were taken over as basic dogma of
Christianity (and later, Islam). Empiricism was deprecated and arm
chair scholasticism replaced science for 900yrs.
It was just a theory, and they debated it. Only the
institutionalization made it lasting so long.
If computationalism is true, and if S4 describes knowledge, then
Socrates argument for the immortality of the machine's soul, can be
translated in terms of numbers relations.
And of course, same dismiss of applying reason on fundamental
questions, a bit like your "refutation" of step 3 of the UDA, where
everyone show you the error(s) you made, and then you redo it again
and again and again. That is typical of people having religious
dogma. They stop thinking.
Which is the whole point of having religion. Did Plato ever suggest
a test of his theology? Does any theologian/shaman?
Yes. It is my whole point: machines have a canonical theology, and as
it includes physics, it is testable, and indeed it explains most
quantum weirdness. I predicted with it the MW, before reading Everett
or knowing about QM. Then incompleteness makes the argument formal.
Plato could not imagine a test, but that is not a refutation of Plato,
the alternative was not testable either.
We just try to understand consciousness and the origin of matter, and
I just point out that if we depart of the religion of the atheist
scientist, by showing that machines do have a theology, we can be,
well, ignored for irrational "religious" reason, in place of dialog
and critics.
(Weak) materialism and (weak) mechanism are incompatible. You can keep
materialism, but then you can't say "yes" to the doctor without being
irrational, or without invoking supernatural effects.
Bruno
Brent
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