> On 17 Jan 2015, at 8:24 am, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 2:44 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> > Take my definition of God in the Plotinus paper. That is God = the set of >> > Gödel numbers of the true (in the standard model) sentences of arithmetic. > > So since according to you it was Christianity who invented the idea that God > was a intelligent conscious being
B did not say that in the previous exchange (go back and read it again) nor has he ever said that. You really are quite preposterous, you know. > I guess all those statues that the Egyptians and Babylonians carved were of > the set of Godel numbers that were sentences of arithmetic. It must be > tricky making a statue of Godel numbers, but somehow they pulled it off. Here you just sound like a complete buffoon. The Egyptians and Babylonians were not Christians either, so you have lost touch with what you were talking about. You are desperate. There is entertainment value watching you go down. > >>> > Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has said that "theology is not a >>> > field of inquiry, it is little more than erudite noisemaking". Richard Dawkins has admitted that he should learn more about quantum mechanics on more than one occasion and I agree with RD about this. He suffers from a lack of rigour. >> >> > You don't cite the context, > > OK, when Dawkins said that he also said "theology should not be taught or > have a department at Oxford where I teach". Thomas Jefferson would have > agreed with him, he founded the University of Virginia and insisted that "a > professorship of theology should have no place in our institution". Yes, and for the reasons Bruno cites. Theology was left to rot for a millennia or so with the result that it fell into the hands of the power seekers who used it to consolidate the power of the Church - not as true science. You may not think that Theology is a field of study but the Taliban, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda have their respective (and overlapping) theologies worked out and these are guiding their every action. Love it or hate it, Theology is something that is a weapon in the hands of a human if not subjected to scientific rigour. Dawkins can go get fucked, basically. He quite literally does not know what he is talking about and clearly neither do you. > >> > and I am not sure which theologians he has in mind. > > I think he was referring to the sort of theologians that breathe. He was, which makes him pretty much as dumb as you are > >>> >> Cosmologist Lawrence Krauss also has something interesting to say about >>> >> theologians and theology: >>> "In regards to theology not being a real subject, I put this challenge out >>> to all theologians. Name me one piece of knowledge theology has contributed >>> to human society in the last 500 years. When I speak to theologians, they >>> always seem to answer “well, what do you mean by knowledge?”, but when I >>> talk to chemists, physicists and medical doctors, they give me concrete >>> facts straight away not this epistemological stuff." >> >> >Which theology? > > What a flabby gutless mealymouthed reply, if it's not "what do you mean by > knowledge?" its "Which theology?"! Nobody would ask for such a ridiculous > "clarification" unless they had nothing better to respond with. The purpose of life is probably something like the enterprise of creating your own theology. To "create your own theology" probably means "to have yourself a nice story about how reality works and to be comfortable with that." You will pretend that your story comes to you as objective truth ie independently of your existence as a knower. That makes you magical. All knowledge is somehow owned by the mind that conceives it. I would not trust anyone calling themselves a theologian any more than I would trust a politician or a schoolteacher, no. Particularly not a theologian because they haven't been working at the coalface for a millennia or so and our knowledge of the universe has advamced meanwhile. That doesn't make them redundant. This means they simply have to catch up with our new understandings and this is nowhere seen in academia. So-called theological colleges and Catholic universities are just tribal fortresses churning out soldiers for Christ - not scholars of the soul. > If you asked a astronomer to name one piece of knowledge astronomy has > contributed to human society in the last 500 years he'd just tell you and > would have no need to resort to these silly evasions; he'd name something, > lots and lots of things actually. > >> > What about step 4? > > What about the blunders in step 3? What about you go hang up your cleric's robes and put your bishop's mitre down somewhere for a while where nobody will trip over the bloody thing.... K > > John K Clark > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
