On 21 Jan 2015, at 01:40, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/20/2015 10:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
The more I think about it, the more I doubt that these subjects
were simply "abandoned" in an innocent fashion. The problem is
that beliefs about fundamental reality are at the foundations of
political power, and the powerful know this, even if only
intuitively.
Read Craig A. James little book, "The Religion Virus" for a history
of religion from that standpoint.
The term religion is too large for such analogy.
In a recent article of the french journal "La Recherche" there is a
paper which shows that historians debunk Ernst Mach idea that science
progressed *against* christianity, and that on the contrary, the root
of modern science might relied in the idea that nature was a mechanism
made by God. I already knew the more obvious relation between
computationalism and christian's self-finiteness belief.
With the greek One, religion is what science is for. The goal is going
near truth, the tool is science. The goal evolves as much as the tool
in the process.
Yes, since always. That is why we are mucky to be in a place where
scientists have regained some freedom in some domain, but clearly
not in all (theology and human science are still not done with the
scientific attitude).
We're in a mucky place because a lot of theologians promote mucky
religions. :-)
And you can expect this will continue if we don't let theology going
back to academy.
When atheist politicians say that we must respect the Vatican,
they are agreeing on some border of power. They are saying, ok we
can't have absolute power but we can negotiate peace with the
Vatican.
Vatican and bishops love atheism, because atheists are their allies
in preventing seriousness in theological matter.
Incidentally, I went to a lecture by a theologian last night. He
gave a definition of theism, the same as mine: Belief in a
supernaturally powerful person who cares about human behavior and
wants to be worshipped. And he went on to say that all serious
theology is a-theistic.
No problem with that. Science by itself is agnostic, but as much about
primary matter than any reality, we can only try religion, and change
of religion, or change religion. A religion is a conception of
reality, and it is based on the belief that there is a reality, that
we can share some aspect of it, and discuss about the way to unify all
the views and reflexion we can have on it.
Now, you frighten me a bit about which theologian you are listening
too, and I give you a tip, go back to the time theology was a science,
that is before +523 in occident (and of course, if you study the
theologians since, you will see many "saying sentences like above, but
only in context of being able to develop other interesting ideas: that
is, not all modern theologian believe in such naive theist god). But
officially: the field is sick (authorianistist) since +523 in
Occident, and about the eleventh century in Middle-East.
Strong-atheism is a religion, and is dishonest when not saying so, as
it is the belief in a primary physical universe or matter, object of
the laws described in the book of physics.
That might be true. We don't know. But we can know that this view is
problematical if we assume there is no magic in the brain or in matter.
It is nice because it illustrates the existence of a realm, a simple
one conceptually (a tiny part of arithmetic), where the laws of
physics originate.
The difficulty to accept this is similar with the difficulty some
accepted evolution. Perhaps.
Read history of science. Humans pervert science all the time, for
short run purpose, or for power purpose. For all of them we must
distinguish the object of study from the humans theories which can
always be wrong, if not escape the well guided practice (laic academy,
laic school, agnostic presentations, encouragement of doubting, even
mocking, *all* authorities, etc.).
Bruno
Brent
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