On 26 Feb 2015, at 21:52, meekerdb wrote:
On 2/26/2015 3:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Fro the greek, the existence of God is a quasi-triviality, because
God, by definition, is the reality that we search. Then the real
question is what is the nature of God? A person? A physical thing?
A mathematical thing? A first principle, etc.
The Greeks had many concepts of the basis of reality which were not
assumed to be gods, i.e. persons. Anaximander called it "aperion".
From Wikipedia:
"Greek philosophy entered a high level of abstraction, adopting
apeiron as the origin of all things, because it is completely
indefinite. This is a further transition from the previous existing
mythical way of thought to the new rational way of thought which is
the main characteristic of the archaic period (8th-6th century BC)."
So I reiterate my objection that using "God" is not only obfuscating
your avowed meaning it is also wrong to say it's what the Greeks
meant by the basis of reality.
Yes, it is a key moment in the greek theology, where at the beginning,
God was considered as finite, and the infinite was confused with the
indefinite, and almost an insult. Later they make the infinite
(apeiron) into a possible attribute of the ONE, and reserve the
indefinite ofr the notion of bad, or matter.
If you don't like the term "God" I will use "Allah". The main point
about God is that it has no name, so *any* name is wrong. I did not
use God, except in a reply which has lead us to that infinite useless
vocabulary discussion. God is just the most common quasi-name (pointer).
I made clear what I meant, and the important point is the coming back
to the scientific attitude in theology, which is typically concerned
with soul, afterlife, (re)incarnation, origin of universe,
transcendence, truth, non-nameable, etc. It is the ONE of Parmenides
and Plotinus, and it is not distinguishable from arithmetical truth,
in case we are machine.
BTW, sometimes ago, you suggested here to promote my work to
Templeton. How is that going?
Bruno
Brent
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