On 07 Feb 2016, at 22:39, Russell Standish wrote:
On Sun, Feb 07, 2016 at 08:21:41PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 07 Feb 2016, at 07:28, Russell Standish wrote:
A really interesting article I just read in New Scientist.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22830520-800-god-vs-the-multiverse-the-2500-year-war/
Its behind a paywall - please ask me for a PDF if you don't have
access to New Scientist.
Interesting view that the subversion of theology in 300CE that Bruno
Marchal refers to (closure of the academy) can be blamed almost
completely on both Aristotle and Plato (pox on both their houses :).
I would requires much more subtanciated evidence than
"Plato insisted on a creator-god who made only one universe:"
That might be a vague allusion to the Timeaeus, but it needs to be
reappraised after the reading of Parmenides (and Plato does not
choose between its participants in his dialogs).
But please, Russell, be careful, I have never said that a subversion
of theology has been done in 300CE.
Only in 500BC (after Christ). Plato and Aristotle just creates all
sciences (theology included) and the subversion has come only when
Plato's academy has been made close, the philosophers bannished or
exiled, most in Alexandria at that time). This is eight centuries
later Plato and Aristotle.
That is what I said. 300 CE is 800 years after the time of Aristotle
and Plato during the Greek golden age of 500 BCE.
Let us use + and "-" for the date. Pythagorus is about at -500.
Plato and Aristotle are about at -300. Aristotle does not subvert
Plato, he just did not understand it and made a new theory (primary
matter).
Moderatus of Gades is about at +100.
Plotinus is about at +300.
Hypatia is about at +400.
What I said is that the subversion of theology happened (in occident)
at about +500, and is due to the mixing of politics and religion and
to the closure of Plato Academy in Athene, and the (forced) abandon of
reason in theology, to make religion as a tool of control. That has
nothing to do with Plato and Aristotle, who were thinkers, which can
be wrong, like all theoreticians and researcher. What the +500
subversion led to was the abandon of a science (theology) to the
politics.
It is not fault of the christians, but it is related to the
exploitation of christianity by Justinian (not Constantine like I
said a long time ago). The subversion has come with the "blaspheme"
consisting in mixing religion and politics (which is very natural to
do, and became anti-science when the theological proposition becomes
dogma, instead as subject of discussion like before).
Also interesting is the view that pantheism (what I'd call Spinoza's
god) and atheism are not that far removed from each other.
That is what the Tibetan called (pejoratively) materialist
spiritualism. I agree atheism and such pantheism are very close.
I would not put Spinoza there, though. Spinoza is neutral monism;
more like with Mechanism: where both mind and matter rise from
something else (number relation for mind, and number relation for
matter appearance, and of course there is no primary matter, in that
monist picture).
I would say Spinoza (and pantheism as Rubinstein is using it) is just
the idea that God can be identified with the totality of reality.
This is always ambiguous, as it depends on the meaning of "reality".
If "reality" is the arithmetical reality, you get the God of the
machine, although that identification is not provable by the machine,
and she must stay mute on this, or communicate it through some
conditionalisation (like IF mechanism is true then ...).
If "reality" is a material universe, then panpsychisme is definitly
materialist spiritualism. It is a way to hide the problem by
trivialising God.
We
are a part of god, not separate from god, as Christian theology would
have it. Using God in such a way is more of a mystic wonderment at the
world we live in, rather than any expression of blind faith.
OK. This is a bit Einstein religion, but that is still close to
materialist spiritualism
But I do have some sympathy for John Clark here, who would prefer to
keep the term God to describe what the majority of God believers (ie
theists)
are referring to. Its OK when all participants in a discussion are
using the same terms - the trouble comes when you and John start
talking past each other about unrelated notions of God.
In science we redefined the terms when we use them. God is whatever
you need to have a Reality. Christian, muslims, atheists, everyone can
agree with that definition, as it works in all case. It is the more
general one, and the one use by the greeks. Then the question is are
this or that theory correct. The problem comes when people decide to
take a non axiomatic stance on this, and decide to define God by a
theory believed virtually by no scientist at all. I have never meet a
christian believing in literal interpretation of the bible, and
catholics have even taken some official stands against literalism.
There are theists in Hinduism, etc. The term God is used by
philosophers, etc.
You did mention yourself a paper on "God or Multiverse" which use also
a non christian notion of God. There God is only a selector of one
reality in the MWI. See the book by Belinfante where he use QM, and
the apparent unreasonableness of the MWI to argue for God, again in
that general sense.
Only fundamentalist insist to use a literal notion of "God". Only non
agnostic atheists and christian sects, TV shows, use them. Once we do
science, we just agree on the definition and go on until we find a
mistake, and then we change the definition. Like we say that Earth is
round instead of Earth does not exist.
Sometimes we use a generalization to simply the talk, like when saying
that 0 and 1 are number.
Plato's God is the truth we search, with the understanding (shown to
be accessible to any machine "rich enough") that Truth is a
transcendent concept.
Not using the original scientific definition consists in leaving the
talk to the charlatans. That is why an atheist, when non agnostic on
the concept itself, is as much irrational than a fundamentalist in any
religion.
I have hundred opf book using the term Gods in the sense I use it.
Only fundamentalists keep insisting using God in some Fairy Tale
sense, be it a man with a beard or some primary matter. But that has
nothing to do with the scientific attitude right at the start.
Bruno
Bruno
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Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellow [email protected]
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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