> On 31 May 2019, at 21:03, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On 5/31/2019 1:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>> On 30 May 2019, at 19:48, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List >>> <[email protected]> >>> <mailto:[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> On 5/30/2019 12:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>>> Mathematicians homogeninize the concept. Even strong atheism is a theology >>>> as it claims that “there is no God”, which is a theological proposition. >>> That is a misrepresentation of atheism. Atheists claim "there is no reason >>> believe there is a God”. >> Yes, but they believe only in the post 529 Aristotelian-Christian notion of >> God. > > As Bertrand Russell noted, there is no fixed meaning to "God”.
That is a good point. > It is a notion appropriated by every ideology to provide unquestionable > support. That does not follow. Politics can appropriate genetic, or even health. But then it is politics and no more science. When doing science, all support becomes questionable. To let theology in the hand of politics, is to defend the idea that there are unquestionable support. > >> >> >> Then I am atheist too. >> >> But if you read the “Element of Theology” by Proclus, you can see that >> during a millenium, theology was a branch of scientific research. And I use >> “god” in that original sense. > > And what science did Proclus produce? The efficacy of magic rituals? Of course not. If you read Proclus, you will see only definition, and reasoning. There is no magic, nor rituals, nor anything like that. Indeed, the discourse of the neoplatonist is quasi-isomorphic to what you get from the Gödel-Möb-Solovay self-reference logic. It is normal, the neoplatonist reason about themselves, and if they are consistent machine, they get the same thing than any machine can find by reasoning from introspective data. > > Theurgy is possible because the powers of the gods (the henads) extend > through their series of causation even down to the material world. And by > certain power-laden words, acts, and objects, the soul can be drawn back up > the series, so to speak. Proclus himself was a devotee of many of the > religions in Athens, considering that the power of the gods could be present > in these various approaches. It was the influence of Porphyry and the christians. Plotinus fight this, Prophyry was more neutral, (he wrote a treatise entitled “Against The Christians”, but when Proclus defended this, but it was a way to attract the christians which were more and more successful at his time. Then the sentence above actually makes sense in the Mechanist frame. The henads are the i in the phi_i. They are the machines. Th series of causation is the notion of computation, and that extend indeed “even down the material world” as that is why we have physical computers. The soul (the first person) van drawn back the series (that is get the universal notion of computation). Then, Proclus indeed expect God (truth) and gods (concepts) capable of being usefully transmitted to non intellectual, illiterate people with the help of theurgy (a point of contention and debate all along neoplatonism. I am myself reflecting on this since long (and my standard concussion, coming from Alan Watts, is that this works as long as the “priest” is able to blink, and not taking him/herself too much seriously. Bruno > > Brent > >> >> With that definition, atheism does no more make sense or become a form of >> nihilism or irrationalism, as God is defined by whatever is the reason why >> we are here and now, and that we search. >> >> Now, I have decided to stop using the nuance “agnostic atheism” and “non >> agnostic atheism”, and use instead agnosticism and atheism instead, as all >> self)called atheist I ahem met believes in physicalism, consciously or not, >> and most of them even believe that God des not exist, which is far different >> that not believing in God. >> >> >>> Brent >>> "Atheism is a belief system the way "Off" is a TV channel." >>> --- George Carlin >> That is what they claim in theory, but in practice that is not the case, >> given that they fight on all theologies, not just the christian one. They >> dismiss a millenium of progress in the filed (read Proclus!) and they defend >> exactly the same metaphysics than christians. Atheism is, in absolute value, >> the same as christianism, but in a radical form. >> >> Bruno >> >> >> >> >>> -- >>> 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] >>> <mailto:[email protected]>. >>> To view this discussion on the web visit >>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/905612f9-db1d-8dca-2cf8-6b5b8e8011de%40verizon.net >>> >>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/905612f9-db1d-8dca-2cf8-6b5b8e8011de%40verizon.net>. > > > -- > 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] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/5703b1f9-7c43-4bef-659e-3cbc941c953d%40verizon.net > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/5703b1f9-7c43-4bef-659e-3cbc941c953d%40verizon.net?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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