> On 2 Sep 2019, at 01:28, Lawrence Crowell <[email protected]> > wrote: > > On Sunday, September 1, 2019 at 6:38:31 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> On 31 Aug 2019, at 20:41, Lawrence Crowell <[email protected] >> <javascript:>> wrote: >> >> On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 9:46:21 PM UTC-5, Samiya wrote: >> فَاذْكُرُونِي أَذْكُرْكُمْ وَاشْكُرُوا لِي وَلَا تَكْفُرُونِ >> >> So remember Me, I will remember you and be grateful to Me and (do) not (be) >> ungrateful to Me. >> [Al-Quran 2:152 <https://www.islamawakened.com/quran/2/152/>] >> >> The Quran does not discourage the HOW questions, rather it encourages humans >> to ponder upon the creation, but it emphasises the WHY questions. God does >> not need our help in creating, sustaining, destroying or recreating >> everything. What He wants from us is realisation and acknowledgement for all >> He has done, and is continuously doing, and to realise that there is great >> purpose in all of this. >> >> For this reason religion has the effect of dulling minds. Science is about >> asking how, it is not really about why questions that are more in the >> philosophical domain. > > There is no reason to not exige as much rigour in philosophy than in any > other domain or inquiry. Theology has been rigorous for one millenium, but > 1500 years of dogma made us forget this. > > > > >> Paul in one of his epistles admonishes against study of the world because >> one is worshiping the "creature" and not the creator. As such this sort of >> religious ideology induces people to focus on "the Truth," or really some >> illusion of such, and they lose the ability to ascertain whether some >> proposition has some probability or reason for being true or false. When >> religion takes over you get a dark age. > > When fake religion, or dogmatic religion, takes over. That leads to absence > of (genuine) religion. > > > > The term genuine religion makes about as much sense as a “dry hurricane.” I > have to give my low down on religion now. > >
I define the religion/theology of the machine M by the set of true propositions about M, and its mathematical structure. The proper theology is the set of true propositions (about M) that the machine M cannot prove, yet still be able to produce as true proposition in some way (by experience, guess, extrapolation, etc.) > > I think it stems from the evolution of the brain …assuming the religious proposition that such brain exist, and time, space, etc. and then, in which theory? The human religion is admittedly a human construct, but so is physics and all science. The object studied by such science might precede the humans. Usually people believe that the Big Bang is not a human creation, and, when we assume Mechanism, we assume that, similarly, the truth of the elementary arithmetical sentences precede the humans too. > and in particular with the development of language. At some point in hominid > evolution language developed to a level of sophistication that our ancestors > started to tell stories. Fouts et al showed with sign language that Washoe > and other chimpanzees communicated elemental language, and later it was found > the chimps in the wild appear to sign to each other. However they do not > appear to tell stories. With our hominid ancestors these stories were > important because they communicated information about the environment in > narratives the projected human beings onto nature. OK. With Mechanism, Nature appears to be such narrative. It is a narrative common to *all* universal number in arithmetic. Physics, with Mechanism, is universal. It is the same for all universal machine, and indeed, that provides a very deep and string invariant from which the physical laws can be extracted and explained, including the non communicable parts (the theory of qualia extends the theory of quanta, and does not contradict it. > This makes the stories interesting and relative, so this means aspects of the > natural world were anthropomorphized. These are spirits, totems and demiurges > and so forth. To cut to the chase, with the developments of large scale > societies, city states, nations and empires religion matured from simple > forest gods called upon my shamans to organized social systems with big gods > or later with the “BIG GOD.” Monotheism is Monism, in the personal for presentation. Ig God is a person or a thing is an open problem in the canonical mathematical theology of the universal machine. > > So I do think there is an evolutionary basis for mythic narratives and this > includes religion. In the large sense of the term, a religion given by a believe in reality “outside us”, which of course no one can prove the existence. All Turing machines, due to the gap between G and G* (the Solovay logics of machines (and some daemons) self-reference), universal machine are bounded up to develop belief in such unprovable realities. Some of these belief can appear to be true, other can appear to be false, other can appear and be undecidable, momentarily of forever. > However, religion starting in the ancient world became totalitarian social > control structures. Yes. That happens when we separated religion from Reason or science. That is the goal: to steal the fundamental science to control people. That can concern all science (cf biology in the USSR), but is more and more prominent for the most fundamental science. > Both Christianity and Islam are complete totalitarian systems, Christianity became totalitarian around the closure of Plato academy. Islam might be born authoritarian, then became very open to rationality, science, including greek theology, and then, in 1148, become authoritarian, in most of its branches. Yet, if you look closely, not all branches did fell in that trap. Note that the materialist religion has been authoritarian (and still is) in many countries, with some low and high degrees. In china, things get extreme today with that respect. > and it works by instilling the commands of an infinite authority into the > minds of people. Yes. > Eric Blair wrote a fascinating treatise on the social psychology of > totalitarian power, where he noted how this is the most effective way of > controlling people. Eric Blair wrote this in fictional form as 1984 under the > pen name George Orwell. His catch phrases about THOUGHT CRIME and the rest > are references to the sort of internal control over minds based on terror, > and in religion this is called sin. Yes, that is what happen with religion when you use authoritarian power to steal a science. It becomes only an instrument of control. Note that the actual politics of health is entirely of that kind, with its myth, like drugs, …, and the will of control (making you actually buying other drugs, …). Thomas Sazs wrote a book on drugs politics using Orwell’s 194 to compare. In fact, when religion is separated from science, both religion and science become pseudo-reliion and pseudo-science. > > Religion though has ultimately this “emperor's new clothes” problem in that > our examinations of the world have revealed how religious ideas about the > world are wrong. All our theories are usually wrong. The problem is not there. The problem is in the dogma. The problem is when you lost the right to doubt. That is the problem I did met, not with academical scientists, but still with academical philosophers, who estimate that we have non right to doubt matter, and argue only with mockery, bullying, diffamation and never through reasoning and dialog. Of course, they have learn well the 1500 years of technic to hide the problems that are unable to solve, and they have become immune to doubt, or even immune to thinking. And when you dig on this issue, you see they belong to a clerical form of atheism, which copy the worst aspect of the totalitarian religions. Some are even related to the Muslim Brotherhood, in the combat against the doubts. > The cosmology of the Tanach, or old Testament, is based on Sumerian cosmology > of a flat earth covered by an iron dome all submerged in water. Ever wonder > why the Israelis called their anti-missile system Iron Dome? So much else is > just wrong as well. The intellectual power of religion has weakened since the > 15th or 16th century. The intellectual power of dogma has weaken, and that is a good sign. But theology has remained in the hand of the charlatan, and as long as theology does not come back to reason, doubt, modesty, it will remain in the hands of the charlatans. > Religions, thought of as memes or sort of brain viruses You can see all ideas like that. But the dogmatic one can last very long. That’s why we have to denunciate this, and one the best way is in studying the mathematical canonical theology of the universal machine, which is already aware of the “theological” or “scientist trap”, like when some people claim to know the truth (the theology of the machine explains that in such case we are with a con man). > are fighting back hard these days. I would compare the state of religion as > similar to WWII Germany during the Ardennes offensive in late 1944. At least > intellectually this is the case, and over half of young people raised > religiously are leaving. Christianity and Islam are worn out mythic > narratives, which will in time if we survive pass on as did the Orphic gods > of the ancient Greeks.. > The dogma will pass on if we make it so, but apparently we have to be patient. It will take a long time before theology come to reason, because it is too much useful to the bandits that we tolerate when voting for them. > > What I see emerging is a new paradigm for mythic systems, and we see it in > superheroes Yugio and Magic cards etc. It is a suspension of rational thought > to imagine super-powered people, who are almost like gods, but it does not > command your complete attention and it is largely a systems of games and > entertainment. This fulfills the psychological need for mythic narratives, > but without the totalitarian ideology. Yes, we have to sublimate the terror and the mythe in games, movies, fantasy, … sure. We must invest in education, so that people learn to defeat the demagog, using religion, health or any applied science domain. But to say that we have to eliminate religion would only mean to impose some religion. In science, we just never claim to have the definitive theory, and we remain open to change the theories, even the relation between the theories. With mechanism, there is no creator nor creation, only number relations and internal statistics imposed by incompleteness. The physical universe is a … useful fiction, not to take literally, or this ends in the elimination of the data of consciousness and persons, like with the Churchland or even Dennett. I don’t know if mechanism is true, but it gives a testable theory, so we can proceed. Physicalism remains consistent with string form of non mechanism, but there is no evidence for them, nor really any theory that I would have seen. Bruno > > LC > >> The expansion of the influence of Christian fundamentalism is one reason the >> US has this orange baboon, or Godzilla, as President. People are becoming >> stupid, and this unfortunately appears to be a trend in the rest of the >> world as well. > > It is just that we have not yet transformed the Renaissance. Not all science > have come back to reason. We are still leaving theology in the hand of people > advocating (if not imposing) dogma. > > The entire God/Non-God debate hides the original questioning of the greek, > where the question was about the existence of the universe, not of God, which > is a nickname for the truth that we search, with the (enlighten) > understanding that nobody can claim to have found it. > > It is the separation of theology from science which has made some people > thinking that science = truth, and religion = fiction, when (of course) > science is doubt, especially about the ontology commitment, be them personal > and impersonal. > > > > >> >> Please, I wish this religious stuff were taken somewhere else. Religion has >> no more sense than if I wish upon a star my fairy godmother will come, >> transubstantiate mice and a pumpkin into a horse drawn coach and take me to >> eternal bliss --- or happy ever after. It is all just magical thinking and >> ultimately preposterous nonsense. > > It can be, but biology has become a similar non sense in the materialist > dogmatic USRR. It is not the domain which is a problem, but the use of dogma, > and the discouragement of the doubt, and that is insane, but is not > “religion”, it is the fake religion that we deserve as long as we don’t let > the domain to come back to reason and experiences. > > Bruno > > > > > >> >> LC >> >> -- >> 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] <javascript:>. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/09e49351-9bd8-41b4-b6c0-d640dd0f7531%40googlegroups.com >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/09e49351-9bd8-41b4-b6c0-d640dd0f7531%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. > > > -- > 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/201a68dd-9b27-4b59-a3ef-2e72b7f835b3%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/201a68dd-9b27-4b59-a3ef-2e72b7f835b3%40googlegroups.com?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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