Think of Tinbergen with his herring gulls, or Lorenz with his Jackdaws, or Wilson with his ants, etc. That's how well you would have to know a person before you could say whether that person was an atheist.
At FRIAM last Friday we had a lovely argument, in which I argued that Taking the Lord's Name in Vain makes you an atheist, while others argued that words (like 'god", for instance) can become void of their meaning. I have to say that people like Dawkins, FEEL religious to me. If, at some level, they did not believe in God, how could it make such a difference to them. They doth protest too much. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2014 12:27 AM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [ SPAM ] RE: clinical diagnosis of [a]theism? Nick writes: "So when someone proposes a measure of something complicated such as "atheism", it's fair to ask what the validator of that measure would be, what the measure is actually intended to GET AT. And one of the kind of standard observations that my kind of psychologist often makes, is that validator of something complex like atheism is actually a complex behavior pattern, not lodged in an instant, but observable in a person over many circumstances and over a sustained period of time. " Is it the complexity of the patterns of atheist approach itself, or the many (competing) ontologies involved in evaluating situations in the real world? I doubt metaphysics is an area that IBM will prioritize for Watson, but.. I suspect it is likely they could fake an atheist, at least for multiple-choice tests. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
