Re: What are atheists for?
On 4/2/2017 3:41 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Sun, Apr 02, 2017 at 12:43:17PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote: On 4/1/2017 11:55 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Am 01.04.2017 um 23:50 schrieb Brent Meeker: On 4/1/2017 12:39 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... I would like to note that in the paper that I have referenced discusses a completely different question. Provided that one could explain religion in the framework of evolutionary advantages, the question arises whether one should also try to explain atheism in the same framework. In the paper there are references to empirical studies that show that atheists have lower birthrates. It's also true that atheists have a higher proportion of their children survive to adulthood. These are simply correlates: in technological, educated societies people have fewer children and have fewer of them die young - and they are less superstitious. It might be good to check if this statement complies with empirical findings. Just compare statistics for a nation with lots of non-believers, e.g France or Sweden, to those with a high proportion of believers, e.g. Afghanistan or Ethiopia. Which is not to say it's a cause/effect relationship. Where life is hard and medical services are sparse people cling to religion and their children often die - so they have more children to compensate...and having more children contributes to their poverty. All the major religions encourage fertility. Religion as a political force aims to win by demographics. What about very religious societies such as the US? It always seemed a bit of an outlier to me. ISTM it exemplifies my point. It's more religious that Europe and has higher infant mortality and higher birthrate. It's less religious than Ethiopia and has lower infant mortality and lower birthrate. Brent -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What are atheists for?
On Sun, Apr 02, 2017 at 12:43:17PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote: > > > On 4/1/2017 11:55 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: > >Am 01.04.2017 um 23:50 schrieb Brent Meeker: > >> > >> > >>On 4/1/2017 12:39 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: > > > >... > > > >>>I would like to note that in the paper that I have referenced > >>>discusses a completely different question. Provided that one could > >>>explain religion in the framework of evolutionary advantages, the > >>>question arises whether one should also try to explain atheism in > >>>the same framework. > >>> > >>>In the paper there are references to empirical studies that show > >>>that atheists have lower birthrates. > >> > >>It's also true that atheists have a higher proportion of their > >>children survive to adulthood. These are simply correlates: in > >>technological, educated societies people have fewer children and have > >>fewer of them die young - and they are less superstitious. > > > >It might be good to check if this statement complies with > >empirical findings. > > Just compare statistics for a nation with lots of non-believers, e.g > France or Sweden, to those with a high proportion of believers, e.g. > Afghanistan or Ethiopia. Which is not to say it's a cause/effect > relationship. Where life is hard and medical services are sparse > people cling to religion and their children often die - so they have > more children to compensate...and having more children contributes > to their poverty. All the major religions encourage fertility. > Religion as a political force aims to win by demographics. > What about very religious societies such as the US? It always seemed a bit of an outlier to me. -- Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What are atheists for?
On 4/2/2017 6:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Words are used to make definition, but the definition are semantical, or axiomatical, and point usually on thing which are not number. The words "consciousness" or "trith", as word, are easy to define (they are just special sequence of letters taken in some finite alphabet". When we say that consciousness, truth, or god, are not definable, we mean that the concept cannot be defined by any sequence of letters. Exactly. You can define words like "chair" as referring to chairs, things which have certain forms and functions you can point to. You can only define "consciousness" ostensively by appealing to other people's use of words like "aware", "feel", "recall", "perceive",..and their actions. Brent -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What are atheists for?
On 4/1/2017 11:55 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Am 01.04.2017 um 23:50 schrieb Brent Meeker: On 4/1/2017 12:39 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... I would like to note that in the paper that I have referenced discusses a completely different question. Provided that one could explain religion in the framework of evolutionary advantages, the question arises whether one should also try to explain atheism in the same framework. In the paper there are references to empirical studies that show that atheists have lower birthrates. It's also true that atheists have a higher proportion of their children survive to adulthood. These are simply correlates: in technological, educated societies people have fewer children and have fewer of them die young - and they are less superstitious. It might be good to check if this statement complies with empirical findings. Just compare statistics for a nation with lots of non-believers, e.g France or Sweden, to those with a high proportion of believers, e.g. Afghanistan or Ethiopia. Which is not to say it's a cause/effect relationship. Where life is hard and medical services are sparse people cling to religion and their children often die - so they have more children to compensate...and having more children contributes to their poverty. All the major religions encourage fertility. Religion as a political force aims to win by demographics. Brent Dominic Johnson tries to explain this empirical fact in evolutionary terms. I looked up Johnson's papers. Thanks for pointing him out. Some the theories in "The Elephant in the Room" apply equally to current politics, e.g. in section 3e: Indeed, Johnson has a paper Dominic D. P. Johnson, Bradley A. Thayer, The evolution of offensive realism: Survival under anarchy from the Pleistocene to the present, Politics and the Life Sciences, v. 35, N 1, p. 1 — 26, 2016. that is pretty similar. Evgenii -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What are atheists for?
On 02 Apr 2017, at 04:06, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Apr 1, 2017 at 3:31 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > If God exist, then it is impossible to prove that God exist. Bullshit. If God existed He would have absolutely problem in proving His existence even to someone like me. In which theory? I guess you mean the fairy tales defended only by obscurantists or victim of obscurantists. > You are the one defending Aristotle theology Bruno, you've been writing that exact same zinger for about a decade now, don't you think it's time to think of a new one? Do you, or do you not believe in a primary physical universe. If not what is your theology? I put the cards on the table, and all what you do is throwing them away without suggesting any replacement. You criticize Aristotle but confess to not having read him. You don't need, indeed, you have the same theology. Why do you think Plato did not choose Aristote to follow him as director of the Athene academy. You criticize the antic greeks, but seem not to realize that our civilisation is based on one half of the greeks. The antic greeks are the one who made clear two quite different view of conceiving rationally the "reality". One gave mathematics, the other one gave physics and, alas, physicalism/materialism. > You confuse Here you confuse And speaking of confusion... > You stooped at step 3. You blundered at step 3. Only in appearance when you throw out the distinction between first person and third person points of view, indeed. That has been shown in all details. It really looks like you are working for the Pope. Well, it is unfair to say this, because if you read "Splendor Veritatis", you can see that the catholic conception of God has changed a lot in one century and is much less naive than yours', but I guess you will not read it. Maybe what you know of religion comes from the TV show by evangelists, in which case you have all my compassion. Those would be able to make God Itself into a strong atheist, ... 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What are atheists for?
On 01 Apr 2017, at 17:33, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 4/1/2017 12:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 31 Mar 2017, at 21:40, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 3/31/2017 6:23 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 31 Mar 2017, at 01:59, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 3/30/2017 6:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 29 Mar 2017, at 21:33, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 3/29/2017 10:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
The problem is that many atheists exploit a confusion between
failing to believe in x, ~[]x, and believing in the
inexistence or falsity of x, []~x.
On the contrary; it is religionists who exploit this confusion
to falsely criticize atheism as "just another faith".
Then, how do you call those who believe that there is no God?
Strong atheists or those who think belief there is a God is a
moral fault, "anti-theists".
OK. So we agree.
The problem is that the strong atheists called themselves just
atheists, and then claim they have no belief, when in fact they
believe in 0 god, unlike agnostic who say: I don't know, give the
definition and the theory.
There are also strong agnostics, i.e. those who hold it is
impossible to know anything about god(s).
That is self-defeating. They hold that it is impossible to know
anything about god(s), but then they hold a strong statement about
God(s): that it is impossible to know anything about Gods.
If you weaken slightly "strong-agnosticism", you will arrive
quickly to the negative theology, which asserts that we cannot
define God by any positive (or even negative) attribute,
That's nonsense. Words get defined, not things.
What
We cannot define "God", is simply false. We can define "God"
however suits us for purposes of communication.
Not at all. But if you think so I can understand the confusion. In
arithmetic it is the concept of truth which cannot be defined. We
manage to define that notion ... by using even more complex assumption
that we cannot defined, but are used too, because it is part of
mathematics. So we can say that a sentence p is true, and write "true
('p') <=> p", and makes sens of this because we do have the intution
of the standard moedl of arithmetic, by defining it in ZF. But tarki
theorem is that in no theory can we define the notion of truth if it
is rich enough to encompasse that very theory.
Words are used to make definition, but the definition are semantical,
or axiomatical, and point usually on thing which are not number. The
words "consciousness" or "trith", as word, are easy to define (they
are just special sequence of letters taken in some finite alphabet".
When we say that consciousness, truth, or god, are not definable, we
mean that the concept cannot be defined by any sequence of letters.
They just do not exist. And that is the meaning of Tarski theorem for
arithemtical truth: there are no predicate "truth" definable in the
alphabet "logical symbol + symbols "+", "*", "s" "0"" such that RA or
PA, or any sound extensions can prove truth('p') <-> p.
It is the thing pointed by the word which lacks a definition.
To say we cannot know anything about God is contradictory because
it assumes we know what God is in order that we can make an
assertion that we can't know anything about it. So I'm not a strong-
agnostic.
That's what I said. Strong-agnosticism does not make sense. Such a
notion can only confuse people.
but you can approach it by a sequence of negative assertions: it is
not this, nor that, etc.
Which naturally evokes the question, "WHAT is not this or that?"
The answer can only point toward the thing, but sum up by "the creator
of everything", or "the reason of everything", or "the origin of
everything", etc. And then we can reason, and show that today that the
evidences accumulated that it is that it cannot be ... a physical
universe.
Bruno
Brent
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Re: What are atheists for?
On 01 Apr 2017, at 16:09, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Am 01.04.2017 um 10:45 schrieb Russell Standish: Maybe we can think along the lines of why the "gay gene" persists. Gay people make attentive uncles, improving the fitness of their near relatives, or so the "just-so" story goes. Maybe atheists are freer thinkers, able to think outside the box to come up with solutions to important social problems. But presumably society doesn't want too many free-thinkers, limiting the number of atheists in society. Something like that. Though how to explain that atheism in practice is probably the dominant "religion" in Australia. And even more so amongst young people, it appears. My son, who went to a nominally christian school, said he only knew of two overtly christian boys amongst the 180-odd in his cohort. Food for thought. Yes, in the paper there are different hypotheses to explain evolutionary advantages for atheists. I especially like: If atheism is "absence of belief" in God, you don't need evolution to explain it. Stones are born atheists. You don't need complex neural nets to not believe in something, zero neurons is already enough. If atheism is "belief in no God", then it is ambiguous, given that "God" is almost by definition, a very vague term. At the start it meant "reason of our existence", and it started the research. Its fairy-tale "official" personification has been based on humans interested in exploiting the fears and credulity of others, which indeed can be explained partially by evolution. 7. Catalyst Presence of atheists facilitates adaptive advantages of belief OK, in the large sense of atheist, because this is recognition of ignorance. But this is not just evolution: all machine get it soon or later. Evolution has just sped-up the mammals recognition of their ignorance. Löbianity, that is self-refential correctness and elementary reasoning ability (with induction) confer a tremendous advantage, indeed. Unfortunately, once Löbian, you get also the ability to lie, and lying has some evolutionnary advantage, and truth remains what most people fears the most. "The presence of atheists may indirectly improve the fitness of believers by catalyzing their beneficial interactions." "atheists might, on the contrary, increase the benefits of religion to the group." "This hypothesis is already implicit in some existing evolutionary theories of religion, which postulate advantages for believers that depend on the co-existence of other individuals with different beliefs." Well, in Johnson's paper there are no mathematical models. To this end, see Robert Rowthorn, Religion, fertility and genes: a dual inheritance model, Proc. R. Soc. B 2011 278 2519-2527. Of course such analysis seems to neglect the very content of the spiritual experiences, and its relation to Reality. here I sort of agree that theology is anti-biological. We would be born with the spiritual truth, we might not evolve at all. It would be like spoiling a thriller movie. A part of theology has to remain secret, for logical reason. That is part axiomatized by the G* minus G logics and their intensional variants. Bruno Evgenii -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
