Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-12 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 11 Feb 2013, at 17:52, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 10:03 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


 If Bob is behind a door that will reveal Moscow and Bill is  
behind a door that will reveal Washington then the probability that  
Bob and Bill will open a door and see Moscow and Washington is 100%.


 Bob and Bill will open a door and see Moscow and Washington is  
very ambiguous.


If Bob and Bill DID open a door


I understand.




and if Bob and Bill DID see Moscow and Washington


Do you mean that
a) both Bob and Bill see both cities, Moscow and Washington, at once?
or do you mean that
b) Bob saw once city and Bill the other?






then my prediction was correct


If you meant a) above, then comp is incorrect, as it supposed some  
telepathy.
If you meant b) then both Bob and Bill will refute the statement W  
and M (with their first person meaning already exposed).








if they don't then it wasn't, and there is nothing ambiguous in  
that. The result was that Bob and Bill DID open a door and Bob and  
Bill DID see Moscow and Washington, so the prediction was correct.
 If Bob and Bill are absolutely identical the probability that  
Bob-Bill will see Moscow and Washington remains at 100%.


 Bob-Bill will refute this once he, whoever he is, will open the  
door.


No, it remained true that Bob and Bill opened a door and saw Moscow  
and Washington. I could have added in my prediction that the guy who  
didn't see Washington will be the guy who didn't see Washington, but  
it seemed silly to do so.


The point with computationalism is that Bob and Bill have only once  
body and soul in Helsinki, but then differentiated  into two persons  
having exclusive experience (seeing W and seeing M). None of them will  
note in the diary I see W and M. And the unique guy in Helsinki  
knows that he will surivive, assuming comp, and that he will in any  
case surivive as either Bob, or Bill, not as being the two person at  
once.








 You keep mixing the 3-view on the 1-views,

And you keep thinking there is such a thing as THE first person  
view,


Yes, as it is the content of the diary of the guy I am asking the  
question where do you feel you are?. And the W-guy look in his diary  
where ha did put the result of his self-localization, and see W, and  
answer me W, and the other does the same and tell me M, and none  
told me, I am in both M and W, as none got that first person result.
*THE* first person view is the content of the diary, of each persons  
resulting from the duplication.


You keep playing with words, as everything is well defined in the paper.

Bruno




and that might be a OK approximation in a world without duplicating  
machines but not in a world that has them; there is only A first  
person view and one view is every bit as legitimate as another. And  
the only thing that turns one first person view into another first  
person view is what they view, so all you're saying is that the guy  
who sees Washington will be the guy who sees Washington which is too  
flimsy to build a philosophy on.


  John K Clark






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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-12 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 11 Feb 2013, at 20:12, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/11/2013 8:52 AM, John Clark wrote:


And you keep thinking there is such a thing as THE first person  
view, and that might be a OK approximation in a world without  
duplicating machines but not in a world that has them; there is  
only A first person view and one view is every bit as legitimate as  
another. And the only thing that turns one first person view into  
another first person view is what they view, so all you're saying  
is that the guy who sees Washington will be the guy who sees  
Washington which is too flimsy to build a philosophy on.


Similarly there is no such thing as the result of an observation  
of a quantum observable that is not already prepared in an  
eigenstate of that observable.


Why? If I look to an up+down electron in the {up, down} base, *the*  
result will be 'up' or will be 'down'.
From my perspective I am not certain of which result I will get, but  
the result of the observation will be quite definite. That's why  
quantum mechanician, like the comp predictors, introduces  
probabilities. Uncertain does not mean vague. (That's a common  
confusion).


Bruno


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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-11 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 10 Feb 2013, at 18:54, John Clark wrote:


On Sun, Feb 10, 2013  AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 All the probabilities need to add up to 100% or it's nonsense,

 making your W and M prediction into nonsense.

If Bob is behind a door that will reveal Moscow and Bill is behind a  
door that will reveal Washington then the probability that Bob and  
Bill will open a door and see Moscow and Washington is 100%.


Bob and Bill will open a door and see Moscow and Washington is very  
ambiguous.





If Bob and Bill are absolutely identical the probability that Bob- 
Bill will see Moscow and Washington remains at 100%.


Bob-Bill will refute this once he, whoever he is, will open the door.  
He will see only W, or M, as both bob-bill will recognize.
You keep mixing the 3-view on the 1-views, with each particular 1- 
views on the 1-view, on which the prediction was bearing.




If Bob-Bill changes his name to John K Clark the probabilities will  
still not change.


Indeed. But it 50%, not 100%, as both John K Clark will recognize  
(making abstraction of John Clark's bad faith, of course).





 And this miss the point that the act of prediction is asked to the  
guy in Helsinki.


The point is that prediction works great at establishing or  
falsifying scientific theories


Indeed. So why not compare the prediction of comp and the prediction  
of physics?




but that is NOT how we get our feeling of a unbroken chain of  
personal identity, you and I make incorrect predictions every day  
but we don't loose our sense of self as a result. It is made only  
from the present into the past, trying to push identity into the  
future works about as well as pushing on a string.


Prediction are always on future events, and always involve a future  
first person verification. Physicists have to assume (implicitly or  
not) some brain mind identity for this being able to work. You have  
already agreed that such identity is not correct, as two identical  
computer in two places can support a unique mind. UDA shows that such  
identity cannot work, in no circumstances.


Bruno



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-11 Thread meekerdb

On 2/11/2013 8:52 AM, John Clark wrote:
And you keep thinking there is such a thing as THE first person view, and that might 
be a OK approximation in a world without duplicating machines but not in a world that 
has them; there is only A first person view and one view is every bit as legitimate as 
another. And the only thing that turns one first person view into another first person 
view is what they view, so all you're saying is that the guy who sees Washington will be 
the guy who sees Washington which is too flimsy to build a philosophy on.


Similarly there is no such thing as the result of an observation of a quantum observable 
that is not already prepared in an eigenstate of that observable.


Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-10 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 08 Feb 2013, at 17:54, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 7:25 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com  
wrote:


 there is a single result in Bruno's experiment, John K Clark sees  
Washington and Moscow.


But under MWI you agreed you see the photon hit the left or the  
right plate, not the left side and the right side.  So which is it?


Yet more confusion and for exactly the same reason, those God damned  
personal pronouns.




H = Helsinki where the person is read and annihilate. M is for Moscow,  
and W is for washington (the cities or the experience of feeling to be  
in the cities, according to the context).


We have agreed that:

- the M-guy is the H-guy.
- the W guy is the H-guy
- The M-guy is not the W-guy.

No problem because pronouns are indexical, and thus modal notions, on  
which typically the Leibniz identity rule don't applied.


We know by comp that the H-guy will survive. The H-guy knows comp, and  
so knows that the two computerized version  s, that is the M-guy and  
the W-guy , will not have direct access to the memory of their  
respective doppelganger, and so that whoever the H-guy will become, it  
can only be felt to be in one city, and that it has two be W or M.


The experience, when done, we can get confirmation. If the H-guy  
predicted W or M, then the W-guy and the M-guy can compare the  
statement W or M in their diaries (which has been multiplied by  
definition of first person), then they look at the city, and the W-guy  
see W, which makes W or M true (by elementary logic). Etc.










John K Clark sees the photon hit the left AND the right side of the  
plate, however John K Clark has been duplicated so the John K Clark  
who sees the photon hit the left side of the plate sees the photon  
hit the left side of the plate and  the John K Clark who sees the  
photon hit the right side of the plate sees the photon hit the right  
side of the plate. In the same way John K Clark sees Washington AND  
Moscow although the Washington John K Clark sees only Washington and  
the Moscow John K Clark sees only Moscow.


If it is in the same way, it justifies the same use of probability.  
The only difference then is that in the quantum the 3p duplication is  
the 3p quantum superposition, and in comp it is the amoeba type, or  
computer type of classical duplication (a read of code followed by a  
reconstitution).



It is crucial, as this shows, before MGA that to use correctly a  
physical laws to predict a first person experience (like seeing an  
eclipse) we have to assume the physical universe is little to apply  
the laws, if not, we have to take into account the probabilities of  
having extension in the universal dovetailing, or in some long enough  
universal dovetailing.


Physicalist must bound the physical universe, to keep the brain mind  
identity thesis they use implicitly in applied physics.


Then MGA suggests this does not work either, unless some magic is put  
in the notion of matter.


Bruno






  John K Clark



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-10 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 09 Feb 2013, at 15:16, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:




On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 12:19 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net  
wrote:

On 2/8/2013 12:04 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:




On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 1:23 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net  
wrote:

On 2/7/2013 3:15 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:




On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 10:53 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net  
wrote:

On 2/7/2013 12:01 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
“A secular purpose” is a nice ruse, because it is “theology-free”,  
right?


Yes it is.  It's not dependent on any ultimate foundation of the  
universe (per Bruno's definition of 'theology') or even any  
agreement about what that might be.  It only depends on the public  
subjective non-religious values of society as expressed in their  
laws.  That's what 'secular' means.



By what mechanism does a value become non-religious? How did  
marriage become secular for instance?


Can you define non-religious values?


I can where religions are certified by the state.


Care to share an example of a secular value stripped of all  
religious and transcendental connotations?


Sure, murder is bad.  Of course this may be incoporated into many  
different religions as a value imposed by some transcendental force  
- but it's constancy across many cultures and religions, it's  
obvious relation to evolutionary survival makes it pretty clear that  
it's a secular value.



You take negation murder to be a secular value? Ok, I'll go along  
with this even though I believe no state or individual sees that, as  
an ethical end to strive for in the sense of a negative intrinsic  
value.


Not murder is, along with all these cultural and evolutionary  
factors, transcendental, as it follows from valuing life in the  
simpler self-referential statement: I live, hence I don't want to  
die. I live, therefore I wouldn't want to be killed, therefore  
murder is bad.


You ask why, and you'll get a transcendental answer: Because my  
life is not worth killing. = simply belief, as the person in  
question could be a Hitler type, with a Stauffenberg waiting in the  
next room. Human life appears as the primary, intrinsic value even  
here, and not not murder, which is merely instrumental negative  
value implied by the primary value of affirming human life. The  
negative instrumental value can be overridden, to assert the  
intrinsic one. I value human life in the general intrinsic,  
affirmative sense is much harder to override.


Value human life is common sense with transcendental roots; not  
some naive nonsense imposed onto religions by their arbitrary  
transcendental false deity.


Additionally, some mystics, theologians, and religions were able to  
nail this point without recourse to historical appearance of  
cultural consistency and religions, evolutionary survival, in which  
you've obscured the transcendental quality to make your point: these  
are imho just sophisticated justifications (still products of  
science's narrative of seeking truth; a truth beyond our reach =  
transcendental smiles back at us again anyway, if you ask why?  
enough times) of something much simpler: the will to live, including  
the irrational belief bit we can't wrap our minds around, as we  
could also be evil and our value of life misplaced at times.


If you make evolution set the standard, then you have to buy the  
darker side of its theology: Good Tsunami, asteroid, CO2, mass  
extinctions of life forms; as these shocks will create a stronger  
forcing function on populations and individuals to adapt in the long  
term; good my family got killed in that last quake.


Good points.

In fact some people seem to have hard to understand that physics is  
not theology, as they bear on different questions. But saying there is  
no theology, makes physics (usually) into a theology. It is no more  
physics: it is physics + a theological assumption. It becomes *a*  
theology.
Not saying it makes it authoritative, which is, provably with comp,  
the theological trap.


In science, locally, we can still tolerate an amount of authority and  
conservatism, but in religion we can't.
The contrary can happen, and that's we have not really begin to do  
science.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-10 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 09 Feb 2013, at 17:28, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 12:08 PM, Quentin Anciaux  
allco...@gmail.com wrote:


 you agree that if I ask you the question in the MWI context, what  
is the probability that you see the photon hit the left plate,  
you'll say 50%,


As I've said before the primary weakness of the MWI is how to  
consistently assign probabilities to observers seeing things,  
particularly if the number of universes is infinite and not just  
very large.  All the probabilities need to add up to 100% or it's  
nonsense,


... making your W and M prediction into nonsense. (with W and M  
being respectfully denoting the corresponding subjective experience of  
being in the city W, or, exclusively, the city M, as you cannot be in  
both cities from the first person point of view.






and there is considerable debate about how well Many World's has  
managed to do that, some say pretty well but others say not so much.


 yet you say that in the duplication experience of Bruno, it 100%  
you see left, 100% you see right which is of course false... the  
correct one either in MWI or with Bruno's experiment is 50%. If you  
can do a prediction in MWI so can you *the same way* in Bruno's  
experiment, only bad faith prevent you to admit it.


In Many Worlds everything is completely deterministic, everything is  
determined by Schrodinger's wave equation; or at least that's it's  
goal if it can get over the infinity problem mentioned above. But  
Bruno claims to have found a brand new type


I just make my case. I have never brag on new and things like that.  
That is not relevant, and the fact that you insist on this illustrate  
an ad hominem kind of argument.





of indeterminacy never seen before when all he has really discovered  
is the less than astonishing fact that the guy who well see the  
photon go to the left is the guy who sees the photon go to the left.


And this miss the point that the act of prediction is asked to the guy  
in Helsinki. That if he said W or M, all his successors will  
agree, and that if he said W and M, all its successors will refute  
the prediction, assuming of course that he has the cognitive ability  
to understand the definition of first person and third person given in  
comp, at the start of UDA.


Bruno







  John K Clark



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-09 Thread meekerdb

On 2/9/2013 6:16 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
If you make evolution set the standard, then you have to buy the darker side of its 
theology: Good Tsunami, asteroid, CO2, mass extinctions of life forms; as these shocks 
will create a stronger forcing function on populations and individuals to adapt in the 
long term; good my family got killed in that last quake. 


You can recognize that evolution is responsible for you valuing your life, and valuing the 
life of your children even more, without making natural selection your standard of value.


Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-09 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Saturday, February 9, 2013 5:03:58 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

  On 2/9/2013 6:16 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: 

 If you make evolution set the standard, then you have to buy the darker 
 side of its theology: Good Tsunami, asteroid, CO2, mass extinctions of 
 life forms; as these shocks will create a stronger forcing function on 
 populations and individuals to adapt in the long term; good my family got 
 killed in that last quake. 


Not really though. This stems from the 'survival of the fittest' 
misconception of evolution. More selection filters doesn't make for an 
organism more impervious to all future threats. If people survive a flood 
because they live on the top of hills, that doesn't mean that their 
offspring is stronger in any way. Even if some people who survive an 
earthquake did so because they were smart and prepared for natural 
disasters doesn't mean that they aren't idiots in a dozen other ways.


 You can recognize that evolution is responsible for you valuing your life, 
 and valuing the life of your children even more, without making natural 
 selection your standard of value.


Evolution would have no need for generating values, since values are a 
subjective motivation. All evolution would have to do is simply impose a 
script that assigns a high priority to protecting ones own children and 
ones own life. Like any computer program, a quantitative equivalence which 
is unsentimental and unconscious would always be more effective.

Craig


 Brent
  

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-09 Thread meekerdb

On 2/9/2013 3:08 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
Evolution would have no need for generating values, since values are a subjective 
motivation. 


Subjective motivation is just a quantitative value seen from the inside.

All evolution would have to do is simply impose a script that assigns a high priority to 
protecting ones own children and ones own life. 


And that's what happened and that's what you feel as love of life and love of 
children.

Like any computer program, a quantitative equivalence which is unsentimental and 
unconscious would always be more effective.


Unsentimental, maybe.  But not unemotional.  For example, rage is very useful in defense 
of one's children.


Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-09 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Saturday, February 9, 2013 6:29:54 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

 On 2/9/2013 3:08 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
  Evolution would have no need for generating values, since values are a 
 subjective 
  motivation. 

 Subjective motivation is just a quantitative value seen from the inside. 


Why would quantitative values have an inside though? The only reason that 
we might presume that is because we are looking at it retrospectively. If 
you turn it around though, and assume quantitative mechanisms can exist 
without awareness, then there is no possibility of any interior experience 
being generated. How and why would such a thing arise?
 


  All evolution would have to do is simply impose a script that assigns a 
 high priority to 
  protecting ones own children and ones own life. 

 And that's what happened and that's what you feel as love of life and love 
 of children. 


I understand why that makes sense to you, but you are making that up by 
taking the undeniable existence of love and drawing a straight line to what 
you presume, unquestionably, to be the cause. It's an unfalsifiable 
misconception which begs the question. Lets say you wanted to make a 
computer program that did not feel anything, but just reproduced and 
survived. Are you suggesting that is impossible? Are you saying that 
whenever a sufficiently complex machine is programmed to avoid specific 
conditions that avoidance conjures an experience of pain out of nowhere?
 


  Like any computer program, a quantitative equivalence which is 
 unsentimental and 
  unconscious would always be more effective. 

 Unsentimental, maybe.  But not unemotional.  For example, rage is very 
 useful in defense 
 of one's children. 


No it isn't. You are only looking at it retrospectively. The effectiveness 
of rage is not in the experience of rage, it is in the boost of strength, 
endurance, aggressive behavior, etc. All of that could be engineered 
without inventing some kind of ridiculous 'emotional state' as a theatrical 
presentation. Look at it prospectively instead. You are trying to make an 
effective replicator. Why would you ever need to do anything but optimize 
its behaviors?

Craig
 


 Brent 



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-09 Thread meekerdb

On 2/9/2013 3:39 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Saturday, February 9, 2013 6:29:54 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 2/9/2013 3:08 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
 Evolution would have no need for generating values, since values are a 
subjective
 motivation.

Subjective motivation is just a quantitative value seen from the inside.


Why would quantitative values have an inside though? The only reason that we might 
presume that is because we are looking at it retrospectively. If you turn it around 
though, and assume quantitative mechanisms can exist without awareness, then there is no 
possibility of any interior experience being generated. How and why would such a thing 
arise?



 All evolution would have to do is simply impose a script that assigns a 
high
priority to
 protecting ones own children and ones own life.

And that's what happened and that's what you feel as love of life and love 
of children.


I understand why that makes sense to you, but you are making that up by taking the 
undeniable existence of love and drawing a straight line to what you presume, 
unquestionably, to be the cause. It's an unfalsifiable misconception which begs the 
question. Lets say you wanted to make a computer program that did not feel anything, but 
just reproduced and survived. Are you suggesting that is impossible?


Yes.  Just like a philosophical zombie is impossible because intelligence entails 
consciousness, goals and purposes (like survival) plus intelligence entails values and 
emotions.


Are you saying that whenever a sufficiently complex machine is programmed to avoid 
specific conditions that avoidance conjures an experience of pain out of nowhere?


Pain and pleasure.




 Like any computer program, a quantitative equivalence which is 
unsentimental and
 unconscious would always be more effective.

Unsentimental, maybe.  But not unemotional.  For example, rage is very 
useful in
defense
of one's children.


No it isn't. You are only looking at it retrospectively. The effectiveness of rage is 
not in the experience of rage, it is in the boost of strength, endurance, aggressive 
behavior, etc. All of that could be engineered without inventing some kind of ridiculous 
'emotional state' as a theatrical presentation.


That's what you say.  But what do you think is an emotional state except the boost in 
adrenaline, the focus on objective, etc?  You are simply imagining the two can be 
separated because you have different words and viewpoints to describe them.


Look at it prospectively instead. You are trying to make an effective replicator. Why 
would you ever need to do anything but optimize its behaviors?


You wouldn't, but that would entail it having values and emotions.

Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-09 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Saturday, February 9, 2013 6:52:46 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

  On 2/9/2013 3:39 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 



 On Saturday, February 9, 2013 6:29:54 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: 

 On 2/9/2013 3:08 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
  Evolution would have no need for generating values, since values are a 
 subjective 
  motivation. 

 Subjective motivation is just a quantitative value seen from the 
 inside. 


 Why would quantitative values have an inside though? The only reason that 
 we might presume that is because we are looking at it retrospectively. If 
 you turn it around though, and assume quantitative mechanisms can exist 
 without awareness, then there is no possibility of any interior experience 
 being generated. How and why would such a thing arise?
  
  

  All evolution would have to do is simply impose a script that assigns a 
 high priority to 
  protecting ones own children and ones own life. 

 And that's what happened and that's what you feel as love of life and 
 love of children. 


 I understand why that makes sense to you, but you are making that up by 
 taking the undeniable existence of love and drawing a straight line to what 
 you presume, unquestionably, to be the cause. It's an unfalsifiable 
 misconception which begs the question. Lets say you wanted to make a 
 computer program that did not feel anything, but just reproduced and 
 survived. Are you suggesting that is impossible? 


 Yes.  Just like a philosophical zombie is impossible because intelligence 
 entails consciousness, goals and purposes (like survival) plus intelligence 
 entails values and emotions.


It's circular reasoning. You are assuming that function is intelligence, 
and then projecting your own human goals, purposes and consciousness onto 
that function. Then, realizing that your own consciousness doesn't make any 
sense as far as assisting function in any way, so you affirm the consequent 
by concluding that there can't be a philosophical zombie. In reality, every 
machine that human beings have ever built is a potentially philosophical 
zombie, it's entirely up to the beholder who determines how deeply they 
subscribe to the pathetic fallacy.


  Are you saying that whenever a sufficiently complex machine is 
 programmed to avoid specific conditions that avoidance conjures an 
 experience of pain out of nowhere?
  

 Pain and pleasure.


Can you explain why that would happen and how it could happen? 1+1 = pain?
 


   
  

  Like any computer program, a quantitative equivalence which is 
 unsentimental and 
  unconscious would always be more effective. 

 Unsentimental, maybe.  But not unemotional.  For example, rage is very 
 useful in defense 
 of one's children. 


 No it isn't. You are only looking at it retrospectively. The effectiveness 
 of rage is not in the experience of rage, it is in the boost of strength, 
 endurance, aggressive behavior, etc. All of that could be engineered 
 without inventing some kind of ridiculous 'emotional state' as a theatrical 
 presentation. 


 That's what you say.  But what do you think is an emotional state except 
 the boost in adrenaline, the focus on objective, etc?


I think that an emotional state is a sensory-motor experience in which we 
participate directly. Adrenaline is a substance, it has no emotional 
qualities. A dead person's body could be filled with adrenaline and there 
would be no emotion there.
 

   You are simply imagining the two can be separated because you have 
 different words and viewpoints to describe them.


No, I am observing that there are different words for them because they 
have absolutely nothing in common except a spatiotemporal correlation. 


  Look at it prospectively instead. You are trying to make an effective 
 replicator. Why would you ever need to do anything but optimize its 
 behaviors?
  

 You wouldn't, but that would entail it having values and emotions.


Values and emotions don't exist yet. That's what I mean by looking at it 
prospectively. You have to justify the creation of 'values and emotions', 
but you can't. You can only claim blindness to the obvious difference 
between a machine acting rapidly and forcefully, and an experience of anger 
and strength. It may not be your fault. I don't know if I have every come 
across someone who has the Western orientation who is able to shift their 
perception. It's a foreground-background shift, which you may not be wired 
to be able to do, in which case I apologize for expecting you to be able to 
do that.

Craig


 Brent
  

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-09 Thread meekerdb

On 2/9/2013 4:39 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Saturday, February 9, 2013 6:52:46 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 2/9/2013 3:39 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Saturday, February 9, 2013 6:29:54 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 2/9/2013 3:08 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
 Evolution would have no need for generating values, since values are a
subjective
 motivation.

Subjective motivation is just a quantitative value seen from the 
inside.


Why would quantitative values have an inside though? The only reason that 
we might
presume that is because we are looking at it retrospectively. If you turn 
it around
though, and assume quantitative mechanisms can exist without awareness, 
then there
is no possibility of any interior experience being generated. How and why 
would
such a thing arise?


 All evolution would have to do is simply impose a script that assigns 
a high
priority to
 protecting ones own children and ones own life.

And that's what happened and that's what you feel as love of life and 
love of
children.


I understand why that makes sense to you, but you are making that up by 
taking the
undeniable existence of love and drawing a straight line to what you 
presume,
unquestionably, to be the cause. It's an unfalsifiable misconception which 
begs the
question. Lets say you wanted to make a computer program that did not feel
anything, but just reproduced and survived. Are you suggesting that is 
impossible?


Yes.  Just like a philosophical zombie is impossible because intelligence 
entails
consciousness, goals and purposes (like survival) plus intelligence entails 
values
and emotions.


It's circular reasoning. You are assuming that function is intelligence,


It's how I recognize intelligence - and so do you.

and then projecting your own human goals, purposes and consciousness onto that function. 
Then, realizing that your own consciousness doesn't make any sense as far as assisting 
function in any way


I don't 'realize' that - and neither do you.  It's just another of your unsupported 
assumptions.


, so you affirm the consequent by concluding that there can't be a philosophical zombie. 
In reality, every machine that human beings have ever built is a potentially 
philosophical zombie, it's entirely up to the beholder who determines how deeply they 
subscribe to the pathetic fallacy.




Are you saying that whenever a sufficiently complex machine is programmed 
to avoid
specific conditions that avoidance conjures an experience of pain out of 
nowhere?


Pain and pleasure.


Can you explain why that would happen and how it could happen? 1+1 = pain?





 Like any computer program, a quantitative equivalence which is 
unsentimental and
 unconscious would always be more effective.

Unsentimental, maybe.  But not unemotional.  For example, rage is very 
useful
in defense
of one's children.


No it isn't. You are only looking at it retrospectively. The effectiveness 
of rage
is not in the experience of rage, it is in the boost of strength, endurance,
aggressive behavior, etc. All of that could be engineered without inventing 
some
kind of ridiculous 'emotional state' as a theatrical presentation.


That's what you say.  But what do you think is an emotional state except 
the boost
in adrenaline, the focus on objective, etc?


I think that an emotional state is a sensory-motor experience in which we participate 
directly. Adrenaline is a substance, it has no emotional qualities. A dead person's body 
could be filled with adrenaline and there would be no emotion there.


  You are simply imagining the two can be separated because you have 
different words
and viewpoints to describe them.


No, I am observing that there are different words for them because they have absolutely 
nothing in common except a spatiotemporal correlation.




Look at it prospectively instead. You are trying to make an effective 
replicator.
Why would you ever need to do anything but optimize its behaviors?


You wouldn't, but that would entail it having values and emotions.


Values and emotions don't exist yet. That's what I mean by looking at it prospectively. 
You have to justify the creation of 'values and emotions', but you can't. You can only 
claim blindness to the obvious difference between a machine acting rapidly and 
forcefully, and an experience of anger and strength. It may not be your fault. I don't 
know if I have every come across someone who has the Western orientation who is able to 
shift their perception. It's a foreground-background shift, which you may not be wired 
to be able to do, in which case I apologize for expecting you to be able to do that.


And I apologize for expecting you to be able to imagine that implementing intelligence 
would entail value and emotion.


Brent


Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-09 Thread meekerdb

On 2/9/2013 5:13 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



It's how I recognize intelligence - and so do you.


No, I recognize intelligence by experiencing learning. If there were an Elvis 
impersonator who was so good that you could not tell the difference between a film of 
him performing and one of Elvis performing, would you say that he had become Elvis Presley?


Learning is only detectable via function.

Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-09 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Saturday, February 9, 2013 9:07:50 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

  On 2/9/2013 5:13 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 

  
 It's how I recognize intelligence - and so do you.
  

 No, I recognize intelligence by experiencing learning. If there were an 
 Elvis impersonator who was so good that you could not tell the difference 
 between a film of him performing and one of Elvis performing, would you say 
 that he had become Elvis Presley?


 Learning is only detectable via function.


Experiencing learning is implicitly detected already. 

Think about it this way:

Let's say I'm a politician. I am about to give a press conference and so I 
have a stack of cards which have been pre-prepared for me by six different 
speech writers. They are color coded; red for questions about the military, 
white for the economy, green for the environment, etc.

If I am a complete idiot, assuming that my writers have done their job, I 
can field most if not all of the hot button questions without having known 
much about them at all. I need only know how to read and to be able to 
recognize which colors belong to which category of questions, and which 
questions seem to be about which category.

Note that there is no one intelligent agent which has an understanding of 
all of the categories.

However, if I were not an idiot, I could conceivably *learn* through the 
course of acting out this political charade, a bit of what I find myself 
parroting. If I am very intelligent, I could actually become informed in 
all of these categories and become, myself, a single intelligent agent with 
a polymath understanding - but -

my function need not change.

Nobody in the press will be able to tell whether I am a genius or an idiot 
based upon anything that I say, given that my speech writers have 
effectively predicted the types of questions which can be answered. As a 
politician, I could probably evade any question which isn't covered by my 
cards.

So there it is - a thought experiment, which, without getting into too much 
Searlean complication, clearly shows the enormous hole in assuming any sort 
of equivalence between intelligence and function, especially when there is 
both a will and skill to execute a simulation of intelligence.

Craig


 Brent
  

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-08 Thread Quentin Anciaux
2013/2/8 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com

 On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 7:25 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

   there is a single result in Bruno's experiment, John K Clark sees
 Washington and Moscow.


 But under MWI you agreed you see the photon hit the left or the right
 plate, not the left side and the right side.  So which is it?


 Yet more confusion and for exactly the same reason, those God damned
 personal pronouns. John K Clark sees the photon hit the left AND the right
 side of the plate, however John K Clark has been duplicated so the John K
 Clark who sees the photon hit the left side of the plate sees the photon
 hit the left side of the plate and  the John K Clark who sees the photon
 hit the right side of the plate sees the photon hit the right side of the
 plate. In the same way John K Clark sees Washington AND Moscow although the
 Washington John K Clark sees only Washington and the Moscow John K Clark
 sees only Moscow.


Yet you agree that if I ask you the question in the MWI context, what is
the probability that you see the photon hit the left plate, you'll say 50%,
yet you say that in the duplication experience of Bruno, it 100% you see
left, 100% you see right which is of course false... the correct one either
in MWI or with Bruno's experiment is 50%. If you can do a prediction in MWI
so can you *the same way* in Bruno's experiment, only bad faith prevent you
to admit it.

Quentin



   John K Clark


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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-08 Thread meekerdb

On 2/8/2013 12:04 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:



On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 1:23 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


On 2/7/2013 3:15 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:



On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 10:53 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 2/7/2013 12:01 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:

“A secular purpose” is a nice ruse, because it is “theology-free”, 
right?


Yes it is.  It's not dependent on any ultimate foundation of the 
universe (per
Bruno's definition of 'theology') or even any agreement about what that 
might
be.  It only depends on the public subjective non-religious values of 
society
as expressed in their laws.  That's what 'secular' means.


By what mechanism does a value become non-religious? How did marriage 
become
secular for instance?

Can you define non-religious values?


I can where religions are certified by the state.


Care to share an example of a secular value stripped of all religious and transcendental 
connotations?


Sure, murder is bad.  Of course this may be incoporated into many different religions as a 
value imposed by some transcendental force - but it's constancy across many cultures and 
religions, it's obvious relation to evolutionary survival makes it pretty clear that it's 
a secular value.


Brent



Not trying to make a point. Just interested :)

PGC

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-07 Thread Quentin Anciaux
2013/2/7 Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com



 On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 8:11 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.comwrote:



 2013/2/6 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net

  On 2/6/2013 1:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


  On 06 Feb 2013, at 04:00, meekerdb wrote:

  On 2/5/2013 11:02 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



 On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 1:14:07 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

 On Tue, Feb 5, 2013  PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote:


   Unpopular religions are denounced as cults.


 A religion is just a cult with good PR.


 It's interesting. I would be curious to know whether every established
 religion intentionally sought legitimacy at some point,


 What would that mean? Legal? Where there is official government
 recognition of religion (and probably tax breaks) the answer would be that
 they sought the recognition.  And all that you can consider 'established'
 have sought adherents.  But legitimacy??  I'm not sure how that world can
 be attached to religion.


  In my country, that is the case. Religions have to be recognized by
 the government. If not they are classified as sect, and are forbidden (like
 scientology). It is awkward and arbitrary, but that's simply the case.


 I'm curious.  How do they get recognized?  Do they  have to apply,


 They have to apply. But contrary to what Bruno claims, sect are not
 illegal, some sects can and have been declared illegal (as any group can
 be). But for example, scientology is not illegal in Belgium (for now) but
 they are often brought to justice by ex-member (for good reason I think).



 Sorry to be frank, but if this is serious (I miss some joke), then it is
 naive: the mechanism that serves to monitor and regulate the founding of
 religions in Western Europe, is the same judicial tool to control and
 finally repress religious groups- by seemingly integrating them.

 The moment any of these groups moves to do things like:


Well they have to conform to the laws (same as in the USA)... So no sects
are not illegal in belgium, they can't be declared illegal as long as they
conform to the laws like anywhere else on earth. And as I said, scientology
*is not* illegal in belgium and it is *in practice* not in theory.

No if you rant about the laws it's a totally different subject and you
should not conflate the two.

Regards,
Quentin



 - change conceptions of marriage

 - change conceptions of family

 - import for example its sacred ceremonial brew from South America, that
 has a controlled substance in it for thousands of years

 - want more appropriate economic frameworks for taxation for their
 conceptions of groups and individuals (why not marriages, as Judith Butler
 often put forward, between 3,4,5 or more partners, if their financial
 strategy and survival is solid with every partner consenting? Today: If a
 community of six partners works and lives together, hopefully they pair off
 to 3 males and 3 females, and still they would be taxed as 3 couples)

 - or simply make too much money: the western democracy rears its
 totalitarian face; less obvious than in North Korea, but let's stop telling
 ourselves stories about our democracy vs. China etc. We have learned
 nothing from totalitarian times and wars.

 Just because we hide the totalitarian tendencies in different judicial
 spots of cultural prejudice, doesn't mean freedom of religion.

 A Rastafarian wanting some of his sacred herb in France: fat chance, if he
 were to cite his religious reasons in court.

 So yes, you can apply for official recognition of your religion if you are
 interested in playing poker in pairs with plastic money beside your bed.

 Sorry, prohibition applies here too. So yes, alternate religious groupings
 are in practice illegal in Western Europe, if not on paper.

 PGC


 



 Quentin


 or does the government have some standard (numbers?) by which they
 automatically get recognized?  Do they have to file some statement of
 doctrine/theology/dogma with the government so that it can be determined
 whether a group is a splinter sect or a different religion?  Is Mormonism
 recognized?

 Brent


  The result is that sect become secret societies, so it is even harder
 to get rid of them, or for adherent to ever been able to get out of the
 influence. It is a real social dramatic problem. Then corruption makes also
 some sect still developing, like notably scientology.

  Bruno


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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-07 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 06 Feb 2013, at 20:06, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/6/2013 1:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



On 06 Feb 2013, at 04:00, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/5/2013 11:02 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 1:14:07 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Feb 5, 2013  PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote:

 Unpopular religions are denounced as cults.

A religion is just a cult with good PR.

It's interesting. I would be curious to know whether every  
established religion intentionally sought legitimacy at some point,


What would that mean? Legal? Where there is official government  
recognition of religion (and probably tax breaks) the answer would  
be that they sought the recognition.  And all that you can  
consider 'established' have sought adherents.  But legitimacy??   
I'm not sure how that world can be attached to religion.


In my country, that is the case. Religions have to be recognized by  
the government. If not they are classified as sect, and are  
forbidden (like scientology). It is awkward and arbitrary, but  
that's simply the case.


I'm curious.  How do they get recognized?


Arbitrarily. basically great known religion are accepted (the  
Abramanic one and, Hinduism, Buddhism). With the other you have to be  
careful when recruiting, and try to look like an association without  
financial interests. Typically a sect will be considered as such if  
people complain on sectarian activity, the most typical one being the  
subtraction of the children from the parents.



Do they  have to apply, or does the government have some standard  
(numbers?) by which they automatically get recognized?  Do they have  
to file some statement of doctrine/theology/dogma with the  
government so that it can be determined whether a group is a  
splinter sect or a different religion?  Is Mormonism recognized?


It is not. Now if there are enough people adhering, and if the  
religion is widespread in some places, they can have a chance. Most  
people accept this state of affair, because we do have an history of  
bad sects leading to collective suicide. Scientology has oscillated  
between some form of acceptance and reject. Eventually, when too much  
people complains, like it has been the case for scientology, the  
government get its attention turned on them, and they disintegrate the  
sect, which sometimes come back with another name.
Jehovah witness are tolerated because they are numerous, and  
considered as a variant of christians. Most male members were sent to  
jail, though, because they refused the military service, when it was  
obligatory for all.


Bruno






Brent

The result is that sect become secret societies, so it is even  
harder to get rid of them, or for adherent to ever been able to get  
out of the influence. It is a real social dramatic problem. Then  
corruption makes also some sect still developing, like notably  
scientology.


Bruno



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-07 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 06 Feb 2013, at 20:11, Quentin Anciaux wrote:




2013/2/6 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
On 2/6/2013 1:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



On 06 Feb 2013, at 04:00, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/5/2013 11:02 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 1:14:07 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Feb 5, 2013  PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote:

 Unpopular religions are denounced as cults.

A religion is just a cult with good PR.

It's interesting. I would be curious to know whether every  
established religion intentionally sought legitimacy at some point,


What would that mean? Legal? Where there is official government  
recognition of religion (and probably tax breaks) the answer would  
be that they sought the recognition.  And all that you can  
consider 'established' have sought adherents.  But legitimacy??   
I'm not sure how that world can be attached to religion.


In my country, that is the case. Religions have to be recognized by  
the government. If not they are classified as sect, and are  
forbidden (like scientology). It is awkward and arbitrary, but  
that's simply the case.


I'm curious.  How do they get recognized?  Do they  have to apply,

They have to apply. But contrary to what Bruno claims, sect are not  
illegal, some sects can and have been declared illegal (as any group  
can be). But for example, scientology is not illegal in Belgium (for  
now)


OK. With enough money on the table, anything is legal in Belgium, and  
many countries.




but they are often brought to justice by ex-member (for good reason  
I think).


Also, I am talking about the legislation I knew about many years ago.  
Maybe today they focus only on sectarian behavior (which would be  
more reasonable).


Bruno







Quentin

or does the government have some standard (numbers?) by which they  
automatically get recognized?  Do they have to file some statement  
of doctrine/theology/dogma with the government so that it can be  
determined whether a group is a splinter sect or a different  
religion?  Is Mormonism recognized?


Brent


The result is that sect become secret societies, so it is even  
harder to get rid of them, or for adherent to ever been able to get  
out of the influence. It is a real social dramatic problem. Then  
corruption makes also some sect still developing, like notably  
scientology.


Bruno



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-07 Thread meekerdb

On 2/7/2013 7:12 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:



On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 8:11 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com 
mailto:allco...@gmail.com wrote:




2013/2/6 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net

On 2/6/2013 1:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 Feb 2013, at 04:00, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/5/2013 11:02 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 1:14:07 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013  PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote:

 Unpopular religions are denounced as cults.


A religion is just a cult with good PR.


It's interesting. I would be curious to know whether every established
religion intentionally sought legitimacy at some point,


What would that mean? Legal? Where there is official government 
recognition of
religion (and probably tax breaks) the answer would be that they sought 
the
recognition.  And all that you can consider 'established' have sought
adherents.  But legitimacy??  I'm not sure how that world can be 
attached to
religion.


In my country, that is the case. Religions have to be recognized by the
government. If not they are classified as sect, and are forbidden (like
scientology). It is awkward and arbitrary, but that's simply the case.


I'm curious.  How do they get recognized?  Do they  have to apply,


They have to apply. But contrary to what Bruno claims, sect are not 
illegal, some
sects can and have been declared illegal (as any group can be). But for 
example,
scientology is not illegal in Belgium (for now) but they are often brought 
to
justice by ex-member (for good reason I think).



Sorry to be frank, but if this is serious (I miss some joke), then it is naive: the 
mechanism that serves to monitor and regulate the founding of religions in Western 
Europe, is the same judicial tool to control and finally repress religious groups- by 
seemingly integrating them.


The moment any of these groups moves to do things like:

- change conceptions of marriage

- change conceptions of family

- import for example its sacred ceremonial brew from South America, that has a 
controlled substance in it for thousands of years


- want more appropriate economic frameworks for taxation for their conceptions of groups 
and individuals (why not marriages, as Judith Butler often put forward, between 3,4,5 or 
more partners, if their financial strategy and survival is solid with every partner 
consenting? Today: If a community of six partners works and lives together, hopefully 
they pair off to 3 males and 3 females, and still they would be taxed as 3 couples)


- or simply make too much money: the western democracy rears its totalitarian face; less 
obvious than in North Korea, but let's stop telling ourselves stories about our 
democracy vs. China etc. We have learned nothing from totalitarian times and wars.


Just because we hide the totalitarian tendencies in different judicial spots of cultural 
prejudice, doesn't mean freedom of religion.


A Rastafarian wanting some of his sacred herb in France: fat chance, if he were to cite 
his religious reasons in court.


One can invent a religion and cite it for anything from eating hallucinogenic mushrooms to 
burning Jews.  In the U.S. the general rule is that a legal prohibition must serve a 
secular purpose (not be directed specifically at a religion) and laws apply equally to 
everyone.  So if your religion says you can beat women who show their face in public, 
that's just too bad for your religion.




So yes, you can apply for official recognition of your religion if you are interested in 
playing poker in pairs with plastic money beside your bed.


Sorry, prohibition applies here too. So yes, alternate religious groupings are in 
practice illegal in Western Europe, if not on paper.


PGC


So what's the advantage of being recognized?  Will some authority prevent you praying at a 
shrine or from reading your sacred text if you're not recognized?  Will you get some tax 
advantage if you are?  And when a religion is recognized that must imply that it is 
somehow defined.  How is that done?   And how finely are religions defined...is 
Christianity recognized as one religion, or do they distinguish Catholics from Baptists 
from Mormons?  This all seems impossibly messy.


Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-07 Thread meekerdb

On 2/7/2013 8:23 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:



On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 4:47 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com 
mailto:allco...@gmail.com wrote:




2013/2/7 Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com
mailto:multiplecit...@gmail.com



On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 8:11 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com
mailto:allco...@gmail.com wrote:



2013/2/6 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net

On 2/6/2013 1:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 Feb 2013, at 04:00, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/5/2013 11:02 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 1:14:07 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013  PM, Craig Weinberg 
whats...@gmail.com wrote:

 Unpopular religions are denounced as cults.


A religion is just a cult with good PR.


It's interesting. I would be curious to know whether every
established religion intentionally sought legitimacy at some 
point,


What would that mean? Legal? Where there is official government
recognition of religion (and probably tax breaks) the answer 
would be
that they sought the recognition.  And all that you can consider
'established' have sought adherents.  But legitimacy??  I'm 
not sure
how that world can be attached to religion.


In my country, that is the case. Religions have to be 
recognized by the
government. If not they are classified as sect, and are 
forbidden (like
scientology). It is awkward and arbitrary, but that's simply 
the case.


I'm curious.  How do they get recognized?  Do they  have to 
apply,


They have to apply. But contrary to what Bruno claims, sect are not 
illegal,
some sects can and have been declared illegal (as any group can 
be). But for
example, scientology is not illegal in Belgium (for now) but they 
are often
brought to justice by ex-member (for good reason I think).



Sorry to be frank, but if this is serious (I miss some joke), then it 
is naive:
the mechanism that serves to monitor and regulate the founding of 
religions in
Western Europe, is the same judicial tool to control and finally repress
religious groups- by seemingly integrating them.

The moment any of these groups moves to do things like:


Well they have to conform to the laws (same as in the USA)... So no sects 
are not
illegal in belgium, they can't be declared illegal as long as they conform 
to the
laws like anywhere else on earth. And as I said, scientology *is not* 
illegal in
belgium and it is *in practice* not in theory.

No if you rant about the laws it's a totally different subject and you 
should not
conflate the two.


Why? Because religious beliefs have nothing to do with judicial concepts?

Our judicial marriage model has nothing to do with the Christian conception of 
marriage?

There is no freedom of religion,


You seem to jump from there are some restrictions on practices that claimed to be 
religious, to there is NO freedom of religion.  Is it your position that freedom of 
religion only exists when every practice called 'religion' by its adherents is permitted?  
I hope you don't have freedom of religion for Aztecs.


no freedom of thought, no legality of sects that stray from Western European 
Christian-Secular legal conceptions = this is conflated via history, so don't blame 
the messenger á la thou shalt not conflate... also you take this conflation for 
granted in arbitrary manner suiting your argument, but not when I raise religious 
freedom issues + you legitimize via because they conform to the laws like everywhere 
else on earth, which is not an argument.


Discriminatory laws have been passed before and continue to be passed.

The legality of sects you cite is peanuts given to caged animals, to be a bit 
hyperbolic :)


The freedom of religion you seek is like letting the lions run free in the zoo - to be a 
little hyperbolic.


Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-07 Thread Platonist Guitar Cowboy
On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 8:34 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 2/7/2013 8:23 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:



 On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 4:47 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.comwrote:



  2013/2/7 Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com



  On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 8:11 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.comwrote:



  2013/2/6 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net

  On 2/6/2013 1:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


  On 06 Feb 2013, at 04:00, meekerdb wrote:

  On 2/5/2013 11:02 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



 On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 1:14:07 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

 On Tue, Feb 5, 2013  PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote:


   Unpopular religions are denounced as cults.


 A religion is just a cult with good PR.


 It's interesting. I would be curious to know whether every established
 religion intentionally sought legitimacy at some point,


 What would that mean? Legal? Where there is official government
 recognition of religion (and probably tax breaks) the answer would be that
 they sought the recognition.  And all that you can consider 'established'
 have sought adherents.  But legitimacy??  I'm not sure how that world 
 can
 be attached to religion.


  In my country, that is the case. Religions have to be recognized by
 the government. If not they are classified as sect, and are forbidden 
 (like
 scientology). It is awkward and arbitrary, but that's simply the case.


  I'm curious.  How do they get recognized?  Do they  have to apply,


 They have to apply. But contrary to what Bruno claims, sect are not
 illegal, some sects can and have been declared illegal (as any group can
 be). But for example, scientology is not illegal in Belgium (for now) but
 they are often brought to justice by ex-member (for good reason I think).



 Sorry to be frank, but if this is serious (I miss some joke), then it is
 naive: the mechanism that serves to monitor and regulate the founding of
 religions in Western Europe, is the same judicial tool to control and
 finally repress religious groups- by seemingly integrating them.

 The moment any of these groups moves to do things like:


 Well they have to conform to the laws (same as in the USA)... So no sects
 are not illegal in belgium, they can't be declared illegal as long as they
 conform to the laws like anywhere else on earth. And as I said, scientology
 *is not* illegal in belgium and it is *in practice* not in theory.

 No if you rant about the laws it's a totally different subject and you
 should not conflate the two.


 Why? Because religious beliefs have nothing to do with judicial concepts?

 Our judicial marriage model has nothing to do with the Christian
 conception of marriage?

 There is no freedom of religion,


 You seem to jump from there are some restrictions on practices that
 claimed to be religious, to there is NO freedom of religion.  Is it your
 position that freedom of religion only exists when every practice called
 'religion' by its adherents is permitted?  I hope you don't have freedom of
 religion for Aztecs.


Yes, that is what I am after Brent. You want me to take this seriously? Ok:
you got me. Should I step outside put my hands on the car now, or what?
Damn it! I was so close to world domination, and then Brent stepped in...
DAMN YOU BRENT :)



  no freedom of thought, no legality of sects that stray from Western
 European Christian-Secular legal conceptions = this is conflated via
 history, so don't blame the messenger á la thou shalt not conflate...
 also you take this conflation for granted in arbitrary manner suiting your
 argument, but not when I raise religious freedom issues + you legitimize
 via because they conform to the laws like everywhere else on earth, which
 is not an argument.

 Discriminatory laws have been passed before and continue to be passed.

 The legality of sects you cite is peanuts given to caged animals, to be a
 bit hyperbolic :)


 The freedom of religion you seek is like letting the lions run free in the
 zoo - to be a little hyperbolic.


I just don't like to confuse necessary and possible in absolute reductive
sense, particularly when considering danger in a broad sense, which you do
in every line here. I am not being hyperbolic this time.

PGC




Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-07 Thread meekerdb

On 2/7/2013 12:01 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:

There might be confusion between necessary and possible dangers.


If there is, you haven't cleared it up.



Necessary danger: It’s legal for your neighbor to walk on to your property and shoot you 
for emotional reasons or it’s legal to burn a minority on racial grounds etc.


What's 'necessary' about either one of those events?  First, if it were legal it would 
still be extremely unlikely (my neighbor likes me) and certainly no necessary.  Second, it 
can happen even though it is illegal.  So it's a possible danger - but not necessitated by 
anything.




Possible danger: eating hallucinogenic mushrooms or driving a car (more die of the 
latter on % basis).


These involve some degree of danger, so you are required to meet certain criteria and get 
a license to drive a car and there are various rules for traffic to reduce the degree of 
danger.  That more people die of car accidents than eating hallucinogenic mushrooms is not 
really to the point.  Many more people drive and ride in cars that eat hallucinogenic 
mushrooms and they thereby accomplish many things useful to society as well as too 
themselves, while of hallucinating is of dubious value.  In any case eating hallucinogenic 
mushrooms is widely tolerated in the U.S. and it's not even clear that it is illegal under 
federal law, independent of any religious claims.




Beating people in public/private again: necessary, forced harm; no matter how you look 
at it. Smoking a herb: possibly, depends on how you look at it.


“A secular purpose” is a nice ruse, because it is “theology-free”, right? 


Yes it is.  It's not dependent on any ultimate foundation of the universe (per Bruno's 
definition of 'theology') or even any agreement about what that might be.  It only depends 
on the public subjective non-religious values of society as expressed in their laws.  
That's what 'secular' means.


Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-07 Thread meekerdb

On 2/7/2013 3:15 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:



On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 10:53 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


On 2/7/2013 12:01 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:

“A secular purpose” is a nice ruse, because it is “theology-free”, 
right?


Yes it is.  It's not dependent on any ultimate foundation of the universe 
(per
Bruno's definition of 'theology') or even any agreement about what that 
might be.
 It only depends on the public subjective non-religious values of society as
expressed in their laws.  That's what 'secular' means.


By what mechanism does a value become non-religious? How did marriage become secular 
for instance?


Can you define non-religious values?


I can where religions are certified by the state.

Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-06 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 05 Feb 2013, at 18:53, John Clark wrote:


On Mon, Feb 4, 2013  Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

 After a experiment has been completed the Many World's  
Interpretation can give some people, including me, a intuitive feel  
of what just happened,


 The analogous experiment in the UDA is pressing the button and  
seeing what City you now find yourself.
  ^ 
^^
Yep it's true, the pee pee proof can not be explained without the  
use of ambiguous pronouns to hide behind.


I did it more than once. You miss the point: you know that whoever you  
can feel to be in the immediate future---after pushing the button, you  
(whoever you have become) will see only one city, making your  
statement non sensical.






 So I would say MW is a theory and not an interpretation.

OK, but it's a theory that has not been proven;


An applied theory is never proven. And MW is a theorem in QM. It  
follows from the linearity of the evolution and of the tensor product.  
Superpositions never disappear. QM is not proven (except from comp),  
but the existence of the moon has never been proven. To prove  
happens only in theories, and all theories are assumed. We have only  
evidences or refutation.




don't get me wrong I rather like the theory but that doesn't make it  
true. Godel thought that all arithmetical statements are either true  
or they are not, but he also knew there are true arithmetical  
statements that can never be proven to be true. So maybe that's also  
the case for statements about physics and cosmology, maybe many  
worlds is true but there is no way to ever experimentally  
demonstrate it. On the other hand maybe tomorrow somebody will find  
a experimental way to prove it.


 I know of no good explanation of why quantum computers should work  
under single-universe interpretations.


And at least so far quantum computers haven't done much of anything  
except to find the factors of the number 15. We'll talk again when  
somebody makes a real quantum computer, but I don't see what they or  
many worlds has to do with the pee pee proof.


Comp implies MW, or many-dreams, and that physics emerges, in a  
precise mathematical way, from that.
We have already an ortholattice structure at the sigma_1 bottom. You  
criticize without studying.





  You've agreed there is a single definite result (even in MW)  
after making some measurement.


Yes.

 You then say there is no single result in Bruno's experiment

Not true, there is a single result in Bruno's experiment, John K  
Clark sees Washington and Moscow.


That can make sense, but but then you are me. And that does not make  
the relative indeterminacy disappear, because John Clark, in Helsinki,  
is wrong if he predicts that he *will* see both W and M. He will see  
only W, or only M, as seeing is a first person view, and that first  
person view will not been duplicated *from his first person view,  
only from a third person view, but we do this since we are amoeba.
So if your prediction is John will see W and M, both the first  
person obtained will refute it.







 because you have been duplicated.

It is beyond dispute that you has indeed been duplicated, so if  
that personal pronoun is used in a question with no additional  
information on which you


We have already agreed that you are both, because you are duplicated.  
But without adding telepathy you cannot know in advance which one you  
will feel to be.




is being referred to then no answer can be given because the  
question is ambiguous.


 However Bruno in his pee pee proof claims to have discovered  
something new about prediction but he is wrong about that.


 Third person indeterminacy is not what he claims as some new  
prediction.


Bruno claims to have found a new sort of indeterminacy unrelated to  
quantum indeterminacy or the sort of uncertainty Godel and Turing  
dealt with.  Bruno's claims are untrue.


So what is your algorithm of prediction? W and M has been refuted,  
but you stick repeating that it is untrue, without given any algorithm  
which is not refuted immediately by BOTH copies (showing that the  
pronouns' ambiguity is just irrelevant).






 you abandoned the proof at step 3 out of the 8.

One does not need to eat the entire egg to know it is bad.


You deny elementary common sense, and avoid the definitions given when  
we single that out. No one here is able to make any sense of your  
refutation.


Bruno



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-06 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 06 Feb 2013, at 03:42, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/5/2013 9:53 AM, John Clark wrote:



  You've agreed there is a single definite result (even in MW)  
after making some measurement.


Yes.

 You then say there is no single result in Bruno's experiment

Not true, there is a single result in Bruno's experiment, John K  
Clark sees Washington and Moscow.


 because you have been duplicated.

It is beyond dispute that you has indeed been duplicated, so if  
that personal pronoun is used in a question with no additional  
information on which you is being referred to then no answer can  
be given because the question is ambiguous.


It seems that part of the problem is that in English you is both  
second person singular *and* plural.  Being from the south I suggest  
that the experiment be expressed as You have been duplicated and  
y'all see Washington and Moscow.


That's correct, as we have already discussed many times.
But then with QM MW, you must say y' will all see the electron being  
everywhere. So the QM-MW and  the comp indeterminacy comes from the  
fact that although we can say, in the 3p views on the 1p views that  
y'all see W and M, that seeing will be disconnected, and individual.  
If not the 1p views are just eliminated, and neither QM without  
collapse, nor Mechanism makes any sense.


Bruno





Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-06 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 06 Feb 2013, at 04:00, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/5/2013 11:02 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 1:14:07 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Feb 5, 2013  PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote:

 Unpopular religions are denounced as cults.

A religion is just a cult with good PR.

It's interesting. I would be curious to know whether every  
established religion intentionally sought legitimacy at some point,


What would that mean? Legal? Where there is official government  
recognition of religion (and probably tax breaks) the answer would  
be that they sought the recognition.  And all that you can consider  
'established' have sought adherents.  But legitimacy??  I'm not  
sure how that world can be attached to religion.


In my country, that is the case. Religions have to be recognized by  
the government. If not they are classified as sect, and are forbidden  
(like scientology). It is awkward and arbitrary, but that's simply the  
case. The result is that sect become secret societies, so it is even  
harder to get rid of them, or for adherent to ever been able to get  
out of the influence. It is a real social dramatic problem. Then  
corruption makes also some sect still developing, like notably  
scientology.


Bruno






Brent

or if it's more of an inevitable consequence of surviving long  
enough to seem ancient. Are their ancient cults (other than those  
intentionally shrouded in secrecy)?


Craig


  John K Clark
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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-06 Thread meekerdb

On 2/6/2013 1:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 Feb 2013, at 04:00, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/5/2013 11:02 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 1:14:07 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013  PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: 
wrote:

 Unpopular religions are denounced as cults.


A religion is just a cult with good PR.


It's interesting. I would be curious to know whether every established religion 
intentionally sought legitimacy at some point,


What would that mean? Legal? Where there is official government recognition of religion 
(and probably tax breaks) the answer would be that they sought the recognition.  And 
all that you can consider 'established' have sought adherents.  But legitimacy??  I'm 
not sure how that world can be attached to religion.


In my country, that is the case. Religions have to be recognized by the government. If 
not they are classified as sect, and are forbidden (like scientology). It is awkward and 
arbitrary, but that's simply the case.


I'm curious.  How do they get recognized?  Do they  have to apply, or does the government 
have some standard (numbers?) by which they automatically get recognized?  Do they have to 
file some statement of doctrine/theology/dogma with the government so that it can be 
determined whether a group is a splinter sect or a different religion?  Is Mormonism 
recognized?


Brent

The result is that sect become secret societies, so it is even harder to get rid of 
them, or for adherent to ever been able to get out of the influence. It is a real social 
dramatic problem. Then corruption makes also some sect still developing, like notably 
scientology.


Bruno


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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-06 Thread Quentin Anciaux
2013/2/6 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net

  On 2/6/2013 1:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


  On 06 Feb 2013, at 04:00, meekerdb wrote:

  On 2/5/2013 11:02 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



 On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 1:14:07 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

 On Tue, Feb 5, 2013  PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote:


   Unpopular religions are denounced as cults.


 A religion is just a cult with good PR.


 It's interesting. I would be curious to know whether every established
 religion intentionally sought legitimacy at some point,


 What would that mean? Legal? Where there is official government
 recognition of religion (and probably tax breaks) the answer would be that
 they sought the recognition.  And all that you can consider 'established'
 have sought adherents.  But legitimacy??  I'm not sure how that world can
 be attached to religion.


  In my country, that is the case. Religions have to be recognized by the
 government. If not they are classified as sect, and are forbidden (like
 scientology). It is awkward and arbitrary, but that's simply the case.


 I'm curious.  How do they get recognized?  Do they  have to apply,


They have to apply. But contrary to what Bruno claims, sect are not
illegal, some sects can and have been declared illegal (as any group can
be). But for example, scientology is not illegal in Belgium (for now) but
they are often brought to justice by ex-member (for good reason I think).

Quentin


 or does the government have some standard (numbers?) by which they
 automatically get recognized?  Do they have to file some statement of
 doctrine/theology/dogma with the government so that it can be determined
 whether a group is a splinter sect or a different religion?  Is Mormonism
 recognized?

 Brent


  The result is that sect become secret societies, so it is even harder to
 get rid of them, or for adherent to ever been able to get out of the
 influence. It is a real social dramatic problem. Then corruption makes also
 some sect still developing, like notably scientology.

  Bruno


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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-05 Thread Quentin Anciaux
2013/2/5 Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com



 On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 2:04 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 2/3/2013 7:20 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

 On 2/3/13, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:

 On 2/3/2013 8:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 It simpler to generalize the notion of God so that indeed basically all
 correct machines
 believes in God, and in some theories question like is God a person
 can
 be an open
 problem.

 But you have a vocabulary problem related to the fact that you cannot
 cut
 with your
 education which has impose to you only one notion of God.

 Why should there be more than one notion designated by God.

 Do you not agree that there are multiple religions and each is free to
 designate its own God or Gods?  To choose one sect of one religion's
 God as the standard God for all atheists to disbelieve in is
 favoritism.  Why do the atheists choose the Abrahamic God over the God
 the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Zoroastrians, the Deists, the Platonists,
 or any of the myriads of religions since lost to history?


 Because that's the god of theism - hence a-theism.


 So are you also an a-deist?  What about an a-Brahmanist, or
 a-Hyper-intelligent-simlatorist?




  You say it
 is because it is the most popular.  Even if that were so, Atheism
 isn't about rejecting one God, it rejects all Gods.


 Not at all.  All the atheists I know allow that a deist god is more
 likely to exist than a theist god.


 They still (I would think) put that probability less than 50%.




  You would have to
 be quite an expert to disqualify every religion's (and indeed, every
 person's) notion of God.


 I don't have to 'disqualify' them (whatever that means); I just fail to
 put any credence in them.


 How do you differentiate yourself from agnostics, who also fail to put any
 credence in them?





  The Abrahamic
 religions use
 the word to designate a particular notion: an omniscience, omnipotent,
 benevolent creator
 person who wants us to worship him.

 Not all do, which you failed to account for in your below probabilities.


 Not all what do?


 Not all Christians define God as an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent
 creator person who wants us to worship him.


Then they're not Christians... christianity is defined by a set of dogmas
(hey dogma is what define religions), so if you doubt the basic dogmas of
christianity, why would you call yourself a christian ??



  I just took the proportion of the world population that self identified
 as Christian, Muslim, and Jew.  The major remaining portions are
 non-believers and Hindus.



Together their adherents constitute 54%
 of those who
 believe in a theist god.  And if we take your view that atheists and
 agnostics use the
 same definition,


 That is not my view.  I am trying to ascertain what is the God that
 atheists disbelieve in, and if it is one in particular (and not all of
 them, which is what I thought most atheists believed (e.g. Richard Dawkins
 and John Clark say they believe in zero Gods)), why have they chosen some
 particular religion's God instead of others?  Are there Gods atheists
 believe in but do not tell anyone about?


I do not believe in any *personified* gods, and in any *dogmas*, so in that
settings I would call myself an atheist. I'm agnostic about what I could
call an existential force, a reality maker... Religions does not allows
doubt, questionning, religions is about dogmas. I would side with John in
saying that wanting to use god for something else than the accepted meaning
(which means a super *being*/*person*) is wrong. I can accept the notion of
the One (which is not a person), the one is not a *god* in that sense.

But when you talk with religious zealot, saying you're agnostic means to
them that they could enrol you in their dogma, and so to them I really
prefer saying I'm an atheist, because really I don't believe their BS, I
don't want to believe, I want to doubt, question, search answers, religions
gives non-questionable answers, religions are not about seeking truth, it
is just shut up and believe.

Regards,
Quentin



  then 70% of people use that same meaning.   If there's some
 other notion,
 why not call it something else.

  The discordians have their own notion of Pope, as do the Catholics.
 Who is anyone to say there is only one meaning of Pope?


 That's not two different meanings any more that king is two different
 notions because there is more than one king.


 They have different properties though.  As is the case between Gods of
 various religions.  There are some nearly universal characteristics, but no
 two are identical.  You could even say, every Christian has a different
 understanding and view point of what God is.  Perhaps there are Gods in
 some religions which are not only consistent or probable, but real.  Should
 science not have some interest in their investigation (especially if they
 are part of reality)?



  Why then,
 should there be only one meaning of God?


 

Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-05 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 03 Feb 2013, at 19:58, Jason Resch wrote:




On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 11:02 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


On 01 Feb 2013, at 17:10, Jason Resch wrote:

Very nice post Bruno.  I found your points convincing and  
informative.


Thanks Jason. I appreciate.

I really don't know what happens with John K Clark.

At least John K Clark answers mails, and the contradiction can be  
made public.

Some other people have not been so polite.

Is there any one on the list who understood Clark's point, and would  
like to defend it?



When I first saw the UDA I paused at step 3 as well, and raised the  
point on the list that both perspectives are experienced and that  
these experience could rightly be said to belong to the same  
person.  I think you replied that Chalmers had said the same thing  
and also that he said it would imply that we are everyone.  The  
notion of a universal self, however, is advanced and using it here  
at step 3 is in a sense skipping ahead.  I think the reasoning on  
duplicates eventually leads to the realization on the self, which  
John Clark may had already reached with his writing of short stories  
on the subject of duplicates.  I think I know what he means when he  
says I experience both, but he is using I in a different sense  
than you mean it.  I think he is using I in the broad sense of the  
universal self rather than the immediacy of here and now and what  
is it my mind presently has access to?  Like a split brain patient  
experiencing both sides of the screen, but one hemisphere of the  
brain not remembering the other hemisphere's experience, you could  
in the same sense say John Clark is presently experiencing both W  
and M, but suffers from the same amnesia/loss of access of a split  
brain patient.


Yes. Indeed. Someone (Lee) made a similar point, and i think agreed  
that this entails that we are already all the same person, like the  
same amoeba, or the universal self, but John did not reply when I  
asked him if that was his view. Then it is also not relevant for the  
first person indeterminacy as it concerns the next possible first  
person experience about the result of an experiment (like pushing on a  
button, and looking which city we feel to be).







Despite that I share this broad sense of self, I came to realize my  
problem with step 3 came down to.


Good. It is frequent that some people takes time to get the first  
person indeterminacy. I think most people eventually understand, but  
some people seems to be unable to acknowlegde it. I guess it is more a  
psychological problem than a problem of being able to reason or not.





What I find most surprising about John's position is that he can use  
I in the same sense you mean in the UDA when referring to many- 
worlds thought experiments, but he refuses to use it in that same  
sense when it comes to duplication in the UDA.


Yes. And he did become rather delirious when explaining to me and  
Quentin why. He introduced the non relevant distinction that in QM the  
doppelganger belongs to different universes, like if that could change  
the comp probability.


It is a bit sad as being open to the QM MWI is normally a big help to  
get the comp MDI (many dreams).


Also, he uses often the mind-brain identity thesis, which is already  
non sensical in MWI, and of course also in comp.


But the worst is in his tone, which does not reflect that he is  
willing to think on those matter seriously, so he does look like a  
sort of priest of the materialist dogma, and at the same time he is  
not, as he said he was open to the idea that arithmetic might be the  
basic reality. That's what is rather weird. To be continued ...


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-05 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 03 Feb 2013, at 22:56, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/3/2013 8:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


It simpler to generalize the notion of God so that indeed basically  
all correct machines believes in God, and in some theories question  
like is God a person can be an open problem.


But you have a vocabulary problem related to the fact that you  
cannot cut with your education which has impose to you only one  
notion of God.


Why should there be more than one notion designated by God.  The  
Abrahamic religions use the word to designate a particular notion:  
an omniscience, omnipotent, benevolent creator person who wants us  
to worship him.  Together their adherents constitute 54% of those  
who believe in a theist god.  And if we take your view that atheists  
and agnostics use the same definition, then 70% of people  use  
that same meaning.   If there's some other notion, why not call it  
something else.



The meaning of words can evolve. In this case I use the word  
theology in the old original sense, and even that sense still make  
sense for 70% of the Abramanic theology, despite adding more weird  
attributes.
Like John you confirm my feeling that atheists defend the use of the  
word as it has been imposed to us, and not the more general concept  
which bring theologies in the first place.


Using another world would not help in the comparative theological  
studies, including the comparaison with comp.


Bruno






Brent

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Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-05 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Jason Resch 

God is a word, and the meanings of words are established by use.
So the word God can mean whatever you intend it to mean.


- Receiving the following content - 
From: Jason Resch 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2013-02-04, 22:12:54
Subject: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.





On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 2:04 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 2/3/2013 7:20 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On 2/3/13, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net ?rote:

On 2/3/2013 8:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

It simpler to generalize the notion of God so that indeed basically all
correct machines
believes in God, and in some theories question like is God a person can
be an open
problem.

But you have a vocabulary problem related to the fact that you cannot cut
with your
education which has impose to you only one notion of God.

Why should there be more than one notion designated by God.

Do you not agree that there are multiple religions and each is free to
designate its own God or Gods? ?o choose one sect of one religion's
God as the standard God for all atheists to disbelieve in is
favoritism. ?hy do the atheists choose the Abrahamic God over the God
the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Zoroastrians, the Deists, the Platonists,
or any of the myriads of religions since lost to history?



Because that's the god of theism - hence a-theism.


So are you also an a-deist? ?hat about an a-Brahmanist, or 
a-Hyper-intelligent-simlatorist?
?



You say it
is because it is the most popular. ?ven if that were so, Atheism
isn't about rejecting one God, it rejects all Gods.



Not at all. ?ll the atheists I know allow that a deist god is more likely to 
exist than a theist god.


They still (I would think) put that probability less than 50%.
?



You would have to
be quite an expert to disqualify every religion's (and indeed, every
person's) notion of God.



I don't have to 'disqualify' them (whatever that means); I just fail to put any 
credence in them.


How do you differentiate yourself from agnostics, who also fail to put any 
credence in them?
?





The Abrahamic
religions use
the word to designate a particular notion: an omniscience, omnipotent,
benevolent creator
person who wants us to worship him.

Not all do, which you failed to account for in your below probabilities.



Not all what do? 


Not all?hristians?efine God as an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent creator 
person who wants us to worship him.
?
? just took the proportion of the world population that self identified as 
Christian, Muslim, and Jew. ?he major remaining portions are non-believers and 
Hindus.





? Together their adherents constitute 54%
of those who
believe in a theist god. ?nd if we take your view that atheists and
agnostics use the
same definition,


That is not my view. ? am trying to ascertain what is the God that atheists 
disbelieve in, and if it is one in particular (and not all of them, which is 
what I thought most?theists?elieved (e.g. Richard Dawkins and John Clark say 
they believe in zero Gods)), why have they chosen some particular religion's 
God instead of others? ?re there Gods atheists believe in but do not tell 
anyone about?
?
then 70% of people use that same meaning. ? If there's some
other notion,
why not call it something else.


The discordians have their own notion of Pope, as do the Catholics.
Who is anyone to say there is only one meaning of Pope?



That's not two different meanings any more that king is two different notions 
because there is more than one king.


They have different properties though. ?s is the case between Gods of various 
religions. ?here are some nearly universal characteristics, but no two are 
identical. ?ou could even say, every Christian has a different understanding 
and view point of what God is. ?erhaps there are Gods in some religions which 
are not only consistent or probable, but real. ?hould science not have some 
interest in their investigation (especially if they are part of reality)?





Why then,
should there be only one meaning of God?



Because then we wouldn't know what God meant. ?f course like many words it 
may refer to more than one thing and there may be some variations. 
?Automobile refers to lots of different things, but they all have wheels, 
motive power, and carry people over surfaces. ?hat doesn't mean you can call an 
aircraft carrier and automobile.


So then what are the universal properties of God? ?ou seem to shy away from 
them and prefer your own overly specific, self-inconsistent definition, because 
it is the one you can most comfortably admit you disbelieve in. ?his is trivial 
though and I think we can do better. ?t is like a mathematician proving there 
are no numbers that are prime and even and greater than 2, so the mathematician 
decides he has proven all there is to prove and gives up deciding to advance 
the field by proving anything else.


In showing that an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent God cannot exist, 
you

Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-05 Thread Jason Resch
On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 3:01 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:



 2013/2/5 Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com



 On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 2:04 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 2/3/2013 7:20 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

 On 2/3/13, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:

 On 2/3/2013 8:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 It simpler to generalize the notion of God so that indeed basically
 all
 correct machines
 believes in God, and in some theories question like is God a person
 can
 be an open
 problem.

 But you have a vocabulary problem related to the fact that you cannot
 cut
 with your
 education which has impose to you only one notion of God.

 Why should there be more than one notion designated by God.

 Do you not agree that there are multiple religions and each is free to
 designate its own God or Gods?  To choose one sect of one religion's
 God as the standard God for all atheists to disbelieve in is
 favoritism.  Why do the atheists choose the Abrahamic God over the God
 the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Zoroastrians, the Deists, the Platonists,
 or any of the myriads of religions since lost to history?


 Because that's the god of theism - hence a-theism.


 So are you also an a-deist?  What about an a-Brahmanist, or
 a-Hyper-intelligent-simlatorist?




  You say it
 is because it is the most popular.  Even if that were so, Atheism
 isn't about rejecting one God, it rejects all Gods.


 Not at all.  All the atheists I know allow that a deist god is more
 likely to exist than a theist god.


 They still (I would think) put that probability less than 50%.




  You would have to
 be quite an expert to disqualify every religion's (and indeed, every
 person's) notion of God.


 I don't have to 'disqualify' them (whatever that means); I just fail to
 put any credence in them.


 How do you differentiate yourself from agnostics, who also fail to put
 any credence in them?





  The Abrahamic
 religions use
 the word to designate a particular notion: an omniscience, omnipotent,
 benevolent creator
 person who wants us to worship him.

 Not all do, which you failed to account for in your below probabilities.


 Not all what do?


 Not all Christians define God as an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent
 creator person who wants us to worship him.


 Then they're not Christians... christianity is defined by a set of dogmas
 (hey dogma is what define religions), so if you doubt the basic dogmas of
 christianity, why would you call yourself a christian ??


So Thomas Aquinas was not a christian, because he understood
the incompatibility of omniscience and omnipotence.





  I just took the proportion of the world population that self identified
 as Christian, Muslim, and Jew.  The major remaining portions are
 non-believers and Hindus.



Together their adherents constitute 54%
 of those who
 believe in a theist god.  And if we take your view that atheists and
 agnostics use the
 same definition,


 That is not my view.  I am trying to ascertain what is the God that
 atheists disbelieve in, and if it is one in particular (and not all of
 them, which is what I thought most atheists believed (e.g. Richard Dawkins
 and John Clark say they believe in zero Gods)), why have they chosen some
 particular religion's God instead of others?  Are there Gods atheists
 believe in but do not tell anyone about?


 I do not believe in any *personified* gods, and in any *dogmas*, so in
 that settings I would call myself an atheist. I'm agnostic about what I
 could call an existential force, a reality maker... Religions does not
 allows doubt, questionning, religions is about dogmas. I would side with
 John in saying that wanting to use god for something else than the accepted
 meaning (which means a super *being*/*person*) is wrong. I can accept the
 notion of the One (which is not a person), the one is not a *god* in that
 sense.

 But when you talk with religious zealot, saying you're agnostic means to
 them that they could enrol you in their dogma, and so to them I really
 prefer saying I'm an atheist, because really I don't believe their BS, I
 don't want to believe, I want to doubt, question, search answers, religions
 gives non-questionable answers, religions are not about seeking truth, it
 is just shut up and believe.


My point is there are various levels of sophistication in understanding.  A
three-year-old might have some concept of numbers, and so does a PhD
mathematician. Their understandings may be incomparable, but you could say
they both have some belief in numbers.  The fact that many people might
have little understanding in certain field is not an appropriate reason to
say there is nothing of any interest in that field.

Jason



 Regards,
 Quentin



  then 70% of people use that same meaning.   If there's some
 other notion,
 why not call it something else.

  The discordians have their own notion of Pope, as do the Catholics.
 Who is anyone to say there is only one meaning of Pope?


 That's 

Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-05 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 05 Feb 2013, at 15:04, Jason Resch wrote:




On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 3:01 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com  
wrote:

snip

I do not believe in any *personified* gods, and in any *dogmas*, so  
in that settings I would call myself an atheist. I'm agnostic about  
what I could call an existential force, a reality maker...  
Religions does not allows doubt, questionning, religions is about  
dogmas. I would side with John in saying that wanting to use god for  
something else than the accepted meaning (which means a super  
*being*/*person*) is wrong. I can accept the notion of the One  
(which is not a person), the one is not a *god* in that sense.


But when you talk with religious zealot, saying you're agnostic  
means to them that they could enrol you in their dogma, and so to  
them I really prefer saying I'm an atheist, because really I don't  
believe their BS, I don't want to believe, I want to doubt,  
question, search answers, religions gives non-questionable  
answers, religions are not about seeking truth, it is just shut  
up and believe.


My point is there are various levels of sophistication in  
understanding.  A three-year-old might have some concept of numbers,  
and so does a PhD mathematician. Their understandings may be  
incomparable, but you could say they both have some belief in  
numbers.  The fact that many people might have little understanding  
in certain field is not an appropriate reason to say there is  
nothing of any interest in that field.



I agree. And to reject a notion because of a common misunderstanding  
can only maintain and spread the misconception.
It remains typical that atheists are so few inclined to accept that we  
tackle theology with the scientific method.


I have used the term theology because I have been qualified as such,  
by vindicative strong atheists, and this when I said things like I am  
interested in the question 'could a machine be conscious (answer:  
that's theology), or even just I am interested in modal  
logic (comment: that's theology). Eventually I think there were  
right, and to prevent such easy dismissal I have called that theology.
Another reason, is that I want prevent the statement science has  
shown that we are machine, and a big part of what I have done should  
explain why this is not a scientific statement, and why saying yes  
to the doctor asks fro some act of faith. Then the theory of  
consciousness makes it a basic and common mystical experience, which  
takes the form of an automated or instinctive bet on a reality.


No scientist get any trouble with this. But I made my old atheists,  
and marxist, and philosophers, ex-friends quite unhappy. May be they  
were just jealous or something, but the persistence of the problem  
that atheists seem to have with the use of the scientific attitude in  
theology makes me suspects that they were perhaps more serious in  
their religious dogma no God!. In fact they meant probably no  
God, (with quotes), but they did not say, as they know this is  
only vocabulary. The idea that matter is an hypothesis makes also  
some people nervous. But in science we should never make any  
ontological commitment, not a single one. Ontological commitment are  
private matter.


Bruno






Jason


Regards,
Quentin

then 70% of people use that same meaning.   If there's some
other notion,
why not call it something else.

The discordians have their own notion of Pope, as do the Catholics.
Who is anyone to say there is only one meaning of Pope?

That's not two different meanings any more that king is two  
different notions because there is more than one king.


They have different properties though.  As is the case between Gods  
of various religions.  There are some nearly universal  
characteristics, but no two are identical.  You could even say,  
every Christian has a different understanding and view point of what  
God is.  Perhaps there are Gods in some religions which are not only  
consistent or probable, but real.  Should science not have some  
interest in their investigation (especially if they are part of  
reality)?




Why then,
should there be only one meaning of God?

Because then we wouldn't know what God meant.  Of course like many  
words it may refer to more than one thing and there may be some  
variations.  Automobile refers to lots of different things, but  
they all have wheels, motive power, and carry people over surfaces.   
That doesn't mean you can call an aircraft carrier and automobile.


So then what are the universal properties of God?  You seem to shy  
away from them and prefer your own overly specific, self- 
inconsistent definition, because it is the one you can most  
comfortably admit you disbelieve in.  This is trivial though and I  
think we can do better.  It is like a mathematician proving there  
are no numbers that are prime and even and greater than 2, so the  
mathematician decides he has proven all there is to prove and gives  
up 

Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-05 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 11:59:09 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:

 Quentin,
  
 I agree with you, if that's what religion is.
 But it is not generally like that. 
 Instead, you are talking about a cult. 
  


The distinction is questionable. I would say that all religions begin as 
cults and that all cults become religions given enough time and popularity. 
Unpopular religions are denounced as cults. Same with religions that become 
popular too suddenly.

Craig
 

  
  

 - Receiving the following content - 
 *From:* Bruno Marchal javascript: 
 *Receiver:* everything-list javascript: 
 *Time:* 2013-02-05, 11:42:46
 *Subject:* Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

  
  On 05 Feb 2013, at 15:04, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 3:01 AM, Quentin Anciaux 
 allc...@gmail.comjavascript:
  wrote:

 snip


 I do not believe in any *personified* gods, and in any *dogmas*, so in 
 that settings I would call myself an atheist. I'm agnostic about what I 
 could call an existential force, a reality maker... Religions does not 
 allows doubt, questionning, religions is about dogmas. I would side with 
 John in saying that wanting to use god for something else than the accepted 
 meaning (which means a super *being*/*person*) is wrong. I can accept the 
 notion of the One (which is not a person), the one is not a *god* in that 
 sense.

 But when you talk with religious zealot, saying you're agnostic means to 
 them that they could enrol you in their dogma, and so to them I really 
 prefer saying I'm an atheist, because really I don't believe their BS, I 
 don't want to believe, I want to doubt, question, search answers, religions 
 gives non-questionable answers, religions are not about seeking truth, it 
 is just shut up and believe.


 My point is there are various levels of sophistication in understanding. 
  A three-year-old might have some concept of numbers, and so does a PhD 
 mathematician. Their understandings may be incomparable, but you could say 
 they both have some belief in numbers.  The fact that many people might 
 have little understanding in certain field is not an appropriate reason to 
 say there is nothing of any interest in that field.



 I agree. And to reject a notion because of a common misunderstanding can 
 only maintain and spread the misconception.
 It remains typical that atheists are so few inclined to accept that we 
 tackle theology with the scientific method. 

 I have used the term theology because I have been qualified as such, by 
 vindicative strong atheists, and this when I said things like I am 
 interested in the question 'could a machine be conscious (answer: that's 
 theology), or even just I am interested in modal logic (comment: that's 
 theology). Eventually I think there were right, and to prevent such easy 
 dismissal I have called that theology. 
 Another reason, is that I want prevent the statement science has shown 
 that we are machine, and a big part of what I have done should explain why 
 this is not a scientific statement, and why saying yes to the doctor asks 
 fro some act of faith. Then the theory of consciousness makes it a basic 
 and common mystical experience, which takes the form of an automated or 
 instinctive bet on a reality.

 No scientist get any trouble with this. But I made my old atheists, and 
 marxist, and philosophers, ex-friends quite unhappy. May be they were just 
 jealous or something, but the persistence of the problem that atheists seem 
 to have with the use of the scientific attitude in theology makes me 
 suspects that they were perhaps more serious in their religious dogma no 
 God!. In fact they meant probably no God, (with quotes), but they did 
 not say, as they know this is only vocabulary. The idea that matter is an 
 hypothesis makes also some people nervous. But in science we should never 
 make any ontological commitment, not a single one. Ontological commitment 
 are private matter.

 Bruno




  
 Jason
  

  
 Regards,
 Quentin



  then 70% of people use that same meaning.   If there's some
 other notion,
 why not call it something else.

 The discordians have their own notion of Pope, as do the Catholics.
 Who is anyone to say there is only one meaning of Pope?


 That's not two different meanings any more that king is two different 
 notions because there is more than one king.


 They have different properties though.  As is the case between Gods of 
 various religions.  There are some nearly universal characteristics, but no 
 two are identical.  You could even say, every Christian has a different 
 understanding and view point of what God is.  Perhaps there are Gods in 
 some religions which are not only consistent or probable, but real.  Should 
 science not have some interest in their investigation (especially if they 
 are part of reality)?
  
  

 Why then,
 should there be only one meaning of God?


 Because then we wouldn't know what God meant.  Of course

Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-05 Thread John Clark
On Tue, Feb 5, 2013  PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:


  Unpopular religions are denounced as cults.


A religion is just a cult with good PR.

  John K Clark

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Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-05 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 1:14:07 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

 On Tue, Feb 5, 2013  PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com 
 javascript:wrote:
  

   Unpopular religions are denounced as cults. 


 A religion is just a cult with good PR.


It's interesting. I would be curious to know whether every established 
religion intentionally sought legitimacy at some point, or if it's more of 
an inevitable consequence of surviving long enough to seem ancient. Are 
their ancient cults (other than those intentionally shrouded in secrecy)?

Craig


   John K Clark 


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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-05 Thread meekerdb

On 2/5/2013 6:04 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 3:01 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com 
mailto:allco...@gmail.com wrote:




2013/2/5 Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com



On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 2:04 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 2/3/2013 7:20 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On 2/3/13, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net
 wrote:

On 2/3/2013 8:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

It simpler to generalize the notion of God so that 
indeed
basically all
correct machines
believes in God, and in some theories question like is 
God a
person can
be an open
problem.

But you have a vocabulary problem related to the fact 
that you
cannot cut
with your
education which has impose to you only one notion of 
God.

Why should there be more than one notion designated by 
God.

Do you not agree that there are multiple religions and each is 
free to
designate its own God or Gods?  To choose one sect of one 
religion's
God as the standard God for all atheists to disbelieve in is
favoritism.  Why do the atheists choose the Abrahamic God over 
the God
the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Zoroastrians, the Deists, the 
Platonists,
or any of the myriads of religions since lost to history?


Because that's the god of theism - hence a-theism.


So are you also an a-deist?  What about an a-Brahmanist, or
a-Hyper-intelligent-simlatorist?



You say it
is because it is the most popular.  Even if that were so, 
Atheism
isn't about rejecting one God, it rejects all Gods.


Not at all.  All the atheists I know allow that a deist god is more 
likely
to exist than a theist god.


They still (I would think) put that probability less than 50%.



You would have to
be quite an expert to disqualify every religion's (and indeed, 
every
person's) notion of God.


I don't have to 'disqualify' them (whatever that means); I just 
fail to put
any credence in them.


How do you differentiate yourself from agnostics, who also fail to put 
any
credence in them?




The Abrahamic
religions use
the word to designate a particular notion: an omniscience, 
omnipotent,
benevolent creator
person who wants us to worship him.

Not all do, which you failed to account for in your below 
probabilities.


Not all what do? 



Not all Christians define God as an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent 
creator
person who wants us to worship him.


Then they're not Christians... christianity is defined by a set of dogmas 
(hey dogma
is what define religions), so if you doubt the basic dogmas of 
christianity, why
would you call yourself a christian ??


So Thomas Aquinas was not a christian, because he understood the incompatibility of 
omniscience and omnipotence.


He understood there could be a conflict and he proceeded to redefine 'omnipotence' to 
meand 'do anything not self-contradictory', then you could invoke the 'nature of God' to 
say that some things, e.g. sinning, would be contradictory.


Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-05 Thread Jason Resch
On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 11:53 AM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Mon, Feb 4, 2013  Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

  You then say there is no single result in Bruno's experiment


 Not true, there is a single result in Bruno's experiment, John K Clark
 sees Washington and Moscow.


But under MWI you agreed you see the photon hit the left or the right
plate, not the left side and the right side.  So which is it?

Jason

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-05 Thread meekerdb

On 2/5/2013 9:53 AM, John Clark wrote:


 You've agreed there is a single definite result (even in MW) after making 
some
measurement.


Yes.

 You then say there is no single result in Bruno's experiment


Not true, there is a single result in Bruno's experiment, John K Clark sees Washington 
and Moscow.


 because you have been duplicated.


It is beyond dispute that you has indeed been duplicated, so if that personal pronoun 
is used in a question with no additional information on which you is being referred to 
then no answer can be given because the question is ambiguous.


It seems that part of the problem is that in English you is both second person singular 
*and* plural.  Being from the south I suggest that the experiment be expressed as You 
have been duplicated and y'all see Washington and Moscow.


Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-05 Thread meekerdb

On 2/5/2013 11:02 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 1:14:07 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013  PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: 
wrote:

 Unpopular religions are denounced as cults.


A religion is just a cult with good PR.


It's interesting. I would be curious to know whether every established religion 
intentionally sought legitimacy at some point,


What would that mean? Legal? Where there is official government recognition of religion 
(and probably tax breaks) the answer would be that they sought the recognition.  And all 
that you can consider 'established' have sought adherents.  But legitimacy??  I'm not 
sure how that world can be attached to religion.


Brent

or if it's more of an inevitable consequence of surviving long enough to seem ancient. 
Are their ancient cults (other than those intentionally shrouded in secrecy)?


Craig


  John K Clark

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-05 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 10:00:05 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

  On 2/5/2013 11:02 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 



 On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 1:14:07 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: 

 On Tue, Feb 5, 2013  PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote:
   

   Unpopular religions are denounced as cults. 
  

 A religion is just a cult with good PR.
  

 It's interesting. I would be curious to know whether every established 
 religion intentionally sought legitimacy at some point, 


 What would that mean? Legal? Where there is official government 
 recognition of religion (and probably tax breaks) the answer would be that 
 they sought the recognition.  And all that you can consider 'established' 
 have sought adherents.  But legitimacy??  I'm not sure how that world can 
 be attached to religion.


Not necessarily a government recognition, but community acceptance. 
Something enjoyed by Episcopalians but not the Satanic church. Some Wiccans 
seem to be seeking a more conventional status within the community, i.e 
petitioning the military to provide a choice for Wiccan symbols on 
gravestones. 

Craig
 


 Brent

  or if it's more of an inevitable consequence of surviving long enough to 
 seem ancient. Are their ancient cults (other than those intentionally 
 shrouded in secrecy)?

 Craig

   
   John K Clark 
  
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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-04 Thread meekerdb

On 2/3/2013 7:20 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On 2/3/13, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:

On 2/3/2013 8:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

It simpler to generalize the notion of God so that indeed basically all
correct machines
believes in God, and in some theories question like is God a person can
be an open
problem.

But you have a vocabulary problem related to the fact that you cannot cut
with your
education which has impose to you only one notion of God.

Why should there be more than one notion designated by God.

Do you not agree that there are multiple religions and each is free to
designate its own God or Gods?  To choose one sect of one religion's
God as the standard God for all atheists to disbelieve in is
favoritism.  Why do the atheists choose the Abrahamic God over the God
the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Zoroastrians, the Deists, the Platonists,
or any of the myriads of religions since lost to history?


Because that's the god of theism - hence a-theism.


You say it
is because it is the most popular.  Even if that were so, Atheism
isn't about rejecting one God, it rejects all Gods.


Not at all.  All the atheists I know allow that a deist god is more likely to exist than a 
theist god.



You would have to
be quite an expert to disqualify every religion's (and indeed, every
person's) notion of God.


I don't have to 'disqualify' them (whatever that means); I just fail to put any credence 
in them.





The Abrahamic
religions use
the word to designate a particular notion: an omniscience, omnipotent,
benevolent creator
person who wants us to worship him.

Not all do, which you failed to account for in your below probabilities.


Not all what do?  I just took the proportion of the world population that self identified 
as Christian, Muslim, and Jew.  The major remaining portions are non-believers and Hindus.





  Together their adherents constitute 54%
of those who
believe in a theist god.  And if we take your view that atheists and
agnostics use the
same definition, then 70% of people use that same meaning.   If there's some
other notion,
why not call it something else.


The discordians have their own notion of Pope, as do the Catholics.
Who is anyone to say there is only one meaning of Pope?


That's not two different meanings any more that king is two different notions because 
there is more than one king.



Why then,
should there be only one meaning of God?


Because then we wouldn't know what God meant.  Of course like many words it may refer to 
more than one thing and there may be some variations.  Automobile refers to lots of 
different things, but they all have wheels, motive power, and carry people over surfaces.  
That doesn't mean you can call an aircraft carrier and automobile.




This is not to say the word is meaningless.  There are commonalities
between different religions and belief systems.  In nearly all, it can
be said that God serves the role as an ultimate explanation.  Whether
it is the Platonic God,

Can you cite Plato referring to such a being?


the Hindu God, the Sikh God, or the Arbrahamic
God, this property is almost universal.  In this respect, it is
perfectly natural for Bruno to say under the arithmetical/CTM belief
system, God (the ultimate explanation) is arithmetical truth.  Under
Aristotelianism, the ultimate explanation is matter (The buck stops
there), and so matter is the God of Aristotelianism.


Except that all those gods are persons.  Arithmetical truth is (a) ill defined and (b) not 
a person.


Brent



Would we be better off had we abandoned the word Earth or World
merely because we discovered it is round instead of flat, instead of
amending our notion of what the Earth or World really is?


The Earth is defined ostensively.  If we could define god(s) ostensively then it would 
make sense to say we discovered it's properties were different than we had supposed.


Brent



Jason



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-04 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 02 Feb 2013, at 09:08, meekerdb wrote:


On 2/1/2013 7:12 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


And here you come back with your vocabulary problem. You don't  
believe in the fairy tale version of christian God, and for some  
mysterious reason you want throw out all notion of gods like if it  
was the only one.


That's not accurate.  I am happy to consider other notions of gods,  
but they are all persons and I don't believe any of them exist.  The  
meaning you want to assign to God is the ultimate foundation of  
the world, which I would call urstuff or something similar.


I disagree.
I use God to avoid stuff, as we already know it is not stuffy. Read  
the greeks. read the taoists, read many idealist school of buddhism.





The theory you have put forward that the world is emergent from the  
computations of a UD doesn't make the fundamental a person


It is an open problem.



and so I can't see any reason to call it a god of God of even  
ONE (since it is very numerous).


? Arithmetical truth is unique. The standard model of arithmetic is  
unique. And we can't really define it, without using more intuitions,  
on sets and infinities.


I did provide a definition of God: what is responsible for everything,  
and can't be named by its creatures. See the arithmetical  
interpretation of Plotinus for more. Even Plotinus was cautious about  
the personhood of the ONE, and about its possible will.


Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-04 Thread Jason Resch
On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 12:39 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sun, Feb 3, 2013  Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:


  What I find most surprising about John's position is that he can use
 I in the same sense you mean in the UDA when referring to many-worlds
 thought experiments, but he refuses to use it in that same sense when it
 comes to duplication in the UDA.


 After a experiment has been completed the Many World's Interpretation can
 give some people, including me, a intuitive feel of what just happened,


The analogous experiment in the UDA is pressing the button and seeing what
City you now find yourself.  (Don't bother replying to this unless you make
some new realization; we've gone over this a dozen times already.)


 as opposed to just crunching the numbers. However when it comes to
 prediction Many Worlds is no better than Copenhagen and Copenhagen did come
 first; and that's why Many Worlds is not the dominant explanation in the
 scientific community, although it's popularity is increasing.


Many worlds requires that gravity be quantized, where the CI does not
(according to http://www.anthropic-principle.com/preprints/manyworlds.html).
 So I would say MW is a theory and not an interpretation.  Also, I
know
of no good explanation of why quantum computers should work under
single-universe interpretations.  In any case, your undermining of
many-worlds is only a red herring for the real problem, which is this:

You've agreed there is a single definite result (even in MW) after making
some measurement.  Despite the fact that according to MW there were
multiple results and you were duplicated.  You then say there is no single
result in Bruno's experiment because you have been duplicated.  There is
an inconsistency somewhere in there.



 However Bruno in his pee pee proof claims to have discovered something new
 about prediction but he is wrong about that.


Third person indeterminacy is not what he claims as some new prediction.
 It is only a building block to see how arithmetical realism can explain
the appearance of the physical universe.  Of course you would not know this
because you abandoned the proof at step 3 out of the 8.


   And to make matters worse Bruno is pushing on a string, he's trying to
 establish a chain of identity from the present to the future and that's
 never going to work, you've got to do it from the present to the past.


Reverse causality experiments in QM has shown that your existence is
consistent with multiple pastes as well.  In any case, this is not a
problem if you accepted the survival with a digital substitution of your
brain which was an explicitly assumption before any steps of the proof.  If
you reject this assumption, it is not a flaw of the proof, you just don't
believe in the computational theory of mind.



 I don't know what my future identity will be, maybe tomorrow I'll become a
 rodeo clown, maybe I'll be elected Pope, maybe I'll be dead I just don't
 know, but I know who I was yesterday.


Even that is not a given.

Jason





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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-04 Thread Jason Resch
On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 2:04 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 2/3/2013 7:20 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

 On 2/3/13, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:

 On 2/3/2013 8:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 It simpler to generalize the notion of God so that indeed basically all
 correct machines
 believes in God, and in some theories question like is God a person
 can
 be an open
 problem.

 But you have a vocabulary problem related to the fact that you cannot
 cut
 with your
 education which has impose to you only one notion of God.

 Why should there be more than one notion designated by God.

 Do you not agree that there are multiple religions and each is free to
 designate its own God or Gods?  To choose one sect of one religion's
 God as the standard God for all atheists to disbelieve in is
 favoritism.  Why do the atheists choose the Abrahamic God over the God
 the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Zoroastrians, the Deists, the Platonists,
 or any of the myriads of religions since lost to history?


 Because that's the god of theism - hence a-theism.


So are you also an a-deist?  What about an a-Brahmanist, or
a-Hyper-intelligent-simlatorist?




  You say it
 is because it is the most popular.  Even if that were so, Atheism
 isn't about rejecting one God, it rejects all Gods.


 Not at all.  All the atheists I know allow that a deist god is more likely
 to exist than a theist god.


They still (I would think) put that probability less than 50%.




  You would have to
 be quite an expert to disqualify every religion's (and indeed, every
 person's) notion of God.


 I don't have to 'disqualify' them (whatever that means); I just fail to
 put any credence in them.


How do you differentiate yourself from agnostics, who also fail to put any
credence in them?





  The Abrahamic
 religions use
 the word to designate a particular notion: an omniscience, omnipotent,
 benevolent creator
 person who wants us to worship him.

 Not all do, which you failed to account for in your below probabilities.


 Not all what do?


Not all Christians define God as an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent
creator person who wants us to worship him.


  I just took the proportion of the world population that self identified
 as Christian, Muslim, and Jew.  The major remaining portions are
 non-believers and Hindus.



Together their adherents constitute 54%
 of those who
 believe in a theist god.  And if we take your view that atheists and
 agnostics use the
 same definition,


That is not my view.  I am trying to ascertain what is the God that
atheists disbelieve in, and if it is one in particular (and not all of
them, which is what I thought most atheists believed (e.g. Richard Dawkins
and John Clark say they believe in zero Gods)), why have they chosen some
particular religion's God instead of others?  Are there Gods atheists
believe in but do not tell anyone about?


 then 70% of people use that same meaning.   If there's some
 other notion,
 why not call it something else.

  The discordians have their own notion of Pope, as do the Catholics.
 Who is anyone to say there is only one meaning of Pope?


 That's not two different meanings any more that king is two different
 notions because there is more than one king.


They have different properties though.  As is the case between Gods of
various religions.  There are some nearly universal characteristics, but no
two are identical.  You could even say, every Christian has a different
understanding and view point of what God is.  Perhaps there are Gods in
some religions which are not only consistent or probable, but real.  Should
science not have some interest in their investigation (especially if they
are part of reality)?



  Why then,
 should there be only one meaning of God?


 Because then we wouldn't know what God meant.  Of course like many words
 it may refer to more than one thing and there may be some variations.
  Automobile refers to lots of different things, but they all have wheels,
 motive power, and carry people over surfaces.  That doesn't mean you can
 call an aircraft carrier and automobile.


So then what are the universal properties of God?  You seem to shy away
from them and prefer your own overly specific, self-inconsistent
definition, because it is the one you can most comfortably admit you
disbelieve in.  This is trivial though and I think we can do better.  It is
like a mathematician proving there are no numbers that are prime and even
and greater than 2, so the mathematician decides he has proven all there is
to prove and gives up deciding to advance the field by proving anything
else.

In showing that an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent God cannot
exist, you end up doing science and advancing the field of theology.  You
could prove logically some possible properties of God are mutually
inconsistent (e.g., God cannot be both omnipotent and omniscient, or both
omnipotent and omnibenevolent).  And with that advancement in understanding
you gain 

Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-04 Thread meekerdb

On 2/4/2013 4:29 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 12:39 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com 
mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:


On Sun, Feb 3, 2013  Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com
mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

 What I find most surprising about John's position is that he can use 
I in
the same sense you mean in the UDA when referring to many-worlds thought
experiments, but he refuses to use it in that same sense when it comes 
to
duplication in the UDA.


After a experiment has been completed the Many World's Interpretation can 
give some
people, including me, a intuitive feel of what just happened,


The analogous experiment in the UDA is pressing the button and seeing what City you now 
find yourself.  (Don't bother replying to this unless you make some new realization; 
we've gone over this a dozen times already.)


as opposed to just crunching the numbers. However when it comes to 
prediction Many
Worlds is no better than Copenhagen and Copenhagen did come first; and 
that's why
Many Worlds is not the dominant explanation in the scientific community, 
although
it's popularity is increasing.


Many worlds requires that gravity be quantized, where the CI does not (according to 
http://www.anthropic-principle.com/preprints/manyworlds.html ).


What gave you the idea CI allowed non-quantized gravity?  It isn't a question of 
interpretation: if gravity is a classical field then it could be used to evade the 
uncertainty principle.


So I would say MW is a theory and not an interpretation.  Also, I know of no good 
explanation of why quantum computers should work under single-universe interpretations.


Because they traverse all allowed Feynman paths.


Brent
Thirty one years ago, Dick Feynman told me about his 'sum over
histories' version of quantum mechanics.  The electron does anything it
likes', he said.  It goes in any direction at any speed, forward or
backward in time, however it likes, and then you add up all the
amplitudes and it gives you the wave-function.
I said to him, You're crazy.  But he wasn't.
  --- Freeman J. Dyson, 'Some Strangeness in the Proportion' 1980

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-04 Thread meekerdb

On 2/4/2013 7:12 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 2:04 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


On 2/3/2013 7:20 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On 2/3/13, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net 
 wrote:

On 2/3/2013 8:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

It simpler to generalize the notion of God so that indeed 
basically all
correct machines
believes in God, and in some theories question like is God a 
person can
be an open
problem.

But you have a vocabulary problem related to the fact that you 
cannot cut
with your
education which has impose to you only one notion of God.

Why should there be more than one notion designated by God.

Do you not agree that there are multiple religions and each is free to
designate its own God or Gods?  To choose one sect of one religion's
God as the standard God for all atheists to disbelieve in is
favoritism.  Why do the atheists choose the Abrahamic God over the God
the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Zoroastrians, the Deists, the Platonists,
or any of the myriads of religions since lost to history?


Because that's the god of theism - hence a-theism.


So are you also an a-deist?  What about an a-Brahmanist, or 
a-Hyper-intelligent-simlatorist?


Probably - although I'm not informed on the latter.




You say it
is because it is the most popular.  Even if that were so, Atheism
isn't about rejecting one God, it rejects all Gods.


Not at all.  All the atheists I know allow that a deist god is more likely 
to exist
than a theist god.


They still (I would think) put that probability less than 50%.


No doubt.  Dawkins only places himself at 9 on a 1-to-10 scale of disbelief in the god of 
theism.





You would have to
be quite an expert to disqualify every religion's (and indeed, every
person's) notion of God.


I don't have to 'disqualify' them (whatever that means); I just fail to put 
any
credence in them.


How do you differentiate yourself from agnostics, who also fail to put any 
credence in them?


Agnostic may mean giving equal roughly equal credence to every position.  Agnostic may 
also mean the position that nothing can be known about the existence of god(s).






The Abrahamic
religions use
the word to designate a particular notion: an omniscience, 
omnipotent,
benevolent creator
person who wants us to worship him.

Not all do, which you failed to account for in your below probabilities.


Not all what do? 



Not all Christians define God as an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent creator person 
who wants us to worship him.


So what makes the Christians?


 I just took the proportion of the world population that self identified as
Christian, Muslim, and Jew.  The major remaining portions are non-believers 
and Hindus.



  Together their adherents constitute 54%
of those who
believe in a theist god.  And if we take your view that atheists and
agnostics use the
same definition,


That is not my view.  I am trying to ascertain what is the God that atheists disbelieve 
in, and if it is one in particular (and not all of them, which is what I thought 
most atheists believed (e.g. Richard Dawkins and John Clark say they believe in zero 
Gods)), why have they chosen some particular religion's God instead of others?  Are 
there Gods atheists believe in but do not tell anyone about?


You seem to be confounding disbelieve in and failing to believe in.  To believe in 
zero gods is ambiguous since it might mean asserting There are no gods or There are no 
gods that I believe in.  Compare There are no aliens on other planets and There are no 
aliens on another planet that I believe in.



then 70% of people use that same meaning.   If there's some
other notion,
why not call it something else.

The discordians have their own notion of Pope, as do the Catholics.
Who is anyone to say there is only one meaning of Pope?


That's not two different meanings any more that king is two different 
notions
because there is more than one king.


They have different properties though.  As is the case between Gods of various 
religions.  There are some nearly universal characteristics, but no two are identical. 
 You could even say, every Christian has a different understanding and view point of 
what God is.  Perhaps there are Gods in some religions which are not only consistent or 
probable, but real.  Should science not have some interest in their investigation 
(especially if they are part of reality)?




Why then,
should there be only one meaning 

Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-03 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 01 Feb 2013, at 19:48, John Clark wrote:


On Fri, Feb 1, 2013  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 Well, I am not an atheist.

Sorry to hear about your mind virus, but don't despair, even rabies  
can sometimes be cured.



I am an agnostic. I think that a serious scientist has to be agnostic  
on any ontological commitment, be it God or Matter.


Then with comp I explain that Matter (primitive matter) does not make  
much sense, and that physicalism cannot work.





 Evolution have programmed us to believe, or to take very seriously  
our environment,


Yes because that program works. And Evolution also programmed us to  
believe almost everything adults told us when we were children and  
no doubt somebody told you that atheist were bad people so although  
you've managed to free yourself from the God idea (and I  
congratulate you for that) you still want to make the I am not an  
atheist noise with your mouth so you redefine the word God and  
thus all related words like atheist.




I just do research. My personal belief are private.
My point is that the real debate is between the Aristotelian view,  
where Matter is primary and everything else emerges from material  
combinations, and the platonist view, where matter is secondary and  
emerge itself, statistically, in the mind of arithmetical beings.  
Today both Christians (with exceptions) and atheists (with fewer  
exception) have adopted the Aristotelian view, more or less imposed to  
us by authority since 1500 years, by the Church, but also by many kind  
of materialist philosophies.






 What do you believe in?

Well, I believe that Tallahassee is the capital of Florida for one  
thing. I believe in all sorts of other things too, I just don't  
believe in God.




It simpler to generalize the notion of God so that indeed basically  
all correct machines believes in God, and in some theories question  
like is God a person can be an open problem.


But you have a vocabulary problem related to the fact that you cannot  
cut with your education which has impose to you only one notion of  
God.  In the machine theology god is arithmetical truth, and I am  
pretty sure that you do believe in that God. It is a good notion of  
God for the machines (as seen from outside, as the machine itself will  
not been able to even define arithmetical truth). Indeed it obeys to  
the two main fundamental attributes: it is not definable, and it is  
responsible for the machine dreams (from which the sharble physical  
realities should emerge (as provable or arguable (at least) once e  
take comp seriously enough.






 You don't believe in the fairy tale version of christian God, and

Guilty as charged.

 for some mysterious reason you want throw out all notion of gods  
like if it was the only one.


I throw out all Gods who are beings that are responsible for the  
multiverse; I don't throw out a hypothetical vastly powerful being,


Good. With comp, arithmetical truth is enough (even a tiny part of it).



I'm a agnostic on that, but such a being would not be a God just a  
comic book superhero or supervillan.


?





 Vocabulary discussion. Just to define your God, which is actually  
a christian simplification of Aristotle's third God: primary matter.


In my opinion Aristotle was the worst physicist who ever lived,  
certainly nobody has harmed the subject more.


No. It was an excellent physicist. Perhaps the first one. He was wrong  
basically on all points. OK. But this we can know thanks to the fact  
that he made precise statements and serious research.
He was a good theologian, he invented logic and modal logic notably to  
argue in metaphysics and theology. But he seems to be also wrong, in  
that field, at least with respect to the comp hyp.








God looks like Santa Klaus to me too, and that is exactly why  
theology has no more substance to it than Santaklausology.


 This is so ridiculous.

I don't see why you believe Santaklausology is more ridiculous than  
theology, one is about a invisible man who lives at the north pole  
and the other about a invisible man who lives in the sky.


Read books written by O'meara, on the revival of Pythagoras with the  
neoplatonists, or read his book on Plotinus. Study the Platonists  
theology, because comp, in which you believe, implies us to bactrack a  
lot, which is not hard to guess given the lasting use of argument of  
authority in the field.
You can' compare the concept of God in Plato with a sort of Santa  
Klaus in the sky.







 It is pretty ridiculous to throw out a concept because of a word.

It's even more ridiculous to throw out a concept but stay loyal to  
the word for it.


Because it is the one used by most, before and around Christians.  
Notably by Plato, on which I try to point.







  you're going to have to invent a new word for it, let's call it  
Fluberblast.


 The fact that you reject one which is the quite standard term in  
neoplatonism shows how much to 

Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-03 Thread meekerdb

On 2/3/2013 8:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
It simpler to generalize the notion of God so that indeed basically all correct machines 
believes in God, and in some theories question like is God a person can be an open 
problem.


But you have a vocabulary problem related to the fact that you cannot cut with your 
education which has impose to you only one notion of God.


Why should there be more than one notion designated by God.  The Abrahamic religions use 
the word to designate a particular notion: an omniscience, omnipotent, benevolent creator 
person who wants us to worship him.  Together their adherents constitute 54% of those who 
believe in a theist god.  And if we take your view that atheists and agnostics use the 
same definition, then 70% of people use that same meaning.   If there's some other notion, 
why not call it something else.


Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-03 Thread Jason Resch
On 2/3/13, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 2/3/2013 8:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 It simpler to generalize the notion of God so that indeed basically all
 correct machines
 believes in God, and in some theories question like is God a person can
 be an open
 problem.

 But you have a vocabulary problem related to the fact that you cannot cut
 with your
 education which has impose to you only one notion of God.

 Why should there be more than one notion designated by God.

Do you not agree that there are multiple religions and each is free to
designate its own God or Gods?  To choose one sect of one religion's
God as the standard God for all atheists to disbelieve in is
favoritism.  Why do the atheists choose the Abrahamic God over the God
the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Zoroastrians, the Deists, the Platonists,
or any of the myriads of religions since lost to history?  You say it
is because it is the most popular.  Even if that were so, Atheism
isn't about rejecting one God, it rejects all Gods.  You would have to
be quite an expert to disqualify every religion's (and indeed, every
person's) notion of God.

 The Abrahamic
 religions use
 the word to designate a particular notion: an omniscience, omnipotent,
 benevolent creator
 person who wants us to worship him.

Not all do, which you failed to account for in your below probabilities.

  Together their adherents constitute 54%
 of those who
 believe in a theist god.  And if we take your view that atheists and
 agnostics use the
 same definition, then 70% of people use that same meaning.   If there's some
 other notion,
 why not call it something else.


The discordians have their own notion of Pope, as do the Catholics.
Who is anyone to say there is only one meaning of Pope?   Why then,
should there be only one meaning of God?

This is not to say the word is meaningless.  There are commonalities
between different religions and belief systems.  In nearly all, it can
be said that God serves the role as an ultimate explanation.  Whether
it is the Platonic God, the Hindu God, the Sikh God, or the Arbrahamic
God, this property is almost universal.  In this respect, it is
perfectly natural for Bruno to say under the arithmetical/CTM belief
system, God (the ultimate explanation) is arithmetical truth.  Under
Aristotelianism, the ultimate explanation is matter (The buck stops
there), and so matter is the God of Aristotelianism.

Would we be better off had we abandoned the word Earth or World
merely because we discovered it is round instead of flat, instead of
amending our notion of what the Earth or World really is?

Jason

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-02 Thread meekerdb

On 2/1/2013 7:12 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
And here you come back with your vocabulary problem. You don't believe in the fairy tale 
version of christian God, and for some mysterious reason you want throw out all notion 
of gods like if it was the only one.


That's not accurate.  I am happy to consider other notions of gods, but they are all 
persons and I don't believe any of them exist.  The meaning you want to assign to God is 
the ultimate foundation of the world, which I would call urstuff or something similar.  
The theory you have put forward that the world is emergent from the computations of a UD 
doesn't make the fundamental a person and so I can't see any reason to call it a god of 
God of even ONE (since it is very numerous).


Brent

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Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-02 Thread Roger Clough
Hi meekerdb 

God is not in spacetime, which is extended, so he doesn't physically exist. 
He is intelligence, etc., which is not extended, exists beyond spacetime,
and is nonphysical. You don't have to think of God as a person, or
believe in any fairy tales (whatever they are, I don't know) unless
you think of the One as a person.


- Receiving the following content - 
From: meekerdb 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2013-02-02, 03:08:08
Subject: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.


On 2/1/2013 7:12 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 
And here you come back with your vocabulary problem. You don't believe in the 
fairy tale version of christian God, and for some mysterious reason you want 
throw out all notion of gods like if it was the only one.

That's not accurate.  I am happy to consider other notions of gods, but they 
are all persons and I don't believe any of them exist.  The meaning you want to 
assign to God is the ultimate foundation of the world, which I would call 
urstuff or something similar.  The theory you have put forward that the world 
is emergent from the computations of a UD doesn't make the fundamental a person 
and so I can't see any reason to call it a god of God of even ONE (since 
it is very numerous).

Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-02-01 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 31 Jan 2013, at 19:42, John Clark wrote:


On Thu, Jan 31, 2013  Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 i don't believe in the GOD in which you don't believe in.

Then what are we arguing about? Are we arguing about science or  
mathematics or philosophy, or are we just arguing about first grade  
vocabulary?


Good question. You are the one criticizing the use of some word,  
despite, like we do in science, the key words are redefine each time  
we use them.







 but I disagree with your insistence to define God by the Abramanic  
one,


I don't understand how you can disagree with the definition of a  
word, especially if it's the same definition used by 99% of the  
people on the planet who wish to communicate.


Today, in Occident, perhaps. the term God as a lasting use in  
philosophy; as others have point out. In comp, it is the difference  
between G and G* which relates the Platonist god , truth, with  
arithmetic. It is tha fact, many thanks to Tarski theorem, that the  
concept of arithmetical truth share the main attribute of God: like  
non nameability, ineffability, roots of everything, everywhere and  
everytime presence/relevance, and even more with the God of the  
neoplatonists (simplicity, origin or the Noùs, origin of the souls,  
origin of the illusion of matter, and why it obeys a spurious  
calculus (Plotinus). The similarities are striking, and Plotis get  
quite close to comp with its chapter on the Numbers.






 God, in philosophy or science, denotes the ultimate explanation

You believe that your pee pee argument proves that numbers are the  
ultimate explanation of everything, it doesn't prove that


It does not prove that for someone confusing and and or or first  
person and third person. You should find a flaw to assess what you say  
here, but you just stop doing the experience. To verify the  
statistics, you have to put yourself at the place of each copies, but  
for unknown reason you fail to do that simple exercise.




but even if it did that would not be God as the word is commonly  
used.


And here you come back with your vocabulary problem. You don't believe  
in the fairy tale version of christian God, and for some mysterious  
reason you want throw out all notion of gods like if it was the only  
one. This is like throwing genetics because some people are wrong on  
it. It is not rational.


I tend to interpret this by the fact that you want the whole field of  
theology being spurious, but it seems clear you have never read  
neoplatonists, or just Plato and Aristotle on Gods and God.





Numbers are not a being much less the supreme being, numbers did not  
will the universe into existence and numbers do not change human  
destiny or the way the universe operates on a whim influenced buy  
prayer.


... and you don't red me. the God notion raised by comp is NOT a  
number. Arithmetical truth is NOT definable in arithmetic.  I have  
insist on this all along. You betray that you did not read the post,  
and that your critics is based on prejudices, like your critics on  
theology in general.





Numbers are not the source of all moral authority, and nobody thinks  
that numbers are deserving of worship, and nobody prays to the  
integers.


Indeed. Comp makes this into a blasphemy. God, in mechanism, is not a  
number, at all. Nor is matter, nor is consciousness.





You could of course personally redefine the word so that God and  
numbers are synonyms,


I could not. I have explained this in detail.



and in the extraordinarily unlikely possibility that you manage to  
convinced others to adopt this new linguistic convention you would  
have succeeded in explaining absolutely nothing about how the world  
works, you'd have just changed English, one of about 7000 human  
languages used on this planet.


And then you'd need to invent a new word for the old meaning of the  
word God and then people like me would say of course I believe in  
God but I don't believe in Fluberblast and then over time people  
would develop a emotional attachment to the word Fluberblast and  
insist on redefining the word and give it such a amorphous all  
encompassing sloppy meaning that everybody would have to say  I  
believe in Fluberblast.


Vocabulary discussion. Just to define your God, which is actually a  
christian simplification of Aristotle's third God: primary matter.


At ll level, you seems to defend the Aristotelian theology/theory of  
everything. Like many atheists you want us to believe that this is the  
only rational option. But comp explains in detail why this can't work,  
and to avoid this, you have to do confuse 1p and 3p at some point, and  
we have shown you were.








 I know exactly what it is that I don't believe in,

 Really?

Yes really.

 It looks like Santa Klaus to me.

God looks like Santa Klaus to me too, and that is exactly why  
theology has no more substance to it than Santaklausology.


This is so ridiculous.





 You know 

Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-31 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 29 Jan 2013, at 22:14, John Clark wrote:


On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 I am very glad with all your posts on religion, as they confirm my  
theory according to which (strong) atheists are (strong) Christians  
in disguise.


Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never  
heard that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12.


 same definition of the creator

EXACTLY!  I have a well defined meaning of the word  God  so when  
I say I don't believe in God it actually means something, and the  
meaning of the word is such that it doesn't reduced the sentence to  
triviality. People may and usually do disagree when I say I don't  
believe in God but at least they know what I'm talking about.


The usual answer here is that i don't believe in the GOD in which you  
don't believe in. I agree with you, but I disagree with your  
insistence to define God by the Abramanic one, or even by the fairy  
tales popularly added to it.


God, in philosophy or science, denotes the ultimate explanation which  
we are searching. It is the ultimate ensemble, or the ultimate  
reason for that ensemble. Then comp makes even clearer why such  
reason is related to many intuition conveyed in many texts inspired  
by people having mystical experience, or going through altered  
state of consciousness.




In contrast you've tortured the meanings of words so much that when  
you say I do believe in God nobody knows what you mean and in  
fact, I'm not trying to be insulting I mean this quite literally,  
when you say I do believe in God you don't know what you're  
talking about.


It means that I believe that a theory of everything makes sense. It is  
a way for me to communicate that I am AGNOSTIC on the current paradigm  
which presuppose or assume (very often implicitly) the primary  
physical universe.





I know exactly what it is that I don't believe in,


Really? It looks like Santa Klaus to me. You know that both of us does  
not find such existence plasuible, or even capable of explaining  
anything. But comp explains that the assumption of a primary physical  
universe does not only NOT explain much more (it just compress  
information), but fails on the mind-body issue, so we have to use a  
term different from universe (which has physicalist connotation),  
and I use the term God, as it was used with that large and vague  
meaning for a millenium before it becomes a political tool of  
manipulation. But if you don't like that term I will use ONE with  
discussing with you, as you take the vocabulary too much seriously, imo.




but the thing that you do believe in is a bunch of amorphous mush  
with virtually no relationship to the traditional meaning of the  
word God .


I search a TOE. Concentrate on the understanding, not the vocabulary.





But you are far from alone in doing this, for reasons I don't  
understand some atheist just want to make the noise  I do believe  
in God with their mouth, and they don't care what if anything it  
means.


I think that you have not understand the mind-body problem, from  
cognition to after-life, and the problem of the origin of the physical  
universe.


Do you believe in a primary physical universe? Are you physicalist?





 same impulse to forbid the scientific method on the deep questions.

Bullshit. I'm a atheist
because a world that was intelligently designed



We both have agreed that this does not make any sense, at least as an  
explanation.




would look very different from one that was not, therefore deciding  
between the 2 hypothesis is a scientific question that can be  
resolved just like any other.


Not really with comp. A machine cannot distinguish the result of some  
simple programs, and a random (or not ORACLE. That makes most  
conventional religion not interesting, as being irrefutable. And thus  
non scientific.
That is why comp is interesting, as it is completely refutable. If  
your were willing to study step 4, you would be able to progress  
toward the understanding of that fact. You have not replied to my last  
refutation of your prediction algorithm.






 I was just asking what do you mean by grand concept, with the  
goal of making sense of what you were saying. You elude the point.


I have noticed that when people get into a tight corner they often  
try to change the subject by asking me for a definition of some very  
common word that I've used. The trouble is that any definition I  
give will be made of words and I can be certain that my debate  
opponent will demand a definition of at least one of those words,  
and away we go.


You elude my simple question. What do you mean by grand concept?


 BTW, I am still waiting your comment on my last rebuttal of your  
predicting algorithm in self-duplication.


I wasn't aware that I had a predicting algorithm in self- 
duplication,


In the WM-duplication, with annihilation of the original you do have  
agreed on many 

Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-31 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Thursday, January 31, 2013 1:42:20 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

 On Thu, Jan 31, 2013  Bruno Marchal mar...@ulb.ac.be javascript:wrote:

   i don't believe in the GOD in which you don't believe in. 

  

 I admit there is a story (probably apocryphal) about Pythagoras killing a 
 man for leaking the proof that the square root of 2 could not be expressed 
 as a fraction. 


Wait, someone leaked that?!?  Death to the infidel!

Craig 

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-31 Thread meekerdb

On 1/31/2013 6:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 you seem to believe that physics does solve the mind-body problem,


The evidence very strongly indicates that mind is what the brain does if that's what 
you mean.


So you do assume the existence of a primitive or primitively material brain?


That doesn't follow. It may be that minds and brains are necessarily linked, without 
assuming that either one is fundamental.


Brent



Are such brain Turing emulable?

If yes, how do you predict the first person feeling of a person doing a physical 
measurement?


You might study some book on the mind-body problem. Serious books makes clear that we 
have not yet solve the problem. Note that UDA, and especially MGA (which I will 
re-explain on the FOAR list) is by itself a formulation of the problem, in the mechanist 
frame.




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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-30 Thread John Clark
 On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 4:42 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

 Your rhetoric may work in other places where you argue with religious
 people


I wish it had but no. Such is the awesome virulence of the religious mind
virus that there is nobody to my certain knowledge in which my arguments
have caused a recovery. Statistically if you are infected at a early age a
cure of the religious mind parasite is almost as rare as recovery from
rabies. Even exchanging one virus (like Christianity) for another parasite
(like Islam) is unusual.

 but I, and probably others on this list, find it rather unconvincing.


If you agree with Martin Luther (and if you're a Christian you've got to)
that  Reason should be destroyed in all Christians. Reason must be
deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason,
sense, and understanding and that we should tear the eyes out of reason
then I'm not surprised that my rational arguments failed to convince you
because no rational argument could do that. You have imposed this blindness
on yourself for one reason and one reason only, mommy and daddy told you to
do it from the first day you learned language; there is quite simply no
more to it than that.

  John K Clark

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-29 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 27 Jan 2013, at 18:31, John Clark wrote:


On Sun, Jan 27, 2013  AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 Without religion, science is pseudo-religion

That's OK with me. Religion is bullshit,


We have discuss this. You confuse religion with clericalism. By saying  
gross statement like religion is bullshit you are favoring the  
clericalists and literalists.


I am very glad with all your posts on religion, as they confirm my  
theory according to which (strong) atheists are (strong) Christians in  
disguise. Same faith in the creation, same definition of the creator,  
same perpetual use of authoritative arguments, same impulse to forbid  
the scientific method on the deep questions.




so pseudo-bullshit is better than pure, triple distilled, extra  
virgin, investment grade bullshit.

 How would you define grand for a concept?

That depends on how you define define. And after that I'd like to  
know the definition of  define define ; and after that [...]


I was just asking what do you mean by grand concept, with the goal  
of making sense of what you were saying. You elude the point.


If you are interested in a theory of definition, by some good  
introductory book in logic, as this is has been well studied.


BTW, I am still waiting your comment on my last rebuttal of your  
predicting algorithm in self-duplication. You seem to praise reason,  
so why do you act so much irrationally on that subject. Your attitude  
is perhaps impulsed by the fact that you seem to believe that physics  
does solve the mind-body problem, which is exactly what UDA shows it  
does not.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-29 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 27 Jan 2013, at 15:57, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Sunday, January 27, 2013 8:09:06 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:




I would like a semi-axiomatic definition of sensory, to make this  
more palatable. I try to get a theory of sense, and I can't take  
that notion for granted, even if I agree that from the 1p pov, it  
looks like primitive (but that the comp theory can already explained  
why).


Sensory is primitive,


Of course, in the comp theory, sensory is not primitive. It only feels  
like primitive, exactly like a part of matter looks like being  
primitive. Comp explains those feeling, except for a tiny part that it  
still explain has to remain unexplainable.




but comp can't explain it because explanation is only a motive which  
seeks to translate one sensory experience into another sensory mode.


That's correct, but this cannot been applied validly to refute comp.  
Similar remarks for what follows.


Bruno






It's not that you agree from the 1p POV, it is that you have no  
choice but to agree - all that your 1p POV consists of is sensory  
experience. There is nothing else that it can ever consist of, and  
of course there is no 3p POV except in the explanation of multiple  
1p experiences.


I think it's useful to talk about sensory experience as 'afferent  
phenomenology' or maybe 'private participation' (whereas motor or  
motive activity would be public-facing participation). Note that you  
can have a public experience in a dream, but the sense of realism of  
waking public experience is, under most conditions, more significant  
in comparison. Without the comparison, a dream can seem real, but  
usually being awake seems clearly different from a dream. I think  
that's not because of differences in the logic of the experiential  
content, but because of sub-personal and super-personal  
(unconscious) sensory connection.


Sense is always the connection from one 1p state to another or from  
a 1p state to its 3p reflection; bridging the literal and the  
figurative (understanding), the figurative and the figurative  
(poetry), or the literal and the literal (physics), or even the  
figuratively literal (logic) and the literally figurative (math).


Deleuze has some interesting things to say about sense - about how  
it exists on the surfaces rather than the depths. I would agree in  
the way that synapses are important neurological sites or the  
junctions of a transistor are important. I think that sense is the  
way that the depths from each other, and/or that division  
accumulates depth. They are the same thing, except that the surface  
is foreground-active from our empirical perspective as nested  
participants in timespace, while the surface is background- 
irrelevant from an absolute perspective as surfaces require  
timespace to manifest. Without timespace, at the absolute scale,  
there is no 3p as there is only a totality of depths.


Craig


Bruno






Craig


Bruno



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-29 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Tuesday, January 29, 2013 8:48:32 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 27 Jan 2013, at 15:57, Craig Weinberg wrote:



 On Sunday, January 27, 2013 8:09:06 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:



 I would like a semi-axiomatic definition of sensory, to make this more 
 palatable. I try to get a theory of sense, and I can't take that notion for 
 granted, even if I agree that from the 1p pov, it looks like primitive (but 
 that the comp theory can already explained why).


 Sensory is primitive, 


 Of course, in the comp theory, sensory is not primitive. It only feels 
 like primitive, exactly like a part of matter looks like being primitive.


There's a difference though. Feeling can't feel like feeling if it isn't 
feeling. Matter can look primitive because matter is inferred from 
sensory-motor participation - we see public bodies as visual obstacles, we 
see surfaces and infer volumes, we hear obstructed volume levels, we feel 
tangible resistance to our touch and can ascribe massive qualities to it. 
All of these, combined with the consensus agreement of other peer 
perceivers contribute to a compelling sense of realism, which I would 
relate to my concepts of significance and perceptual inertia - 
meta-meta-feeling, sense with bass, like electricity with ground - 
orientation, and worldliness.

You give away comp's weakness by saying that sense 'only feels like 
primitive', because feeling is already sense. It is actually comp which 
feels like it's primitive to another set of sensory-motor experiences, that 
of the verbal-logical thinker. Thought and logic are a special flavor of 
sense which is optimized to feign objectivity and hide the fact (i.e. 
Baudrillard's simulacra: a copy with no original: comp takes literally the 
anonymous impersona of arithmetic as the root of personal sense, rather 
than the peripheral extension of sense until apotheosis of self-denial).
 

 Comp explains those feeling, except for a tiny part that it still explain 
 has to remain unexplainable.


Comp doesn't explain any feeling. It explains that if there was a such 
thing as feeling, then comp has a place to theoretically put it. I maintain 
that this place is not the true home of feeling, but a sterile partition, 
an entombment of the almost-utterly-unconscious level of sense.
 




 but comp can't explain it because explanation is only a motive which seeks 
 to translate one sensory experience into another sensory mode. 


 That's correct, but this cannot been applied validly to refute comp. 
 Similar remarks for what follows.


You say it cannot be applied, but I see clearly that it must.

Craig
 


 Bruno





 It's not that you agree from the 1p POV, it is that you have no choice but 
 to agree - all that your 1p POV consists of is sensory experience. There is 
 nothing else that it can ever consist of, and of course there is no 3p POV 
 except in the explanation of multiple 1p experiences.

 I think it's useful to talk about sensory experience as 'afferent 
 phenomenology' or maybe 'private participation' (whereas motor or motive 
 activity would be public-facing participation). Note that you can have a 
 public experience in a dream, but the sense of realism of waking public 
 experience is, under most conditions, more significant in comparison. 
 Without the comparison, a dream can seem real, but usually being awake 
 seems clearly different from a dream. I think that's not because of 
 differences in the logic of the experiential content, but because of 
 sub-personal and super-personal (unconscious) sensory connection.

 Sense is always the connection from one 1p state to another or from a 1p 
 state to its 3p reflection; bridging the literal and the figurative 
 (understanding), the figurative and the figurative (poetry), or the literal 
 and the literal (physics), or even the figuratively literal (logic) and the 
 literally figurative (math).

 Deleuze has some interesting things to say about sense - about how it 
 exists on the surfaces rather than the depths. I would agree in the way 
 that synapses are important neurological sites or the junctions of a 
 transistor are important. I think that sense is the way that the depths 
 from each other, and/or that division accumulates depth. They are the same 
 thing, except that the surface is foreground-active from our empirical 
 perspective as nested participants in timespace, while the surface is 
 background-irrelevant from an absolute perspective as surfaces require 
 timespace to manifest. Without timespace, at the absolute scale, there is 
 no 3p as there is only a totality of depths.

 Craig


 Bruno





 Craig


 Bruno



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-29 Thread John Clark
On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 I am very glad with all your posts on religion, as they confirm my theory
 according to which (strong) atheists are (strong) Christians in disguise.


Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard that
one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12.


  same definition of the creator


EXACTLY!  I have a well defined meaning of the word  God  so when I say
I don't believe in God it actually means something, and the meaning of
the word is such that it doesn't reduced the sentence to triviality. People
may and usually do disagree when I say I don't believe in God but at
least they know what I'm talking about. In contrast you've tortured the
meanings of words so much that when you say I do believe in God nobody
knows what you mean and in fact, I'm not trying to be insulting I mean this
quite literally, when you say I do believe in God you don't know what
you're talking about. I know exactly what it is that I don't believe in,
but the thing that you do believe in is a bunch of amorphous mush with
virtually no relationship to the traditional meaning of the word God .

But you are far from alone in doing this, for reasons I don't understand
some atheist just want to make the noise  I do believe in God with their
mouth, and they don't care what if anything it means.

   same perpetual use of authoritative arguments,


So you think my arguments are reliable and trusted as being accurate  and
are the best of its kind and unlikely to be improved upon. Well I'm
blushing, there not THAT good, someday sombody might do even better.

 same impulse to forbid the scientific method on the deep questions.


Bullshit. I'm a atheist because a world that was intelligently designed
would look very different from one that was not, therefore deciding between
the 2 hypothesis is a scientific question that can be resolved just like
any other.

 I was just asking what do you mean by grand concept, with the goal of
 making sense of what you were saying. You elude the point.


I have noticed that when people get into a tight corner they often try to
change the subject by asking me for a definition of some very common word
that I've used. The trouble is that any definition I give will be made of
words and I can be certain that my debate opponent will demand a definition
of at least one of those words, and away we go.

I would humbly suggest that for efficient communication you buy yourself a
dictionary, then you wouldn't need to ask people what obscure and little
used words like grand and God mean, you could just look them up.

  that depends on how you define define. And after that I'd like to
 know the definition of  define define ; and after that [...]


  If you are interested in a theory of definition, by some good
 introductory book in logic, as this is has been well studied.


If I already knew what the word define meant then I wouldn't need such
books, and if I didn't know the meaning then asking to define define
would be like asking to klogknee klogknee.

 BTW, I am still waiting your comment on my last rebuttal of your
 predicting algorithm in self-duplication.


I wasn't aware that I had a predicting algorithm in self-duplication, and
I have no way of knowing if I should praise your rebuttal or condemn it
because I don't know what on earth you're talking about.

 you seem to believe that physics does solve the mind-body problem,


The evidence very strongly indicates that mind is what the brain does if
that's what you mean.


  which is exactly what UDA shows it does not.


UDA? Oh yes, all that pee and pee pee stuff.

  John K Clark

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-29 Thread Jason Resch
John,

Your rhetoric may work in other places where you argue with religious
people but I, and probably others on this list, find it rather unconvincing.

Jason

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 3:14 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  I am very glad with all your posts on religion, as they confirm my
 theory according to which (strong) atheists are (strong) Christians in
 disguise.


 Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard
 that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12.


  same definition of the creator


 EXACTLY!  I have a well defined meaning of the word  God  so when I say
 I don't believe in God it actually means something, and the meaning of
 the word is such that it doesn't reduced the sentence to triviality. People
 may and usually do disagree when I say I don't believe in God but at
 least they know what I'm talking about. In contrast you've tortured the
 meanings of words so much that when you say I do believe in God nobody
 knows what you mean and in fact, I'm not trying to be insulting I mean this
 quite literally, when you say I do believe in God you don't know what
 you're talking about. I know exactly what it is that I don't believe in,
 but the thing that you do believe in is a bunch of amorphous mush with
 virtually no relationship to the traditional meaning of the word God .

 But you are far from alone in doing this, for reasons I don't understand
 some atheist just want to make the noise  I do believe in God with their
 mouth, and they don't care what if anything it means.


same perpetual use of authoritative arguments,


 So you think my arguments are reliable and trusted as being accurate  and
 are the best of its kind and unlikely to be improved upon. Well I'm
 blushing, there not THAT good, someday sombody might do even better.

  same impulse to forbid the scientific method on the deep questions.


 Bullshit. I'm a atheist because a world that was intelligently designed
 would look very different from one that was not, therefore deciding between
 the 2 hypothesis is a scientific question that can be resolved just like
 any other.

  I was just asking what do you mean by grand concept, with the goal of
 making sense of what you were saying. You elude the point.


 I have noticed that when people get into a tight corner they often try to
 change the subject by asking me for a definition of some very common word
 that I've used. The trouble is that any definition I give will be made of
 words and I can be certain that my debate opponent will demand a definition
 of at least one of those words, and away we go.

 I would humbly suggest that for efficient communication you buy yourself a
 dictionary, then you wouldn't need to ask people what obscure and little
 used words like grand and God mean, you could just look them up.

  that depends on how you define define. And after that I'd like to
 know the definition of  define define ; and after that [...]


  If you are interested in a theory of definition, by some good
 introductory book in logic, as this is has been well studied.


 If I already knew what the word define meant then I wouldn't need such
 books, and if I didn't know the meaning then asking to define define
 would be like asking to klogknee klogknee.

  BTW, I am still waiting your comment on my last rebuttal of your
 predicting algorithm in self-duplication.


 I wasn't aware that I had a predicting algorithm in self-duplication,
 and I have no way of knowing if I should praise your rebuttal or condemn it
 because I don't know what on earth you're talking about.

  you seem to believe that physics does solve the mind-body problem,


 The evidence very strongly indicates that mind is what the brain does if
 that's what you mean.


  which is exactly what UDA shows it does not.


 UDA? Oh yes, all that pee and pee pee stuff.

   John K Clark


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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-29 Thread Platonist Guitar Cowboy
On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 10:14 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  I am very glad with all your posts on religion, as they confirm my
 theory according to which (strong) atheists are (strong) Christians in
 disguise.


 Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard
 that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12.


  same definition of the creator


 EXACTLY!  I have a well defined meaning of the word  God  so when I say
 I don't believe in God it actually means something, and the meaning of
 the word is such that it doesn't reduced the sentence to triviality. People
 may and usually do disagree when I say I don't believe in God but at
 least they know what I'm talking about. In contrast you've tortured the
 meanings of words so much that when you say I do believe in God nobody
 knows what you mean and in fact, I'm not trying to be insulting I mean this
 quite literally, when you say I do believe in God you don't know what
 you're talking about. I know exactly what it is that I don't believe in,
 but the thing that you do believe in is a bunch of amorphous mush with
 virtually no relationship to the traditional meaning of the word God .

 But you are far from alone in doing this, for reasons I don't understand
 some atheist just want to make the noise  I do believe in God with their
 mouth, and they don't care what if anything it means.


same perpetual use of authoritative arguments,


 So you think my arguments are reliable and trusted as being accurate  and
 are the best of its kind and unlikely to be improved upon. Well I'm
 blushing, there not THAT good, someday sombody might do even better.

  same impulse to forbid the scientific method on the deep questions.


 Bullshit. I'm a atheist because a world that was intelligently designed
 would look very different from one that was not, therefore deciding between
 the 2 hypothesis is a scientific question that can be resolved just like
 any other.

  I was just asking what do you mean by grand concept, with the goal of
 making sense of what you were saying. You elude the point.


 I have noticed that when people get into a tight corner they often try to
 change the subject by asking me for a definition of some very common word
 that I've used. The trouble is that any definition I give will be made of
 words and I can be certain that my debate opponent will demand a definition
 of at least one of those words, and away we go.

 I would humbly suggest that for efficient communication you buy yourself a
 dictionary, then you wouldn't need to ask people what obscure and little
 used words like grand and God mean, you could just look them up.

   that depends on how you define define. And after that I'd like to
 know the definition of  define define ; and after that [...]


  If you are interested in a theory of definition, by some good
 introductory book in logic, as this is has been well studied.


 If I already knew what the word define meant then I wouldn't need such
 books, and if I didn't know the meaning then asking to define define
 would be like asking to klogknee klogknee.

  BTW, I am still waiting your comment on my last rebuttal of your
 predicting algorithm in self-duplication.


 I wasn't aware that I had a predicting algorithm in self-duplication,
 and I have no way of knowing if I should praise your rebuttal or condemn it
 because I don't know what on earth you're talking about.

  you seem to believe that physics does solve the mind-body problem,


 The evidence very strongly indicates that mind is what the brain does if
 that's what you mean.


  which is exactly what UDA shows it does not.


 UDA? Oh yes, all that pee and pee pee stuff.

   John K Clark



I agree with Jason.

I don't know how the bodily fluids relate to TOE's or the UDA apart from
primary school usage of urination phonetic pun on the UDA's use of 1p, 3p
observations and views, though.

But for humor to work, the audience must find it funny.

This gets no laughs from me, nor from Jason i would guess, and I gig comedy
occasionally (badly, but I do...)

Russell can probably explain this to me: how this sort of joke is closer
to TOE then posing a question concerning possible future technological
horizons. Because from what I can tell, this particular phenomenon is in
the domain perception of physical body, but that's not totally right;
it's more like psychological connotations of metabolic fluid deposits in
discourse; which is of course, much more specific and much further afield
from Ensemble Theories of Everything or Russell has A LOT of deleting to do.

Everybody can label stuff with their own word fields and make funky
assignments, re-frame stuff over and over. Doesn't disguise empty arguments
from authority and it doesn't shed one photon on the problems of domain
specificity in the face of interdisciplinary phenomena. You just gloss over
your own BS by going: 

Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-27 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 25 Jan 2013, at 20:52, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Friday, January 25, 2013 2:16:02 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 24 Jan 2013, at 22:03, Jason Resch wrote:


John,

I agree with Craig.  The concept of divine simplicity exists in  
several religions ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_simplicity ).


Little numbers can develop crazy complex behaviors, and with comp  
they can support (locally) rich inner experiences.
The difficulty relies in the first person statistical fitness with  
the probable universal neighbors. (As you can guess).


Makes me think of superfluid helium...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z6UJbwxBZI

As simplicity approaches the absolute (and -271K He is an  
interesting range of simplicity in matter) it seems to expose the  
hidden complexity of our expectations for what is minimal. Of  
course, I point to this to show again that arithmetic truth and  
information float on the surface of an ocean of permanent and  
expanding sensory depth.


I would like a semi-axiomatic definition of sensory, to make this  
more palatable. I try to get a theory of sense, and I can't take that  
notion for granted, even if I agree that from the 1p pov, it looks  
like primitive (but that the comp theory can already explained why).


Bruno






Craig


Bruno



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-27 Thread John Clark
On Sun, Jan 27, 2013  AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  Without religion, science is pseudo-religion


That's OK with me. Religion is bullshit, so pseudo-bullshit is better than
pure, triple distilled, extra virgin, investment grade bullshit.

  How would you define grand for a concept?


That depends on how you define define. And after that I'd like to know
the definition of  define define ; and after that [...]

  John K Clark

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-26 Thread Jason Resch
Thanks.  The below shows it would be impossible for us to have a  
rational discussion on the subject and therefore we need not waste any  
electrons on the subject.


If in the future you change your mind and are interested in discussing  
the merits/properties/purpose of a possibly true and rational religion  
(which I define simply as a set of beliefs) we can do so.


Jason

On Jan 25, 2013, at 9:55 AM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:


On Thu, Jan 24, 2013  Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

 how do you define the word religion?

re·li·gion  [ri-lij-uhn]

1 n. A theological fungus that thrives best in the dark and when fed  
by bullshit.


2 Believing what you know ain't so.

3 The boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate.

4 Religion is to rationality as horseshit is to horsepower.

  John K Clark
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Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-25 Thread Roger Clough
Hi John Clark 

If you want to learn about science, study Darwin, etc.
If you want to learn about God, read the Bible.


- Receiving the following content - 
From: John Clark 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2013-01-24, 11:17:30
Subject: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.


On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

?
 Genesis doesn't say anything about God being grand and complex as far as I 
 know. 

It certainly says God is grand and if it didn't say that a omnipotent being was 
complex it certainly should have. And Darwin provided a real explanation, he 
didn't just say that complex life evolved from much simpler life, he provided 
the engine, he explained how the mechanism works. 

But exactly how did God create the heavens and the earth? Genesis doesn't say, 
and that's why Genesis explains absolutely nothing; it might as well have just 
said stuff happens for all the enlightenment it brought.
?
It's a three letter word and it is not explained at all,

I know. That's the problem.


 so how complex could it be?


Infinitely, and that's a 10 letter word.? 


 Isn't God just supposed to be I am that I am.?


I believe so. I'm not sure of the exact verse but it's somewhere in the Bible, 
I think it's in The Book Of Popeye ? I yam what I yam and I yam what I yam 
that I yam.
?
 Had Gutenberg printed the Origin of Species instead of a Bible, printing 
 probably would not have caught on with the public.


Had Gutenberg printed the Origin of Species Gutenberg would have been slowly 
burned alive by the church. Do you have any reason for defending the barbaric 
actions of this institution other than the fact that I don't like it? 


 I doubt that most televangelists have even studied theology.


You can study mythology or you can study the appalling behavior of primitive 
bronze age tribes but there is nothing in theology to study. There is no field, 
there is no there there. 

? John K Clark








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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-25 Thread John Clark
On Thu, Jan 24, 2013  Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

 how do you define the word religion?


re·li·gion  [ri-lij-uhn]

1* n.* A theological fungus that thrives best in the dark and when fed by
bullshit.

2 Believing what you know ain't so.

3 The boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate.

4 Religion is to rationality as horseshit is to horsepower.

  John K Clark

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-25 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 24 Jan 2013, at 22:03, Jason Resch wrote:


John,

I agree with Craig.  The concept of divine simplicity exists in  
several religions ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_simplicity ).



The book by O'Meara on Plotinus makes clear the idea that Plotinus  
want the ONE to be simple.
The ONE is seen as the simplest thing from which the MANY can emanate,  
and the SOUL contemplate (or fall).





The concept is also not dissimilar to the Neti Neti (Not this, not  
that) explanation of Brahman in Hindusim ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neti_neti 
 ) or the Nirguna Brahman, which is Brahman without qualities.


Nice. That's also a common point with neoplatonist theologies. It is  
negation theologies, where the big thing is only refuted to be this or  
that. With comp this applies to both truth and the inner god, that  
is you-at-the-first-person (you-1 have no definite name or  
description), you-yourself are not this or that.






Of course, the whole question of what is simple and what is complex  
requires a definition of complexity.  The universal dovetailer is a  
simple program, yet it generates all programs.  The Mandlebrot set  
has a simple definition, but is infinitely detailed.  Pi has a  
simple definition, but an infinite expansion of digits.


So apparent complexity, of a universe, a world, etc. need not be  
dependent on complex underlying principles or systems.  Bruno often  
says, arithmetic is much bigger when seen from the inside.


Little numbers can develop crazy complex behaviors, and with comp they  
can support (locally) rich inner experiences.
The difficulty relies in the first person statistical fitness with the  
probable universal neighbors. (As you can guess).


Bruno




Jason




On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 2:54 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com  
wrote:

On Thu, Jan 24, 2013  Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 A two year old can understand what God is supposed to be.

A two year old can't understand how something simple can know  
everything and neither can I; and there is a reason the word  
simple is often used as a synonym for stupid. And the Bible just  
says that God made animals but it doesn't say how, but Darwin didn't  
just say Evolution made animals he explained how it did it. Saying  
animals exist because of God is no more helpful than saying  
animals exist because of flobkneegrab.


 The position that I am arguing is knock down that unsupported  
balloon that you tried to float about science being better than  
religion because science always means that complex things are  
explained by simple things.


That is not what science means that is what a explanation means; a  
theory (like the God theory) that explains the existence of  
something unlikely (like us) by postulating the existence of  
something even more unlikely (like God) is worse than useless.



 Your straw man of me arguing that God is not important didn't work.

Good, now I don't have to find a verse in the Bible proving that it  
teaches that God is grand.



 This is something that science and religion have in common, not  
which sets them apart.


But you aren't exactly a expert on science, you admitted that to you  
most scientific papers are just a huge amount of mumbo jumbo, so  
your readers might be wise to take your views on the value of  
science with a grain of salt.


  John K Clark



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-25 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 24 Jan 2013, at 22:19, John Clark wrote:




On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 4:03 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com  
wrote:


 I agree with Craig.  The concept of divine simplicity exists in  
several religions


And in those religions how did a simpleton God make life? Darwin  
provided the mechanism by which Evolution did it,  so those  
religions need to explain exactly how the invisible man in the sky  
did it.


 Of course, the whole question of what is simple and what is  
complex requires a definition of complexity.  The universal  
dovetailer is a simple program, yet it generates all programs.  The  
Mandlebrot set has a simple definition, but is infinitely detailed.   
Pi has a simple definition, but an infinite expansion of digits. So  
apparent complexity, of a universe, a world, etc. need not be  
dependent on complex underlying principles or systems.


If you don't like the simple-complex dimension use the humble-grand  
dimension. The Bible says something grand made something humble and  
it doesn't say how so it explains nothing; Darwin says something  
humble made something grand and the best part is he said how it did  
in, and that is a explanation worthy of the name.


You confuse theology before 523 and after. If you appreciate reason,  
look at the development from Pythagorus to Plotinus, for  example.


You would see that they depict a different conception of reality, than  
the current Aristotelian one, and which by many token is somehow more  
rational as committing less ontological commitments. And it would be  
just a lie to say that science has decided on this.


Study computer science and take a look how coherent Plotinus appear,  
from a complete arithmetical point of view (see the pdf at my  
frontpage url).


If you prevent the rationalists to study theology, it will remain in  
the hand of the irrationalists, you know.


Bruno








  John K Clark


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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-25 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Friday, January 25, 2013 2:16:02 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 24 Jan 2013, at 22:03, Jason Resch wrote:

 John,

 I agree with Craig.  The concept of divine simplicity exists in several 
 religions ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_simplicity ). 


 Little numbers can develop crazy complex behaviors, and with comp they can 
 support (locally) rich inner experiences. 
 The difficulty relies in the first person statistical fitness with the 
 probable universal neighbors. (As you can guess).


Makes me think of superfluid helium...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z6UJbwxBZI

As simplicity approaches the absolute (and -271K He is an interesting range 
of simplicity in matter) it seems to expose the hidden complexity of our 
expectations for what is minimal. Of course, I point to this to show again 
that arithmetic truth and information float on the surface of an ocean of 
permanent and expanding sensory depth.

Craig


 Bruno




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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-24 Thread John Clark
On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:


  Genesis doesn't say anything about God being grand and complex as far as
 I know.


It certainly says God is grand and if it didn't say that a omnipotent being
was complex it certainly should have. And Darwin provided a real
explanation, he didn't just say that complex life evolved from much simpler
life, he provided the engine, he explained how the mechanism works.

But exactly how did God create the heavens and the earth? Genesis doesn't
say, and that's why Genesis explains absolutely nothing; it might as well
have just said stuff happens for all the enlightenment it brought.


 It's a three letter word and it is not explained at all,


I know. That's the problem.

 so how complex could it be?


Infinitely, and that's a 10 letter word.

 Isn't God just supposed to be I am that I am.?


I believe so. I'm not sure of the exact verse but it's somewhere in the
Bible, I think it's in The Book Of Popeye   I yam what I yam and I yam
what I yam that I yam.


  Had Gutenberg printed the Origin of Species instead of a Bible, printing
 probably would not have caught on with the public.


Had Gutenberg printed the Origin of Species Gutenberg would have been
slowly burned alive by the church. Do you have any reason for defending the
barbaric actions of this institution other than the fact that I don't like
it?

 I doubt that most televangelists have even studied theology.


You can study mythology or you can study the appalling behavior of
primitive bronze age tribes but there is nothing in theology to study.
There is no field, there is no there there.

  John K Clark

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Re: Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-24 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Thursday, January 24, 2013 4:32:58 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:

  Hi Craig Weinberg 
  
 OK,  you can see that in two current junk science cults:
  
 (a) materialism
  
 (b) climate change



What I can see is that your responses seem to be generated by this logic 
tree:

Do I Understand It?

Yes = Leibniz
No = God

Do I Like It?

Yes = Rational
No = Blame Liberals (aka Nazi-Communist Jews who advocate a Welfare-Police 
state)

Craig

  

 - Receiving the following content - 
 *From:* Craig Weinberg javascript: 
 *Receiver:* everything-list javascript: 
 *Time:* 2013-01-23, 09:15:40
 *Subject:* Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 
 STEPS.

  

 On Wednesday, January 23, 2013 5:30:25 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: 

  Hi Craig,
  
 What is a fundamentalist pathology ? And how does it apply to science ?


 A pathology here refers to a degenerative condition, like a disease, 
 decay, or a failing strategy - a state of deepening dysfunction and 
 corruption which produces increasingly undesirable effects.

 Fundamentalist here refers to a reactionary stance characterized by 
 rigidity and overbearing defensiveness toward alternative approaches. 
 Intellectual totalitarianism.

 Craig

   

 - Receiving the following content - 
 *From:* Bruno Marchal 
 *Receiver:* everything-list 
 *Time:* 2013-01-22, 11:00:27
 *Subject:* Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

  
  On 21 Jan 2013, at 22:20, meekerdb wrote:

  On 1/21/2013 9:11 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 

 It is only recently, as the limitations of the narrow Western approach 
 are being revealed on a global scale, that science has fallen into a 
 fundamentalist pathology which makes an enemy of teleology.


 Yes, it is only the recently, since the Enlightenment, that science has 
 displaced theology as the main source of knowledge about the world.  


 This is non sense. Science is not domain. It points only to an attitude. 
 Science cannot displace theology, like it cannot displace genetics. It can 
 give evidence that some theological theories are wrong headed, or that some 
 theories in genetics are not supported by facts, but science cannot 
 eliminate any field of inquiry, or it becomes automatically a 
 pseudo-religion itself (as it is the case for some scientists).




  Coincidentally is only recently that the sin theory of disease was 
 replaced by the germ theory...that the geocentric model of the solar system 
 was replaced by the heliocentric...that insanity has been due to bad brain 
 chemistry instead of possession by demons...that democracy has replaced the 
 divine right of kings...that lightning rods have protected us from the 
 wrath of God...that the suffering of women in childbirth has been 
 alleviated...


 OK. This shows that religion provides answer, and then the scientific 
 attitude can lead to corrections, making those answers into abandoned 
 theories. This really illustrates my point. Now some go farer and make 
 primary matter the new God. that's OK in a treatise of metaphysics, when 
 physicalism is explicitly assumed or discussed, but some scientists, 
 notably when vindictive strong atheists I met, just mock the questions and 
 imposes the physicalist answer like if that, an only that, was science. 
 This is just deeply not scientific.

 Bruno


  http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-24 Thread meekerdb

On 1/24/2013 8:17 AM, John Clark wrote:


It's a three letter word and it is not explained at all,


I know. That's the problem.


Interestingly, in Aramaic the word was Elohim, and my jewish/anthropologist friend tells 
me that's a plural.  So it should have been translated gods, except that didn't sit well 
with the later monotheism.


Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-24 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 23 Jan 2013, at 15:22, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:58:03 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:
Hi John Clark

From his hostile postings, Craig seems to have been very
very badly hurt by the Christian Church sometime in the past.

Haha, not at all. Some of my best memories in high school were of  
drinking beers and smoking cloves with the lovely and exciting girls  
from my friend's church group. I think cathedrals are wonderful.  
Church services bore me but not as much as synagogue services - wow,  
if you want to have a monotonous meaningless experience try sitting  
through a three hour monologue in Hebrew.


I just think that the idea of an anthropomorphic God is an  
unfortunate and seductive mistake. If I sound hostile, it is because  
of the tremendous damage that this concept can do to people's lives.  
I am hostile toward crystal meth too. I love the idea of  
recreational drugs, but I have known too many exceptional people who  
have seen the course of their lives derailed by crystal.


Crystal meth, like crack cocaine, or the quite terrible Krokodil, are  
typical products of prohibition. Krokodil appeared in Russia after an  
attempt to make heroin disappear in large region there.
Like wood alcohol during alcohol interdiction, prohibition invites  
people to build ersatz which are usually far more dangerous than the  
original products.


Bruno




Craig




- Receiving the following content -
From: John Clark
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2013-01-22, 13:23:37
Subject: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 3:12 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com  
wrote:


 The astronomer Giordano Bruno would not have been surprised to  
hear that the invention of science was a fight against theology, he  
was burned alive by the church for suggesting that the bright points  
of light you see in the night sky were other suns very very far away.


The Catholic Church of the 16th century is no more representative  
of Theology


In Europe in 1600 the Catholic Church was not representative of  
theology it virtually was theology; competing franchises like  
Judaism and Islam were just rounding errors, and they were just as  
dumb anyway. �


than ethnic cleansing is representative of Darwin.

Huh?� Charles Darwin and ethnic cleansing, it does not compute.

 Explaining how complexity came about from simplicity is much  
better than saying complexity came about from even more complexity.


 Religion does the same thing.

Bullshit.

 The Tower of Babel. Noah's Ark. Genesis. Complexity emerges from  
simplicity


God is not simple, although very often the believers in God are.�
�
 Ron Popeil is not a theologian.

True, Ron Popeil is much more moral than theologians because the  
stuff he sells on TV actually exists.


 What would lead to unemployment is if the LHC discovers nothing  
mysterious that contradicts what we think we know.


 Not really.

Yes really.

 Validating the standard model is just as profitable as mystery.

Bullshit. Everybody knows that the standard model is very very good  
but they also know it can't be the end of the story because it says  
nothing about gravity or Dark Matter or Dark Energy nor can it  
explain why neutrinos have mass. And everybody knows that unlike  
telescopes that have found a lot of surprising stuff in fundamental  
physics, particle accelerators have not discovered anything  
surprising in almost 40 years (finding the Higgs was not surprising,  
not discovering it would have been surprising and that's why many  
hoped it didn't exist but they were disappointed), and if the LHC  
doesn't find anything new either it could be the last of these very  
expensive machines for a century.


�ohn K Clark



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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-24 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Thursday, January 24, 2013 11:17:30 AM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

 On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript:
  wrote:
  

  Genesis doesn't say anything about God being grand and complex as far 
 as I know. 


 It certainly says God is grand and if it didn't say that a omnipotent 
 being was complex it certainly should have.


Ah, so we are talking about what you think Genesis should have said rather 
than what it actually says.

Show me where in Genesis it says anything about God being grand or complex:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1version=NIV

 

 And Darwin provided a real explanation, he didn't just say that complex 
 life evolved from much simpler life, he provided the engine, he explained 
 how the mechanism works. 

 But exactly how did God create the heavens and the earth? Genesis doesn't 
 say, and that's why Genesis explains absolutely nothing; it might as well 
 have just said stuff happens for all the enlightenment it brought.
  

 It's a three letter word and it is not explained at all,


 I know. That's the problem.


Make up your mind, do you have a problem with the God concept being too 
simple or too complex?
 


  so how complex could it be?


 Infinitely, and that's a 10 letter word.  


Infinity is not quite as simple as God, but it is still very simple 
compared to natural selection and genetic replication. 


  Isn't God just supposed to be I am that I am.?


 I believe so. I'm not sure of the exact verse but it's somewhere in the 
 Bible, I think it's in The Book Of Popeye   I yam what I yam and I yam 
 what I yam that I yam.


I was just thinking that there should be a Chuckle Like Popeye Day added to 
the calendar actually.

 

  Had Gutenberg printed the Origin of Species instead of a Bible, 
 printing probably would not have caught on with the public.


 Had Gutenberg printed the Origin of Species Gutenberg would have been 
 slowly burned alive by the church. Do you have any reason for defending the 
 barbaric actions of this institution other than the fact that I don't like 
 it? 


I don't like the church either, but the church is not theology. To me, the 
church is a social organization which uses the popularity of theological 
themes to gain political influence and control over a population. All such 
organizations can be as barbaric, from governments to business to country 
clubs and unions. Theological ideas however, are just early philosophy, 
which is early science. Science, in its refinement of philosophy has made 
obvious strides beyond theology, but not everything that has been discarded 
along the way can be forgotten. This is a simplistic view of progress. 
Until science can reconcile physics with psyche in a way which does not 
diminish either one, there will continue to be a huge blind spot which 
fundamentalist churches will exploit.


  I doubt that most televangelists have even studied theology.


 You can study mythology or you can study the appalling behavior of 
 primitive bronze age tribes but there is nothing in theology to study. 
 There is no field, there is no there there. 


 
http://divinity.duke.edu/sites/default/files/documents/academics/course-schedule-course-listing-2012-fall.pdf

Hyperbole and bigotry are the antithesis of science, IMO. Ignorance plus 
arrogance only helps your ego, not science.

Craig


   John K Clark








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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-24 Thread John Clark
On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 11:58 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:

  It certainly says God is grand and if it didn't say that a omnipotent
 being was complex it certainly should have.


  Ah, so we are talking about what you think Genesis should have said
 rather than what it actually says.


Yes, the Bible is a reprehensible document not only because of what it says
but because of what it does not say.

 Show me where in Genesis it says anything about God being grand or
complex:

Has it come to this, do I really have to prove that the Bible doesn't teach
that God is of no importance? Craig, I think you've lost track of the
position you're arguing for and just feel obligated to contradict anything
said, even if it supports your view, rather like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

  John K Clark

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-24 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Thursday, January 24, 2013 1:45:55 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

 On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 11:58 AM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript:
  wrote:

   It certainly says God is grand and if it didn't say that a omnipotent 
 being was complex it certainly should have.


  Ah, so we are talking about what you think Genesis should have said 
 rather than what it actually says.


 Yes, the Bible is a reprehensible document not only because of what it 
 says but because of what it does not say.  
  
  Show me where in Genesis it says anything about God being grand or 
 complex:

 Has it come to this, do I really have to prove that the Bible doesn't 
 teach that God is of no importance? Craig, I think you've lost track of the 
 position you're arguing for and just feel obligated to contradict anything 
 said, even if it supports your view, rather like this:  

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y


Certainly God is supposed to be of the utmost importance, but that sense of 
grandeur is not rooted in complexity, either conceptually or literally. A 
two year old can understand what God is supposed to be. The position that I 
am arguing is knock down that unsupported balloon that you tried to float 
about science being better than religion because science always means that 
complex things are explained by simple things. If you recall, I said that 
religion does the exact same thing. The God concept is grand in a different 
way than natural selection is grand, but they are comparable as far as the 
relation of simplicity to complexity. This is something that science and 
religion have in common, not which sets them apart.

Your straw man of me arguing that God is not important didn't work.

Craig


   John K Clark

  




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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-24 Thread Jason Resch
John,

I agree with Craig.  The concept of divine simplicity exists in several
religions ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_simplicity ). The concept
is also not dissimilar to the Neti Neti (Not this, not that) explanation
of Brahman in Hindusim ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neti_neti ) or the
Nirguna Brahman, which is Brahman without qualities.

Of course, the whole question of what is simple and what is complex
requires a definition of complexity.  The universal dovetailer is a simple
program, yet it generates all programs.  The Mandlebrot set has a simple
definition, but is infinitely detailed.  Pi has a simple definition, but an
infinite expansion of digits.

So apparent complexity, of a universe, a world, etc. need not be dependent
on complex underlying principles or systems.  Bruno often says, arithmetic
is much bigger when seen from the inside.

Jason




On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 2:54 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Thu, Jan 24, 2013  Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

  A two year old can understand what God is supposed to be.


 A two year old can't understand how something simple can know everything
 and neither can I; and there is a reason the word simple is often used as
 a synonym for stupid. And the Bible just says that God made animals but
 it doesn't say how, but Darwin didn't just say Evolution made animals he
 explained how it did it. Saying animals exist because of God is no more
 helpful than saying animals exist because of flobkneegrab.

  The position that I am arguing is knock down that unsupported balloon
 that you tried to float about science being better than religion because
 science always means that complex things are explained by simple things.


 That is not what science means that is what a explanation means; a theory
 (like the God theory) that explains the existence of something unlikely
 (like us) by postulating the existence of something even more unlikely
 (like God) is worse than useless.


  Your straw man of me arguing that God is not important didn't work.


 Good, now I don't have to find a verse in the Bible proving that it
 teaches that God is grand.


  This is something that science and religion have in common, not which
 sets them apart.


 But you aren't exactly a expert on science, you admitted that to you most
 scientific papers are just a huge amount of mumbo jumbo, so your readers
 might be wise to take your views on the value of science with a grain of
 salt.

   John K Clark


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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-24 Thread John Clark
On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 4:03 PM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

 I agree with Craig.  The concept of divine simplicity exists in several
 religions


And in those religions how did a simpleton God make life? Darwin provided
the mechanism by which Evolution did it,  so those religions need to
explain exactly how the invisible man in the sky did it.


  Of course, the whole question of what is simple and what is complex
 requires a definition of complexity.  The universal dovetailer is a simple
 program, yet it generates all programs.  The Mandlebrot set has a simple
 definition, but is infinitely detailed.  Pi has a simple definition, but an
 infinite expansion of digits. So apparent complexity, of a universe, a
 world, etc. need not be dependent on complex underlying principles or
 systems.


If you don't like the simple-complex dimension use the humble-grand
dimension. The Bible says something grand made something humble and it
doesn't say how so it explains nothing; Darwin says something humble made
something grand and the best part is he said how it did in, and that is a
explanation worthy of the name.

  John K Clark

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-24 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Thursday, January 24, 2013 3:54:03 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

 On Thu, Jan 24, 2013  Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote:

  A two year old can understand what God is supposed to be. 


 A two year old can't understand how something simple can know everything 
 and neither can I; 


Nor can they understand how something simple like 'probability' or 
'determinism' can account for everything.
 

 and there is a reason the word simple is often used as a synonym for 
 stupid. And the Bible just says that God made animals but it doesn't say 
 how, but Darwin didn't just say Evolution made animals he explained how it 
 did it. 


Right, because evolution is complex and counter-intuitive. God concepts are 
an inescapable feature of all known human cultures (for better or worse, 
obviously).
 

 Saying animals exist because of God is no more helpful than saying 
 animals exist because of flobkneegrab.  

  The position that I am arguing is knock down that unsupported balloon 
 that you tried to float about science being better than religion because 
 science always means that complex things are explained by simple things.


 That is not what science means that is what a explanation means; a theory 
 (like the God theory) that explains the existence of something unlikely 
 (like us) by postulating the existence of something even more unlikely 
 (like God) is worse than useless.


A universe from invisible, intangible laws that pop into 'existence' from 
nowhere seems likely?
 


  Your straw man of me arguing that God is not important didn't work.


 Good, now I don't have to find a verse in the Bible proving that it 
 teaches that God is grand.


I didn't say that God is not seen as grand, only that the concept of God is 
not a grand concept. See (use-mention distinction). 


  This is something that science and religion have in common, not which 
 sets them apart.


 But you aren't exactly a expert on science, you admitted that to you most 
 scientific papers are just a huge amount of mumbo jumbo, so your readers 
 might be wise to take your views on the value of science with a grain of 
 salt.


Argument from authority. Does that mean I'm wrong about science and 
religion having simple causation to complexity in common? No, it does not.

Craig
 


   John K Clark
  



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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-24 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Thursday, January 24, 2013 11:08:14 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

 On Thu, Jan 24, 2013  Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote:

  evolution is complex and counter-intuitive. 


 The basic idea behind Evolution is not complex but it is counter-intuitive 
 because the human mind tends to endow intentionality to nearly everything. 
 That's why Darwin's ideas, although simpler than Newton's, too longer to 
 find.  


Funny thing that. In a universe devoid of intention, the human mind is 
overflowing with the illusion of intention.
 


  A universe from invisible, intangible laws that pop into 'existence' 
 from nowhere seems likely?


 Darwin can't explain why there is something rather than nothing and 
 neither can anybody else, 


I can, and I have. There is no 'nothing'. Nothing is an idea that a 
participant in something has about the absence of everything.

least of all the invisible man in the sky dingbats. Darwin can't even 
 explain how life first came to be on this planet, but once bacteria came to 
 be he can explain how humans evolved from them, and that's a pretty good 
 accomplishment. 


It is an extraordinary accomplishment. Not knocking Darwin.
 

 Science can explain a lot but it hasn't explained everything, but religion 
 hasn't explained anything. Zip zero nada goose egg.


Religion is not about explaining what is useful, it is about explaining 
what seems important. Judging religion as a competitor to science is like 
judging your head as a competitor to the rest of your body. Again, you make 
it about winning winners who win, proving the non-winners to be LOSERS. 
This is not the attitude of science, or philosophy, or theology, it is 
wrestling.


  I didn't say that God is not seen as grand, only that the concept of God 
 is not a grand concept. See (use-mention distinction). 


 I am quite familiar with the  use-mention distinction and that ain't it. 
 If God is grand so is the concept.


Uh, no. The US Federal Tax Code is grand. The concept of a nation having a 
tax code is not grand. 

The God concept is incredibly primitive and compelling (as attested to by 
anthropological universality). It is basically this. 

A child understands:

I can know things and do things.
Grownups know more things and can do more things than I can do - they are 
wiser, stronger, more aware, and have been around longer.
Who can do and know more things than grownups?
There must be grand-grownups who know and do more than anyone. 
There must be someone who knows and does everything.
Our Father, who art in heaven...

That's it. Big Daddy = God. Not complex.


  But you aren't exactly a expert on science, you admitted that to you 
 most scientific papers are just a huge amount of mumbo jumbo, so your 
 readers might be wise to take your views on the value of science with a 
 grain of salt.


  Argument from authority.

  
 Despite its many faults the argument from authority beats the hell out of 
 argument from ignorance; and Craig let's face reality, you know next to no 
 science and the really depressing thing is that you're not even trying to 
 learn more.


When the first fallacy fails, move on to the Ad Hominem.

You must have forgotten to defend your reasoning though. Let's face reality 
John, you can't stand losing.

Craig
 


   John K Clark




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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-24 Thread Stephen P. King

On 1/24/2013 11:59 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, January 24, 2013 11:08:14 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

On Thu, Jan 24, 2013  Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com
javascript: wrote:

 evolution is complex and counter-intuitive.


The basic idea behind Evolution is not complex but it is
counter-intuitive because the human mind tends to endow
intentionality to nearly everything. That's why Darwin's ideas,
although simpler than Newton's, too longer to find.


Funny thing that. In a universe devoid of intention, the human mind is 
overflowing with the illusion of intention.



 A universe from invisible, intangible laws that pop into
'existence' from nowhere seems likely?


Darwin can't explain why there is something rather than nothing
and neither can anybody else,


I can, and I have. There is no 'nothing'. Nothing is an idea that a 
participant in something has about the absence of everything.


least of all the invisible man in the sky dingbats. Darwin can't
even explain how life first came to be on this planet, but once
bacteria came to be he can explain how humans evolved from them,
and that's a pretty good accomplishment.


It is an extraordinary accomplishment. Not knocking Darwin.

Science can explain a lot but it hasn't explained everything, but
religion hasn't explained anything. Zip zero nada goose egg.


Religion is not about explaining what is useful, it is about 
explaining what seems important. Judging religion as a competitor to 
science is like judging your head as a competitor to the rest of your 
body. Again, you make it about winning winners who win, proving the 
non-winners to be LOSERS. This is not the attitude of science, or 
philosophy, or theology, it is wrestling.



 I didn't say that God is not seen as grand, only that the
concept of God is not a grand concept. See (use-mention
distinction).


I am quite familiar with the  use-mention distinction and that
ain't it. If God is grand so is the concept.


Uh, no. The US Federal Tax Code is grand. The concept of a nation 
having a tax code is not grand.


The God concept is incredibly primitive and compelling (as attested to 
by anthropological universality). It is basically this.


A child understands:

I can know things and do things.
Grownups know more things and can do more things than I can do - they 
are wiser, stronger, more aware, and have been around longer.

Who can do and know more things than grownups?
There must be grand-grownups who know and do more than anyone.
There must be someone who knows and does everything.
Our Father, who art in heaven...

That's it. Big Daddy = God. Not complex.


 But you aren't exactly a expert on science, you
admitted that to you most scientific papers are just a
huge amount of mumbo jumbo, so your readers might be wise
to take your views on the value of science with a grain of
salt.


 Argument from authority.


Despite its many faults the argument from authority beats the hell
out of argument from ignorance; and Craig let's face reality, you
know next to no science and the really depressing thing is that
you're not even trying to learn more.


When the first fallacy fails, move on to the Ad Hominem.

You must have forgotten to defend your reasoning though. Let's face 
reality John, you can't stand losing.


Craig


Hear Hear!

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Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-23 Thread Roger Clough
Hi guys,

Theology is just a form of philosophy, therefore is a rational pursuit,
say like psychology or sociology or engineering mechanics.


- Receiving the following content - 
From: Bruno Marchal 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2013-01-22, 10:50:27
Subject: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.




On 21 Jan 2013, at 22:08, meekerdb wrote:


On 1/21/2013 8:53 AM, John Clark wrote: 
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:



 You confuse theology and post 500 occidental use of the field. 


There is no such field of study. There are experts in literature and experts in 
the behavior of bronze age tribes but there are no experts in the field of 
theology because there is no knowledge there to impart. There is no there 
there.  And I don't understand your grudge with occidental civilization, 
western religions are not significantly stupider than eastern religions.


 Theology is mainly perverted since 523


Speaking of confusion, I am using the word theology, as you admit in the 
above, as it has been used for the last 1500 years. If you insist on redefining 
common words (like God and theology) and give them your own private meaning 
then confusion is inevitable; we need a language to communicate and a language 
known to only one person is useless. 



 Theology did come up with the idea that there is a reality,

That is one ridiculous statement! With or without theology people had no 
trouble figuring out that there is a reality, so did snails. 


 and that reason can unravelled it, or a part of it. 

I didn't think it was possible but that statement is even more ridiculous! 
Science had to fight every inch of the way against theology and theologians and 
the fight still isn't over. If you can't immediately figure out how something 
can be the way it is theology advises you to just give up and say God did it; 
in other words theologians are intellectually lazy, but fortunately scientists 
are not. But they do have something in common, they both love mysteries. 
Theologians love mysteries because they like to wallow in ignorance, scientists 
love mysteries because it gives them something new to try to figure out. That's 
why particle physicists would be absolutely delighted if the LHC produced 
something mysterious that contradicted something they thought they knew and 
will be very disappointed if nothing like that shows up in one of their 
detectors. Can you imagine a theologian being delighted to find something that 
contradicted his faith? I can't.   



 What is your theory?


That theologians are so dumb they can't walk and chew gum at the same time.


To see a prefect example of a theologian who is apparently a graduate of The 
John K. Clark school of Liberal Divinity see: 

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/the-way-of-the-agnostic/ 




Gary Gutting seems quite good to me. Nice paper.


Bruno









I didn't bother to comment since there a plenty of good comments already, but 
it exemplifies many features of liberal theological thought: 

Some things can never be explained by science; and if science hasn't explained 
it then religion does.  

Religion gives access to a rich and fulfilling life of love (which is 
implicitly denied the irreligious).

Atheists have to prove God doesn't exist.

There is something called 'understanding' that is better than knowledge and you 
can have for free

Brent



  John k Clark

 


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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-23 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Craig,

What is a fundamentalist pathology ? And how does it apply to science ?

- Receiving the following content - 
From: Bruno Marchal 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2013-01-22, 11:00:27
Subject: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.




On 21 Jan 2013, at 22:20, meekerdb wrote:


On 1/21/2013 9:11 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
It is only recently, as the limitations of the narrow Western approach are 
being revealed on a global scale, that science has fallen into a fundamentalist 
pathology which makes an enemy of teleology.

Yes, it is only the recently, since the Enlightenment, that science has 
displaced theology as the main source of knowledge about the world.  


This is non sense. Science is not domain. It points only to an attitude. 
Science cannot displace theology, like it cannot displace genetics. It can give 
evidence that some theological theories are wrong headed, or that some theories 
in genetics are not supported by facts, but science cannot eliminate any field 
of inquiry, or it becomes automatically a pseudo-religion itself (as it is the 
case for some scientists).








Coincidentally is only recently that the sin theory of disease was replaced by 
the germ theory...that the geocentric model of the solar system was replaced by 
the heliocentric...that insanity has been due to bad brain chemistry instead of 
possession by demons...that democracy has replaced the divine right of 
kings...that lightning rods have protected us from the wrath of God...that the 
suffering of women in childbirth has been alleviated...



OK. This shows that religion provides answer, and then the scientific attitude 
can lead to corrections, making those answers into abandoned theories. This 
really illustrates my point. Now some go farer and make primary matter the 
new God. that's OK in a treatise of metaphysics, when physicalism is explicitly 
assumed or discussed, but some scientists, notably when vindictive strong 
atheists I met, just mock the questions and imposes the physicalist answer like 
if that, an only that, was science. This is just deeply not scientific.


Bruno




http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-23 Thread Roger Clough
Hi John Clark 

From his hostile postings, Craig seems to have been very 
very badly hurt by the Christian Church sometime in the past. 

- Receiving the following content - 
From: John Clark 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2013-01-22, 13:23:37
Subject: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.


On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 3:12 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:



 The astronomer Giordano Bruno would not have been surprised to hear that the 
 invention of science was a fight against theology, he was burned alive by 
 the church for suggesting that the bright points of light you see in the 
 night sky were other suns very very far away. 

The Catholic Church of the 16th century is no more representative of Theology

In Europe in 1600 the Catholic Church was not representative of theology it 
virtually was theology; competing franchises like Judaism and Islam were just 
rounding errors, and they were just as dumb anyway. ? 



than ethnic cleansing is representative of Darwin. 

Huh?? Charles Darwin and ethnic cleansing, it does not compute.



 Explaining how complexity came about from simplicity is much better than 
 saying complexity came about from even more complexity. 


 Religion does the same thing. 

Bullshit.


 The Tower of Babel. Noah's Ark. Genesis. Complexity emerges from simplicity

God is not simple, although very often the believers in God are.? 

?

 Ron Popeil is not a theologian. 


True, Ron Popeil is much more moral than theologians because the stuff he sells 
on TV actually exists.


 What would lead to unemployment is if the LHC discovers nothing mysterious 
 that contradicts what we think we know. 


 Not really.

Yes really.


 Validating the standard model is just as profitable as mystery.

Bullshit. Everybody knows that the standard model is very very good but they 
also know it can't be the end of the story because it says nothing about 
gravity or Dark Matter or Dark Energy nor can it explain why neutrinos have 
mass. And everybody knows that unlike telescopes that have found a lot of 
surprising stuff in fundamental physics, particle accelerators have not 
discovered anything surprising in almost 40 years (finding the Higgs was not 
surprising, not discovering it would have been surprising and that's why many 
hoped it didn't exist but they were disappointed), and if the LHC doesn't find 
anything new either it could be the last of these very expensive machines for a 
century.

?ohn K Clark



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Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-23 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Wednesday, January 23, 2013 5:30:25 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:

  Hi Craig,
  
 What is a fundamentalist pathology ? And how does it apply to science ?


A pathology here refers to a degenerative condition, like a disease, decay, 
or a failing strategy - a state of deepening dysfunction and corruption 
which produces increasingly undesirable effects.

Fundamentalist here refers to a reactionary stance characterized by 
rigidity and overbearing defensiveness toward alternative approaches. 
Intellectual totalitarianism.

Craig

  

 - Receiving the following content - 
 *From:* Bruno Marchal javascript: 
 *Receiver:* everything-list javascript: 
 *Time:* 2013-01-22, 11:00:27
 *Subject:* Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

  
  On 21 Jan 2013, at 22:20, meekerdb wrote:

  On 1/21/2013 9:11 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 

 It is only recently, as the limitations of the narrow Western approach are 
 being revealed on a global scale, that science has fallen into a 
 fundamentalist pathology which makes an enemy of teleology.


 Yes, it is only the recently, since the Enlightenment, that science has 
 displaced theology as the main source of knowledge about the world.  


 This is non sense. Science is not domain. It points only to an attitude. 
 Science cannot displace theology, like it cannot displace genetics. It can 
 give evidence that some theological theories are wrong headed, or that some 
 theories in genetics are not supported by facts, but science cannot 
 eliminate any field of inquiry, or it becomes automatically a 
 pseudo-religion itself (as it is the case for some scientists).




  Coincidentally is only recently that the sin theory of disease was 
 replaced by the germ theory...that the geocentric model of the solar system 
 was replaced by the heliocentric...that insanity has been due to bad brain 
 chemistry instead of possession by demons...that democracy has replaced the 
 divine right of kings...that lightning rods have protected us from the 
 wrath of God...that the suffering of women in childbirth has been 
 alleviated...


 OK. This shows that religion provides answer, and then the scientific 
 attitude can lead to corrections, making those answers into abandoned 
 theories. This really illustrates my point. Now some go farer and make 
 primary matter the new God. that's OK in a treatise of metaphysics, when 
 physicalism is explicitly assumed or discussed, but some scientists, 
 notably when vindictive strong atheists I met, just mock the questions and 
 imposes the physicalist answer like if that, an only that, was science. 
 This is just deeply not scientific.

 Bruno


  http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/





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Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-23 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:58:03 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:

  Hi John Clark 
  
 From his hostile postings, Craig seems to have been very 
 very badly hurt by the Christian Church sometime in the past. 


Haha, not at all. Some of my best memories in high school were of drinking 
beers and smoking cloves with the lovely and exciting girls from my 
friend's church group. I think cathedrals are wonderful. Church services 
bore me but not as much as synagogue services - wow, if you want to have a 
monotonous meaningless experience try sitting through a three hour 
monologue in Hebrew.

I just think that the idea of an anthropomorphic God is an unfortunate and 
seductive mistake. If I sound hostile, it is because of the tremendous 
damage that this concept can do to people's lives. I am hostile toward 
crystal meth too. I love the idea of recreational drugs, but I have known 
too many exceptional people who have seen the course of their lives 
derailed by crystal.

Craig


 

  

 - Receiving the following content - 
 *From:* John Clark javascript: 
 *Receiver:* everything-list javascript: 
 *Time:* 2013-01-22, 13:23:37
 *Subject:* Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

  On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 3:12 PM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript:
  wrote:

The astronomer Giordano Bruno would not have been surprised to hear 
 that the invention of science was a fight against theology, he was burned 
 alive by the church for suggesting that the bright points of light you see 
 in the night sky were other suns very very far away. 


 The Catholic Church of the 16th century is no more representative of 
 Theology


 In Europe in 1600 the Catholic Church was not representative of theology 
 it virtually was theology; competing franchises like Judaism and Islam were 
 just rounding errors, and they were just as dumb anyway. � 

  than ethnic cleansing is representative of Darwin. 


 Huh?� Charles Darwin and ethnic cleansing, it does not compute.

   Explaining how complexity came about from simplicity is much better 
 than saying complexity came about from even more complexity. 

  
  Religion does the same thing. 


 Bullshit.

   The Tower of Babel. Noah's Ark. Genesis. Complexity emerges from 
 simplicity


 God is not simple, although very often the believers in God are.� 
 �

  Ron Popeil is not a theologian. 


 True, Ron Popeil is much more moral than theologians because the stuff he 
 sells on TV actually exists.

What would lead to unemployment is if the LHC discovers nothing 
 mysterious that contradicts what we think we know. 


  Not really.


 Yes really.

   Validating the standard model is just as profitable as mystery.


 Bullshit. Everybody knows that the standard model is very very good but 
 they also know it can't be the end of the story because it says nothing 
 about gravity or Dark Matter or Dark Energy nor can it explain why 
 neutrinos have mass. And everybody knows that unlike telescopes that have 
 found a lot of surprising stuff in fundamental physics, particle 
 accelerators have not discovered anything surprising in almost 40 years 
 (finding the Higgs was not surprising, not discovering it would have been 
 surprising and that's why many hoped it didn't exist but they were 
 disappointed), and if the LHC doesn't find anything new either it could be 
 the last of these very expensive machines for a century.

 �ohn K Clark


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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-23 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 22 Jan 2013, at 20:27, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Tuesday, January 22, 2013 1:15:00 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 22 Jan 2013, at 18:26, Craig Weinberg wrote:



 On Tuesday, January 22, 2013 10:14:45 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 On 21 Jan 2013, at 18:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:

 
 
  On Monday, January 21, 2013 12:31:00 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal  
wrote:

 
 
 
  Impossible, or comp is false. No machine can ever figure out that
  there is anything without postulating it by faith. The fact that
  such postulation is unconscious makes this counter-intuitive, but
  with comp it is provable with mathematical logic.
 
  Aha, now this is interesting. Here I can begin to see the sub-
  arithmetic sense that you are working with. By 'figure out', do  
you

  mean that a machine has a conscious experience of reasoning?

 Not systematically. Only if she is universal, or perhaps she has  
to be

 Löbian. I am still not sure on this.



  Or is the reasoning as unconscious as the faith upon which said
  reasoning must rely?

 Hard to say. But most people (as this discussion actually  
illustrates)
 are not aware that the idea of a primary universe is something  
that we
 infer. It is not something that we live. It is unconscious theory.  
It

 is obvious (by natiral selection) that it would be a waste of energy
 and time to make this systematically conscious.

 I think of the universe not so much as something we live or infer as
 just the ultimate context of consideration. Sort of the idea of the
 largest possible here.






  Where does provability by mathematical logic come in?

 I model the belief of an ideally correct machine by its provability
 predicate. This is a predicate that we can translate in the language
 of the machine (in arithmetic for example), an,d which obeys the  
usual

 axiom for rational belief:
 [](p - q) - ([]p - []q)
 []p - [][]p (for the rich machines).
 Rules: modus ponens and necessitation (p/[]p).
 In such a machine case, the machines (and all its consistent
 extensions) will obey the Löb axioms: []([]p - p) - []p, which is
 the building block of the comp hypostases.
 In that frame work, the inferences in the proposition t, and more
 generally of propositions in G* minus G, plays the role of
 consciousness. But the inference itself is not conscious.


 It only makes sense to me that propositions are a facet of conscious
 experience.

Not necessarily. Don't confuse the propositions and the content of the
proposition.

The form of a proposition is an even more abstract facet of  
conscious experience.





 I don't see that propositions, or words, or figures drawn on paper,
 or any other symbolic form would themselves play at consciousness.

Indeed, they don't. No more than SWE, or a book on black hole.  Even
neurons does not play at consciousness in the comp theory. They make
it only relatively manifestable. Consciousness is already beyond
word. It is a mystical truth, yet quite common.

Then why would comp be primitive and not the mystical truth through  
which comp comes to our attention?


Because the mystical truth is what we want to explain, or meta- 
explain. We must start from simple things on which everyone agree.










 We might infer they are conscious, like a cartoon or puppet, but I
 don't see any reason to suspect that symbols would suddenly become
 actually conscious at some point because of complexity or scale.

What is conscious is the person making the inference (of a reality).
Consciousness is not the inference, not the symbols used, etc.

Why not? What else would they be?


?




Consciousness is in the knowledge of the person,

Consciousness makes knowledge available to a person in the first  
place. Unconscious people can gain no knowledge. Conscious people  
can be conscious whether or not they acquire any knowledge.


I agree.


This may be the core disagreement that I have with your position.  
Consciousness is in knowledge? Not a chance.


?




Pain hurts whether or not you know anything about anything.


You know the pain. Consciousness is that knowledge.





and that is non
computably associated to infinities of computations. But it can obeys
laws, and be described with a theory, or a meta-theory, because
consciousness has no formal term to refer to it. Like arithmetical
truth has no term to refer to it in arithmetic. that is why modal
logic is useful, as it makes possible to talk about things which have
no descriptions.

That assumes that logic is independent of consciousness.


I don't think so. Logic is only a tool to make theories and apply  
them. It emerges too in the mind of the numbers. We need logic to  
describe this, but the arithmetical truth are not dependent on logic,  
nor on theories.




I see that it is actually the range of conscious presentations which  
is furthest from the core. Logic is sense, but it is the sense of  
the opposite of sense - automated inevitable senseless sense.  
Applying modal logic to consciousness 

Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-23 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 22 Jan 2013, at 22:10, meekerdb wrote:


On 1/22/2013 8:00 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



On 21 Jan 2013, at 22:20, meekerdb wrote:


On 1/21/2013 9:11 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


It is only recently, as the limitations of the narrow Western  
approach are being revealed on a global scale, that science has  
fallen into a fundamentalist pathology which makes an enemy of  
teleology.


Yes, it is only the recently, since the Enlightenment, that  
science has displaced theology as the main source of knowledge  
about the world.


This is non sense. Science is not domain. It points only to an  
attitude. Science cannot displace theology, like it cannot displace  
genetics. It can give evidence that some theological theories are  
wrong headed, or that some theories in genetics are not supported  
by facts, but science cannot eliminate any field of inquiry, or it  
becomes automatically a pseudo-religion itself (as it is the case  
for some scientists).



Of course it can't displace a field of inquiry.  But theology wasn't  
a field of inquiry, it was apologetics for revelation and dogma.


Like genetics has been in the ex-USSR.
That's a reason to come back to the seriousness in the field. By  
refusing this, you just perpetuate the dogma.











Coincidentally is only recently that the sin theory of disease was  
replaced by the germ theory...that the geocentric model of the  
solar system was replaced by the heliocentric...that insanity has  
been due to bad brain chemistry instead of possession  
by  demons...that democracy has replaced the divine  
right of kings...that lightning rods have protected us from the  
wrath of God...that the suffering of women in childbirth has been  
alleviated...


OK. This shows that religion provides answer, and then the  
scientific attitude can lead to corrections, making those answers  
into abandoned theories. This really illustrates my point. Now some  
go farer and make primary matter the new God. that's OK in a  
treatise of metaphysics, when physicalism is explicitly assumed or  
discussed, but some scientists, notably when vindictive strong  
atheists I met, just mock the questions and imposes the physicalist  
answer like if that, an only that, was science. This is just deeply  
not scientific.


Can you cite any physicists who use the term 'primary matter'.


Can you cite any physicist interested in the mind-body problem.  
Physicists does not care about the distinction between primary matter  
and matter, because they usually take Aristotle theology for granted.  
It is comp and logic which forces us to realize that science has not  
yet decide between Plato and Aristotle, making us obliged to be aware  
that matter might not have a primitive existence and might need to be  
derived from something else (like arithmetic).





I've never come across it except on this list.  Of course almost all  
physicists believe in some kind of matter which is the subject of  
their study and they may hypothesize that it is primary, that there  
is nothing more fundamental which explains the matter, but that's  
just an hypothesis.  John Wheeler was not criticized for talking  
about It from bit.


Indeed. Wheeler was aware that physics might be originating from  
something non physical. he was well inspired by the bits, and even by  
self-reference.




Max Tegmark is still highly respected after suggesting a  
mathematical universe.  I think you have just been unlucky in  
running into some close minded atheists who probably suspected that  
your use of God to mean Truth


And trapped, as they encouraged me to do so, in the name of the free- 
exams. Some were sincere though, but others seem to have planned the  
refusal in advance.
In Conscience  Mécanisme I define theology by modal logic. Indeed  
Aristotle invented logic and modal logic to handle tricky metaphysical  
and theological question. Also, during my studies, when I suggested  
that modal logic might help for the study of provability and  
consistency (before Solovay), the atheists was used to dismiss the  
whole thing as theology.  So it was a way to remind them of the free- 
exam, and indeed that's why some encouraged me to do so: to prevent  
easy dismissals.




(and I'm not sure what that means) was an attempt to slip Christian  
dogma into science by the back door - it sounds very much like what,  
as John K. Clark pointed out, liberal theologians do in order to  
pretend that physics or mathematics supports their dogma.


I don't know what is a liberal theologian. In science we have no dogma  
(ideally). Of course the existence of math and physics supports the  
idea that there is a reality and so can be seen as evidence that some  
transcendent truth might make sense. Then computer science explains  
that if a machine posit a truth it will have transcendent aspect.
I use theology because I have read tuns of book in theology (from  
East and West) and they helped me to find the right 

Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-23 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Wednesday, January 23, 2013 10:26:56 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 22 Jan 2013, at 20:27, Craig Weinberg wrote:


 Then why would comp be primitive and not the mystical truth through which 
 comp comes to our attention?


 Because the mystical truth is what we want to explain, or meta-explain. We 
 must start from simple things on which everyone agree.


To me the mystical truth is much simpler than arithmetic truth. Everyone 
can agree that we participate in a sensory experience. It's a simple matter 
to see that the same is true for all things in the proper context.
 





  




  We might infer they are conscious, like a cartoon or puppet, but I   
  don't see any reason to suspect that symbols would suddenly become   
  actually conscious at some point because of complexity or scale. 

 What is conscious is the person making the inference (of a reality).   
 Consciousness is not the inference, not the symbols used, etc.   


 Why not? What else would they be?


 ?


Symbols are an artifact of consciousness.
 



  

 Consciousness is in the knowledge of the person, 


 Consciousness makes knowledge available to a person in the first place. 
 Unconscious people can gain no knowledge. Conscious people can be conscious 
 whether or not they acquire any knowledge. 


 I agree.


 This may be the core disagreement that I have with your position. 
 Consciousness is in knowledge? Not a chance. 


 ?


Knowledge is part of consciousness, but consciousness does not appear out 
of a hypothetically independent knowledge.
 




 Pain hurts whether or not you know anything about anything.


 You know the pain. Consciousness is that knowledge.


You don't have to know pain the first time you feel it. It can feel 
completely new and unprecedented. You can doubt the pain after you have 
felt it, you can forget it or diminish it. You can have knowledge of pain 
and knowledge about pain, but pain itself is a perception independent of 
knowledge or belief. Pain is an encounter with the concrete, illogical 
horror of involuntarily and irrevocably embedded participation. The 
capacity to reflect on that encounter is the experience of knowledge of the 
horror of it, which modulates the horror to some extent, for better or 
worse or both.




  

 and that is non   
 computably associated to infinities of computations. But it can obeys   
 laws, and be described with a theory, or a meta-theory, because   
 consciousness has no formal term to refer to it. Like arithmetical   
 truth has no term to refer to it in arithmetic. that is why modal   
 logic is useful, as it makes possible to talk about things which have   
 no descriptions. 


 That assumes that logic is independent of consciousness. 


 I don't think so. Logic is only a tool to make theories and apply them. It 
 emerges too in the mind of the numbers. We need logic to describe this, but 
 the arithmetical truth are not dependent on logic, nor on theories.


I would agree, but I would say that its because arithmetical truth is a 
subset of sense. All arithmetic truth makes sense, but not all sense is an 
expression of arithmetic. Really only the manipulation of abstracted rigid 
bodies is arithmetic. Arithmetic has no true fluidity or vagueness. Such 
fluidity is critical for all biological experience, and cannot be 
constructed logically, except as a digitized integral analysis.




 I see that it is actually the range of conscious presentations which is 
 furthest from the core. Logic is sense, but it is the sense of the opposite 
 of sense - automated inevitable senseless sense. Applying modal logic to 
 consciousness in that way is like going into a cave with a blacklight and 
 fluorescent paint to study the sun.
  





  
  
  
  
   Why doesn't everything use unconscious faith 
  
  Faith is always conscious. The inference itself might be or not 
  unconscious, so I guess what you mean. If I said unconscious faith, 
  I meant unconscious inference of something and the unconscious 
  bears on inference, not on the content of the faith. 
  
  Ok, I can see where an inference would be unavailable to personal   
  consciousness (I call this perceptual inertia - expectations become   
  backgrounded and implicit) but because we are organisms with   
  particularly elaborate consciousness, I would not rule out that what   
  has become less than conscious to us at the personal level is still   
  conscious on sub-personal levels. 

 I tend to believe this, actually. But not really from my reflexion of   
 comp, but from my reading of books on brains, and then my reading of   
 salvia reports (and other plants). 
 I tend to think that our consciousness result from the association of   
 at least a dozen of already conscious beings integrated in some way.   
 some drugs dissociates those presence. Amazingly some presence might   
 not been in the brain, but in arithmetic, to which our brain is   
 naturally connected. 


 Sounds good to me. Except the 

Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-23 Thread John Clark
On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 3:26 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:


  The astronomer Giordano Bruno would not have been surprised to hear
 that the invention of science was a fight against theology, he was burned
 alive by the church for suggesting that the bright points of light you see
 in the night sky were other suns very very far away.


 The Catholic Church of the 16th century is no more representative of
 Theology


  In Europe in 1600 the Catholic Church was not representative of
 theology it virtually was theology; competing franchises like Judaism and
 Islam were just rounding errors, and they were just as dumb anyway.


  Then by that logic, the practice of bloodletting should represent
 Medicine, and witch burning should represent Justice.


Medicine and science and Justice have improved since 1600 but as for
religion., well I suppose the Catholic Church has improved too, after
all they did admit that they may have gone a bit too far in their treatment
of Galileo and that he may have had a point after all, they said this in
the year 2000.  There have been calls for the church to reopen the case
against the astronomer Giordano Bruno and give hin a posthumous apology for
burning him alive but so far the church has not done so, but give them
time, it's only been 413 years, and I'm sure defending themselves from all
those pedophile cases must be time consuming.


  Huh?  Charles Darwin and ethnic cleansing, it does not compute.


  It did for many people.
 http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2009/02/beyond-darwin-eugenics-social-darwinism-and-the-social-theory-of-the-natural-selection-of-humans/


Apparently you believe that Charles Darwin should be held accountable for
the sins of his cousin Francis Galton, but Darwin was never a social
Darwinist and opposed slavery long before it was popular to do so, in a
letter he said  what a proud thing for England, if she is the first
European nation which utterly abolish is it. But of course the personal
virtues or vices of Charles Darwin have nothing to do with the truth or
falsehood of his theory, it's just interesting that unlike Issac Newton who
was a complete bastard Darwin was a very nice man, even people who didn't
like his theory tended to like the man personally.


  I take it as a given that you will think anything that I say is
 bullshit,


Only if everything you say is bullshit. Try saying something that isn't
bullshit, who knows maybe you'll like it.


  Genesis also - simple - first with the light, then with the dividing the
 waters and whatnot


Genesis hypothesizes that something grand and complex (God) produced
something less grand and less complex (humans), but Darwin provided a
mechanism by which something complex (humans) could be produced by
something less grand and less complex (bacteria) ; and that is why Charles
Darwin was a vastly superior human being compared to whatever nameless bozo
it was that wrote Genesis.


  Ron Popeil is much more moral than theologians because the stuff he
 sells on TV actually exists.


  Still, televangelism is not representative of theology as a whole.


Theology is just like any other line of work, not everybody manages to
reach the very top.

  John K Clark

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-23 Thread meekerdb

On 1/23/2013 7:55 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
Belief and question are inseparable. Science and theology are converging to be what they 
always were before their artificial separation by political interests: agile, adaptive 
partners in our dealings with the final questions of real. These are exciting times, 
unless you have some axe to grind, in which case: Back to work! Go on, defend and 
substantiate with your godlike criteria! While you do that ...Uhmm I'm just gonna have a 
beer with that crazy Zen dude over there, even though I don't practice Zen. Cheers! 


My apologies PGC, I didn't mean to imply that your open mindedness was not 
superior to mine.

Brent

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Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-23 Thread Craig Weinberg


On Wednesday, January 23, 2013 1:50:57 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

 On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 3:26 PM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript:
  wrote:


  The astronomer Giordano Bruno would not have been surprised to hear 
 that the invention of science was a fight against theology, he was burned 
 alive by the church for suggesting that the bright points of light you 
 see 
 in the night sky were other suns very very far away. 


 The Catholic Church of the 16th century is no more representative of 
 Theology


  In Europe in 1600 the Catholic Church was not representative of 
 theology it virtually was theology; competing franchises like Judaism and 
 Islam were just rounding errors, and they were just as dumb anyway.   


  Then by that logic, the practice of bloodletting should represent 
 Medicine, and witch burning should represent Justice.


 Medicine and science and Justice have improved since 1600 but as for 
 religion., well I suppose the Catholic Church has improved too, after 
 all they did admit that they may have gone a bit too far in their treatment 
 of Galileo and that he may have had a point after all, they said this in 
 the year 2000.  There have been calls for the church to reopen the case 
 against the astronomer Giordano Bruno and give hin a posthumous apology for 
 burning him alive but so far the church has not done so, but give them 
 time, it's only been 413 years, and I'm sure defending themselves from all 
 those pedophile cases must be time consuming. 
  

  Huh?  Charles Darwin and ethnic cleansing, it does not compute.


  It did for many people. 
 http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2009/02/beyond-darwin-eugenics-social-darwinism-and-the-social-theory-of-the-natural-selection-of-humans/


 Apparently you believe that Charles Darwin should be held accountable 


No, that's why I used the comparison as an example of fallacious logic.
 

 for the sins of his cousin Francis Galton, but Darwin was never a social 
 Darwinist and opposed slavery long before it was popular to do so, in a 
 letter he said  what a proud thing for England, if she is the first 
 European nation which utterly abolish is it. But of course the personal 
 virtues or vices of Charles Darwin have nothing to do with the truth or 
 falsehood of his theory, it's just interesting that unlike Issac Newton who 
 was a complete bastard Darwin was a very nice man, even people who didn't 
 like his theory tended to like the man personally. 


Newton was definitely a whack job, but I have no problem with either his 
theories or Darwin's - I'm just saying that they are part of the progress 
which began with spirituality and religion and continued to develop through 
theology, philosophy, and science. Of course, the key being that I am one 
of the many people who view the current phase of science as having passed 
its prime and will decay unless it can embrace larger and more scientific 
understandings.

 

  I take it as a given that you will think anything that I say is 
 bullshit, 


 Only if everything you say is bullshit. Try saying something that isn't 
 bullshit, who knows maybe you'll like it.


I don't bullshit as far as I know. I have no reason to lie and I'm not very 
good at it. It's not because I have a moral aversion to it, I'm just too 
lazy to keep track of what I say, so it's simpler to tell the truth.

 

  Genesis also - simple - first with the light, then with the dividing 
 the waters and whatnot


 Genesis hypothesizes that something grand and complex (God)


Genesis doesn't say anything about God being grand and complex as far as I 
know. It's a three letter word and it is not explained at all, so how 
complex could it be?
 

 produced something less grand and less complex (humans), 


Less grand maybe, but not less complex. Isn't God just supposed to be I am 
that I am.?
 

 but Darwin provided a mechanism by which something complex (humans) could 
 be produced by something less grand and less complex (bacteria) ; and that 
 is why Charles Darwin was a vastly superior human being compared to 
 whatever nameless bozo it was that wrote Genesis.  


Probably several people contributed to writing Genesis, but while I think 
that the Bible has caused a lot of harm to the world, it's still 
responsible for driving much of the art and science of the Western world. 
Had Gutenberg printed the Origin of Species instead of a Bible, printing 
probably would not have caught on with the public.

 

  Ron Popeil is much more moral than theologians because the stuff he 
 sells on TV actually exists.


  Still, televangelism is not representative of theology as a whole.


 Theology is just like any other line of work, not everybody manages to 
 reach the very top.


I doubt that most televangelists have even studied theology.

Craig


   John K Clark

  



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Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-22 Thread Roger Clough
Hi John Clark 

Materialism is a religious cult who main tenet is contempt prioor to 
investigation.


- Receiving the following content - 
From: John Clark 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2013-01-21, 11:53:07
Subject: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.


On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:



 You confuse theology and post 500 occidental use of the field. 


There is no such field of study. There are experts in literature and experts in 
the behavior of bronze age tribes but there are no experts in the field of 
theology because there is no knowledge there to impart. There is no there 
there.? And I don't understand your grudge with occidental civilization, 
western religions are not significantly stupider than eastern religions.? ? 


 Theology is mainly perverted since 523


Speaking of confusion, I am using the word theology, as you admit in the 
above, as it has been used for the last 1500 years. If you insist on redefining 
common words (like God and theology) and give them your own private meaning 
then confusion is inevitable; we need a language to communicate and a language 
known to only one person is useless. 



 Theology did come up with the idea that there is a reality,

That is one ridiculous statement! With or without theology people had no 
trouble figuring out that there is a reality, so did snails. 


 and that reason can unravelled it, or a part of it. 

I didn't think it was possible but that statement is even more ridiculous! 
Science had to fight every inch of the way against theology and theologians and 
the fight still isn't over. If you can't immediately figure out how something 
can be the way it is theology advises you to just give up and say God did it; 
in other words theologians are intellectually lazy, but fortunately scientists 
are not. But they do have something in common, they both love mysteries. 
Theologians love mysteries because they like to wallow in ignorance, scientists 
love mysteries because it gives them something new to try to figure out. That's 
why particle physicists would be absolutely delighted if the LHC produced 
something mysterious that contradicted something they thought they knew and 
will be very disappointed if nothing like that shows up in one of their 
detectors. Can you imagine a theologian being delighted to find something that 
contradicted his faith? I can't. ? ? ? 



 What is your theory?


That theologians are so dumb they can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

? John k Clark

?


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Re: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

2013-01-22 Thread Telmo Menezes
On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 1:28 PM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:

  Hi John Clark

 Einstein is as welcome to his beliefs as Christians
 are to theirs and as your scepticism is to you.
 None of this is provable, so please keep your
 beliefs to yourself.


Roger, you have to admit this is a bit funny coming from you...




 - Receiving the following content -
 *From:* John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com
 *Receiver:* everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com
 *Time:* 2013-01-21, 12:32:38
 *Subject:* Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS.

  On Mon, Jan 21, 2013� Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

   What you say above reminded me of what Einstein said on religion:


 Let's look at a few more quotations about what Einstein had to say about
 religion:

 ** it was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious
 convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe
 in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it
 clearly.� If something is in me which can be called religious then it is
 the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our
 science can reveal it.

 **I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that
 could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a
 magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and
 that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility

 The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.

 A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy,
 education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would
 indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment
 and hope of reward after death.
 I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the
 structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to
 appreciate it.�
 When Einstein moved to America his religious views, or rather lack of
 them, did not always go over well with the native hillbillies and he got
 some strange letters:

 Professor Einstein, I believe that every Christian in America will answer
 you, We will not give up our belief in our God and his son Jesus Christ,
 but we invite you, if you do not believe in the God of the people of this
 nation, to go back where you came from. I have done everything in my power
 to be a blessing to Israel, and then you come along and with one statement
 from your blasphemous tongue, do more to hurt the cause of your people than
 all the efforts of the Christians who love Israel can do to stamp out
 anti-Semitism in our land. Professor Einstein, every Christian in America
 will immediately reply to you, Take your crazy, fallacious theory of
 evolution and go back to Germany where you came from, or stop trying to
 break down the faith of a people who gave you a welcome when you were
 forced to flee your native land.

 We deeply regret that you made your statement in which you ridicule the
 idea of a personal God. In the past ten years nothing has been so
 calculated to make people think that Hitler had some reason to expel the
 Jews from Germany as your statement. Conceding your right to free speech, I
 still say that your statement constitutes you as one of the greatest
 sources of discord in America.

 � John K Clark

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