BRUNO:
I have never met an atheist who does not believe in primitive matter. Well, today even theist believe in primitive matter, with few exception.
Now, if an atheist does not believe in primitive matter, he certainly believe in something, all right. And if he does fundamental research, he certainly believe in something fundamental, and then if he is a lobian machine, then it can be shown that that fundamental thing has to be unnameable and god-like, even if it is "just" a pagan notion of god.
Bruno
---------------------------------------------
I cannot offer myself as the example you missed so far, because - as I explained - I do not consider myself conform to MY definition of an atheist.
Theists do beluieve in primitive matter, created by their God. The previous Pope even undersigned to the Big Bang (some version).
*
Being a "he" you pointed to (rejcted though as 'atheist') I really do not ' believe. What I
find "logically not so repugnant - as either the reductionist science fables" nor the religious hearsay - is a 'story' and I call it my "NARRATIVE" to just speak about an origination of our world and uncountable others in a less nausiating way.
And yes, you may call my 'plenitude' a 'god', outside (not above) OUR mother-nature AND unidentified to the limit of minimum information. Not sitting as an old man on cloud.
John M
:---- Original Message -----
From: Bruno Marchal
To: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 7:25 AM
Subject: Re: Believing ...
Le 20-mars-07, à 13:02, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :
On 3/20/07, Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
Le 01-mars-07, à 00:35, Brent Meeker a écrit :
> Brent Meeker quoted:
> "Atheism is a belief system the way "Off" is a TV channel."
> --- George Carlin
Carlin makes the typical confusion between atheism and agnosticism.
An atheist has indeed a rich belief system:
1) he believes that God does not exist (unlike an agnostic who does not
believe that God exists: that makes a huge difference)
2) he generally believes in a material or Aristotelian Universe
(despite its contradiction with comp, or with QM, or with some
physically reproducible facts, and despite any proof or argument beyond
the Aristotelian Matter reification.)
1) Do you believe we should also be agnostic about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy? If so, should the balance of belief in these entities (i.e. belief for/against) be similar to that in the case of God? I ask in all seriousness as you are a logician and there *is* a huge difference, logically if not practically, between atheism and agnosticism.
Of course (cf Brent's comment) we are on the verge of a purely vocabulary discussion. If you define God by a big white male sitting on a cloud, there is a case of comparing "God" and "Santa Klaus". If you define "god" by "ultimate meaning or ultimate theory of everything including persons and feeling, quanta and qualia, ...", or even more generally by "god" = "truth" about "us", then it is different. Now most religions accept or even define God by its transcendance and unnameability, making "truth" an elementary lobian machine/entity's God, and this is enough for coming back to serious theology. The gap between truth about a machine and provability by that machine already illustrates the necessity of distinguishing the scientific and religious discourse of machines. Pure theology can be (re)defined by "truth minus science". Then, lobian theology is controlled by the G/G* mathematical gap, and their intensional (modal) variants.
Talking or acting or doing anything in the name of God leads to inconsistency and most probably suffering. In the scientific (= doubting) discourse, we can use use the term "God" like we can use the term "first person", but we cannot talk *in* those names.
2) I don't know that atheists are much more likely to believe in a material universe than other people.
I have never met an atheist who does not believe in primitive matter. Well, today even theist believe in primitive matter, with few exception.
Now, if an atheist does not believe in primitive matter, he certainly believe in something, all right. And if he does fundamental research, he certainly believe in something fundamental, and then if he is a lobian machine, then it can be shown that that fundamental thing has to be unnameable and god-like, even if it is "just" a pagan notion of god.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list-unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Wed Mar 21 2007 - 10:50:35 PDT