Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> 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,
A god defined solely by that would not be accepted by any of the major religions, except perhaps Bhuddism which doesn't include gods. The Abrahamic religions add that God is a person, is beneficient, is demanding, and answers prayers. These are defining characteristics of theism. Which is why I was careful to specify a theist God. The etymology of "atheist" implies that it is this religion of theism that is not believed.
>making "truth" an elementary lobian machine/entity's God,
> and this is enough for coming back to serious theology.
Serious theology for Bruno seems to be that of Paul Tillich: God is whatever you consider fundamental. To me that seems like an attempt at theological jujitsu to convert atheists by redefining words.
>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.
What difference does "in the name of make"? That seems to attribute magic power to phrases.
>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.
I can appreciate that the fundamental thing (if there is one) must be unameable and god-like (omnipresent)...but not God-like (person, answer prayers, beneficient) and not God.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Wed Mar 21 2007 - 13:18:45 PDT