Re: belief, faith, truth

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 16:54:03 +0100

Le 30-janv.-06, à 17:25, daddycaylor.domain.name.hidden (Tom) wrote :


> Bruno wrote:
>> I think everyone has religious faith...
>
> Amen, Bruno, and Ben also! This is of course a searing statement,



Its consequences are no less searing I'm afraid. It means that an
atheist is someone who has some religious faith, for example in
Aristotle Nature or in a material universe, but has lost the ability to
put it in doubt, making him/her unaware of the dogmatic character of
what he/her has faith in.
This prevent progress in research. I think.




> which goes back to why the word "theology" is taboo. As it's commonly
> said, the two topics to stay away from in conversation are religion
> and politics.


I think "theology" is taboo because it has been appropriated by politic
power about 1600 years ago (Emperor Constantine).


>
> But, without using the word religion, we can safely say that we all
> have some basic belief that we hold to in order to make the decisions
> of our practical living, whether they are every-day decisions like
> holding a grudge against someone (or not), or bigger decisions about
> our course in life such as getting married (or not) etc. The modern
> (and leading up to the modern) reductionist philosophy has split these
> particulars apart from our musings about universals, so that people
> typically no longer see any connection between them. (Talk about
> going in the opposite direction from "Everything"!) In a way it is
> rather convenient because we can live out "personal" lives the way we
> want to. But the reality is that in being set totally free from
> universals, we become enslaved. The ultimate destination of
> rationalism in a totally closed system is something like pan-critical
> rationalism, where we end up in a swirl of confusion. Even then, we
> really are having faith that somehow the "system" is set up such that
> things will work out OK. If we didn't, then what are we left with?
> In order to have freedom we need at least some constraints. For
> example, take the axiomatic system. This applies also to the
> "Mathematics: Is it really..." thread. So there needs to be a faith
> that something is fixed, even if we don't yet know, or perhaps believe
> that we can never truly know, what is it. This something is what is
> called truth.

Yes. And Truth is the first primary hypostasis of the machine which
looks inside herself.
Now, what the machine really discovers is its own Abyssal Ignorance.
Truth is what we are or feel to be ignorant of. We need it to be able
to doubt our "theories", as you say.

Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Wed Feb 01 2006 - 11:04:13 PST

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