On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 8:51 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> Most catholic theologians have already abandoned the idea of an > omniscient and omnipotent being, Maybe that's what the smarter ones think privately but that is most certainly NOT what they preach to their congregation on Sunday, if they even hinted at such a thing they'd be excommunicated and would no longer be catholic theologians. And a disbelief in a omniscient omnipotent being is all I mean when I say I'm a atheist. You have no definition of the word "God" and so anything, science, mathematics, philosophy, standup comedy, every human activity becomes a "religion". This is nuts, if you want to say truth say truth if you want to say unknown say unknown and leave the word "God" for the times you want to talk about a omnipotent omniscient being who created the universe. > I have never insisted on the "free" qualifification, and I have often > defend your point on this. I understand will, you take actions to make some things more likely to happen and others less likely. But why does this trivial observation deserve the billions of words written about it? >> You're in love with the word but not the idea so you've redefined the > word "God" so radically that only a idiot would be a atheist because then > he would be saying that truth does not exist. > > Some people go that far. The world is full of fools but fools of that particular type are far too rare to worry about. >> I have a really radical idea, if you want to talk about truth why not >> use the word (drum roll please) "truth"? >> > > > Because the use of the word God, there is less risk as being taken > literally. Don't be ridiculous. No word in the English language carries more baggage or has more idiotic associations than "God", if a scientist wants to be misunderstood he couldn't do better than use that word. > The "truth" about a machine cannot be defined by that machine. Godel didn't say a machine can't prove anything, he said it can't prove everything. What I just explain here can be derived from the discourse of the Löbian > machine, by the theorem of Tarski. Nobody except you knows what a Löbian machine is, even mighty Google doesn't know. Did Löb know? > We should do what mathematicians always do: search for principle on which > we can agree, and then define God Definitions should come first or a proof is incomprehensible. A mathematical proof usually starts with "Let X be this and that" , and then we find some interesting principle that X has, in the same way we should first define God and then examine what properties can and can not be derived from it, like the property of existence for example. > You have a too much precise conception of God The advantage of my approach is that when I say I don't believe in God I know precisely what I'm talking about; but when you say you do believe in God you have only the haziest idea of what you mean, I don't say this insultingly but you quite literally don't know what you're talking about. John K Clark -- 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@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
