On 05 Aug 2012, at 19:26, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/5/2012 12:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
John, I provide another answer to your last comment to me:
On 03 Aug 2012, at 17:34, John Clark wrote:
On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> Define "theology"
The study of something that does not exist.
Not so bad after, after all. In AUDA the machine "theology" can be
defined by something which is supposed to be responsible, willingly
or not, for my existence, and which I cannot prove to exist. I
remeber having already some times ago provided this definition.
Then, the logic of theology is given, at the propositional level,
by G* minus G. (if you have read my posts on those modal logics and
Solovay theorem). For example <> t (consistency, ~[]f) belongs to
G* minus G. Consistency is true for the machine, but it cannot
prove it. Yet the machine can guess it, hope it, find it or produce
it as true with some interrogation mark.
Theology is the study of the transcendent truth, which can be
defined, in a first approximation, by the non provable (by the
machine) truth.
> Define "God"
The God I don't believe in is a omniscient omnipotent being who
created the universe. If you define God, as so many fans of the
word but not the idea do,
I remain astonished why atheists defend a so particular conception
of God.
I'm astonished that you think accepting the definition of a being by
those who claim to believe in it is 'defending' it.
There are thousand definition of God, but as a scientist I limit
myself on sharable semi-axiomatic definitions. I do that for geometry
(i reject the intuitive common notion of line for axiomatic definition
of points and lines), so why would I not do this for theology, unless
I would like to defend some dogma in the field?
I accept the definition of Fascism by those who claim it is the best
form of government, but that doesn't mean I defend Fascism.
But they would not *define* fascism by "best form of government". For
the christians you seem to accept that they have find the best
definition of God. So it is different.
This confirms what I have already explained. Atheism is a variant
of christianism. They defend the same conception of God than the
Christians, as you do all the time.
Note that philosophers use often the term "God" in the general and
original sense of theology: as being, by definition, the
transcendental cause of everything.
as "a force greater than myself" then I am a devout believer
because I believe in gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong
nuclear force. I believe in bulldozers too.
But I have already told you that God is supposed to be responsible
for our existence;
Doesn't that responsibility require 'free will'?
I was using "responsible" in the large non human sense of "reason",
itself in the large sense, like when we see that a tempest is
responsible for the death of many people. Perhaps this is not a
practice in english, but we do that in french. Sorry if this was an
french only expression.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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