On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 11:55 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> With this thing you call "comp" if matter is organized in certain ways >> then the adjective "conscious" can be used to describe it and that's all >> that can be said about consciousness; >> > > > ? I have no answer because I don't understand the question. >> however that's not all that can be said about matter; >> > > > Apparent matter, or primitive matter. In our context everything is in > that difference. > The sort of matter the Large Hadron Collider investigates. I don't know if you call that apparent matter or primitive matter, I just call it matter. >> I see on this very list endless debates about if people have free will > or not or if God exists or not and there is not the slightest agreement > about what "free will" or "God" means. > > > I gave the definitions. > Here we go again! Yet again we have tales of the mythical era of Middle Earth where you gave all these wonderful definitions of free will and God and apparently also made a vow never ever to repeat them again for mortal man to hear. > > But you reject them! > As I said before I will agree on any meaning of any word provided it is self consistent and non-circular and provided you don't complain when I use nothing but that definition and pure logic to take you to places you may not want to go, like endowing Roulette Wheels with free will or turning a bulldozer into God. If you don't like the consequences of your definition don't blame me, it's your definition not mine. > Atheism needs a precise notion of God > That is very true it does, and it's the exact same notion that 99.9% of the people on this planet who call themselves a "theist" have, a omnipotent omniscient conscious being who created the universe. It follows logically, and using a convention of the English language that putting a "a" before a word can negate it, a "atheist" is someone who does not believe in that notion. You disbelieve in the same thing I do but you seem ashamed of that fact and try to weasel out of it, but I'm proud to call myself a atheist. > I don't believe in any literal definition, of God [...] I am not an > atheist. > You don't believe in God but you are not a atheist. That does not compute. > I am a Pythagorean. I believe in 0, 1, 2, 3, ... > Are you as uncomfortable as Pythagoras was about the square root of 2? He didn't know about -1 but if he did I'll bet he wouldn't have liked it much, and I'll bet he would have really hated the square root of -1. 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.
