On 01 Dec 2013, at 11:01, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2013/12/1 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
On 30 Nov 2013, at 23:33, meekerdb wrote:
On 11/30/2013 10:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Brent,
I hope you don't mind I re-answer this.
On 28 Nov 2013, at 21:19, meekerdb wrote:
I can conceive of (with apologies to H. L. Mencken), Agdistis or
Angdistis, Ah Puch, Ahura Mazda, Alberich, Allah, Amaterasu, An,
Anansi, Anat, Andvari, Anshar, Anu, Aphrodite, Apollo, Apsu, Ares,
Artemis, Asclepius, Athena, Athirat, Athtart, Atlas, Baal, Ba Xian,
Bacchus, Balder, Bast, Bellona, Bergelmir, Bes, Bixia Yuanjin,
Bragi, Brahma, Brent, Brigit, Camaxtli, Ceres, Ceridwen, Cernunnos,
Chac, Chalchiuhtlicue, Charun, Chemosh, Cheng-huang, Clapton,
Cybele, Dagon, Damkina (Dumkina), Davlin, Dawn, Demeter, Diana, Di
Cang, Dionysus, Ea, El, Enki, Enlil, Eos, Epona, Ereskigal,
Farbauti, Fenrir, Forseti, Fortuna, Freya, Freyr, Frigg, Gaia,
Ganesha, Ganga, Garuda, Gauri, Geb, Geong Si, Guanyin, Hades,
Hanuman, Hathor, Hecate (Hekate), Helios, Heng-o (Chang-o),
Hephaestus, Hera, Hermes, Hestia, Hod, Hoderi, Hoori, Horus, Hotei,
Huitzilopochtli, Hsi-Wang-Mu, Hygeia, Inanna, Inti, Iris, Ishtar,
Isis, Ixtab, Izanaki, Izanami, Jesus, Juno, Jehovah, Jupiter,
Juturna, Kagutsuchi, Kartikeya, Khepri, Ki, Kingu, Kinich Ahau,
Kishar, Krishna, Kuan-yin, Kukulcan, Kvasir, Lakshmi, Leto, Liza,
Loki, Lugh, Luna, Magna Mater, Maia, Marduk, Mars, Mazu, Medb,
Mercury, Mimir, Min, Minerva, Mithras, Morrigan, Mot, Mummu, Muses,
Nammu, Nanna, Nanna (Norse), Nanse, Neith, Nemesis, Nephthys,
Neptune, Nergal, Ninazu, Ninhurzag, Nintu, Ninurta, Njord, Nugua,
Nut, Odin, Ohkuninushi, Ohyamatsumi, Orgelmir, Osiris, Ostara, Pan,
Parvati, Phaethon, Phoebe, Phoebus Apollo, Pilumnus, Poseidon,
Quetzalcoatl, Rama, Re, RheaSabazius, Sarasvati, Selene, Shiva,
Seshat, Seti (Set), Shamash, Shapsu, Shen Yi, Shiva, Shu, Si-Wang-
Mu, Sin, Sirona, Sol, Surya, Susanoh, Tawaret, Tefnut, Tezcatlipoca,
Thanatos, Thor, Thoth, Tiamat, Tianhou, Tlaloc, Tonatiuh, Toyo-Uke-
Bime, Tyche, Tyr, Utu, Uzume, Vediovis, Venus, Vesta, Vishnu,
Volturnus, Vulcan, Xipe, Xi Wang-mu, Xochipilli, Xochiquetzal, Yam,
Yarikh, YHWH, Ymir, Yu-huang, Yum Kimil and Zeus. But I see no
reason to believe any of them exist.
So the question is: do you see a reason to disbelieve all of them?
I didn't say I "disbelieved", I said I saw no reason to believe in
them.
But that is agnosticism. Not atheism. We might have only a
vocabulary problem. All the atheists I know are typically NOT
agnostic.
I *fail* to believe in them. I think of "belief" as admitting
degrees. I disbelieve in them FAPP, i.e. if I have to act I will
act as if they didn't exist. But I cited the list to contradict
your idea that conceiving of gods makes it harder to disbelieve in
God.
I have never develop that idea (did I made a typo?). I am saying the
exact contrary. It is NOT conceiving a God, which makes harder to
disbelief in it.
I think it is the other way around; it's harder to disbelieve in
something undefined.
That's my exact point, and that is the reason why science should be
agnostic before having more light on the mind-body problem and on
the origin of the physical universe.
Which makes me wonder how you can be so dogmatic that fundamental
matter does not exist?
I am not dogmatic. All I do is providing an argumlent that IF comp
is correct, then Aristotelian primitive matter becomes a phlogiston-
of-the-gap. I show that such a notion of matter fails to explain the
very knowledge that we can have of matter (and mind). I am only
reducing the mind-body problem, or the "hard problem of
consciousness" to the problem of justifying the belief in physics
from the belief in arithmetic (or Turing-equivalent).
What if the list just missed the one that exists?
As far as I know, honestly, it seems to me that only Ganesh, or
Ganesha, is incompatible with comp.
I really love Ganesh, though, perhaps for that very reason. When
kid, Ganesh made his father angry and the angry father cut Ganesh's
head, and threw it away. Her mother was *very* angry, and ordered
the father do find a new head quickly, and the father, in the hurry,
cut the head of of the first elephant passing by, and that is why
Ganesh has an elephant head (which reminds me of the cuttlefish
which I love even more).
I guess you see the problem with comp. It is a version of the brain-
exchanged thought experience. But is it really contradictory with
comp? That's needs the thought experiences with (degrees of)
amnesia, and addressing the question who are we and how many person
really exist.
But how could I argue about Ohyamatsumi or RheaSabazius, Tlaloc? I
would need to study their stories to conclude.
Also, it looks that list misses the divinities that you can met by
smoking some herb, like the four kanobo Gods, and Daunarani, ...
with tobacco, or simply Maria, you know, the Mother of God, that you
can meet with Salvia (according to the Christian Mazatecs).
There is no algorithm capable of deciding of two machines computes
or not the same function, so you can imagine the difficulties with
the nameable non machines, or gods and goddesses.
And the big one, cannot be in such a list, I guess.
We might try to decide on a definition of "atheism", as that notion
is very unclear, and I have rarely obtain a definition on which
atheists agreed.
It's as clear as the negation of 'theist'.
But "theist" is not clear.
My point exactly.
But if you agree that "theist" is not clear, you agree that
"atheist" is not clear either.
But "theist" is only unclear because you suppose that you can cite
some ancient philosopher as *really* defining "theism". I accept
the modern theory of dictionaries that meanings are defined by
usage; and the usage of "God" is a superperson who created the
world, wants to be worshipped, and judges, rewards and punishes.
The "modern" definition is done in a obscurantist period where
science and theology have been artificially separated by people for
reason of power. I take the definition of those who invented
science, and which included all from of fundamental reflexions,
including the reflexion on the origin of "reality".
It creates an opposition where I see beliefs everywhere, and good
willing people trying to understand each others, mixed with people
who insult instead.
I have many sympathy for many atheists, and I share with them
important ideas, like no artificial magic, occam razor, rationalism,
and the anticleralism, and the "anti-autoritarism" (of the first
one), but they get trapped in* believing* they have solved the
theological question, or trapped in the deny that there was even a
question, leading to a form of "don't ask", which slow down the
possible progresses, and becomes an autoritarist meme by itself.
Some identify "God" with the God of their own culture. In science,
we try to get a concept as independent of human and culture as
possible.
I use "God" in the greek sense of Truth (the one that we can search
about us, or hope or fear, in life and afterlife, whatever it is).
Except nobody here is speaking Greek. And the Greeks had plenty of
gods that had nothing to do with truth; in fact they were given to
deception.
I was of course alluding to the greek (neo)platonists. They did
invented the God used by both the abramanic cultures (even if
terribly deformed, notably by the abandon of science about it, and
the use of authoritative arguments, by Christians, Muslims, and
perhaps by the Jewish (with Maimonides, to some extent).
Christianity, specifically Aquinas and Augustine, tried to merge
Greek philosophy into the Jewish Messianic religion of
Christianity. But the abrahamic religions owe far more to the
Babylonian, Egyptian, and Zoroastrian religions than to Greek.
OK. But let us not confuse the terrestrial implementation of the
religious process and the true relations that machines can have with
truth.
But you are exactly the person confusing them in your writing (if
not your thoughts) by using language of religions to express simple
mathematical ideas.
because since Gödel we have discovered that arithmetical truth
transcend all machines. before we were thinking that eventually we
might identify provable and true, but today, as the greek intuited,
we know that truth (even in the apparently limited domain of the
numbers) escape *all* theories and all *machine*. So with comp, the
simple "truth" get a necessarily transcendental character, and this
explain that Plato was right on this: truth is a transcendental
(theological) notion.
I cannot meta-identify truth and God, because those notion are a
priori different. It just happens that IF we assume comp, THEN truth
behaves like Plato's notion of God. Only the day the vast majority
practice or believe in comp, we might use "truth" in the place of
God. Before that it would be dishonest. Likewise, if comp is
refuted, and some solid argument is given that the material reality
is fundamental, we can use "physical universe" instead of "God", but
doing that before would again be preposterous.
Why would the term god be less "preposterous" ? You don't use it in
the standard meaning... it's strange you insist on using the "god"
word, where you're practically the only one using it with that
meaning (and maybe some folks 2000 years ago... but we're now, not
2000 years ago).
My favorite theologian use the word "God", even the contemporary one.
LIke Paul Valadier, O'Meara, Watts, Smullyan, (een to disbelieve some
conception of God) ...
"God" is the more neutral term on which most theologian already agree
that it is a wrong term, but it would be wronger to abandon that term,
as that would be like taking the term more seriously than we are
allowed to do, and would be like dismissing the report of mystics and
the immense amounts of literature, in all culture.
But feel free to suggest a better term if you find one. Avoid "truth",
"reality", etc. That would beg the theological original point, and
would be, in comp terms, a confusion between G and G*, like if we
could know God or the Truth in some public way.
See my preceding post for more on this.
Bruno
Quentin
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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