On 03 Oct 2014, at 19:20, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com
] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2014 9:07 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: generalizations_of_islam
On 02 Oct 2014, at 20:41, meekerdb wrote:
On 10/2/2014 8:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Religion and spirituality are not barbaric, like medication are not
dangerous.
But the distinction between spirituality and religion is that
spirituality is personal, while it is part of the definition of
religion that it "binds together".
I agree.
One "belongs to" a religion.
Only because we have mix it with politics. It was natural at the
start, and the first big civilisation were based on religion, if
only as a mean for identity, and providing some sense to life.
The usual idea is that our ancestors were good, and if things are
mess up, it is because we have forgotten the lesson, and so this can
create a struggle between different traditions.
Be it a lodge, a sect, an "official" religion, or a counter-
religion, you belong to it when your parents belong to it, most
usually. You belong to your histories.
Now if you look at them, "religion" is NOT the factor of violence.
Violence is a human factor, and usually, like the insults, come from
people having some identity problem, and they can be dangerous, as
usually they develop hate, and disrespect for the discussions.
A religion is defined by a set of dogma.
>>No. That is a pseudo-religion.
Isn't that semantic?
I have put my card on the table. A religion is defined by a conception
or reality. A pseudo-religion is the same, after being
institutionalized.
I define God by that conception of reality, that is God is truth, with
an understanding and emphasis on its transcendent "beyond us" aspect
(that is with our admission of ignorance, inability to name god,
etc...). It is roughly the definition of the greek platonists.
In the ideal case of sound (correct) machine, basically the logic of
science is given by G and its intensional variant, and the logic of
religion is the whole G* and its intensional variant. Then it is a
theorem that we can study the religion of simpler machine than us, and
lift it, with some perils, to ourself. We get inconsistent if we don't
put the interrogation marks (for example we cannot know that we are
correct machine, but we can hope for it).
For has not every organized religion throughout all history imposed
a core set of dogmas on the masses of individual people who believe?
Yes, but that is true for atheism too, and can be false for some
buddhism, or taoism, etc... All good idea, when institutionalized,
becomes pseudo-religious. No problem for anyone who study a bit of
theology, and see that atheism is a variant of christianism. (by
atheism, I always mean the "strong" one, as the word lost his meaning
if we enlarge it to agnosticism, which is the only option is the
canonical simple religion of correct machines).
Hasn't every religion in all cases been what you call pseudo-religion.
It happens very often. Look at atheism in the USSR (or at ULB). But it
happens for some reason, and is not a fatality. In fact it is dues to
the lack of faith. Only people lacking faith in their God (be it
Matter, Jesus, whatever) will impose it to others with coercion, which
itself can take many shape.
I see why you say this, but I would argue you are mixing personal
spiritual revelation..
Just math and logic.
the intimate deep experience of self-revealed connection with the
very different animal of organized religion.
It is a problem with the lack of faith of the human, not with the
content of the possible theologies, or theories of everything.
It means that science has not yet begun. We can't still question the
gods, like matter in the USSR (or at ULB), or god in many places, but
not all.
The dogma can be God, or the Universe, or even Comp (although comp
explains in detail that the comp dogma is inconsistent if comp is
true, but some people can miss the proofs and makes it into a
dogma), or even the natural numbers.
>>So let us do science instead, keeping our private feeling for us,
and working with the interrogation point, always. This, at the meta-
level identifies the beliefs with the theories, which are the things
which we can revised.
>>Why not adopt that attitude in all fields.
That would be a beautiful thing;
It is the natural one. Only when people lie do they need argument per
violence. No ne has been burned alive when saying something like
2+2=5. It is only when people says that 2+2=4.
however I would argue that faith by its nature tends to produce
organizations rooted in dogma and upon the imposition of some dogma.
The lack of faith. if you have faith in something, you let the other
learn by themselves. Especially in the religious (transcendent) field.
I guess you mean the kind of blind faith that some institution asks
for. Then you are coorect: blind faith needs army and polices to
enforce, as nobody can really have it. It is no more religion, it is
the usual barbary.
Faith is something that transcends questioning and questioning faith
is often viewed as apostasy and can become very dangerous for those
who engage in it. Faith - that powerful "known" feeling of
certainty, that something is right... the right path, the right mind
state... arrives in the mind like a tsunami.... It is pre-informed (by
its own internal logic) and the individual "receives" their faith.
Faith is only quite rarely arrived at through meditated means after
deep thought and consideration of all possible paths. Especially
after the advent of recorded culture, faith has arrived transmitted
down through the generations by the process of enculturation. By the
time the child is old enough to begin thinking for themselves they
are already securely locked up in the dogma of their particular sub-
culture.
Yes, like the faith in the danger of drugs. It is brainwashing. It
exists because we don't allow doubt in the fundamentals, or in the
important like health. It is not a fatality, and I am pretty sure we
will lack this type of brainwashed "bad faith", but it will still take
some time. It is partially Darwinian. Insects have blind faith, but
the atom of doubt rises already in spider, is much bigger in mammals,
and with the neotony, it develops greatly in the humans. It asks some
courage, as you need to be able to say "we don't know, here is our
beliefs/hypothesis".
of course, that very idea, I have to doubt it, if only to remain
consistent. So do I. I can only communicate something like IF that
theory is correct, then blind faith will eventually disappears.
Some people cannot doubt the existence of the physical universe, and
that is in part because that type of blind faith is preprogrammed, and
is useful and even locally true. Just fundamentally false, perhaps.
The brain has not been eveloved to look at itself below its
substitution level.
Fundamentalism and violence in religion (and in health) comes from
the fact that apparently we are not mature enough to let theology
(or just to listen to the people) coming back to reason in academy
(the worst system except for the others).
>>Religion is when spiritual people exchange their experience. It
leads to binding and bonding, but the more serious we are in that
affair, the more we can bind with different people, or animals or
plants or even relative numbers.
Perhaps, in an ideal sense this is what it would be, however in
practice it is a far different beast.
Yes. But I am a theorician, and I believe the practice will evolve if
we get a better understanding of the possible theories, including the
fact that theories are always interrogation, questions, never
knowledge known as such.
>>By preventing reason in theology, we favor the fundamentalists,
the fairy tales, the superstitions, which are all things which can
be used to propagate hate and the unjust irreligious power.
But, isn't it theology itself (or at the very least the powers that
control the institutions of religion) that act - and often act
powerfully and violently - to prevent reasoned discourse on the core
tenets of some particular dogma?
This will continue as long as we tolerate the argument-per-authority
in it.
But eaxtly like few christian today believe in the bilble literally,
when theology will come back to reason, they will not take anything
literally, but they will enrich their interpretation thanks to the
constraints of consistency and lucidity. Science will not give the
answer. The theological science do not suggest a definite answers, but
shows which beliefs are consistent with which beliefs. Like we know
perhaps now that the god Primary Matter is not consistent with the
religious belief in the digital and technological reincarnation (comp).
The worst problem is that by separating science from religion, not
only we get madness in the religious domain, but we get wrongness on
the very idea of what science is. Some believes that the existence of
a primary moon is a fact, but that is not a scientific fact.
Nobody can't have a religion. We all believe in some reality, with
some conception of it. As working in that very filed, I call that a
theology. All machines have a theology. When a machine says that she
has no theology, only science, that machine impose its theology to
others. Saying I have no religion is in fact an argument per authority
in disguise.
>>Christians have been radical too, but today are less radical that
some atheists (in my experience),
Come visit the USA - we have our very own American Taliban and they
are as scary as their Muslim brothers (in spirit - for they both
espouse fundamentalist violence and cultish blind adherence to
absurd fairy tales). We have plenty of very radical Christian sects
here, who seek to impose their Dominionist theology on every person.
OK. I was thinking to the european christians, among intellectuals and
people genuinely interested in the domain. But some years ago, the
extreme-left was like you describe above. They were threatening and
easily violent (even with bombs) those doubting their idea.
Influence by logic and machines, I tend to find obvious that in the
religious field, all attempt to convince some others is a symptom of
lack of faith. truth needs no army, and win all war in the limit, but
*we* can make quite big detours, too.
>>and the problem is not which religion if true, or is the problem,
because the problem is only the idea that we tolerate total lack of
rigor in what is (for my understanding, close to greeks and indians)
the theory of everything. That includes or is equal to theology,
even if it is only to disprove the existence of this or that sort of
gods when assuming this or that hypotheses about how connecting our
measurement results.
The problem is not the notional ideas themselves - even the
ridiculous fairy tales found in all religions are not a problem
(they could be just interesting cultural artifacts).
Even medication, like the good fairy tales we read to a child to help
him/her sleep. The key is that they are fiction stories, they
illustrate possible ideas or hopes.
The problem is - IMO - that organized culturally recorded and
transmitted religious systems have been able to get a stranglehold
over the minds of a vast number of people in all ages of recorded
history.
It is a bit natural. But we are at the time of the perverse effect,
and the greeks show the way, and we have get back to the idea in the
"Enlightened period" except that one field did not go through (the
everything field, which needs to be theology as everything has to be
concerned to the transcendental (even for saying it does not exist,
which might be the case if computationalism is false).
It is this stranglehold on the mind of those who believe that is the
core central danger of any and all religion.
I have lived this with the religion "atheism". Yes, you are very
right. It is the stupidity of the adult state, which was necessary for
life to develop, but is perverse in the limit. In the long run,
neotanoy has no end, and we will come back to the innocence and
ignorance of the childhood (in the classical comp theology).
If comp is true, which I don't know, then you can define God by what
remains when you are willing to abandon, even only for awhile, when
you stop believing in the God "Nature", or "Matter", etc.
>>A lot of evidence for some God (like the god Matter), is not a
proof of its existence, still less so in front of complex open
problems.
I have been having a very long argument -- on another list - with a
man whose intellect and mind I very much respect, but who is
irrationally attached to the notion of the god Matter. It has gone
on for over fifty back and forth posts and this person - who is
intelligent and very aware of events in the world and in the mind... a
man who has had deep spiritual experiences and is someone I
generally respect.
But my questioning of the "need" for actual real stuff in the
universe and my pointing out that fundamentally all we know about
the universe is information we can measure about it and that it is
information itself (and information processes - i.e. computation)
Information in which theory? It is a bit too much vague for me. I can
agree, but consciousness and matter is not information, it is more the
way some self-referential information/propositions get structured due
to the reality of numbers or combinators, etc. Shannon and quantum
information theories studied some 3p aspects of this, but usually does
not address the 1p aspect of this, which is the key for having
consciousness and persons.
that seems to be - and arguably could be - fundamental... it hit a
brick wall in his brain. There is just no budging him on it and he
has become quite heated in his insistence on the existence of - as
you put it god Matter. It keeps creeping up in the arguments he puts
forth as a given.
It is a difficult problem to even get someone to question whether or
not this "god Matter" is even necessary for the formulation of an
explanation for reality.
It is not. Physicists do not use the notion, but many take it for
granted. Even Einstein took time, but apparently thanks to Gödel's
explanation, got the point that the mathematical reality is not
conventional, and we might get rational reason to dismiss the God
Matter, in which he will still believe, to be sure.
yet science (including theology) is born from the first doubt about
the God matter. This one can be said to have been institutionalized in
great part by the evoliution of our brain. It is locally very useful,
like all lies: they have a reason. But we can proceed and complete the
"Enlightenment Period". It is just a matter of letting non
confessional theology going back to the academy, school, and
university, together with the scientfic attitude (that is modesty of
the one who can doubt theories).
It is only a matter of being a little less afraid by the dark.
May be salvia and cannabis can help, probably more than oil and alcohol.
>>To be able to do research in theology requires the ability to
doubt your religion.
And doubt is something just about every single faith ever invented
(or as these faiths would state it received from the supreme deity
through some divine means... like stone tablets for example - whatever
works LOL) defines as apostasy
Of course! Once you have bad faith, you need to enforce it by
violence, and use big name for those who dare to say "I don't grasp
your theory".
>>Certainty is madness. If you are OK with spirituality, you should
be OK with religion, and angry only against the religion when used
as authoritative power to control other people.
Bruno
I am fine with spirituality and with the free sharing and discourse
of spiritual matters, but religion corrals people into mind prisons
of imposed dogma.
I think we agree, but I prefer to not separate religion from
spirituality. There is no problem with people sharing their
spirituality, and usually spirituality bond people. But when they use
a name for god, or more exactly when they take that name too much
seriously, and can't joke about (like in the Zen Rinzai, or like with
salvia, or like with old wise teachers ...), then bad faith crops, and
violence follows. It is easier to progress if we introduce the
distinction at the religion level, keeping the critics fro the
institutionalized religion, because having a religion is no more as
having an idea of some reality. They are all religion, and as such,
they are all perverted by *any* institution, including academies, but
less so than any others (as ULB somehow illustrated: I have been all
the time encouraged to that theology machine studies, and to question
matter, etc. Too bad there was *also* an influent materialist group
using violent method to defend its bad faith, and that happen in the
best academies. Humans are still not remembering who they are ...
Every religion without exception has been guilty of this... even
something as putatively free spirited as Zen Buddhism, when served
up on the plate of religion becomes its own dogmatic system.
Yes, but before, this included astronomy, music, sex, even math, but
we progress, and separate this from the coercion, and that should (and
will) happen for the whole of religion too. But that cannot happen if
we decide that religion is a bad thing, as religion always exist, and
if we say it is a bad thing, we will let the religion in the hand of
the bad guys, who made it a bad thing.
Bruno
Chris
Brent
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