On 03 Jan 2015, at 09:28, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com
] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Thursday, January 01, 2015 3:36 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Democracy
On 31 Dec 2014, at 20:12, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List
wrote:
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com
] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2014 5:34 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Democracy
On 30 Dec 2014, at 01:38, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List
wrote:
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Alberto G. Corona <agocor...@gmail.com>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2014 10:27 AM
Subject: Re: Democracy
>>The Soviet union can be formally considered a "democracy". There
is nothing external or formal that may distinguish a democracy from
any other regime. Since every modern state has the same elements.
All of them use the momenclature of the age. The word democracy is
the most overused world in this century togeter with "scientific".
No word comes close to matching the overuse of the word "god" however.
Yes, ... and no.
For the greeks "God" was just a pointer to the truth we are
searching, through theories and observation. It led to math and
physics, + inquiry about which one is more fundamental, and what
might still be beyond math and physics. That use of God remains in
some language expression, like when we say "only God knows", which
means "I don't know".
But that is how the word was used in the Hellenistic period; I was
referring to modern usage that has associated it with a monotheistic
value system.
I think monotheism is only the "personal" view of the monism of the
parmenides one.
I think that the theology of the christians and jews reflect the
monism of those who believe in an unifying truth. The fairy tales is a
pedagogical popularization, who get wrong when the religion is (too
much) mixed with politics.
>>Which comes from the ONE of the greeks, mixed with the Jewish
legend. Well, if you forget the superstition, it has some important
relation. Monotheism is a reflexion of parmenides or Plotinus monism.
Perhaps you are referring to the Jewish mystic concept of the
sephiroth kether (kether means crown in Hebrew) it is that which is
manifest yet cannot be named; the first divine emanation out of pure
abstract space… that is without form or definition yet which fills
and animates all things…. The divine spark so to speak.
I think so.
A few examples “a God fearing” man (or woman) is upstanding, moral
and considered (by other god-fearers at least) to be superior to
those who do not fear god;
But this "fearing of God" is a mystery to me. God should be good. Only
the devil should be feared. (between us). Obviously that are open
problem in machine theology.
>>With some definition, fearing God is a nonsense.
I find those definitions of God far more palatable than I do the
Manichean dystopic vision, of a universe divided between the
opposing forces of good and evil.
In the theology of the machine, the devil is well played by the notion
of false. In a sense, like in Plotinus, it simply does not exist, but
its influence is incarnated in the []f, and [][]f, or even []<>t,
which implies logically f, at the star level (in G*), which we cannot
see, but can intuit. That makes the frontier between good and bad into
a fractal similar to the Mandelbrot set. But it relates also the "bad"
to the harm. The opposing force is nature manicheism, needed to make
us believe that eating is good and being eaten is bad, which is
locally useful to live and develop.
>>We should fear the devil, but not God.
Or as some spiritual traditions maintain the devil is merely a
manifestation of our own ignorance and impoverished state of being
cutoff form our spiritual being.
That follows from what I say aboven but not withot some technical
difficulties. Plotinus get similar difficulties. Pain and suffering
remains quite complex to analyse. there are still many difficulties.
The devil is a paper tiger… not to say that evil does not exist, but
evil is ultimately a manifestation of profound spiritual ignorance –
at least amongst some spiritual traditions.
So perhaps if I could re-phrase the phrase above to say that we
should be mindful of our ignorance, for inner ignorance is what cuts
us off from the infinite eternal divine infusion of being.
I will think about this. I am not entirely sure. It is more the
ignorance of our ignorance which is evil, but that might correspond to
what you say, because it is the ignorance of ignorance which cut of
frm the "divine source". Our ignorance itself, when living on the
terrestrial plane, is our knowledge of God/Truth. To see God is a sort
of way to see the abyssal and intrinsic ignorance when we are living
in a (finite) body. That ignorance is a friend, and the evil exploit
the ignorance of that ignorance. Hope I make sense.
>>But of course this aspect of the thing is not yet retrieved from
arithmetic. I hipe it will, but I am not 100% sure. Open problem.
How much can e say that god is good, like Plato thought? We don't
know yet.
Perhaps God evolved..
Not sure. Keep in mind that I have machine's god in mind, which is not
distinguishable by us (the finite machine) with the arithmetical truth/
reality.
perhaps the version of reality we exist in evolved from earlier
renditions and over infinite recursion into previous renditions in
this hypothesized behind the scenes reality configuration space the
holistic principle gradually evolved. Why not a Darwinian type
process perfecting God itself so that our God is the result of a
long line of preceding Godheads.
God is out of time, simple, and the roots of everything. It is the
truth we search, but can never assert we know. We are the evolving
gods. If God itself evolves, we will need another invariant God to
make sense of this, I think.
Everything I see both outside myself and when I look within is an
evolving maelstrom of barely ordered chaos, balancing on that
creative knife edge between static order and total incoherent chaos.
The galaxies, the stars in them, the sponge-like riverine mega
structures of dark matter upon which galaxies ride. The quantum
leaps of electrons between electron shells but never between.
Everything seems a swirl of evolving forms. And so it is within our
own selves; we are far from static beings (even the dullest amongst
us)
Everything ... physical. But that is an illusory aspect, when
considered from the absolute. I think you might be talking of the
third Plotinian God: the soul or inner God. Then what you make sense.
but it is not the outer god (the ONE), nor the second God (the Noùs,
or worlds of ideas, computations, arithmetical relations, ...).
whilst by comparison describing a person as being godless is usually
a form of ad hominem insult. A Godless person is assumed to be (by
the God-fearing sheeple) of lower moral caliber and someone who
cannot be trusted.
OK.
>>I can make sense. No one is Godless. Godless people confuse God
and some hero of fairy tale.
God is used possessively by most people who use the word to describe
some special supernatural entity that they know about and will be
good to them but whom is going to damn everyone else (all those who
does not believe as they do) to eternal damnation and torture…
sadistically punishing them in often shockingly rendered and
detailed accounts of these divine torture chambers (sub-contracted
out to the devil… or as they say Mr. D)
OK, we are back here to the concept in their most misused form. I saw
a movie (on youtube) made for young christians, on hell, by south
Corean catholics, which looks exactly like very hard porn!
God is a word that may have meant something to the people of
Hellenistic Mediterranean basin, but the word symbol has become
highly loaded with value judgment during the era of the prevalence
of the three Abrahamic cults of monotheism (and perhaps earlier even
with Persian Zoroastrianism the mother monotheist religion that gave
birth to the later usurper Abrahamic faiths that violently
supplanted it for the most part.)
It is the monism (which I take as a progress). Then it abuses by
people wanting to manipulate others. But not everything is negative,
and the jewish extracted the idea of social laws from there, without
mixing it with a feeling of universal enforcement.
>>Like the star were Gods, but we know better, and adapt the
vocabulary. If not we sustain the dogma in the field, and, as we can
see in my case, we stop the progress.
It is hard to change the common usage of a word as deeply embedded
in a given matrix of meaning as the word God (with a capital ‘G’)
has become in the three Abrahamic monotheistic cultures.
Wouldn’t it be better to invent a new word – unsaddled by all that
Abrahamic baggage – to describe that which ancient Greek
philosophers were describing when they used this word?
It does not work, and gave the feeling that the name is important.
"God" is simpler, and is already the best term in comparative
theology. But call it the ONE, if you prefer. But then people will
tought that you defend only the Neoplatonists.
I am probably less annoyed than you about the current monotheism,
which I take as a progress, despite the abuse and dead alleys. The
problem is that after a platonic staring impetus, they came back to
Aristotle metaphysics. That is the problem, for a theologian scientist.
>>Why?
Because of the endless useless and most often moronic arguments the
word causes amongst people who use it.
OK. But that is the reason to use the word. If you change, you will
miss those reactions, and people will not learn.
It has become loaded with Judeo-Christian-Islamic overtones that
have polluted its meaning and poisoned its usage to be a word of
hatred, death, punishment, damnation and all manner of intensely
negative emotions and experiences.
All words leads to that, when they point on the notion. It is part of
the process. Changing a word will add cinfusion only, and deprive the
believer to evolve. It will give rise to another pseudo-religion. Imo.
>>They use it before, and the main attribute of God is that it has
no name,
Sounds a lot like the descriptions given for kether (the crown or
godhead perhaps) it is formless potential, nameless and without
definable attributes
Yes.
so it is good to use the substantive instead. Creating a new name
automatically will make us believe that the name is important, and
so would be gravely misleading. It would make more complex the
comparison. During a period, I use "One" in the place of "God". This
led people to believe that I was advertising for Plotinus in a
misleading way. God is the very general term. Just look at "God" in
the wikis, you will see that the same term "god" is used in quite
different meaning, which is useful when doing science, as we must be
neutral since the start.
I understand your hesitance to use an inferior word that describes
one facet of what the word God describes – such a say the word
“One”, but God is not neutral for by far most people who use it and
therein is the rub.
>>When I presented my thesis in France, I suppress all "religious"
name, but the atheists were still saying the same bs on it.
Dogmatists will be dogmatic whatever the colors they may be wearing.
Yes, that's my point. And that is why I have came back with the most
usual terms in the domain. Then only the dogmatic are shocked. The
others can appreciate (and then be shocked by the technical aspects of
it, like the many worlds, the loss of personal identity, the idealist
or immaterialist aspects, ...)
Let us just keep the scientific attitude, and let us try to go
beyond the vocabulary issue. The monotheistic theologians are, in
general, less wrong than the atheists on even the God of the
machine. (That is what makes some strong-atheists nervous, but it is
just because they cannot say "I was wrong").
I agree with that… with a scientific attitude towards theology;
after all – at least IMO -- exploring the mind of God is the most
interesting pursuit in the universe…
yes, even outside the universe :)
if by God, we understand a deep mystic re-binding thread of some
unfathomable un-nameable essential something (or other).
Religion (truth sharing) is the only goal.
Science (modesty sharing) is the only tool.
Bruno
-Chris
Bruno
-Chris
Then, when the science "theology" has been recuperated by politics,
and when religion get institutionalized, the term God has become the
name of some hero in some fairy tale, and the science behind has
been put under the rug, and is still taboo today (which I can
understand for the Church's employee, but not for the atheists,
which should on the contrary be open to the coming back to reason in
that field. Eventually I conclude that atheism is *really* the
religious mirror of christianity. They have the same notion of God
(even if it is used only to be denied) and they have the same notion
of primary matter (modulo some details).
So God is both not enough used (it means the unknown fundamental
reality, simply) and overused (idolatry, blasphems, argument by
terror (like with hell), etc.).
Bruno
-Chris
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