On 01 Feb 2017, at 21:20, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 2/1/2017 3:10 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
I agree with the video. You might also like this:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a6/a9/9f/a6a99fb6a3ad81cefc08ba8a67dab9e0.jpg
The narrator says: "putting god ahead of humanity is a terrible
thing". I agree, but what I meant from the beginning is even more
general. I would say:
"putting absolute belief ahead of humanity is a terrible thing"
But that is exactly what theism demands - God is the ultimate
arbiter of all morality and is to be worshipped and obeyed.
That is not theism. It is not even christianism. It is Roman
Institutionalized Christianism. It is a very particular, and obviously
fake theory.
A recent poll in France has shown that 60% of french christians admit
not believing in God. But they claim to be christian because they
share the values of christianity, like compassion with the poor and
the weak, charity, universality, etc.
Likewise, 90% of atheists believe in a physical universe. We can be
agnostic about that too, and should be when doing fundamental science.
In science there is no revelation books, only experiences and reason
that we try to share, and to account in some theory which we are
willing to abandon in case of contradiction (internal or with respect
to fact).
The scientific attitude is modesty and skepticism. To bring back
theology in science means only to bring back modesty and skepticism in
theology. Only fundamentalist believers are sick with that idea, and,
as confirmed in the facebook atheist groups, I would say that one half
of the atheists are strongly gnostic one: they do *believe* in a
physical primary universe and they do believe in the absence of any
sort of god (and so they contradict themselves at the start). That is
two strong metaphysical beliefs.
Anyway, except for 2 or 3 ultrafinistists, we all believe in the god
of the universal machine (arithmetical truth), and we can understand
its transcendent (god-like) aspect by reason only, when we assume
mechanism (or even without mechanism actually).
The divide is not between God or Not God, the real debate is on the
nature of God (physical universe, arithmetical reality, person, not-
person, good, bad, etc.). God is just defined by the absolute, but
unknown, reality that the fundamental inquirer assume (or meta-assume)
to exist independently of his local ego and environment. that some
politics have made God into a Tyran is sad, we say only something
about ourself and politics. It has been invented to stop the
scientific inquiry and to manipulate people. perhaps we should be
better to call that it a Devil.
All my books on theology use the term "theology", despite being highly
non christian books (even when written by christians). It really looks
like only (gnostic) atheists have a problem with the use of the term
"theology", but then they automatically impose their religious
materialist conceptions to the others, and sometimes with as much
violence than the ancient christian, or the pseudo-islam radicals. In
my university, there is an explicitly alliance between the gnostic
atheists and the islamic radicals, against jews, christians, and in
fact against ... agnosticism.
This includes organised religion but also stalinism, the Chinese
cultural revolution and other horrors. These were also done in the
name of absolute belief. I don't think that it matters if absolute
belief comes with the label "god" or something else.
But they didn't claim revelation from a supernatural being and they
didn't demand faith as the basis of morality.
They demand faith in the political bureau, or in the people (and we
know what they mean by that). The early christians did not ask any
faith, and many of them never took any legend as truth. This has come
later. I have taken time to analyze christianism before and after the
closure of Plato academy. It is almost antipodic.
They made arguments for their position, which implies that they
recognized the importance of facts and reason - even though they
lied about what they were. It is only theism which says, "It's a
mystery. You must accept God on faith."
Religious faith is indeed related to a feeling of a mystery, and that
is the trigger to do fundamental science, or look for religious
experience. That a precise version of God is asked to be believe in
with blind face is no mre religion, like believing that cannabis is
bad for the health without one evidence ever shown as few relation
with care and health.
Why do atheists defend so much a theory they pretend/claim to not
believe in is a mystery for me. They are *de facto* allies of the
Church Dogma.
Science and atheism are different things. The first is a method of
inquiry, the second is a belief system (which is not coherent,
because
the thing that it opposes is also not coherent).
Sure they are different. But, no, atheism is not a belief system.
It's no more a belief system than failing to believe there are
fairies in the garden is a belief system.
The agnostic fails to believe in something. The gnostic do believe in
something (that there is no fairies, or that there is a garden ...).
Atheism is failure to believe in a certain class gods:
That is of the type ~[] #. That is agnosticism, in the usual mundane
sense. That is not the atheism of the gnostic atheists, which is of
the type [] ~#
Supernatural eternal beings who created the universe
That is already interpreted in may quite different ways by the
christian theologian. In Europa, the fairy tale reading of this is
limited to the teaching of small kids. In the US, since the "trial of
the apes", it may be different.
and who judge human behavior.
That is an addendum of the politics. God is used to justify tyrants.
It is the natural fate of any fundamental theory, when exploited by
special minority interest.
I partly agree with Sam Harris when he say "atheism" is an
unnecessary word; we don't have a word, "a-fairiest", for those who
don't believe in fairies, or "a-yetist" for those who don't believe
in yetis. But only partly, because theism is (a) common and (b)
demands faith (absolute belief independent of evidence); which is
different from belief in fairies and yetis. Even the advocates of
fairies and yetis don't say you should believe in them by faith.
That is a good critics, but not of theism (the philosophical
position), but of this or that form of theism when imposed by
violence. But the term theism is more general of course. In my
university they fight only the "argument per authority", and the
atheists all welcomed the coming back to science of theology that my
work in computer science shows inevitable ... until we realized that
the university was in the hands of a minority of highly gnostic self-
called atheists, but of course, you can call them catholic, as they
defend that theology remains in the churches.
When saying that we have to believe x by faith, it can also mean that
IF you want to believe in x, you can't use only reason. But then all
universal machine can understand that if they want to believe in
truth, they have only hope and faith at disposition, given that they
can know that truth extends reason. It is a theorem in arithmetic or
computer science, not that god, universe or truth exist, but that you
can't believe in them by only reason. In fact to believe in the sun
also ask some faith in some theory.
You are accepting the theists framing of atheism as an absolute
belief that there is no god of theism. But that's wrong. Atheism
is just saying that based on the evidence theism is no more likely
true than fairies in the garden or yetis in the Himalaya's. When
Dawkins, who is often castigated as a radical atheist, was asked, on
a scale of 1 to 7 how certain was he that there is no God, he said
"6".
The whole problem is there. If God is the god of a fairy tale: no
scientist at all believe in it. We are all atheists. If God means the
reason of the universe and consciousness, then all person interested
in fundamental question are believers, and the interesting debate is
on what is God.
The problem of atheism is that this word (atheism) is used in two
completely opposed sense. On some atheist facebook page I am
considered as being 100% atheists, and on other as being 0% atheist.
In all groups I use the local vocabulary, but then you can quote me as
saying contradictory things, but in fact it is just vocabulary
differences.
And since you like to credence original usage of words over current
usage you should know that agnosticism was originally just
considered a form of atheism - since it implies not believing in God.
Some atheists accept agnostic, but some do it relulanctly, and
consider agnosticism as politically correct and coward way to hide the
disbelief in god, which of course is dishonest and unscientific;
And even deists, like Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, were
considered atheists because they didn't believe in the god of theism.
Some says that the first use of "atheism" was by the Roman, to
designate the christians, before making them eaten by lion.
Then the word atheism has been used by christians to designate the
pagan religion including the whole of Platonism.
We are all atheists with respect to some theism.
Brent
"Atheism is a belief system the way "Off" is a TV channel."
--- George Carlin
That is agnosticism (in the usual mundane sense). It is agnostic
atheism, and it is the antipode of the gnostic atheism, with its
double strong belief: no god but matter.
In (theological) science, no invocation of any god can be valid. There
is no ontological commitments *at all*, not even on the intended model/
meaning of the terms used in the theory. Existential statement are not
metaphysical ontological commitment. Of course, when we apply the
science, like when saying "yes" to a doctor, or when just going out of
the bed in the morning, we must resort to some faith, and some
personal non communicable experience.
Bruno
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