[ExI] No gods, no meaning?

[John Clark]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 7:31 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> Could we say that Carl Sagan's belief in science his "religion"?*


Sure, I don't know if it will still be true after the November 3 election
(or non-election) but right now you have freedom of speech.

*> Why or why not? What elements of belief are necessary for something to
> be labeled a religion in your view?*


You can define a word any way you want, but some resulting sentences using
those redefined words contain more information than others. If you say "I
am religious" with religious defined as a belief in God and God defined as
a omnipotent omniscient being who created the universe then I have obtained
new information about you. But if God is not omnipotent or omniscient and
hasn't created anything and isn't even a being but instead God is defined
as an amorphous grey blob of indeterminate size that doesn't do anything
specific then if you tell me "I am religious" I have received zero bits of
new information about you because everybody believes in amorphous grey
blobs that don't do much of anything.

In spite of this many intellectuals insist on defining "God" in just this
vague nebulous sort of way, although they long ago abandoned the idea of
God for some reason that I don't understand they're still in love with the
3 character ASCII sequence G-O-D and still want to say "I believe in God"
even though the word no longer means anything.

John K Clark
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