[ExI] Fw: Re: atheists declare religions as scams.

[Darren Greer]

Someone else wrote: >people who go to great pains to point out that they are
a agnostic not a atheist seem a little silly to me because, judging from the
equal respect they give to both believers and atheists


I wrote: >Who said an agnostic has to afford anything approaching respect to
an atheist or a believer based on their belief or lack of it? An agnostic
could just as well despise both camps


John wrote: >Who said? You said, and you said it just above; you describe an
irrational agnostic who gives equal respect . . .<

I didn't actually describe an agnostic in any such way. I was responding to
someone else who gave that description. And my point remains: I don't see
why an agnostic by definition should accord respect to a believer or
non-believer. It's one thing to say what an agnostic or an atheist or a
religionist believes or doesn't believe in general principle, but it's going
pretty far down the line to say that these flimsy labels also describe their
attitudes towards each other. It's as misleading as saying all atheists are
uniformly contemptuous of the concept of transcendence, or all religionists
foam at the mouth and handle snakes.

>Well, unlike God we know that Chaitin's constant (also called Omega)
exists, and if even a few hundred integers in that irrational number were
known it would solve most of the problems in number theory, a few thousand
would solve them all, unfortunately we also know that Chaitin's constant can
not even be approximated by finite beings like us. <

Sagan's scenario is interesting though. If suddenly with a decimal expansion
of a sextillion integers in pi we find a repeating pattern that describes a
perfect circle left there by a super-intelligent species that somehow can
manipulate the very fabric of space-time and the mathematical structure of
the universe-- not Gods but who would appear to us as Gods--then we have
nothing to argue with religionists about. Far-fetched, perhaps, but for me,
his point in Contact is well taken: that those who argue most strenuously
about the universe are those who often look at it and feel the same sense of
wonder and awe. It is the origins of the universe and the wonder it inspires
that is contested, not the glory of the thing itself.

Darren

2011/1/30 John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>

> On Jan 29, 2011, at 9:00 PM, Darren Greer wrote:
>
> people who go to great pains to point out that they are a agnostic not a
> atheist seem a little silly to me because, judging from the equal respect
> they give to both believers and atheists
>
>
> Who said an agnostic has to afford anything approaching respect to an
> atheist or a believer based on their belief or lack of it? An agnostic could
> just as well despise both camps
>
>
> Who said? You said, and you said it just above; you describe an irrational agnostic
> who gives equal respect to both believers and atheists. In fact, regardless
> of what a dictionary may say, in usage (which is far more important than
> definitions) the word "agnostic" means pretty much what you say it does.
> And that's why I call myself a atheist and not a agnostic.
>
> I like Carl Sagan's fictional scenario: if we're going to look for a
> universal creator, let's start by digging around in irrational numbers.
>
>
> Well, unlike God we know that Chaitin's constant (also called Omega)
> exists, and if even a few hundred integers in that irrational number were
> known it would solve most of the problems in number theory, a few thousand
> would solve them all, unfortunately we also know that Chaitin's constant can
> not even be approximated by finite beings like us.
>
>  John K Clark
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>


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*"It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard everyone would do it. The
'hard' is what makes it great."*
*
*
*--A League of Their Own
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