RE: World's oldest computer may be older than previously thought

[Chris de Morsella]

For those who get into this kind of stuff.

 

http://www.gizmag.com/antikythera-mechanism-date/35016/

World's oldest computer may be older than previously thought

By David Szondy

December 4, 2014

3 Comments

The Antikythera Mechanism is the world's oldest computer (Photo: Giovanni Dall Orto)

Since its discovery over a century ago, the Antikythera Mechanism has had scholars scratching their heads over how the Greeks managed to build a mechanical computer a hundred years before the birth of Christ and thousands of years before anything similar. But now things have become even stranger as researchers claim that it's over a hundred years older than previously believed and may have been built by a famous hand.

The Antikythera Mechanism was discovered in 1901 by sponge divers off the Greek island of Antikythera. At first, not much was made of it, but after the coral-encrusted, corroded mass of bronze gears was later studied using x-rays, gamma rays, and neutrons, and then reconstructed, it turned out to be something astonishing.

The device at first was thought to be some sort of surprisingly early clock, but then it turned out to be the oldest computer known. In fact it was an analog astronomical computer based on the principle of the differential calculator that uses gear trains as a way of performing complex calculations. On further study, the device proved capable of calculating, among other things, the position of the planets, sidereal time, and eclipses.

And all of this by using technology that was never realized to exist in the ancient world and after it vanished, didn't reappear until the 14th century. Even today the device sparks interest as the design is adapted to not only museum exhibits, but also watches.

First reported in the New York Times, the new date for the Antikythera Mechanism is the result of work by James Evans, professor of physics at University of Puget Sound, and Christián Carman, history of science professor at University of Quilmes, Argentina.

The new date is based on a reconstruction of the device made by John Steele of Brown University in 2008. This involved matching the calculations against Babylonian eclipse records and applying an analysis that took into account lunar and solar anomalies, solar eclipses, and lunar and solar eclipse­s cycles that might have been missing and other inaccuracies – not the least of which might have been caused by the fact that much of the device was never salvaged.

By a process of elimination, Evans and Carman eliminated hundreds of eclipse patterns until a match was found that placed the earliest eclipse on the device matching the year 205 BC. According to the researchers, such a date not only places the manufacturing date perhaps a hundred years earlier than the previous date of about 100 BC, but also indicates that the mathematics used to design the device were derived from Babylonian methods rather than Greek trigonometry, which did not exist at that time.

The researchers also put forward another tantalizing possibility opened by the new date. According to Cicero, there was a story that a device much like the one found at Antikythera was made by Archimedes and captured by the Roman general Marcellus after the sack of Syracuse and the death of Archimedes in 212 BC. It is remotely possible that it and the Antikythera Mechanism may be one and the same. The researchers emphasize that the correlation is conjectural, but it does suggest that the age of the device is not only now known, but that a famous name can be given to its maker.

The results were published in the Archive for History of Exact Science.

Source: University of Puget Sound

 

[Bruno Marchal]

Which go in the direction that may be Archimedes could have found, or that greeks would have emit much earlier, a Church-Turing thesis, and that without the stopping of science/theology by the Roman Christians, the whole of computer science could have been born much earlier. But in occident, science and theology stopped at +500, and we entered the dark age, and we are still in there, now. And if we continue to be blind on what happens in the Middle-East, and elsewhere, we might well stay in the dark for one more  millenium.

Well, to be sure, we don't have evidence that the antikythera mechanism is authentically Turing universal, but it is sure that it is close. Very impressive discovery. 

Bruno

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[Samiya Illias]

As a person who takes the Quran literally, I'm not at all surprised as it is stated that the ancients had been given much more, and we haven't been given a tenth of what they had. 

Samiya 

[Alberto G. Corona]

there is a documentary in youtube about this device

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Alberto.

[meekerdb]

On 12/5/2014 3:16 AM, Samiya Illias wrote:

As a person who takes the Quran literally, I'm not at all surprised as it is stated that the ancients had been given much more, and we haven't been given a tenth of what they had. 

Samiya

Well then you must be surprised that our computers are much faster and more accurate than the ancients.  Of course we weren't given them; they were invented and built - by atheists and agnostics.

Brent

[Samiya Illias]

On 06-Dec-2014, at 10:25 am, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 12/5/2014 3:16 AM, Samiya Illias wrote:

As a person who takes the Quran literally, I'm not at all surprised as it is stated that the ancients had been given much more, and we haven't been given a tenth of what they had. 

Samiya

Well then you must be surprised that our computers are much faster and more accurate than the ancients.

That's an assumption 

  Of course we weren't given them; they were invented and built

God grants intelligence and ability to discover and invent to whom He Wills 

- by atheists and agnostics.

It is up to the individual whether to recognise and appreciate the God-given intelligence and abilities, or to pretend otherwise. 

Samiya 

Brent

[meekerdb]

On 12/5/2014 9:56 PM, Samiya Illias wrote:

On 06-Dec-2014, at 10:25 am, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 12/5/2014 3:16 AM, Samiya Illias wrote:

As a person who takes the Quran literally, I'm not at all surprised as it is stated that the ancients had been given much more, and we haven't been given a tenth of what they had. 

Samiya

Well then you must be surprised that our computers are much faster and more accurate than the ancients.

That's an assumption

It's much less of an assumption than the assumption that the ancients were given a superior calculator, since the ankythera device has been reproduced and tested and found to be less accurate than astronomical calculations by modern digital computers. 

So why aren't you surprised that Allah's gift to the ancients is inferior, contrary to the revelation of the Quran?

  Of course we weren't given them; they were invented and built

God grants intelligence and ability to discover and invent to whom He Wills

Then He seems to favor those who do not believe the self-serving rants of Mohammed.  Judging by the list of Nobel prize winners He seems to favor atheists of Jewish descent.

- by atheists and agnostics.

It is up to the individual whether to recognise and appreciate the God-given intelligence and abilities, or to pretend otherwise.

Or the individual may chose to proportion his belief to the evidence.

Brent
“Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar…but we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.”
   --- Christopher Hitchens

[Samiya Illias]

On 06-Dec-2014, at 11:15 am, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 12/5/2014 9:56 PM, Samiya Illias wrote:

On 06-Dec-2014, at 10:25 am, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 12/5/2014 3:16 AM, Samiya Illias wrote:

As a person who takes the Quran literally, I'm not at all surprised as it is stated that the ancients had been given much more, and we haven't been given a tenth of what they had. 

Samiya

Well then you must be surprised that our computers are much faster and more accurate than the ancients.

That's an assumption

It's much less of an assumption than the assumption that the ancients were given a superior calculator, since the ankythera device has been reproduced and tested and found to be less accurate than astronomical calculations by modern digital computers. 

So why aren't you surprised that Allah's gift to the ancients is inferior, contrary to the revelation of the Quran? 

Look at all the ruins of the ancient civilizations - you think they were inferior? 

  Of course we weren't given them; they were invented and built

God grants intelligence and ability to discover and invent to whom He Wills

Then He seems to favor those who do not believe the self-serving rants of Mohammed.  Judging by the list of Nobel prize winners He seems to favor atheists of Jewish descent. 

The ancients also didn't believe. Yet when their insolence and transgression exceeded all bounds, in spite of their Messengers bringing them clear evidence, they were destroyed. 

Samiya 

- by atheists and agnostics.

It is up to the individual whether to recognise and appreciate the God-given intelligence and abilities, or to pretend otherwise.

Or the individual may chose to proportion his belief to the evidence.

Brent
“Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar…but we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.”
   --- Christopher Hitchens

[Bruno Marchal]

On 05 Dec 2014, at 12:16, Samiya Illias wrote:

As a person who takes the Quran literally, I'm not at all surprised as it is stated that the ancients had been given much more, and we haven't been given a tenth of what they had. 

In theology, I agree. In the natural science and mathematics, the evidence is that we have been much farer, notably thanks to Aristotle's simplifying meta-physical assumptions.

Then Islam, Judaism and Christianity have been meta-physically correct up to the eleventh century in the middle-east, but then, more or less after Maimonides, they have taken the Aristotelian idea of "universe" or "creation" too much seriously---making it into a dogma. Here the beliefs of atheists, and the 3 religions departs too much from Plato, and thus from the computationalist hypothesis. They might be true, but the evidences are more that they are not, today.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 Dec 2014, at 06:56, Samiya Illias wrote:

On 06-Dec-2014, at 10:25 am, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 12/5/2014 3:16 AM, Samiya Illias wrote:

As a person who takes the Quran literally, I'm not at all surprised as it is stated that the ancients had been given much more, and we haven't been given a tenth of what they had. 

Samiya

Well then you must be surprised that our computers are much faster and more accurate than the ancients.

That's an assumption 

It is QM which has made possible the invention of the transistor. The machine of the ancient were closer to Babbage machine, but the current one use transistor, which has made possible their speeding up and the miniatuirization.

To be sure, we can always accelerate any computer by an arbitrary factors on almost all input sby just programming them differently. But this is another type of (non practical) speed-up, and for all practical purposes, we can say that the machine of the ancient, and Babbage machine are much slower and "antic" than your PC.

Bruno

  Of course we weren't given them; they were invented and built

God grants intelligence and ability to discover and invent to whom He Wills 

- by atheists and agnostics.

It is up to the individual whether to recognise and appreciate the God-given intelligence and abilities, or to pretend otherwise. 

Samiya 

Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

May be Turing, and Markov, but I am not sure for Post, Church, Kleene, and many others.

Of course the ancient were not just believer, but, like Einstein, they were believer for rational reason. Of course, those believers don't believe in "revelation" or any fairy tales. It is more the beliefs of Parmenides, that there is a unifiable truth beyond what we see and measure. Modern mathematics is born from that.

For a platonist, atheism is just christianism with a different presentation. I know atheists dislike this, but it is a simple fact:  same conception of God, same dogmatic belief in a 3p ontologically primitive physical reality. It is really the same metaphysics, but we can't sustain them with computationalism or with QM (with or without collapse).

Bruno

Brent

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[LizR]

Indeed, in particular a certain gay atheist who can be given quite a lot of the credit for defeating the Nazis. 

[LizR]

On 6 December 2014 at 19:25, Samiya Illias <samiya...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 06-Dec-2014, at 11:15 am, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 12/5/2014 9:56 PM, Samiya Illias wrote:

On 06-Dec-2014, at 10:25 am, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 12/5/2014 3:16 AM, Samiya Illias wrote:

As a person who takes the Quran literally, I'm not at all surprised as it is stated that the ancients had been given much more, and we haven't been given a tenth of what they had. 

Samiya

Well then you must be surprised that our computers are much faster and more accurate than the ancients.

That's an assumption

It's much less of an assumption than the assumption that the ancients were given a superior calculator, since the ankythera device has been reproduced and tested and found to be less accurate than astronomical calculations by modern digital computers. 

So why aren't you surprised that Allah's gift to the ancients is inferior, contrary to the revelation of the Quran? 

Look at all the ruins of the ancient civilizations - you think they were inferior? 

That's a curious question. The ruins and record indicate that there was no ancient civilisation that had anything like the knowledge or resources of modern day technology. For example, no ancient civilisation discovered the use of fossil fuels or nuclear power. One could argue that these things aren't in fact good for modern civilisation, but since we don't know how things will work out that would be presumptuous. However, we can almost certainly say that no civilisation prior to ours measured the age of the universe to an accuracy of around 1%, or discovered DNA, or was able to prolong life through medicine and surgery, or could cure mental conditions through the use of synthetic drugs, or construct buildings a kilometer high, or fly, or explore the Moon and planets, or discovered the nature of matter, or invented recorded sound, images and TV and films, or intelligent machines, or reliable contraception, or machines able to free the population from everyday household drudgery, or the ability to feed billions of people, or have lights and heat available at night and all the year round, or send messages almost instantly around the world...

(...how long have you got?)

The fact is, all but the poorest people in the Western world has things that would have been unimaginable to the richest people of the ancient world. I would say that this does make our civilisation superior in important ways; I would certain prefer to be alive now than even 100 years ago. Indeed 100 years ago the routine gall bladder surgery I had a couple of years ago would have probably killed me (always assuming I'd survived childhood illnesses, childbirth and so on).

[Alberto G. Corona]

This thread remember me the discussions of the dumbest of a city disussing the relative merits of each basket team player based on if they are redhead or not.

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Alberto.

[Chris de Morsella]

 

 

From: everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2014 1:18 AM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: World's oldest computer may be older than previously thought

 

Which go in the direction that may be Archimedes could have found, or that greeks would have emit much earlier, a Church-Turing thesis, and that without the stopping of science/theology by the Roman Christians, the whole of computer science could have been born much earlier. But in occident, science and theology stopped at +500, and we entered the dark age, and we are still in there, now. And if we continue to be blind on what happens in the Middle-East, and elsewhere, we might well stay in the dark for one more  millenium.

 

Well, to be sure, we don't have evidence that the antikythera mechanism is authentically Turing universal, but it is sure that it is close. Very impressive discovery. 

 

I found this part, especially interesting:  “the mathematics used to design the device were derived from Babylonian methods rather than Greek trigonometry, which did not exist at that time”.

Reaches pretty far back towards the dawn of recorded culture, in our little corner of the multiverse, at least.

-Chris

[meekerdb]

On 12/6/2014 12:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 06 Dec 2014, at 06:25, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/5/2014 3:16 AM, Samiya Illias wrote:

As a person who takes the Quran literally, I'm not at all surprised as it is stated that the ancients had been given much more, and we haven't been given a tenth of what they had. 

Samiya

Well then you must be surprised that our computers are much faster and more accurate than the ancients.  Of course we weren't given them; they were invented and built - by atheists and agnostics.

May be Turing, and Markov, but I am not sure for Post, Church, Kleene, and many others.

Konrad Zuse and John von Neumann.

Of course the ancient were not just believer, but, like Einstein, they were believer for rational reason. Of course, those believers don't believe in "revelation" or any fairy tales. It is more the beliefs of Parmenides, that there is a unifiable truth beyond what we see and measure. Modern mathematics is born from that.

For a platonist, atheism is just christianism with a different presentation. I know atheists dislike this, but it is a simple fact:  same conception of God, same dogmatic belief in a 3p ontologically primitive physical reality. It is really the same metaphysics, but we can't sustain them with computationalism or with QM (with or without collapse).

But for an atheist Platonism is just Christianities rejection of the empirical and other-worldly preoccupation with faith.  It's no accident that Augustine was able to re-interpret Plato as prefiguring Christianity and only later was Aquinas able to do the same for Aristotle.

Brent

[Cedric Knight]

On 06/12/14 17:56, everyth...@googlegroups.com wrote:
> World's oldest computer may be older than previously thought

> <http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/t/2ecc8efb138742df?utm_source=digest&utm_medium=email>

Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Well, to be sure, we don't have evidence that the antikythera
> mechanism is authentically Turing universal, but it is sure that it
> is close. Very impressive discovery.

...

> It is QM which has made possible the invention of the transistor. The
> machine of the ancient were closer to Babbage machine, but the
> current one use transistor, which has made possible their speeding up
> and the miniatuirization.

I wonder if you missed the word "analog" in the news story. To avoid
possible confusion, the Antikythera Mechanism was not a digital or
programmable "computer", but basically a system of gears which took the
continuous input of a date and produced the rising and setting times of
celestial features. Although it was mechanical like the analytical
engine, it would perhaps be better compared to a slide rule (if you
remember how calculations were done in an analogue way before
calculators) than to any idea of a general-purpose digital computer
invoking Babbage, Turing or von Neumann.

> To be sure, we can always accelerate any computer by an arbitrary
> factors on almost all input sby just programming them differently.

Well, there is some horrendously inefficient code out there (see May's
Law), but I'm sure the people forecasting your weather would be
interested in how they can accelerate their computing devices by
programming them differently :) .

> But this is another type of (non practical) speed-up, and for all
> practical purposes, we can say that the machine of the ancient, and
> Babbage machine are much slower and "antic" than your PC.

The Antikythera Mechanism was perhaps "slower" if you include the human
operation and read-off, but IMHO it shouldn't be directly compared to a
PC because, however impressive and beautiful it may have been, it was
still a single-purpose analogue device.

CK

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 Dec 2014, at 10:32, Cedric Knight wrote:

> On 06/12/14 17:56, everyth...@googlegroups.com wrote:
>> World's oldest computer may be older than previously thought
>> <http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/t/2ecc8efb138742df?utm_source=digest&utm_medium=email
>> >
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> Well, to be sure, we don't have evidence that the antikythera
>> mechanism is authentically Turing universal, but it is sure that it
>> is close. Very impressive discovery.
> ...
>> It is QM which has made possible the invention of the transistor. The
>> machine of the ancient were closer to Babbage machine, but the
>> current one use transistor, which has made possible their speeding up
>> and the miniatuirization.
>
> I wonder if you missed the word "analog" in the news story.

Now I remind, I saw a video on this sometime ago. Good point!

> To avoid
> possible confusion, the Antikythera Mechanism was not a digital or
> programmable "computer", but basically a system of gears which took
> the
> continuous input of a date and produced the rising and setting times
> of
> celestial features. Although it was mechanical like the analytical
> engine, it would perhaps be better compared to a slide rule (if you
> remember how calculations were done in an analogue way before
> calculators)

Yes, it is a physical rendering of the continuous homomorphism from R*
without zero to R+, known as logarithm.
I am enough old to have play with such slide rule at school!
It is clever than the Antikythera, as it transforms a complex
iteration (multiplication) into a simple one (addition), and without
the need of the computation of a table of logarithm. I ask myself when
such slide rule appeared. I am pretty sure that the disocvery of
logarithm (by Neper, also known as Napier) is the real start of the
industrial revolution.

> than to any idea of a general-purpose digital computer
> invoking Babbage, Turing or von Neumann.

You are right, making such machine not just less than universal, but
not even belonging to a class of machines admitting a universality
notion. I commented to much quickly.

>
>> To be sure, we can always accelerate any computer by an arbitrary
>> factors on almost all input sby just programming them differently.
>
> Well, there is some horrendously inefficient code out there (see May's
> Law), but I'm sure the people forecasting your weather would be
> interested in how they can accelerate their computing devices by
> programming them differently :) .

I was alluding to the Gödel's length of proof theorem, or the similar
(but not completely equivalent) speed-up theorem of Blum.
Unfortunately it is not practical, except perhaps for long term open
processes, like life is a theory of evolution. Could play some role in
the origin of physics too, as those unbounded speed-up appears also in
the universal dovetailing. Those speed-up result are not constructive,
or when they are, they are correct for all inputs ... with a finite
numbers of exceptions, which limit direct applicability. For the
weather, we still have to better listen to birds and frogs ...

>
>> But this is another type of (non practical) speed-up, and for all
>> practical purposes, we can say that the machine of the ancient, and
>> Babbage machine are much slower and "antic" than your PC.
>
> The Antikythera Mechanism was perhaps "slower" if you include the
> human
> operation and read-off, but IMHO it shouldn't be directly compared
> to a
> PC because, however impressive and beautiful it may have been, it was
> still a single-purpose analogue device.

You are right.

Bruno



>
> CK

[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 Dec 2014, at 10:37, LizR wrote:

On 6 December 2014 at 19:25, Samiya Illias <samiya...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 06-Dec-2014, at 11:15 am, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 12/5/2014 9:56 PM, Samiya Illias wrote:

On 06-Dec-2014, at 10:25 am, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 12/5/2014 3:16 AM, Samiya Illias wrote:

As a person who takes the Quran literally, I'm not at all surprised as it is stated that the ancients had been given much more, and we haven't been given a tenth of what they had. 

Samiya

Well then you must be surprised that our computers are much faster and more accurate than the ancients.

That's an assumption

It's much less of an assumption than the assumption that the ancients were given a superior calculator, since the ankythera device has been reproduced and tested and found to be less accurate than astronomical calculations by modern digital computers. 

So why aren't you surprised that Allah's gift to the ancients is inferior, contrary to the revelation of the Quran? 

Look at all the ruins of the ancient civilizations - you think they were inferior? 

That's a curious question. The ruins and record indicate that there was no ancient civilisation that had anything like the knowledge or resources of modern day technology. For example, no ancient civilisation discovered the use of fossil fuels or nuclear power. One could argue that these things aren't in fact good for modern civilisation, but since we don't know how things will work out that would be presumptuous.

For the nuclear resources, I follow you. For the use of petrol (dead plants), arguments (in favor of Hemp, 'course) already mentioned that it was not sustainable, and that it would disrupt life equilibrium in the middle run (a point made already by Henry Ford).

However, we can almost certainly say that no civilisation prior to ours measured the age of the universe to an accuracy of around 1%, or discovered DNA, or was able to prolong life through medicine and surgery, or could cure mental conditions through the use of synthetic drugs, or construct buildings a kilometer high, or fly, or explore the Moon and planets, or discovered the nature of matter, or invented recorded sound, images and TV and films, or intelligent machines, or reliable contraception, or machines able to free the population from everyday household drudgery, or the ability to feed billions of people, or have lights and heat available at night and all the year round, or send messages almost instantly around the world...

(...how long have you got?)

The fact is, all but the poorest people in the Western world has things that would have been unimaginable to the richest people of the ancient world. I would say that this does make our civilisation superior in important ways;

It makes us more competent, but plausibly less intelligent.

I would certain prefer to be alive now than even 100 years ago.

May be. May be not. It is very hard to evaluate. There are no absolute point of comparison. People from that period might get very depressed if living in our urban cities for a while. 

Indeed 100 years ago the routine gall bladder surgery I had a couple of years ago would have probably killed me (always assuming I'd survived childhood illnesses, childbirth and so on).

We are better for the survival, but we might be astonished for the quality of life, even of the poors. It is very hard to judge. We have much more depression and suicides, we have much more elderly people abandoned by their family. We have much more fake conviviality and superficial happiness. We have new fears and new subject of despair (like atomic bombs, pollution, prohibition, ...). I just mean that I am not completely persuaded that the technological progresses made us more happy. The 20th century has also been a peak of inhumanity, notably through genocide, very cruel wars, including the cold one, rise of unemployment, etc. So I am not sure, I dunno, may be we can't really answer this.

Bruno

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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[meekerdb]

On 12/7/2014 4:30 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

We are better for the survival, but we might be astonished for the quality of life, even of the poors. It is very hard to judge. We have much more depression and suicides, we have much more elderly people abandoned by their family. We have much more fake conviviality and superficial happiness. We have new fears and new subject of despair (like atomic bombs, pollution, prohibition, ...). I just mean that I am not completely persuaded that the technological progresses made us more happy.

Of course there's not much depression and suicide in Syria - because there's so much grief and homicide.

Brent
We are all happy, if we but knew it.
      --- Dostoevski

[Chris de Morsella]

 

 

From: everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of meekerdb

Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2014 10:27 AM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com

Having lived in a war zone I can affirm that the Syrian people have been deeply traumatized by their recent experiences. I am sure that the people of Syria are suffering immensely, and that they have been psychologically damaged and that their society will be experiencing PTSD after-shocks – resulting from the extreme trauma of brutal sectarian war -- for decades to come.

I feel so bad for anyone whose life becomes imprisoned in such a hell of hate and death that is the inevitable result of a state of war. I can close my eyes and still picture the soul dead eyes of the victims of war.. too numbed by their anguish, grief and pain to show any outward signs of life…. Their bodies burned, broken and maimed by the industrial scale technology of death visited upon them and their villages from the sky.

I am positive that there is and will be a massive uptick in clinical depression and other psychological trauma such as uncontrollable outbursts of PTSD driven rage and so forth, in Syria over the next four or five decades as a result of this horrible sectarian war. Even if it is not diagnosed as being clinical depression and remains closeted in the unreported regions of the visible reported society as we outsiders can view it… it is there right now latent and locked up in all the unbelievable grief that so many Syrians must be feeling right about now.

War is terrible, as anyone who has seen it (and is not a blood lusting psychopath) will say. War leaves behind masses of human wrecks, both physical wrecks, broken maimed, burned bodies.. and psychological wrecks. War is hell, and the costs of war continue to accrue long after the war has “ended”.

-Chris

Brent
We are all happy, if we but knew it.
      --- Dostoevski

--

[LizR]

On 8 December 2014 at 01:30, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 06 Dec 2014, at 10:37, LizR wrote:

That's a curious question. The ruins and record indicate that there was no ancient civilisation that had anything like the knowledge or resources of modern day technology. For example, no ancient civilisation discovered the use of fossil fuels or nuclear power. One could argue that these things aren't in fact good for modern civilisation, but since we don't know how things will work out that would be presumptuous.

For the nuclear resources, I follow you. For the use of petrol (dead plants), arguments (in favor of Hemp, 'course) already mentioned that it was not sustainable, and that it would disrupt life equilibrium in the middle run (a point made already by Henry Ford).

My point is that using fossil fuels MAY have bridged the gap from preindustrial society to a sustainable postindustrial one - we don't know yet.

The fact is, all but the poorest people in the Western world has things that would have been unimaginable to the richest people of the ancient world. I would say that this does make our civilisation superior in important ways;

It makes us more competent, but plausibly less intelligent.

Yes, I agree that is at least possible.

I would certain prefer to be alive now than even 100 years ago.

May be. May be not. It is very hard to evaluate. There are no absolute point of comparison. People from that period might get very depressed if living in our urban cities for a while. 

Yes, I have to admit I was thinking *I* would prefer it - but *I* know about life now. As someone said in a TV show once (I forget which) in which someone from the past visited the present - "So what did they bring back from the Moon? Some rocks? That doesn't sound very interesting...:"

Indeed 100 years ago the routine gall bladder surgery I had a couple of years ago would have probably killed me (always assuming I'd survived childhood illnesses, childbirth and so on).

We are better for the survival, but we might be astonished for the quality of life, even of the poors. It is very hard to judge. We have much more depression and suicides, we have much more elderly people abandoned by their family. We have much more fake conviviality and superficial happiness. We have new fears and new subject of despair (like atomic bombs, pollution, prohibition, ...). I just mean that I am not completely persuaded that the technological progresses made us more happy. The 20th century has also been a peak of inhumanity, notably through genocide, very cruel wars, including the cold one, rise of unemployment, etc. So I am not sure, I dunno, may be we can't really answer this.

I find myself agreeing with you. I was trying to counteract the idea of a "golden age" - that the past was much better than the present. (Certainly I might well have died horribly in various ways in the past before reaching my present age, but even so... to automatically extrapolate from what I said to "we are therefore happier now" would be wrong.

 

[spudb...@aol.com]

Sent from AOL Mobile Mail

The suffering in much of western asia is elective. These guys trample over each others heads to get to heaven, or Janah, a paradise of girls, with wine drinking permitted there. Its unnecessary, but the payoff promised is far, too, great, to stop. Theres no incentive to stop, because jihad is the way upwards. They do have truces, used to re-arm, called a hudna, but its designed not to last. Janah is the eternal home for those loyal to Allah, so they sacrifice this world, for the much, better, next one.

[meekerdb]

Once the fighting starts it becomes a question of which side do you want to be on.  I'm sure there are plenty of guys who don't want to fight, but if they don't choose a side they'll be dispossessed at best and killed at worst.

Brent

[John Clark]

On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 6:16 AM, Samiya Illias <samiya...@gmail.com> wrote:

> As a person who takes the Quran literally, I'm not at all surprised as it is stated that the ancients had been given much more, and we haven't been given a tenth of what they had. 

Think what you're saying!  At one time the human race was knowledgeable enough to construct the Antikythera Mechanism, but 200 years after it was made Jesus was born and started a major world religion, and 630 years after Jesus Mohamed was born and started another major world religious; and by the time Mohamed died we'd lost over 90% of our smarts. Actually there is some truth in what you say, certainly during Mohamed's lifetime nobody on the planet knew how to make something like the Antikythera Mechanism, a device that was made nearly a thousand years before. 

I said it before I'll sat it again, religion makes people stupid.

 John K Clark 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marc

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[Chris de Morsella]

 

 

 

From: everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com]

Sent from AOL Mobile Mail

 

The suffering in much of western asia is elective. These guys trample over each others heads to get to heaven, or Janah, a paradise of girls, with wine drinking permitted there. Its unnecessary, but the payoff promised is far, too, great, to stop. Theres no incentive to stop, because jihad is the way upwards. They do have truces, used to re-arm, called a hudna, but its designed not to last. Janah is the eternal home for those loyal to Allah, so they sacrifice this world, for the much, better, next one.

 

That is your opinion. As someone, who, unlike you has actually visited and lived in that (and other) regions I see your views regarding the existential attitudes of other people as being stereotypical and rooted in your ignorance. History is long and swings back and forth on the matter of who currently holds the mantle of the most shocking barbarity… let us not forget the level of European and American brutality is quite remarkable, as evidenced by history… the poison gas trench warfare of WWI, the gas ovens of the Nazis, the fire-bombing of Dresden. That is recent… haven’t even gotten medieval on you yet. You should read sometimes, just how incredibly murderous and cruel some of our illustrious ancestors were.

[Samiya Illias]

What are your thoughts about the huge, earthquake-proof megalithic stone structures around the world, the planned cities of the Indus civilisation, the astronomical alignment and knowledge of precession with which the pyramids of Egypt were built, the lack of a 'developmental era' in the ruins of the ancient Egyptians, as if they built their civilisations using technology already available to them, that the erosion on the Sphinx indicates that it probably existed at the time of the Great Flood, and thus predates the pyramids by thousands of years, and so on? To my mind, these societies seem technologically quite advanced. I agree that the Antikythera mechanism device is but a mechanical device from our current technological perspective, but we have yet to discover far more about the civilisations of the past, and there may be many more superior technologies of the past patiently waiting to be discovered.   

Samiya 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 Dec 2014, at 22:09, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:

 

 

From: everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of meekerdb
Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2014 10:27 AM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: World's oldest computer may be older than previously thought

 

On 12/7/2014 4:30 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

We are better for the survival, but we might be astonished for the quality of life, even of the poors. It is very hard to judge. We have much more depression and suicides, we have much more elderly people abandoned by their family. We have much more fake conviviality and superficial happiness. We have new fears and new subject of despair (like atomic bombs, pollution, prohibition, ...). I just mean that I am not completely persuaded that the technological progresses made us more happy.

Of course there's not much depression and suicide in Syria - because there's so much grief and homicide.

 

Having lived in a war zone I can affirm that the Syrian people have been deeply traumatized by their recent experiences. I am sure that the people of Syria are suffering immensely, and that they have been psychologically damaged and that their society will be experiencing PTSD after-shocks – resulting from the extreme trauma of brutal sectarian war -- for decades to come.

I feel so bad for anyone whose life becomes imprisoned in such a hell of hate and death that is the inevitable result of a state of war. I can close my eyes and still picture the soul dead eyes of the victims of war.. too numbed by their anguish, grief and pain to show any outward signs of life…. Their bodies burned, broken and maimed by the industrial scale technology of death visited upon them and their villages from the sky.

I am positive that there is and will be a massive uptick in clinical depression and other psychological trauma such as uncontrollable outbursts of PTSD driven rage and so forth, in Syria over the next four or five decades as a result of this horrible sectarian war. Even if it is not diagnosed as being clinical depression and remains closeted in the unreported regions of the visible reported society as we outsiders can view it… it is there right now latent and locked up in all the unbelievable grief that so many Syrians must be feeling right about now.

War is terrible, as anyone who has seen it (and is not a blood lusting psychopath) will say. War leaves behind masses of human wrecks, both physical wrecks, broken maimed, burned bodies.. and psychological wrecks. War is hell, and the costs of war continue to accrue long after the war has “ended”.

-Chris

If this can help, as they have stop the aid, apparently for financial problem reason:

http://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/increase-funding-to-the-world-food-programme-to-support-syrian-refugees?bucket&source=facebook-share-button&time=1417970300

Brent
We are all happy, if we but knew it.
      --- Dostoevski

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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

Yes during war, depression and suicide go away. But I don't see the link with what I said.

Bruno

Brent
We are all happy, if we but knew it.
      --- Dostoevski

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 Dec 2014, at 22:17, LizR wrote:

On 8 December 2014 at 01:30, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 06 Dec 2014, at 10:37, LizR wrote:

That's a curious question. The ruins and record indicate that there was no ancient civilisation that had anything like the knowledge or resources of modern day technology. For example, no ancient civilisation discovered the use of fossil fuels or nuclear power. One could argue that these things aren't in fact good for modern civilisation, but since we don't know how things will work out that would be presumptuous.

For the nuclear resources, I follow you. For the use of petrol (dead plants), arguments (in favor of Hemp, 'course) already mentioned that it was not sustainable, and that it would disrupt life equilibrium in the middle run (a point made already by Henry Ford).

My point is that using fossil fuels MAY have bridged the gap from preindustrial society to a sustainable postindustrial one - we don't know yet.

I think so for fossil fuels other than petrol. And we would have use living plants, we would have still used petrol, but with a means of an economical regulation based on fair or fairer competition. The problem is that once we get criminals organizing the market, we lost all the regulating factors, and the society get pyramidal in the Monty way. This leads to social crisis, and life becomes hard. In UK the number of people having food problem has gone from 200,000 to 900,000, for example. The current austerity is nonsense, but we are all hostage of bandits.

The fact is, all but the poorest people in the Western world has things that would have been unimaginable to the richest people of the ancient world. I would say that this does make our civilisation superior in important ways;

It makes us more competent, but plausibly less intelligent.

Yes, I agree that is at least possible.

I would certain prefer to be alive now than even 100 years ago.

May be. May be not. It is very hard to evaluate. There are no absolute point of comparison. People from that period might get very depressed if living in our urban cities for a while. 

Yes, I have to admit I was thinking *I* would prefer it - but *I* know about life now. As someone said in a TV show once (I forget which) in which someone from the past visited the present - "So what did they bring back from the Moon? Some rocks? That doesn't sound very interesting...:"

Not talking about the food, that such time traveller would consider insipid, not even swallowable. They would not beat the heat system, because what is better than a wood fire. Then kids would be happy just seeing planes and the technology, but might understand that this does not simplify our lives, but make it more complex. Then the poor can be depressed, because we keep insulting the rich, but some poor like to dream that one day they might become rich, and that dream is forbidden today, which left no choice. Today, we want respect everybody (political correctness), and I think this would depressed most people of the past. Political correctness is a very depressing phenomenon. Take the jewish people, I am not sure they can say that there has been any progress for them all along the years, except perhaps with the creation of Israel, which might give a minute hope for the time traveller, but then we know that it is not that simple, and that the future is still not clear. Thay are still persecuted, in and out of Israel. The progresses are that we have now stupidity + technology, like bombs and the net, which for some people amplify the misery and the problems.

But then after 1500 years of interdiction of theology, and imposition of the materialist christianism, it is not astonishing. We have regress on the human science, since that time, except for the birth of democracy, but they are young and already very sick today. I still hope we can progress, but as long as the lies on health, physical, mental and spiritual continue, the progress are not even on the horizon. 

Indeed 100 years ago the routine gall bladder surgery I had a couple of years ago would have probably killed me (always assuming I'd survived childhood illnesses, childbirth and so on).

We are better for the survival, but we might be astonished for the quality of life, even of the poors. It is very hard to judge. We have much more depression and suicides, we have much more elderly people abandoned by their family. We have much more fake conviviality and superficial happiness. We have new fears and new subject of despair (like atomic bombs, pollution, prohibition, ...). I just mean that I am not completely persuaded that the technological progresses made us more happy. The 20th century has also been a peak of inhumanity, notably through genocide, very cruel wars, including the cold one, rise of unemployment, etc. So I am not sure, I dunno, may be we can't really answer this.

I find myself agreeing with you. I was trying to counteract the idea of a "golden age" - that the past was much better than the present.

Some past, in some place, for some people. Today, as islam and atheism (the non agnostic one) illustrates (alas) that we are at the peak of obscurantism. It is not Islam per se, nor atheism, but the fact that parrots repeating without understanding are numerous, and thinking is not welcome there (as I have personnally see with some kind of strong atheism and "free-thinker", which are more dogmatic than christians, even under inquisition).

Proportionnally, much more people can eat when hungry, but we are much more numerous also, and that more poor people starving than during all preceding period. 

(Certainly I might well have died horribly in various ways in the past before reaching my present age, but even so... to automatically extrapolate from what I said to "we are therefore happier now" would be wrong.

OK. There so many factors in a human life, that it is hard to compare.

Bruno

 

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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 Dec 2014, at 04:55, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 6:16 AM, Samiya Illias <samiya...@gmail.com> wrote:

> As a person who takes the Quran literally, I'm not at all surprised as it is stated that the ancients had been given much more, and we haven't been given a tenth of what they had. 

Think what you're saying!  At one time the human race was knowledgeable enough to construct the Antikythera Mechanism, but 200 years after it was made Jesus was born and started a major world religion, and 630 years after Jesus Mohamed was born and started another major world religious; and by the time Mohamed died we'd lost over 90% of our smarts. Actually there is some truth in what you say, certainly during Mohamed's lifetime nobody on the planet knew how to make something like the Antikythera Mechanism, a device that was made nearly a thousand years before. 

I said it before I'll sat it again, religion makes people stupid.

Not religion, but the imposition of a religion to others, whatever that religion is. But that is made possible by the separation of religion from science, which is a way to accept the lack of rigor and the use of the argument-per-authority in the field of theology. Strong atheists want to keep up that separation, which perpetuates the institutionalized religious nonsense. 

You have never refute my argument that (strong) atheism is de facto ally with the Churches against reason. In fact they too try to impose their religious beliefs on other, with the aggravating factor that they pretend not to be religious.

Bruno

 John K Clark 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marc

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 5:59 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> At one time the human race was knowledgeable enough to construct the Antikythera Mechanism, but 200 years after it was made Jesus was born and started a major world religion, and 630 years after Jesus Mohamed was born and started another major world religious; and by the time Mohamed died we'd lost over 90% of our smarts. Actually there is some truth in what you say, certainly during Mohamed's lifetime nobody on the planet knew how to make something like the Antikythera Mechanism, a device that was made nearly a thousand years before. 

I said it before I'll sat it again, religion makes people stupid.

> Not religion, but the imposition of a religion to others,

Until just a couple of centuries ago the 2 things were virtually synonymous, and even today it remains true for hundreds of millions of people, especially in the Islamic world.

>  that is made possible by the separation of religion from science

Religion is made possible by the separation of critical thinking from the population, that's why critical thinking was illegal and punishable by death in the past, and still is in many places.

> You have never refute my argument that (strong) atheism is de facto ally with the Churches against reason.

Let me see if I understand you correctly, you believe I have not spent enough time refuting your monumentally silly "argument" that atheist is just a slight variation of Christianity. Did I get that right?

  John K Clark

   

[John Clark]

On Mon, Dec 8, 2014  Samiya Illias <samiya...@gmail.com> wrote:

> What are your thoughts about the huge, earthquake-proof megalithic stone structures around the world

I think they were utterly ridiculous. The Romans with their aqueducts and roads were the first to have epic engineering projects that actually had a point; before that it was all about tombs that were robbed of their contents just a few years (perhaps just a few months) after they were completed, temples to honor Gods that didn't exist, colossal statues that people were forced to build of their overlords, and military fortifications that largely didn't work.         

> the erosion on the Sphinx indicates that it probably existed at the time of the Great Flood,

The Sphinx existed even before the Great Flood, it existed during the era of the Great Shoe and the old lady who lived in it and had so many children she didn't know what to do.

  John K Clark

[meekerdb]

On 12/8/2014 2:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 07 Dec 2014, at 19:26, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/7/2014 4:30 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

We are better for the survival, but we might be astonished for the quality of life, even of the poors. It is very hard to judge. We have much more depression and suicides, we have much more elderly people abandoned by their family. We have much more fake conviviality and superficial happiness. We have new fears and new subject of despair (like atomic bombs, pollution, prohibition, ...). I just mean that I am not completely persuaded that the technological progresses made us more happy.

Of course there's not much depression and suicide in Syria - because there's so much grief and homicide.

Yes during war, depression and suicide go away. But I don't see the link with what I said.

My point was only that material and civil well being is what makes depression and suicide more common than grief and homicide by reducing the latter.

But in any case I don't agree with some of your premises.  I don' think more elderly people are abandoned by their family.  I can't think of a single one in my personal experience.  Whether conviviality is fake you'll have to judge for yourself.  Lincoln said, "Everybody is about as happy as they want to be."  The only reason superficial happiness is more common is because material well being provides things that were previously supposed to bring happiness - but people are still only as happy as they want to be.  So if you ask them if they are happy they reflect on their material well being and conclude that they should be happier than they are.  So technological progress allows us a kind of equilibrium at our inherent level of happiness.  Our unhappiness then is related to dissatisfaction with ourselves, worry about the future for our children, ... rather that grief and suffering and fear for our lives.

Brent

[meekerdb]

On 12/8/2014 2:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 07 Dec 2014, at 22:17, LizR wrote:

On 8 December 2014 at 01:30, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 06 Dec 2014, at 10:37, LizR wrote:

That's a curious question. The ruins and record indicate that there was no ancient civilisation that had anything like the knowledge or resources of modern day technology. For example, no ancient civilisation discovered the use of fossil fuels or nuclear power. One could argue that these things aren't in fact good for modern civilisation, but since we don't know how things will work out that would be presumptuous.

For the nuclear resources, I follow you. For the use of petrol (dead plants), arguments (in favor of Hemp, 'course) already mentioned that it was not sustainable, and that it would disrupt life equilibrium in the middle run (a point made already by Henry Ford).

My point is that using fossil fuels MAY have bridged the gap from preindustrial society to a sustainable postindustrial one - we don't know yet.

I think so for fossil fuels other than petrol. And we would have use living plants, we would have still used petrol, but with a means of an economical regulation based on fair or fairer competition. The problem is that once we get criminals organizing the market, we lost all the regulating factors, and the society get pyramidal in the Monty way. This leads to social crisis, and life becomes hard. In UK the number of people having food problem has gone from 200,000 to 900,000, for example. The current austerity is nonsense, but we are all hostage of bandits.

The fact is, all but the poorest people in the Western world has things that would have been unimaginable to the richest people of the ancient world. I would say that this does make our civilisation superior in important ways;

It makes us more competent, but plausibly less intelligent.

Yes, I agree that is at least possible.

I would certain prefer to be alive now than even 100 years ago.

May be. May be not. It is very hard to evaluate. There are no absolute point of comparison. People from that period might get very depressed if living in our urban cities for a while. 

Yes, I have to admit I was thinking *I* would prefer it - but *I* know about life now. As someone said in a TV show once (I forget which) in which someone from the past visited the present - "So what did they bring back from the Moon? Some rocks? That doesn't sound very interesting...:"

Not talking about the food, that such time traveller would consider insipid, not even swallowable. They would not beat the heat system, because what is better than a wood fire. Then kids would be happy just seeing planes and the technology, but might understand that this does not simplify our lives, but make it more complex. Then the poor can be depressed, because we keep insulting the rich, but some poor like to dream that one day they might become rich, and that dream is forbidden today, which left no choice. Today, we want respect everybody (political correctness), and I think this would depressed most people of the past. Political correctness is a very depressing phenomenon. Take the jewish people, I am not sure they can say that there has been any progress for them all along the years, except perhaps with the creation of Israel, which might give a minute hope for the time traveller, but then we know that it is not that simple, and that the future is still not clear. Thay are still persecuted, in and out of Israel.

But the progress is that they get to persecute the Palestinians.  ;-(

The progresses are that we have now stupidity + technology, like bombs and the net, which for some people amplify the misery and the problems.

But then after 1500 years of interdiction of theology, and imposition of the materialist christianism, it is not astonishing. We have regress on the human science, since that time, except for the birth of democracy, but they are young and already very sick today. I still hope we can progress, but as long as the lies on health, physical, mental and spiritual continue, the progress are not even on the horizon.

Democracy was invented a long time ago.  The additional advance of the Enlightenment was the recognition of individual rights and values and the idea that government's only legitimate function is to serve its citizens.  This idea is what seems to be missing in the middle east where democracy seems to mean the majority gets to impose whatever it chooses.  This is a direct consequence basing government on religion.  What you call the "imposition of materialist christianism" is the recognition of freedom of personal conscious from state imposed religion.

The other great advancement in human ethics has been the abolishing of slavery and the recognition of the equality of women (still a work in progress).

Brent

[meekerdb]

On 12/8/2014 2:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 08 Dec 2014, at 04:55, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 6:16 AM, Samiya Illias <samiya...@gmail.com> wrote:

> As a person who takes the Quran literally, I'm not at all surprised as it is stated that the ancients had been given much more, and we haven't been given a tenth of what they had. 

Think what you're saying!  At one time the human race was knowledgeable enough to construct the Antikythera Mechanism, but 200 years after it was made Jesus was born and started a major world religion, and 630 years after Jesus Mohamed was born and started another major world religious; and by the time Mohamed died we'd lost over 90% of our smarts. Actually there is some truth in what you say, certainly during Mohamed's lifetime nobody on the planet knew how to make something like the Antikythera Mechanism, a device that was made nearly a thousand years before. 

I said it before I'll sat it again, religion makes people stupid.

Not religion, but the imposition of a religion to others, whatever that religion is. But that is made possible by the separation of religion from science, which is a way to accept the lack of rigor and the use of the argument-per-authority in the field of theology. Strong atheists want to keep up that separation, which perpetuates the institutionalized religious nonsense. 

You have never refute my argument that (strong) atheism is de facto ally with the Churches against reason. In fact they too try to impose their religious beliefs on other, with the aggravating factor that they pretend not to be religious.

Atheists have no "religious beliefs" except that there is no personal god who judges and answers prayers... that's the literal meaning of a-theist.  It is a word that is only useful because the default assumption is that everyone is a theist.  We don't need the word "a-leprechaunist" or "a-voodooist" or "a-unicornist" because the default assumption is that people don't believe those fairy tales.  Atheists try to "impose their beliefs" the same way you do, by rational argument and empirical observation.  Twenty six states in the U.S. have provisions in their constitutions that prohibit atheists from holding political office.  No atheist has ever voted for or proposed a law to prohibit theists from holding office.

Brent

[John Clark]

On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 , meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

> Atheists have no "religious beliefs"

Of course they don't, but just because something isn't true will never EVER stop religious nincompoops from saying it over and over and over and over and over again. I became a atheist when I was 12 and about 20 minutes later I heard for the first time the charge that I was being just as religious as Christian snake handlers. I treated the accusation with contempt then but today I'm older and wiser, today I give the "atheists are religious" view all the respect it deserves.

  John k Clark

[LizR]

On 8 December 2014 at 18:38, Samiya Illias <samiya...@gmail.com> wrote:

What are your thoughts about the huge, earthquake-proof megalithic stone structures around the world, the planned cities of the Indus civilisation, the astronomical alignment and knowledge of precession with which the pyramids of Egypt were built, the lack of a 'developmental era' in the ruins of the ancient Egyptians, as if they built their civilisations using technology already available to them, that the erosion on the Sphinx indicates that it probably existed at the time of the Great Flood, and thus predates the pyramids by thousands of years, and so on? To my mind, these societies seem technologically quite advanced. I agree that the Antikythera mechanism device is but a mechanical device from our current technological perspective, but we have yet to discover far more about the civilisations of the past, and there may be many more superior technologies of the past patiently waiting to be discovered.   

I think we can be fairly certain that ancient civilisations didn't have at least most of the technology we have discovered in the last 300 or so years, or there would be signs of it - to take a couple of extreme examples, I don't think there are any sites that might have been where neolithic nuclear bombs were exploded, nor is there evidence of extensive use of fossil fuels prior to the industrial revolution.

It's possible that past societies had more advanced technology that we credit them for, but it isn't possible that they had technology as advanced as what we have now, because what we have now has made extensive changes to the planet, and there are no signs that similar changes occurred in the past while human beings existed.

[LizR]

On 8 December 2014 at 23:44, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 07 Dec 2014, at 22:17, LizR wrote:

On 8 December 2014 at 01:30, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 06 Dec 2014, at 10:37, LizR wrote:

That's a curious question. The ruins and record indicate that there was no ancient civilisation that had anything like the knowledge or resources of modern day technology. For example, no ancient civilisation discovered the use of fossil fuels or nuclear power. One could argue that these things aren't in fact good for modern civilisation, but since we don't know how things will work out that would be presumptuous.

For the nuclear resources, I follow you. For the use of petrol (dead plants), arguments (in favor of Hemp, 'course) already mentioned that it was not sustainable, and that it would disrupt life equilibrium in the middle run (a point made already by Henry Ford).

My point is that using fossil fuels MAY have bridged the gap from preindustrial society to a sustainable postindustrial one - we don't know yet.

I think so for fossil fuels other than petrol. And we would have use living plants, we would have still used petrol, but with a means of an economical regulation based on fair or fairer competition. The problem is that once we get criminals organizing the market, we lost all the regulating factors, and the society get pyramidal in the Monty way. This leads to social crisis, and life becomes hard. In UK the number of people having food problem has gone from 200,000 to 900,000, for example. The current austerity is nonsense, but we are all hostage of bandits.

I agree. But again we don't know how this will pan out. Someone (I forget who) recently published an economic analysis that indicates the western world is due for another round of revolutions soon (his analysis was, to simplify no doubt enormously, that inequalities tend to become magnified over time and eventually get so bad that the ruling class is overthrown - then the cycle starts again). If that happens, then it's possible the slate will be wiped and rewritten. There have certainly been signs that we might be heading for some form of cyber-revolution, with govts failing to keep up with technology (except for surveillance) and being undermined by a tech-savvy middle class.

(Perhaps. Or was that just the plot of my next novel...?)

[LizR]

Atheists may however make unwarranted metaphysical assumptions. It is sometimes hard to draw the line between what one can reasonably be atheist about (no Jahweh, Allah etc) and what one should be agnostic about (where did the universe come from, what is origin of laws of physics, etc)

[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 Dec 2014, at 16:50, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 5:59 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> At one time the human race was knowledgeable enough to construct the Antikythera Mechanism, but 200 years after it was made Jesus was born and started a major world religion, and 630 years after Jesus Mohamed was born and started another major world religious; and by the time Mohamed died we'd lost over 90% of our smarts. Actually there is some truth in what you say, certainly during Mohamed's lifetime nobody on the planet knew how to make something like the Antikythera Mechanism, a device that was made nearly a thousand years before. 

I said it before I'll sat it again, religion makes people stupid.

> Not religion, but the imposition of a religion to others,

Until just a couple of centuries ago the 2 things were virtually synonymous, and even today it remains true for hundreds of millions of people, especially in the Islamic world.

Yes, but the same for science. We have separate science from politics (very approximattely), and religion is still a problem because we don't have separate it from the argument of authority.

>  that is made possible by the separation of religion from science

Religion is made possible by the separation of critical thinking from the population,

Bad science is made possible by that separation. You confuse religion and the use of religion by people wanting to control other people. 

I agree with you if you replace "religion" or "theology" with "institutionalized religion/theology". That is why I insist that we have to separate "theology" from any form of temporal power, except the academies, where we can question everything and adopt methodological questionning, make theories, etc.

that's why critical thinking was illegal and punishable by death in the past, and still is in many places.

Yes. Again this is true for all branches of science, including theology. You seem happay that we can use critical thinking, so why not promote it in all field, including health and religion.

> You have never refute my argument that (strong) atheism is de facto ally with the Churches against reason.

Let me see if I understand you correctly, you believe I have not spent enough time refuting your monumentally silly "argument" that atheist is just a slight variation of Christianity. Did I get that right?

Yes. Just saying "silly" is not an argument. It is just plain obvious that as long as we don not promote reason in theology, we let the field to those who promote the use of violence (verbal or not). So strong atheism maintains the religion in the hand of the irrationalist. Then most strong atheists believe in primary matter in a dogmatic way. They say you are mad if you doubt it, for example. In thats sense they share the main metaphysical axiom of the christian, and obliterate the fact that science is born from taking a distance with that dogma. Then atheists share the definition of God taken by the Christians-Jews-Muslims, even if it is used to assert its non existence, forgetting buddhism, hinduism, taoism, platonism, neoplatonism. except that some string atheists asserts those gods does not exist, but those are the one who believe the most in primitive matter, without providing any evidence for it. Yes, atheism, seen from Plato, is a variant of christianism: same God, same Matter, same mockery of the entire field of theology, same attempt to hide the mind-body problem under the rug, etc. And of course, same dismiss of applying reason on fundamental questions, a bit like your "refutation" of step 3 of the UDA, where everyone show you the error(s) you made, and then you redo it again and again and again. That is typical of people having religious dogma. They stop thinking.

Bruno

  John K Clark

   

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 Dec 2014, at 19:02, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2014 2:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 07 Dec 2014, at 19:26, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/7/2014 4:30 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

We are better for the survival, but we might be astonished for the quality of life, even of the poors. It is very hard to judge. We have much more depression and suicides, we have much more elderly people abandoned by their family. We have much more fake conviviality and superficial happiness. We have new fears and new subject of despair (like atomic bombs, pollution, prohibition, ...). I just mean that I am not completely persuaded that the technological progresses made us more happy.

Of course there's not much depression and suicide in Syria - because there's so much grief and homicide.

Yes during war, depression and suicide go away. But I don't see the link with what I said.

My point was only that material and civil well being is what makes depression and suicide more common than grief and homicide by reducing the latter.

I am not convinced there are more suicide only because people are less often killed. I think it is more because when people are materially comfortable, the lack of the spiritual value make them interrogating the meaning of life. 2/3 of those winning big lottery prize get severely depressed, sometimes paralysed I read once.

But in any case I don't agree with some of your premises.  I don' think more elderly people are abandoned by their family.  I can't think of a single one in my personal experience. 

You are lucky. I see only that in urban cities, and it arrives also in the countries.

Whether conviviality is fake you'll have to judge for yourself.  Lincoln said, "Everybody is about as happy as they want to be." 

Nice quote. The problem is in the "want".

The only reason superficial happiness is more common is because material well being provides things that were previously supposed to bring happiness - but people are still only as happy as they want to be. 

Some people can be more happy dreaming about being rich, than in being rich, where indeed they eventually understand that money does not make happiness, and this shut out the possible dreams, and they get depressed. Of course money is a good tool, but when blinded spiritually, it becomes an end, and as an end it is brings only frustration.

So if you ask them if they are happy they reflect on their material well being and conclude that they should be happier than they are.  So technological progress allows us a kind of equilibrium at our inherent level of happiness.  Our unhappiness then is related to dissatisfaction with ourselves, worry about the future for our children, ... rather that grief and suffering and fear for our lives.

Material "well being" leads to both when the money is no more a tool but an end. 

Bruno

Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 Dec 2014, at 19:29, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2014 2:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 08 Dec 2014, at 04:55, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 6:16 AM, Samiya Illias <samiya...@gmail.com> wrote:

> As a person who takes the Quran literally, I'm not at all surprised as it is stated that the ancients had been given much more, and we haven't been given a tenth of what they had. 

Think what you're saying!  At one time the human race was knowledgeable enough to construct the Antikythera Mechanism, but 200 years after it was made Jesus was born and started a major world religion, and 630 years after Jesus Mohamed was born and started another major world religious; and by the time Mohamed died we'd lost over 90% of our smarts. Actually there is some truth in what you say, certainly during Mohamed's lifetime nobody on the planet knew how to make something like the Antikythera Mechanism, a device that was made nearly a thousand years before. 

I said it before I'll sat it again, religion makes people stupid.

Not religion, but the imposition of a religion to others, whatever that religion is. But that is made possible by the separation of religion from science, which is a way to accept the lack of rigor and the use of the argument-per-authority in the field of theology. Strong atheists want to keep up that separation, which perpetuates the institutionalized religious nonsense. 

You have never refute my argument that (strong) atheism is de facto ally with the Churches against reason. In fact they too try to impose their religious beliefs on other, with the aggravating factor that they pretend not to be religious.

Atheists have no "religious beliefs" except that there is no personal god who judges and answers prayers...

OK. That is one religious beliefs, often accompanied with thought like "death is the absolute end for me, etc."

Many have another one: they believe in a primitive physical universe. They make it into a god (which is defined by the reason why we are conscious).

that's the literal meaning of a-theist.  It is a word that is only useful because the default assumption is that everyone is a theist.  We don't need the word "a-leprechaunist" or "a-voodooist" or "a-unicornist" because the default assumption is that people don't believe those fairy tales.  Atheists try to "impose their beliefs" the same way you do, by rational argument and empirical observation. 

Those I met use only mockery and ad hominem stances. They never discussed, nor even accept meeting or mail discussion. John Clark is respectable for answering mail, but he illustrates then the point: he uses only mockery, ad hominem remarks, assertion of being superior, etc. But he insists not reading Plato, Plotinus, or any rationalist mystic people. 

Twenty six states in the U.S. have provisions in their constitutions that prohibit atheists from holding political office.  No atheist has ever voted for or proposed a law to prohibit theists from holding office.

They should have done so, in case those theists are members of sects or religious institutions confusing temporal and atemporal concerns. Perhaps. 

I can believe in anticlericalism, but the atheists, in many countries acts more clerically than "believers", with hypocrisy added to the plate.

Of course I mean "strong atheists", not the agnostic one. In fact I mean only the people against the return of reason in theology. I have met many of them. Some belongs to lodge with quite catholic-like ritual, and they behaves in a quite sectarian way. In the anglo-saxon world, free mason can be protestant or catholic, in Europa, most lodges contains string atheists, and they act more clerically than the priests in the Church. 

But once you believe in a reality other than your consciousness, you are a believer. Dismissing the science theology is a way to impose religious belief on others, be it a God, a Matter, Money, or anything. You lost your right to doubt.

Bruno

Brent

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[Alberto G. Corona]

2014-12-07 13:30 GMT+01:00 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>:

We are better for the survival, but we might be astonished for the quality of life, even of the poors. It is very hard to judge. We have much more depression and suicides, we have much more elderly people abandoned by their family. We have much more fake conviviality and superficial happiness. We have new fears and new subject of despair (like atomic bombs, pollution, prohibition, ...). I just mean that I am not completely persuaded that the technological progresses made us more happy. The 20th century has also been a peak of inhumanity, notably through genocide, very cruel wars, including the cold one, rise of unemployment, etc. So I am not sure, I dunno, may be we can't really answer this.

Bruno

 Indeed. Some people would be depressed if they manage to understand that History is not a supermarket where one buy lego pieces of distortion and propaganda to construct his own sense of superiority. Neither an govermental agency in charge of producing comfortable feelings about oneself, and about the regime where one lives.  But they would beeven more upset when they discover that modernity is something more than his iPhone, paid holydays, democracy and breast augmentation.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 Dec 2014, at 00:41, LizR wrote:

On 8 December 2014 at 23:44, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 07 Dec 2014, at 22:17, LizR wrote:

On 8 December 2014 at 01:30, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 06 Dec 2014, at 10:37, LizR wrote:

That's a curious question. The ruins and record indicate that there was no ancient civilisation that had anything like the knowledge or resources of modern day technology. For example, no ancient civilisation discovered the use of fossil fuels or nuclear power. One could argue that these things aren't in fact good for modern civilisation, but since we don't know how things will work out that would be presumptuous.

For the nuclear resources, I follow you. For the use of petrol (dead plants), arguments (in favor of Hemp, 'course) already mentioned that it was not sustainable, and that it would disrupt life equilibrium in the middle run (a point made already by Henry Ford).

My point is that using fossil fuels MAY have bridged the gap from preindustrial society to a sustainable postindustrial one - we don't know yet.

I think so for fossil fuels other than petrol. And we would have use living plants, we would have still used petrol, but with a means of an economical regulation based on fair or fairer competition. The problem is that once we get criminals organizing the market, we lost all the regulating factors, and the society get pyramidal in the Monty way. This leads to social crisis, and life becomes hard. In UK the number of people having food problem has gone from 200,000 to 900,000, for example. The current austerity is nonsense, but we are all hostage of bandits.

I agree. But again we don't know how this will pan out. Someone (I forget who) recently published an economic analysis that indicates the western world is due for another round of revolutions soon (his analysis was, to simplify no doubt enormously, that inequalities tend to become magnified over time and eventually get so bad that the ruling class is overthrown - then the cycle starts again).

A revolution aginst bandits? Maybe. I hope the democratic idea will survive through this.  But exactly like it is impossible to put the lie in a trial, it is difficult to imagine a revolution for people dismissing their own constitution. So, well, maybe there will be a revolution, but that would be sad. It is enough we learn to do our jobs, ... and being reasonably paid for it.

If that happens, then it's possible the slate will be wiped and rewritten. There have certainly been signs that we might be heading for some form of cyber-revolution, with govts failing to keep up with technology (except for surveillance) and being undermined by a tech-savvy middle class.

People wanting control cannot like the net, but the net, like drugs and religion, will always prosper from attacks against it.

(Perhaps. Or was that just the plot of my next novel...?)

:) Go for it Liz!  (just keep in mind that reality is beyond fiction and at the same time all young people take it for granted).

Bruno

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 5:22 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>>>> At one time the human race was knowledgeable enough to construct the Antikythera Mechanism, but 200 years after it was made Jesus was born and started a major world religion, and 630 years after Jesus Mohamed was born and started another major world religious; and by the time Mohamed died we'd lost over 90% of our smarts. Actually there is some truth in what you say, certainly during Mohamed's lifetime nobody on the planet knew how to make something like the Antikythera Mechanism, a device that was made nearly a thousand years before. 

 

>>>> I said it before I'll sat it again, religion makes people stupid.

 >>> Not religion, but the imposition of a religion to others

>> Until just a couple of centuries ago the 2 things were virtually synonymous, and even today it remains true for hundreds of millions of people, especially in the Islamic world.

> Yes, but the same for science.

Oh yes science is just as intolerant as religion, throughout the centuries many thousands have been burned to death at the stake for denying that the logarithm of 42 is 1.6232492904. And don't forget the bloody wars fought between the base 10 adherents and the natural logarithm faithful.

 

>> Let me see if I understand you correctly, you believe I have not spent enough time refuting your monumentally silly "argument" that atheist is just a slight variation of Christianity. Did I get that right

> Yes. Just saying "silly" is not an argument.

The word "silly" is the only argument the "atheism is just a slight variation of Christianity" idea deserves.   
 

> most strong atheists believe in primary matter in a dogmatic way.

And the only comment the above deserves is "gibberish". 

  John K Clark

[Telmo Menezes]

On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 4:30 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 5:22 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>>>> At one time the human race was knowledgeable enough to construct the Antikythera Mechanism, but 200 years after it was made Jesus was born and started a major world religion, and 630 years after Jesus Mohamed was born and started another major world religious; and by the time Mohamed died we'd lost over 90% of our smarts. Actually there is some truth in what you say, certainly during Mohamed's lifetime nobody on the planet knew how to make something like the Antikythera Mechanism, a device that was made nearly a thousand years before. 

 

>>>> I said it before I'll sat it again, religion makes people stupid.

 >>> Not religion, but the imposition of a religion to others

>> Until just a couple of centuries ago the 2 things were virtually synonymous, and even today it remains true for hundreds of millions of people, especially in the Islamic world.

> Yes, but the same for science.

Oh yes science is just as intolerant as religion, throughout the centuries many thousands have been burned to death at the stake for denying that the logarithm of 42 is 1.6232492904. And don't forget the bloody wars fought between the base 10 adherents and the natural logarithm faithful.

Science and religion are not people, they are concepts. So they are not tolerant or intolerant. People can be tolerant or intolerant in the name of concepts. Have people been extremely intolerant in the name of science? Sure. Both nazism and stalinism are notorious examples.

 

 

>> Let me see if I understand you correctly, you believe I have not spent enough time refuting your monumentally silly "argument" that atheist is just a slight variation of Christianity. Did I get that right

> Yes. Just saying "silly" is not an argument.

The word "silly" is the only argument the "atheism is just a slight variation of Christianity" idea deserves.   
 

> most strong atheists believe in primary matter in a dogmatic way.

And the only comment the above deserves is "gibberish". 

  John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 Dec 2014, at 16:30, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 5:22 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>>>> At one time the human race was knowledgeable enough to construct the Antikythera Mechanism, but 200 years after it was made Jesus was born and started a major world religion, and 630 years after Jesus Mohamed was born and started another major world religious; and by the time Mohamed died we'd lost over 90% of our smarts. Actually there is some truth in what you say, certainly during Mohamed's lifetime nobody on the planet knew how to make something like the Antikythera Mechanism, a device that was made nearly a thousand years before. 

 

>>>> I said it before I'll sat it again, religion makes people stupid.

 >>> Not religion, but the imposition of a religion to others

>> Until just a couple of centuries ago the 2 things were virtually synonymous, and even today it remains true for hundreds of millions of people, especially in the Islamic world.

> Yes, but the same for science.

Oh yes science is just as intolerant as religion,

It was indeed, 100% when science was equated to the Bible.

Today, both atheists scientists and ecclesiastic authorities are intolerant with respect to come back to theology in that spirit.

throughout the centuries many thousands have been burned to death at the stake for denying that the logarithm of 42 is 1.6232492904.

Today, they know that burning to death advertize the idea, so the method are more smooth. Just ignorance, or defamation, and the usual deny of the evidences.

The point is that we should not separate science from religion. We can make hypothesis and reason about the nature of matter, soul, divine, etc. I illustrate it with the computationalist hypothesis, which provides mathematical tools: computer science and mathematical logic. I translated, in that frame, the mind-body problem into the problem of deriving the "persistent illusion of matter" in arithmetic.

And don't forget the bloody wars fought between the base 10 adherents and the natural logarithm faithful.

 

>> Let me see if I understand you correctly, you believe I have not spent enough time refuting your monumentally silly "argument" that atheist is just a slight variation of Christianity. Did I get that right

> Yes. Just saying "silly" is not an argument.

The word "silly" is the only argument the "atheism is just a slight variation of Christianity" idea deserves.  

You don't quote my argument, and you don't provide any argument.

It is just plain obvious that by keeping theology out of rationalism, we get irrational theology continuing to ravage the streets.

I remind you that theology might not be the one from a "revelation", although this does not imply logically that the "revelations" are 100% wrong, either.

I gave you my definition of what is the theology of the machine M, it is technical. Just study the work.

 
 

> most strong atheists believe in primary matter in a dogmatic way.

And the only comment the above deserves is "gibberish". 

That comment does not help.

I don't even see what you are defending, John, but in this list we search for a theory of everything, and the initial consensus was in the favor for the quantum Many-Worlds or some generalization of it. 

Computationalism does imply  a generalization of Everett on the sigma_1 arithmetical reality, and mathematical logic shows how self-referential machines, emulated in that arithmetical reality comes to believe on bigger set of sentences than the one they can justify from their sharable beliefs.  The notion of truth, behave in a manner analog to the One of the neoplatonist. Then even a plotinian sort of matter admits an account, formally described, and with transparent interpretation in arithmetic, and its logic can be compared to the formal approach in quantum mechanics. 

But you need to understand that no universal machine can know in any direct way which universal machine run it. It is a "modern" view of the dream argument, and a simple consequence, assuming computationalism, of the invariance of consciousness for digital brain substitution.

You can define the God of PA in ZF. You can define the God of ZF in ZF + Kappa. You can see the theory of the large cardinals as abstract theology. Recursion theory makes it more concrete and relates it to what ideal machine can actually justify and hope/bet. Artificial intelligence is engineering of all this, but the theory explains that in practice it is more like isolating a creative germ than by building something that we can understand (theoretical artificial intelligence share with theology its necessary non constructive aspects, but that's what classical logic is for).

My work is in in theoretical computer science, but if it applies to us, if we bet on the digital surgeon, that is admits the computationalist hypothesis.

UDA is only AUDA made simple. I mean you can see it this way. But it would be simpler to admit you did understood step 3, and tell us your opinion on step 4 (and you did once, actually), so tell us about step 5 and 6.

To use physics to make prediction of first person experience, computationalism shows that we need a strong limitation principle (or a strong induction axiom, it is the same thing). We almost need to postulate the unicity of the universe, or of a multiverse, etc. Computationalism makes the use of that principle into a begging God-of-gap type of explanation, and asks for a more subtle mind-body relationship.

Bruno

  John K Clark

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[meekerdb]

On 12/9/2014 2:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 08 Dec 2014, at 16:50, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 5:59 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> At one time the human race was knowledgeable enough to construct the Antikythera Mechanism, but 200 years after it was made Jesus was born and started a major world religion, and 630 years after Jesus Mohamed was born and started another major world religious; and by the time Mohamed died we'd lost over 90% of our smarts. Actually there is some truth in what you say, certainly during Mohamed's lifetime nobody on the planet knew how to make something like the Antikythera Mechanism, a device that was made nearly a thousand years before. 

I said it before I'll sat it again, religion makes people stupid.

> Not religion, but the imposition of a religion to others,

Until just a couple of centuries ago the 2 things were virtually synonymous, and even today it remains true for hundreds of millions of people, especially in the Islamic world.

Yes, but the same for science. We have separate science from politics (very approximattely), and religion is still a problem because we don't have separate it from the argument of authority.

You can't separate religion from authority.  Religion is institutionalized Platonism.  From prehistoric times every tribe had their shaman who explained the world and predicted things based on his visions and revelations (often chemically aided) of a greater, mystical world beyond the senses.  They explained why the tribe had to paint themselves blue or women had to sleep apart during their menstruation or why they couldn't eat the meat of cloven hooved animals.  This bound the tribe together and distinguished it from those other, inferior, barbarian tribes that painted themselves red and ate beans.  It was the invention of religion and it was an evolutionary step in cultural Darwinism.  Plato was just the most famous shaman of the Greeks.  His ideas were incorporated into Christianity by St Augustine.

>  that is made possible by the separation of religion from science

Religion is made possible by the separation of critical thinking from the population,

Bad science is made possible by that separation. You confuse religion and the use of religion by people wanting to control other people.

That has always been the role of religion.  Without the institutionalization it's just mysticism.  In polls of peoples religion one of the most common answers in the U.S. is, "I'm spiritual but not religious."  There can't be a one person religion.

I agree with you if you replace "religion" or "theology" with "institutionalized religion/theology". That is why I insist

Whenever someone "insists" you know they have no argument.

that we have to separate "theology" from any form of temporal power, except the academies, where we can question everything and adopt methodological questionning, make theories, etc.

You can have a one-person theology - which is what those people mean by saying, "I'm spiritual, but not religious."

that's why critical thinking was illegal and punishable by death in the past, and still is in many places.

Yes. Again this is true for all branches of science, including theology.

Yes we all remember the inquisition that burned all those scientists at the stake for not accepting the geo-centric theory of the universe - except they were burned for incorrect theology.

You seem happay that we can use critical thinking, so why not promote it in all field, including health and religion.

I am very happy to promote critical thinking AND empiricism in health and religion.  Health had benefitted greatly from empiricism.  But religion dare not allow critical thinking because it is contrary to its basic function of binding together the tribe.

> You have never refute my argument that (strong) atheism is de facto ally with the Churches against reason.

Let me see if I understand you correctly, you believe I have not spent enough time refuting your monumentally silly "argument" that atheist is just a slight variation of Christianity. Did I get that right?

Yes. Just saying "silly" is not an argument. It is just plain obvious that as long as we don not promote reason in theology, we let the field to those who promote the use of violence (verbal or not).

You keep switching between Christianity, which is a religion, and theology which is an academic field of study of the supernatural.  These are two very different things. 

So strong atheism maintains the religion in the hand of the irrationalist.

It must be irrational.  If its beliefs and practices were wholly rational then anyone could adopt them and they would have no significance in distinguishing the tribe.  Try reading Scott Atran, David Sloan Wilson, or Loyal Rue.  These are your scientists who actually study religion.

Then most strong atheists believe in primary matter in a dogmatic way. They say you are mad if you doubt it, for example. In thats sense they share the main metaphysical axiom of the christian, and obliterate the fact that science is born from taking a distance with that dogma. Then atheists share the definition of God taken by the Christians-Jews-Muslims, even if it is used to ass

And Platonists deny it dogmatically.  The difference is materialists can point to what they think exists while Platonists have private dreams of it.

ert its non existence, forgetting buddhism, hinduism, taoism, platonism, neoplatonism. except that some string atheists asserts those gods does not exist, but those are the one who believe the most in primitive matter, without providing any evidence for it.

You always throw in the word "primitive" to make the materialist seem dogmatic.  But I don't know of any materialist who thinks they know what "primitive" matter is.  It's just working hypothesis that whatever is found to explain or experience will obey some comprehensible, mathematical laws.  That it won't include any supernatural agency.

Yes, atheism, seen from Plato, is a variant of christianism: same God, same Matter, same mockery of the entire field of theology, same attempt to hide the mind-body problem under the rug, etc.

Plato "solved" the mind-body problem by just assuming thoughts (of philosopher/shamans) and the soul were real and bodies were illusory.  He assumed that nothing transient could be real so the soul was eternal.  Both were taken over as basic dogma of Christianity (and later, Islam).  Empiricism was deprecated and arm chair scholasticism replaced science for 900yrs.

And of course, same dismiss of applying reason on fundamental questions, a bit like your "refutation" of step 3 of the UDA, where everyone show you the error(s) you made, and then you redo it again and again and again. That is typical of people having religious dogma. They stop thinking.

Which is the whole point of having religion.  Did Plato ever suggest a test of his theology?  Does any theologian/shaman?

Brent

[meekerdb]

On 12/9/2014 3:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> My point was only that material and civil well being is what makes depression and
>> suicide more common than grief and homicide by reducing the latter.
>
> I am not convinced there are more suicide only because people are less often killed. I
> think it is more because when people are materially comfortable, the lack of the
> spiritual value make them interrogating the meaning of life.

True, when you need not worry about food and shelter and sex, you have the leisure to
think about the meaning of life and discover that you forgot to provide it.

> 2/3 of those winning big lottery prize get severely depressed, sometimes paralysed I
> read once.

I can understand that. If you've been thinking and planning and working to assure that you
will have enough money to be comfortable in your retirement and suddenly you have more
than enough your immediate purpose is gone; and also you feel you have great assets with
which you should accomplish something.

Brent

[meekerdb]

On 12/9/2014 3:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

But once you believe in a reality other than your consciousness, you are a believer.

Once you believe in anything, including arithmetic, you're a believer.  I know physicists who think matter is just part of a theory we made up to explain observations and consciousness is just model to explain our memories.  Are they as agnostic as John Mikes pretends to be?

Brent

[Alberto G. Corona]

Telmo: as happens often, you have been cristal clear, only by rescuing some categories from the doxa of street talking. It is a pity that, for some other issues, the categories are so immerse in the mud of modernity babble that it is impossible to talk rationally. Some day we will progrees even to the level of the greek philosophers again.

--

Alberto.

[John Clark]

On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 12:05 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> we should not separate science from religion.

We must separate shit from chocolate cake, otherwise you won't have chocolate cake, you'll just have shit.
 

> We can make hypothesis and reason about the nature of matter,

And the people who think studying the stresses in concrete is a religion are the same people who love the three letter word "G-O-D" but not the meaning behind it.

>> The word "silly" is the only argument the "atheism is just a slight variation of Christianity" idea deserves.  

> You don't quote my argument, and you don't provide any argument.

The word "silly" is the only argument the "atheism is just a slight variation of Christianity" idea deserves. 
 

> It is just plain obvious that by keeping theology out of rationalism, we get irrational theology

Words have meanings, or at least they should. If it's not irrational then it's not theology. 

> You can define the God of PA in ZF. You can define the God of ZF in ZF + Kappa.

And the only biped who would make such a bizarre definition would be one who loves the three letter word "G-O-D" but not the meaning behind it.

>>> most strong atheists believe in primary matter in a dogmatic way

>> And the only comment the above deserves is "gibberish". 

> That comment does not help.

Neither does "most strong atheists believe in primary matter in a dogmatic way".

  John K Clark

[meekerdb]

On 12/9/2014 8:50 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 4:30 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 5:22 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>>>> At one time the human race was knowledgeable enough to construct the Antikythera Mechanism, but 200 years after it was made Jesus was born and started a major world religion, and 630 years after Jesus Mohamed was born and started another major world religious; and by the time Mohamed died we'd lost over 90% of our smarts. Actually there is some truth in what you say, certainly during Mohamed's lifetime nobody on the planet knew how to make something like the Antikythera Mechanism, a device that was made nearly a thousand years before. 

 

>>>> I said it before I'll sat it again, religion makes people stupid.

 >>> Not religion, but the imposition of a religion to others

>> Until just a couple of centuries ago the 2 things were virtually synonymous, and even today it remains true for hundreds of millions of people, especially in the Islamic world.

> Yes, but the same for science.

Oh yes science is just as intolerant as religion, throughout the centuries many thousands have been burned to death at the stake for denying that the logarithm of 42 is 1.6232492904. And don't forget the bloody wars fought between the base 10 adherents and the natural logarithm faithful.

Science and religion are not people, they are concepts. So they are not tolerant or intolerant. People can be tolerant or intolerant in the name of concepts. Have people been extremely intolerant in the name of science? Sure. Both nazism and stalinism are notorious examples.

One might argue that Stalin was intolerant in the name of the "science" of economics - although Marx was more of a philosopher than scientist.  But Hitler and Nazism were intolerant in the name of a mystical Christian racism.

"We stand at the end of the Age of Reason. A new era of the
magical explanation of the world is rising."
   --Adolf Hitler from Gespräch mit Hitler by Herman Raschning
quoted by Francis Slakey "When the lights of reason go out" New
Scientist 11 September 1993.

"Christ was the greatest early fighter in the battle against the
world enemy -- the Jews. The work that Christ started but did not
finish, I, Adolf Hitler, will conclude."
   --- "The Book of Political Quotes," London: Angus & Robertson
Publishers, 1982, p. 195)

"I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany,"
    --- Adolf Hitler - Berlin March, 1936

We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity in fact our movement is Christian.
    ---Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Passau, 27 October 1928, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Zehlendorf,         [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall¹s The Holy Reich]

³We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.²
    ---Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933

And it was not as though the Nazis invented this intolerant mystic Christianity.

"Those who object to the punishment of heresy are like dogs
and swine,"
      --- John Calvin

 “When we come to believe, we have no desire to believe  anything else, for we begin by believing that there is nothing else  which we have to believe….  I warn people not to seek for anything  beyond what they came to believe, for that was all they needed to  seek for. In the last resort,  however, it is better for you to remain ignorant, for fear that you  come to know what you should not know….  Let curiosity give place to  faith, and glory to salvation.  Let them at least be no hindrance, or  let them keep quiet.  To know nothing against the Rule [of faith] is  to know everything.”
    --- Tertullian

"Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of
his Reason."
      --- Martin Luther

"We are at fault for not slaying them [the Jews]."
         ---Martin Luther, "On the Jews and Their Lies"

"What shall we do with...the Jews?...set fire to their
synagogues or schools and bury and cover with dirt whatever
will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or
cinder of them."
        ---Martin Luther



Brent

[LizR]

On 10 December 2014 at 06:29, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

    You can't separate religion from authority.  Religion is institutionalized Platonism.  From prehistoric times every tribe had their shaman who explained the world and predicted things based on his visions and revelations (often chemically aided) of a greater, mystical world beyond the senses.  They explained why the tribe had to paint themselves blue or women had to sleep apart during their menstruation or why they couldn't eat the meat of cloven hooved animals.  This bound the tribe together and distinguished it from those other, inferior, barbarian tribes that painted themselves red and ate beans.  It was the invention of religion and it was an evolutionary step in cultural Darwinism.  Plato was just the most famous shaman of the Greeks.  His ideas were incorporated into Christianity by St Augustine.

This is certainly one aspect of authoritarian religion, and one that was important to survival at the time. Basically, religious mores were codified knowledge about what was important for people to know and trust automatically and unquestioningly. So they were told not to eat a certain animal because they knew that eating it tended to make people sick. Since they didn't know why it made people sick, they blamed it on evil spirits or whatever. And they had prohibitions against things that would cause social unrest, and they tried to encourage practices that would lead to more children being born and surviving, and so on. We see the ghosts of all these practices which appear to have no modern relevance (but they would if we were suddenly plunged into a world like the one of 3000BC).

So essentially religion was an early form of science - a set of rules of thumb that helped people survive and produce children (hence helped the society survive). Rather than long winded explanations that could be argued with, people were told to do X and not to go Y because God said so. Again we see the shadow of this in the present and it seems very oppressive and authoritarian, but 5000 years ago daily life was full of even more dangers than it is now.

[meekerdb]

In pre-historic times there was no distinction between science, magic, and religion (where I identify science with empirically derived and tested knowledge).  A lot of religious prohibitions may have an empirical basis.  But not all of them.  Scott Atran observes that origin stories always have striking, counter-empirical features.  And this is true of many cautionary religious stories.  It makes them more striking, more memorable, and more distinct from those of other tribes.  So the supernatural, irrational aspects of religion are not just incidental left-overs - they are essential to its cultural function of binding together "us" and separating "us" from "them".  One of the few intelligent things Alberto has said is that religion, membership in a group, requires sacrifice.  And it is a significant sacrifice of one's intellect and integrity to publicly avow belief in impossible events and ridiculous propositions.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 Dec 2014, at 18:29, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/9/2014 2:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 08 Dec 2014, at 16:50, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 5:59 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> At one time the human race was knowledgeable enough to construct the Antikythera Mechanism, but 200 years after it was made Jesus was born and started a major world religion, and 630 years after Jesus Mohamed was born and started another major world religious; and by the time Mohamed died we'd lost over 90% of our smarts. Actually there is some truth in what you say, certainly during Mohamed's lifetime nobody on the planet knew how to make something like the Antikythera Mechanism, a device that was made nearly a thousand years before. 

I said it before I'll sat it again, religion makes people stupid.

> Not religion, but the imposition of a religion to others,

Until just a couple of centuries ago the 2 things were virtually synonymous, and even today it remains true for hundreds of millions of people, especially in the Islamic world.

Yes, but the same for science. We have separate science from politics (very approximattely), and religion is still a problem because we don't have separate it from the argument of authority.

You can't separate religion from authority. 

Putting back theology in the academy would help. 

Religion is institutionalized Platonism. 

Only institutionalized religion.

From prehistoric times every tribe had their shaman who explained the world and predicted things based on his visions and revelations (often chemically aided) of a greater, mystical world beyond the senses.  They explained why the tribe had to paint themselves blue or women had to sleep apart during their menstruation or why they couldn't eat the meat of cloven hooved animals.  This bound the tribe together and distinguished it from those other, inferior, barbarian tribes that painted themselves red and ate beans.  It was the invention of religion and it was an evolutionary step in cultural Darwinism. 

The shaman was the scientist of the day. Science, religion and politics were not separated in the beginning.

Plato was just the most famous shaman of the Greeks.  His ideas were incorporated into Christianity by St Augustine.

Christianity took Aristotle philosophy first. Judaism and Islam will do the same 500 years later.

Augustine was already a going back to Plato, like Kabbala and muslims neo-platonism will do later, but Platonism has not suppressed the Aristotelian basis of today's abramanic religion, and today's science.

>  that is made possible by the separation of religion from science

Religion is made possible by the separation of critical thinking from the population,

Bad science is made possible by that separation. You confuse religion and the use of religion by people wanting to control other people.

That has always been the role of religion.  Without the institutionalization it's just mysticism.  In polls of peoples religion one of the most common answers in the U.S. is, "I'm spiritual but not religious."  There can't be a one person religion.

because religion is institutionalized mysticism, which of course does not make sense, except for some political power to control other people.

I agree with you if you replace "religion" or "theology" with "institutionalized religion/theology". That is why I insist

Whenever someone "insists" you know they have no argument.

Or that someone's feel his message is not read with enough attention. Come on, that is wordplay.

that we have to separate "theology" from any form of temporal power, except the academies, where we can question everything and adopt methodological questionning, make theories, etc.

You can have a one-person theology - which is what those people mean by saying, "I'm spiritual, but not religious."

Mysticism alludes to personal experience, but theology is (or was) science: it needs many people: the one writing the paper, and the peers reviewing it, or the discussion and the blackboard.

that's why critical thinking was illegal and punishable by death in the past, and still is in many places.

Yes. Again this is true for all branches of science, including theology.

Yes we all remember the inquisition that burned all those scientists at the stake for not accepting the geo-centric theory of the universe - except they were burned for incorrect theology.

Like geneticist were send to the Goulag by atheists philosophers who got the power. The situation is the same, but last a longer time as theology as attempt toward the theory of everything is a hotter subject.

You seem happay that we can use critical thinking, so why not promote it in all field, including health and religion.

I am very happy to promote critical thinking AND empiricism in health and religion.  Health had benefitted greatly from empiricism.  But religion dare not allow critical thinking because it is contrary to its basic function of binding together the tribe.

Institutionalized religion.

> You have never refute my argument that (strong) atheism is de facto ally with the Churches against reason.

Let me see if I understand you correctly, you believe I have not spent enough time refuting your monumentally silly "argument" that atheist is just a slight variation of Christianity. Did I get that right?

Yes. Just saying "silly" is not an argument. It is just plain obvious that as long as we don not promote reason in theology, we let the field to those who promote the use of violence (verbal or not).

You keep switching between Christianity, which is a religion, and theology which is an academic field of study of the supernatural.  These are two very different things. 

Which *should* be an academical field. But things like roman christianity has put theology out of the academy: that is the problem.

So strong atheism maintains the religion in the hand of the irrationalist.

It must be irrational.  If its beliefs and practices were wholly rational then anyone could adopt them and they would have no significance in distinguishing the tribe. 

If people were rational, we would not use petrol but hemp, because the consequences were known at the start. 

But you are right, religion are based on non provable intuition, like the "saying yes to the doctor" of the computationalist, or like the assumption of the primary physical universe of the physicalist. Fundamental assumption are irrational in that sense. Then, admitting those are hypothesis (belief, with interrogation mark) makes them into modest science.

Try reading Scott Atran, David Sloan Wilson, or Loyal Rue.  These are your scientists who actually study religion.

They wrote their text in a context which has already put theology out of the academy. What they say works for all branches of science, which were also political at the start (and still is in some proportiopn as the cannabis, and perhaps the climate change, illustrates.

Then most strong atheists believe in primary matter in a dogmatic way. They say you are mad if you doubt it, for example. In thats sense they share the main metaphysical axiom of the christian, and obliterate the fact that science is born from taking a distance with that dogma. Then atheists share the definition of God taken by the Christians-Jews-Muslims, even if it is used to ass

And Platonists deny it dogmatically. 

Not at all. Even in Plato's academy, this was debated and discussed a lot. 

The difference is materialists can point to what they think exists while Platonists have private dreams of it.

Which gave mathematics. Those dreams were sharable and shared. Science os born from this.

ert its non existence, forgetting buddhism, hinduism, taoism, platonism, neoplatonism. except that some string atheists asserts those gods does not exist, but those are the one who believe the most in primitive matter, without providing any evidence for it.

You always throw in the word "primitive" to make the materialist seem dogmatic. 

*primitive* has nothing to do with dogmatic. It means that the materialist have to assume matter, and abandon the problem of justifying it from something else (be it a God, mathematical truth, or whatever).

But I don't know of any materialist who thinks they know what "primitive" matter is.  It's just working hypothesis that whatever is found to explain or experience will obey some comprehensible, mathematical laws.  That it won't include any supernatural agency.

No. In place like ULB, I was declared "mad" by biggot atheists who declared we cannot doubt primary matter.

Yes, atheism, seen from Plato, is a variant of christianism: same God, same Matter, same mockery of the entire field of theology, same attempt to hide the mind-body problem under the rug, etc.

Plato "solved" the mind-body problem by just assuming thoughts (of philosopher/shamans) and the soul were real and bodies were illusory.  He assumed that nothing transient could be real so the soul was eternal.  Both were taken over as basic dogma of Christianity (and later, Islam).  Empiricism was deprecated and arm chair scholasticism replaced science for 900yrs.

It was just a theory, and they debated it. Only the institutionalization made it lasting so long.

If computationalism is true, and if S4 describes knowledge, then Socrates argument for the immortality of the machine's soul, can be translated in terms of numbers relations.

And of course, same dismiss of applying reason on fundamental questions, a bit like your "refutation" of step 3 of the UDA, where everyone show you the error(s) you made, and then you redo it again and again and again. That is typical of people having religious dogma. They stop thinking.

Which is the whole point of having religion.  Did Plato ever suggest a test of his theology?  Does any theologian/shaman?

Yes. It is my whole point: machines have a canonical theology, and as it includes physics, it is testable, and indeed it explains most quantum weirdness. I predicted with it the MW, before reading Everett or knowing about QM. Then incompleteness makes the argument formal. Plato could not imagine a test, but that is not a refutation of Plato, the alternative was not testable either.

We just try to understand consciousness and the origin of matter, and I just point out that if we depart of the religion of the atheist scientist, by showing that machines do have a theology, we can be, well, ignored for irrational "religious" reason, in place of dialog and critics.

(Weak) materialism and (weak) mechanism are incompatible. You can keep materialism, but then you can't say "yes" to the doctor without being irrational, or without invoking supernatural effects.

Bruno

Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

I would have said yes, except that consciousness is not a model/theory. It is a personal fact in need to be explained. 

There is no problem with physics. Nor with physicalist. Only with physicalist philosophers when pretending not doing philosophy nor theology. The problem is with people who have unconscious dogma. The problem is with the self-proclaimed free-thinkers who get uneasy with applied free-thinking when it shows the limit of their free-thinking openness. Usually they are philosophers. My work is not a problem with genuine scientists, only with mediatico-politico-pseudo-religious circles, which are just more influent than scientists nowadays.

To be honest, I think the problem are purely political, not scientific.

Bruno

Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

I agree. Well, it is a bit more than mere shadow, for the fundamental science, and the health science, etc.

In fact "religion" is the fundamental science. And institutionalized religion is science + interdiction to question it.

Genuine science is when we substitute authoritarian faith into questionable hypothesis/theories.

Bruno

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