[~ot] why is programming so fun?

Yigal Chripun yigal100 at gmail.com
Thu Jun 5 15:02:47 PDT 2008


BCS wrote:
> Reply to Yigal,
> 
>> BCS wrote:
>>
>>> I claim that the question of the existence of god is relevant in
>>> every life. The atheist says "I think there is no god" and acts on
>>> that assumption. The theist does the reverse. Neither has proof yet
>>> both act (because you can't /not/ act). Therefor both act on faith
>>> (belief without proof). I don't see any functional difference
>>> regarding faith.
>>>
>>
>> your claim proves my point. As a theist person you assume that "the
>> question of the existence of god is relevant in every life.".
>> As an atheist I can tell you that it is not.
> 
> How can answering "yes" to a question effect your life and answering
> "no" not? If nothing else it effects your life by the mere absence of
> the effects that saying "yes" has.
>> There is a difference between assuming (believing) that god does _not_
>> exist and act based on that vs. _not_ assuming anything about this
>> question (since as stated before it's not relevant) in the first
>> place.
> 
> How do these differ? How would a person who ascribes to one act
> different than one who ascribes to the other?
> 
> 
let's look again at my metaphor. What is the meaning of the concept of
color to a person who's blind from birth?
would you agree that it's completely different situation from a person
that sees colors but chooses intentionally to ignore them? The result
may be almost the same even identical in extreme cases, but from that
person's perspective it's completely different since for the blind
person the concept of color doesn't have any meaning what so ever.
My example is a negative one and does not fully translate to the god
question, since the existence of colors is a known physical fact whereas
god's existence is a claim that cannot [by definition] be proven.
but if you only look at this from that blind person's perspective and
try to understand that the word "color" simply doesn't have any meaning
for him, you'll see that he lives in a world where the concept itself,
the definition of that particular word "color" simply does not exist.
this IS the very important difference between the two.

let look at this in a particular situation:
the blind man wants to put on a shirt. how does the color or lack
thereof affects his actions? it does not, again, the concept of color
does not exist in his world.
compare it with a seeing person who believes that colors do not exist
[maybe he thinks they are just an illusion - a manifestation of
something else]. When the seeing person chooses to put a shirt, does the
color affect his choice? of course it does, even if he deliberately
chooses to ignore it.
now, think of a universe without color, a universe where the blind
person's world view is the "correct" one.

if I would ask you to explain what god is, what the definition of that
word in your vocabulary, I'd get no doubt your (Christian) definition,
and if you were to ask me the same question, as a Jewish person I could
give you a very different (Jewish) definition of the concept. and the
definitions are different. in the atheist's case, this word does not
exist at all, so there simple is no definition. this is fundamentally
different form saying the god does not exist based on some "atheist"
definition of the concept.
I claim not the "god" as you define it does not exist, I claim the I do
not have any definition to this concept and this concept in fact does
not exist for me at all.

the math equivalent is to say that an empty set [of words] is _NOT_ the
same as a set that contains only the empty word.

--Yigal



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