What is religion ?

[godelian]

That does not look particularly interesting. For a starters, I do not program in Haskell. The furthest I go in functional programming is by using something like the underscore or lowdash (or similar) library, which is in fact just a collection of set-theoretical macros. I admit that they are often useful. However, I do not think that they entire language should push you into functional programming mode. I personally prefer to default to simple imperative mode because I usually find it more straightforward. I consider set-theoretical operations to be just an add-on.

Oh, the programming language is getting in the way? You can't translate it into Javascript?

Code: Select all

function* unfoldr(fn, seed) {
    let current = seed;
    while (true) {
        const result = fn(current);
        if (result === null) break;
        const [value, next] = result;
        yield value;
        current = next;
    }
}

const naturals = unfoldr(n => [n, n + 1], 0);

Imperatively - tell me when the above computation terminate? Tell me something about its complexity.

Because if it doesn't - you can't even define the natural numbers.

The real question is rather: What problem are you trying to solve?
In my impression, you are rather trying to create one, and that is really not the point of programming.

[Skepdick]

The real question is rather: What problem are you trying to solve?

Problem? What's that?

What is the ontology of a "problem"?

I am simply asking you questions about the "ontological" properties of a real-world computation.

In my impression, you are rather trying to create.

In my impression you are confused.

[Veritas Aequitas]

For your focus on abstractions, you are too focused in falsehoods in a way and ignoring what is really real, i.e. the particularity in continuity.

In my opinion, physicalism reflects a certain lack of intelligence. If you cannot understand abstract, Platonic concepts, then you end up denying them. Physicalism is fuelled by a lack of intellectual capacity.

I do not accept 'physicalism'.

My principle is:
Whatever is real, true, factual, knowledge and objective is contingent upon a human based [collective of subjects] framework and system [FS] of which the scientific FS is the most credible and objective.
This is based on philosophical antirealism.

Physicalism and platonism are in the same shoe as philosophical realism, i.e. they claim reality exists as absolutely mind-independent regardless of whether there are humans or not.
Physicalism and platonism are both chasing illusions.

The point is with platonism as philosophical realism, show me how can you demonstrate whatever your claim is real is really real without any human based [collective of subjects] framework and system [FS]?

If we state 'water is H20' that is because it is contingent upon a human based [collective of subjects] science-chemistry framework and system [FS].
There is no need to invoke platonism nor physicalism.
If one is not sure whether a liquid is real water or not, just rely on the human based [collective of subjects] science-chemistry framework and system [FS] to verify and justify it is true, then one can safely drink it.

The question of whether it is platonism or physicalism based on philosophical realism is based on some sort of psychological insecurity reducible to TMT.
This is the same with a belief in God.

[godelian]

The real question is rather: What problem are you trying to solve?

Problem? What's that?

What is the ontology of a "problem"?

I am simply asking you questions about the "ontological" properties of a real-world computation.

In my impression, you are rather trying to create.

In my impression you are confused.

What problem are you trying to solve?

By the way, I have run only once into a Haskell program that solves an interesting problem:

Pandoc a universal document converter
https://pandoc.org

Every other time I have run into Haskell source code, it did not do anything useful.

A programming language without any useful application is effectively a useless programming language.

In fact, I kind of sense why Haskell generally fails to be useful. Instead of working on useful programs, Haskell programmers prefer to engage in endless diatribes as to why Haskell would be such a fantastic programming language.

[Skepdick]

What problem are you trying to solve?

I have no idea what you are asking. There is no problem. There's just a question.

I gave you a computation. Tell me something about its computational complexity.

By the way, I have run only once into a Haskell program that solves an interesting problem:

Pandoc a universal document converter
https://pandoc.org

Every other time I have run into Haskell source code, it did not do anything useful.

You seem perpetually confused. Do you know what transpilation is?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-to-source_compiler

Anything you can express in JavaScript you can also express in Haskell - which is precisely why I gave you the exact same computation in both languages.

I transpiled it for you.

A programming language without any useful application is effectively a useless programming language.

The utility of all Turing-complete programming languages is identical.

In fact, I kind of sense why Haskell generally fails to be useful. Instead of working on useful programs, Haskell programmers prefer to engage in endless diatribes as to why Haskell would be such a fantastic programming language.

You could have simply said "I don't know how to use it"... You could have also said "I don't understand computation outside of a particular model/programming language".

[Dr Faustus]

Doc, would you agree that:

Religions point out spirituality hiding in the confusion of chaos, life, purpose, all the good stuff.

The worship is revealed to the witness by the actions of worship rituals, actions copacetic with the particular view. For example, the sky burial of Tibet is a spiritual action, but not to many other religions that have other views about this and that.

In theory, consistent spiritual actions will yield a consistent result, which is why yoga is called a science and an art, one can say it’s the science of artful action without end.

The spirituality of skipping through the daisies and being one with the blue sky and perfect climate may be a pleasure, but it’s more of a base pleasure, an animal sensation. Some views figure that’s spirituality, which makes the nature of devotional spiritual practice a matter of capacity within the religion. For example, some are lamas while some are farmers and craftsmen, while some say Buddhism is not a religion because of comparisons with other religions rather than with what it takes to religiously perform daily, devotional practices with the purpose of spirituality permeating all of daily life, and night time too.

Now I must travel.

Hello Walker,

What you said makes me wondering about is what defines and distinguish a religious from a non religious practice. You mentioned the sky burial of Tibet. Do we make a distinction between sky burial of Tibet and our burial, or other funeral ritual such as cremation ? I don't think that cremation is seen in Occident as a religious practice.

Hello Doc,

Apparently:

A religious practice generates spirituality that is expressed in action and thought. Conversely, a practice that generates spirituality is a religious practice. An example of this is the Japanese tea ceremony in which ego dissolves into the purpose at hand.

The purpose of generating spirituality is to make spirituality a spontaneous expression every moment, as it was for those who inspired the religion.

Every moment includes chopping wood, hauling water, wearing a loincloth, or smoking a bidi, etc.

Different religious practices appeal to various capacities, from intellectual analysis to whirling dervish. Religious practices are designed to awaken the spontaneous spirituality that is perceived in the actions and words of those who inspired the religion.

If every moment are included in religion ? What distinguish religious from cultural practices ? Spirituality ?

Do you consider psychotherapy as a spiritual, and then a religious practice ?

[Dr Faustus]

My point was to answer to Godelian about natural religion, who believes (as i interpret it) that they do not make distinction between God and World. Actually they do.

My point is rather that the belief in an eternal physical universe is not a viable religious doctrine. According to Tennenbaum's theorem, arithmetic is not possible in such eternal physical universe. Computation does not work and therefore computers don't work either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_religion

Natural religion most frequently means the "religion of nature", in which God, the soul, spirits, and all objects of the supernatural are considered as part of nature and not separate from it. Conversely, it is also used in philosophy to describe some aspects of religion that are said to be knowable apart from divine revelation through logic and reason alone, for example, the existence of the unmoved Mover, the first cause of the universe.[1]

This "religion of nature" is unsustainable. Computations and computers don't work in this kind of "nature".

The model-theoretical signature of the universe implied by the "religion of nature", i.e. its set of non-logical symbols, contains a nonstandard number, i.e. an actual infinity. That is not our universe. It may be another universe that exists somewhere else, but it is not the universe that we live in.

This english wiki version is incomplete. It makes a confusion between pantheism and natural religion. Natural religion is the belief that the idea of God, moral, can be founded rationally, without the recourse of a revelation.
It includes deism and other belief of God which not include a revealed text. But it does not specifically statuate on the finite or infinite.

Besides, the finite or infinite universe is not a scientific question. We don't actually know if universe is finite or not.

[Skepdick]

Besides, the finite or infinite universe is not a scientific question. We don't actually know if universe is finite or not.

If you believe infinite is the opposite of finite; e.g if you believe they are complementary notions you are already trapped in a "religion"...

The religion if excluded middle.

For reasons deeply technical all debates framed in classical logic end up as being battles over narrative control - pointless power struggles over semantics.

Once you escape the trap of bivalent logic you get to talk about neither finite nor infinite entities. Which may be our universe.

[Dr Faustus]

Well on the fact that things are distinguished for a purpose, I already realized it. On the fact that they are arbitrary distinguished, i disagree.

How is it non-arbitrary? You are "distinguishing" using collective nouns. That's not distinguishing - that's erasing distinctions.

Since human human understanding has its determinations.

[Dr Faustus]

Besides, the finite or infinite universe is not a scientific question. We don't actually know if universe is finite or not.

If you believe infinite is the opposite of finite; e.g if you believe they are complementary notions you are already trapped in a "religion"...

The religion if excluded middle.

For reasons deeply technical all debates framed in classical logic end up as being battles over narrative control - pointless power struggles over semantics.

Once you escape the trap of bivalent logic you get to talk about neither finite nor infinite entities. Which may be our universe.

What is it then ? Draw your line. What kind of logic do you have ? What concepts do you propose ?

[godelian]

You could have simply said "I don't know how to use it"... You could have also said "I don't understand computation outside of a particular model/programming language".

If there were useful programs in Haskell, I would have had to learn it, in order to modify these programs. I never chose the programming language to learn. It is the need to work on a particular program that made the choice for me.

So, what useful program did you need to work on, that made you learn Haskell? I am curious because, as I have said already, I personally don't know of one.

[godelian]

Besides, the finite or infinite universe is not a scientific question. We don't actually know if universe is finite or not.

It is a cosmological question. The current consensus is that it is finite.

https://www.space.com/24054-how-old-is- ... verse.html

The universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old but its exact age is not yet clear. What we do know is that it's likely less than 14 billion years old.

Age is easier than size, because most of it is invisible.

The mathematical take, according to Tennenbaum's theorem, is that it cannot be eternal, because in that case, arithmetic would be physically impossible in it.

[Scott Mayers]

The question seems to be trivial. When we talk about religions, every one knows what it refers to : Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc.

We have an idea of the extension the term refers to. But we don't have a true comprehension of this word.

Traditional definition of religion implies the belief of a superior principle.

In what extent this belief implies only what we call religions, and not other things such as ideologies.

Ideologies seems to have legitimacy on the public space whereas religion doesn't.

What does this difference tell to us about the signification of religion ?

"Religion" from 'ra-legion' or "the spreading" of "legends" (historical) and/or "legions" (many years ago) Perhaps "legion" relates to "log" + "-ion" that might also reference a record (a 'log')).

'ra' terms refer to 'rays' or 'radiance' and was used to broadcasted something. That's why I chose 'spreading' above in this context. But it can also mean anything written, spoken, or imposed by some centralized authority of some sort, such as the 'rays' of the sun being the broadcasting of light.

Some here confuse the adjectives or adverbs created FROM the noun. The religious in particular tend to think of "religion" to be the extreme degrees of devotion of someone regardless of meaning because they default to assume everyone as having the same 'god' as they do. That is, they assume their idea of religion to be a mere matter of fact. So they tend to USE the term only in context to describing "devotion". But the actual meaning refers (or referred to by some similar term of another language, ....

Religion: the collective set of beliefs regarding particularly human-centered origins and moral expectations as being based upon some mystical source but treated as though literal to some degree.

My definition here adds that the mystical source is itself deemed 'literal'. I am referring to the kind of transference that turns a "UFO" into a literal "space ship of aliens". The term "UFO" that referred to unidentified flying objects somehow became aliens because the existence of such would certainly be one significant rationale for why they remain "unidentified": they are 'unidentifiable'. So "religion" in comparison was likely interpreted as a history of one's historical roots without specific reference , ....and became the generalized BELIEFS about such roots in time. Most religious rituals, for instance, were based upon some prior rational political function that lost its necessity and had much of its original 'trace' lost (and probably intentionally destroyed).

Some presume the atheist to be a form of religion. But this is a deceptive attempt to 'equalize' the force of irrationality of those who believe in weird things and make it seem like it was an 'invention'. All humans are 'atheist' initially and have to be TAUGHT the religion in question. By the fact that some of us CHOOSE the default lack of belief after the interim of the social education that imposes religious beliefs in our youth does not mean that the atheist is the one 'choosing' to deny some 'default' of what is or is not true.

But yes, you CAN technically use the secondary evolution of the term, "religion" (or 'religious') to describe HOW one might BE 'atheist'. But that is a disingenuous use of the ROOT meaning. To be a strong believer in a religion though is a 'hard' devotion to compete with or beat and why the borrowed adjectival use of "religion" is used as a rhetorical expression of strong devotion.

[Skepdick]

What is it then ? Draw your line. What kind of logic do you have ? What concepts do you propose ?

Logic is the wrong tool for the job...

The universe is not an axiomatic system.

[Skepdick]

Since human human understanding has its determinations.

Multiple determinations exist. You've picked one and not the others.

That's rather arbitrary.