www.politiquebec.com

[HIM666]

The Improbability of God
by Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is Oxford's Professor of Public Understanding of Science. He is the author of The Blind Watchmaker (on which this article is partly based) and Climbing Mount Improbable. He is a Senior Editor of Free Inquiry.

Much of what people do is done in the name of God. Irishmen blow each other up in his name. Arabs blow themselves up in his name. Imams and ayatollahs oppress women in his name. Celibate popes and priests mess up people's sex lives in his name. Jewish shohets cut live animals' throats in his name. The achievements of religion in past history -- bloody crusades, torturing inquisitions, mass-murdering conquistadors, culture-destroying missionaries, legally enforced resistance to each new piece of scientific truth until the last possible moment -- are even more impressive. And what has it all been in aid of? I believe it is becoming increasingly clear that the answer is absolutely nothing at all. There is no reason for believing that any sort of gods exist and quite good reason for believing that they do not exist and never have. It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren't so tragic.

Why do people believe in God? For most people the answer is still some version of the ancient Argument from Design. We look about us at the beauty and intricacy of the world -- at the aerodynamic sweep of a swallow's wing, at the delicacy of flowers and of the butterflies that fertilize them, through a microscope at the teeming life in every drop of pond water, through a telescope at the crown of a giant redwood tree. We reflect on the electronic complexity and optical perfection of our own eyes that do the looking. If we have any imagination, these things drive us to a sense of awe and reverence. Moreover, we cannot fail to be struck by the obvious resemblance of living organs to the carefully planned designs of human engineers. The argument was most famously expressed in the watchmaker analogy of the eighteenth-century priest William Paley. Even if you didn't know what a watch was, the obviously designed character of its cogs and springs and of how they mesh together for a purpose would force you to conclude "that the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use." If this is true of a comparatively simple watch, how much the more so is it true of the eye, ear, kidney, elbow joint, brain? These beautiful, complex, intricate, and obviously purpose-built structures must have had their own designer, their own watchmaker -- God.

So ran Paley's argument, and it is an argument that nearly all thoughtful and sensitive people discover for themselves at some stage in their childhood. Throughout most of history it must have seemed utterly convincing, self-evidently true. And yet, as the result of one of the most astonishing intellectual revolutions in history, we now know that it is wrong, or at least superfluous. We now know that the order and apparent purposefulness of the living world has come about through an entirely different process, a process that works without the need for any designer and one that is a consequence of basically very simple laws of physics. This is the process of evolution by natural selection, discovered by Charles Darwin and, independently, by Alfred Russel Wallace.

What do all objects that look as if they must have had a designer have in common? The answer is statistical improbability. If we find a transparent pebble washed into the shape of a crude lens by the sea, we do not conclude that it must have been designed by an optician: the unaided laws of physics are capable of achieving this result; it is not too improbable to have just "happened." But if we find an elaborate compound lens, carefully corrected against spherical and chromatic aberration, coated against glare, and with "Carl Zeiss" engraved on the rim, we know that it could not have just happened by chance. If you take all the atoms of such a compound lens and throw them together at random under the jostling influence of the ordinary laws of physics in nature, it is theoretically possible that, by sheer luck, the atoms would just happen to fall into the pattern of a Zeiss compound lens, and even that the atoms round the rim should happen to fall in such a way that the name Carl Zeiss is etched out. But the number of other ways in which the atoms could, with equal likelihood, have fallen, is so hugely, vastly, immeasurably greater that we can completely discount the chance hypothesis. Chance is out of the question as an explanation.

This is not a circular argument, by the way. It might seem to be circular because, it could be said, any particular arrangement of atoms is, with hindsight, very improbable. As has been said before, when a ball lands on a particular blade of grass on the golf course, it would be foolish to exclaim: "Out of all the billions of blades of grass that it could have fallen on, the ball actually fell on this one. How amazingly, miraculously improbable!" The fallacy here, of course, is that the ball had to land somewhere. We can only stand amazed at the improbability of the actual event if we specify it a priori: for example, if a blindfolded man spins himself round on the tee, hits the ball at random, and achieves a hole in one. That would be truly amazing, because the target destination of the ball is specified in advance.

Of all the trillions of different ways of putting together the atoms of a telescope, only a minority would actually work in some useful way. Only a tiny minority would have Carl Zeiss engraved on them, or, indeed, any recognizable words of any human language. The same goes for the parts of a watch: of all the billions of possible ways of putting them together, only a tiny minority will tell the time or do anything useful. And of course the same goes, a fortiori, for the parts of a living body. Of all the trillions of trillions of ways of putting together the parts of a body, only an infinitesimal minority would live, seek food, eat, and reproduce. True, there are many different ways of being alive -- at least ten million different ways if we count the number of distinct species alive today -- but, however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead!

We can safely conclude that living bodies are billions of times too complicated -- too statistically improbable -- to have come into being by sheer chance. How, then, did they come into being? The answer is that chance enters into the story, but not a single, monolithic act of chance. Instead, a whole series of tiny chance steps, each one small enough to be a believable product of its predecessor, occurred one after the other in sequence. These small steps of chance are caused by genetic mutations, random changes -- mistakes really -- in the genetic material. They give rise to changes in the existing bodily structure. Most of these changes are deleterious and lead to death. A minority of them turn out to be slight improvements, leading to increased survival and reproduction. By this process of natural selection, those random changes that turn out to be beneficial eventually spread through the species and become the norm. The stage is now set for the next small change in the evolutionary process. After, say, a thousand of these small changes in series, each change providing the basis for the next, the end result has become, by a process of accumulation, far too complex to have come about in a single act of chance.

For instance, it is theoretically possible for an eye to spring into being, in a single lucky step, from nothing: from bare skin, let's say. It is theoretically possible in the sense that a recipe could be written out in the form of a large number of mutations. If all these mutations happened simultaneously, a complete eye could, indeed, spring from nothing. But although it is theoretically possible, it is in practice inconceivable. The quantity of luck involved is much too large. The "correct" recipe involves changes in a huge number of genes simultaneously. The correct recipe is one particular combination of changes out of trillions of equally probable combinations of chances. We can certainly rule out such a miraculous coincidence. But it is perfectly plausible that the modern eye could have sprung from something almost the same as the modern eye but not quite: a very slightly less elaborate eye. By the same argument, this slightly less elaborate eye sprang from a slightly less elaborate eye still, and so on. If you assume a sufficiently large number of sufficiently small differences between each evolutionary stage and its predecessor, you are bound to be able to derive a full, complex, working eye from bare skin. How many intermediate stages are we allowed to postulate? That depends on how much time we have to play with. Has there been enough time for eyes to evolve by little steps from nothing?

The fossils tell us that life has been evolving on Earth for more than 3,000 million years. It is almost impossible for the human mind to grasp such an immensity of time. We, naturally and mercifully, tend to see our own expected lifetime as a fairly long time, but we can't expect to live even one century. It is 2,000 years since Jesus lived, a time span long enough to blur the distinction between history and myth. Can you imagine a million such periods laid end to end? Suppose we wanted to write the whole history on a single long scroll. If we crammed all of Common Era history into one metre of scroll, how long would the pre-Common Era part of the scroll, back to the start of evolution, be? The answer is that the pre-Common Era part of the scroll would stretch from Milan to Moscow. Think of the implications of this for the quantity of evolutionary change that can be accommodated. All the domestic breeds of dogs -- Pekingeses, poodles, spaniels, Saint Bernards, and Chihuahuas -- have come from wolves in a time span measured in hundreds or at the most thousands of years: no more than two meters along the road from Milan to Moscow. Think of the quantity of change involved in going from a wolf to a Pekingese; now multiply that quantity of change by a million. When you look at it like that, it becomes easy to believe that an eye could have evolved from no eye by small degrees.

It remains necessary to satisfy ourselves that every one of the intermediates on the evolutionary route, say from bare skin to a modern eye, would have been favored by natural selection; would have been an improvement over its predecessor in the sequence or at least would have survived. It is no good proving to ourselves that there is theoretically a chain of almost perceptibly different intermediates leading to an eye if many of those intermediates would have died. It is sometimes argued that the parts of an eye have to be all there together or the eye won't work at all. Half an eye, the argument runs, is no better than no eye at all. You can't fly with half a wing; you can't hear with half an ear. Therefore there can't have been a series of step-by-step intermediates leading up to a modern eye, wing, or ear.

This type of argument is so naive that one can only wonder at the subconscious motives for wanting to believe it. It is obviously not true that half an eye is useless. Cataract sufferers who have had their lenses surgically removed cannot see very well without glasses, but they are still much better off than people with no eyes at all. Without a lens you can't focus a detailed image, but you can avoid bumping into obstacles and you could detect the looming shadow of a predator.

As for the argument that you can't fly with only half a wing, it is disproved by large numbers of very successful gliding animals, including mammals of many different kinds, lizards, frogs, snakes, and squids. Many different kinds of tree-dwelling animals have flaps of skin between their joints that really are fractional wings. If you fall out of a tree, any skin flap or flattening of the body that increases your surface area can save your life. And, however small or large your flaps may be, there must always be a critical height such that, if you fall from a tree of that height, your life would have been saved by just a little bit more surface area. Then, when your descendants have evolved that extra surface area, their lives would be saved by just a bit more still if they fell from trees of a slightly greater height. And so on by insensibly graded steps until, hundreds of generations later, we arrive at full wings.

Eyes and wings cannot spring into existence in a single step. That would be like having the almost infinite luck to hit upon the combination number that opens a large bank vault. But if you spun the dials of the lock at random, and every time you got a little bit closer to the lucky number the vault door creaked open another chink, you would soon have the door open! Essentially, that is the secret of how evolution by natural selection achieves what once seemed impossible. Things that cannot plausibly be derived from very different predecessors can plausibly be derived from only slightly different predecessors. Provided only that there is a sufficiently long series of such slightly different predecessors, you can derive anything from anything else.

Evolution, then, is theoretically capable of doing the job that, once upon a time, seemed to be the prerogative of God. But is there any evidence that evolution actually has happened? The answer is yes; the evidence is overwhelming. Millions of fossils are found in exactly the places and at exactly the depths that we should expect if evolution had happened. Not a single fossil has ever been found in any place where the evolution theory would not have expected it, although this could very easily have happened: a fossil mammal in rocks so old that fishes have not yet arrived, for instance, would be enough to disprove the evolution theory.

The patterns of distribution of living animals and plants on the continents and islands of the world is exactly what would be expected if they had evolved from common ancestors by slow, gradual degrees. The patterns of resemblance among animals and plants is exactly what we should expect if some were close cousins, and others more distant cousins to each other. The fact that the genetic code is the same in all living creatures overwhelmingly suggests that all are descended from one single ancestor. The evidence for evolution is so compelling that the only way to save the creation theory is to assume that God deliberately planted enormous quantities of evidence to make it look as if evolution had happened. In other words, the fossils, the geographical distribution of animals, and so on, are all one gigantic confidence trick. Does anybody want to worship a God capable of such trickery? It is surely far more reverent, as well as more scientifically sensible, to take the evidence at face value. All living creatures are cousins of one another, descended from one remote ancestor that lived more than 3,000 million years ago.

The Argument from Design, then, has been destroyed as a reason for believing in a God. Are there any other arguments? Some people believe in God because of what appears to them to be an inner revelation. Such revelations are not always edifying but they undoubtedly feel real to the individual concerned. Many inhabitants of lunatic asylums have an unshakable inner faith that they are Napoleon or, indeed, God himself. There is no doubting the power of such convictions for those that have them, but this is no reason for the rest of us to believe them. Indeed, since such beliefs are mutually contradictory, we can't believe them all.

There is a little more that needs to be said. Evolution by natural selection explains a lot, but it couldn't start from nothing. It couldn't have started until there was some kind of rudimentary reproduction and heredity. Modern heredity is based on the DNA code, which is itself too complicated to have sprung spontaneously into being by a single act of chance. This seems to mean that there must have been some earlier hereditary system, now disappeared, which was simple enough to have arisen by chance and the laws of chemistry and which provided the medium in which a primitive form of cumulative natural selection could get started. DNA was a later product of this earlier cumulative selection. Before this original kind of natural selection, there was a period when complex chemical compounds were built up from simpler ones and before that a period when the chemical elements were built up from simpler elements, following the well-understood laws of physics. Before that, everything was ultimately built up from pure hydrogen in the immediate aftermath of the big bang, which initiated the universe.

There is a temptation to argue that, although God may not be needed to explain the evolution of complex order once the universe, with its fundamental laws of physics, had begun, we do need a God to explain the origin of all things. This idea doesn't leave God with very much to do: just set off the big bang, then sit back and wait for everything to happen. The physical chemist Peter Atkins, in his beautifully written book The Creation, postulates a lazy God who strove to do as little as possible in order to initiate everything. Atkins explains how each step in the history of the universe followed, by simple physical law, from its predecessor. He thus pares down the amount of work that the lazy creator would need to do and eventually concludes that he would in fact have needed to do nothing at all!

The details of the early phase of the universe belong to the realm of physics, whereas I am a biologist, more concerned with the later phases of the evolution of complexity. For me, the important point is that, even if the physicist needs to postulate an irreducible minimum that had to be present in the beginning, in order for the universe to get started, that irreducible minimum is certainly extremely simple. By definition, explanations that build on simple premises are more plausible and more satisfying than explanations that have to postulate complex and statistically improbable beginnings. And you can't get much more complex than an Almighty God!

http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/dawkins3.htm

[Jobserve]

A deal with God

The Battle of Antietam was the bloodiest day in American History. There were 23,000 casualties in one day . . . four times the casualties suffered during the D-Day invasion. The Battle of Antietam was one of the defining moments in American History.

In the fall of the year 1862, Abraham Lincoln had become desperate for a victory in the Civil War. Up to that time, the South had achieved victory after victory. Bull Run, Wilson’s Creek, and Shiloh had all been convincing victories for the South. Abraham Lincoln realized that if the North did not achieve a victory soon, the survival of the Union would be in doubt. This led Abraham Lincoln to look to God and make an offer . . . Lincoln prayed that if God would grant him victory on the battlefield, he would free the slaves.

Slavery had haunted Lincoln for some time. He fully realized the cruelty and brutality of this corrupt institution, but he did not have the strength to stand up against it. Desperate for a victory, he made the deal with God. Shortly after this, he received news of McClellan’s success at Antietam. Despite devastating losses, McClellan was able to drive Lee out of Maryland, and back into Virginia. The battle of Antietam was fought on September 17, 1862. On September 22, 1862 Abraham Lincoln honored the promise he made to God, and issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

The picture above was taken on October 3, 1862. Lincoln is shown standing on the Battlefield of Antietam. The following day, October 4, 1862 his Emancipation Proclamation appeared for the first time on the pages of Harper’s Weekly, the most widely distributed newspaper of the day.

http://www.old-picture.com/defining-mom ... tietam.htm

[Thriff]

« Lincoln was thoroughly disgusted that McClellan had let Lee's army escape, to nurse its wounds and fight again. But however indecisive and incomplete Antietam was, Lincoln still regarded it as a victory—and an unmistakable sign from God concerning emancipation. On September 22, therefore, Lincoln called a Cabinet meeting to discuss the final draft of his preliminary proclamation. His Secretaries were excited and tense, for this was an historic moment, but Lincoln opened the session with a story, reading them a chapter from Artemus Ward's "A High Handed Outrage at Utica." When Artemus showed up in the New York town with a cage of "wax figures of the Lord's Last Supper," the tale went, a burly fellow pulled Judas out and exclaimed, "What did you bring this pussylanermous cuss here fur?" "You egrejus ass," Artemus said, "that air's a wax figger—a representation of the false 'Postle." The fellow bellowed that Judas couldn't show himself in "Utiky with impunerty" and caved the figure's head in. Outraged, Artemus "sood" the man, and the jury returned a verdict of "Arson in the 3d degree."

Most of the Secretaries were not amused, Chase wearing a sick smile and Stanton frowning sourly. The President put the book aside and got down to business. He told the Cabinet about his vow to himself—and, he said hesitatingly, "to my Maker"—and then read his proclamation. »

Stephen B. Oates, With Malice toward none—The Life of Abraham Lincoln,
Mentor New American Library, 1977, p. 346.

« Si un frère ou une sœur sont nus, s'ils manquent de leur nourriture quotidienne, et que l'un d'entre vous leur dise : " Allez en paix, chauffez-vous, rassasiez-vous ", sans leur donner ce qui est nécessaire à leur corps, à quoi cela sert-il ? » Jacques, 2, 15-16.

http://www.biblia-cerf.com/BJ/jc2.html

[Thriff]

L'exploitation des travailleurs étrangers aux États-Unis explose.

"Jury finds New York millionaires guilty in 'modern day slavery' case" :
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/12/ ... -Labor.php

Mitt Romney s'est fait prendre deux fois :
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articl ... _governor/

Et le chef de police de Giuliani, son contact avec le crime organisé (par. 31) :
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/nyc/ ... 907ind.pdf

[Thriff]

"Slave labour that shames America"

"Migrant workers chained beaten and forced into debt, exposing the human cost of producing cheap food"

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/ame ... 263500.ece

[Yukiwi]

Dawkins est un amateur ... il s'agit de lire les réponses & les contre argumentations à Dawkins... Dawkins écrire pour écrire & ses argumentations peuvent être facilement détruit...

voici un exemple, un scientifique qui détuit Dawkins avec les gants de velours.. sans vraiement aller au fond ..

Deconstructing Dawkins
Alister McGrath's challenge of famous atheist is bracing—but does not go far enough.
Logan Paul Gage | posted 11/16/2007 04:26PM


As Oxford professor and arch-evangelist of atheism Richard Dawkins continues his crusade against religion, we finally have the first book-length critique of The God Delusion: Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine (InterVarsity Press).





One could hardly think of a more contrasting figure to Dawkins or a better apologist for theism than Alister McGrath. This atheist-turned-Christian, also of Oxford, is a professor of historical theology. But as a student of molecular biophysics, he possesses the dual credibility in science and religion that Dawkins lacks. Further, McGrath authored Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life in 2004, and is thus thoroughly familiar with Dawkins's other writings. This is especially helpful for calling Dawkins to consistency.

For example, Dawkins's central argument is that God's existence cannot explain the world because he must be at least as complex, and therefore as improbable, as the world itself; and such an improbable entity would also require explanation. Recalling Dawkins's earlier work Climbing Mount Improbable, McGrath notes Dawkins's admission that humanity's existence itself is overwhelmingly improbable. But of course we exist. "We may be highly improbable—yet we are here," writes McGrath. "The issue, then, is not whether God is probable but whether he is actual."

Although McGrath's response is provocative, it is precisely at such points in The Dawkins Delusion? that one wishes McGrath had plumbed the depth of Dawkins's philosophical naïveté. In asserting that God is improbable, the zoologist is out of his habitat. Probability theorists have developed complex equations to tackle exactly this sort of problem.

Suffice it to say that if Dawkins's argument (i.e., God's existence cannot account for the design of the world because his existence is improbable) is correct, God's trial is over before it begins. In other words, Dawkins does not have to counter specific empirical evidence for purposeful design.

Dawkins next proposes that evolution shaped human brains to believe religious hypotheses (even though religion is itself not evolutionarily beneficial). McGrath is at his finest here, observing that while Dawkins is a scientist writing about religion, he fails to study religion scientifically. In fact, Dawkins does not even offer a rigorous definition of religion.

Like watching one schoolboy do another's work, McGrath's true gift is pointing out what Dawkins is obliged to show in order to make his case. Different propositions are, unsurprisingly, processed differently by the brain. So if Dawkins is to proffer religious belief as a byproduct of our evolution, it is incumbent on him to tell us what category religious statements belong to, what other sorts of statements religious thoughts may piggyback on, and how the brain processes them—none of which Dawkins seems aware he should provide.

As McGrath rightly points out, "There is nothing specific to religion here." All of our thoughts (including atheistic thoughts) are brain-dependent. What is worse, Dawkins presupposes a reductionist approach in which mental states have a one-way relationship from the physical brain rather than a more complex approach in which mental states—depression is McGrath's example—have a multiplicity of causes, both physical and social. And McGrath can't resist noting that while love has physical correlates in the brain, this should not be taken to prove that one's beloved does not exist!

Finally, concerning religious beliefs—where Dawkins paints in broad strokes—McGrath admirably delves into their complexity and diversity. It may make a nice sound bite to lump Christian evangelicals with Islamic extremists. But to develop a serious scientific critique of religion, one must discuss pertinent differences in theology. And McGrath finds Dawkins's knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth, the roots of religious violence, and the Bible (e.g., Dawkins asserts without qualification that Paul wrote Hebrews) seriously wanting.

The Dawkins Delusion? is a deliberately short work not intended to fight Dawkins on all fronts. Even so, it is odd that McGrath does not attempt to counter Dawkins on neo-Darwinism, for this is Dawkins's whole cachet. As Dawkins put it, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." Thus, any critique of Dawkins's atheism without tackling its Darwinian foundation is bound to leave the reader unsatisfied.

McGrath does not attack Darwinism because he views it as equally compatible with both theism and atheism. Either interpretation is legitimate, he says. McGrath cites as a witness atheist-Darwinist Stephen Jay Gould, who noted that half his Darwinist colleagues believed in God, and half did not. Therefore, thought Gould, Darwinism must be compatible with both worldviews, or half of his colleagues must be "stupid." But of course this would not make half of them stupid; it would just make half wrong. McGrath recounts surveys showing many scientists to be theists. Unfortunately, this does nothing to establish the compatibility of Darwinism and theism. Humans hold incompatible beliefs all the time.

To see why Darwinism and theism are incompatible, consider random mutations and natural selection—the two elements of modern Darwinian theory. Random mutations are, well, random. By definition, random mutations are unguided. "Mutations are simply errors in DNA replication," according to University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne. "The chance of a mutation happening is indifferent to whether it would be helpful or harmful." If a mutation is harmful, the organism with the mutation will leave fewer offspring; but if the mutation is beneficial for reproduction, the mutated gene will be passed to many offspring. This is the "natural" selection part. Theistic Darwinists claim that this process creates life's diversity and is also "used" by God.

While theists can have a variety of legitimate views on life's evolution, surely they must maintain that the process involves intelligence. So the question is: Can an intelligent being use random mutations and natural selection to create? No. This is not a theological problem; it is a logical one. The words random and natural are meant to exclude intelligence. If God guides which mutations happen, the mutations are not random; if God chooses which organisms survive so as to guide life's evolution, the selection is intelligent rather than natural.

Theistic Darwinists maintain that God was "intimately involved" in creation, to use Francis Collins's words. But they also think life developed via genuinely random mutations and genuinely natural selection. Yet they never explain what God is doing in this process. Perhaps there is still room for him to start the whole thing off, but this abandons theism for deism.

So there is a danger in the approach of theistic Darwinists such as McGrath. He is surely right that the religious and scientific worldviews are compatible. Harmony can be found. But this is not because theism can concede a materialist origin story and escape unscathed. Rather, it is because the materialist story is false and, further, is contradicted by mounting physical evidence in physics, chemistry, and biology.

McGrath is, if anything, too generous with Dawkins. The Dawkins Delusion? is written with a scholarly care and graciousness that Dawkins lacks. Dawkins's arrogance and contempt lead him to be sloppy with his opponents' arguments. McGrath, despite his flaws, takes Dawkins seriously.

Logan Paul Gage, policy analyst, Discovery Institute.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

[Thriff]

Dawkins offre un spectacle d'acharnement contre une thèse ("design argument") qu'il a lui-même érigée avec des éléments d'autodestruction, tels la complexité, la régularité mécanique de l'espace et de temps, en un mot avec des abstractions quasi-mathématiques superflues et indifférentes ; par un facile procédé, il attribue aux croyants des pensées et des attitudes qui sapent la croyance religieuse et qui parfois se situent aux antipodes.


Kierkegaard, Post-scriptum aux miettes philosophiques [IIe Partie, IIe section, chapitre 2], Gallimard, 1949, pp. 134-135 :

« Du point de vue éthico-religieux, l'important réside à nouveau dans le comment, et pourtant ce comment ne se préoccupe pas de convenances, de modulation, d'élocution, etc., mais du rapport existentiel de l'existant à ce qui est dit. Objectivement, on ne s'informe que des déterminations de la pensée ; subjectivement, que de son intériorité. À son sommet, ce comment est la passion de l'infini, et la passion de l'infini est la vérité elle-même. Mais la passion de l'infini est justement la subjectivité, et ainsi la subjectivité est la vérité. Du point de vue objectif, il n'y a pas de décision infinie, et il est ainsi objectivement exact que, en même temps que le principe de contradiction, la différence entre le bien et le mal est supprimée, et par là aussi la différence infinie entre la vérité et le mensonge. Ce n'est que dans la subjectivité qu'il y a décision, par contre "vouloir-rester-objectif" est fausseté. La passion de l'infini est le décisif, non son contenu, car elle est son propre contenu. Ainsi le comment subjectif, la subjectivité est la vérité.

Mais le comment qui est accentué subjectivement est en même temps, justement parce que le sujet existe, dialectique sous le rapport du temps. Au moment de la décision passionnée, où le chemin s'écarte du savoir objectif, la décision infinie semble par là terminée. Mais au même moment l'existant est dans la vie temporelle, et le comment subjectif se change en un effort qui est mis en branle par la passion décisive de l'infini et ranimé par elle à plusieurs reprises, mais qui reste pourtant un effort.

Etant donné que la subjectivité est la vérité, il faut que la détermination de la vérité contienne l'expression de l'antithèse de l'objectivité tout en gardant le souvenir du point de bifurcation du chemin, et alors cette expression accuse en même temps la tension de l'intériorité. Une telle définition de la vérité est la suivante : l'incertitude objective appropriée fermement par l'intériorité la plus passionnée, voilà la vérité, la plus haute vérité qu'il y ait pour un sujet existant. Là où le chemin bifurque (où, on ne peut le dire objectivement, car c'est justement la subjectivité) le savoir objectif est suspendu. Objectivement on n'a donc que de l'incertitude, mais c'est justement par là que se tend la passion infinie de l'intériorité, et la vérité consiste précisément dans ce coup d'audace qui choisit l'incertitude objective avec la passion de l'infini. Je considère la nature pour trouver Dieu et je vois bien de la Toute-Puissance et de la Sagesse, mais je vois aussi beaucoup d'autres choses, angoissantes et troublantes. La "summa summarum" de tout cela est l'incertitude objective, mais c'est justement pour cela que l'intériorité est si grande, parce qu'elle embrasse l'incertitude objective avec toute la passion de l'infini. Pour une proposition mathématique, par exemple, l'objectivité est donnée, mais aussi c'est pour cela que sa vérité est une vérité indifférente.

Mais la définition ainsi donnée de la vérité est une transcription de celle de la foi. Sans risque pas de foi. La foi est justement la contradiction entre la passion infinie de l'intériorité et l'incertitude objective. Si je peux saisir Dieu objectivement, je ne crois pas, mais justement parce que je ne le peux pas il faut que je croie, et si je veux conserver la foi je ne dois pas cesser d'avoir présent à l'esprit que je maintiens l'incertitude objective, que je suis "au-dessus d'une profondeur de 70 000 pieds d'eau" dans l'incertitude objective et que, pourtant, je crois.

Dans la phrase : la subjectivité ou l'intériorité est la vérité, réside la sagesse socratique, dont le mérite immortel consiste justement à avoir égard à la signification essentielle de l'existence, au fait que le sujet connaissant est un sujet existant, et c'est pourquoi Socrate, dans son ignorance au milieu du paganisme, était, au plus haut degré possible, dans la vérité. Comprendre que le connaissant est un sujet existant (et le malheur de la spéculation est qu'elle l'oublie toujours à nouveau) est déjà assez difficile dans notre époque objective. Mais aller plus loin que Socrate quand on n'a même pas compris le socratique, le moins qu'on puisse dire est que ce n'est pas socratique. »

[Marc Brault]

Ce texte de Kierkegaard ne contredit en rien la thèse de Dawkins, bien le contraire; ils arrivent, par différents chemins, à la même conclusion. Kierkegaard et Dawkins estiment que la preuve (au sens classique du terme, exige deux (2) composantes; un fait, et, une démonstration) de l'existence, en soi, de Dieu est improbable (à l'encontre d'une estimation probabiliste, autrement dit impossible à prouver); puisque Dieu, en tant que fait, n'existe pas en dehors de celui qui y croit; il est une projection, une chosification, formulée en termes transcendants de la propre subjectivité du croyant. Ce n'est pas par hasard si l'essai de Dawkins s'intitule 'The God Delusion', ("Le délire Dieu"). Il n'y a pas de contradiction entre ce texte de Kierkegaard et la thèse de Dawkins, uniquement une différence de point de vue (et surtout d'époque).

Lors d'une inauguration à la NASA, d'un nouvel ordinateur super sophistiqué, un prêtre demande à l'ordinateur "Est-ce que Dieu existe?", l'ordinateur lui répond "Maintenant oui ".

[Cosmique]

Why do people believe in God? For most people the answer is still some version of the ancient Argument from Design. We look about us at the beauty and intricacy of the world -- at the aerodynamic sweep of a swallow's wing, at the delicacy of flowers and of the butterflies that fertilize them, through a microscope at the teeming life in every drop of pond water, through a telescope at the crown of a giant redwood tree. We reflect on the electronic complexity and optical perfection of our own eyes that do the looking. If we have any imagination, these things drive us to a sense of awe and reverence.

Entre croire en un Dieu créateur de ce merveilleux Univers et croire que le hasard et le causalisme mécaniste suffisent à L'expliquer, il y a tout un monde, pour ne pas dire tout un univers, et il existe en même temps un incontournable point commun: le besoin absurde d'entretenir une croyance en quelque chose d'indémontrable.

Et si l'Univers était tout simplement infini, éternel et holistique, et donc sans besoin ni de Dieu, ni de hasard, ni de cause pour l'expliquer à quiconque entretiendrait l'illusion de pouvoir le comprendre ?

Aux scientifiques: l'Univers n'est pas un puzzle pour singes aveugles. Il est le Tout des touts inter-reliés à tout, partout, tout le temps et à l'infini. Il n'existe en Lui ni cause mécaniste, ni hasard. Tout s'explique en impliquant pour ce faire l'entièreté de tout le reste de l'Univers. En ce sens l'Univers ressemble plus à un dieu qu'à un chantier de construction, mais à un dieu sans miroir, prisonnier de sa solitude, de son ignorance de lui-même, de sa nécessaire subjectivité inconsciente, le néant étant Sa seule référence.

Aux théistes: contrairement à vous, l'Univers n'a aucun besoin de Dieu. Voilà pourquoi Il ne s'est jamais donné la peine de L'inventer au cours de l'éternité passée et qu'Il ne se donnera certainement pas la peine de L'inventer au cours de l'éternité à venir. En fait, l'Univers ne fait pas de politique.


_______________________
Le fantôme de Cosmique

[Sebb]

Bof ! Le Pari de Pascal est suffisant.

Y'a des trucs qu'on aura toujours de la difficulté à expliquer...

[Thriff]

Le positivisme de l'école de Vienne a sombré vers la conclusion que le scientifique ne connaît que ses sensations subjectives et que la réalité n'est qu'une illusion. Hans Reichenbach a offert comme échappatoire d'admettre la probabilité et d'invalider la notion de vérifiabilité ; la science reposerait sur l'emploi de conventions arbitraires qui peuvent donner un sens à un énoncé quelconque si, et seulement si, on peut déterminer son degré de probabilité.

Mais la destruction finale du positivisme par Thomas S. Kuhn [The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd edition, The University of Chicago Press, 1996] accentue la difficulté de différencier la science de la théologie :


« [p. 136] Furthermore, though the point can be fully developed only in my concluding section, the analysis now required will begin to indicate one of the aspects of scientific work that most clearly distinguishes it from every other creative pursuit except perhaps theology. »

« [Postscript, p. 206] There is, I think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like ‘really there’; the notion of a match between the ontology of a theory and its “real” counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle. Besides, as a historian, I am impressed with the implausability of the view. I do not doubt, for example, that Newton’s mechanics improves on Aristotle’s and that Einstein’s improves on Newton’s as instruments for puzzle-solving. But I can see in their succession no coherent direction of ontological development. On the contrary, in some [p. 207] important respects, though by no means in all, Einstein’s general theory of relativity is closer to Aristotle’s than either of them is to Newton’s. »


The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience :

« [p. 150] These examples point to the third and most fundamental aspect of the incommensurability of competing paradigms. In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, the other in a curved, matrix of space. Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction. Again, that is not to say that they can see anything they please. Both are looking at the world, and what they look at has not changed. But in some areas they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. That is why a law that cannot even be demonstrated to one group of scientists may occasionally seem intuitively obvious to another. Equally, it is why, before they can hope to communicate fully, one group or the other must experience the conversion that we have been calling a paradigm shift.

[p. 151] And Max Planck, surveying his own career in his Scientific Autobiography, sadly remarked that “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” [Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, trans. F. Gaynor (New York, 1949), pp. 33-34.]

These facts and others like them are too commonly known to need further emphasis. But they do need re-evaluation. In the past they have most often been taken to indicate that scientists, being only human, cannot always admit their errors, even when confronted with strict proof. I would argue, rather, that in these matters neither proof nor error is at issue. The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced. ... »


How conversion is induced and how resisted :

« [p. 152] Still, to say that resistance is inevitable and legitimate, that paradigm change cannot be justified by proof, is not to say that no arguments are relevant or that scientists cannot be persuaded to change their minds. Though a generation is sometimes required to effect the change, scientific communities have again and again been converted to new paradigms. Furthermore, these conversions occur not despite the fact that scientists are human but because they are. Though some scientists, particularly the older and more experienced ones, may resist indefinitely, most of them can be reached in one way or another. Conversions will occur a few at a time until, after the last holdouts have died, the whole profession will again be practicing under a single, but now a different, paradigm. We must therefore ask how conversion is induced and how resisted.

What sort of answer to that question may we expect? Just because it is asked about techniques of persuasion, or about argument and counterargument in a situation in which there can be no proof, our question is a new one, demanding a sort of study that has not previously been undertaken. We shall have to settle for a very partial and impressionistic survey. In addition, what has already been said combines with the result of that survey to suggest that, when asked about persuasion rather than proof, the question of the nature of scientific argument has no single or uniform answer. Individual scientists embrace a new paradigm for all sorts of reasons and usually for several at once. Some of these reasons—for example, the sun worship that helped make Kepler a Copernican—lie outside the apparent [p. 153] sphere of science entirely. [For the role of sun worship in Kepler’s thought, see E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (rev. ed.; New York, 1932), pp. 44-49.] Others must depend upon idiosyncrasies of autobiography and personality. Even the nationality or the prior reputation of the innovator and his teachers can sometimes play a significant role. [For the role of reputation, consider the following: Lord Rayleigh, at a time when his reputation was established, submitted to the British Association a paper on some paradoxes of electrodynamics. His name was inadvertently omitted when the paper was first sent, and the paper itself was at first rejected as the work of some “paradoxer.” Shortly afterwards, with the author’s name in place, the paper was accepted with profuse apologies (R. J. Strutt, 4th Baron Rayleigh, John William Strutt, Third Baron Rayleigh [New York, 1924], p. 228). ] »


More subjective and aestetic considerations :

« [p. 155] Fortunately, there is also another sort of consideration that can lead scientists to reject an old paradigm in favor of a new. These are the arguments, rarely made entirely explicit, that appeal to the individual’s sense of the appropriate or the aesthetic—the new theory is said to be “neater,” “more suitable,” or “simpler” than the old. [p. 156] To see the reason for the importance of these more subjective and aesthetic considerations, remember what a paradigm debate is about. When a new candidate for paradigm is first proposed, it has seldom solved more than a few of the problems that confront it, and most of those solutions are still far from perfect. Until Kepler, the Copernican theory scarcely improved upon the predictions of planetary position made by Ptolemy. When Lavoisier saw oxygen as “the air itself entire,” his new theory could cope not at all with the problems presented by the proliferation of new gases, a point that Priestley made with great success in his counterattack.»


Need of a basis, though it need be neither rational nor ultimately correct, for faith :

« [p. 157] But paradigm debates are not really about relative problem-solving ability, though for good reasons they are usually couched in those terms. Instead, the issue is which paradigm should in the future guide research on problems many of which neither competitor can yet claim to resolve completely. A decision between alternate ways of practicing science is called for, and in the circumstances that decision must be based less on [p. 158] past achievement than on future promise. The man who embraces a new paradigm at an early stage must often do so in defiance of the evidence provided by problem-solving. He must, that is, have faith that the new paradigm will succeed with the many large problems that confront it, knowing only that the older paradigm has failed with a few. A decision of that kind can only be made on faith.

That is one of the reasons why prior crisis proves so important. Scientists who have not experienced it will seldom renounce the hard evidence of problem-solving to follow what may easily prove and will be widely regarded as a will-o’-the-wisp. But crisis alone is not enough. There must also be a basis, though it need be neither rational nor ultimately correct, for faith in the particular candidate chosen. Something must make at least a few scientists feel that the new proposal is on the right track, and sometimes it is only personal and inarticulate aesthetic considerations that can do that. Men have been converted by them at times when most of the articulable technical arguments pointed the other way. When first introduced, neither Copernicus’ astronomical theory nor De Broglie’s theory of matter had many other significant grounds of appeal. Even today Einstein’s general theory attracts men principally on aesthetic grounds, an appeal that few people outside of mathematics have been able to feel. »


Progress through Revolutions :

« [p. 160] The preceding pages have carried my schematic description of scientific development as far as it can go in this essay. Nevertheless, they cannot quite provide a conclusion. If this description has at all caught the essential structure of a science’s continuing evolution, it will simultaneously have posed a special problem: Why should the enterprise sketched above move steadily ahead in ways that, say, art, political theory, or philosophy does not? Why is progress a perquisite reserved almost exclusively for the activities we call science? The most usual answers to that question have been denied in the body of this essay. ...

[p. 162] Viewed from within any single community, however, whether of scientists or of non-scientists, the result of successful creative work is progress. How could it possibly be anything else? We have, for example, just noted that while artists aimed at representation as their goal, both critics and historians chronicled the progress of the apparently united group. Other creative fields display progress of the same sort. The theologian who articulates dogma or the philosopher who refines the Kantian imperatives contributes to progress, if only to that of the group that shares his premises. No creative school recognizes a category of work that is, on the one hand, a creative success, but is not, on the other, an addition to the collective achievement of the group. If we doubt, as many do, that non-scientific fields make progress, that cannot be because individual schools make none. Rather, it must be because there are always competing schools, [p. 163] each of which constantly questions the very foundations of the others. The man who argues that philosophy, for example, has made no progress emphasizes that there are still Aristotelians, not that Aristotelianism has failed to progress.

These doubts about progress arise, however, in the sciences too. Throughout the pre-paradigm period when there is a multiplicity of competing schools, evidence of progress, except within schools, is very hard to find. ...

With respect to normal science, then, part of the answer to the problem of progress lies simply in the eye of the beholder. Scientific progress is not different in kind from progress in other fields, but the absence at most times of competing schools that question each other’s aims and standards makes the progress of a normal-scientific community far easier to see. ...

[p. 164] The most esoteric of poets or the most abstract of theologians is far more concerned than the scientist with lay approbation of his creative work, though he may be even less concerned with approbation in general. That difference proves consequential. »


Losses and gains :

« [p. 167] Inevitably those remarks will suggest that the member of a mature scientific community is, like the typical character of Orwell’s 1984, the victim of a history rewritten by the powers that be. Furthermore, that suggestion is not altogether inappropriate. There are losses as well as gains in scientific revolutions, and scientists tend to be peculiarly blind to the former. »


To relinquish the notion of "truth" :

« [p. 170] These last paragraphs point the directions in which I believe a more refined solution of the problem of progress in the sciences must be sought. Perhaps they indicate that scientific progress is not quite what we had taken it to be. But they simultaneously show that a sort of progress will inevitably characterize the scientific enterprise so long as such an enterprise survives. In the sciences there need not be progress of another sort. We may, to be more precise, have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth.

It is now time to notice that until the last very few pages the term ‘truth’ had entered this essay only in a quotation from Francis Bacon. And even in those pages it entered only as a source for the scientist’s conviction that incompatible rules for doing science cannot coexist except during revolutions when the profession’s main task is to eliminate all sets but one. The developmental process described in this essay has been a process of evolution from primitive beginnings—a process whose successive stages are characterized by an increasingly detailed and refined understanding of nature. But nothing that has been or will be said makes it a process of evolution toward anything. [p. 171] Inevitably that lacuna will have disturbed many readers. We are all deeply accustomed to seeing science as the one enterprise that draws constantly nearer to some goal set by nature in advance.

But need there be any such goal? Can we not account for both science’s existence and its success in terms of evolution from the community’s state of knowledge at any given time? Does it really help to imagine that there is some one full, objective, true account of nature and that the proper measure of scientific achievement is the extent to which it brings us closer to that ultimate goal? If we can learn to substitute evolution-from-what-we-do-know for evolution-toward-what-we-wish-to-know, a number of vexing problems may vanish in the process. Somewhere in this maze, for example, must lie the problem of induction. »

[Cosmique]

Bof ! Le Pari de Pascal est suffisant.

Est-ce à dire que vous pratiquez votre religion juste au cas où ce que votre curé vous raconte au sujet de Dieu, du ciel et de l'enfer serait bien vrai Sebb ? Parce que si c'est le cas, moi à la place de votre Dieu, s'il existe, je vous condamnerais à errer éternellement dans les limbes pour manque d'authenticité et lâcheté spirituelle, soit là où se trouve toujours Pascal d'ailleurs.





_______________________
Le fantôme de Cosmique

[Polémix]

À l'époque de la main-mise Catholique sur le monde occidental, Copernic fut persécuté par le pape pour avoir affirmé que la terre tourne autour du soleil. Il se rétracta pour éviter la torture mais, à la fin de sa vie, il affirma:
- Et pourtant, elle tourne!

Aujourd'hui, la science est la grande religion qui définit le réel et gagne les guerres. La science affirme maintenant qu'il n'y a pas de Dieu et certains forumeurs ''persécutent'' les croyants. Toutefois, sans aucune prétention au génie ni au martyre, j'affirme :
- Et pourtant, Dieu, ça marche !


Si vous avez eu la chance de voir en reprise l'un des derniers interviews de Pierre Péladeau (dimanche soir, à RDI), vous avez entendu ses mots très inspirant sur la foi. En gros, Péladeau-père disait :
- Je me fous de ce qu'est Dieu, je me fous que ce soit soit un Chinois, un nègre ou une femme, tout ce qui m'intéresse c'est que ça marche.

[Jobserve]

C.S. Lewis
Les miracles : étude préliminaire.
(traduction de Jacques Blondel). Paris : S.P.B., 1985. 181 p.
Traduction de : Miracles, a preliminary study
Étude sur la possibilité des miracles. Approche philosophique et logique.

Extrait:
"Parlez de la beauté, de la vérité et de la bonté, ou d'un Dieu qui est simplement le principe inhérent à ces trois choses, parlez d'une grande force spirituelle qui inonde tout, d'un esprit commun dont nous sommes les parties, d'une mer de spiritualité généralisée vers laquelle nous pouvons tous nous jeter, et vous retiendrez un intérêt bienveillant et amical. Mais la température tombe dès que vous citez un Dieu qui a des dessins et qui accomplit des actions particulières, qui fait ceci et ne fait pas cela, un Dieu concret, qui choisit, commande, défend avec un caractère précis. Les gens sont embarrassés et agacés. Pareille conception leur paraît primitive grossière et même irrespectueuse. La religion courante exclut les miracles par qu'elle exclut le "Dieu vivant" du christianisme et croit plutôt à un Dieu qui ne ferait pas de miracles ni rien d'autre." (Miracles 1985: p. 82)

[Thriff]

Quand Albert Einstein a formulé "God does not play at dice with the universe!", Niels Bohr a riposté : "Quit telling God what to do!"

Heisenberg : "...the wave function [of the primordial source of the universe] is not real; it is simply a device used in the mathematics of quantum theory. Indeed, it is a wave of probability rather than an oscillation of matter. What the wave function describes is the probability that a particle will be discovered in a particular region of space should a measurement be carried out. This same wave function is also the mathematical tool used to predict the outcome of other experimental measurements. So what sense does it make to talk about the reality of wave functions and quantum states when no laboratory apparatus is around - indeed, when no large-scale world yet exists?"

Le théorème de Bell a donné raison à Bohr et Heisenberg ; la non-localité semble confirmer Platon et Aristote.


Imre Lakatos, Philosophy in the Open, tire ces conclusions :

« Thus a statement may be pseudoscientific even if it is eminently 'plausible' and everybody believes in it, and it may be scientifically valuable even if it is unbelievable and nobody believes in it. A theory may even be of supreme scientific value even if no one understands it, let alone believes in it. ...

One can today easily demonstrate that there can be no valid derivation of a law of nature from any finite number of facts; but we still keep reading about scientific theories being proved from facts. Why this stubborn resistance to elementary logic? ...

It was only the downfall of Newtonian theory in this century which made scientists realize that their standards of honesty had been utopian.

One answer to this question was provided in the twentieth century by 'inductive logicians'. Inductive logic set out to define the probabilities of different theories according to the available total evidence. If the mathematical probability of a theory is high, it qualifies as scientific; if it is low or even zero, it is not scientific. Thus the hallmark of scientific honesty would be never to say anything that is not at least highly probable.

But, in 1934, Karl Popper, one of the most influential philosophers of our time, argued that the mathematical probability of all theories, scientific or pseudoscientific, given any amount of evidence is zero. If Popper is right, scientific theories are not only equally unprovable but also equally improbable. »


Le pragmatisme échappe au scepticisme par l'affirmation que chercher ce qui marche est du même coup chercher la vérité : "If the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true."


William James, The Will to Believe, An address to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown Universities, New World, 1896 :

« VIII. Science has organized this nervous­ness into a regular technique, her so-called method of verification; and she has fallen so deeply in love with the method that one may even say she has ceased to care for truth by itself at all. It is only truth as tech­nically verified that interests her. The truth of truths might come in merely affirmative form, and she would decline to touch it. ...

IX. Moral questions immediately present themselves as questions whose solution cannot wait for sensible proof. A moral question is a question not of what sensibly exists, but of what is good, or would be good if it did exist. Science can tell us what exists; but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart. ...

And where faith in a fact can help create the fact, that would be an insane logic which should say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the ' lowest kind of immorality ' into which a thinking being can fall. Yet such is the logic by which our scientific absolutists pretend to regulate our lives!

X. In truths dependent on our personal action, then, faith based on desire is certainly a lawful and pos­sibly an indispensable thing. ...

Scepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error, — that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. ...

I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truth-seeking, or wilfully agree to keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot do so for this plain reason, that a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledg­ing certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule. That for me is the long and short of the formal logic of the situa­tion, no matter what the kinds of truth might materi­ally be.

In concreto, the freedom to believe can only cover living options which the intel­lect of the individual cannot by itself resolve; and living options never seem absurdities to him who has them to consider. When I look at the religious ques­tion as it really puts itself to concrete men, and when I think of all the possibilities which both prac­tically and theoretically it involves, then this command that we shall put a stopper on our heart, instincts, and courage, and wait — acting of course mean­while more or less as if religion were not true (Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true. The whole defence of religious faith hinges upon action...) — till doomsday, or till such time as our intellect and senses working together may have raked in evidence enough, — this command, I say, seems to me the queerest idol ever manufactured in the philosophic cave. Were we scholastic absolutists, there might be more excuse. If we had an infallible intellect with its objective certitudes, we might feel ourselves dis­loyal to such a perfect organ of knowledge in not trusting to it exclusively, in not waiting for its releas­ing word. But if we are empiricists, if we believe that no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp, then it seems a piece of idle fantasticality to preach so solemnly our duty of wait­ing for the bell. Indeed we may wait if we will, — I hope you do not think that I am denying that, — but if we do so, we do so at our peril as much as if we believed. In either case we act, taking our life in our hands. No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another's mental freedom: then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic; then only shall we have that spirit of inner tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is soulless, and which is empiricism's glory; then only shall we live and let live, in speculative as well as in practical things. »

http://falcon.jmu.edu/~omearawm/ph101willtobelieve.html

[Polémix]

Pierre Péladeau, 1925-1997

Quelques semaines avant sa mort, Pierre Péladeau avait accepté de consacrer une journée de son temps précieux, une rencontre exceptionnelle au cours de laquelle il a répondu à toutes les questions de Pierre Maisonneuve.( Jouer Pour Gagner, Les Éditions Québecor )

Voici une partie de cet entretien.

ET DIEU ?

Vous avez déjà un peu parlé de Dieu. Vous avez été élevé dans un univers de religion assez fermé, vous avez côtoyé le «Dieu est mort » de Nietzsche, puis vous avez redécouvert Dieu. Quelle différence faites-vous entre ces trois Dieux ?

En fait, je n’ai pas redécouvert Dieu, je l’ai découvert parce que je ne l’avais jamais rencontré avant. Ce n’est pas le Dieu des Jésuites, un Dieu de haine, de peur, de punition. L’enfer et tout le reste, pour moi, c’est de la foutaise !

La semaine dernière, je suis allé aux funérailles d’un ami. C’était une célébration commémorative en présence de ses cendres. Une belle cérémonie, toute simple. Trois de ses enfants sont venus porter des fleurs à l’avant. Deux de ses fils et des amis sont venus lui rendre hommage. Mais il y avait là un dominicain qui – c’est le seul mot qui me vient à l’esprit et c’est bien ce qu’il faisait --- manipulait toute la cérémonie. À la fin, alors que l’ex-femme de mon ami était en train de dire un petit mot, le dominicain en question s’est rendu en avant à côté de celle-ci et s’est mis à faire brûler de l’encens ! Comme si ça l’intéressait, mon pauvre ami, de sentir l’encens dans son urne ! Ridicule ! Le symbolisme de l’Église me fâche au plus haut point.

Un jour, j’assistais à une autre cérémonie de funérailles. C’étais un monseigneur --- pour ne pas dire un évêque--- qui présidait. Il a dit toutes sortes de conneries comme il peut s’en dire dans de telles situations. «Comme il a été baptisé, il s’en va à Dieu…» Comme si Dieu avait besoin que nous soyons baptisés pour nous accueillir quand nous allons mourir ! Il faisait peur aux gens. Alors que c’est très beau, la mort ! Dans la mort, tu retournes à ton Dieu, à ton Père. Que demander de plus ?

À la fin de la cérémonie, le célébrant est allé reconduire le cercueil à la porte de l’église, et là, il saluait les gens. Quand je suis arrivé près de lui, je lui ai donné la main et je lui ai dit «Monsieur, vous n’avez pas la foi !» et je suis sorti. C’est exactement ce que je pensais. Quelqu’un qui fait une cérémonie comme ça, qui dit les choses qu’il a dites, ne peut pas avoir la foi. C’est très beau, la mort ! Retourner à son Père ! Moi, j’ai hâte de le connaître, mon Père !

Ça, vous y croyez.

Ah ! oui !

Quel éclairage votre foi prend-elle ? Vous dites ne pas vouloir du Dieu des punitions de votre enfance.

Ça ne tient pas debout ! Dieu ne peut pas avoir deux visages, un visage de bonté et un autre de punition. C’est impossible. Dieu est Dieu, il est entier, complet ! On ne va pas lui ajouter des choses…

Dieu va donc tout vous pardonner.

Dieu ne pardonne pas, il est avec moi. Il ne pardonne pas, Il n’a pas besoin de me pardonner. C’est simple.

Un jour, on m’a demandé dans une entrevue : «Qui est Dieu pour vous ?» J’ai répondu que ça ne m’importait pas. Qu’il soit un chinois, un noir ou une femme, ça n’a pas d’importance. L’important, c’est que la foi, ça marche ! Tout le reste ne m’intéresse pas.

Mais ça peut être une sorte de potion magique.

Que ce soit n’importe quoi, je m’en fous. Ça marche !

Ça marche pour vous ?

Oui. Et je l’ai fait connaître à d’autres. Un jour, une femme, psychologue, est venue se baigner ici. Elle me dit ne pas avoir la foi, que ça ne vaut rien, que c’est de la foutaise. Je lui dis qu’évidemment, en tant que psychologue, tout est clair comme de l’eau de roche, qu’elle a le monopole de la vérité… je lui ai suggéré de faire une petite expérience.«Ton père est mort depuis un an. Demande-lui de t’aider à t’ouvrir l’esprit pour que tu puisses ouvrir un peu ton cœur à la foi.» Elle est revenue la semaine suivante, tout excitée des choses extraordinaires qu’elle avait découvertes. Ce n’était pas du tout ce qu’elle imaginait.

Mais j’ai le goût de vous demander : vous avez foi en quoi ?

En Dieu.

Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire ?

Ça veut dire que j’ai un homme ou un être humain ou un Dieu ou ce que vous voudrez --- pour moi, c’est sans importance --- qui est à mes côtés et qui peut m’aider si je le lui demande. Si je lui demande, il m’aide. C’est tout.

Il faut garder ça simple. Pas besoin d’encens, d’habits spéciaux, de chasubles, etc. Tout cela, c’est de la foutaise, je n’ai pas besoin de cela. J’en ai vendu, des chasubles, quand j’étais jeune… mais c’est superflu !

Mais qu’est-ce qui vous a fait redécouvrir ce Dieu simple ? Vous dites : «Je crois. Il est là. Il existe. Il peut m’aider et il m’attend.»

Il m’aide ! S’il ne m’aidait pas, je n’y croirais pas !

Il vous aide à faire des millions ?

Je ne sais pas. Ce n’est pas ce que je lui demande.

Que demandez-vous à Dieu ?

Toutes sortes de petites choses. Par exemple, il arrive parfois le matin que je sois de mauvaise humeur. Cela arrive à tout le monde. Je prends l’ascenseur pour monter à mon bureau, au 13e étage. En montant, je me dis : «Je vais emmerder tout le monde. Je vais être désagréable avec tout le monde. Je n’ai pas le droit de leur faire subir cela.» J’ai un petit truc que je répète dans ces occasions : Let go and let God. «Laisse aller, et laisse ça entre les mains de Dieu.» C’est très simple. Alors, quand j’arrive à mon bureau, je sors de l’ascenseur, je m’assois à mon pupitre et je suis de bonne humeur. C’est formidable. Des trucs de ce genre, j’en ai des tas.

C’est de la pensée magique, non ?

Je ne sais pas. Et ça m’importe peu. Je ne veux pas faire de recherches pseudo-scientifiques là-dessus. C’est bon, ça marche. C’est tout ! L’électricité, j’ignore ce que c’est, j’ignore comment ça fonctionne. Et personne ne peut le faire, ou à peu près. Je sais cependant que si j’appuie sur le commutateur, la lumière va s’allumer. Et je sais l’éteindre si j’en ai envie. C’est exactement la même chose.

Donc, un jour, vous avez appuyé sur le commutateur de Dieu.

Non, ça ne s’est pas passé comme ça. Je m’étais rendu en Abitibi pour faire l’acquisition d’un journal. Je revenais de Val-d’Or. J’étais à l’aéroport. L’avion venait de Rouyn, c’était donc un appareil assez gros. Je suis monté dans l’avion, je me suis assis. Il n’y avait personne ! Juste moi et un couple. Je n’aimais pas ça. J’avais pourtant déjà fait le tour du monde à plusieurs reprises, j’étais allé partout en avion…

Et vous voyagez tous les jours en hélicoptère…

Eh oui ! Qu’est-ce qui se passait ? D’habitude, je monte dans l’avion et je m’endors. C’est la même chose en hélicoptère. Je n’ai absolument pas peur. Mais là, ça n’allait vraiment pas. J’avais peur.

L’hôtesse est venue nous dire que nous allions voyager à 25 000 pieds d’altitude, à telle vitesse, etc. J’avais peur. C’était la première fois que ça m’arrivait. Je me suis levé et je me suis dirigé vers la cabine pour aller voir qui s’y trouvait. Peut-être le pilote était-il saoul ? S’il était saoul, on ne volerait pas longtemps ! Je suis allé voir le pilote qui n’avait pas l’air saoul du tout. Son navigateur était à ses côtés. Il avaient l’air tout à fait bien. Je suis ressorti et je suis retourné m’asseoir à ma place. J’aimais de moins en moins ça. Nous avons décollé. Je suis ressorti et je suis retourné m’asseoir à ma place. J’aimais de moins en moins ça. Nous avons décollé. Je me tenais à mon fauteuil. Quelque chose ne tournait pas rond : ma vie était entre les mains de cet homme en avant que je venais de voir pour la première fois. J’ignorais qui il était et c’était lui qui menait ma vie. Il pouvait faire de moi ce qu’il voulait. Ça ne tenait pas debout, ça n’avait pas de bon sens! Mais si lui tenait ma vie entre ses mains, il y avait quelqu’un qui tenait la sienne. Et dans le cockpit, il n’y avait personne d’autre, à part le navigateur. Et là, j’en ai déduit que s’il n’y avait personne d’autre, c’est que je ne le voyais pas… c’était donc Dieu.

C’est comme ça que j’ai vraiment découvert la foi. C’est aussi simple que cela.

Est-ce que ça a changé votre vie?

Complètement. Totalement.

Dans quel sens?

En ce sens qu’aujourd’hui, je vois les choses sans aucune sorte de peur, sans aucune sorte de culpabilité ou d’infériorité de quelque nature que ce soit, intellectuelle, physique ou morale.

J’ai un certain nombre de problèmes avec une de mes filles. Il y a quelques mois, elle m’a dit : « Si je suis comme ça, c’est de ta faute!» Se faire dire ça par sa fille, ça ne fait pas plaisir; ça fait mal. Je lui ai répondu :« Écoute, ma fille, fous-moi la paix. Si tu penses m’impressionner avec ça, tu te trompes. Tu fais ce que tu veux, c’est ta vie. Moi, je ne peux rien y faire. Ça ne m’appartient pas.» Avant, je n’aurais jamais pu faire cela. Je me serais senti extrêmement coupable.

Dieu vous a déculpabilisé.

Totalement. En fait, c’est encore plus simple : je me suis déculpabilisé grâce à Dieu. Il ne faut cependant pas charrier et affirmer que Dieu fait tout pour moi. Ce n’est pas vrai. Il a autre chose à faire!

Prier Pierre Péladeau?

Pierre Péladeau, vous êtes bien conscient qu’un jour, le plus tard possible, on pourra réutiliser cet entretien pour parler de vous au passé. Qu’est-ce que vous aimeriez que les gens se disent après avoir entendu ce témoignage de votre vie? Qu’est-ce que vous souhaitez que les gens se disent de Pierre Péladeau ?

Je ne sais pas. Je ne sais vraiment pas. Je ne m’interroge pas à ce sujet. Comme je vous le disais tout à l’heure, je ne veux pas de pierre tombale. Quand ce sera fini, ce sera fini! Ce que les autres diront de moi, je m’en balance.

Ce que j’aimerais, cependant, c’est que mes enfants, mes amis et même d’autres personnes comptent sur moi pour beaucoup de choses. Vous savez, je prie Beethoven, parfois.

Alors, vous souhaiteriez qu’on vous prie? Qu’on prie Pierre Péladeau?

Certainement! Comme moi-même je prie tous mes amis décédés. Prier, c’est demander de l’aide. C’est ce que ça veut dire et pas autre chose. Ce n’est pas s’excuser, demander pardon, etc. Dieu pardonne tout. Autrement, il ne serait pas Dieu.

Cela signifie que lorsque vous serez mort, vous aimeriez que certaines personnes se souviennent de vous en disant : «Pierre Péladeau, aide-moi, j’ai un problème!»

Oui. Ce serait le parfait complément à ma vie.[/color]

[Cosmique]

Dieu ne pardonne pas, il est avec moi. Il ne pardonne pas, Il n’a pas besoin de me pardonner. C’est simple.

et un peu plus loin

Dieu pardonne tout. Autrement, il ne serait pas Dieu.

...

Alors, vous souhaiteriez qu’on vous prie? Qu’on prie Pierre Péladeau?

Certainement!

Voilà qui résume assez bien l'incohérence de la pensée spirituelle de Pierre Péladeau qui soit dit en passant n'est certainement pas une référence en cette matière. Mais comme Dieu était avec lui, qu'Il ne pardonne pas ET pardonne tout à la fois comme seul le Dieu de Péladeau peut le faire, prions Péladeau $$$. Après tout, si ça marche ...



Joyeux Noël (Neo Helios) = Joyeuse nouvelle année



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Le fantôme de Cosmique

[Polémix]

Dieu ne pardonne pas, il est avec moi. Il ne pardonne pas, Il n’a pas besoin de me pardonner. C’est simple.

et un peu plus loin

Dieu pardonne tout. Autrement, il ne serait pas Dieu.

...

Alors, vous souhaiteriez qu’on vous prie? Qu’on prie Pierre Péladeau?
Certainement!

Voilà qui résume assez bien l'incohérence de la pensée spirituelle de Pierre Péladeau qui soit dit en passant n'est certainement pas une référence en cette matière. Mais comme Dieu était avec lui, qu'Il ne pardonne pas ET pardonne tout à la fois comme seul le Dieu de Péladeau peut le faire, prions Péladeau $$$. Après tout, si ça marche ...

Péladeau était homme d'affaire et pas homme de lettre; vous avez trouvé une petite paille qui plaît à votre refus d'admettre la chose .. mais cela n'infirme rien.

[ADN_ARN]

------------------------

Expression mathématique de Dieu :

------------------------

D = T

dans laquelle D est Dieu

et

T est la logique d’une proposition dont le prédicat reprend le sujet.

L’équation D = T comprend trois éléments formant une trinité dans laquelle :

D est le prédicat divin

T est la tautologie divine

Le signe égal est une expression spirituelle permettant d’établir la trinité divine d’un élément unique constitué de trois éléments qui sont bien indépendants les uns des autres en même temps qu'ils ne le sont pas du tout.

L’équation D = T forme une trinité dont chaque membre est divin et dont l’ensemble représente chacun des éléments divins en même temps que Dieu Lui-même.

Tout élément capable d’affirmer sincèrement la vérité de l’équation D = T est croyant et a donc raison de croire en vertu du principe que s'il a raison de croire c'est bien parce qu'il a raison de croire.

Sinon il aurait tort.

.

[skidooman]

Entre croire en un Dieu créateur de ce merveilleux Univers et croire que le hasard et le causalisme mécaniste suffisent à L'expliquer, il y a tout un monde, pour ne pas dire tout un univers, et il existe en même temps un incontournable point commun: le besoin absurde d'entretenir une croyance en quelque chose d'indémontrable.

Et si l'Univers était tout simplement infini, éternel et holistique, et donc sans besoin ni de Dieu, ni de hasard, ni de cause pour l'expliquer à quiconque entretiendrait l'illusion de pouvoir le comprendre ?

En effet.

Peut-être y a-t'il des mécanismes à l'univers que l'on ignore et que Dieu s'y trouve.

Peut-être que Dieu est l'Univers et inversement.

Peut-être que Dieu, c'est le phénomène de la vie en action.

Personellement, ça me semble clair que Dieu hors de l'Univers, qui vit et qui transpire, ça fait pas trop sérieux. Mais existe-il un principe unificateur en quelque part? Un plan? Une volonté?

...

Enfin, on peut certes réfléchir à tout ça. Et par chance qu'on y pense, même dans le cas des athéistes. Parce que si on pousse la logique à son extrême, la vie sans la réflexion ne vaut pas la peine d'être vécue.

Les plus grands athéistes de notre temps - les communistes - croyaient tout de même en quelque chose (dans leur cas, que ça valait la peine de se battre pour l'établissement d'une société socialiste, une entité utopique, immatérielle).

Les nihilistes n'ont jamais fait long feu, et pour cause.

[La Sorcière]

------------------------

Expression mathématique de Dieu :

------------------------

D = T

dans laquelle D est Dieu

et

T est la logique d’une proposition dont le prédicat reprend le sujet.

L’équation D = T comprend trois éléments formant une trinité dans laquelle :

D est le prédicat divin

T est la tautologie divine

Le signe égal est une expression spirituelle permettant d’établir la trinité divine d’un élément unique constitué de trois éléments qui sont bien indépendants les uns des autres en même temps qu'ils ne le sont pas du tout.

L’équation D = T forme une trinité dont chaque membre est divin et dont l’ensemble représente chacun des éléments divins en même temps que Dieu Lui-même.

Tout élément capable d’affirmer sincèrement la vérité de l’équation D = T est croyant et a donc raison de croire en vertu du principe que s'il a raison de croire c'est bien parce qu'il a raison de croire.

Sinon il aurait tort.

.

Intéressante cette formule. Elle n'est pas sans rappeler la théologie négative dont Georges Bataille, entre autres, s'était inspiré pour sa Somme athéologique : « Qui ne "meurt" pas de n'être qu'un homme ne sera jamais qu'un homme ».

La théologie négative ( ou apophatique ) procède par la négation de tous les prédicats portant sur le sujet Dieu jusqu'à ce que l'opération devienne une somme ... négative.

Ainsi, l'une des principales figures de cette (a)théologie fut Maître Eckhart, dont l'exemple le plus classique se retrouve dans le Sermon 52 ( Pourquoi nous devons nous affranchir de Dieu même ): « C'est pourquoi nous prions Dieu d'être libérés de Dieu » in Traités et Sermons, traduction Alain de Libera, GF, 1993, p.351.

Dans son Tractatus logico-philosophicus, Wittgenstein ne sera pas très loin de la pensée éckhartienne : « Comment est le monde ? Voilà qui est absolument indifférent pour ce qui est plus élevé. Dieu ne se révèle pas dans le monde. » proposition 6.432, TLP, Gallimard, coll. Idées, trad. Pierre Klossowski, p. 173.

Comme l'écrivait Bataille dans L'expérience intérieure, Dieu échappe à toute représentation. Dès lors, ce ( Dieu ) dont on ne peut parler, il faut le taire.

Bref, Dieu (l'idée de Dieu serait plus juste ) n'est pas ce que nous croyons et l'inverse n'est pas moins vrai...

--

[Polémix]

- Et pourtant, Dieu, ça marche !

[shokin]

Good news ! God knows !



Shokin

[ADN_ARN]

.
D'un côté, le grand silence de Dieu, de l'autre, tout simplement, ça :
.
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid= ... &plindex=1
.

[Cosmique]

Entre croire en un Dieu créateur de ce merveilleux Univers et croire que le hasard et le causalisme mécaniste suffisent à L'expliquer, il y a tout un monde, pour ne pas dire tout un univers, et il existe en même temps un incontournable point commun: le besoin absurde d'entretenir une croyance en quelque chose d'indémontrable.

En effet.

[...]

Les plus grands athéistes de notre temps - les communistes - croyaient tout de même en quelque chose (dans leur cas, que ça valait la peine de se battre pour l'établissement d'une société socialiste, une entité utopique, immatérielle).

Les nihilistes n'ont jamais fait long feu, et pour cause.

L'athéisme et le nihilisme sont des points de vue philosophiques similaires mais bien distincts. Alors que le premier cultive une croyance en l'inexistence de quelque dieu, divinité ou entité surnaturelle que ce soit, le second cultive une croyance en ce que le monde est dénué de toute signification, tout but, toute vérité compréhensible ou toute valeur. Ainsi donc, si l'athéisme tente de convaincre (en vain je pense) que le surnaturel n'existe pas, soit que seul existe le monde naturel (dont la définition - départager naturel et surnaturel - reste à faire), il n'affirme en rien que ce monde naturel est insensé, ce qu'affirme le nihilisme qui lui n'affirme rien sur l'existence de Dieu, sinon qu'elle serait nécessairement absurde et insensée. Cela dit, ils ont un point commun: entretenir inutilement des croyances indémontrables.

D'autre part, le point de vue que j'invoquais en demandant "Et si l'Univers était tout simplement infini, éternel et holistique, et donc sans besoin ni de Dieu, ni de hasard, ni de cause pour l'expliquer à quiconque entretiendrait l'illusion de pouvoir le comprendre ?", quant à lui, relève de l'agnosticisme.




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Le fantôme de Cosmique

[ADN_ARN]

------------------------------

Les théistes croient à l’omniscience et à l’omnipotence de la tasse de thé.

Les athé(e)s croient peut-être à l’inexistence de l’omniscience et de l’omnipotence de la tasse de thé, mais ils l’expriment différemment. En effet, ils disent qu’ils ne croient pas à cette omniscience ni à cette omnipotence.

Mais ils peuvent aussi exprimer cette idée sur le mode positif au moyen d’un verbe autre que le verbe « croire ». Ce verbe, c’est le verbe « penser ».

Les athé(e)s pensent que l’omniscience et l’omnipotence de la tasse de thé sont inexistantes.

Ce disant ils réfutent la qualité de croyants qu’on veut leur attribuer et revendiquent leur qualité de penseur, quitte à paraître un peu orgueilleux.

------------------------------

[Cosmique]

On parle parfois d'athéisme positif pour désigner l'affirmation de l'inexistence de toute divinité, et d'athéisme négatif quand il s'agit d'une simple absence de croyance (cf: Portée de l'athéisme). Dans ce sens, l'agnosticisme est une forme d'athéisme négatif et non pas d'athéisme positif, militantiste, dont il s'agit généralement lorsqu'on oppose athéisme et théisme. Aussi, dès que quelqu'un s'affiche athé en tentant de justifier sa position, il rejoint les croyants. Les véritables agnostiques, quant à eux, ne s'affichent ni comme athés, ni même comme athés négatifs, se contentant d'être discrets et d'éviter de cultiver quelque croyance que ce soit en quelque vérité absolue.





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Le fantôme de Cosmique

[uobbuob]

l'imorbabilité de dieu est une faille conceptuelle, une impuissance à définir un language entre ce qui se passe et ce qu'on en pense. dans l'ancien testament l'Éternel est l'état, il dicte ce qui doit être et advenir. et cela se passe comme tel autant dans l'affliction que dans l'allégresse.

pour moi la conscience donne naissance à la dualité corps-esprit. la fourmis est entièrement soumise à l'éternel tous ses mouvements s'effectuent dans l'absolu néant. elle ne connait pas qu'elle est. il n'y a que la conscience pour le reconnaître. à partir de là, qu'on soit croyant, athée ou agnostique un language s'établit qui définit ce qui se passe. ce language s'articule par notre perception de l'éternel, la constitution de notre corps, la destinée de l'exsitence. il n'y a pas là le moindre soupçon d'improbabilité.

victor, ya un loop sur gould dans mon salon. et sur le mur un rhinocéros dans une barque. le rameur peine.

e la nave va

[ADN_ARN]

... Aussi, dès que quelqu'un s'affiche athé en tentant de justifier sa position, il rejoint les croyants ...

L'athé(e) ne justifie sa position que dans la seule mesure où il n'a pas à la justifier. L'athé(e) n'a rien à prouver et encore moins à justifier. Si le croyant affirme qu'une tasse de thé gouverne le monde, il lui reste à le prouver. Le fardeau de la preuve lui appartient en totalité.

Cette demande de preuve est souvent mal comprise, ou éludée. Elle est fondée sur la méthode scientifique. Ni plus, ni moins.

L'athé(e) ne rejoint pas ceux qui croient à l'omniscience et à l'omnipotence de la tasse de thé. Il s'oppose à eux.

Il s'oppose à eux car ceux-ci affirment ce qu'ils veulent sans jamais avancer la moindre prémisse d'entrée en matière de début de commencement de préambule de balbutiement de PREUVE.

Il s'opposent à eux le temps d'une intolérance de leur part, c'est-à-dire le temps d'une tautologie de tasse de thé.

Par ailleurs, les athé(e)s sont - ou devraient être - infiniment reconnaissants envers les religions de toutes les tasses de thé, qui ont toutes déclaré qu'elles étaient la seule et unique vérité de leur tasse de thé à eux.

Elles lui ont donné envie de la connaître, la vérité ...

.

[Cosmique]

ADN_ARN, vous décrivez l'agnosticisme (sauf pour votre dernière phrase). Si tous les athés étaient agnostiques alors je serais plutôt d'accord avec ce que vous affirmez dans votre dernier message, mais ce n'est pas le cas. Il existe, par exemple, de nombreux 'scientifiques' se disant athés et qui prétendent dogmatiquement que tout peut être expliqué par le hasard et quelques lois mécanistes. Ce ne sont donc pas de véritables athés direz-vous, je vous comprends, mais le fait est qu'ils s'affirment bel et bien comme étant athés avec comme conséquence que ce terme est généralement compris, sur la place publique, là même où se tient un débat plutôt émotif sur la laïcité, comme porteur d'une affirmation de l'inexistence de toute divinité, affirmation ne pouvant en rien être démontrée et qui relève donc de la croyance. Et de plus, à chaque fois qu'un 'athé' débat avec un 'théiste', il cesse d'être agnostique.

En d'autres termes, vous semblez nier l'existence de l'athéisme positif et prétendre que seul existe l'athéisme négatif (voir à ce propos mon message précédent).




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Le fantôme de Cosmique