From pycyn@aol.com Tue Jun 13 02:21:36 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 25884 invoked from network); 13 Jun 2000 09:21:34 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 13 Jun 2000 09:21:34 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-r20.mx.aol.com) (152.163.225.162) by mta1 with SMTP; 13 Jun 2000 09:21:34 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-r20.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v27.10.) id a.ca.5ec07b8 (3953) for ; Tue, 13 Jun 2000 05:00:40 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 05:00:40 EDT Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: lujvo To: lojban@egroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 3.0 16-bit for Windows sub 41 From: pycyn@aol.com X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 3031 In a message dated 00-06-12 18:12:27 EDT, robin writes: << If I read "lo " where foo translates to "the mother of God", I'm going to be pissed. It assumes that there is an objectively observable God _and_ that said God has a mother _and_ that it's the God you're talking about. I would find that set of assumptions offensive. >> Since you have already withdrawn the basic one paert of this, it seems overzealous to work on another, but where in is the "objectively observable" part? Real, sure, existent, yes -- but not observable (let alone objectively observable -- a remarkably unlojbanic notion, even if it were meaningful). If you mean to insist that that is what "real" means, then I have to tell you that, if so, then almost nothing is real at all -- nothing in science and almost nothing in your room. Even Carnap got around to admitting that eventually -- and changed what was needed for soemthing to be real. I do agree that I would find the assumption that God was objectively observable or that God (as God, at least) had a mother offensive, and that may be your complaint, lese deite. If so, sorry to jump at you. But it does sound otherwise, and about that other view I wonder what is offensive (or is it just the assumption part) about the common view that God exists and interacts with the world. It is hard to prove, of course, or even to make plausible, but it shares that position with its denial, by essentially the same arguments (and the denial has the added burden of the difficulty --legendary in detective fiction -- of proving a negative). "We had no need of that hypothesis" just means we have not gotten the system complex enough to adequately represent reality.