Re: Mathematics and God

From: Androcles (androc1es_at_nospamblueyonder.co.uk)
Date: 08/14/04 

Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 20:25:21 GMT

"Franco" <englishenglish@tin.it> wrote in message
news:BKlRc.87569$OR2.4709979@news3.tin.it...

|
| What i call "plagiarism" is when a child(a person that can't distinguish
| what is true and what is false) believe his parents, and he learnd and
| believe that because his/hers parents teach that to him/her.

That is rather an odd definition of plagiarism, but I see your point.
Plagiarism is the willful repetition of the ideas, thoughts or works of
another, claimed as one's own unless openly declared otherwise. Tom Lehrer
intimated, if not openly accused, Lobachevski of plagiarizing Riemann for
his follow-up of Riemann's treatment of Euclid's fifth postulate.
The child does not wilfully believe his parents, he does so through naivety.
I stopped believing mine at around age 10 and was fully atheistic at 12. I
suppose I was agnostic in the intervening months. I confess to having a
grandfather that had no religious convictions, though.
Perhaps you mean a conditioned response, much as a Pavlovian dog will
salivate when a bell is wrung.
IMO many people behave or converse according to their conditioning. I knew
someone that would insist that when she died her soul went to heaven, but
was unable to tell me what a 'soul' was. That was in response to my asking
if she thought she would go to heaven when she died. Apparently she thought
of her soul as she might think of an arm or a leg, something that was part
of her but not her 'self'.
Androcles

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