Posted on 06/23/2007 12:21:46 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
We know.
Actually, if understand Kurt Godel correctly (one of the most significant logicians of all time), he showed that a combination of simple self-evident axioms demands that we acknowledge the existence of true ‘supernatural’ theorems whose truth can never be proven directly. If true, Godel has demonstrated that science can indeed study certain aspects of the supernatural. And as far as I know, Godel has not been disproven.
Which means what, in the context of testing observations? That we don't really test our observations, or that there's no more basis to trust the results of the test than there was to trust the initial observation in the first place? Something else altogther? Nothing at all?
On the sidebar that followed:
Truly, no one is exempt from the "observer problem." And that includes theologians who sometimes wander beyond the revelations of God, fabricating doctrines and traditions of their own imaginings.
Some of them are harmless - like the color of the carpet - or pointless, like ritual washing of dishes. But some of them can be very harmful indeed, especially when they direct hapless followers away from God.
The most common problem vis-à-vis God and the observer problem is the tendency of men to anthropomorphize Him.
For instance, they may insist that God must comply with Aristotlean Laws of Logic. They might say, by reason of the Law of the Excluded Middle, commandments or revelations in Scripture must be either/or and never both.
As another example, they may insist that God must abide by their own sense of an arrow of time and thus cannot judge a person before he comes into existence to say or do anything whereby he would be judged.
By anthropomorphizing God, they deny God who IS and create a smaller "god" of their own imagining, one they can comprehend.
Sure it can. Ghost hunters use thermal vision and thermometers to look for ghosts.
But, since there is no such thing ghosts, they have yet to come up with any scientific proof.
Cordially,
Get over yourself ... you’re starting to sound like (not be, but be like) Ichneumon the perfect (or was prefect?).
I've heard your argument on this before, and probably responded similarly before, but the special status you attribute to matter in this respect is arbitrary. ALL scientific concepts (certainly all significant ones) are theory laden in the same or similar respects.
I wasn’t talking about ghosts. Godel’s theorems prove that either the universe is infinite, or it is finite and infinity lies outside the universe (as theists maintain). And seeing that virtually everything we have learned about the universe suggests that it is finite, theists are on much more solid ground than philosophical naturalists when they claim a spiritual creator from outside the physical universe created the same.
Thank you for your insights, A-G.
I agree that information is present in life, yet, I do not think that information is life.
I am thinking that there actually is some essence that is life, that it is either on or off, full or empty, complete or broken....something like that.
For instance, they may insist that God must comply with Aristotlean Laws of Logic. They might say, by reason of the Law of the Excluded Middle, commandments or revelations in Scripture must be either/or and never both.
As another example, they may insist that God must abide by their own sense of an arrow of time and thus cannot judge a person before he comes into existence to say or do anything whereby he would be judged.
By anthropomorphizing God, they deny God who IS and create a smaller "god" of their own imagining, one they can comprehend.
It's also possible (and common) to err in the opposite direction: To over (or too exclusively) emphasize God's transcendence at the expense of his immanence in the world.
For instance if God is truly immanent in the world, then some aspects of God do exist within "the arrow of time". (Some, and of course not all, which would be pantheism as opposed to theism.)
Likewise if God is ALL knowing then he must know, in some genuine fashion, of phenomena such as discovering and experiencing new things. Therefore God must have aspects of or within himself that are NOT omniscient, if God in His completeness is omniscient.
Of course both of these aspects, among others, are found in God's incarnation as Christ.
Anyway this opposite error makes for a "big" God, but also one far too distant from his creation.
If I were using the spiritual language of Christians (I Cor 2) to address those issues - my correspondents who do not speak that language would not understand.
But if my correspondents do speak that language and are also interested in the math and science, then I speak both.
So be wary of making assumptions about what others are saying, especially if you don't know the speaker.... If in doubt, it's better to ask for an outright clarification of what they're saying rather than to assume you understand what they said.
Both philosophers/theologians and scientists are human beings, and both are just as likely to have opinions formed from their own (limited) knowledge and experience. Both may also have valuable things to say; and they are not necessarily "mutually opposed," but perhaps each represents a complementary view.
The best rule (it seems to me) is to listen to what people have to say, and avoid "attributing motives," or otherwise trying to make one's opponent "look bad" (such as attempting to disqualify one's opponent as not qualified to speak to an issue -- I see that one around here a lot -- or gratuitously redefining his argument in absurd ways).
Here's a great rule of thumb from Victor Davis Hanson:
"In writing opinion journalism ... it’s a good idea to follow two general rules: never gratuitously, maliciously, or unfairly personally attack anyone — and never let a serious attack against yourself go unanswered."At the end of the day it is always possible to disagree yet still be civil in one's disagreement.
Just my two cents worth, tacticalogic. Thank you so much for writing!
I don't get this. I'm not a mathematician, but I thought Godel's proof referred to formal systems, like rational (and in the event man made) systems of mathematics.
How does a proof that formal systems cannot be complete (generate proofs of all true theorems) say anything about the universe, let alone what's beyond the universe? After all it's possible (is it not?) to have infinities within mathematics, for instance an infinite number of integers, without the universe itself being spatially infinite.
I disagree.
I would say that there are far more people like myself who wonder why the God of the Bible (especially the Old Testament) seems to be archaically unsophisticated. God's endless blathering about how to grow your crops, treat your slaves, and run your small regional city states makes him seem like a local wise man squatting in an incense-filled lambskin tent rather than the incredible, timeless, all knowing ruler of the universe.
If God is so omnipotent and involved in the goings on of heaven and Earth, why does he limit his scripture's geographic reach to middle eastern backwoods? Surely there were righteous men and human upheavals happening elsewhere in the world that could have used his guidance.
His explanation of the creation time, space, and the Earth reads more like a big budget version of the story we tell children to explain where babies come from; instead of the stork delivering the baby to awaiting parents, we have God fashioning the universe in a few days like he's putting together a train set.
Why does God's words seem so caught up in the dated rituals and social norms of slavery and animal sacrifice that even the laziest and amoral of modern men have long abandoned?
The New Testament is somewhat of an improvement to the Pentateuch and later books of the Old, but it still doesn't do much to improve the ostensible impression that the God of the Bible is very much a being invented by Bronze age story tellers.
I think I've tried to do that. While sometimes it's a conscious effort to not attribute motives to some of the answers, I think in some ways it's more difficult to not attribute motives to failure to answer at all.
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