Posted on 01/07/2002 8:19:37 AM PST by dead
The logic of this statement is completely at odds with itself.
Just as any language is an invention. Even the lowest of the species have language. Are they capable of invention?
The natural principles described by mathematics are pre-existing. So how come we first "invent" an area of mathematics and only subsequently "discover" that it describers Nature?
I can't recall who once said: "God is a mathematician."
Some mathematician, no doubt.
Just for fun, on what document, quote, theory do you rest the idea that God is perfect?
And if God is/was perfect, why would there be the need for anything else? (What motivated God? A lacking? A desire?) It would seem reasonable to assume that ALL (God) was not perfect until he "let there be light" etc.
In which case, I've got some funny hunches about the perfection (God) the universe(s) are completing....
Basically, God is (re)creating himself through reality, like a smoke-ring twisting around itself as it moves into the future.
Maybe "reality" is the only way God can "travel".
Just for fun, on what document, quote, theory do you rest the idea that God is perfect?
And if God is/was perfect, why would there be the need for anything else? (What motivated God? A lacking? A desire?) It would seem reasonable to assume that ALL (God) was not perfect until he "let there be light" etc.
In which case, I've got some funny hunches about the perfection (God) the universe(s) are completing....
Basically, God is (re)creating himself through reality, like a smoke-ring twisting around itself as it moves into the future.
Maybe "reality" is the only way God can "travel".
Hey now! I resemble that remark. LOL
I suspect, though, that the type of ETI that the author meant was not a cute one like ET, but an awe-inspiring one like .... < searches for analogy from SF > .... Apollo in the Star Trek episode, "Who Mourns for Adonis?" Not God, but impressive enough to be a god to people significantly less advanced.
Would any sufficiently advanced ETSCI be indistingushable from God?
The more I think about it, the funnier it gets.
I'm no Biblical scholar (and am not now nor have ever been associated w/ a conspiracy--ignorant or otherwise) but I think Holy Scripture presents God as a perfect being.
Just for fun let's look at Milton's answer to your question, ie, why bother w/ creation if He were indeed complete.
In Paradise Lost JM posits that w/ the fall of Satan, God created man to redeem perfection. When man was tricked by Satan, Jesus Christ was sent to earth to redeem man (sorry, a bad synopsis). In the fullness of time JC will return and Paradise (along w/ us) will be regained.
IOW Creation is the process God works through to maintain perfection. Not entirely different from your smoke rings but w/ a point. Obviously the point is probably far from the mark, but I think worthy of consideration. (Milton's point-not mine).
Udderly ridiculous.
I think it was Eddington, as others have probably already answered. I think Earnst Mach was closer to the truth in saying that God would have no need of mathematics. Just as we have no need of mathematics to add one and one, as we can directly visualize the answer.
Numbers are a language: "The set of all sets that are simular to themselves" (I think thats correct)
So 'math' is an invention (language) that allows us to explore/discover 'logic' which is (we hope) an underlying 'law' of reality.
Then along comes quantum physics =)
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