[net.religion] God, Goedel, Wittgenstein

ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (10/23/85)

>> Sounds good that everything is explicable by the great god
>> Science until you run into somebody like Goedel (who if
>> we are allowed to extrapolate his ideas) predicting that
>> we will NOT be able to explain it all without reference
>> outside the System.
>> 
>> Maybe God is the Outside-the-System reference...maybe not ?
>Bob Brown

>Stretch your brain a little further, Bob.  If God is the "outside the
>reference system", then by the same principle the God cannot be omniscient.
>Mike Huybensz

    I think Bob's notion of God as representing a higher level of truth than
    can be verified within the system is very close to what mystics have
    been saying for a long time. Mike, your objection is totally losing.  A
    `higher truth' that includes all truths perceivable from within a system
    as well as those only perceivable from without IS TOTALLY logical.

    Revelation is the only way to percieve a `higher truth' -- one that is
    not observable from the axioms yet established.  Normative assertions
    (eg- It is wrong to gain enjoyment from the suffering of others), which
    are required to establish ethics, are mundane examples of such `higher
    truths'. They cannot be established from a logical empirical basis.

    The `Goedelian' nature of ethics (and God) seem clear enough to me.
    Wittgenstein said this quite well in Tractatus:

6.41    The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world
        everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it, there
        is no value -- and if it were, it would be of no value. 
        If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all
        happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
        What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise
        this would again be accidental.
        It must lie outside the world.
    
6.42    Hence there can be no ethical propositions..
..    
6.4312  ...The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside
        of space and time. (It is not the problems of natural science which
        have to be solved).

6.432   How the world is, is completely indifferent to what is higher. God
        does not reveal himself in the world.

-michael

dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi) (10/25/85)

In article <613@spar.UUCP> ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) writes:
>    I think Bob's notion of God as representing a higher level of truth than
>    can be verified within the system is very close to what mystics have
>    been saying for a long time. Mike, your objection is totally losing.  A
>    `higher truth' that includes all truths perceivable from within a system
>    as well as those only perceivable from without IS TOTALLY logical.

I have posted, separately, a proof that there is at least one true statement
that God doesn't know.

>    Revelation is the only way to percieve a `higher truth' -- one that is
>    not observable from the axioms yet established.  Normative assertions
>    (eg- It is wrong to gain enjoyment from the suffering of others), which
>    are required to establish ethics, are mundane examples of such `higher
>    truths'. They cannot be established from a logical empirical basis.

"Ethics" is a word we use to describe a process in which humans
evaluate the actions of themselves and others.  Given that the human
being performing these evaluations is a physical system, ethical
evaluation is a physical activity.  Rather than something "revealed",
I think ethics is a matter of neural "wiring" and past experience.
(Hardware & software, if you prefer.)
-- 
David Canzi		"Permission is not freedom."

rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (11/04/85)

>>>    I think Bob's notion of God as representing a higher level of truth than
>>>    can be verified within the system is very close to what mystics have
>>>    been saying for a long time. Mike, your objection is totally losing.  A
>>>    `higher truth' that includes all truths perceivable from within a system
>>>    as well as those only perceivable from without IS TOTALLY logical.

>>I have posted, separately, a proof that there is at least one true statement
>>that God doesn't know.

>     Hmmm. I did not see that proof, but I have no reason to doubt your 
>     confidence in it validity. I might as well give up. You win.
>     Hey God! Stop existing!! 
>     God does not exist, as you have so cleverly demonstrated.

Your carefulness in reading is apparent.  He said "a proof that there is at
least one true statement that God doesn't know".  Not a proof of god's
non-existence.  It's nice to see a disinterested third party example of
your taking someone's article and reading into it what you like and making
stupid comments about it.  And to think, I thought it was just me...

>>"Ethics" is a word we use to describe a process in which humans
>>evaluate the actions of themselves and others.  Given that the human
>>being performing these evaluations is a physical system, ethical
>>evaluation is a physical activity.  Rather than something "revealed",
>>I think ethics is a matter of neural "wiring" and past experience.
>>(Hardware & software, if you prefer.) -- David Canzi

>     I agree Dave.  YOU are simply a physical being mechanically behaving
>     according to neural "wiring" and past experience. You and Rich Rosen
>     would make swell robot buddies. 
    
Note, readers, that Michael CANNOT provide a counterargument to what was said
(and very well, by the way, David!), so instead he resorts to a vacuous
emotionally rhetorical statement.  Beautiful.
-- 
Anything's possible, but only a few things actually happen.
					Rich Rosen    pyuxd!rlr

dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi) (11/05/85)

In article <2031@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes:

Thanks, Rich.  I'm glad you liked what I said, but it turns out I didn't
quite say what I really wanted to say.  In response to Michael saying
that ethics is some kind of "higher" truth that can only be learned via
revelation, I meant to say:

   "Ethics" is a word we use to describe a process in which humans
   evaluate the actions of themselves and others.  Given that the human
   being performing these evaluations is a physical system, ethical
   evaluation is a physical activity.  So you can think of ethics as
   a branch of physics.
   
(Beep, beep, robot buddy.)
-- 
David Canzi		"Permission is not freedom."