On Mon, Mar 6, 2017 at 5:10 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> >> >> Yes it's possible that a majority of those fluent in the English language >> could have decided that the ASCII sequence "God" means the unknown >> ultimate/absolute reality, *BUT THEY DID NOT*; instead they decided that >> sequence means a intelligent conscious omniscient omnipotent PERSON who >> created the universe. > > > > > The majority are not doing science, simply. > As I've said before, the meaning a ASCII string is not determined by science, it is determined by the majority vote of those who have a opinion on the subject. Always. >> >> In any language the majority is always always always the final authority >> on what a word means. > > > > > Not when we do science. > No ALWAYS! Most people have no opinion on what "2-acetoxybenzoic acid" means but those who know enough on the matter to vote have decided that the ASCII string means "aspirin". Can you name one short word used in everyday common speech that means something completely different if not downright contradictory when used in a scientific context? I can't. But of course theology is not science, it's not much of anything. > > Read any book in comparative theology. > Why on Earth would I want to do that?? Exactly what is the author of a book on theology a expert on? In the last thousand thousand years theology has made precisely *ZERO* discoveries. I know that's the correct number because I counted twice and got the same figure both times. > > > The reasoning does not depend on the choice of words at all. > Of course it does. Even if your reasoning proved that "God" exists all you would have really proven is that "stuff" exists. > > Your seem to work for the fundamentalists against any come back to reason > in the field, > I'm not the one who determines what a word means nor are you, that is determined by the collective activity of all English speakers. And I don't know what the "field" is you're referring to. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
