Le 14-nov.-06, à 07:52, Tom Caylor a écrit :
> > Brent Meeker wrote: >> Tom Caylor wrote: >>> Brent Meeker wrote: >>>> An excellent essay. I agree with almost everything you wrote; and >>>> you put it very well. Would you mind if I cross posted it to Vic >>>> Stenger's AVOID-L mailing list. You can check out the list here: >>>> http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/ > >>> Although Victor Stenger doesn't use the word "anti-natural", the >>> following equation is what he is assuming in his atheistic arguments: >>> supernatural = anti-natural. > >>> Therefore he thinks that a proof of theism would amount to finding a >>> violation of natural law. Since he finds no such violation (which I >>> would argue is a circular argument based on the definition of >>> natural) >>> he claim this proves atheism beyond a reasonable doubt (what is the >>> measure of certainty/uncertainty?). > > >>> In terms of Bruno's provability, this is akin to saying that a proof >>> of >>> the existence of a non-trivial G*/G can be obtained by finding an >>> inconsistency in G. This does not make sense. This is like saying >>> the >>> only god that can exist is an inconsistent god. > >> A theist God (as opposed to a deist God) is one who intervenes in the >> natural order, i.e. does miracles. Stenger will readily admit that >> his argument does not apply to a deist God. > >> Brent Meeker > > The problem (or challenge :) is that the meaning of "natural order" > is open to much debate, especially here on the Everything List. > Everything is up for grabs, so much so that it can be a challenge to > figure out where any order comes from, resulting in problems such as > white rabbits. When we start with Everything, the problem is not just > "How can anything interesting happen (like life, not to mention our > stereotypical 'miracles'?" (the something-from-nothing question), > but also "How can any order be birthed out of the plenitudinous sea > of disorder?" So in this Everything context, not having the whole > picture of what the "natural order" is implies a lack of knowledge > of what it would be to "intervene" on the natural order. > > Of course if we're talking about theism, then the nature of > "intervention" is limited by certain parameters related to whatever > god is supposedly intervening. These parameters are a function of > contingent aspects, such as, in the case of the biblical God's > universe, the presence of evil and sacrificial love. But such facts > are probably considered too contingent for a List like this, where > Everything is supposed to be impersonal. (Is it?) 0-personal, yes. I can argue we got that idea from Plotinus and his followers (the neoplatonist christians and non christians). The "one" is not a thinker, nor even a person. That was clear earlier for many among the Chinese "philosophers". > Unfortunately, as > Blaise Pascal noted, if the solution to the problem of evil is based on > contingent facts, then staying at a general metaphysical (Everything) > level is not going to get us in contact with the solution. One > possible insight that we can get from Everything-level discussion, if > the thinker is willing to accept it, is to realize that a solution > based on contingent facts in history is not ruled out by general > philosophical thought about Everything. Another insight is to realize > that there is no solution to the problem of evil (or the mind-body > problem...) at the (non-contingent) Everything level. Of course I disagree. With the comp hyp, the mind-body problem is partially reduced into a measure problem with respect to n-person points of view. The evil problem, by many aspects is simpler, and related to incompleteness. It would be long to develop this here, but a remark by André Weyl, the french mathematician, could be relevant here: "God exists because Mathematics is consistent, and the devil exists because we cannot prove it". (Quoted in Benacerraf paper "God, the Devil and Gödel" ref in my thesis). > And if there's > no solution to a problem that is part of the universe, then perhaps the > (impersonal) Everything approach is not sufficient for dealing with > everything. The "impersonal" feature is not related with "our everything" approach. It is related with any scientific approach. Science *is* third personal. But this does not mean that science cannot study "first person" matter. It is enough to provide a third person approach to first person notion. > > Getting back to the more impersonal question, as has been observed on > this List multiple times, there is a problem with discerning the source > of order in the universe. In which "universe"? (physical, mathematical, computer-theoretical, arithmetical ...). The word universe is worst than the word "god" in the sense that many people, since about 1500 years, take for granted that there is a primitively physical universe. But such an assumption is no more an explanation than the dishonest use of "God" during centuries. > Where does this natural order come from that > we can make laws about it, and predict nature's actions fairly > accurately, at least for our purposes? Why is it that we aren't > destroyed by savage white rabbits out of nowhere? yes that's the question we talk about since a long time. > Proposed > explanations include the use of ideas such as the Anthropic Principle, > Occam's Razor, some kind of "measure", numbers, local order at > the expense of disorder somewhere else far away, etc. So again, in the > light of this lack of understanding, it seems pretty presumptuous for > us to say that there must not be interventions in the natural order > simply because we don't see any as we've defined them. I agree with you. But the word "god" and "natural order" are very fuzzy, and rather dangerous to use out of an axiomatic or scientific context, and, as I said, such notion have been out of the realm of ratio since the closure of Plato Academy. > (Then we > trap ourselves even more when we attach the label "natural order" > to Everything we observe, whether we can explain it "naturally" or > not.) Perhaps the following analogy will help to open up the > possibilities (not probabilities!) in our brains. This is from C.S. > Lewis as he put it in his book "Miracles". > > Tom > > "Let us suppose a race of people whose peculiar mental limitation > compels them to regard a painting as something made up of little > coloured dots which have been put together like a mosaic. Studying the > brushwork of a great painting through their magnifying glasses, they > discover more and more complicated relations between the dots, and sort > these relations out, with great toil, into certain regularities. Their > labour will not be in vain. These regularities will in fact > "work"; they will cover most of the facts. But if they go on to > conclude that any departure from them would be unworthy of the painter, > and an arbitrary breaking of his own rules, they will be far astray. > For the regularities they have observed never were the rule the painter > was following. What they painfully reconstruct from a million dots, > arranged in an agonizing complexity, he really produced with a single > lightning-quick turn of the wrist, his eye meanwhile taking in the > canvass as a whole and his mind obeying laws of composition which the > observers, counting their dots, have not yet come within sight of, and > perhaps never will. I do not say that the normalities of Nature are > unreal. The living fountain of divine energy, solidified for purposes > of this spatio-temporal Nature into bodies moving in space and time, > and thence, by our abstract thought, turned into mathematical formula, > does in fact, for us, commonly fall into such and such patterns. But to > think that a disturbance of them would constitute a breach of the > living rule and organic unity whereby God, from his own point of view, > works, is a mistake. If miracles do occur then we may be sure that not > to have wrought them would be the real inconsistency." Nice but unconvincing, because the word "miracle" has no clear meaning, or perhaps a too much clear meaning in our civilization. It cannot be an inconsistency, so in the everything-like theories (like comp and QM), a miracle can only be a rare event. But even this could be used in a non scientific way for explaining too much away. Is the origin of life a rare quantum possibility? I doubt it, and I think that such a move should not be taken too quickly. Is the origin of numbers a miracle? I cannot conceive it like that, but then I know numbers are *the* most unexplained mystery, something going beyond the human mind and apparently even beyond the lobian mind (of machine or angels). But a mystery is not a miracle. Number theory is full of mysteries, and incredible "coincidences", but only a man, or a (lobian) entity can "feel" such lack of understanding ... Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
