Bruno Marchal wrote: > Le 24-nov.-06, à 10:03, Tom Caylor a écrit : > > > Have you read Francis Schaeffer's trilogy of books: The God Who Is > > There, Escape From Reason, and He Is There And He Is Not Silent. He > > talks about the consequences of the belief in the uniformity of natural > > causes in a closed system. > > No. But if you want to send a little summary, please do. > > If by uniformity of natural causes in a closed system you mean > something describable by a total computable function, I can understand > the point (but recall I don't assume neither the notion of Nature nor > of Cause). Now, the computerland is closed for diagonalization "only". > That is something quite different, making computerland much open than > anything describable by total computable functions. > > Bruno > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
There is no way that I can give a little summary, but I'll try anyway. I think this will also go towards addressing Stathis' allusion to faith. One thing Schaeffer did was remind us that the assumptions of nature and cause were foundational to modern science. We have to assume that there is a nature to reality in order to study it and use our reason to make sense of it. Reality has to "make sense" inherently, i.e. it has to have an order to it, in order for us to "make sense" of it. Our reason (rationality) makes use of antithesis, to induce cause and effect. Perhaps nature and cause do not appear as formal assumptions in comp, but do you not make use of a belief in them in the process of thinking and talking about comp, and surely in the process of empirically verifying/falsifying it? Schaeffer maintained that the basis for antithesis is not that it was an invention of Aristotle or anyone, but that the basis for antithesis is reality itself, based on the God who is there (as opposed to not being there). The existence of the personal God answers the questions: 1) Why is there something rather than nothing? i.e. the question of the origin of the form of the universe, why does it "make sense"? What is the basis for the nature of reality and beauty? 2) Why is man the way he/she is? Why is man able to have language and do science, and make sense of the world? Why is man able to love and figure out what is right? What is the basis for meaning? What is the basis for mind? How can persons know one another? 3) Why is man able to know anything, and know that he knows what he knows? What is the basis for truth? What is truth? However, from the birth of modern science, we have taken a journey to dispense with any kind of faith and try to be exhaustive in our automony and control. Ironically we have abandoned rationality (including antithesis), and we have abandoned ourselves to ourselves. We are lost in a silent sea of meaningless 0's and 1's, and man is a machine. This is why I said that when we put ourselves at the center of our worldview, it is a prison. Tom --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---