> On 30 Oct 2019, at 11:42, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 5:40 AM Bruno Marchal <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > >> There is one why question religion can not answer and claims it would be > >> wicked to even ask: Why is a religious answer better than no answer at all? > > > If a religion answers, with an air of claiming it is a definitive answer; > > then it is not a religion, but a fraud. > > I agree of course but that wasn't what I was getting at. If there was some > deep existential problem you wanted to know more about I can understand why > you would want to discuss it with a mathematician or a scientist, but why > would you ask a expert on religion? Why would you expect a theologian to give > a better answer to the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" > than for example, an expert on gardening or an expert on plumbing?
Because theology was at the start suppose to handle this subject and type of questioning, and in fact, it all begun with Pythagorus’ proposal that everything is explained by the natural numbers. After that, theology has been a branch requiring a high level diploma in mathematics. Even in the years 1600, it was still normal for a (christian!) priest to be a good mathematician, like the bishop Nicolas Oresme, considered by some to be at the origin of “modern science” (a good book is https://www.jstor.org/stable/2853610?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) Then Digital Mechanism (aka computationalism) comes back to explaining indeed everything with natural numbers . It provides furthermore an explanation why we cannot use less than natural numbers (with addition and multiplication, or Turing equivalent). For example it can be proved that all axioms of Robinson Arithmetic(*) (RA) are independent of each other. None can be proved from the remaining one, and only the full seven axioms are Turing emulable. To be sure, we do have a much weaker theory than RA, usually called R, for Robinson again, but it has infinitely many axioms (which are all key theorems of RA to prove its Turing universality). So the first answer given by the earliest theologians was the correct one, *when* we assume Mechanism. That is not a definitive answer, as we cannot publicly know if mechanism is correct, even after surviving a classical teleportation (which can still lead to a private certainty, but that one *can* be false, due to anosognosia). Note that the metaphysical/theological (Aristotelian) materialist hypothesis also provides an answer, as it asserts that everything comes from some “physical reality”, which remains possible, but suffer from the hardness to define what physical means, and from having put the problem of mind under the rug for a very long period. The first test of digital mechanism (QM) sides much more for Mechanism than Materialism. The idea that theology is not the fundamental science is an idea which came after theology became simply a tool for bandits to manipulate people and exploits the natural fear of death. But if you read Proclus’ very classical treatise of neoplatonist theology, you will not see any references to revelation, or to sacred text, only to mathematics. It proceeds only through definition (rather precise for that time) and reasoning, and is not a long way from the “modern” (still a bit ignored) explanation through computer science, arithmetic and mathematical logic. Bruno (*) RA axioms are the axioms and inference rules of classical logic + the axioms: 1) 0 ≠ s(x) 2) s(x) = s(y) -> x = y 3) x = 0 v Ey(x = s(y)) 4) x+0 = x 5) x+s(y) = s(x+y) 6) x*0=0 7) x*s(y)=(x*y)+x Note that you can define and prove all of RA theorem and axioms in the simpler theory, not relying on classical logic, having the three inference rules: 1) If A = B and A = C, then B = C 2) If A = B then AC = BC 3) If A = B then CA = CB And the two axioms: 4) KAB = A 5) SABC = AC(BC) As I have shown, still this year. To avoid the trivial model, we add the axiom that S ≠ K, requiring then a bit of propositional logic (to handle the negation). Bruno > > 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 [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0x4Ar06EF74znRjAy7nLQuoQHj4qTaZdoq8R6F9HgeZQ%40mail.gmail.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0x4Ar06EF74znRjAy7nLQuoQHj4qTaZdoq8R6F9HgeZQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- 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 [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/786BC3D2-8B47-45D3-AD71-6818F7123DC8%40ulb.ac.be.
