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- From: fc03@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (Frederick W. Chapman)
- Newsgroups: sci.math
- Subject: Re: God's Existence
- Message-ID: <1992Sep4.045607.93521@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu>
- Date: 4 Sep 92 04:56:07 GMT
- Organization: Lehigh University
- Lines: 101
-
- In article <1992Sep2.235433.89970@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au>,
- kevin@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au writes:
-
- >I can't seriously believe that someone can assert God's existence by
- >claiming it is an axiom - written in the bible. [...]
-
- "God says, 'I exist'; therefore God exists." is indeed a silly circular
- argument. (Let me add, though, that if God Himself were to tap me on the
- shoulder and say, "Made ya look!" or "Mars needs women." or anything else
- for that matter, I personally would find that to be a rather convincing
- proof of His existence.)
-
- The "I AM THAT I AM" Biblical passage referred to here is NOT intended to
- be taken as a proof of the existence of God. I am told that a better
- translation of this is "I AM WHAT I WILL BE". The essential meaning of the
- passage is a statement about WHAT GOD IS LIKE (i.e., God is eternal and
- unchanging), NOT a statement about whether God exists. (In fact, "I AM" is
- used in the Bible as a name for God, which French Bibles tend to translate
- into something that means "The Eternal One".)
-
- Again, this passage is NOT intended to be taken as an existence proof.
- Besides, after reading the 50 or so chapters of Genesis, and however many
- chapters of Exodus, the reader is STILL not certain of the viability of the
- book's main character and needs reassurance from existence proofs??? :-)
-
-
- >Reason 2. It is not immediately clear what an axiom in the real world is,
- >or even more seriously, how we know we have one in our hands when we think
- >we do. Note that by an axiom I mean a NON-TAUTOLOGICAL sentence about the
- >world. [...]
-
- My guess is that the original poster is using "axiom" in an ENTIRELY
- different way than you are! I personally would use "axiom" as follows in
- this context. Think of a theology as a belief system, analogous to an
- axiomatic system in mathematics. The most basic, fundamental assertions of
- the theology are generally called "tenets of the faith" and correspond to
- what are called "axioms" in a mathematical system; i.e., such assertions
- are considered to be given, accepted without proof, and form the starting
- point from which all else follows. In this sense, the existence of God is
- an "axiom" for many systems of religous beliefs.
-
- ...........................................................................
-
- I posted a week or two ago that I believe that science and religion operate
- in disjoint domains and that neither is adequate to address the issues
- typically dealt with by the other. It follows from this that I necessarily
- believe a scientific/mathematical proof of the existence of God to be both
- impossible and entirely unnecessary.
-
- OK, let me qualify this by saying that mathematical logic might yield a
- possible exception; perhaps God is waiting for us, sitting atop the
- hierarchy of sets. :-) Picture this scene in your minds...
-
- Logician: *puff* *puff* *puff* Boy! What a long climb!
- God: Welcome! I was beginning to think you'd NEVER get here. What
- took you so long?
- Logician: Well, just before I reached the Inaccessible Cardinal, we ran
- out of rope. We had to send Hartog back for more.
-
- Sort of the intellectual equivalent of Moses meeting God at the top of Mt.
- Sinai, I suppose. Speaking of which, while miracles themselves do not
- constitute evidence for the existence of God (especially if we define
- miracles to be phenomena beyond the explanatory powers of the scientific
- theories of the time, or even simply as phenomena outside the realm of
- ordinary every-day experience), a miracle followed by a conversation with
- God, perhaps accompanied by some stone tablets with writting on them to
- serve as a memento of the occasion, makes for a much less ambiguous
- interpretation of the significance of the event. My point is that
- (Judeo-Christian) religious accounts of miracles do not present isolated
- occurrences, but events which took place in a CONTEXT that gave (and
- continues to give) them their meaning. In (Judeo-Christian) religious
- accounts, miracles are NOT intended to be taken as proofs of the EXISTENCE
- of God (the faithful already believe that!), but as INDICATIONS OF THE
- PRESENCE of God (and/or as demonstrations of the CHARACTERISTICS of God).
- Miracles are just God's little way of saying, "Yoo hoo! Here I AM! (Come
- see what I'm like!)"
-
- e.g., "Moses, my main man! *BUSH BURNS BUT IS NOT CONSUMED* Yeah, that's
- right -- over here, home boy. Let me give you 10..." :-)
-
- Actually, the Bible is not especially concerned with proving the existence
- of God; historically (especially in Old Testament times, but also in New
- Testament times), the problem was not that people did not believe in ANY
- gods, but that they believed in TOO MANY gods. Identifying the true God is
- a substantial Biblical theme (e.g., Jehovah vs. Baal in the story of
- Elijah); showing that there are any gods at all is not.
-
- ...........................................................................
-
- "100 uncircumcised Philistines on the wall, 100 uncircumcised Philistines,
- you take one down and *LIGHTNING BOLT* *ZOT* ... 99 uncircumcised
- Philistines on the wall." [DECREMENT; REPEAT]
-
- --
-
- o ------------------------------------------------------------------------- o
- | Frederick W. Chapman, User Services, Computing Center, Lehigh University |
- | Campus Phone: 8-3218 Preferred E-mail Address: fc03@Lehigh.Edu |
- | "The day after yesterday is the second-to-last day before |
- | the rest of your life the day after tomorrow." |
- o ------------------------------------------------------------------------- o
-