Tom Caylor wrote:
> 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
I want to be clear that it isn't modern science that is to blame, but
the abandonment of faith (being certain of what we do not see). It
isn't that there's something unique to this time in history either.
This has happened multiple times in history. Now we are seeing perhaps
a backlash from man as a machine, in lots of different ways e.g.
postmodernism, fundamentalism... But if there is a God who is there
and is not silent, then faith takes on a different meaning. Faith in
and of itself does not do the trick. It has to be faith in a real
reality, a true truth.
Tom
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Received on Wed Nov 29 2006 - 00:10:50 PST