In Reply to: Re: Faith, Reason, God and Other Imponderables posted by Farmer on July 26, 2006 at 05:19:14:
Farmer:
Thanks for your kind words. I see my “Journey” as grace extended to me from God to “show me great and mighty things” I couldn’t know, or arrange to know, by myself. As I went back to university post-TF, and began today’s so-called “Higher education” re-learning process, I found that education was an industry, with a specific PR and Marketing format, with all products narrowly focused and all employees tightly controlled, and academic fairness not an option. I got into a lot of heated conversations, and learned to pick my battles, and especially to be led by the Spirit, so as to not “cast…pearls before swine, nor…give that which is holy to the dogs”. I got a little tired of getting “rended”; if you know what I mean!
I like a good-spirited open debate. My West Point Dad sent me at age 12 to a military school, and at that early age I was on a team with all older students, and usually won arguments of various kinds—that’s not my intention today, since winning an argument doesn’t necessarily win the person argued with; of course. And chat-board posts are not always mediated fairly, and so on (the Coordinators HAVE done a VERY good job recently, though; IMO—Kudos; y’all! ;-)).
I do love math the same way you do; I believe. To me it’s like learning Russian or an Asian tonal ideographic language—it takes a while to learn the specific language, its conventions, direct and implied meanings, and so on. I especially enjoyed a (graduate) course in Symbolic Logic—every problem was a proof, and it was very definitely a mathematical system of its own—very elegant and foundational! I enjoyed it more than differential equations! I love Gödel and Marsh, as well as Einstein and Bose, especially.
Einstein argued with Neils Bohr that a more complete view of reality than micro-quantum probabilities must exist, Einstein wanted a view that covered both the macro-world, and the quantum world, and objected to the “punctuated determinism” (mine) view proposed by Bohr as absolute. I view Bohr as an idealist, bordering on a quasi-Gnostic, whereas I view Einstein as a purely mathematical physicist, who insisted that “God does not play dice with the universe”. Extrapolating, Bohr gave a passing non-respect to the constantly verifiable classic view of physics—that God indeed created a universe that was observably logical and reasonable, and needing revelational knowledge to fully understand certain things. Bohr pretended the classical view very LANGUAGE could not adequately even BEGIN to describe “quantum realties” as somehow immeasurably more then MATHEMATICALLY-BASED probability projections. I believe that Einstein SUCCESSFULLY defeated Bohr’s arguments, with the simple “slitted cards” experiments which simultaneously MEASURED particle AND wave/quantum-probability properties SIMULTANEOUSLY!
I think the Copenhagen Institute was far more interested in their own view of “politico-physics”, if you will, than with pure science, and that they shafted Einstein; BIG time. Pretending to have a “scientific” basis for moral relativism was the reason for the philosophical CON; IMO.
The lives of mathematicians and physicists fascinate me, as well as the historical development and social content of the systems they discovered—like Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz simultaneously discovering calculus; for instance (neither one was atheistic—BOTH were theistic; in fact—Hmmm!). Plus the fact that quite a few mathematicians were more than a little nuts!
Please keep me posted as you are able to pursue your math studies—I’d be very interested! Keep your brain alive and interested, and practice the disciplines—those are valid and valuable math languages you’ve learned—stay agile and fluent with them. Or you’ll regret it! Aging will eventually cut into personal acuity!
I read a lot of arguments on both sides, and look for non-linearity mistakes, and the most obvious logical blunders—there are a lot on both sides, as well as some seedy characters (on BOTH sides, IMO). I was “nihilist” after I sat the linearity of rationalist/materialist/atheism collapse on its own, and when I was an atheist, I presumed the superiority of atheists over all other “true believers”, but even then I called it what it was, a belief system hanging on a weak grouping of weaker hypotheses which seemed to contradict the most basic PONDERABLES, such as entropic doom/thermodynamics and linear logic itself---rationalISM versus provable rationality.
I cannot remember the last debate with an atheist, where the main part of their statements were NOT an attack on their opponent, with merely an appeal to unestablished authority (the logical mistakes of ad hominem and ad bacculum) when unable to make cogent answers of their own regarding atheism’s own burden of proof in ALL areas of strictly done science, and an inability to avoid even the most basic of logical mistakes, such as “false premise”, “incomplete middle”, “begging the question”, and “circular argumentation”. I don’t even like to respond to someone who cannot manage these problems in an open discussion—I don’t mean that condescendingly, it is usually just a waste of time, and a verbal fight generating mostly heat, with very little actual “light”.
Speaking of scientists who are Christians and Creationists as not “lack[ing] in any way supporters of any kind of science…:, I just answered a post on NDN where the other poster had come across a so-called “theistic evolutionist”, and cited some interesting sources for her to consult at her convenience—see http://www.newdaynews.com/fun/index.cgi/read/1926.
I don’t plan to be silenced. I DO want to be able to “be ready to give an answer” with respect, and I hope to avoid discussions where the “questioner” has no intention of keeping the rules of civil debate and discussion. 2 Tim 2:22-26.
“Googling” is easy—taking the time to understand and present a cogent argument, and to not just parrot someone else’s ideas, is much more difficult. “Spamming and dumping” URLs is NOT an intelligent discussion, it’s a dodge. If one does not actually have the firepower with which to first understand the subject, then studying ALL sides of the argument, FIRST, is definitely in order.
Thanks again; Farmer—I enjoyed your post, as usual.
Sincerely,
OT2 (OldtimerToo)