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From: martillo@csd2.UUCP (Joachim Martillo)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Proof of Outlandish Propositions
Message-ID: <3780071@csd2.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Aug-85 10:23:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: csd2.3780071
Posted: Fri Aug 23 10:23:00 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 26-Aug-85 00:53:29 EDT
References: <293@mit-athena.UUCP>
Organization: New York University
Lines: 30

I was not clear enough in my original posting.

Rosen believes in science but not in God.

My claim is that modern science rests on certain beliefs for which
there is no logical basis and which must be taken on faith.

The first is that "induction"  (in a loose  sense) works.  That  is we
can take our few observations and generalize into physical laws.

The next is that  somehow mathematical equations can be  used to model
the universe.   Now we know that  there  are fundamental problems with
the Hilbert/Bernays/Goedel approach to mathematics.  Also even without
the problems in mathematics itself, many of the equations which we use
tend to come up with  embarrassing singularities.  This is particulary
a problem with the  most empirically supported  cosmological equations
as t ->   0.   There  also  may be  some    fundamental problems  with
mathematically modeling extremely small distance extremely high energy
events.

The last is repeatability. That is if I  repeat an  experiment N times
and get some set of results and then if  I repeat the experiment again
at some unspecified  time, I will  get  some results   related in some
rational way to the first set of results.

Without these assumptions, there is no modern science.  Modern science
works well, but that does not prove these assumptions but rather shows
they are good axioms.  I am perfectly reasonable  to take the efficacy
of these axioms as possible evidence  for the existence  of a divinity
stabilizing the universe in some sense.