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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.philosophy
Subject: God, Goedel, Wittgenstein
Message-ID: <613@spar.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-Oct-85 06:24:40 EST
Article-I.D.: spar.613
Posted: Wed Oct 23 06:24:40 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 31-Oct-85 01:49:21 EST
References: <10673@ucbvax.ARPA> <1744@akgua.UUCP> <788@cybvax0.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
Lines: 47
Xref: linus net.religion:7662 net.philosophy:2650

>> Sounds good that everything is explicable by the great god
>> Science until you run into somebody like Goedel (who if
>> we are allowed to extrapolate his ideas) predicting that
>> we will NOT be able to explain it all without reference
>> outside the System.
>> 
>> Maybe God is the Outside-the-System reference...maybe not ?
>Bob Brown

>Stretch your brain a little further, Bob.  If God is the "outside the
>reference system", then by the same principle the God cannot be omniscient.
>Mike Huybensz

    I think Bob's notion of God as representing a higher level of truth than
    can be verified within the system is very close to what mystics have
    been saying for a long time. Mike, your objection is totally losing.  A
    `higher truth' that includes all truths perceivable from within a system
    as well as those only perceivable from without IS TOTALLY logical.

    Revelation is the only way to percieve a `higher truth' -- one that is
    not observable from the axioms yet established.  Normative assertions
    (eg- It is wrong to gain enjoyment from the suffering of others), which
    are required to establish ethics, are mundane examples of such `higher
    truths'. They cannot be established from a logical empirical basis.

    The `Goedelian' nature of ethics (and God) seem clear enough to me.
    Wittgenstein said this quite well in Tractatus:

6.41    The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world
        everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it, there
        is no value -- and if it were, it would be of no value. 
        If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all
        happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
        What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise
        this would again be accidental.
        It must lie outside the world.
    
6.42    Hence there can be no ethical propositions..
..    
6.4312  ...The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside
        of space and time. (It is not the problems of natural science which
        have to be solved).

6.432   How the world is, is completely indifferent to what is higher. God
        does not reveal himself in the world.

-michael