Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

Describe a single mathematical, logical, geometrical, geographical, or scientific concept without using any form of language,

You've stipulated "describe," which requires human language, and then said, "without any form of language." It's also like a squared circle and a married bachelor, meaning an absurdity created by requiring the first term and then denying by the second in the same equation. The fault is in your question, not in mathematics.

That's like asking for "swimming without any form of liquid." But the act of swimming IS NOT liquid, even though swimming requires a liquid.

For a human to understand mathematics requires language. That does not mean that the realities to which mathematics refer ARE language.

Follow that?

Quite the opposite: if the realities that the language of mathematics describes WERE language only, then they would be self-referential delusions. But in any language you choose, mathematical realities remain fixed.

That's why you can say, "dos et dos es quatro," or "deux et deux est quatre," or 2+2=4, or " & ⇒ ". It makes no difference at all to the truth of the mathematical reality being indicated.

The reality precedes and exceeds all the languages. It was true before there was language to express it, and will be true if there's ever none.

The language is only one of various human attempts to express an objective reality that is more profound than them all.

[attofishpi]

We don't know what language God spoke at Creation.

Of course we do.

You might have spared yourself all the effort.

No, we don't. Your assumption is based on the idea that whatever language it was must be a human language. However, no human language has creatorial force. So no, we have no idea. All is speculation.

So "Let there be light.." was not in ANY form of language that man could translate as "Let there be light.." so why were these words written into Genesis?

Do you think perhaps God is expecting intelligent minds (his creation) to question the veracity right there at the start of the bible, and indeed for the rest of the entire book?

[attofishpi]

I submit here anti-Smashing Pumpkins

What u talkin' 'bout Willis? --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOG3eus4ZSo

No good?

[Immanuel Can]

Of course we do.

You might have spared yourself all the effort.

No, we don't. Your assumption is based on the idea that whatever language it was must be a human language. However, no human language has creatorial force. So no, we have no idea. All is speculation.

So "Let there be light.." was not in ANY form of language that man could translate as "Let there be light.." so why were these words written into Genesis?

Who said the words don't "translate"? Clearly, they do.

But when they are spoken by a human tongue, or translated into a human language, are you expecting them to have the same effect?

One of the things that make "word" significant in the Biblical text is the question of "Who is standing behind the word spoken?" In other words, who is its Guarantor. Whose "word" is it, and what does the speaker have by way of authority and power to make such a statement?

For example, when the Bible says, as was quoted earlier, "My word shall not return to me without producing the effect for which I sent it," (Isaiah 55:11) Who is the Speaker there?

If that's just me or you, it means very little what we say. But if the Supreme Being stands behind an utterance, not surprisingly, that's quite a different issue.

[attofishpi]

You might have spared yourself all the effort.

No, we don't. Your assumption is based on the idea that whatever language it was must be a human language. However, no human language has creatorial force. So no, we have no idea. All is speculation.

So "Let there be light.." was not in ANY form of language that man could translate as "Let there be light.." so why were these words written into Genesis?

Who said the words don't "translate"? Clearly, they do.

You stated to RC Saunders that you are at least questioning as to whether God is speaking in human language and yet you think that this non human language clearly translates to English!

So "Let there be light.." is like turning on a switch - not aeons of fusion where hydrogen fuses to heavier elements, but 6 days, job done.

Again, does this not imply that at the outset God wants us to question everything within the bible?

[Immanuel Can]

So "Let there be light.." was not in ANY form of language that man could translate as "Let there be light.." so why were these words written into Genesis?

Who said the words don't "translate"? Clearly, they do.

You stated to RC Saunders that you are at least questioning as to whether God is speaking in human language and yet you think that this non human language clearly translates to English!

Wait a minute. You just said you think I don't think that.

Which one do you think is actually true?

Words translate between languages. But if I say the words, "Atto, your sins are forgiven," then just want do those words mean? How different if God were to say them.

I would think you would understand that the speaker makes a big difference.

[attofishpi]

Who said the words don't "translate"? Clearly, they do.

You stated to RC Saunders that you are at least questioning as to whether God is speaking in human language and yet you think that this non human language clearly translates to English!

Wait a minute. You just said you think I don't think that.

Which one do you think is actually true?

Words translate between languages. But if I say the words, "Atto, your sins are forgiven," then just want do those words mean? How different if God were to say them.

I would think you would understand that the speaker makes a big difference.

You are talking gibberish - you should become a Pastor. (or a politician)

[RCSaunders]

I know you cannot show me any language that is not a human language.

Ummm...that's because...I'm human.

Mathematics is a subset of language, like logic and trigonometry, which do not exist at all outside human consciousness.

The specific words do not exist outside of human beings. The realities to which the language aims to refer do. And what that fact shows is that the universe is rational, at the deepest level.

But how does an accidental universe end up being rational? That's a good question. See if you can figure it out.

I do not know what you mean by rational. According to the dictionary rational means:

1. Having or exercising the ability to reason.
2. Consistent with or based on reason or good judgment.
3. Of sound mind; sane.
4. Mathematics: Capable of being expressed as a quotient of integers.

Those are the only meanings I understand rational to have, in which case, the universe is not rational: it does not have the ability to reason, doe not make choices or do anything based on reason or judgement, and obviously does not have a mind, and is not a mathematical ratio.

The universe has a specific nature which is comprehendible by means of human reason. (I suspect that what you really mean) If all you mean by the universe being, "rational," is that it can be identified and understood by means of human reason, where's the mystery? The universe has to have some nature, and however it is understood, it is simply knowledge of what is, whatever it is. How could it be otherwise? Only human minds are rational, the universe is just what the human rational mind discovers it to be.

As for your characterization of the universe as an, accident, if by, "accident," you mean, "unintended," you are absolutely right. There is nothing teleological about the universe. Teleology--all purpose, meaning, and values begin and end with human consciousness and sans human minds there are no purposes, no meaning, and no values. All that is, sans human life, is simply what exists and it could not have been anything other than it is. If you regard whatever exists without some mystical, "cause," behind it an, "accident," than your imagined god is an accident. If you thought that, you would be right.

[RCSaunders]

Describe a single mathematical, logical, geometrical, geographical, or scientific concept without using any form of language,

You've stipulated "describe," which requires human language, and then said, "without any form of language." It's also like a squared circle and a married bachelor, meaning an absurdity created by requiring the first term and then denying by the second in the same equation. The fault is in your question, not in mathematics.

That's like asking for "swimming without any form of liquid." But the act of swimming IS NOT liquid, even though swimming requires a liquid.

For a human to understand mathematics requires language. That does not mean that the realities to which mathematics refer ARE language.

Do you have a reading comprehension problem or are you being intentionally obtuse. How many times do I have to say, language is only a method of identifying what exists and its nature, that is, every existent and their attributes which is all that exists ontologically. The concepts by which all those existents and their attributes are identified and explained only exist in human consciousness. Of course the things that language identifies and describes are not language. The things that mathematical concepts are used to identify, count, and measure are not the concepts, they are what the concepts make it possible to know.

That's why you can say, "dos et dos es quatro," or "deux et deux est quatre," or 2+2=4, or " & ⇒ ". It makes no difference at all to the truth of the mathematical reality being indicated.

Except for be cruder and your attempt to use it as an argument for some mystic form of mathemeatics that exists somewhere somehow on it own, how is that any different than I already explained:

There is nothing dictating what symbols must be used in any language, including mathematical language. 'XV,' '15,' '11101 (binary)' and 'E (hexadecimal)' all represent the same numerical concept, just as the words, 'home,' 'domocile,' 'residence,' 'abode,' 'casa,' (Spanish), 'maison,' (French), 'spiti,' (Greek), and 'ban,' (Thai) all represent the same concept. The symbols are totally arbitrary inventions of human beings. There is nothing mystical or ontological about mathematics.

You just misunderstand the reason the method of mathematics works:

All of mathematics is nothing more than a method invented to identify and describe those attributes of physical things that can be counted or measured. The countable and measurable things actually exist on their own. The attributes of things human beings have discovered can be counted and measured exist ontologically. All the mathematical concepts and symbols by which human beings count and measure things were invented by human beings and otherwise do not exist at all.

The reality precedes and exceeds all the languages.

That's correct if you mean the reality that language is used to identify and know exists and is what it is whether anyone knows it or not.

It was true before there was language to express it, and will be true if there's ever none.

If that means, "reality is true," it is nonsense. Reality just is what it is. If you are trying to say reality is what it is and is not contingent or dependent on anything else, such as whether it is known or not, that would be true, but the word, "true," only pertains to propositions, that is, statements made using language that assert something, and reality does not do that.

The language is only one of various human attempts to express an objective reality that is more profound than them all.

What nonsense. What are some of the other attempts, without and other than language?

[RCSaunders]

Some of what you write, RC, reminds me of dialogue in Dr Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg:

Let me tell you something: there are three
sorts of people -- thinkers, scribblers, and cattle. It is
true I secretly count almost all who are called thinkers
and poets among the scribblers, and most of the
scribblers belong among the cattle. But that's not the
point. The business of thinkers is to search out the
truth. There is, however, a secret about truth which,
oddly enough, is but little known, although I should
have thought it was clear as daylight -- and it is this:
truth is like the sun, its value depends wholly upon our
being at a correct distance away from it. If the thinkers
were allowed to have everything their own way they
would steer our globe straight into the sun and burn us
all to ashes. Small wonder, then, their activity some-
times causes the cattle to become restive and bellow:
Put out the sun, in the name of Satan, put it out! It's
the business of us scribblers to preserve a correct and
satisfactory distance from the truth. A really good
scribbler -- and there aren't many! -- understands with
the thinker, and feels with the cattle. It's our job to
protect the thinkers from the rage of the cattle and the
cattle from too hefty doses of truth. But I admit the
latter duty is the easier of the two, and the one we make
the best job of in the ordinary way of things; and I
admit, too, that in this we have the invaluable help of a
mass of spurious thinkers, as well as of the more
sensible among the cattle....

I'll forgive you!

[RCSaunders]

The meaning of a word is its use.

Oh Belinda, do you really believe that logical-positivist Wittgenstein nonsense. Hume and Kant almost totally destroyed epistemology with their absurd assertion that a word means its definition, but Russel, Wittgenstein and the post modernists finished it off with their assertion that a word means, "however it is used."

[Immanuel Can]

I would think you would understand that the speaker makes a big difference.

You are talking gibberish - you should become a Pastor. (or a politician)

Hmmm...seems a simple concept...

[Immanuel Can]

But how does an accidental universe end up being rational? That's a good question. See if you can figure it out.

I do not know what you mean by rational.

That's easy. It means two things.

One is that the universe turns out to operate by predictable, mathematical regularities or "laws," rather than by some kind of unintelligible inconsistencies. (And that fact is what makes science, physics, engineering, and so on possible, of course.)

The second thing is that that same predictable, mathematical, regular universe is also intelligible to one of its particular creatures, namely, to rational human beings.

So it's an inherently rationally-behaving kind of universe, and is rationally understandable by us. Both facts are utterly surprising, if we assume that the universe itself is nothing more than a cosmic accident or explosion.

The universe has a specific nature which is comprehendible by means of human reason. (I suspect that what you really mean) If all you mean by the universe being, "rational," is that it can be identified and understood by means of human reason, where's the mystery?

Well, it's twofold: one is that some "accident" like the Big Bang somehow produced an orderly, law-governed universe balanced by very precise and minute physical laws; the second miracle is that there are living creatures within it that seem marvelously able to decode and unpack the rational order behind the universe. We should not expect either to have happened at all, if the origin of the universe itself is a mere accident.

The universe has to have some nature,

Actually, it doesn't have to have regular or law-like nature at all...and it also ought not, by chance to have creatures in it to "read" that order.

As for your characterization of the universe as an, accident, if by, "accident," you mean, "unintended,"

More than that.

Secular cosmology theorizes that the universe is not merely unintended, but is the product of a mere explosion. But when do you ever observe an "explosion" that issues in an extremely high level of order?

It's like if you go out into your driveway and stick a bomb in your Austin Mini...after it explodes, does it become a Mercedes? Or is it more certain to end up as a smoking heap of twisted metal? Of course, the answer is obvious: observably, accidents to not inject increased order into a situation, but increased disorder. And the same phenomenon, when applied to all things, we call the Second Law of Thermodynamics: things tend from a state of higher order into a state of lower order, right down to the genetic level.

Entropy is a universal, measurable, scientific, observable phenomenon.

Teleology--all purpose, meaning, and values begin and end with human consciousness...

Then there are no objective or real teleologies: just human delusions as if there are, and the actual universe has no place for such things. Because human beings believing in a teleology will not make that teleology real.

[Belinda]

The meaning of a word is its use.

Oh Belinda, do you really believe that logical-positivist Wittgenstein nonsense. Hume and Kant almost totally destroyed epistemology with their absurd assertion that a word means its definition, but Russel, Wittgenstein and the post modernists finished it off with their assertion that a word means, "however it is used."

I give you my word that I will always try to find the most apt word in any context.

You see? Two meanings of 'word' .One meaning refers to promise and intention and the other meaning refers to lexical item.

W's later theory of language is a social theory of language.

[RCSaunders]

W's later theory of language is a social theory of language.

That's right and exactly what is wrong with it. Wittgenstein is always presented as a philosopher, not a social scientist and his views are represented as legitimate epistemology, not some view of how language is used socially. Any so-called, "social theory," of language actually distorts the whole nature of what language is. It's not a social thing and is only possible to individual minds. Like everything else, it can be used socially, but communication is not the purpose of or reason for language. The whole purpose of language is as the means to knowledge. One must know something before they can communicate it.

This idea that language can be understood by studying how it is used is like a botanist attempting to understand what trees are by studying what carpenters do with wood. It's absurd.