Some comments are just too good to stay buried in the warehouse. It was a coin flip between Swarn and Jonathan this week. The latter has won the internet this morning.
Loy—”Was the number zero invented, discovered, or revealed? How does the invention / discovery / revelation of zero differ from that of God? Both derive from abstract reasoning, not directly or primarily from empirical observation”.
Jonathan—”For one, there is no place in the history of the number zero where the claim of divine revelation is found
A lot of things in the sciences, first exist as a hypothesis (which is usually a product of reasoning), then if the empirical observation matches the proposed hypothesis then the hypothesis is given credibility.
Einstein theories of relativity as is many things in theoretical physics were largely gotten through abstract reasoning
Direct and indirect empirical observation and experiment are what are used to validate an idea.
Even in mathematics, because you came up with an idea through reasoning, does not automatically make it correct. In mathematics, the idea has to be proven.
If you want to prove that god is mathematical axiom, then go ahead,
But if god is a supernatural being that created the universe then you need to have empirical evidence
Thinking about it, zero and god are very similar. Zero was created by man, so was god. Zero is nothing, so too is god”
Here’s the comment link if interested https://jimoeba.wordpress.com/2018/10/09/horrible-ideas-inspire-the-most-philosophy-faith/#comment-9722
And if you’re not following, here’s Jonathon’s blog. He doesn’t post too often, but worth the follow when he does.
TheCommonAtheist 
Zero was a Spanish superhero who defended the poor of Spain from the tyranny of the rich in the early part of the 20th Century. ‘The Mark of Zero” was a good film made about his exploits. Also, he owes me money, so if you see him, tell him I’m looking for him. Thanks.
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He owes you..zero is sneaky that way.
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He is, and his Spanish rice is to DIE for!
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¡Mentiroso!
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Narrador de la verdad!
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I always speak the truth except while talking togas.
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Mi toga es muy corta.
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Lieutenant Dangle?
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Private Dangle: as in, “My privates dangle cause my toga’s too short.”
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Get some coffee Jim! Ok. Uhem!
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//zero and god are very similar// A brilliant analogy……
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He is purely reasonable. This was the perfect setup!
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How does one even argue that zero and God are the same in terms of discovery. I mean it’s true that I have discovered there are zero Gods despite what a lot of people seem to think. 🙂
But seriously…if you had 2 apples and you eat them and no longer have any apples. It’s a pretty sound observation that you have zero apples. Furthermore zero just comes out of the logic of math. I mean 2-2 has to equal something. There is certainly no equation that subtracts or adds up to God.
This is the main problem with Loy is that he hasn’t read nearly as many books as he needs to, to be making his arguments. When I argued with him about primate behavior, it was clear he hadn’t read a single article on primate behavior. Despite the large amount of evidence about Gandhi’s racism and misogyny, to Loy that’s just opinion. There is a book he could read, which I’ve read called Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous idea. https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Biography-Dangerous-Charles-Seife/dp/0140296476
If he had read that book he certainly would find out much more about the origins of the number. Zero has been around for a long time, but for a long time it wasn’t seen as particularly useful, and more over the inescapable conclusion that anything divided by zero was equal to infinity was equally worrying. But we could worry about zero in the same way we worry about all numbers. Do numbers actually exist, or is it only in our minds that they do. The following goes into the philosophy of that question. To equate God to the logical propositions that are possible with numbers is ridiculous. This text explains why numbers are not like fictional characters that we might imagine. It’s an important distinction. God could simply be a fictional character. There is no evidence to suggest otherwise at this point. Zero on the other hand is observable. http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~lee/exist.html
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Overreaching analogy in apologetics takes you just as far as religious reasoning. Deciphering ancient ontology (guesses) does the same thing. And zero just fit so well here. Thanks Swarn. A genuine pleasure!
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I have zero apples, but I never ate them. I just didn’t pick any from the tree, or buy any from the store. Having zero apples makes no sense, you might as well say you have zero elephants, or zero qalitons. Having zero gods is just as nonsensical, though having one or more gods doesn’t fare any better. Having some of that which does not exist is equal to having none of that which does exist. In the end you still have nothing, whether you think you do or not…
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I don’t agree with all your assessment here. Just like any number as a form of measurement, the context matters. You can’t just say you have 5. But you can say you have 5 apples…just like you can say you have zero apples, and possibly zero elephants as well if in fact you do have zero elephants. Some people have elephants to count I imagine. Zero is most definitely a number and it most definitely can be used as measurement of whatever you are trying to measure.
But I do agree with you that having some of what does not exist is equivalent to having none of what does exist. If you never heard of an apple then the statement of having 2 apples if you don’t even know they exist is equivalent. But it still makes zero a fundamentally different concept than God.
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You could have zero apples and still be full of horse-apples. You can also run a bad idea into the ground and still be wrong. Claiming there is something on a table when there is nothing on the table, makes one wong and batty trying to convince others, especially when that something is already premised as inconceivable and unknowable to humans.
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“he hasn’t read nearly as many books as he needs to, to be making his arguments”
That can be said of most people, and certainly of all the armchair atheists (and professional atheists for that matter).
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What is it that draws a person to conclude it is a god that they are seeking? There is a lot to the world that we feel, tics in neural function, dreams, hypnogogia, impressions, seizure manifestations of super religiosity, why a god? Presupposed learning and superstition? What draws you to conclude with mounds of other options that it is god you seek?
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@jim – Not seeking “a god”. (There are no “gods”. ) Just seeking the truth.
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Welcome back Loy. You’ve come to the right place then!
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Re: the essay by Lee Lady–
“Lakoff and Núñez see numbers and other mathematical entities as metaphors.” (“In Lakoff’s usage….one concept is a metaphor for another when there is a detailed parallel between the logical structures underlying the two concepts.” [N.B. This is basically Aquinas’ concept of knowledge by analogy.])
“In this sense, then, mathematics is so useful because it enables us to organize our understanding of situations in the tangible world.”
Theology proceeds somewhat similarly. Everything we can say about God is metaphorical (in Lakoff’s sense) and/or analogical (in Aquinas’ sense). This reasoning, especially when put into practice by a faith community, is useful because it enables us to organize our understanding of our common existential dilemma.
“Certainly numbers do not have a tangible existence in the world. They exist in our collective consciousness. And yet they are not arbitrary products of our imaginations in the way that fictional characters are.”
Nor is God an arbitrary product of our imaginations in the way that fictional characters are, because God surpasses anything we can imagine or conceive.
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This doesn’t even make sense. How can something that is beyond our ability to imagine or conceive, proof that it is real.
Also there is quite a lot of criticism of Lakoff and Nunez’ book, you should check it out. I’ve read a lot of Lakoff’s essays, and I think he is quite intelligent, but that doesn’t mean he’s exactly right here. Wikipedia has a good summary of some of the criticisms:
Many working mathematicians resist the approach and conclusions of Lakoff and Núñez. Reviews by mathematicians of WMCF in professional journals, while often respectful of its focus on conceptual strategies and metaphors as paths for understanding mathematics, have taken exception to some of the WMCF’s philosophical arguments on the grounds that mathematical statements have lasting ‘objective’ meanings. For example, Fermat’s last theorem means exactly what it meant when Fermat initially proposed it 1664. Other reviewers have pointed out that multiple conceptual strategies can be employed in connection with the same mathematically defined term, often by the same person (a point that is compatible with the view that we routinely understand the ‘same’ concept with different metaphors). The metaphor and the conceptual strategy are not the same as the formal definition which mathematicians employ. However, WMCF points out that formal definitions are built using words and symbols that have meaning only in terms of human experience.
Critiques of WMCF include the humorous:
“It’s difficult for me to conceive of a metaphor for a real number raised to a complex power, but if there is one, I’d sure like to see it.” — Joseph Auslander[2]
and the physically informed:
“But their analysis leaves at least a couple of questions insufficiently answered. For one thing, the authors ignore the fact that brains not only observe nature, but also are part of nature. Perhaps the math that brains invent takes the form it does because math had a hand in forming the brains in the first place (through the operation of natural laws in constraining the evolution of life). Furthermore, it’s one thing to fit equations to aspects of reality that are already known. It’s something else for that math to tell of phenomena never previously suspected. When Paul Dirac’s equations describing electrons produced more than one solution, he surmised that nature must possess other particles, now known as antimatter. But scientists did not discover such particles until after Dirac’s math told him they must exist. If math is a human invention, nature seems to know what was going to be invented.”[2]
Lakoff made his reputation by linking linguistics to cognitive science and the analysis of metaphor. Núñez, educated in Switzerland, is a product of Jean Piaget’s school of cognitive psychology as a basis for logic and mathematics. Núñez has thought much about the foundations of real analysis, the real and complex numbers, and the Basic Metaphor of Infinity. These topics, however, worthy though they be, form part of the superstructure of mathematics. Cognitive science should take more interest in the foundations of mathematics. And indeed, the authors do pay a fair bit of attention early on to logic, Boolean algebra and the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms, even lingering a bit over group theory. But neither author is well-trained in logic (there is no index entry for “quantifier” or “quantification”), the philosophy of set theory, the axiomatic method, metamathematics, and model theory. Nor does WMCF say enough about the derivation of number systems (the Peano axioms go unmentioned), abstract algebra, equivalence and order relations, mereology, topology, and geometry.
Lakoff and Núñez tend to dismiss the negative opinions mathematicians have expressed about WMCF, because their critics do not appreciate the insights of cognitive science. Lakoff and Núñez maintain that their argument can only be understood using the discoveries of recent decades about the way human brains process language and meaning. They argue that any arguments or criticisms that are not grounded in this understanding cannot address the content of the book.[3]
It has been pointed out that it is not at all clear that WMCF establishes that the claim “intelligent alien life would have mathematical ability” is a myth. To do this, it would be required to show that intelligence and mathematical ability are separable, and this has not been done. On Earth, intelligence and mathematical ability seem to go hand in hand in all life-forms, as pointed out by Keith Devlin among others.[4] The authors of WMCF have not explained how this situation would (or even could) be different anywhere else.
Lakoff and Núñez also appear not to appreciate the extent to which intuitionists and constructivists have anticipated their attack on the Romance of (Platonic) Mathematics. Brouwer, the founder of the intuitionist/constructivist point of view, in his dissertation On the Foundation of Mathematics, argued that mathematics was a mental construction, a free creation of the mind and totally independent of logic and language. He goes on to upbraid the formalists for building verbal structures that are studied without intuitive interpretation. Symbolic language should not be confused with mathematics; it reflects, but does not contain, mathematical reality
Again, everything your saying applies to any character we can conjure up. Fictional characters not surprisingly have human traits. There is no character trait about God that we don’t have as humans, God just does it better. We create, we build, we destroy, we love, we are vengeful, we predict, we punish and we reward. For so many things God literally hasn’t made any sense for once we figured what was actually going on. The God character is precisely what one would expect by a group of creative intelligent beings with a propensity for type I (false patternicity) error makers who were trying to understand the world around them but didn’t have the ability to really understand what was going on.
The problem is I can talk about anything metaphorically, but some of those things can be evidenced to exist, others not. I can talk about Frodo from Lord of the Rings metaphorically. That doesn’t make him real. And the fact that I get a community of people to do it with me, doesn’t make Frodo anymore real.
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There is no character trait about God that we don’t have as humans, God just does it better. We create, we build, we destroy, we love, we are vengeful, we predict, we punish and we reward.
No, I wouldn’t accept that at all. The language of human experience is all but useless in speaking of God. Nevertheless it’s all we have to work with, and thus we fall back on language that is at various times anthropomorphic, figurative, metaphorical, allegorical, analogical, mystical etc. But in doing so me must always acknowledge the utter inadequacy of such language. God is in no way some anthropomorphic or superhuman “character”.
Nor, as I said, is God an arbitrary product of our imaginations in the way that fictional characters are, because God surpasses everything we can imagine or conceive. I do not claim that that statement “proves” that God is “real”, any more than one can “prove” that math is “real” (or “prove” that I am “real”, much less “prove” that you are “real”). But God allows us to name the ultimate reality we cannot see.
The God character is precisely what one would expect by a group of creative intelligent beings with a propensity for type I (false patternicity) error makers who were trying to understand the world around them but didn’t have the ability to really understand what was going on.
I gather you’re alluding to “gods” of primitive pagan superstition. That’s not particularly germane to our discussion.
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Are you Dr. Maarten Boudry in disguise here Loy?
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Not referring to primitive pagan superstition at all. Just the sort of thing we might have come up with a couple thousand years ago when your religion was born,
Once again you use parlor tricks logic to make false analogies. Yes, I am more real than God. To use the “nothing might be real” argument to say that God and I stand on the same level when it comes to proof of existence is ridiculous.
Again the fact that you can’t see how ludicrous it is to claim that “God surpasses everything we can imagine or conceive” makes this conversation fruitless. Your statement is one of pure belief. There is no evidence for this claim in the least and to try to wave it away as well “well there is no proof for anything” is pure bullshit. Like life, ideas try to survive anyway they can. The God argument has been called out on for it’s lack of evidence so many times that this is where the idea is hiding itself now: in a smokescreen tactic of “nothing is real, we can’t really describe God because it’s so complex, God is beyond our undestanding, he works in mysterious ways”. This is hallmark of an idea that is desperate to cling to relevance. And the only tactic left to an apologist who can no longer defend his or her ideas with evidence. The way that is required from any other idea someone puts forth. Only the idea of God is immune from evidence, because it’s the only way to escape using an argument.
God is not, in any way beyond my ability to comprehend, because it is fiction. It makes sense why we’d give God the attributes we have, it makes sense why we would think there is one, just in the same way it makes sense why at one point with though the sun revolved around the Earth. It makes sense why people benefit from believing in a higher power, and it makes sense why people like you would cling to it against all evidence. God is entirely understandable when you accept the fact that there isn’t one. There IS no mystery there.
Now, there are lots of other mysteries, but having mysteries doesn’t mean you can put whatever the hell you want in there and claim that it’s real. And when those mysteries get solved, all your doing is saying “ah but that thing that I claimed was real that was the answer to the mystery, is now the person who created the mystery and the answer…whoa he must be really complicated and beyond our understanding”. It’s a con, and congratulations you’ve bought into it. And that’s your choice, but you either have to become a more clever peddler or go sell your product to someone else.
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The key to understanding the mysteries of god is unbelief. Thank you Swarn.
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If you want to argue that what you mean by God is not real, then we’re in complete agreement.
If however you want to argue against Judeo-Christian theology, whether against God as such, or against a particular tenet, then that is a different matter.
That “God surpasses everything we can imagine or conceive” is a basic tenet of Judeo-Christian theology. God’s incomprehensibility has nothing to do with complexity (indeed God is absolutely simple), nor with “mysterious ways”. Rather, it is implied by God’s absolute otherness and uniqueness. To deny this tenet and assert the contrary (namely that someone can fully comprehend God) would require a more robust argument than simply dismissing it as “ludicrous”.
It seems clear, however, that you have no sincere interest in actually engaging with the theology, but simply want to argue that God as defined by you is not real. As already granted, there is no disagreement on that point. If God is as you say, then God is not real. (But God is not as you say.)
Your philosophical and metaphysical opinions ultimately are matters of conjecture, conviction and conscience, same as anyone else’s, and no more or less warranted.
“God is entirely understandable when you accept the fact that there isn’t one.”
So if you posit that God is not real, then you will “understand” that God is not real. Apparently some are so desperate to deny God they will overlook a begged question.
Since we seem to be debating fruits (apples and oranges), “fruitless” may not be quite the right word!
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I’m quite certain our god is more unknowable, therefore more real than your god. He’s less evident, less comprehensible, and less full of shit than your god. How do I know this? I can’t know this, that is what makes him ultimately more than your god. Your god? Is only so so, because you think you actually have a personal relationship. That screws your entire line of bs! How could you not know, that believing you can know this, is the key to worshipping false gods? You are unbelievable with this nonsense! Unimaginable! Loy is god! He’s in your head like everyone else that believes.
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The problem with this line of argument is insisting it be tackled on the ground of empirical evidence and proof as if that was the be all, end all on the subject . Sorry but that’s as silly a stance as taken by your adversaries-dogmatism. When I believed in God no challenge on empirical grounds would have meant anything because it was arguing a concept against material evidence. I don’t believe in God any more but I still know (not by faith or wishful thinking) that God exists, even if it’s an idol, a meme. The greatest telling evidence for God is the billions who assiduously validate the concept. Demonstrate a superior life in self empowerment and compassion and you will know you have won your argument and it won’t even matter. Once they realize you are not trying to change their mind and consequently they can’t change yours you’ve taken all the wind from their sails and brought it in yours.
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I agree that this isn’t an effective way to change minds for someone whose mind is made up. But it’s also not useless to counter bad logic through argumentation for those whose minds are not made up and are wrestling with questions in their head.
“The greatest telling evidence for Good is the billions who assiduously validate the concept”
And you talk about my silly stances. Ignoring the fact that this is a fallacious argument – appeal to popularity (I mean what’s the magic number where enough people believe in something that it will it into reality?), but your use of the word assiduously implies that billions of people take great care and attention to understand their belief system. This is easily dismissed by the multitude of people who have not even read the entirety of something that is supposed to be the living word of God and just believe what their preacher tells them. The amount of people who are assiduous about their beliefs is far fewer than you imagine. It is also possible for billions to be duped given our will documented cognitive biases and our social nature which means thinking differently from the group often has dire consequences. Given our fears and uncertainties it makes complete sense why uncomfortable truths about the nature of the universe would be hard to latch on to.
As I mention later in this conversation, the idea that belief is the basis for which we make things true has proved dangerous… Whether it’s religion or politics or worse the combination of both.
If Loy just said I believe in God because it makes him feel good, there is no need for further conversation. But how we come to know what’s real and acquire knowledge matters a great deal.
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Demonstrate a superior life in self empowerment and compassion and you will know you have won your argument and it won’t even matter
By the way, I agree 1000% with this statement. (not a typo)
Sorry I was typing before and couldn’t respond fully. And while evidence might not matter to the believer, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to promote critical thinking, to promote skepticism, and what are fallacious modes of reasoning and what are non-fallacious modes of reasoning. Then nobody needs to tell anybody what to think, they can think for themselves.
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Sounds like a contrived conclusion.
She: What are you reading?
Me: A discussion.
She: What is the discussion about?
Me: Zero, nothing, zilch, zip, and (oh yes) the feckin’ almighty whitey.
She: Why?
Me: It’s theistic math.
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What is the infatuation with a god? Really? Trying to explain what no one can comprehend or even imagine (according to all sources) but somehow insist there is an all encompassing galactic entity that is outside of the galaxy monitoring your thoughts and diddling practices. This being that exists outside of time and space is at least 150billion light-years across, but sits on a throne indulging in his glorious accolades of beings that neither comprehend him, nor can he touch or be touched. He is so impressive he is unimpressive, so inconceivable to the perception of man that he is irrelevant. But I believe! Why?
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Stuff exists. That’s all the proof they need, and all the evidence anyone will ever get. Maybe I should include the shit happens hypothesis. So there you have it. Things exist and events occur. Deep sigh. And that is why.
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Well, god has gotten smaller in his assignment, so he must be bigger and bigger, more elusive than ever before. Soon, we’ll invent new words to explain the yawntology. Stir it with a little horse-shit and shake it up. Voilet!
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I’ve NEVER understood why “Unknown” from human sensory-perceptions necessarily MUST unequivocally equate to a divine being anymore than it should unequivocally equate to a unicorn, fairies, Peter Pan, Sasquatch, or Martians/Aliens/ETs. Nothing wrong with fun, crazy imaginative fiction, BUT… to say it’s “truth,” real, and rules all domains?
Umm, who died and made YOU brainiac god? 😉 😛
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I really like that! All the oddities and unexplainables through history…who made them god? Why a god? Why why why!?! Too bad Paul was already engrossed in religion or he maybe would have started neuro-research!
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Yep! At least been a prime candidate for epileptic seizures and treatment! 😉
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HAH! I see I have fallen behind quite a bit on all this impactful goings on and such about the wonderful purpose of life… and how we Homo sapiens utilize our cognitive skills…
or not. 😉
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It’s been a fun week. Busy week! You?
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Ditto. I just finished and scheduled my final Part IV of Saul the Apostate. LOL It’s due to publish 3am CST. Man, I just cannot cram-in that sort of topic into 800 – 1,000 word blog-posts. There is just TOO MUCH required, necessary support/evidence to prove over and over again how bogus Christianity, or rather the Pauline Christology-cult, truly is in all its forms today. Period. 😛
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Looking forward to it. It really is amazing how thoroughly evolved and polished and professional religion has become. One size fits all! Over a psychological play on the basics of human need.
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Indeed, and as you’ve heard/seen me state time and time again, if you aren’t up on and thoroughly familiar with your Agnotology, you are left in the dark to swim on your own! Because the Salesmen and women are super convincing with their emotional-psych selling techniques in order to get you to be impulsive. Then repeat it (in church) over and over and over… until you’re essentially a puppet.
But we know all that already don’t we Sir. 😉
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Considering the orientation and general tenor of this site, I’d be really worried if I score goose eggs! All I can do is try my best to keep ’em honest, Lord.
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You have to admit Jonathan hit this one pretty well. Thanks for being a good sport. Of course Swarn hitting clean up isn’t too bad either. Good dialog, good ideas and things to think about Loy.
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Math is just a language and zero is relative to where it is used and what it is describing. Zero is not a constant nothing rather a description of some sort of state. Like zero degrees Celsius is just freaking cold and a state where water freezes to ice. Simply a way of measuring and describing. Comparable to words change their meaning relative to the context they are put in . Now does the temperature exist or is it nothing? Behind zero in this case you find the movement of the atoms. So, we must realize that zero is comparable to space time and is relative to what we are describing. God would be the constant, like the speed of light in this case. Moving on to abstract thinking, well it allows us to operate in within the fabric of space and time in a more intelligent and beneficial way. We are able to remove ourselves from the facts of here and now. It gives us hindsight and foresight, rather than simply blind instincts and emotions that encourage in the moment behaviour. Zero is not an infinite constant. Mathematics breaks down in black holes and the white hole (prior to the big bang). Function takes an infinite value and there no space and time. So, the language of mathematics does break down and becomes gibberish/without meaning.
“At the physically impossible-to-reach temperature of zero kelvin, or minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius), atoms would stop moving. As such, nothing can be colder than absolute zero on the Kelvin scale.”
If an atom could reach zero Kelvin it would stop moving completely and the fabric of space and time from its perspective would be infinite. Whereas from lights point of view there is no time and space. Zero in the lights case would be no space time. God is light and in him there is no darkness at all (no fabric of space and time).
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But, “god is light” is just a metaphor contrasting darkness. Light = good and darkness = bad. If you want to change the the meaning of virtually every interpretation, your description is quite nice, but that all it is. Zero is nothing, or a sliding scale of something defined. If we had assigned 1 kelvin as our start point for the absolute coldest temperature, and realize light is a metaphor, your beautiful attempt is void of reason. Great comment though.
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What is a void? Mathematics is just a language invented by man to describe our reality. If we did not have ten fingers, it would probably look very different. Is the empty space on the inside of atoms nothing? Between the electrons, protons and neutrons. Or is it “something” because of the fact that it is inside the atom? You say that zero is O. I find that it can be minus 273.15 degrees Celsius. Is a vacuum nothing when it is actually on the inside of space and time/the universe? It is all relative. If we dive deeper into the rabbit hole we find that subatomic particles cannot be measured because of the quantum enigma. There math turns into predictions of probable outcomes, and the outcome is different when we observe. I suspect that nothing is what the second law of thermodynamics predicts; nothing happens that is going to keep on not happening. I was referring to darkness as space time. The darkness in itself is not the problem, it is what one can do with it. When one understand Einstein’s theory of relativity and light – God is light can be seen as the fabric of space time shrinking to absolute zero (he is infinite). Darkness is furthermore dark matter that outweighs normal matter six to one in the universe and this combination is holding the universe together. Dark energy those virtual particles popping in and out of existence driving the expansion of the universe, not to mention black holes. Super massive black holes that cause the rotation of galaxies.
Black holes does not seem to be a great place to get stuck in. The prediction about the effects of dark energy is not that pleasant either; Every galaxy is going to be left in solitary darkness. Precious Jim, I am not changing the interpretation it is the truth about math. If you and I lived on a zero thickness sheet of paper, although impossible, we would have had no way of understanding or moving in a third dimension. Only observers from the outside would see our true frame. So, if God is infinite without space and time it would be a way beyond our understanding. He could see our three dimensional sheet. Space and time would be only our very incomplete reality. Then, space and time would hide the truth for us, and kept us in the darkness.
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I have to add to that in my (note) theory of everything that I think that the fabric of space and time is the fisherman’s net that Jesus was talking about. Jesus said, “I will make you fishers of men”. In evolution of the species the branch that led to humans is called vertebrates, and from fish it branched out. If we assume that we choose to leave God and he is the ultimate life source there would be nothing on the outside of him/his creation. Instead of instant death, made space and time as a temporary thing to catch as many of his fish as possible (hopefully all of us). So it would be the darkness that is keeping us from seeing the truth behind the dimension we are woven into. So, I have to rephrase the conclusion in my previous comment it is darkness that hide our state.
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Absolute zero on the Kelvin scale is connected to light like this. On the fabric of space and time atoms are no longer moving, but frozen in time due to absolute zero (not unlike a cold heart that is not moved by anything;-)). Photons of light moves across all the slices of space and time all at once. It is like infinity on opposite ends. Void of reason?
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The void of reason is changing the meaning of obvious intended metaphors, to a physical property of light. Scripture says god “created” the physical light (like actual light) whereas the jesus-light is a metaphor for good, god and his creation are separate entities. The Greek for light (phos) is “the illumination of the mind, so it would read jesus if the way, the truth, and the illumination of the mind. Not a physical property. That’s where the reason falls apart. Make sense?
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Let us break this up
1. The blog-post uses zero as a metaphor for God and his non-existing
2. It mentions Einstein’s theory of relativity and mathematics as a way reasoning and a way of disproving God
3. Furthermore, abstract thinking is used as an argument against a creator
If I am on the other side and want to put forth arguments to support God.
1. I am not allowed to change the first metaphor that God is zero.
2. Nor use the theory of relativity and mathematics as a way to pointing evidence towards God
3. Not to mention use abstract thinking and remove myself from the very first condition zero (which I absolutely must do in order to lay forth any evidence to support my claim.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
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I am not arguing many of your points at a scientific level, but injecting jesus as a physical light is problematic, as we can comprehend light and its functions as you so perfectly stated, but god is unimaginable, incomprehensible, and unknowable to mere humans. Light is not any of those, in fact we have fairly good understanding, measuring, observing, and testing it in its duality of particle or waves. “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man.
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Dear Jim, we are getting nowhere with this discussion and could go on and on. Have a wonderful day:-)<3
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Egualmente.
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Thanks:-)
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So, yes God created light, but;
God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
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Metaphorically- among Bible scholars this is the consensus. Light is wisdom and truth, darkness is evil and void. Like I said, if we want to change the meaning of the Greek to suit your analogy, it works pretty well.
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Bye friend:-)
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