Wednesday, May 20, 2009

What Godel has to say in all of this



My last recent posts on 24 have attracted some form of controversy. So what else is new?

On thing emerges in the heated discussions, and that is, the role of science in reading the Bible. It boils down to authority and which one has priority. Does one give authority to the language of the Bible, or does one give authority to scientific empirical pronouncements? To whichever we give priority, that one therefore has authority. The two are connected.

There is also a corollary point that has been missed in the discussions, and that people are not aware of the philosophical critiques that philosophers have been making against science (falsely so called). If people only knew, they would not trust so much in it.

So, I turn to my patron (whose picture you see in my profile) - Godel and try to find out what he thought about science and scientific pronouncements....

Here is what he said:

  1. I do not believe in (natural) science.
  2. I don’t think the brain came in the Darwinian manner. In fact, it is disprovable. Simple mechanism can’t yield the brain. I think the basic elements of the universe are simple. Life force is a primitive element of the universe and it obeys certain laws of action. These laws are not simple, and they are not mechanical.


In both counts, my bias says Godel was correct, most specially in #1. The wise scientist should be the first to admit the limitations of his craft.

Besides, we are not allowed to believe in anything and in anyone, John 11:25-26.

3 comments:

Adrian Piazza said...

Bravo! Belief and reason are products of an Intelligence. If they are not, then any appeal to logic must be taken as a random electric impulses in a mechanism that expresses these impulses in mutually agreed upon symbols that approximate communication.

Steve Martin said...

Nice going, Lito!

Science is great....for what it is, but it can never explain or replace God.

LPC said...

Adrian/SM.

I am just trying to share that there are people of respectable minds that do not believe in science or at least do not give science credit more than it is due.

This guy Godel was one of them, a mathematician philosopher in his own right, he was critical of how natural science goes about business.

LPC