natural theology

We have just published a new book that summarizes the ideas of this site. Free at Scientific Theology, or, if you wish to support this project, buy at Scientific Theology: A New Vision of God

Contact us: Click to email
vol VII: Notes

1999

Notes

[Notebook DB 52A Mathesis]

[Sunday 24 October 1999 - Saturday 30 October 1999]

Sunday 24 October 1999

Church has lasted 2Kyr whether as a result of superior doctrine or superior politics is hard to tell. For most of its history one would feel that doctrine has been secondary to discipline, insofar as the disciplinarians have been in a position to suppress deviant doctrine either by murder of by declaring that the doctrine and its adherents are 'extra ecclesiam'.

FAITH and ORDER - Pneuma / sensus fidelium / sensus fidei.

The problem is to maintain the organization while renewing both the faith and the order ie a revolution. To maintain the church is to maintain

[page 44]

the people in the church.

The Roman Catholic Church sees itself as a) one true church; b) global mission, <.p>

To achieve this is must conform itself to reality.

. . .

Xian faith ⊂ scientific faith

[page 45]

Who are the people of God (God)

[I was] caught in the 'Prague Spring' that accompanied Vatical II and condemned by those anti-modernest these that represented the height of reaction before the Church through the arms of John 23 opened itself to the world .

. . .

Christian ecumenism: righting old wrongs
Global ecumenism: moving into new territory

. . .

Dialogue between the word and all religions.

SPIRIT - FREEDOM: Wind bows where it wills [subject to dynamic constraints]

Define the BROADEST POSSIBLE CHURCH! [secular = real]

Truth: Vatican II Second Vatican Council: Declaration on Religious Freedom

[page 46]

The Roman Catholic Church lives in a weird world of its own creation.

. . .

An important distinction from the point of view of survival is to be made between consumption and capitalization.

All I can say after 5 years on earth is the the Xian story is the biggest load of crap ever foaled.

All the ancient religions are blatant grabs for power by an entrenched bureaucracy.

THE SELFISH GENE Dawkins

[page 47]

THE PHENOTYPE FIGHTS BACK

Deposit of faith = genotype of the Church.

Ancient genes : modern genes

Monday 25 October 1999

Now at last we can see what FAITH is. I long ago made the transitin from Catholic to Scientific. FIRST the FAITH [data]; then the UNDERSTANDING.

Faith = to die for, ie not-faith also equals death.

. . .

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM = CHANGE OF FAITH [scientific freedom = new paradigm]

. . .

[page 48]

From the point of view of the world, the Roman Catholic Church is not the but a religion, Insofar as it wants to be part of the word, it must accept the ways of the world, and one of these ways is that pers are equal. PEER is a term defined in ordered sets. Equality = euivalence = cardinal number.

EQUAL = NOT ORDERED

. . .

The Church is in the grip of a CANTOR EXPANSION = period of inflation

ie NEW LEVEL OF PERMUTATION

What can we learn from the polity of electrons? The dance of life is a dance of electrons and photons

THE WORD = BODY

[page 49]

We come to dignitatis humanae and here I think the Church tries to have its cake and eat it, by at once admitting the equality of all people, and therefore thee churches that they construct for themselves, and at the same time trying to make out it is the one true church. Its move to the outside is not consistent with its interior stance, but once having entered into dialogue with the world around it it will inevitably have to become consistent with it. The Roman Catholic Church would like to think that everyone can be brought around to its terms because it really does think it is the one true church, But hat if it is not? Dialogue as between equals can only begin when the church undertakes to admit that it is wrong, not just at some superficial administrative level, but to its core.

p. When we listen to Pius IX frothing at the mouth and compare it to the more placid tones f latter years, things seem to be on the mend, but it is just the lull in the storm of reform that must sweep the churches if they are going to

[page 50]

lead us to heave.

This is truth; that external states match internal states, Not-truth is the opposite, mismatch between interior and exterior, Such a mismatch always exists due to communication lags.

FITNESS = COOPERATION

So evolution is competition for the most cooperative.

Tuesday 26 October 1999

NORMATIVE CULTURE / SCHOOLING

[page 51]

The Cantor Universe is staring us in the face : we live in a quantum universe governed by continuous function ψ.

Differential equations represent transitin between transfinite levels. [digital/symbolic representations of continua]

Thomism comes out as a model of the transfinite network, a coordinate patch, is a deterministic patch in an indeterministic system. . . .

. . .

Five universal wished: happiness, love, health, prosperity, peace.

The problem is that ancient thinkers made god distinct from the universe, and do effectively devalued the universe.

page 52]

WAR is a DENIAL of REALITY

. . .

FAITH = IMPRINTING (Konrad Lorentz) Konrad Lorenz - Wikipedia

The knight must always say the dragon before he can partner the princess. The princess is (naturally) using her attractiveness to rid her people of a dangerous evil.

DEATH: end of life / door to new life.

The seed must die . . . WRONG

[page 53]

WORK = action effective for survival, ie reducing the risk of failure and death. Have to smoke a joint and make myself sick to write this stuff - WHY?

governor and droop - we need the ERROR Droop speed control - Wikiedia

. . .

The rule of life is very simlpe : SURVIVE, and the method is to cooperate with all things

[page 54]

that promote survival and avoid all things that deprecate (?) derogate (?) block (?) it.

Religions do enhance survival. The population of the world has quadrupled this century love and eachother reducing death rates ad enhancing birth rates.

. . .

does god exist? Artificially induced dualism brought on by the dim view they took of the world and so the need ti invent a word of fantasy to take their minds off the roughness of life around them.

Boethius: De Consolatione Philosophiae Boethius

This thesis represents a rapidly changing attitude to the word - postmodern personality.

[page 55]

Such a personality does not hide from the problems of the world, but rather attacks them in a principled way.

Principles; Evidence based; Maximum bandwidth; Just; Sustainable = self regulating.

We must not be dragged from the real by the ideal.

As log as the Roman Catholic Church remained a cosed shop it could live out is fantasies in peace, but when it finally opened its doors to the word it embarked on a period of change which has a log way to go yet It ist remake itself to effectively fulfill its natural function in the light of new knowledge: Feminism, Birth control, Environment.

Most of the evis in the word are a consequence of clashes as the boundaries of religions . . .

[page 56]

. . .

Religion is a REAL THING so it is time for us to ditch the od fairy talkes and base our [page 57]

behaviour on the scientifically perceived reality.

The recursive nature of evolution means that the past is embedded in the present, and so we are able to study and become aware of the ast and see how it contributed to the present state of affairs. So for instance we share fundamental metabolic systems with every organism in the planet.

. . .

COURT PROCESS - STEERED BY OBJECTION

Wednesday 27 October 1999
Thursday 28 October 1999

. . .

[page 58]

Friday 29 October 1999

. . .

Bliss is the sweet spot. The point of balance at which most of the momentum of the bat goes into the ball with o reaction upon the hitter's hands. We woud like to prove that every real action has its sweet spot, at which the resources are used with maximum benefit and minimum cost.

...

[page 59]

The spirit of truth is the spirit of consistency. Consistency is broader than truth. So ψ has infinite eigenvalues only one of which is realized.

CONSISTENCY ⊃ TRUTH, ie consistency is the space of truth.

. . .

Each photon is defined both by its moment of birth and what it has gone through to get here (RELATIVITY). 3K radiation has spent billions of years timelessly climbing out of the potential well of gravitational potential. Cosmic microwave background radiation - Wikipedia

From an engineering or physical point of view the sweet spot may look far from

[page 60]

mathematically perfect because the universe contains chaos as well as predictability. Animals like ourselves who have evolved in the milieu have learnt to take practical perfection for perfection, not knowing what engineers know.

. . .

[page 61]

. . .

BANDWIDTH = NIMBLENESS OF STEERING

[page 62]

Emotional lobotomy, cutting body off from soul.

Only some explanatory models are real.

Simple / complex = dynamic / static.

Saturday 30 October 1999

Copyright:

You may copy this material freely provided only that you quote fairly and provide a link (or reference) to your source.


Further reading

Books

Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)

Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene , Oxford UP 1976 Amazon: Editorial review: 'Inheriting the mantle of revolutionary biologist from Darwin, Watson, and Crick, Richard Dawkins forced an enormous change in the way we see ourselves and the world with the publication of The Selfish Gene. Suppose, instead of thinking about organisms using genes to reproduce themselves, as we had since Mendel's work was rediscovered, we turn it around and imagine that "our" genes build and maintain us in order to make more genes. That simple reversal seems to answer many puzzlers which had stumped scientists for years, and we haven't thought of evolution in the same way since.' Rob Lightner 
Amazon
  back
Lonergan, Bernard J F, and Robert M. Doran, Frederick E. Crowe (eds), Verbum : Word and Idea in Aquinas (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan volume 2) , University of Toronto Press 1997 Jacket: 'Verbum is a product of Lonergan's eleven years of study of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. The work is considered by many to be a breakthrough in the history of Lonergan's theology ... . Here he interprets aspects in the writing of Aquinas relevant to trinitarian theory and, as in most of Lonergan's work, one of the principal aims is to assist the reader in the search to understand the workings of the human mind.' 
Amazon
  back
Pétrement, Simone, and Raymond Rosenthal (translator), Simone Weil: A Life, Schocken 1988 Jacket: 'A French Jew who broke with Judaism and wavered on the edge of Roman Catholicism, the daughter of a respected physician, the sister of one of the century's greatest mathematicians, Simone Weil devoted her life to the search for truth and God amid the poverty and misery of the poor.

Since her death in 1943 at the age of thirty-four, Simone Weil has become a person of legend. T S Eliot, Dwight Macdonald, Leslie Fiedler and Robert Coles spoke of her as the saint of the twentieth century who lived the contradictions of our era more intensely and continuously than anyone else.' 
Amazon
  back

Tymoczko, Thomas, New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics: An Anthology, Princeton University Press 1998 Jacket: 'The traditional debate among philosophers of mathematics is whether there is an external mathematical reality, something out there to be discovered, or whether mathematics is the product of the human mind. ... By bringing together essays of leading philosophers, mathematicians, logicians and computer scientists, TT reveals an evolving effort to account for the nature of mathematics in relation to other human activities.' 
Amazon
  back
Weil, Simone, On Science, Necessity and the Love of God, Oxford University Press 1968  
Amazon
  back
Links
ABC, Australian Broadcasting Commission , 'Australia's leading source of information and entertainment' back
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius - Free Ebook, 'The book called 'The Consolation of Philosophy' was throughout the Middle Ages, and down to the beginnings of the modern epoch in the sixteenth century, the scholar's familiar companion. Few books have exercised a wider influence in their time. It has been translated into every European tongue, and into English nearly a dozen times, from King Alfred's paraphrase to the translations of Lord Preston, Causton, Ridpath, and Duncan, in the eighteenth century.' back
Cosmic microwave background radiation - Wikipedia, Cosmic microwave background radiation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'With a traditional optical telescope, the space between stars and galaxies (the background) is completely dark. However, a sufficiently sensitive radio telescope shows a faint background glow, almost exactly the same in all directions, that is not associated with any star, galaxy, or other object. This glow is strongest in the microwave region of the radio spectrum. The CMB's serendipitous discovery in 1964 by American radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson was the culmination of work initiated in the 1940s, and earned them the 1978 Nobel Prize.' back
Covenant Productions, A Ripple of Hope, 'Advised against appearing before an inner city crowd in Indianapolis the Night Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, Robert Kennedy delivered an extemporaneous speech that brought a sense of peace to the city. This film weaves together first person accounts of that tumultuous day in 1968.' back
D. T. Suzuki - Wikipedia, D. T. Suzuki - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki (鈴木 大拙 貞太郎 Suzuki Daisetsu Teitarō, October 18, 1870 – July 12, 1966) was a Japanese author of books and essays on Buddhism, Zen and Shin that were instrumental in spreading interest in both Zen and Shin (and Far Eastern philosophy in general) to the West. Suzuki was also a prolific translator of Chinese, Japanese, and Sanskrit literature. Suzuki spent several lengthy stretches teaching or lecturing at Western universities, and devoted many years to a professorship at Otani University, a Japanese Buddhist school.' back
Droop speed control - Wikiedia, Droop speed control - Wikiedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In electrical power generation, Droop Speed Control is a speed control mode of a prime mover driving a synchronous generator connected to an electrical grid. This mode allows synchronous generators to run in parallel, so that loads are shared among generators in proportion to their power rating.' back
Frederick Winslow Taylor - Wikipedia, Frederick Winslow Taylor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856–March 21, 1915), widely known as F. W. Taylor, was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of scientific management and was one of the first management consultants.' back
Konrad Lorenz - Wikipedia, Konrad Lorenz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (7 November 1903 – 27 February 1989) was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, developing an approach that began with an earlier generation, including his teacher Oskar Heinroth. Lorenz studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially in greylag geese and jackdaws. Working with geese, he investigated the principle of imprinting, the process by which some nidifugous birds (i.e. birds that leave their nest early), bond with the first moving object that they saw within the first hours of hatching.' back
Second Vatican Council: Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis humanae, 'First, the council professes its belief that God Himself has made known to mankind the way in which men are to serve Him, and thus be saved in Christ and come to blessedness. We believe that this one true religion subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church, to which the Lord Jesus committed the duty of spreading it abroad among all men. Thus He spoke to the Apostles: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have enjoined upon you" (Matt. 28: 19-20). On their part, all men are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and His Church, and to embrace the truth they come to know, and to hold fast to it.' back
Trinity - Wikipedia, Trinity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons or hypostases:[1] the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit; "one God in three persons". The three persons are distinct, yet are one "substance, essence or nature".[2] A nature is what one is, while a person is who one is.[3][4][5] The Trinity is considered to be a mystery of Christian faith.' back

www.naturaltheology.net is maintained by The Theology Company Proprietary Limited ACN 097 887 075 ABN 74 097 887 075 Copyright 2000-2020 © Jeffrey Nicholls