Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mls@sfsup.att.com (Mike Siemon) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: What does IMHO mean? Message-ID: Date: 14 May 91 07:36:45 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 52 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , blauch@bilge.ece.cmu.edu (Andrew J Blauch) writes: > If God had a physical body he would be bound by space, Gulp. There is *so* much unwarranted assumption in this as to make me a bit green. It's a good type case of what is wrong with "apodeictic" or systematic theology after the pattern of Greek philosophy. If I wanted to know about "physical bodies" I'd ask a physicist -- and I would find that things are rather complex, especially in regard to the relation of bodies to "space." Einstein, for example, has a few things to say about the "space-like" character of some of our experience being something of an illusion (one may go to Minkowski to get an elucidation of the situation, or study general relativity and learn of space-like, time-like and null geodesics.). And Quantum Electrodynamics introduces some wildly non-Einsteinian kinds of reality -- such that Einstein was boggled, and with Podolsky and Rosen tried to construct a convincing philosophical rejection, only to find that in *experiential reality* the universe is either non-causal or at the very least such as to make *local* causality impossible. We need not here look in detail at the results, except to notice that the physicists INSIST that the universe does NOT operate as our ordinary linguistic presumptions may dispose us to think. Even if they are "ultimately" wrong, they are still FAR more correct than some idiot Greek who mistook puns on Greek usages as "final" truths. And building a Christian theology on Greek mistakes does NOT redeem the mistakes! Nothing in science requires us to take any physicist's statement as final truth -- but there is at least some worth in granting that they KNOW what they are talking about, and have the most adequate statements of this they can manage. By contrast, Aristotelian or Thomistic or other "systematic" philosophical statements tend to have plausibility only if we ignore the reality that presents itself for modeling to the physicists. Philosophy, or theology, that attempts to make simple classifications on the basis of ordinary human use of words (and this is ALL that metaphysics has ever done!) has little claim on my attention, when the SERIOUS study of "physical bodies" finds that it MUST reject such simplistic categories. The problem with all the "omni" nonsense of popular theology is that it PRESUMES that the Greeks knew what they were talking about. But it is an incontrovertible fact that they simply did NOT. That is no denigration of their serious *attempt* to know -- but it is a warning that I will not gladly suffer an uncomprehending rehash of Greek mistakes as if they were somehow required for Christian understanding of Christian faith. -- Michael L. Siemon "O stand, stand at the window, m.siemon@ATT.COM As the tears scald and start; ...!att!attunix!mls You shall love your crooked neighbor standard disclaimer With your crooked heart."