Thank you for your post.

"That Peter has wiped the dust from his feet and moved on from their responses is to be admired. Is that not the injunction of the Lord?"- Boxbum

Direct quote, no citation or allusion to Luke, here. Albeit, I did look up Luke and now see the plagiary and ambiguity (for me).

Disagree mathematicians [truly] understand latent entities, else Cosmology and QM would have been unified in 90s. Stephen Hawkins admits, he underestimated the task. Rodger Penrose states, we cannot understand the complexities of a Mandelbrot set.

I have read Penrose on Platonic, Mathematical and Mental worlds, so, I have some insights into your thinking [unlike Peter].

Regarding Peter, I can understand the smart remarks made by quick visits from SOME atheists, upsetting; but see Wellian accounts of History, subject-predicate forms in philosophy and physical anthropology and broader theocrasia, legitimate Forum inputs.
The nounsense Peter sees in my posits has the weight of civilizationists, other historians, philosophers of knowledge and forensic science.

Agree you can cluster gods and you have impressively, demonstrated wide-reading in your models. Catch is, even if Jesus lived, the attributes of the Isis-Serapis godhead could have been "assigned" to that person... George Reeves could fly.

Appreciate Peter is a CHRISTIAN, with the emphasis, but, my posit is this makes him a priest of a religion NOT a seeker of God.

[Had Peter written about epicycles in worship of Ptolemy, "a priori" I would have recommended at least considering alternative celestial mechanics. The Forum is like "Speaker's Corner" it is not closed to the authority/parameters of its authors. We debate.]

George,

I once worked for two years with IBM (Washington) on AI. Historically, I was a programmer, but, here, Chaired the handover of business requirements specifications to application systems developers on an nine-figure AI project. The problem for AI is not so-much the symbols, but, the symbols having a fluid character.

With Banking software, for instance, one typically inputs to "hard codes" fields, say 3 months in a term deposit field. When dealing with Logically Engineered Generic Objects, the value of the term, say, x, is NOT hard coded, but, computed, from, say lodgement date (a) and maturity date (b). Catch is, "a" and/or "b" might need to be NOT hard coded to fit an other operation. With thousands of "fluid" generic objects, the idea is to NOT have static fields, rather, fluid objects. [i.e., not just variable values/symbols: 1, 2, 3, n ...].

You might be interested in checking out Japan's 6GL project (80s ?), lost to history

George, perhaps I should just give up if you think I'm pulling your leg with postmodern philosophy. After all, most of my posts in this thread at least would seem to indicate emphatically the opposite. Just happens that I've always felt quite uncomfortable with people's need for boundaries and from your perspective I'd imagine to be seen as a transgressor. Probably as a child many years ago, perhaps as an eight year old stepping away from Sunday school, I feel I just transcended and hyperlinked to the 360 degrees of an infinite material environment. Whilst consciousness may seem on top here, there are many layers and depths of unconsciousness brought into play. Play, although hard to define, is what I tend to do most and seemingly all lacking the extrinsic as well as any reduced uncertainty.

My family and friends often wonder why I post here in Peter's Forum and perhaps the main reason is the wealth of funny stuff and subroutines that I get to play with that otherwise would never be tried. There are cognitive benefits in play and enrichment that enhance behavioral flexibility. Picasso and Mozart played all their lives ........ and one can say that Max Whisson plays from his lab too.

But there are some unfortunates that do not play, that are maladaptive, fragile, inhibited, stressed or whatever? However, let's try to get the essential features of intrinsic motivation where first one should PLAY before the enrichment of find and ye shall seek.

Oliver,
Boxgum and Peter used “no citation or allusion to Luke” apparently for the same reasons one would allude to Romeo and Julia (when commenting on the fate of some unfortunate couple), without mentioning Shakespeare explicitly. However, for an e.g. Chinese audience you probably would have to. Cosmology and QM are not parts of mathematics - Hawking certainly understands the mathematics behind QM, the problem is with our understanding why (or to what extent) it models so “unreasonably effectively” features of the physical world. Penrose uses “understand” in a different sense (he actually uses the word “comprehend” in my book, whereas I would perhaps have used “visualize”) that I am not going to go into: there are books written about the term “understanding” in philosophy. My example with the mathematician and anglicist was just a shortcut.

Finally, my point was not about Peter being a Christian, but about the topic of his article, which was written from a Christian standpoint and with a Christian background. Of course, it could have been written with a different background, e.g. that of a “seeker of God” as you mention, starting from somewhere else. However, you first have to know what you seek, have an understanding of God (“definition” is here a strong word) before you can rationally engage in that seeking (emotionally it is a different matter). The Christian tradition is “ faith seeking understanding” (Augustine, Anselm: fides quaerens intellectum) whereas my impression is that yours is rather a case of “understanding seeking faith”, which I would also sympathize with.

Peter,
Thank you for your words of appreciation. When you wrote “in relation to the Trinity ... I think we understand more about that subject and its reasonableness than some mathematical theories that inexplicably describe an aspect of reality” you apparently have in mind what I called mathematical models of PHYSICAL (or material) reality. Perhaps at the most fundamental level, material reality can actually be DEFINED as that part (or feature) of reality that is open to mathematical modeling, i.e. where mathematics is useful. (ctd)

(ctd) This would include superstrings or the multiverse: they either exist as part or feature of our material world, or do not exist at all (like aether or phlogiston). I think mathematical theories have nothing to do with the Christian concept of Trinity and its understanding; as you know, even St Augustine had problems with this. Christian models of the Ultimate reality (in some way including the material reality but, we believe, not reducible to it) can be seen as “unreasonably effective”, however on quite different levels (metaphysical, psychological, cultural, etc.) as disputed as this effectiveness is by outsiders. The “outsiders” who do not want to accept (or understand) the “unreasonable effectiveness” of mathematics can simply be ignored, they do not count in our understanding of the material world. However, those outsiders who cannot see the effectiveness of Christianity should not be ignored, they are part of that effectiveness, as I see it, and should be taken into consideration both at the rational level - to strengthen or amend our beliefs - and on the psychological level - to strengthen or amend our understanding of ourselves.

Keiran, I think I have to apologize for some clumsy expressions of mine. I just could not understand what you wrote in your last posting, and the fact that I cannot understand what most postmodernists write does not mean, of course, that you have anything in common with them. Thank you for your sincere personal words. Believe me, I am trying to understand you, especially your use of the word “play” - or is it rather something like “toy” or “play around” with words, ideas? There could be something to it, but only to a point, sooner or later your thoughts have to find their home and you peace of mind. I certainly do not see you as a transgressor, unless you wish to provoke (e.g. by using the term “transcend” to indicate almost the opposite of what it is usually reserved to in metaphysics) and want to be seen as such. Is your domain of expertise close to psychology or biology?

I see some truth in George's point about faith chasing understanding versus understanding chasing faith. But that is not quite how I have seen my quest. Rather, I see things in terms of a closed or open attitude towards knowledge discovery. Herein, testing, both belief and disbelief requires a vista not a shoe box. Despite the hundreds of posts by now since the "How doe God Exist" article, I feel no-one has justified "a priori" posits.

I have never been anti-religion (s). Religion (a) aided the transformation from more primitive organisational forms to the establishment of the first City-States in Sumer and beyond, and, (b) supplied the template of the notion of "design". This valuable contribution should be recognised. However, a few thousand years from now, I suggest, our descendants will look upon Religion having been developmentally significant to our societies (c. 5000 BCE - 2200 CE) but redundant (to them). Likewise, I do not "oppose" Sells, nor, similarly, would I condemn the New Guinea Cargo Cults of the 1940s.

The existence of religion is undisputed.

God? Well, that is another story worthy of investigation. But, religion is the wrong starting point, as there is too great a tendency towards acquiesence bias, narrow citations, a priori posits and entrenched convictions. "Is the Pope a Catholic?". Yes. NOTHING is going to change that. Gods and godheads have become intertwined in our history and encaptured by religionists and self-confirming worships. This comment is not a anti-religionism, instead, a diagnois of condition.

George and Kieran,

Thank you for your past contributions and views.