George
If I can just interrupt you metaphysical tai chi routine for a moment.

Initially I found it incredible to hear you sermonizing to TR re fanaticism, considering your stance firming in the monotheistic camp. Then I remembered ! Monotheism was not just historically
the leading exponent of fanaticism, it has for millennium also been the leading exponent of revisionism –boldly re-writing history to suit its ‘revelations’& excuse itself –whenever it thought it could get away with it ( Comrade Joe owed a lot to formative years spent in a theological college !)

I suggest that monotheism’s new found commitment to peace & reconciliation has more to do with dominant 20-21st century secular memes, that anything within the fruit cake of propositions found in monotheistic codes.

And, as for your butchering of ‘models’ & ‘truth’ concepts:
A better approach would be, different degrees of certainty .
Science as opposed to individual scientists, relies on trial & error, places methodology above authority & it would rarely pronounce anything 100% certain- even ‘trivial’ things .
Monotheism on the other-hand purports to stem from divine authority –which by definition cannot be faulted, its apologists only defence is to duck & weave around issues of ‘interpretation’, but it quickly becomes apparent to free thinkers that monotheism has no clothes- and no future.

…/

Here, I feel religionists and fundamentalist atheists become stuck on their default settings not letting new challenges in. If a Sells-like [another thread] attitude were Einstein’s, Einstein may have built Special Relativity from classical mechanics, but could not have accepted the challenge of adjusting the settings leading to changing the entities that stupefied classical mechanics, within alternative domains. In religion, Sells-like absolutes do not allow one to change the default settings [faith is problematic]:

If there is geological evidence Earth is over 6,000 years old or there were several Jewish Messiahs during the Greek and Roman occupation, “a Sells” will not adjust defaults.

Renn gives examples of how Einstein, between 1907 and 1912, uses the Lorentz Model of field equations to change mental model terminals [the differential operator] representative of the source of the field "describing how the source generates the field”. The differential operator could be incorporated into the equivalence principle, suggesting "co-variants such as the Riemann tensor as the starting point".

Thus, the shift from Special Relativity to General Relativity could not be crisply established from the traditional Lorentz model, yet it could be reshaped via progressive heuristics. Likewise, the architecture of God's presence or allusion can modelled from the triangulating relevant sciences and histographies: e.g., the architecture of theocracies. But one has to let defaults to change. Else, we are left arrested.

Instead, create a traditional model of the Bible and change the default settings based on other knowledge. Keep the Bible, but be prepared to stupefy [not in an insulting sense] it. Identify the Bible’s terminals to conjoin with valid external probes. To iterate, the idea is not to establish opposition, rather to modify the terminals of the traditional [Biblical] model to create new knowledge.

[Above is very simplified and slight tangent owing to space limits]

Best wishes for your 70th.

BACK ON TOPIC NEXT TIME

Oliver,
I agree that we do not disgree that much on the concept of model. I was thinking of its epistemological function in science: understanding “what things are” rather than just “how they work” as is the case with e.g. computer simulations of “real” procedures), though in literature by mathematical models one usually means the latter, technical, application of mathematics.

I am really grateful to you for calling my attention to Jürgen Renn: he seems to be relevant to my ideas about mathematical (and religious) models, though his approach is more historical. For instance, the relation between General and Special Relativity is – retrospectively seen - rather simple (like the relation of a manifold to its tangent space), whatever went on in Eisntein’s mind while passing from SR to GR. You are probably referring to http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ISIS/journal/issues/v95n4/950406/950406.web.pdf, which I am certainly going to read. The distinction between mental models and real models seems to be most interesting, though I did not know it was related to Minski’s Society of Mind. For this I am also thankful to you.

I agree with you if by religionist you mean the fundamentalist version, though I think Sells is more subtle than that. I also agree in principle with your ideas about religious “new knowledge” except that I think one should EXTEND the “old knowledge”, build on it, rather than “modify its terminals”. You see, from a mathematician’s point of view Einstein did not modify Newton but extended his “knowledge”, i.e. model of physical reality. Also, thanks for the birthday wishes.

Horus,
I feel sorry for you, you must have been really hurt by a Christian, or Muslim, or perhaps a priest, that I cannot tell. What I can tell is that you indeed need help, but you can hardly find it on a forum where one is supposed to discuss rationally, and with due respect to alternate world views, different approaches to politics, philosophy, religion, science etc. You can see that even when we occasionally deviate into what you call “metaphysics” (like Oliver and I) we can do it in a civilised, polite manner.

Don’t cry for me Argentina-George!
Cry for those everywhere, cowering under the yoke of monotheistic creeds
And cry for humanity's lost opportunities

George,

You are spot on. I subscribe to ISIS via my membership of the History of Science Society. Caught up with my own research at the moment but will reflect on your valuable comments and will reply next week. Again, have a a great birthday!

Kind wishes,

O.

It is of course no surprise 2 me that the like's of
*Boaz et al*
choose 2 attack style in advance of commenting on substance.

Though I must admit that it surprises me that the bigotry can extend to what could easily b construed as a "Heartless" attitude towards the scores upon scores of desperate young Islamic girls who find themselves in the clutches of a consortium allegedly comprising elements of the Balinese Mafia, Local Police & Military, in a sordid cocktail of prostitution, drugs & corruption, fuelled in no small part by filthy australian "sex tourist" pigs.

In fact, I write the way I do for a specific reason & for a specific audience, though flushing out the likes of *Boaz* & his wannabe political construct mates is always on the agenda.

In other places, we all use multiple languages & translation problems are easily overcome by on-line translators. For the considerate thinkers on this forum, I am sure that this is nothing new.

Whilst I feel very safe & secure in my new 2nd home of
*White Tiger Village*
in staunchly Islamic East Indonesia, I often enquire as to people's views on the Bali Bombings. The latest such interview was with a senior police INTEL officer who had cause to drop by "home" on an unrelated matter.

In addition, I have spoken to the *Haj People* both b4 & after their most recent trip to *Mecca* & invariably, straight off the bat usually, the word used is "Maksiat."

My dictionary defines it as:
in violation of God's Law, immoral (esp.sexually immoral)

...Adam...