proof-texting

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>>>>> "HENRY" == HENRY L BUNCH <henryrna@juno.com> writes:

    HENRY> If quoting scripture is proof texting then any preaching or
    HENRY> teaching is the same or is it?  It would be hard to
    HENRY> convince anyone maybe they had been taught wrong concerning
    HENRY> their relationship to God.

I think that the *ACCUSATION* that one is "proof-texting" is a ploy to
discredit results that might just be creditable.  This whole issue
goes much deeper than most readers of this list are aware.

While quoting from an infinite body of text to support something can
never prove it, and quoting a single counter-example can instantly
disprove it, what we are up against are the two mathematically and
philosophically famous issues of the "law of the excluded middle", and
the "closed world assumption".

The law of the excluded middle states that since every statement is
either true or false, then there can be no thing that does not fit
this categorization.  A tacit assumption among mathematicians and
philosophers up until the earlier part of this century was that
furthermore, every statement was provable -- it could always be proven
to be either true or false.  Some things were easy to prove;
somethings were hard.  Some things were *SO* hard they were still
trying to find a proof, but everyone believed that a proof was
possible; they just had to try harder.

Bertrand Russel (a famous methematician/philosopher/athiest) wrote, in
the 1890's, a treatise titled "Principia Mathematica" in which he
tried to establish every statement in mathematics on rigorous
axiomatic grounds.  This was so that every subsequent statement could
be rigorously submitted to the techniques of mathematical proof.  What
he ran into was the now famous "Russell'd Paradox".

Kurt Godel, in the 1930's, was able to prove that not every statement
is provable.  He did this by proving that in any mathematical system
complicated enough to subsume arithemetic, it was possible to make
statements that were not provable within that same system.  In order
to reach any comclusion about such statements, one had to go outside
that system, and into the realm of metaknowledge -- knowledge that
transcends the system itself.

Now the text of the Bible is a finite text, and it only has so many
statements in it, but queries may be made of it -- questions asked --
that require taking more than one scripture and placing them "line
upon line, precept upon precept" to reach a conclusion.  Some
questions we may ask are not answered directly, or even indirectly, by
the scriptures.  The Bible satisfies the closed world assumption in
its text, but because the statements in it may be recursively applied
in potentially infinite chains of inference, the Hebrand Universe
that the Bible spans is *NOT* finite!  So we have here a finite text
with infinite possibilities.

In order to answer some questions, we need metaknowledge.  We must go
outside the system to a larger system that *SUBSUMES* the original
system.  


Webster Definition for "subsume"

sub.sume \s*b-'su:m\ vt [NL subsumere, fr. L sub- + sumere to take up
- more at ]CONSUME : to classify within a larger category or under a
general principle {~ an individual under a species}


Shall we then go to other men?  No, because they do not subsume the
word of God.  Neither shall we go to the natural word -- the physical
realm of science.  How about philosophy?  No, that's out too; it is
the invention of man's mind.  That would be the same as going to other
men.  Then to whom shall we turn?  To whom shall we go?

"I go to the rock of my salvation!"  I go to the God who wrote the
Bible.  I ask him personally in prayer.  I appeal to the infinite
source of all knowledge, metaknowledge included.  And he will hear my
prayer, and He will answer me, and I shall know the truth, and the
truth shall set me free!

-- 
--------  "And there came a writing to him from Elijah"  [2Ch 21:12]  --------
Robert Jay Brown III  rj@eli.wariat.org  http://eli.wariat.org  1 847 705-0424
Elijah Laboratories Inc.;  37 South Greenwood Avenue;  Palatine, IL 60067-6328
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