Dialogue with a Friendly Christian 3.4 q9

Axiomatic Systems - Godel

There is a Jain theological term, Anekantevada, which means "no one correct point of view". Every attempt at verbalization of the Truth, is but a partial truth. Anekantavada goes hand in hand, in a way, with Kurt Godel, the mathemetician. Many ways of thinking have come out of modern quantum physics to paint a picture that there is not some one Aristotelian truth, syllogistically arrived at, as Aquinas or Descarte had invisioned.

Just as Euclidean Geometry, Hyperbolic Geometry, and Ellliptical Geometry, are mutually contradictory in what they assert about the nature of space, and yet co-exist, and all adequately describe our phenomenal experience of space within the limitation of accuracy of measuring instruments. Just as light itself is a self-contradictory thing which behaves as waves and as quanta or particles.

For the Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and others, dogmatic theological systems are no different than geometrical axiomatic systems. They contradict one another, yet they are internally consistent in the context of their own assumptions, and they co-exist with one another.

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