I think it developed that way because the elites realized that order was better than chaos - for them. But in terms of actually reaching useful conclusions on what makes life better for all mankind, religion has and continues to fall short. — Pro Hominem

This is quite a substantial statement to make. So let's address this first. You must remember that science was first studied on religious motivations. Furthermore, the development of the modern scientific method by Descartes was claimed to be 'inspired by the divine'. The reasons for pursuing science remains based on a dogmatic argument even today. One does not do science for any utilitarian/economic purpose, but instead for the pursuit and understanding of reality. Most of our scientific facts do not have any application beyond satisfying the curiosity and developing the understanding of those who study it. The idea that this is a valid way for humans to spend their time has no argument beyond 'the pursuit of truth' which is an argument deeply rooted in religion. I would not call Science a shortcoming in making useful conclusions on what makes life better for mankind. Galilleo, Newton, Godel, von Neumann, Einstein, all believed in some sort of God and they all pursued science for the sake of understanding their reality, and by extension, its relation with their religious concepts better. In fact Godel's theorems in logic (arguably the greatest advances in logic since the subject's inception) was derived directly to refute the formalists trying to disconnect mathematics from the dogmatic argument that mathematical objects are 'real'.

Now beyond science, would you say the conclusion that slavery is bad is a shortcoming? Would you say that assumptions like 'murder is bad' and 'don't sleep with your neighbor's wife' do not make life better for mankind? Would you say the ideas of charity and peace do not make life better for humankind? All of these core assumptions, so fundamental to how our society functions today that we forgot we assumed them in the first place, are derived mostly from religion. Even much of our big laws today is derived verbatim from the Jewish laws of 4000 years ago.

So if you're aware that efforts have already been made to do this, do you also know that they are all failures? Language is more complex than that. It is specifically flexible in a way that mathematics isn't. They do different things and trying to reconcile them is a fruitless waste of time. But I'm sure your smarter than all the people who have tried it before, so no worries. :roll:

The best part is that efforts to simply create ANY language with the consistency of mathematics have failed in the past, but you want to create one specifically to talk about THEOLOGY?!?!? Sure. — Pro Hominem

I never claimed I was going to be the one to do it. I merely wanted to ponder the implications of someone actually doing it.

Examples of languages with the consistency of mathematics is:
python, java, group theory, regular expressions, Turing machines etc. We have many such examples. We do not need a language to describe every human thought, although Turing machines, by way of modern developments in AI seems to come close.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence — Pro Hominem

I already mentioned I am not a philosopher. You are going to have to drop you sarcasm and explain yourself concisely. I never claimed equivalence between the list of things I mentioned. I mentioned a bunch of examples of different concepts that all share a common attribute, which we call 'abstraction'. Saying apples and oranges are the same is false equivalence. Saying apples and oranges share an attribute of being edible is not false equivalence.

Now you still do not seem to grasp what I am saying. I apologize for not being articulate enough, my native language is not English.

I will try again, but with an example.

Let's make it simple and consider Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism. This is something we understand rather well, so it shouldn't be too hard for logicians to come up with a first order theory describing it. If we then were to prove this theory consistent, then we would guarantee the existence of a set theoretical construct that mimics precisely what we described an electron to be. This is what mathematicians mean by 'existence' and this is what you mean when you say 'there exists infinitely many primes'. Now the existence of the set theoretic construction does not imply physical existence. It does not imply the existence of the electrons in your coffee cup. It merely implies the existence of our abstract concept of an electron.

This is why I mentioned 'half existence'. This is why I mentioned religions attribute a stronger type of existence to their respective gods. However, the 'half existence' of a god puts the concept on the same level of reality as our current concepts of mathematics. Thus if you want to reject that concept of a god, you are going to have to reject the notions of existence of mathematical objects, and instead treat it as a purely symbolic subject. And if you want to treat mathematics as a language that says something about reality, then since it would then also say something about a god, you cannot completely reject the abstract notion of a god.

You don't think evolution or medicine are evidence based and correlate to the real world? Are you a Trump voter? — Pro Hominem

My statement: 'the facts considered in these fields are considered to be true' was put there to say we do not need a consistent formal language to describe things that we describe to be true. Furthermore it was put there to highlight the incredible inconsistency built into language, as anyone on the forefront of these fields may testify that publications consist of a LOT of arguing and contradicting. It's messy.

Mathematics is ultimately just a language, and most of mathematics has nothing to do with the real world in any easily graspable way. Consider Category theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_nonsense) for example. Furthermore go research the philosophical problems connected with things like the continuum hypothesis/axiom of choice.

No. It is specifically correlated to the "real" (observable) world. Mathematics is internally consistent in a way that transcends language. There have been efforts to rest language on the solid foundation of mathematics (Russell for example) but I have never heard of someone trying to rest the reliability of math on the "consistency" of language. Language is not consistent. It is largely correlative, but it is agreement reality and fluid. God doesn't have nearly the evidence to support his existence as mathematics does, or even the less secure language. — Pro Hominem

You are correct, there is a long history of mathematicians trying to make general language consistent. And this is somewhat analogous to what I proposed. I propose a formal language to describe theological theory in a consistent way, thus granting it the same level of 'reality' as mathematical objects like groups/rings/topological spaces or the real numbers. I am not resting the reliability of math on the consistency of English. I am resting the reliability of math on the consistency of a special 'language' called first order theories, in particular set theory (which in any case is yet to be proven consistent, we are taking the consistency of it as faith at this stage).

Love is an abstract concept. Like numbers was an abstract concept 1000 years ago. We saw a bunch of examples of each, enough for us to talk relatively unambiguously about both and thus we started calling it 'real'. Other examples of abstract concepts are money, economy, countries, etc. which all of us come to call real. If someone were to develop a specialized language, as was done for mathematics, to pin down our abstract concept of God, then God would share the same amount of reality as all of the abstract concepts I mentioned. However note that I believe religions commonly attribute a stronger type of reality than mere an abstract human thought.

God on the other hand, does not correlate to the "real" world, and is not reflected in human interaction. It is a concept that was invented to concentrate power in the hands of a few elites so they could maintain control of their tribes in the face of growing population numbers. Religion had a function historically, and allowed societies to increase their net security and stability to the point that the next step in human evolution, reason, could be developed. In the presence of reason, religion is not necessary and not even desirable. — Pro Hominem

You might believe that God was created by the 'elite' as a ploy to power, but I doubt this is the case. Do you believe superheroes were created by the American shadow government to control your minds and influence the opinions of the masses? Because this is the same type of argument you are making.

At the very least one needs to treat religion as an abstract concept developed to try pin down some observations on what actions make life better and what actions make life worse. Also, keep in mind most of western law has it's roots in the laws developed in Israel on dogmatic basis. Do not murder, do not steal, do not sleep with you neighbors wife etc. These are things we take for granted. The abolishment of slavery was done on Christian arguments. Equal rights is one of the core ideas in Christianity. Western society today is still very much a Christian one, in the sense that we subscribe to Christian morality. So I reiterate, at the very least one needs to treat religion as 'real' in the abstract way.

So the language I was talking about was the 'language' of first order theories. Now this is a MUCH simplified model of language, simplified to the point where you can feed the axioms into a computed and it will just algorithmic-ally be able to crank out proofs. This is much too simple to describe anything we come across in our day to day lives, however it is strong enough for mathematics to be formalized in this way.

Now I am not a philosopher by any means, and also not a linguist. I am training to become a mathematician. These are just thoughts i have along the way.

This is some simple examples of some first order sentences we dealt with:

True, but by this argument this is also a proof against evolutionary theory/ modern medicine/ any other modern science not formalized in this way. The facts generated in these fields are nonetheless considered to be true.

Would you reject the concepts of mathematics as irrational and not correlated to the real world? What I tried to do was explain that one may consider mathematical reality to be based solely on the fact that the language used to describe it is logically consistent. So my proposition is that if we can do the same for our language used to describe God, then this gives our concept of God as much 'reality' as mathematics.

This however does not yet prove the existence of a somewhat more 'platonic' God, but it does give us a sort of 'half' existence like mathematics/numbers/love etc.

So I have recently studied a bit of mathematical logic and first order theories. A bit of background:

A first order theory is a very specific language used to describe mathematical 'things'. This is done by specifying axioms and inference rules, and proofs are done in a very disciplined/algorithmic way. One can view it as simple symbol manipulation with the intention of it meaning something. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-order_logic

Now a big result was that "a theory is consistent if and only if it has a model". A model is also a very specifically defined thing, but I am going to make myself guilty of popularizing a bit here. A model is basically a 'real' mathematical object. So your theory having a model basically means there is a 'real' mathematical object that all this mindless symbol manipulation describes. In other words the symbols/language have meaning.

Consistency means that your first order theory is contradiction free. You can not derive two contradictory statements from the axioms. Furthermore, if one can derive even one contradiction, then one can prove any statement in your theory.

One may have big philosophical discussions about reality of mathematical/abstract things, but what this result basically tells us that when dealing with first order theories, mathematicians view 'existence' equivalent to the language describing the 'thing' to be consistent.

Again, I am once again going to make myself guilty of generalizing, but I believe these ideas may carry over relatively intuitively to everyday life. If one speaks of 'real' objects, then one is not free to say what one wants to. Some statements are true and some statements are false. If anyone doubts us we just point to the object and verify it. So if one is talking about a real thing, then the language used to describe it is relatively 'consistent' or contradiction free. Now in mathematics (well the mathematics of first order theories at least) they also accept the converse: if we are consistent in describing this thing then it must exists. If we are not free to say what we want about this thing, then it exists.

Now this brings me to the question of existence of God. I am not a philosopher/logician or anything fancy like that. However, if one accepts what mathematicians do about existence, then one only needs to show that the dogmatic theory describing God is consistent.

Obviously this is an enormous undertaking, as human language is very dirty and complex and any human thought is absolutely riddled with contradictions. But if one day someone tries to 'clean up' language so as to remove all the contradictions built into it, and then proceeds to provide a consistent dogmatic theory about God, then do you guys think this will suffice as a proof for the existence of God, albeit only as an abstract concept similar to our concepts of numbers/mathematics today?