This post is to move a discussion from Sandbox(4) at Entropy’s request.
Over on the Sandbox(4) thread, fifthmonarchyman made two statements that I disagree with:
“I’ve argued repeatedly that humans are hardwired to believe in God.”
“Everyone knows that God exists….”
As my handle indicates, I prefer to lurk. The novelty of being told that I don’t exist overcame my good sense, so I joined the conversation.
For the record, I am what is called a weak atheist or negative atheist. The Wikipedia page describes my position reasonably well:
“Negative atheism, also called weak atheism and soft atheism, is any type of atheism where a person does not believe in the existence of any deities but does not explicitly assert that there are none. Positive atheism, also called strong atheism and hard atheism, is the form of atheism that additionally asserts that no deities exist.”
I do exist, so fifthmonarchyman’s claims are disproved. For some reason he doesn’t agree, hence this thread.
Added In Edit by Alan Fox 16.48 CET 11th January, 2018
This thread is designated as an extension of Noyau. This means only basic rules apply. The “good faith” rule, the “accusations of dishonesty” rule do not apply in this thread.
KN,
I’d be interested in hearing you elaborate on that. I haven’t seen anyone, enactivist or not, demonstrate that skepticism about the external world is a non-starter.
God’s existence justifies the assumption that logic obtains.
If you deny God’s existence you are left with the obvious question
Why does logic obtain???
not at all,
Assume God and logic necessarily follows.
It’s not an added layer it’s a necessary consequence.
peace
This one seems to come up repeatedly so lets cover all the bases.
How do I know revelation is genuine revelation?
Short answer— revelation.
Same answer from a different perspective—-revelation is self-verifying
slightly longer answer — I know it’s actually a revelation if the revealer actually revealed it.
Bonus paragraph
How do I know that my wife’s favorite movie is the Princess Bride?
Because she revealed it to me
How do I know that she actually revealed it to me?
Because I know my wife and I know what revelation from her is like.
I hope that helps
peace
Given false memories can be implanted exactly how reliable is such a memory?
A condition does not exist in the absence of the entity it is attached to. But truth would still exist if absolutely nothing whatsoever existed because it would be true that nothing whatsoever existed.
Truth is eternal and a-se
peace
Actually you have to assume God is logic and God is justifies logic and logic needs justification.
My memory of the revelation is not the same thing as the revelation
The revelation is 100% reliable if she revealed it to me. It’s 0% reliable if she did not reveal it to me. In that case it’s not revelation at all.
The reliability of the revelation is not dependent on my memory it’s dependent on if it was revealed.
Knowledge does not require certainty or even perfect memory.
I can know stuff even if it’s possible that I may be mistaken.
peace
I have no idea what it means to say that logic exists. What is “logic” supposed to mean here? What kind of “existence” is logic supposed to have?
It’s not an assumption it’s revelation
The greek word Logos means Logic or Reason
In the beginning was the word (Logos), and the word (Logos) was with God, and the word (Logos) was God.
(Joh 1:1)
If logos is logos is
Assume logic and you assume God.
What needs justifying is the idea that logic can exist and at the same time God not exist.
peace
That does not surprise me.
check it out
http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=16
quote:
God is a rational being, the architecture of whose mind is logic.
end quote:
peace
Where would presuppositionalism be without equivocation?
Glen Davidson
Your theory is it constitutes the entity, God is truth, not God is truthful.
Then statement nothing existed would exist.
GlenDavidson,
Should be re-baptized to equivocationalism bullshitologetics.
Truth is a person yes…..and a condition
“Ful” is simply a suffix meaning “full of,”
Truth is Truthful
as
God is Godly
peace
The statement “nothing existed” is something, is it not?
peace
All,
I going to have to leave you to your fun for a little while. Like i have said repeatedly i am swamped right now
enjoy 😉
peace
And when he returns, he’ll be back to making the same inane arguments, as if his ass hadn’t been kicked and re-kicked in this thread as in earlier ones.
That’s a metaphor. It is not meant to be taken literally.
This is absurdity mounted onto more absurdity. Logic is a conceptual framework that helps solve problems. A being that already knows everything has no use for logic. Your imaginary friend is not supposed to have any problems to solve. It has all the power and all the knowledge, past and future. So it would be absurd for this imaginary being to put together any syllogisms and/or look for problems in an argument. Hell, your imaginary friend has no use for senses. It knows everything, every position, every color, every everything. it doesn’t need to feel to move out of the way, it’s invisible and “immaterial.”
Concepts are representations. So, if this imaginary being’s mind is composed of logic, then the mind of this being is composed of concepts, of representations. That makes this being necessarily limited, thus contradicting the omni-everything idea (which is absurd either way).
That makes your claim for revelation a claim of having something told to you by a limited being.
Fantasy and bullshit from the very foundation. When you idiots try and put that together you invite further problems, and you don’t even notice. You just make those claims with airs of superiority, as if your arrogance made the shit you’re eating any less nauseating.
quote:
one God, alone, great, true, truthful, the truth. Of whom if we endeavor to think, so far as He Himself permits and grants
and
O soul pressed down by the corruptible body, and weighed down by earthly thoughts, many and various; behold and see, if you can, that God is truth. For it is written that “God is light;” not in such way as these eyes see, but in such way as the heart sees, when it is said, He is truth [reality]. Ask not what is truth [reality] for immediately the darkness of corporeal images and the clouds of phantasms will put themselves in the way, and will disturb that calm which at the first twinkling shone forth to you, when I said truth [reality]. See that you remain, if you can, in that first twinkling with which you are dazzled, as it were, by a flash, when it is said to you, Truth [Reality]. But you can not; you will glide back into those usual and earthly things. And what weight, pray, is it that will cause you so to glide back, unless it be the bird-lime of the stains of appetite you have contracted, and the errors of your wandering from the right path?
end quote:
Augustine of Hippo
peace
That’s the whole idea of presuppositionalism. They make a commitment to their fantasies, and nothing you say will penetrate their minds. Nothing at all. He will just repeat the very same bullshit and pretend that he presented a solution to his absurd requests, even though people have shown them that their claims are beyond absurd.
quote:
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
(Rom 1:21)
end quote:
peace
This time I really got to go
Entropy,
Is this its own presupposition?
Bill,
Since you’re here, let’s do an experiment. Read this comment and tell us if you can see the logic mistake that fifth is making. It’s quite basic and obvious.
quote:
Augustine, after he had experienced all the implications of ancient skepticism, gave a classical answer to the problem of the two absolutes: they coincide in the nature of truth. Veritas is presupposed in ever philosophical argument; and veritas is God. You cannot deny truth as such because you could do it only in the name of truth, thus establishing truth. And if you establish truth you affirm God. “Where I have found the truth there I have found my God, the truth itself,” Augustine says. The question of the two Ultimates is solved in such a way that the religious Ultimate is presupposed in every philosophical question, including the question of God. God is the presupposition of the question of God.
end quote:
Paul Tillich
peace
Thank you for this textbook example of the circular reasoning fallacy.
What do you refer to when you write “its.” FMMs imaginary friend?
Entropy,
Yes
I agree that if I thought I knew things without justification then my worldview would be similar in that sense to yours. Well done, perhaps there’s hope for you yet.
You wrote it as a claim. You’re now trying to distance yourself from it because you were asked to support it. Do you think that kind of behavior is honest? Would your god approve?
That’s not how rational discourse proceeds. You made the claim, you have to support it. What are your evidence and logic supporting the idea that your god must exist in order for the law of “noncontridiction” to be valid and for our powers of reasoning to be generally reliable? Stop trying to avoid supporting your claim by asking questions of others. Your argument must stand on its own. You don’t win by default.
Well said. I should have read ahead.
Moderators, how long are you going to allow this to continue??
Where does Alurker get off trying to decide the motives of FMM’s questions?
This constant rules breaking and extra leniency by the moderators to allow this has to stop. Just because Alurker would like to be an atheist, that does not mean he deserves to not have the rules apply to him. I don’t know what his motives are, but I know it is against the rules to say what his motives are.
It’s one thing to say that if God exists, and if God is a rational being in the same sense that we are, then God’s mind conforms to logical principles. But that doesn’t tell us anything about what logic is or why it’s only theism that allows us to understand logic.
To be honest, it’s not at all clear to me that you understand what logic is or what logicians do.
Right, so isn’t that the question? Maybe NOTHING is logical, and we just believe it is. Do we have any basis for believing our thoughts are logical, if there is nothing TRUE that exists outside our mind?
Some people would say that a God is an example of true knowledge (a God is something that is presumably not fooled by his senses). But if that doesn’t exist, then there is no such thing as true knowledge. We are all just fools of our senses. As such, we have no real logic by which to base anything. Nothing we believe is true, thus nothing is logical.
Then what is logic?
When some uses this expression, it gives a distinct impression that until this very moment he had been BSing me… Otherwise why would he even mention it?
That’s what I call logic…
Moved a couple of posts to guano.
It is an assumption that the revelation is true, it is an assumption it is divine, it is an assumption you understand correctly, three more assumptions, makes six
So John says God is Logic,and we are back at revelation with the addition of Biblical assumptions.
newton: God is justifies logic
I agree, so far it is revelation all the way down
newton: logic needs justification
Not asssuming logic, it is a tool which has been demonstrated to be useful and you only need to assume God if you already assumed He is Logic.
Not assuming anything about God’s existence one way or the other and logic exists , it’s dependence on God’s existence is an assumption. Just cause you pile them up it doesn’t mean they become non assumptions.
peace
fifth:
ALurker:
Heh. Fifth has a knack for falling into his own traps.
Think about that, you are claiming that scripture and the church fathers and learned Christians through the ages meant to say “God is like logos” instead of “God is Logos”.
What could it possibly mean to say “God is like Logic”?
peace
Nope, you need to read up on the difference between viciously circular and virtuously circular.
To say that revelation is self verifying is virtuously circular because revelation is not a instantaneous event but a process that continuously imports contextual information from the outside.
communication is unique in that way
My wife can reveal that she loves something in an instant but it will take a lifetime of interpersonal communication for me to exauhaust the totality of what was meant by that simple revelation.
peace
I agree logic needs justification in a world with out God
the assumptions in that statement are glaring and manifold
1) how do you know that you are not imagining that logic has been demonstrated to be useful?
2) how do you know that “useful” is synonymous with valid?
3) how do you know that “useful in the past” is in anyway relevant to what is happening now?
etc etc
peace
That is not at all what I’m saying.
God reveals to you what logic is and you don’t have to be a Christian to understand logic you just have to be a Christian to justify it.
Peace
No, just the opposite is true.
I have justification for what I know and you don’t as far as I can tell.
I have provided justification that you have already implicitly accepted
God can reveal so things so that I can know them!
You have not provided any justification whatsoever as of yet for what you claim to know.
I’ll bet that if you ever do it will be subject to further regress
peace
Virtuously circular: name given by presuppositionalists to their own fallaciously circular arguments.
Viciously circular: name given by presuppositionalists to anything an atheist might respond to the presuppositionalist’s “arguments.”
There you go.
It seems odd that with all the talk in this thread about “logic,” no one has mentioned any concepts involved in logic: inference, argument, validity, structure, form, soundness, premises, or conclusion. Nor has anyone here noted that there are many logics: sentential logic, predicate logic, modal logic, deontic logic, paraconsistent logics, relevance logic, quantum logic, monotonic and non-monotonic logics, etc. (see here)
The question was raised above as to what justifies logic if not God. I think that a moment’s reflection will show that this question does not make sense. (It is also worth pointing out that God cannot both justify logic and also be logic.)
An innocuous and non-controversial characterization of logic is that it is the study of inference, or better, inferential form. An argument is logically valid if it has the right form or structure, regardless of its content. The “laws” of logic are rules which stipulate what a good inferential form has to be like.
Generally speaking, there’s a deep connection between goodness of inferential form and preservation of truth: if an argument has good inferential form, then true premises will yield true conclusions. If an argument is invalid because has the wrong inferential form, then it will have true premises and a false conclusion. There’s actually a rather lively debate among logicians about whether inference or truth is the more fundamental notion: shall we define inference in terms of truth, or truth in terms of inference? Regardless, there’s a very deep connection between the two.
The fact that we have multiple logics — both the standard or ‘classical’ logic and the various ‘non-classical logics’ — suggests that there’s more than one way to codify goodness of inferential form. It depends on what aspects of reasoning we’re trying to capture in our logic. (For an example, see here on the debate between material implication and strict implication.)
What then of justification? We may take justification to be about reasoning: a claim p is justified if there is a reason, q, for accepting p. What counts as a good reason is often context-dependent (for example, the standard of “reasonable doubt” does not hold in civil law; a person can be convicted in civil court even if found innocent in criminal court). The standards of evidence are different in law and in science (despite what Philip Johnson would have us believe).
When we take up the question, “what justifies logic?” or “why does logic exist?” it is impossible to understand what these questions could mean. Logic, as a study of inferential form, is not the sort of thing that could be justified. There’s no line of reasoning that takes premises of any sort and yields “logic!” as a conclusion.
To engage in reasoning at all is to engage in the kind of activity that can be modeled with some logic of some kind. Logic does not need any justification because it is a way of understanding what justification is — namely, a way of understanding the role of inferential form in reasoning.
(All this, by the by, should be perfectly obvious to anyone who has taken the time to study logic in high school or college.)
That’s a contradiction of terms involving layers of absurdity upon absurdity.
1. That logic obtains means that it doesn’t need justification. It’s self-containing.
2. Justification requires logic, so asking for a justification for logic is self-imploding and self-refuting.
3. Making a question requires logic, so asking for a justification for logic is self-imploding and self-refuting.
4. The existence of anything implies logic, so pretending that a magical being’s existence is necessary to justify logic is ass-backwards. Cart-before-the-horse.
5. Since the existence of anything implies logic, presuppositionalists actually rely on logic obtaining, which means that the presuppositionalists are arrogantly borrowing, without acknowledgement, from an atheist worldview.
To fifthmonarchyman:
“You’re not really a theist. You’re mistaken about that.”
Kantian Naturalist,
I don’t read anything in this that explains how truth can be described outside of our senses if there is no one who possesses perfect truth.
If nothing is true, nothing is logical. Its only logical for you, because you are only going by your truth, which must necessarily be different from everyone else’s.
On what basis did you move my comment to Guano? I very carefully wrote it to conform to the rules. You are demonstrating the problem that I am trying to get you and Alan to address.
Your conclusion does not follow from premise , it does not follow that nothing is true. We have evidence that enough sensory information must be true enough and shared to allow us to maneuver heavy objects at high speed routinely though others doing the same to reach a destination.