Kent Symanzik

Hi sir drinks-a-lot,

I think I am just confusing you with my choice of terms. Sorry about that. I did not come to believe Christianity is true through rational testing. But, now that I am a Christian I find that Christianity is the only worldview that can pass the test of rationality. By that I mean simply that it is the only worldview that can give a foundation for rationality.

Presuppositions are circular, there is no way to avoid that. Circular arguments are not fallacious when it comes to ultimate things. We all must start our reasoning somewhere. Presupposing your starting point is unavoidable. So, the only way to determine if certain presuppositions are valid is if they provide the foundations necessary to support the whole worldview.

I wasn't making a universal statement that all atheists believe that there will be a rational foundation for atheistic worldviews someday. I was just trying to explain why I prefer describing atheistic worldviews as inconsistent rather than incomplete.

In the Christian worldview, the computer does not have in itself rationality. We humans program it.

How would you as an atheist answer this question? In the atheist worldview, are computers rational? Why or why not?

If you had my dog I think you would answer, no, dogs are not rational Honestly, I see dogs act both ways or maybe I am confusing irrationality with lack of intelligence. It's hard to tell.

Kent

Kent Symanzik

Hi Mark_Chid,

Don't be so hard on yourself, I'm sure you are not an idiot.

This is a good question. The bible tells us that Jesus died on the cross for the sins of many and then he rose again from the dead. He died on the cross because only God himself could satisfy God's justice for our sin. We as humans cannot pay for our own sin. We would spend an eternity trying because our sin is against an infinite God.

That is why God sent His Son to die on the cross for us. Jesus as God and being sinless was able to atone for our sin. Jesus' resurrection from the dead demonstated his righteousness, his victory over death for us, and his divinity.

So yes, Jesus died and then rose from the dead.

Kent

Mark_Chid

You're not actually explaining anything hear, you're just repeating the same empty meaningless words I'd heard for decades.

Either death is terrible or its not.

Christianity teaches that death is not terrible if you go to heaven afterwards.

Jesus apparently died in the certain knowledge he was going to heaven, then afterwards came back to life, proving he could choose whether or not to be dead. In the end he gave up life as a persecuted capenter to go back to eternity in heaven

So I ask again WHERE'S THE SACRIFICE?

To make a sacrifice you must lose something permanently - what exactly did God/Jesus lose?

acronos

Kent,

You have said repeatedly "that when atheists use the laws of logic they are not acting in accordance with their own worldview." If I understand you correctly, you said that you could not prove that your worldview is the only consistent worldview. However, your worldview was the only worldview that you have conceived that was consistent. So, for both of our sakes, can you point out how I am not "acting in accordance" with my worldview?

My worldview:
I do not accept your "necessary being." I see no reason to believe he exists. I am an atheist.

My presupposition is that the universe that we observe exists.

Math and logic are human creations to model and explain observations about the universe that I presuppose exists. When I create a model ship, I can test the flow of water around the hull; so that when I build the real ship, I build the best design. When I use mathematics to model the flow of water around the hull of the ship, I am doing the exact same thing. Math is symbols, or models, that represent aspects of our reality. The number 3 represents what I have when I am holding 3 coins. It is a mind model just as my model boat is a physical model.

Logic is another form of math. It is a system for modeling behavior in the world. It is a system to model relationships that have consistently proven to be true - just as 2 plus 2 equals four in math. When you have taken two coins and added two more to them, our world consistently presents us with four coins. We learn this rule of math by observing our world. We learn the rules of logic in the same way.

The rules of logic are our models of the universe. Their existence is a combination of three factors. The first factor is the existence of the universe, which I have presupposed. The second factor is a human to make the observation. I know humans exist because I have observed them, and I myself am one. The third factor is human reasoning deducing that it can model its reality and doing so. Again, I know I can reason because I have observed myself do it. I know I can create models because I have done it. I have even created new forms of math and logic that assist me in predicting the behavior of our universe that I observe. It turned out later that someone else had already invented them, but I didn't know that at the time. My graphical models made predictions much faster than the teacher trying to use algebra. My models of infinity made much more sense to me than what the teachers were trying to teach using sets.

So help me please. Show me where I am logically inconsistent. I have a bad habit of creating my own logic, so I very well may be logically inconsistent by world standards. If so, I am unaware of it.

[ August 26, 2002: Message edited by: acronos ]
Sorry, I posted a little too quickly.

[ August 26, 2002: Message edited by: acronos ]</p>

Synaesthesia

Kent
You presuppose that God is a foundation for logic, hence you presuppose that you can presuppose a foundation for logic.

You have, for the duration of this discussion, merely assumed that it accounts for logic. You have not dealt with the difficulties, such as the fact that the very idea of God assumes a vast amount of organization, hence in some sense logic.

Moreover, you have not explicitly set out what it even means to “account” for order, nor have you set out how postulating the existence of an infinitely complex being can possibly explain complexity.

Since you have based so much of your argument upon these assumptions, I think it’s fair that you should at least explain what you’re talking about.

I don’t think you know what ‘preconditions for logic’ even means. I certainly don’t.

Exactly what logic is has not yet been understood, naturally it follows that the necessary preconditions are unknown, by both you and every other human being alive. As far as we can discern, logic is simply another word for organization. As to that question, nobody really has an answer. The closest we have gotten is reductionist science which make us capable of explaining complex events in simpler terms.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, presuppositions in the sense that you are using the term is not only unnecessary, but is inevitably misleading. If you do not have a mutual web of epistemic support, your assumptions have precious little chance of corresponding to anything else. In other words, it’s a shot in the dark.

Like an architect who insists that the earth is his foundation without regard to how it actually holds up the house, you are insisting that gods explain logic without the faintest notion of how God would be possible without any logic.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

Kent Symanzik

Hi acronos,

That's fine.

I assume you mean that humans created the symbolism we use to talk about logic. If it is a human creation then there was a time when logic did not exist. Was there a time in the universe when A and not-A were the same?

Numbers and logic are abstract forms. You do not see the number 3. You use instances of the number 3. But, the number 3 is an abstract concept. If it was a particular then it could not be universal. That's a profound statement

Yes, the Christian worldview agrees that the universe adheres to the laws of logic. We Christians know it does because God created it that way. This may be where it becomes more difficult for you as an atheist. You only know what you have observed or what you know from observations from others. You have not observed the universe. You are actually presupposing the uniformity of the universe.

Are you saying that the laws of logic would not exist apart from human observation? This would make them contigent and particular. I will let you clarify.

You seem very logical to me. I think I need you to clarify the things above a bit before I completely understand you. But, it seems like you will not be able to explain the universal character of the laws of logic. This is a problem that keeps coming up with atheistic worldviews in a number of areas, logic, ethics, and science. It seems that many atheists are satisfied with subjective ethics. That is why I like to discuss the laws of logic. I think most atheists, to their credit, hold rationality in very high regard. But, as far as I know, it is impossible to have universal and invariant laws of logic in an atheistic worldview. In an atheistic worldview, you only have particulars. You do not have the number 3. You have instances of the number 3 which point to an abstract universal threeness. What are abstract universals in an atheist worldview? Are there immaterial things? And if there are, how do you know whether they are universal or not?

I'm just trying to give you an idea of where I'm coming from. I will let you clarify your position and then we can go from there.

Thanks

Kent

[ August 26, 2002: Message edited by: Kent Symanzik ]</p>

Jobar

Hello Kent- welcome to EoG. I confess I have not read all this thread; but after reading the last two pages, I want to point out what I see as a huge hole in your reasoning. You have said, in several places and various phrasing-

"We know that God does not change because he tells us so. "

As you are a Christian, I know you are referring to the Bible. I contend you have no reason to believe this; the Bible is no more the "word of God" than any other book. There is nothing miraculous, or indeed extraordinary, about it. There is nothing telling us it is the word of God save itself; no messages written on the sky in letters of fire, or on the moon in patterns of craters; no least breath of evidence beyond the written words of men. Men who can be mistaken; men who can lie through their teeth.

I am a strong atheist with respect to Jehovah- I can say with complete confidence he does not exist, because as he is most commonly defined- omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent- he is self-contradictory in several ways. (A God of infinite love *cannot* co-exist with suffering.)

As to my own world view- as far as I can tell, I only pre-suppose that my senses give me a good representation of an externally-existing universe. I am not a solipsist. I do not see that I need assume anything beyond that.

acronos

I agree. There was a time when logic did not exist. There was a time when A and not-A were meaningless. There was a time when math did not exist. Humans have not always been able to add and subtract. I realize that reasoning is a more complicated proposition, but humans have not always had the rules of logic that they have today. They derived these rules from what they observed. Most of our logic originates from the ancient Greeks.

However, the human capacity to reason is just a part of being human. It evolved the same way that the rest of us did. The ability to model the world to make predictions was a useful trait. Our ability to use symbols to model the world is a huge component in our intelligence. However, the rules of the universe exist outside of the existence of humans. These rules are part of the presupposition that the universe exists.

I agree that I have not observed the entire universe. Yet, what I have observed fits with my worldview. I think of it like a picture puzzle. I never have the whole picture, but what I have so far fits. When it doesn't, I change my world view. My mind models seem to work at predicting the missing pieces. My observations so far point at a uniform universe. I don’t think I am presupposing that; I am observing that.

Yes, I am saying that the rules of logic would not exist apart from human observation. The rules that our universe exhibits would still exist though. The rules that our universe exhibits are part of the presupposition that the universe we observe exists. I am not denying that the rules that our universe exhibits exist. In your model, as I understand it, it is God that you read about/observe that exhibits the rules rather than the universe. We both are supposing the existence of these rules in our presuppositions.

I am drawing a distinction between human reasoning and the actual rules of the universe. The law of gravity exists in the absence of human observation. Once a human was there to observe it, then he was able to create a model that we call the Law of Gravity. The model is an example of logic, but the universe and its laws existed before it was observed. The universe existed before the reasoning of man created logic. The reasoning of man evolved.

When I create a model of a boat, I don’t have the boat. I have a model of the boat. When I create a mind model of three coins, I don’t have three coins. I have a model of three coins. When I create another mind model of two coins and add these mental coins together, then I have five mentally modeled coins. Now I can use such models to predict the behavior of the real universe that I observe. These models are real, not abstract. They exist in my mind, but they do exist. They have so far proven to be universal, but I do not completely rule out the possibility that I may find an instance where they do not correctly model reality. I just sincerely doubt that such a possibility exists.

[ August 26, 2002: Message edited by: acronos ]</p>

Thomas Metcalf

You seem to be asking for three different things here. I assume you aren't asking how we atheists know logic to be true, because it's necessarily true, of course. So you must be asking how we know it applies throughout the universe.

1. Are you asking the atheist to provide a justification of induction? There are always new attempts to digest, but to my knowledge, there is no naturalistic justification of induction. Are you hinting at a transcendental argument from epistemic foundations? If you are, I may offer in response the possibility that the atheist believe in Epistemo, a non-god whose existence causes epistemic foundations to obtain.

2. As for ethics, of course there are several secular ethical theories. To adopt some forms theism actually removes one's ethical footing, especially if one adopts utilitarianism or divine command theory. Are you familiar with transcendental moral argument from evil or with the Euthyphro dilemma?

3. It is patently false that the atheist "worldview" cannot countenance abstract universals. You are correct that conceptualism faces some difficulties, but one could be an atheist who believes in Plato's heaven, or, of course, a nominalist of any stripe. Of course, I believe conceptualism may also be defended fairly plausibly.

HRG

And how do you know that he doesn't deceive you - perhaps for your own good, or for a purpose which is inscrutable for human minds ? Even if he is the ultimate authority on truth, you cannot know that what he tells you is the truth.
Fine. Please add the following prefix to all your statements:

"If my assumption that my God is the ultimate authority is true, then ..."

BTW, by which authority did you assume that your God is the ultimate authority ?

Regards,
HRG.

"Man is the measure of all things" (Protagoras)