Pomp

Kelly,

If you click the icon with the pencil and paper that appears above each of your posts, you can edit the content of that post, so you don't have to post corrections seperately.

Clutch

Koy,

You're not making any sense. The point made on WS's site was that mere conditional statements are not arguments. That's true. But aj does not claim that his P1 is an argument in itself. It's just the conditional premise in a MP inference. WS claimed that aj's P1 is flawed because it's conditional, though. And this is false -- nor is it what that website said, as aj correctly pointed out.

Moreover, your claim about the imprecision of the statement "God exists" is of dubious relevance to logic. In the propositional calculus, the propositions are uninterpreted; one is only interested in truth-preserving structures. Certainly if you can demonstrate that "god exists" is incoherent, that would be a good counter-argument -- but that aj follows millions of theists *and* atheists in assuming that the claim has sufficient clarity to be judged true *or* false, is hardly a reflection on his competence or professional ethics, qua instructor of first order logic!

I shudder to think what will now be said about my own unfitness for my job, but it turns out that I teach logic too. I haven't seen any evidence that you know your onions, logically speaking, so you may want to re-think your sense of entitlement to rage about who should and shouldn't lose their teaching positions.

Anyhow, aj's fallacy has been illuminated by lots of people now, in lots of different ways.

Koyaanisqatsi

For f*ck's sake aj, give it a rest.

"Something exists" is an ambiguous (fallacious) phrase that offers no way to establish a legitimate (i.e., "true") conditional antecedent.

"God" is a logically impossible (trinity), mythological creature(unproved necessary being), who cannot be defined as a necessary being (ineffability) even if you could prove it existed.

End of pointlessness.

Koyaanisqatsi

Yes, actually, I am. You keep thinking that my referrencing ws's site and aj's site was for source material to back up counter-arguments, when the fact is I referenced the sites to demonstrate that aj is being disingenous in the manner in which he is conducting himself here.

His own source would side with us in concluding that aj's syllogism is fallacious, as well as admonish him for not being the first one to figure this out for himself.

It was a Ghost of Christmas Past kind of thing; a mentor shaming his student, kind of thing.

The fact that his syllogism has already be demonstrated to be unsound ad nauseum was not my primary concern.

It is irrelevant what aj claims, the entire syllogism hinges upon the conditional being an argument unto itself.

Yes, a fallacious conditional premise in an MP inference.

I don't think that is the case, but you should take it up with wordsmyth.

Excuse me?

And what is "one" interested in when attempting to establish whether or not "one's" syllogism is sound?

Do you need help stuffing that straw man? His competence and "professional ethics" are in question because he knows the fallacies he is committing, yet continues to go to great lengths to obfuscate, redirect and split pointless semantic hairs.

The purpose of logic is to arrive at the truth as objectively and formally as possible, not play deliberate semantics games to obfuscate the truth.

He knows damn well what he's doing, but his bias is overriding his professional ethics as a logician.

Clarity and/or precision of definition is the goal of the logician first and foremost, yes?

Do you also seek to deliberately use ambiguous terms in order to split semantics hairs, thereby subverting the ultimate purpose and intent of logic?

Considering you have repeatedly misunderstood and misconstrued my recent posts, that won't make me lose much sleep.

One should pull one's head out of one's ass if one wants to see the bigger picture.

[ May 10, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Clutch

Koy, I'll work on pulling my head out of my ass. I knew something was wrong!

And here's some helpful advice for you. "Ambiguous" means, "having more than one possible meaning". Your use of the term does not seem to reflect this. Conditional statements are not fallacious, nor is "something exists" fallacious, since neither purports to warrant an inference in itself. thge latter might be ill-formed, though I think its logical form is probably just expressed in second-order terms: EFEx(Fx), or, as Quine might have said, there's an F and an x such that x F-asizes.

I'm glad that you won't be losing any sleep. Indeed, you might think about getting more.

sir drinks-a-lot

OK, I get the joke. The title of the thread says "A proof that there is a God" and that is what Tronllnonymous provided. The thread is not called "A Sound Proof that there is a God", "A Valid Proof that there is a God", or "A Valid Proof, with true premises, that there is a God."

Don't feed Trollnonymous.

anonymousj

sir drinks-a-lot,

You said,
A question: I 'must show that the premises are true' to accomplish what?

1. I have acknowledged that I have done nothing to show that the first premise of my argument is true. But let me point out again that nothing that anyone has produced in this entire collection of posts has done anything at all in the way of showing that the first premise of my original argument is false.

2. You ask 'Can I show that the premises are true?' (I assume that you are talking only about the first premise. ) Of course I can! I can produce a sound argument that has as its conclusion 'If something exists, then God exists'. In a related vein, I can show how I know that the first premise is true.

No one has, in the course of this topic, given anyone any reason to suppose that I can't do these things.

cheers,

anonymousj

Bill Snedden

True, but neither does anyone besides yourself bear any burden to demonstrate anything about your argument.

As I said before, unless you can demonstrate the truth of your first premise, those to whom you are making this argument are quite justified in claiming that its soundness is unproven.

As I also stated before, it seems undisputed that the first premise can be denied without contradiction. This gives us ample reason to doubt its veracity. Further, since your argument is a deductive one, and the premises must be true if the conclusion is to be true, and we have ample reason to doubt the veracity of your first premise, we therefore also have ample reason to believe that your argument may be unsound and are thus justified in taking the epistemic position, "I believe anonymousj's argument to be unsound."

Also true. However, in eight pages of posts neither have you attempted to provide any such argument despite repeated requests to do so.

I repeat my earlier unanswered question: what's the point? You've outlined your proof. You've asserted your own epistemic position on its soundness. Numerous posters have detailed reasons why they don't share your belief. Are you planning on continuing the dance (and thus proving your "trollness"), or are you actually planning on making some kind of point?

If your point was to demonstrate that many people are unaware of the difference between "proof" and "proven", bravo! You're done.

Or was there something else you had in mind?

Regards,

Bill Snedden

Adrian Selby

"1. If something exists, then God exists."

You say that the onus is on us to prove this false. That doesn't mean its true, and you said in your original post that a sound argument has all true premises, even though you've offered no grounds for accepting this as true.

Well, I don't see how it can be true until it is proved false.

I do not accept there is a dragon in my back garden until I look out there. I accept its a possibility, awaiting confirmation or disconfirmation. It is not true there is a dragon outside until I prove it false. Why then might your premise be true until proved false?

I've asked you to provide grounds for the truth of your premise. I have also asked for an explanation of what you mean by the term God, and you've referred to a work of fiction which describes a being that there is no proof of. You've rather weakly suggested that a Christian merely adapts their position, I asked you if it was possible to have logically contradictory descriptions of the Christian God. Until we know what we're talking about why can't we substitute these other silly concepts people have posited here and have equally demonstrable proofs of them existing, going by your criteria.

Unless you implicitly posit that something's existence is entirely dependent on the Christian God existing, then there are logically contradictory proofs of what something relies on for its existence. For God I assume cannot merely be a unicorn, or Gandalf or any other myth. Until I understand why not, I do not see how your first premise can be true. It can only be possibly true. Do you at least concede that your first premise is only possibly true, or do you assert that it is true.

To save another post, if it is true, explain why.
If it is true, in your opinion, please also state that it is true in your opinion.

Adrian

Adrian

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: Adrian Selby ]</p>

Datheron

Bill,

I still think you've hit it right on the head when you suggest that all Anon has done is show the difference between "proved" and "proven". I made a comment about this a while ago, which was sadly ignored:

As Bill the Mod has already posted, after reading some 4+ pages of discussion about the validity of the argument, it's becoming quite apparent that Anon knows exactly what the objections are, and are avoiding them time and time again (whilst chuckling smugly at himself, perhaps) in order to try to bring home the point that he has proven the existence of God as opposed to having proved the existence of God. I also see a blatant attempt at an ad ignorantium, but it looks like Anon is avoiding that simply by defining his argument to not address those issues involved.

Such a farce is intellectually dishonest; if your point, Anon, was to show that one can employ various dirty tactics in a debate, then you have already shown that it is the case. Fortunately, most of us reside in the non-anal plane of existence.

And the list of pathetic theists with pathetic arguments grows ever higher...