WJ

In any atheist brave enough to answer my question!!!??????


"I think that WJ's point may be that Ayer is an example of self-refuting atheist arguing. In other words, if we, as atheists, accept Ayer's arguments (which we must, because he's an atheist, too, and we of course all think alike), it means we cannot use logic to prove or disprove God. That plus his apparent refusal to see that we are not trying to use logic to prove that God does not exist leads him to conclude that we are being inconsistent: ****we claim that logic can't conclude anything about God, then we use logic to conclude something about God.**** [****BINGO]

That is one hypothesis, anyway, to try to make sense of what WJ is trying to say. If there is a point behind the muddle, that may be the point. If that is his point, then the response is that atheism is based on a lack of evidence for God's existence rather than a logical refutation of God's existence, so his argument misses the point entirely."

If an EOG forum provides for only direct evidence
from language, ie analytic propositions, whose truth follows purely from the meanings of the words involved (such as the ontological argument) then the atheist can rightfully assert there is nothing to the world other than mathematics and tautologies.

Now, if any of you disagree with that, I shall stop and ask why?

In the alternative, what other point am I missing?

---------------------------

Then Nial said:


"That's where all versions of the ontological argument fail, they presume that our language dictates reality, that our language is a perfect match with reality rather than a continuous struggle to make the two correspond."

We agree! NOW WHAT?????

Keep dancing all you atheist's, your problem of logic won't go away!

(BTW, the tactic of transferring the topic 'rants and raves' only serves to reinforce the fact that atheism is logically inconsistent!)

Your Christian friend,

MrDarwin

But apparently you see no need to answer any of ours.

And can you provide any reasons why atheism is "logically inconsistent" other than that you say so?

Javaman

[PRODDING] God is a logically necessary Being because... [/PRODDING]

- or -

[PRODDING] Atheism is logically inconsistent because... [/PRODDING]

[ August 24, 2002: Message edited by: Javaman ]</p>

NialScorva

Logical consistency is the skeptically superior position. It cannot be proven that something is logically consistent, however, it *can* be proven that something is inconsistent. The onus is on *you* to show the inconsistency.

Jayhawker Soule

I am again reminded of the following: At the same time, this "logical impossibility of proving the existence of" God in no way divests us of the ability to evaluate the 'evidence' provided by theists. However, if they choose to offer no evidence, if they simply insist that they know God(s) exist, the best we can say is: "Go with God." - with, perhaps, the emphasis being placed on the 'Go'"

[ August 24, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>

Javaman

WJ,

With your angry-faced post and your use of !!!??????, I believe that your use of logic will ultimately fail you. Should you somehow logically prove an existance of a God... or we fail to logically prove our position, you're still an awfully long way away from getting to a Christian God.

Let's play a game:

Given a God exists, show it to be that God described in the OT/NT. Please.

As I've said before, should I suddenly decide to be a theist, Christianity would be near the bottom of my list of choices.

Scorpion

Uh, what? I've always thought that everything that isn't logically inconsistent is logically consistent?

-S-

TerryTryon

WJ:

As has been pointed out numerous times, there is no such thing as heresy once one calls himself/herself an atheist. One can be a strong atheist who claims that since the definition of god is incoherent, there can be no further argument as to the existence of such an entity. Then there is the weak atheist who claims that even if the definition of god is not coherent, nevertheless there may be an entity which matches enough of the criteria to be considered god and therefore the concept is still open to debate. For some reason, I cannot understand, the sarcasm of the citation you made either passed completely over your head, or you chose to ignore it. All atheists do not think alike. Neither can the argument of one atheist be extrapolated onto that of another without risking grave misunderstanding of both views.

Vibr8gKiwi

Why is anyone still talking to this guy? He does not lay out his arguments for discussion, so what is to discuss? I doubt he even has an argument. Any meat to his posts are the words of other people. He'll just keep asking the same questions over and over and picking quotes he doesn't understand until you stop responding to him.

NialScorva

I should add a couple caveats, my statement only holds for non-trivial systems, those that are capable of talking about themself. It also only applies to formalized systems as well, though whether such philosophical systems are formal is a completely different argument.

It can be shown that a system is inconsistent merely by proving both P and ~P. However, it cannot be shown that a given system cannot prove both P and ~P. Actually, it's worse than that, it's been shown that if a system *can* prove that there is no P and ~P, then it is necessarily inconsistent.