John Page

Why not? If his reality is not your reality then one of the realities must be external to the other. One may use logical principles in conjunction with observations about "reality". The system of logic participates in reality, otherwise how could it be of any use to us?

Extending the suggestions of previous posters, you can use logical principles to compare monotheistic religions and thereby show (through incompatibility) that even if a monotheistic god existed, a maximum of one of the religions would be true.

Another counter is that Christianity can be considered unreal (using the same measure as to assess logic vs. external reality). Absurdly, turn the argument on its head and state ""Christianity cannot prove the existence of external reality. Therefore you cannot use Christianity to examine formal logic."

Cheers, John

Tani

i don't know. "formal logic cannot prove?" i thought logic is what establishes proofs. i mean, what does it mean to say validity is invalid? if you throw out logic, then proof has no meaning.

if christianity is about that, indeed it means logic doesn't apply to christianity, just as it means logic does apply to christianity. unless he intents to say that the whole of christianity ends with the letter y, i don't see how he can make any thing out of christianity without logic. for starters, what does external reality have to do with christianity? how about jesus? and christ? what do they have to do with each other? and what does it mean that they have anything to do with each other if logic doesn't apply?

then again, may be christianity is all nonsense... (this is an assertion, but without logic, does it matter?)

yguy

It is, in that B does not follow from A, although A is true. Since God is not the author of confusion, it's not asking much to prevail upon proponents of Christianity to make sense. Not being schooled in formal logic, I can't make a judgment as to whether it is up to the task of making such a determination, although from what I've seen of it here, I'm not too impressed.

Why do you care? Will it somehow confer greater legitimacy on your position if you can hang an academia-approved label on it?

worldling

No, yguy. Just interested, that's all.

Guillaume

worldling, the person you are arguing with has made no logical fallacy at all. But at this point it is irrelevant anyway ; he is basically arguing that logic itself is flawed and can be wrong. Using logic to counter his points when he doesn't even believe in logic is pure idiocy.

Note that I used the word believe. This is because the conviction that logic is true is actually a belief ( or based on another belief ). You need to realize that at the base of any system, lies an assumption taken for granted. The assumption may be a simple as “what I experience is true” or somehow more complex, like the Occam’s razor. But all these assumptions are effectively equivalent, as there is no “a priory true” tool able to judge or prove them. Since nothing can determine if an “original” assumption is true or false, it is effectively useless to try to change one’s assumption by arguing. As such, the only useful thing you can do with someone with different assumptions than you is to walk away.

Nowhere357

Logic is based on rational belief. Religion is an irrational belief. I hope you can see that there is a bit of a difference here.

You say the person has made no fallacy. If that is right, then his conclusion is sound.

So I think your assertion needs some support.

Guillaume

Thank you for demonstrating my point ! By using the circular reasoning “logic justifies logic" you have showed how similar belief in religion and belief in logic are !

Remember : just because something is evident to you doesn't mean it is true or justified !


Not necessary. A logical deduction can have no fallacy yet still lead to an incorrect conclusion if the premises are invalid. In other words, even if the premises are not justified the logical deduction itself if still valid.

Nowhere357

You're welcome. All knowledge is based on belief.

Actually, a better paraphrase would be "rational belief justifies logic". I think it is clear that we are using different shades of meaning for these words. Logic is a tool, like a scalpel, and I cut myself a lot.

That said, there is nothing similar between belief in religion, and belief in logic. Here's why:

We have two methods of reaching belief, or "knowledge".
Rational belief, from the left brain.
Intuitive belief, from the right brain.

Rational belief works best when exploring objective reality.
Intuitive belief works best when exploring subjective reality.

So I answer questions about rocks and trees with logic.
I answer questions about love and empathy with intuition.

Belief in religion is non-rational, and so illogical. All the logic in the world can't touch it.

Belief in science is non-intuitive, rational, and logical. All the intuition in the world cannot touch it.

This is a simplistic explanation, because our "real" beliefs are built on some combination of these two types of knowledge.

So I hope NOW you can see that even though both science and religion are based on belief, there is just a bit of difference between them.

Remember: just because something is NOT evident to you, doesn't mean it is false or unjustified!

I would guess that invalid premises are logical fallacy. But I'm no logician. In this case, the "premise" was stated as fact. Isn't that argument from ignorance?

At any rate, there must be a term to describe "logical conclusion, invalid premise, therefore conclusion not sound."

BTW EVERY belief or world view ultimately comes down to circular reasoning, or tautology. Strange but true.

John Page

Belief can be based on reality. Do you consider reality (not the word, the actual stuff to which the word refers) a tautology? If so, how could we distinguish between the efficacy of empiricism and made-upism (for example)?

Cheers, John

worldling

He does believe in logic. He just thinks that it is "inappropriate" to use it to examine the Christian hypothesis.