The origin of Logic

[Bodhi]

You have got to be kidding me. I've studied western philosophy seriously, and believe me, the philosophical problems you point out do not lead to the necessity of a deity or the supernatural.

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By doing science, you must assume uniformity in nature (testability + repeatability), but that assumption is unwarrented without a universal immutable God by which to sustain and maintain the universe.

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Uniformity in nature may not have epistemological justification, but it is a gross error to conclude that you need an a priori guarantee in order to believe in it. Science is pragmatic, it doesn't concern itself with philosophical problems like this, nor should it.

I would write more but I have to go.

[jason1990]

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2) Randomness is omnipresent in our lives. Everything that occurs without human intervention, it would seem, is a "random" event.

This of course would make god very different from humans, as opposed to our being made in the image of god. (This concept never made sense to me. To what end would an anthropomorphic god create images (dolls?) of herself?)

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But do we not ourselves exhibit a great deal of randomness? I know that in my own mind I feel I have motivations and reasons for the things I do, but could anyone objectively discern that from the outside? When I look at my fellow man, I often find his behavior to be quite random, much more so than a comet or an asteroid, for example. In fact, the same is true of all life on the planet. Wherever I see life, I see randomness to varying degrees. The only places where I can find a noticeable lack of randomness is in things I would call inanimate. My chair, for example, very rarely behaves randomly.

[purnell]

Excellent point. Gonna have to chew on that one for a while, thanks.

[purnell]

"Wherever I see life, I see randomness to varying degrees. The only places where I can find a noticeable lack of randomness is in things I would call inanimate. My chair, for example, very rarely behaves randomly. "

Things like comets and stars have motion that is predictable, but are subject to some forces (small collisions, subtle and transient gravitational effects) that influence their motion and make it (impossible?) to exactly predict their future locations.

Life appears to create order from the random environment, from the DNA on up. But I wonder...

The chunk of wood you are sitting on does not behave randomly (to the naked eye), but alot of random events influenced it's formation and it's eventual place at your desk.

We are way OT here, but I am enjoying the exercise.

[udontknowmickey]

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You have got to be kidding me. I've studied western philosophy seriously, and believe me, the philosophical problems you point out do not lead to the necessity of a deity or the supernatural.


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So justify where your logic comes from. Justify from your worldview defining presupposition (first principle) how you can answer all of the problems I stated. If they do not pose a problem philosophically then an answer should be easy.


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Uniformity in nature may not have epistemological justification, but it is a gross error to conclude that you need an a priori guarantee in order to believe in it. Science is pragmatic, it doesn't concern itself with philosophical problems like this, nor should it.

I would write more but I have to go.


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My arguement is that because science is pragmatic, it must presuppose the uniformity of nature. This condition (uniformity in nature) requires God. It is merely an example of how we must presuppose God's existence with everything. It is not a claim that we cannot believe in science. But I also deny the reliability of science for reasons below.

You say you don't need epistemological (and I will confess that I had to look this up) justification. I ask you why not? How does "Science is pragmatic" free it from the need for justification? How do we know that "Science" has the property of actually being "pragmatic"? Doesn't pragmatism simply lead to "I'll assume this is true"? How does that give us any conclusive evidence about anything?

As Hume has demonstrated, induction is a formal fallacy. Induction relies on a guess that:

guess: A, B, C lead to Y
Y is true
therefore: A,B,C

But what if it's D,E,F that lead to Y? How do we know it's necessarily A,B,C?

Science, by it's very nature being inductive, comes to conclusions that are mere guesswork. David Sklansky believe's its all about probabilities, but when there are an infinite of variables, and we can control only a finite number of them, the probability of us being right is (expressed very simply)

(number of variables we can control)/(total number of variables)

When the denominator is infinite but the numerator is finite, our probability of getting the correct variables approaches 0.

[jason_t]

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You are argument runs like the following:

1. For logic to exist, there must be a God.
2. Logic exists.
3. God exists.

And you use the bible in your proof which before the fact may just be the work of man.

Good work.

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This leads into: Without first presupposing all of the Bible and it's entire worldview it entails, nothing is knowable.

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By doing science, you must assume uniformity in nature (testability + repeatability), but that assumption is unwarrented without a universal immutable God by which to sustain and maintain the universe.

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You really have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. You are confounding assumptions that science makes with the scientific method.

By performing logic (or even acknowledging that this chair is not a desk), you must assume that logic holds in that particular instance. This assumption is unwarrented without a God who's trancendence provides the universal basis for logic.

By using your senses, you assume that they are accurate and reliable, but this is unwarrented without God's direct intervention so that we move and live by His power.

I gave my arguements for God's existence and I say you must borrow from my worldview in order to begin to argue against God. But in borrowing from my worldview, you must assume it's true, and thus all your arguements are groundless and baseless.

I challenge you to give your rational for how you're even able to use logic, senses or anything. I challenge you to give a reason why logic should work universally, why there should be a universal moral code (or deny that there is one). I challenge you to explain how you can even understand the word "and" and know it's meaning.

I state (and I can give support from my worldview) that all these things find their answers only in the God laid forth in the 66 books of the Bible.

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This is complete rubbish, and since you say I "must borrow from [your] worldview in order to begin to argue against God. But in borrowing from [your] worldview, [I] must assume it's true, and thus all [my] arguements are groundless and baseless" I am not even going to bother elaborating beyond saying you are basically assuming that god exists to justify his existence.

[udontknowmickey]

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This is complete rubbish, and since you say I "must borrow from [your] worldview in order to begin to argue against God. But in borrowing from [your] worldview, [I] must assume it's true, and thus all [my] arguements are groundless and baseless" I am not even going to bother elaborating beyond saying you are basically assuming that god exists to justify his existence.

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If my arguements are so clearly rubbish, give your answers so that we might compare. From your worldview, with your first premise, give me an answer to the questions I presented.

You accuse me of circular reasoning. I do not deny it. In fact I will state that logic cannot prove more than it's presuppositions. All one can prove is contained within one's presuppositions. All you can accuse me of is being consistent. I ask you to do the same. Show me your self-justifying self-consistent first principle that leads to your knowledge, logic, language that enables you to critique my arguement as "rubbish"

You say as well that I'm confusing the assumptions of science with the scientific method. I am merely stating (and I can give proof from my worldview) that the assumptions that science makes requires God. Once again, show me from your worldview how you can make those assumptions without assuming God.

[jason_t]

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If my arguements are so clearly rubbish, give your answers so that we might compare. From your worldview, with your first premise, give me an answer to the questions I presented.

You accuse me of circular reasoning. I do not deny it. In fact I will state that logic cannot prove more than it's presuppositions. All one can prove is contained within one's presuppositions. All you can accuse me of is being consistent. I ask you to do the same. Show me your self-justifying self-consistent first principle that leads to your knowledge, logic, language that enables you to critique my arguement as "rubbish"

You say as well that I'm confusing the assumptions of science with the scientific method. I am merely stating (and I can give proof from my worldview) that the assumptions that science makes requires God. Once again, show me from your worldview how you can make those assumptions without assuming God.

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Your arguments are rubbish? Who said anything about that. What your saying is rubbish: it makes no sense.

You clearly don't know what logic is nor do you understand what presuppositions are.

The assumptions that science make don't require god. They are ASSUMPTIONS. And science has drawn some amazing conclusions from them that match our observations without needing the concept of god.

[jason1990]

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Life appears to create order from the random environment, from the DNA on up. But I wonder...

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I've been thinking about this and I'm not sure what to make of it. If we had defined god to be chaos or order, then I can see how this observation might be directly relevant. But we have defined god to be randomness, which is simultaneously chaotic and ordered.

For example, in a random string of digits, any conceivable string of digits can be found -- the whole monkeys typing shakespeare thing -- there's the chaos. But the string has an underlying pattern to it, described in part by the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem -- there's the order. Like the string of random digits, life is also both chaotic and ordered in an interwoven fashion. Evolution is driven by a random and chaotic string of mutations, but in the long run this process produces what we regard as order.

So it seems randomness transcends chaos and order. And any decent god should transcend things, right? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Triumph36]

Except that Kant refuted this idea of Hume's, and that we know that through our a priori knowledge of space and time, causation is a very real thing. Uniformity in 'nature' is a meaningless phrase: it is uniformity the way the world is presented to us. This does not require a God. Kant did later go on to say that a God would help science, but only a non-objective one (whatever that means).