Can you be an atheist and believe in logic and maths?

by passwordprotected 69 Replies latest jw friends

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  passwordprotected

  I hope Perry finds his way to this thread and you two can laugh at how closed-minded people who disagree with you guys are.
  I just hope that you and Perry agree, otherwise you will have to call each other closed-minded.

  Surely you can see that resorting to ad hominem attacks doesn't strengthen what you're saying. I'm open minded enough to consider whether the naturalist materialistic world view has any validity or not.

  I recognise that claiming that all that exists are things is a worldview that doesn't have any sustainability to it as logic and reason need to be applied to the evidence to form a conclusion. And logic and reason aren't things.
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  OnTheWayOut

  Passwordprotected, did you stop beating your wife. Please restrict your answer to "Yes" or "No" only.
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  passwordprotected

  So, did gravity change? no, but the way we humans understood it did once we had more information to figure it out. Our local measurements and experiments worked fine (and we still use the "old" math for calculations that are purely local in nature since they work).

  Next question?

  So the laws of science don't change and they're also not made of matter. Yet I'm guessing you believe that all that exists is ever-changing matter (i.e constantly evolving things). Doesn't the fact that the laws of science are immaterial and unchanging contradict your worldview? And doesn't that contradiction (remember the law of the excluded middle) mean your worldview is false?
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  passwordprotected

  Passwordprotected, did you stop beating your wife. Please restrict your answer to "Yes" or "No" only.

  That question presupposes something to have been proven, namely that I beat my wife. Now you're resorting to informal fallacies? How does that strengthen your argument?
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  notverylikely

  No I'm not. Read what I'm actually asking.

  I did, and you are. You are asking an "or" question where one doesn't exist.

  Dan Barker, in a debate with Dr. James White, attempted to refute this argument by saying that “logic is not a thing.” Well if by thinghe means a physical object then I would agree with him. The problem is that he already said that thingsare all that exist. So according to Dan Barker there is no logic.

  Therefore, either all that exists is matter, constantly changing, or it isn't. A natural materialist has to borrow from someone else's worldview in order to prove what they believe. This contradicts their worldview and as a result makes it false.

  So? One guy says something and you jump through hoops and say all atheists beleive something and propose an "or" question based on it. What one guy says in a debate is somewhat irrelevant to the world at large and how it works.
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  BurnTheShips

  Atheists are, by definition, naturalistic materialists; i.e. they believe that only the physical universe exists, only the nature exists therefore there is no supernatural and certainly no God.

  By definition, atheists do not believe in God. That's all there is to the term "atheist."

  A monistic materialistic atheist could easily sweep aside your argument by disputing the premise that logic is in itself a thing. They could proceed by simply saying that logic isn't a thing in itself, but a property of matter and energy. Since you don't believe that God is a property, but a thing in itself, you're comparison is not a comparison of likes.

  BTS
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  passwordprotected

  One guy says something and you jump through hoops and say all atheists beleive something and propose an "or" question based on it.

  Either answer the questions or don't, it's up to you. You're jumping through hoops to avoid the issue;

  • either all that exists is matter or not
  • either the laws of logic and maths are unchanging or not

  Pick a side.
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  passwordprotected

  A monistic materialist could easily sweep aside your argument by disputing the premise that logic is in itself a thing

  I'm not saying logic is a thing. I'm saying it's not a thing. Therefore, how does it fit in with a naturalistic materialist worldview?
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  notverylikely

  So the laws of science don't change and they're also not made of matter.

  How do you know they aren't made of matter? Do you know what matter is? How about spacetime? Gravity? What is it made of? Since you are stating it as fact, you must know it to be true and can prove it. Please do so.

  Yet I'm guessing you believe that all that exists is ever-changing matter (i.e constantly evolving things). Doesn't the fact that the laws of science are immaterial and unchanging contradict your worldview? And doesn't that contradiction (remember the law of the excluded middle) mean your worldview is false?

  So, you guess at what I beleive, then you misunderstand the "laws" of science and how it works and then prove that what you guessed I believed based on your misunderstanding of science is wrong?
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  BurnTheShips

  I already gave a possibility, that logic is a property of matter. I could say that matter, by definition, behaves logically. It is an irreducible property of matter, like mass, or velocity. This solves your apparent paradox.

  BTS