Ros,
SURE Jan. Probably because your conclusion was not the antethesis of your initial assertion. Namely, point 5 would be "God does not exist."
Then, point 1 and point 5 would contradict each other directly. You seem to mix up something in your mind here, but I have a hard time understanding what it is.
And speaking of ”quoting”, I suppose you never saw something like this site: http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~kim/Bevis.html
Which I linked into my message in the first place. Gone to "the Goo school of telling lies", Ros?
Almost EXACTLY like your example, Jan, . . .Hmmm ;)
Which you yourself contradict below. It is a basic outline of the argument against theism from evidential evil, or the theodicy problem. You can find it in any discussion of the issue. Kim is a physics grad. student, btw, and a quite vocal atheist on news:no.samfunn.religion of that means anything to you. He merely formalized arguments that are centuries old. Actually, it seems to be a main concern of the author of the Book of Job.
with one little difference I just cannot resist pointing out:
The arguments are in the order I said they were supposed to be.
I agree it is the way you'd normally list these points, of course. That is a question of style. You asserted that the order was significant for the formal validity of the argument. And that is false. That you even consider it a possibility that the order is relevant, proves this is a very foreign subject for you.
This application of reductio ad absurdum to disprove God makes as much sense as Anselm's use of it to prove God does exist. NOT. And there are plenty of viable critiques of this technique by logicians. (You did know that didn't you?)
Of course I know criticisms exist. Care to outline a few, and tell me why you agree with these logicians over their opponents?
If Anselm's arguments were sound, they would prove God's existence. The reason they do not, is that they are faulty.
Really, Jan, all you have to do is start out with a statement that is the opposite of what you want to prove, throw in a premise that contradicts the statement, and thereby conclude that the opposite is true.
And be shot down immediately by all who disagree with one of the premises. That is just garbage in - garbage out applied to logic. It demonstrates nothing.
Fact is, once you agree with the premises, you must logically agree with the conclusion as long as the argument is valid.
If you disagree with one of the premises, you can reject the proof as unsound.
Do you really have problems understanding this?
I can do the same with the antethesis of your argument, i.e., by starting out with the assertion that "God does not exist":1. God does not exist.
2. God made nothing.
3. Nothing does not exist.
4. Something exists.
==========================
5. God exists.
It gets pretty funny when you try to do something you have no clue about. You first say you "can" do something, and then demonstrate you cannot. First, something that does not exists cannot make "nothing", whatever that may be. Second, you misuse "nothing" totally and make meaningless gibberish sentences (actually, you seem to believe that "nothing" is an object, and not a lack thereof). Third, 3 and 5 are the same, if nothing is the complement to something.
Or.1. God does not exist.
2. God made nothing.
3. God made nothing that is good.
4. There are things that are good.
=======================
5. God exists.
This is getting worse and worse. Do I even have to point out how these sentences fail to make any sense?
How anybody can think this kind of logic proves or disproves God is beyond me.
That is easy to understand, since your "kind of logic" only demonstrates one thing: that you don't have a logical bone in your body.
I think the technique can be applied for proof of some simple things, but not the existence of God.
Of course it can apply to God's existence. Why should it be beyond logic?
If God is beyond logic, then you can just as well say that God exists and God does not exist, all at the same time.
If logic does not apply to God, neither does any human language. You cannot say anything meaningful about something that is beyond even simple logic. For all intents and purposes, your translogical deity is nonexistent.
But of course, you don't really believe that. Your God-of-the-gaps have been forced to hide in the shadows since the dawn of rational thought and science. Now you argue this god not only needs to be hidden from telescopes, but even needs to be hidden from logic.
But even so, your example (the same being the one at the above link) has a conspicuous flaw even for reductio ad absurdum:
Your contradictory premise has to contradict the initial assertion you are trying to disprove, not one of the following assertions. You have simply proved that you do not understand the technique. In the case of your example, you have not proved that God does not exist, but (according to the logic technique) provided a contradictory statement to disprove the assertion that “Everything God made was good”. In other words, conclude that “God made evil”.
Uh, no. Since it is a premise that God only created what is good, God cannot have made evil. The whole point is that such an argument does not disprove one of the premises, but the whole class of premises under consideration.
As I wrote in my early message, the argument only disproves the God of classical theism, not an evil deity. We already know that. But Christians worship a postulated all-knowing all-good and all-powerful God, and that God cannot possibly coexist with evil. Very simple.
Ros: I bet you will later post a new thread about God or evolution, and then use a lot of time explaining how you never like to discuss these issues.
- Jan
--
Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. [Ambrose Bierce, The Devil´s Dictionary, 1911]
