Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
3 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,821 Year: 3,078/9,624 Month: 923/1,588 Week: 106/223 Day: 4/13 Hour: 0/2


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Something about all true arguements
Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 8 of 14 (462704)
04-07-2008 1:18 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by TheNaturalist
04-06-2008 8:23 PM


I wouldnt say anyone has ever given any such demonstration of how "God" works or even how such a god could theoretically work.
I'm not sure what your question is or exactly what the problem is, but I'll make an attempt at an answer anyway.
When Newton developed his theory of gravity, he never came up with any explanation of how gravity works. And this was, like you in this post, a criticism that many at the time laid against his theory: he merely postulated that gravity did exist, and that gravity had certain observable effects, and that we should be able to see real life bodies behave as if affected by the postulated gravitational forces.
I see no reason why God cannot be investigated in the same way (other than it may be blasphemous to put God under scientific scrutiny, of course). One can postulated that God exists, and one can may hypotheses about how God will interact with human beings and the material universe. One can then investigate whether the expected effects are seen.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. -- Kurt Vonnegut

This message is a reply to:
 Message 5 by TheNaturalist, posted 04-06-2008 8:23 PM TheNaturalist has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by TheNaturalist, posted 04-11-2008 8:55 PM Chiroptera has replied

  
Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 9 of 14 (462707)
04-07-2008 1:46 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by TheNaturalist
04-05-2008 6:34 PM


Having answered post #5 as per Admin request, I now want to make some general comments in case the problem is a misunderstanding between the relation between logic and knowledge about the real world.
First, the thread title is in error. Arguments, in the sense of logic, are not true nor false. True and false are values given to statements; they can be assigned arbitrarily in the case of a theoretical exercise, but usually we consider a statement to be true if it corresponds to a fact about the real world and false otherwise.
Arguments are valid or invalid. An argument is valid if the conclusion is necessarily true whenever all the premises are true, otherwise it is invalid. An argument can also be sound or unsound; it is sound if it is valid and if the premises are all true; in otherwords, the conclusion of a sound argument must be true.
The problem is that we can never be absolutely certain whether or not any argument is sound because we can never be absolutely certain whether or not the premises are true. So we can never be certain whether or not a logical argument is actually telling us something about the real world. In the end, we must always verify our assumptions, the premises, by empirical observation.
As a matter of fact, this is what science is all about. We test theories (the premises of a logical argument) by seeing whether we observe that the conclusion (the prediction) is true. If the conclusion is false (we see something different), then, assuming that the argument is valid (which is usually straightforward to check), we know that one or more of the premises are false -- that is, the theory as it stands is in error and must be fixed or thrown out.
So it is pretty easy to develop perfectly valid arguments for the existence and for the non-existence of God. This has been done since time immemorial. Where all these arguments fail is when people disagree that all the premises that go into these arguments are true; that is, these arguments are either not sound, or their soundness is in question.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. -- Kurt Vonnegut

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by TheNaturalist, posted 04-05-2008 6:34 PM TheNaturalist has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 10 by TheNaturalist, posted 04-11-2008 8:46 PM Chiroptera has replied

  
Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 12 of 14 (463135)
04-12-2008 2:17 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by TheNaturalist
04-11-2008 8:46 PM


I define "argument" as....
if a "true" arguement is defined as....
This is part of the problem. "Argument" already has a definition. It is defined to be a set of statements called premises and an additional statement called the conclusion. If you want, you can also extend it to include the exposition that demonstrates that the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises. "True" also has a definition. It is a value that is assigned to statements (usually implying that they correspond to a fact in the real world), not to arguments. Arguments are not true or false. They can be valid or invalid. They can be sound or unsound.
These definitions are standard -- by using the standard definitions people know what is being said and effective communication can take place. It may be that the precise technical definitions differ somewhat from the colloquial meanings used in everyday speech, but the colloquial meanings are usually ambiguous or imprecise, causing a risk for confusion.
Now when you decide that you're not going to use the standard definitions, you end up creating a potential for confusion, especially when, as is the case here, you don't have much experience in producing precise definitions. Also, it has been my experience here that an exposition that requires idiosyncratic definitions is a sign of confused thinking.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. -- Kurt Vonnegut

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by TheNaturalist, posted 04-11-2008 8:46 PM TheNaturalist has not replied

  
Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 13 of 14 (463160)
04-12-2008 4:32 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by TheNaturalist
04-11-2008 8:55 PM


The difference is: "God" is not regularly observed and has never been known to have been observed by a reasonable source.
That seems to be the controversy. Christians, for example, claim to regularly observe God. Christians, especially evangelical Christians, claim that the Bible is a reasonable source that describes the actions of God. You might decide that any source with which you disagree is not "reasonable", but the fact is that we have observations that may or may not be indicative of the existence of God. You can dismiss them because you've already concluded that such a God doesn't exist, if that's what you want, but any discussion of the existence of God, like the existence of any other entity or phenomenon, is going to have to discuss the reliability of the sources, not just dismissing the sources a priori as unreliable.
-
we 1. dont know exactly what "God" is
Well, you might not. I'm sure most people have a good idea of what God is.
-
since everyone defines "God" differently
I'm not sure why this is a weakness. Presumably you're going to discuss God with only one person at a time, or, at most, with a small group who pretty much have the same conception of God. Find out what they think God is, and discuss this God with them.
-
2. people dont actually know that "God" exists
I dunno. Christians seem pretty certain. If they are correct and God exists, then I think we can say that they do know that God exists according to the classical meaning of "know".

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. -- Kurt Vonnegut

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by TheNaturalist, posted 04-11-2008 8:55 PM TheNaturalist has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 14 by TheNaturalist, posted 04-13-2008 1:38 PM Chiroptera has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024