Underlying Philosophy

I cannot tell what is newly added and what was there before. I think that refutes your claims about the reliability of memory (as in Message 360), since obviously my memory is not reliable enough to tell me what I read before your additions.In any case, your additions don't help. Logic is still a human construct.You seem to think that logic is some sort of miraculous magic that was handed down. It isn't. When we say that logic is a human construct, we are not saying that humans invented such a miraculous magic. Rather, we are saying that natural language is a human construct, and logic works because of the ways that people organize their natural language naming conventions and their describing conventions.Oh, and logic doesn't actually work all that well anyway. See for example, the Sorites paradoxes as described in Wikipedia or in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Logic works particularly well in mathematics, because mathematics uses its own specialized language that is structured so that logic will work reliably.

This is an excellent example of why people criticize religion. It provides easy answers (as in "God did it") that turn out to be of no practical use. It is well known that human memory is unreliable.
Reliability of self-report data.
Human Memory is Unreliable and so is Eyewitness Testimony.
New study shows false memories affect behavior.

Editing a post AFTER the replies have been made is somewhat impolite.

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I said you cannot account for the origin of the laws of logic, to which you replied that the laws of logic are merely human constructs. Does this mean that before the Greeks formalized the laws of logic (e.g., a=a), "a" wasn't always equal to "a"? Or do you admit that "a" has always been equal to "a", even before humans evolved and then formalized this truth (that a=a) into a law? Obviously, a=a has always been true, which means it was a sort of "law" before humans even existed. Obviously then, a=a is not a human construct. Although the symbols and the idea of a symbol representing a particular object etc. are human constructs, there was never a point in time where one object was not equivalent to itself.

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As I have said the laws of logic are semantic rules and formalisations of features of natural language. Of course natural language existed before the Greek philosophers ! This is a particularly obvious rule, but do take into account the existence of ambiguities of language. Outlawing the use of such ambiguities is one of the spects of the formalisation.

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Here is a law of logic that was formalized by the Greeks: if p then q, p is true, so q must be true.

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Now don't you think that the Greeks may have actually invoked the use of this law in order to formalize it? Perhaps they looked at examples of this law around them, and saw that whenever this law was followed, correct conclusions were made. They then concluded that the law was valid.

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I guess that you don't really understand the concept of "formalisation". Of course the basic concept was here in the language all along, in the meaning of "if..then". To formalise it simply means to add the rules of use that give logic it's precision and reliability and to avoid the oddities of natural language. There's no need to invoke observation or to apply the rules in the way you are suggesting !But I'm glad that you chose this example because it allows me to illustrate a way that standard logic is different from natural language.In standard logic "If p then [/q]" is true whenever p is false, no matter what q might be. "If I am the King of England than 2 + 2 = 5" is a true statement, so long as you realise that I am not a monarch ! However, if by some bizarre chain of events I did become the King it would not make 2 + 2 = 5 ! (If you understand logic it is easy to see why.).

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So if the Greeks didn't make up that law of logic, who did? The big bang?...

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Since your argument rests on misunderstanding the whole concept of formalisation there is no need to go back beyond the Greeks. True, the Greeks were developing pre-existing concepts, but you don't really have logic in the full sense without the formalisation. Natural language is too imprecise and human thought too prone to fallacies (some of which are valid ways of thinking, but not strictly logical, while others are just plain wrong).Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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This is an excellent example of why people criticize religion. It provides easy answers (as in "God did it") that turn out to be of no practical use.

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God as the ultimate ad hoc explanation...

Well if I am going to take the piss out of theists I may as well do it with a smile on my face. Oh dear. The degree of ignorance you demonstrate is incredible. God must love stupid people. He has created so many of them. What are you talking about?How about we put a screwdriver through your head and see how well your thoughts and emotions get on without a functioning brain?

dwise1,I don't know about everybody else, but I am not here to call atheists bigots and fools, and tell them that they have their "head in a cockpit". Certainly I believe the atheist position to be foolish, but I'm not going to spend all my time verbalizing it and trying to come up with the best "disses". Instead, I'm trying to debate intelligently, and although your ad-hominem ramblings may fire up other atheists, they do nothing in the way of defending and promoting your worldview, and further, they do not help you win the debate in any way whatsoever.Perhaps before I go any further, I should demonstrate why ad-hominem attacks are useless.So you think I have my head in a cockpit.? I think you have your head in a cockpit too...stalemate.It doesn't matter how much you tell me I have my head in a cockpit, nor does it matter how much I tell you that you have your head in a cockpit. Neither one of us will ever be truly convinced that we have our heads in a cockpit unless logical debate first takes place.

Huntard, So is something always wrong if it causes any distress, pain or suffering for someone? Why does it (rape) cause an unstable society? Or to rephrase the question: what is it about rape that causes an unstable society?I hope you see that you are in an infinite regress. Okay. Then give me your address and I'll come over and steal some of your money and food because I will starve otherwise...or would this be wrong? Your statement means nothing, because you merely made a statement without any proof... Sorry. I meant the Bible references where God condones slavery. Don't you realize that I was answering a question? I was merely answering the question asked! I provided my answer, now you provide yours!

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This next quote is comical. And yet when I ask you about the nature of reality, you tell me that my question is mumbo jumbo. So you are dealing with something (reality) of which' nature you know nothing about...Once again: And yet you refuse to tell me what the nature of that reality is...And also (maybe I'm missing something), I don't really know what you mean when you say that you "test your experiences against reality".

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Another question: do you believe that there are any moral absolutes at all?

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So how in a universe caused by an explosion (the big bang), would you come up with an orderly universe in which there are certain laws of logic that apply to nature, and in which you have the ability to rely on your memory to determine what you should do in the present, and in which we can observe things around us and make correct conclusions, and in which we have the ability to make correct conclusions at all (what if we all thought that since the solar nebula are blue and red, Thor is going to cause a thunderstorm today...?), and in which we can enjoy ourselves, and in which we can somehow sense beauty, and countless other things. How could all these things come about as the result of an explosion?One last question I should ask: why do humans have an aesthetic sense, and animals don't, and how did our aesthetic sense come about as a result of an explosion?

Dr. Adequate, Precisely. The question raised here is this: what/who controls the actions of the brain? What/who is it that controls the chemical reactions? Are the chemical reactions independent, or are they controlled by something else?And also, does the brain have an area in it that causes it to be self-aware?Or can the brain love somebody?I do realize that you are not a materialist (at least you don't seem to be), so this objection isn't pointed at you personally, but at the typical, materialistic atheist. Edited by sac51495, : No reason given.Edited by sac51495, : No reason given.

anglagard, Did I say that?

What do you mean: "Precisely"? You imagine a materialist saying: "It's not me, it's just my brain", I point out the reason why no materialist could say that, and you answer: "Precisely"? Really? Then it's the wrong question. It would make as much sense to ask that of a mental materialist as it would to ask a mental immaterialist: who controls the action of the soul? To the immaterialist, the soul is the who that controls things. Apparently. I'm not an philosophical materialist, but I am a mental materialist. After all, an injury to my brain would injure my mental faculties, whether it be my short-term memory, my sense of morality, or my ability to recognize fruit (depending on which part of the brain was injured). If I have an immaterial soul, what's it doing?

But our memory is not reliable. Can we therefore conclude that there is no God? You are wrong.In message #338 I wrote: See? I assume no such thing. I also haven't given a reason why pigs have wings. But that is not a failing of my philosophy, because they don't.

Gotta love the infinite knowledge base of atheists. They have figured out everything. Why does this seem to remind me of the theists?

It's funny how no atheist ever claims that. Perhaps you also believe them to be infinitely modest?

"We don't know" once a year wouldn't hurt anyone, and i presume wouldn't ruin the atheist philosophy.

Apart from the fact that the Big Bang was not an explosion, you are equivocating on the word "cause". You might as well ask how a painting of sunflowers was caused by Vincent Van Gogh's father ejaculating.P.S: On what grounds do you claim that animals have no aesthetic sense?