Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Grassblade wrote:
> > Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >> Of course he can. Whether you believe in science and whether you believe
> >> in God are orthogonal. Many scientists are rather devout. It's *because*
> >> religion is illogical that this is possible.
> > It is?
>
> Yes. In my experience, it is.
>
> Take, DeCartes, for example. His first step, "I think, therefore I am"
> is logical. His second (or so) step is "I know there is evil, hence
> there must be good" isn't. There could be many kinds of evil, and no
> good.
Descartes was also a philosopher, apart from mathematician. Philosophers have
this (annoying, IMHO) tendency to split everything in twain. However, if you
know the word "good", and observe only degrees of evil, what do you think a
philosopher living in such a world would call the less evil tier? His step is
illogical only if you define an absolute concept of good, which could
potentially not exist. But if you define relative concepts, I cannot imagine
how observing (relative) evil could not lead to defining (relative) good.

> If I have two different geometric objects with different numbers
> of sides, I know they can't both be triangles. But that doesn't mean if
> one isn't a triangle, the other one must be.
>
> > I can only talk about Christianism, but how silly of me to think that
> > about 1500 years of Europe's greatest minds would have ironed out the kinks so
> > much so that atheists can't think of anything really persuasive to make their
> > case.
>
> Not persuasive to someone already faithful, no. That's kind of the point
> of faith.
>
> Silly of you to think that after 1500 years of Europe's greatest minds,
> you couldn't come up with something to pursuade atheists, either, hmmm?
LOL.

>
> > Christianism is based on a dogma: God exists.
>
> Well, yeah. And logically, from one flawed premise, you can get all
> *kinds* of results that aren't isomorphic to reality in any way.
True. But there is just that little problem of proving that the premise is
flawed. ;-)

>
> I can base my navigation on a dogma that the earth is flat. Doesn't mean
> I'll get to where I'm going, even tho the greeks worked out all the
> rules for figuring that out were it so.
>
> > All the rest is logically gleaned from the Bible.
>
> In my experience, if logic conflicts with the statements in the Bible,
> the logic goes out the window.
That's because you talk to cracknuts. And some atheists are just as rabid and
nuts. Empirical evidence of, what?, 20+ years of BBS's, newsgroups and forums
has shown that both will just head-butt their respective ideas on one another's
head.
I'd like to have an example of a logical conflict, though.

>
> > Mathematicians use axioms and then derive conclusions
> > logically from there.
>
> Right.
>
> > According to you, then, maths is illogical and irrational
> > because it is necessarily based on (unproven) axioms.
>
> No, that isn't what makes religion illogical. That religion is based on
> unsupported axioms just makes its logical conclusions useless.
As opposed to mathematical axioms?

>  But even
> so, in my experience talking to religious people of all stripes,
> including (as I've described) people who have actually studied to be
> priests from a family of priests, religion is illogical. In the sense
> that if accepted premises lead to unacceptable conclusions, modus ponens
> must be at fault.
>
> >> I'm not sure it would be religion any more. When people got convinced
> >> that Thor wasn't real, it wasn't replaced with a different religion.
> > It wasn't? They went straight from Norse to atheist? Wow.
>
> By "thor" I meant the whole bit of "gods are responsible for lightning."
> When we found out what actually caused thunder, people didn't say "Oh,
> it wasn't *Thor*, it was *Loki*" or something.
>
> Out of curiousity, given the number of religions that have come and gone
> and are still popping into existence, why do you think yours is the
> right one?
Good question. I guess I was born in it. Miracles certainly play a part.
Heisenberg uncertainty principle also, since it seems to imply that Something
outside Big Bang could know position and angular momentum at the same time, but
anything inside can't. That would tie in quite surprisingly with beliefs of an
omnipotent time-lord that were already present in Judaism.
But most of all, I like the figure of Jesus. Definitely a very fine knower of
men.

>
> --
>    Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
>      It's not feature creep if you put it
>      at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message