Split from: DV Christians Unite! (Christian Only Thread)

[Noogah]

What I meant by what you just quoted is that you attempted to show that logical reasoning "works"; i.e. that the conclusions of logical arguments hold if their premises hold; i.e. that logic "exists". No, I assume we both know that logic "works". If you go back through my posts, you will notice that I have carefully avoided such words as "prove" when it comes to logic. I have used the words "justify" and "account for". We both KNOW logic exists, there is no question about that. Is this not an argument for your belief that the existence of God implies that logic works and that humans can use it? If not, what was it? And do you have any such arguments? No, I don't have an argument FOR the existence of logic, but I can show through logic that my worldview allows for logic. Yours does not. If YOU follow logic, then you will logically have to terminate logic, as a naturalist. Forgive me if you are NOT a naturalist, but all through this discussion, you have not denied it, so I am assuming that you are. I quoted C.S Lewis for this purpose, and I hope you read the quotation, because it really says it all, much better than I am able to. Just to reiterate, I'll repost it: All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning. If the feeling of certainty which we express by words like must be and therefore and since is a real perception of how things outside our minds really “must” be, well and good. But if this certainty is merely a feeling in our own minds and not a genuine insight into realities beyond them—if it merely represents the way our minds happen to work—then we can have no knowledge. Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true. It follows that no account of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have to be reaching by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished…It would be an argument which proved that no arguments was sound—a proof that there are no such things as proofs—which is nonsense. I'm off for the night friends. I will return to this discussion tomorrow. Auf wiedersehen!

[Xei]

No, I don't have an argument FOR the existence of logic, but I can show through logic that my worldview allows for logic. Wait, so... what you're saying is that in an atheist world view there can't possibly be logic, compared to a theist world view, where you simply have no idea whether logic exists or not? In any case, "showing that my world view allows for logic" still suffers from exactly the same logical flaw that I mentioned. It presumes the conclusion and thus is a fallacy.

[Noogah]

Noogah, I don't see your answer in those links. Perhaps the answer you are looking for is not in those links, but the answer to your actual question IS in those links. Your actual question: Why do you assume those things [morality, logic, uniformity of nature] have to come from God? My abbreviated answer: 1. These things can come from God 2. They can come from nowhere else 3. Therefore, they can come only from God I obviously did not expect that you would AGREE with these answers. You may not even think that they are good, or valid answers. But I did, in fact, procure them. I am certain that you think these are not at all adequate answers to the question, so let's move into specifics. To keep on insisting that I did not provide any semblance of an answer will take this discussion nowhere. In which case, we may as well go our separate ways - I didn't come here to bicker with you, I came here so we could talk about truth. Tell me, precisely, on which points you contest me. Things don't have to be physical to exist In philosophy,[materialism is] the view that the world is entirely composed of matter.[link] Which is precisely why I was correct when I told you “in a materialistic perspective, these three things are meaningless, and certainly do not exist”. You have therefore concurred with me that logic makes materialism impossible, and so you are therefore not a materialist. There is, and has necessarily got to be, more to reality than the universe as we observe it. Wait, so... what you're saying is that in an atheist world view there can't possibly be logic I don’t think there can be. compared to a theist world view, where you simply have no idea whether logic exists or not? I have said before, and I will now say again: you and I are both quite positive that logic exists. If we were not, we could safely be put in the loony bin, since the only way to say that logic does not exist is to get there by means of logic. And this amounts to what C.S Lewis called “a proof that there are no such things as proofs” which, as he concurred, “is nonsense”. 'showing that my world view allows for logic’ still suffers from exactly the same logical flaw that I mentioned. It presumes the conclusion and thus is a fallacy. No, they are not the same things at all. What you criticized was the attempt to prove the existence of logic, which can only be done by assuming that it does, in fact, exist. This is not the same as using logic (without doubting its existence) to deduce whether or not a particular worldview would actually permit laws of logic to exist, and to furthermore discover whether in that world our thinking could represent real insight. And if you discovered that it did not, you would have to abandon that worldview, since you would thereby derive that it couldn’t represent reality, in which you and I both agree, there is such a thing as logic.

[Universal Mind]

My abbreviated answer: 1. These things can come from God 2. They can come from nowhere else 3. Therefore, they can come only from God I know the premise assertions. You have yet to give your bases for them. This is getting boring. Also, I am not a materialist.