Originally Posted by Calidore
Well, it's all pretty straightforward. It's just logic-101 stuff that you'll learn in any introductory course on the subject. Your terms must be clear, your premises plausible, and your reasoning valid. If one of these ingredients is missing, your arguments are no good.
Ugh. Logic talk. The plague of the forum.
Eh Climacus?
In that case, one has recourse to inductive rather than deductive logic.
I agree with you, by the way. I only stressed the point because you kept saying that we can't disprove the proposition "God exists," but of course we can.
It's fine to insist that everyone follow those rules to the letter in a formal setting where everyone's doing the same, but speaking for myself, as long as I'm clearly making my point, I don't really care whether the structure of my argument is an airtight modus tollens or ad absurdum or ad hominem or e pluribus unum or whatever. I'm much more interested in discussing the effects of religion on people vs. the effects of people on religion.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi
I've never seen so many logic-bashers in one place.
Don't you want to make your points as well and as cogently possible? Well, here's how (short of taking a lengthy rhetoric course). There are three easy-to-follow steps: your terms must be clear, your premises plausible, and your reasoning valid. That's all. We're not talking about quantum mechanics here. Don't you want your terms to be clear and unambiguous rather than unclear and ambiguous? Don't you want your premises to be plausible rather than implausible? Don't you want your reasoning to be valid rather than invalid?
I don't think anyone's bashing logic, just rolling their eyes at the over-insistence by one person that everyone else follow stringently formal rules when all we're doing is simply having a friendly discussion. We all understand each other just fine most of the time, and we clarify when we don't.
I'm very sorry you never got to meet Musicology. That would have been incredibly entertaining.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Yes. He would've had a ball with him.
I agree with this, though. I don't even know who's being the logic stickler here and whether it's justified (and sometimes it is), but often times discussions--which is what these are, just discussions--become arguments about logic and what point can be made this way or that way, and before you know it that's turned into the argument. Oh, I'm sorry, [insert one of several possible names here], that you can't posit a negative or some stupid bull**** . . . just answer the question.
There was nothing invalid, unclear or implausible about my or anyone else's argument. You say you agree with me. If all your training in logic has lead you to the same place where I am, well then, what was the point?I've never seen so many logic-bashers in one place.
Don't you want to make your points as well and as cogently possible? Well, here's how (short of taking a lengthy rhetoric course). There are three easy-to-follow steps: your terms must be clear, your premises plausible, and your reasoning valid. That's all. We're not talking about quantum mechanics here. Don't you want your terms to be clear and unambiguous rather than unclear and ambiguous? Don't you want your premises to be plausible rather than implausible? Don't you want your reasoning to be valid rather than invalid?
You want all conclusions to meet your standard of logical rigour. I guess I should go study formal logic, that way I can come back and state the exact same conclusions in a fancier more pretentious way.
I wonder what someone like Epictetus or Lao Tse would have to say about all this. They'd probably laugh.
And Climacus I think you are very much correct in your main point. Just because evidence for something is lacking it does not logically follow that said thing necessarily does not exist. My point is that atheists do not make this claim. Rather, they point out that since there is no evidence for God's existence it is reasonable to conclude that there is no reason to believe in Him. I have no reason to believe that there is at this moment a man in a red sweater-vest standing on one foot in Time's Square. I do not however think its impossible. I won't argue that its a logically incoherent assertion. I just have no reason to believe it.
Analogy, probably a poor one, but it's getting late:
It's like someone showing up to a dinner party dressed to the nines and insisting everyone else dress for dinner because that's what's done. Except the party is just a backyard barbecue with everyone casually lounging around. Dressing for dinner has its place, but that place isn't everywhere.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Here's another analogy:
You have a lot of knowledge on basket-weaving. You never get to use this knowledge because it has very little practical application, but you are very passionate about it.
When you see people having a discussion somewhat related to basketweaving on the internet, you become very anal about how they discuss it because this gives you a rare opportunity to flaunt your basketweaving talents.
It isn't important, I don't think--but Varenne's post#15 was after your redefinition of atheism. I think you were responding to Calidore's #13. And, yes, it's good to get definitions straight.
I hope you don't count me among the logic bashers because I would never ever want to do that. But I hope you, as a student of logic and it's application to careful discussion, consider yourself less than perfect in your application of logic to this discussion. I respect your commitment to logic, it's a commitment that I share--but it pays to be careful and argue in good faith.I've never seen so many logic-bashers in one place.
You, without any clear reason, decided to remove the idea that an atheist "would be a person who..." when creating the premise of your now famous formulation, which created a reductio that thus had no bearing on the discussion, a formulation which Varenne responded to in the next post by saying that you were being silly--yet you insisted that the point was valid, and that she should respond to it, because the silliness was for a good reason, when in fact it was entirely arbitrary and misguided. Later, you attempted to sooth her with your sympathies about how she didn't know how to make an argument--which we should not mistake as any sort of ad hominem, since you apparently believed you were on to something with all of this, and you are quite right about how logic should be a (mandatory, in my opinion) part of high school education.
In the face of your mistake being pointed out (and, yes, people make mistakes when they are trying to get the hang of applying things from logic texts/classes to discussion), you proceeded to (twice) explain the internal logic of your reasoning, when the thing that was in doubt was your decision to address something that was apart from what was being discussed--the actual topic being whether ancient peoples, Varenne, or any other person calling themself an atheist would need to be someone who ascribes to the proposition, "There is no God." Suddenly it became a bare "no beliefs", allowing you to point at things like rocks, to no useful purpose.
In the end of course, you seemed to admit that it was silly and seem to finally suggest it was supposed to be a joke--despite your earlier urging of Varenne to refute it and learn about how to make an argument (like you presumably have begun the study of, I guess) or whatever. One wonders if you might still be championing the silliness as if it were the virtue of a relevant reductio... I certainly hope not.
So, yes, that part where you "talked about the re-definition of atheism as a lack of belief" rather than affording it the expected "person who lacks a belief in god(s)" as you had previously done with your explanation of the "historical definition of atheism"--yes, that is what I was referring to.
Last edited by billl; 12-19-2011 at 02:01 AM.
Your still implying that I'm demanding "stringently formal rules." But I'm not. I'm just asking, insofar as one is propounding an argument, for the bare minimum - clear terms, plausible premises, and valid reasoning. Again, this applies to arguments. And arguments are the things I was asking for.
If, like Varenne, you just want to voice subjective personal opinions or explanations. That's fine. They needn't be logical in any way. But if you're putting an argument forward, it must have those three qualities, or it's no good.
Last edited by Climacus; 12-19-2011 at 10:04 AM.
There have been very few arguments in this thread, Darcy. But people are implying that they have arguments. And I've been trying to squeeze them out. But they're not coming. Instead of arguments, you kept posting premises, and question-begging ones at that.
I meant that I agreed with this sentiment of yours:You say you agree with me. If all your training in logic has lead you to the same place where I am, well then, what was the point?
"I don't need final irrefutable logical proof to claim that belief in God is unreasonable. I need it to say that there is no possible way God exists, but that's not what I or most atheists believe. We simply believe that there is no good reason to believe that He does exist."
But I do not agree that the proposition "God doesn't exist" cannot be proved true. It can be proved true.
No. I only the want the conclusions of arguments to be logical, to be logically valid.You want all conclusions to meet your standard of logical rigour. I guess I should go study formal logic, that way I can come back and state the exact same conclusions in a fancier more pretentious way.
Last edited by Climacus; 12-19-2011 at 10:05 AM.
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