Did God create logic? Or is logic further evidence of God’s existence?

[shunyadragon]

your problem is in thinking these "laws" of logic are some sort of commands that force things to conform to them, like a speed limit law. Instead they are descriptions of how reality is, how it works. So yes God is "governed" by these "laws" -

I disagree the laws of logic are human conventions that evolved to provide reason to human thinking of the nature of our existence. I do think fallible humans comprehend what laws govern God.

[shunyadragon]

Shuny, YOU made this claim: "Contradictions do not exist in any form in the ultimate absolute nature of our existence."

So again is that an absolute truth or a relative claim? Or is it a "fallacy of universal generalization?"

It is a fallible human view of the reality of the nature of our existence that is being debated. You also have a very human view you believe in and argue that view. The sky is also Carolina blue on a clear day at noon on the 4th of July.

I believe the lack of 'absolute truths' beyond our knowledge of objective observations of our physical world from the human perspective is based on the fact that the human views of any possible worlds beyond the physical world is too variable, diverse and conflicting to know one claim of absolute truth is true over other conflicting beliefs.

[seer]

It is a fallible human view of the reality of the nature of our existence that is being debated. You also have a very human view you believe in and argue that view. The sky is also Carolina blue on a clear day at noon on the 4th of July.

I believe the lack of 'absolute truths' beyond our knowledge of objective observations of our physical world from the human perspective is based on the fact that the human views of any possible worlds beyond the physical world is too variable, diverse and conflicting to know one claim of absolute truth is true over other conflicting beliefs.

Shuny, you did not answer my question, you said: "Contradictions do not exist in any form in the ultimate absolute nature of our existence."

Is that an absolute truth or a relative one?

[Jim B.]

There is no intent on my part to be taken as an "absolute truth" and never indicated so.

This a consistent problem with many apologists throwing pixie dust around in arguments, like seer and sparko. The following is an interesting response by Bo Bennett a PhD Philosopher to a quote from seer I requested he comment on.

Seer's comment "Is it an absolute truth and we cannot know absolute truths?" Yours takes on a similar meaningless direction.

Source: https://www.dowellwebtools.com/tools/qa/Bo/LogicalFallacies/2W4Vk9w9

It is one of those questions that people who think they "gotcha" like to ask. "Oh, we can't be certain about anything? Are you certain about that?" Clearly, if one is rejecting the idea of certainty, truth, or any other concept, when they make a statement such as "there is no..." they are not claiming certainly, truth, or whatever.

The person who asks that question is trying to set the other person up for a self-refuting statement (a fallacy). One could argue that the question itself reflect a self-refutation, but clearly those who ask this question are being ironic and attempting to point out an illogical position. Just to reiterate, the position is ONLY illogical if someone were to claim certainty that there is no certainty, or similar self-refutation.
Bo Bennett, PhD Philosophy

© Copyright Original Source

So are you saying that there is no absolute truth or certainty? Only degrees of certainty? There is no absolute context-free sense of the term "absolute certainty." So the pertinent question to ask is "Absolutely certain for what?" or "Certain enough for what?" The only statements that might approach "absolute" certainty would be analytic statements or mathematical propositions, but Humeans would argue that these statements do not yield new knowledge but simply explicate what's already assumed. Most mathematicians I know would disagree with that.

To assume that scientific knowledge is the most 'reliable' or certain kind of knowledge(if that's what you're saying) is questionable. There is Hume's problem of induction. There's also the fact that reliance on scientific knowledge requires reliance on a host of other assumptions, such as the reliablility of our senses and our minds which must be at least as certain as the knowledge they make possible.

[JimL]

your problem is in thinking these "laws" of logic are some sort of commands that force things to conform to them, like a speed limit law. Instead they are descriptions of how reality is, how it works. So yes God is "governed" by these "laws" - God exists. God can't both exist and not exist. understand?

So then, by the term "god," you do not mean to define a being who is free to make his own laws, or a being who is free to defy those laws, but a being who himself is governered by his own eternal nature? Sort of like how we would define the laws governing the natural world itself. Would you say that good and evil fit into that category, i.e. that they are fixed laws that god has no ability to violate? If so is god determined by his nature in a sense that we are not?

[logician bones]

Shun:

Frst from the scientific perspective nothing is 'proven.'

Is that proven? ;)

Scientific theories and hypothesis have have falsified the possibility of the existence of a Quantum World that is infinite beyond our universe, and the possibility of multiverses.

I think your doubled "have" here was meant to be just one "have"? The grammar would change if it was a different word you forgot... If you just meant one "have", though, this statement is obviously false. The causality proof has proven that existence as a whole is infinite. Once you have one proof, you cannot have another proof contradicting that! Law of non-contradiction.

That said, I'd love to hear your reasoning to support that. :)

(Notice also that if this is not proven, it is not a helpful statement to contradict the causality proof anyways. You just said nothing in science is proven. So, whether that's true in reality or not, you portray it as "true in your head". :P So how do you square that with this?)

I disagree that from the philosophical/theological perspective we have anything close to any conclusions of the nature of our existence outside the universe.

A flat earther disagrees that we have proof of a spheroid Earth. Your point was?

The 'direct observation of natural phenomenon' in the development of scientific theories and hypothesis ended with Newtonian Physics.

Wow, contradiction mode is on strong today! It was YOU who was arguing that we can only know through direct observation! However, science was never limited only to direct observation, nor is logic in general; the whole point of logic and science is to conclude things (soundly) based on observation and clear thinking, but building to conclusions that are not necessarily observed.

Bennett's quote is very valid concerning the fallacy of self-refutation when posters make meaningless 'waste of time' statements like "Is it an absolute truth and we cannot know absolute truths?" Bennett need not write a wordy three page essay to make the point. Such foolish 'self refuting statements have no part in constructive positive dialogue between different perspectives.

I would love to hope that you want on some level to get back to constructive dialogue -- you've been close before. But you showed when you decided to start obviously lying about my position and others' that you aren't interested in that. At the moment?

So by your own logic here, you are calling yourself a fool...

Even so, I'd like to hope somewhere in there there's still somebody who does want to have a truthseeking discussion. *shrugs* You never know...

Testable, sound conclusions in philosophy/theology cannot by 'known to be true.'

Then your statement I've quoted here is not a testable, sound conclusion and should be dismissed. ;)

The whole point of testing is to know -- versus just assuming!

However, as you know full well I have talked about already, there is a scale of certainty, and few things besides "I exist" and "there is existence" are actually 100%. Yet, there is a level below this within which we still refer to sound conclusions as "proven". Others fall down only to what we call evidenced. And others with even less certainty (among those who rely only on sound conclusions anyway).

Science will not even make that claim based on sound falsification of theories and hypothesis.

Yes it does. It makes the claim with qualification -- "True so far as current experiments have verified" -- and the knowledge that factors could change and the results could change in future experiments is built into science, Shunya. I mentioned this before. Your acting like I didn't is indeed very deceptive...

Here and in other posts it is common for you to 'appeal to ignorance'

Prove it. What is the premise that is a statement of ignorance and what is the conclusion based on it?

Oh, right, you can't prove it. You can't prove anything! Sigh.


Shunya, you're becoming a walking example of exactly why logicians warn against the idea of rejecting sound logic. (Even as you try to pretend to be the expert on fallacies! Who cares, if logic is to be distrusted as you admitted you do? ;)) Instead of making sure your conclusions are sound, you're grab-bagging beliefs left and right and acting like they can be true merely on personal authority! This "we can't be sure of anything" is looking more and more like just a mask you use to wiggle out of responsibility when something you act like you believe is shown to be false. Worse, even after it's pointed out to you clearly why your claim cannot be true, you're acting oblivious to that and continuing to promote it, usually without clarification that you only wonder if it might be true.

This is not good...

Newtonian

Inigo. :rolleyes:

Newtonian physics is estimation of how things in our everyday experience work under normal circumstances. Relativity, quantum mechanics, and a lot of other things investigate deeper into physics, in ways that weren't available to Newton at the time.

Basically, your approach is like if we say "Earth is a sphere and here's why" and you ignore the reasons and just say either "we can't know the shape of Earth!" or "I don't want to bother thinking about your reasons because I'm not sure if we can know the shape". When we don't know something that's precisely when we should go look for testable reasons to support one answer or another.

Again your appealing to a very Newtonian 'appeal to ignorance' as to what you claim 'science cannot show or know.'[/quote]

Huh? Are you saying in your view, the Earth might not be a spheroid because to think that would be Newtonian?

Newtonian physics was the best estimate of how things worked under normal circumstances, so far as Newton and those closer to his time were able to test or deduce at that point. Later physics scientists dug deeper, all of which I strongly encourage -- and I want to know more and more and more if possible. There's nothing Newtonian about my approach.

And again, why the heckler do you allege appeal to ignorance there? Throwing around accusations of that is not a valid excuse for refusing to look at sound support for a conclusion that is true. This is about you having the guts to actually let yourself think through the logic, not about basing anything on ignorance. What is built is built on knowledge -- if there's ignorance it's only in the person refusing to look at the reasoning. Wilful ignorance in that case.


Jim:

Do you believe that god is governed by these absolute laws, or does god have power to violate them?

This is why I advised earlier to avoid the word "law" for absolute logical necessities. :P



Shun:

I disagree the laws of logic are human conventions

There's a lot in formal logic that is indeed convention; choosing to use the symbol "S" versus "1" or whatnot -- but the principles that these labeling choices talk about are not conventions. If anything they're discoveries.

I do think fallible humans comprehend what laws govern God.

Was this a typo for "not think"?

based on the fact that the human views of any possible worlds beyond the physical world is too variable

Contradicting yourself once again...

And are you actually arguing "there are a variety of views, therefore we can't know which one is true"?!

Treat the different views as possibilities to be investigated, tested. (And don't assume unless it's logically warranted that the list of views you've heard is all the possibilities that should be tested, of course, but test for what's true. Go step by step; break it down logically into smaller questions that can be tested, and build from there. That's how logic is supposed to work. :))



Jim:

So the pertinent question to ask is "Absolutely certain for what?" or "Certain enough for what?"

Indeed. Ah. Sanity from Jim is back!

For that sentence anyway... *reads on*

he only statements that might approach "absolute" certainty would be analytic statements or mathematical propositions, but Humeans would argue that these statements do not yield new knowledge but simply explicate what's already assumed. Most mathematicians I know would disagree with that.

The Humideans (:P) are kind of on the right track with that; sound truth could be described as explicating what is already known in the sense of making conclusions consciously known that were already implied by the premises and may in some cases have been subconsciously already calculated by those who knew the premises.

Though with complex mathematical proofs I would agree it's hard to sustain that.

To assume that scientific knowledge is the most 'reliable' or certain kind of knowledge(if that's what you're saying) is questionable.

It is, but I think a lot more caution is needed there than is usually used. I mentioned there's a few illogical things on creation.com for example, even though overall I strongly recommend the site -- the blithe way "it isn't science" is thrown away sometimes is one that concerns me... Science may validly subsume everything, or almost everything*; it may simply be that we haven't always found the means to do that.

However, I'm still not sure on that either way so yeah. It's a caution I think is warranted, unless somebody can prove otherwise. :)


*I'd put "all possible knowledge about infinite variety" as one thing human science presumably can never (at any point in linear time anyway :P) achieve. But our knowledge may be able to expand indefinitely until we reach the highest possible limits of recording/remembering knowledge within a physical universe. (I do suspect God doesn't intend us to always keep learning new things per se, but rather enjoy a stable life as normal humans in the new creation forever, doing things with healthy cyclical repetition... but for quite a long time I'm pretty sure we'll be learning a lot that can help us with that life and relationship with God.)

So then, by the term "god," you do not mean to define a being who is free to make his own laws

That doesn't follow, Jim, because here laws could refer to additional laws beyond just the most basic, absolute necessities of existence. Go back to what I said about general physics versus specific physics. The very concept of absolute, "most general" physics or "rules"/"laws" of reality implies that you can build off of them to make more specific rules/laws, just like how when we make a virtual world we build from the rules of computers which are more general to program specific rules for that virtual environment.

Would you say that good and evil fit into that category, i.e. that they are fixed laws that god has no ability to violate?

I'm out of time here, but noting that this is something that may need expanded on. Short answer if you asked me would be that the most basic principle of good is absolute. Unfortunately, it's difficult to put that principle into indisputable, simple words, but something like, try to do what's best for everybody within fully responsible priorities given the specific circumstance. This also implies that the circumstances will be different.

Examples usually work best here. You're given a gun as a cop. Should you never kill? Well, shooting somebody who will kill innocents if you don't is not the same as shooting innocents yourself!

[Sparko]

So then, by the term "god," you do not mean to define a being who is free to make his own laws, or a being who is free to defy those laws, but a being who himself is governered by his own eternal nature? Sort of like how we would define the laws governing the natural world itself. Would you say that good and evil fit into that category, i.e. that they are fixed laws that god has no ability to violate? If so is god determined by his nature in a sense that we are not?

are you determined to twist everything I say into something else? Or just to misunderstand everything on purpose?

I have no idea what you are even asking at this point. God has a specific nature, he can't violate his own nature. He can't be unGod. He can't be evil. He can't be nonexistent. He can make his own "laws" - but not change his own nature. He can make whatever physical laws he wants because he created the physical universe. But he can't change the basics of reality itself. Things like non-contradiction are not something created, it is just reality. Something can't exist and not exist at the same time in the same sense for example and not even God can make it that way. But God could make the speed of light half of what it is, he can change that kind of "law"

[Sparko]

Jim:



Indeed. Ah. Sanity from Jim is back!

That is because you conflated Jim B. with JimL

[logician bones]

That is because you conflated Jim B. with JimL

Lol, figures. Lesson learned: nicknames have issues........

[shunyadragon]

Interesting reference posted in another thread!

Source: http://www.proginosko.com/docs/The_Lord_of_Non-Contradiction.pdf

The Lord of Non-Contradiction:
An Argument for God from Logic

James N. Anderson and Greg Welty

What is the relationship between the laws of logic and the existence of God? Perhaps the most
obvious thing to say is that there is an epistemological relationship between the two, such that
the existence of God—more precisely, rational belief in the existence of God—depends on the
laws of logic. In the first place, any argument one might offer for the existence of God must
conform to the laws of logic: the law of non-contradiction, the rules of deductive inference, and
so forth. Furthermore, many would maintain that the concept of God must conform to the laws
of logic as a precondition of rational belief in the existence of God. (This seems implicit even in a
“Reformed Epistemology” view which says that rational belief in God doesn’t have to depend
on arguments.) In this paper we do not propose to explore or contest those epistemological
relationships. Instead we will argue for a substantive metaphysical relationship between the
laws of logic and the existence of God, with the arrow of dependence running in the opposite
direction. In other words, we will argue that there are laws of logic because God exists; indeed,
there are laws of logic only because God exists. If we are correct about this metaphysical
relationship, it is but a short step to a fascinating and powerful but neglected argument for the
existence of God.

Our approach will be as follows. The bulk of the paper will be concerned with establishing
what kind of things the laws of logic must be for our most natural intuitions about them to be
correct and for them to play the role in our intellectual activities that we take them to play.
Once we have a clear idea of what the laws of logic are—and must be—it will be readily
observed that the laws of logic are metaphysically dependent on the existence of God,
understood as a necessarily existent, personal, spiritual being. For this metaphysical
dependency relationship, we will show, is essentially the relationship between God and God’s
thoughts.

© Copyright Original Source

[shunyadragon]

Shun:


Is that proven? ;)

Classic fallacy!!!!

(Notice also that if this is not proven, it is not a helpful statement to contradict the causality proof anyways. You just said nothing in science is proven. So, whether that's true in reality or not, you portray it as "true in your head". :P So how do you square that with this?)

A flat earther disagrees that we have proof of a spheroid Earth. Your point was?

Scientific methods of falsification trump illusive claims of proof every time. A very basic college level knowledge of scientific methods, and the nature of proof in math and classic logic appears to be missing here.

[The Thinker]

I'm not sure what your point its. I would say that logically is the way God thinks and that an intelligible universe is a reflection of that rational Mind.

And yet, the central claim of your religion is that god sacrificed himself, to himself, to save us from himself.