From: ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik )
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Criticism: "There's no logic in Christianity"
Date: 6 Jan 93 19:58:17 GMT
Followup-To: talk.religion.misc
Organization: (Evil Eye Creature from Mars, Inc.)

In article <1993Jan5.190530.26315@csrd.uiuc.edu>,
skinner@sp94.csrd.uiuc.edu (Gregg Skinner) wrote:
> Ken Arromdee correctly observed the following,
>      To be valid logic is not the same as being true or
>      false; valid means that the conclusion follows from the premises.
> ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik ) responds:
> >OK, if we can't state that a premise is true or false, how could we
> >then draw a conclusion about the logical validity of the outcome?
> 
> The answer to this question appears in Ken Arromdee's words above.
> "Valid means that the conclusion follows from the premises."
> Regardless of the truth of the premise, we can determine whether the
> conclusion would follow _if_ the premise were true.

> That Mr. Sandvik fails to see the utility of such an exercise is
> not terribly interesting.

I see the outcome in known cases (see earlier postings), but in the
case of pure assertion premises, the eye is in the beholder. Those
who believe have established a conceptual agreement, and where logic
suddenly makes sense in their belief systems. I think this is the lesson,
people think differently, and for a medieval priest to figure out 
logically how many devils one could place on a pin made very much
logical sense. And 200 years from now I'm sure that the current
philosophical
problems could be considered to be pretty barbaric.

> >In other words we agree upon premises in the case of science and
> >formal logic/mathematics, but in the case of metaphysics some believe,
> >some not, and the qualification ultimately depends on the personal
> >world view.
> 
> All together now:  "Agreement on the truth of the premise of an
> argument is irrelevant to agreement on the validity of the argument."

You know, not all accept this happily. Is this a political campaign
to make a universal assertion about this one? Do you see the fallacy,
you are trying to make an acceptance that this rule is OK, just to
justify your logical conclusion. If there are people that don't accept
this assertion, your logical construct is in danger. In other words
you need acceptance in order to justify your statement. This is the
problem.

As we have stated earlier, we have agreements on many a priori constructs,
but not *all of 'em*, like sin, God, relationships with God, Jesus as God
and so on.

> >In other words everything is logical if it makes sense
> >for me... Intriguing...
> 
> This is an inaccurate paraphrase.  Mr. Arromdee's words suggest an
> argument is logical if the conclusion follows from the premise.  The
> result of this precise test, if applied properly, does not vary from
> person to person.

True, if all these individuals have *agreed* upon the premise itself.
I don't see any problems with logical statements based on mathematics,
or empirical ones based on science. However, when we are dealing with
religious themes, you have to have an agreement on what we are dealing
with concerning more complex logical statements. Otherwise we are
dealing with opinions.

> >My concern could be stated in one single sentence, as long as we
> >don't know what we are stating, we can't draw conclusions based
> >on such premises.
 
> His concern is unwarranted.  From the premise "P implies Q; Q implies
> R" we can draw the conclusion "P implies R".  We don't need any
> additional information to reach this conclusion.

As long as we don't question the P, Q  and R premises, fine. We all agree
on some of these. However, substitute P with "relationship with God",
Q with "God is Jesus" and R "relationship with Jesus".

Here we have already the assertion that Jesus = God" and we are in deep
trouble. For instance, if my assertion was that Jesus != God, and yours
that Jesus == God, then we are both right, and we have a logical conclusion
that is both true and false. Is this a logical outcome? Or is it 
maybe *an opinion*?

Another point, if we want to construct truth tables, we need to get 
some kind of a resolution on each premise, if we can't do that we 
get non-defined statements that I would not state as being logically
valid.

> Mr. Sandvik's chief concern is quickly dismissed by a look at the
> first few pages of any logic text.  I believe we have strong reason to
> doubt his claim of expertise in the field of logic.

It seems that the best attack is when in doubt is to attack the other
person's background. I don't think this is valid in logical reasoning.

In other words aren't we really dealing with argumentation ad nauseum 1),
non sequitur 2) and argumentation ad antiquitam?

Kent

1) an assertion is more likely to be true the more often it is heard 
2) an argument where the conclusion is drawn from premisses which are not
logically connected with it (God vs. sin vs relationship vs Jesus).
3) asserting that something is right or good simply because it's old,
recorded, and the way it has always been.

-------------------
Kent Sandvik (UUCP: ....!apple!ksand; INTERNET: ksand@apple.com)
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Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc