From: ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik )
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Criticism: "There's no logic in Christianity"
Date: 6 Jan 93 18:59:39 GMT
Followup-To: talk.religion.misc
Organization: (Evil Eye Creature from Mars, Inc.)

In article <1993Jan4.161624.29290@csrd.uiuc.edu>,
skinner@sp94.csrd.uiuc.edu (Gregg Skinner) wrote:
> To Mr. Sandvik and Mr. Sarver: Please explain in what (non-standard)
> way you define "logically valid argument".

My personal interpretation of a logically valid argument is one where
the outcome is clearly a known statement. So let's see if your premises
could lead to a clear yes/no. I'm not counting 'undecided' as a logical
conclusion, because it implies that I could use gibberish and call that
logical constructs (maybe that's the thing we are arguing about?).
 
> The premise I give
> 
>      1. Relationship with God is good.
>      2. Sin is the only thing that inhibits relationship with God.
>      3. All sin.
>      4. Forgiveness removes the effect of sin in (2).
>      5. Accepting Jesus provides forgiveness.
> 
> is in no particular order.  There is no speaking of one being "next".
> The argument is simply of the standard form, "Given that the above
> five are true, it follows that accepting Jesus is good."

You assume that:
a) there's a relationship between humans and God
b) it's a good thing (unlike the Gnostic doctrine, for instance)
c) it's the *only* thing that inhibits a relationship with God. If 
you boldly use such a premise, you have to be sure about this, otherwise
your logical conclusion is not verified. If there's another relationship
with God, let us say revenge, then your conclusions are false. In other
words here already things are falling apart. We can't show this, so we
are never sure about the final outcome.
d) Forgiveness removes the effeot of sin is something that we don't know,
neither can't verify. Problems yet again.
f) Finally accepting Jesus is the magical wand that suddenly explains
sinning,
because you assume yet again that Jesus was God, unlike some of the other
Christian sects that didn't make this assumption.

I still think this is a nice opinion, but to make a logical construct
based on assumptions that can't be verified is as much true depends
on your personal views of the premises. In other words this was an
opinion, not a statement.

> If there are other conclusions which can be validly inferred from the
> above premise, fine.  The existence of other conclusions in no way
> invalidates the one I gave.  Given a premise, all conclusions which
> obey the rules of inference are equally valid.

But it shows that if there are multiple outcomes, where's the logic???
If we have multiple conclusions, maybe we have a problem somewhere,
let's see, maybe in the assertions about premises?
> 
> Yes.  The "chain of propositions" you gave, which I annotate in part
> below, cannot be inferred from the premise.
> 
> >Here they are:
> 
> >1.  The sky is blue.
> 
> >2.  The gods make the color blue fall from heaven.  
> 
> This cannot be inferred from the premise.
> 
> >3.  It is invisible to us because humans have only two eyes--three or more 
> >    eyes are necessary to see color falling--my holy book says so.
> 
> This also cannot be inferred from the premise.

According to your definition of logical constructs you could indeed
have valid conclusions from such un-asserted premises. I think this
example was an opinion as well, not a conclusion.

Please, doesn't this show already the futility to make logical
conclusions from premises we can't even agree upon?  There's a huge
difference between religious logic, and mathematical logic, where
we all have agreed on the primitives.

Maybe not always, actually. As a counter-example of problems with 
mathematicaly agreed universals, which are the seven first primes? :-)

Kent
-------------------
Kent Sandvik (UUCP: ....!apple!ksand; INTERNET: ksand@apple.com)
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