From: skinner@sp94.csrd.uiuc.edu (Gregg Skinner)
Subject: Re: Defining the kingdom of God
Reply-To: g-skinner@uiuc.edu
Organization: UIUC Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 14:21:50 GMT

We may have discovered the source of our disagreement.  Mr. Sandvik
spells out his perceptions of logic:

>As for truth, logic deals with the truth, it's the tool of the
>truth, and if presence of logic does not demonstrate its truth,
>something must be wrong with the logical conclusions.

The presence of valid logic is necessary, but not sufficient, for
establishing truth.  While a contradiction is enough to demonstrate a
conclusion false, the existence of a valid chain of reasoning simply
shifts the question of truth to the premises.  In the example I
presented there exists a valid argument connecting the assumptions to
the conclusion.  Logic is present in this chain of reasoning, i.e. it
obeys the rules of logic.  But the truth of the conclusion remains
unknown, for the premises cannot at present be verified.

Mr. Sandvik suggests logic is not present if the premises cannot be
verified.  I suspect he has not thought through the implications of
his standard.  For example, it forces him to find arithmetic is
without logic -- the Axiom of Choice cannot be verified.  He must
further condemn Euclidean geometry to the realm of the illogical for
its reliance on the "point" and the "line".  Paradoxically, he may
even be forced to reject logic itself as without logic because of its
reliance on unverifiable axioms.

Mr. Sandvik adds another standard for discerning what is logical: "If
Christianic issues would be logically useful, I'm sure Popper,
Heidegger, Nietzche, Russell, Whitehead, et rest would have used them
in their philosophical papers."  Evidently this means that any issues
of which these philosophers were aware that they did include in their
writings are therefore not logically useful.  I do not see the
justification for this test.  Certainly these writers had more than
one criteria for including ideas in their works.  Also, for the
outcome of the test to be as Mr. Sandvik implies, philosophers which
did discuss Christian issues, such as Pascal, are necessarily
excluded from "et rest".  The criteria for their exclusion is not
clear.

(Mr. Sandvik writes, "I would like to know if you have evidence from
non-Christians that support Christianity using logic."  He may mean he
wants a non-Christian schooled in logic to write that Christianity is
not without logic.  If that is the case, this want has already been
satisfied by a recent contribution from Dave Butler.)


                                   Gregg Skinner



P.S. I wish to comment on Mr. Sandvik's response to my observation
that he is mistaking my intent in refuting his claim.  To support this
observation I wrote,

     Earlier I wrote how silly I feel Mr. Sandvik's charge, "the only
     evidence for Jesus comes from believers," sounds in a different
     context.  At that time he interpreted my argument to be an
     attempt to assert the truth of Christianity.  For reasons I do
     not understand, my repeated clarifications fell on deaf ears.

Mr. Sandvik's response misses the point entirely:

     Christians have over time digged [sic] into historical papers to justify
     the existance [sic] of the miracle maker, and the outcome is meager, if
     not missing. There are valid cases to admit that one of the Messiah
     figures was named Joshua, and he started a sect called Christianity,
     but that's really all.

This response is an attempt to dredge up and old argument.  It does
not address my point, which is that Mr. Sandvik may have
misinterpreted my intentions.

I have reason to believe Mr. Sandvik is being purposefully dull in
refusing to acknowledge my stated intentions, in order to interject
rants such as the one that appears above.
Xref: sparky talk.religion.misc:24056 alt.atheism:23885 alt.slack:3518