From: ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik )
Subject: Re: Defining the kingdom of God
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 23:29:34 GMT
Organization: (Evil Eye Creature from Mars, Inc.)
Followup-To: talk.religion.misc

In article <1992Dec18.142150.21040@csrd.uiuc.edu>,
skinner@sp94.csrd.uiuc.edu (Gregg Skinner) wrote:
> 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.

You presented a valid logical chain of thought, but the components
used in the chain can't be verifed to be logically true or false.
As you maybe know ancient Greeks spent a lot of time just trying
to verify and agree upon the building blocks of logic, and we would
never argue about what an integral value is for instance (unless
we are dealing with mathematical issues). Note also the lack
of religious elements in Euclid's works.

However, concerning your simple concepts like 'original sin' and 
similar Christian concepts, they can't be stated as true or false,
so using them in a logical chain could produce an end result that
looks and smells nice, but can't be never verified as truth. This 
was my observation.

> 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.

Both you and I agree on the Euclidean building blocks, as long as we
operate on the 2-dimensional plane. However, we don't agree on the
Christian doctrines, so using logic to justify Christian doctrines
is doomed to fail with the first statement where a component not
verified as something everyone agrees upon is not a valid approach.
This was my second observation concerning using logic with Christianity.

There's a difference between Euclidean logic and Christian logic, I'm
thankful Skinner pointed this out, because Hindus and followers of
Islam agree upon the logic based on Euclidean geometrics!

> 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.

I will post and excellent example of logic used by Pascal to demonstrate
how Christian logic works. Unfortunately my book on Philosophy is back
home, so I have to post it in another email. Thanks for pointing out
Pascal, he's a really interesting Christian philosopher.

> 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.

Gregg, thanks for not making talk.religion.misc entries to personal
attack vehicles due to lack of evidence. I really appreciate your
efforts to keep out flames from news entries.

Regards,
Kent
-------------------
Kent Sandvik (UUCP: ....!apple!ksand; INTERNET: ksand@apple.com)
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"Don't just do something!  Stand there!"  -- Mystery Science Theater 3000
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