Talk:Trilemma

message: Note: I've split the section on Lewis's trilemma to a new article.  Since almost all the discussions here at Talk:Trilemma were about Lewis's trilemma, I moved Talk:Trilemma to Talk:Lewis's trilemma, then cut and pasted back everything that wasn't specifically about Lewis's trilemma.  This is what the talk page looked like before I moved it.  Sideshow Bob Roberts 03:35, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split 

message: :The third horn of the trilemma is the application of a circular and therefore invalid argument. 
Circular arguments are by definition valid.  There are other problems with them, but no invalidity Lostcaesar 07:59, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Umm... no... a premise cannot also be a conclusion and that is what a circular argument is, and therefore it is invalid... that sentence is correct 86.168.145.150 (talk) 20:24, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error on the Page 

message: This article is about trilemmas in general; detailed discussions about particular trilemmas belong in separate articles.  At the moment, the Impossible Trinity and the Munchhausen-Trilemma have separate articles and are summarised by a paragraph or two in the main trilemma article.  Is there any reason why Lewis's trilemma should not be dealt with the same way?  Sideshow Bob Roberts 14:38, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Done Sideshow Bob Roberts 03:35, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal to split Lewis's trilemma into a new article

message: It is absurd to put in the mistaken thought of one man (that 'most New Testament scholars do not today support the view that Jesus claimed to be God') readily refuted by the millions of scholars and graduates of the thousands of Christian seminaries that do claim and teach that Jesus claimed to be God. Such a statement is both false and POV (even if it was referenced) and thus, violates Wikipedia guidelines.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rusmeister (talk • contribs) 02:34, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Jesus Christ did not to our knowledge claim to be God Almighty thanks and wise up. Read Holy Trinity and if you think that is a Catholic (Definition: Complete, absolute) term ... forget about it. Obviously not aware of the difference between Son and Father. Good luck and er... Jesus bless you my er... son. Perhaps on the grounds that he is God Almighty being absurd, otherwise nonsense, sorry. Son of forget about it read the bible. ~ R.T.G 05:32, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apologetic Trilemma 

message: I think the top corner of the triangle should be labelled with an adjective (is it "bright"?) not the noun "communist". Everything is about "communist". Please correct! 83.77.253.211 (talk) 18:03, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error in the figure of Zizak's trilemma 

message: It is claimed in the Apologetic trilemma section that
One well known trilemma was put forward by Christian apologists as a proof of the divinity of Jesus, ...
This gives the impression that it was put forward by Christian apologists when debating those who are not Christian apologists. Secondly, the claim does not appear in the source cited at the end of the paragraph, Mere Christianity; it only puts forward the trilemma, and makes no mention of Christian apologists in relation to it. It should be made clear whom this trilemma was put forward to (see ), along with a list of additional assumptions that are made to support the proof, if any. It should also be cited or removed. --Joshua Issac (talk) 11:47, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: A reference supporting the claim was  by Rbreen. --Joshua Issac (talk) 15:22, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proponents of apologetic trilemma 

message: From the introduction on the page:
"There are two logically equivalent ways in which to express a trilemma:"
followed by:
"it can be expressed as a choice among three unfavourable options, one of which must be chosen, or as a choice among three favourable options, only two of which are possible at the same time."
I don't object to the part after colon but the part before it seems incomplete. Shouldn't the whole text be something like this:
"There are two pairs of logically equivalent ways in which to express a trilemma. One 'optimistic' pair which expresses the trilemma as a choice among three unfavourable options, one of which must be chosen, or as a choice among three favourable options, only two of which are possible at the same time. One 'pessimistic' pair which expresses the trilemma as a choice among three unfavourable options, only one of which can be avoided, or as a choice among three favourable options, only one of which can be chosen."
I didn't want to edit the page directly but this makes a lot more sense to me. 
37.0.85.197 (talk) 12:45, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing statement in the introduction. 

message: "Trilemma of the Earth"  seems not to satisfy the definition of trilemma. It is really more of a dilemma between Economic Development/Energy Expenditure and Environmental Protection.
--
+1, I suspect this is from a single person pushing their publication and some term they introduced therein. For now I just edited the section to point out that this is not actually a trilemma, and requested citation that "scientists" actually use this term in a widespread enough way to justify such a statement in an encyclopedia.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:4C4C:228F:1700:C04D:73C4:8551:2BB7 (talk) 05:06, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Delete "Trilemma of the Earth" ?

message: Hey guys!
I submitted an edit: I removed the Blockchain Trilemma because it is not a trilemma, just a dilemma. The dilemma also affects all kinds of distributed data-storage systems, not just blockchain, so calling it "blockchain trilemma" is a wrong habit.
'''
Security and Decentralization go hand in hand. If decentralization is damaged, security also damaged, and vice versa. Scalability of blockchain also misunderstood: when we talk about scalability, we usually talk about TPS (transaction per second) or GAS limit. In fact, this is vertical scalability, but distributed systems also have horizontal scalability al well. (for example, sharding will be horizontal - but it affects decentralization and security at the same time, again).
When we talk about permissioned blockchains, decentralization (only some computer validates the blockchain) and security (the validators can manipulate the blockchain, they can be hacked easier thank 10000 nodes) also destroyed at the same time.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by DaWe35 (talk • contribs) 13:10, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove "blockchain trilemma" 

message: Is this traditionally regarded as a trilemma?  I ask because it looks more to me like a quadrilemma (for reasons I will explain below).  But I will first also point out that I think the current formulation includes a rhetorical question which obscures clarity.  I suggest replacing it with a more direct statement such as:
# If God is unable to prevent evil, then he is not all-powerful.
# If God is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all-good.
# If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then evil does not exist.
This is more or less how it's formulated on the inconsistent triad page.
Now back to my point about it being a quadrilemma rather than a trilemma.  The Epicurean paradox page gives a better, more complete formulation which deals not only with the existence of evil and God's omnipotence and omnibenevolence, but also His omniscience.  Hence we have an inconsistent tetrad which gives rise to the following quadrilemma:
# God is not omnibenevolent (He knows there is evil and He can prevent it but He doesn't want to)
# God is not omniscient (He can prevent evil and He wants to but He doesn't know about it)
# God is not omnipotent (He knows about evil and He wants to prevent it but He is unable to do so)
# Evil does not exist (God knows there is evil, wants to prevent it, and can prevent it)
The fourth option isn't mentioned on the other page but if we don't include the "evil doesn't exist" option then we don't exhaust all possible combinations. So it's a quadrilemma, not a trilemma. 2601:49:8400:26B:1921:3F36:9E7D:CACA (talk) 13:21, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Epicurus' trilemma 

message: The article says,
This is doubtful and I'm not sure how the cited article is relevant.  I've quickly skimmed it (it's available here if anyone wants to check it out: https://philarchive.org/archive/HOWWJM-2 ) and it's possible that I missed something but I don't see anything in that article suggesting that this trilemma is "almost completely absent from discussions about the status of Jesus by professional theologians and biblical scholars".
How do we even quantify "almost completely absent"?  I'm sure it comes up less than other topics, but it does come up.  Even Bart Ehrman, the most famous bible scholar, has commented on it.  Here's something from his blog: https://ehrmanblog.org/the-problem-with-liar-lunatic-or-lord-for-members/ I don't know if he's written any academic papers on it or anything, but we can't say he hasn't discussed it.  Also, there's the bible scholar Brant Pitre.  He uses the "Lord Liar Lunatic Legend" quadrilemma variant in order to set up his Case for Jesus.
Also, I don't know if the implication was intentional or not, but it sounds almost like it's saying that apologetics is a less serious discipline than theology or biblical studies, or that we ought not to take the trilemma seriously on that account.  But there's a pretty obvious reason why Lewis's trilemma is used by apologists and not discussed nearly as much by theologians and bible scholars: it's because each of these three disciplines has its own goals.  The goal of apologetics is to give reasons and evidence in defense of the faith--at the very least, to show that the faith is not unreasonable.  So a big part of the goal is to establish reasons for believing that Jesus is God.  Lewis's trilemma tries to do that, and is fairly persuasive, so we'd expect to see it used a lot within the field of apologetics.  Theology and biblical studies, on the other hand, are sciences.  Christian theologians presuppose that Jesus is God and they seek to derive further knowledge about God; while biblical scholars may nor may not believe that Jesus is God but their goal is to make sense of the biblical text.  Neither theology nor biblical studies is really trying to establish Jesus's divinity or convince anyone of anything, so the trilemma is not too relevant to either of these two disciplines.  (If anything, the trilemma would probably be of more interest to the philosophy of religion.) 2601:49:8400:26B:1921:3F36:9E7D:CACA (talk) 18:48, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apologetic trilemma