What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Universe?

[TheFlyingBastard]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

That's the mystery of faith. God is not supposed to be understood by humans. At least that is the view which is accepted by believers.

That's what they sometimes say but then they claim that God wants you to do this and He wants that, etc... It's clear that they believe that they understand Him and only fall back on the claim that He cannot be understood when you point out how illogical their claims of Him are...

Exactly, that's the whole point of faith. The usage of flawed logic.

 

[pdka2004]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

If he does then, regardless of whether or not he actually exists, we can never interact with him on any meaningful level, so he may as well not exist

 

[lrkun]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

That's the mystery of faith. God is not supposed to be understood by humans. At least that is the view which is accepted by believers.

That's what they sometimes say but then they claim that God wants you to do this and He wants that, etc... It's clear that they believe that they understand Him and only fall back on the claim that He cannot be understood when you point out how illogical their claims of Him are...

I am not claiming to know about god. To answer the question whether it exists or not is not something that I can claim, because I have no ground to do so. I am of the position that it may or may not exist. I also have the opinion that theists believe that it exists despite their lack of understanding or that they don't have ground to do so. Therefore it is not reasonable to say that god exists or does not exists. Despite my observation of the matter, theists still claim that it does, this is not something that I dispute, I find it funny and laughable, but I keep this opinion to myself when I am constantly surrounded by them.

Whether I am correct or wrong is subject to the evidence which we can gather at this point in time. If I am wrong, then so be it, I'll change my position, but if I am right, then the theists should change their understanding accordingly.

The issue which I am trying to address is that in the point of view of an atheist, the understanding of the term god, whether it exists or not, is illogical. On the other hand, on the point of view of a theist, this is a first principle, which cannot be disputed despite how unreasonable the demonstration or evidence is.

I am bias to the point of view of the atheist.

 

[lrkun]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

Exactly, that's the whole point of faith. The usage of flawed logic.

And I wonder why you dispute my argument for the past few points, because this is also my point of view. Was I unclear in stating my argument when I was arguing that god is illogical, because the proof of its existence is through miracles?

 

[borrofburi]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

If he does then, regardless of whether or not he actually exists, we can never interact with him on any meaningful level, so he may as well not exist

Again, I do not see justification for this. That god is capable of violating the rules of logic, reason, or the laws of the universe, does not necessitate that god is always violating these rules. Obviously a being that ALWAYS violates these rules is completely necessarily incomprehensible to us, but a being that can and does, on occasion, while not completely comprehended by us, could be understood to "exist" and be interacted with.

 

[Story]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

EDIT: (This, and a few other things are reasons as to why I'm an AGNOSTIC atheist and not just an atheist... just saying O_O)

An agnostic atheist is JUST an atheist.



In regards to your argument, it is pretty much the definition of omnipotence. I suppose with your flavour of it, you could justify the contradictions in the bible because a contradiction is a logical deduction and God is illogical so in the case of specific numbers being completely different than each other, god probably illogically made them both correct.

The major failure of this argument is something I like to call "making shit up".

We could philosophically make up any concept in this fashion that would be unfalsifiable and obviously wrong.

Take for instance, how would you prove that you aren't just a brain in a jar and you're the only person that really exists, but you're connected up to a computer that makes you believe that other people exist too. This mindset is called solipsism, it's the consideration that your existence is the only thing you can be sure of

How would you be able to prove that the world did not instantaneously pop into existence at this very moment in the state that it currently is and all your memories of previous times is just the data that your head was made with at the moment the world was created.

How would you argue against reincarnation or the existence of other non-judeo-christian gods.

There is an infinite possibility of things I could suggest that were just as possible as god, but contradicted his existence. Because it's really easy to just "make shit up".

This is why it's important to come to conclusions based on observations and not the random suggestions of curious minds. All other things have a null probability or possibility until further data suggests otherwise.

 

[OmegaMale]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

The major failure of this argument is something I like to call "making shit up".

Haha! Do you mind if I steal that?

Doesn't sound quite as intellectual as, say, argumentum ad verecundiam... What's 'making shit up' in Latin?

 

[lrkun]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

The major failure of this argument is something I like to call "making shit up".

Haha! Do you mind if I steal that?

Doesn't sound quite as intellectual as, say, argumentum ad verecundiam... What's 'making shit up' in Latin?

condita shit sursum - making shit up.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

condita shit sursum - making shit up.

I think that should be argumentum ad condita sursum merda (of course, you can put the words in pretty much any order you like but, generally, phonetic elegance is the precedent).

 

[Story]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

I like how googling that brings up this exact thread.

 

[phantomkirby]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

An agnostic atheist is JUST an atheist.

In regards to your argument, it is pretty much the definition of omnipotence. I suppose with your flavour of it, you could justify the contradictions in the bible because a contradiction is a logical deduction and God is illogical so in the case of specific numbers being completely different than each other, god probably illogically made them both correct.

The major failure of this argument is something I like to call "making shit up".

We could philosophically make up any concept in this fashion that would be unfalsifiable and obviously wrong.

Take for instance, how would you prove that you aren't just a brain in a jar and you're the only person that really exists, but you're connected up to a computer that makes you believe that other people exist too. This mindset is called solipsism, it's the consideration that your existence is the only thing you can be sure of

How would you be able to prove that the world did not instantaneously pop into existence at this very moment in the state that it currently is and all your memories of previous times is just the data that your head was made with at the moment the world was created.

How would you argue against reincarnation or the existence of other non-judeo-christian gods.

There is an infinite possibility of things I could suggest that were just as possible as god, but contradicted his existence. Because it's really easy to just "make shit up".

This is why it's important to come to conclusions based on observations and not the random suggestions of curious minds. All other things have a null probability or possibility until further data suggests otherwise.

Thank you. I appreciate your reply a lot. I agree with you I appreciate all replies to anyone who has replied with my original post.

 

[Story]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

Haha! Do you mind if I steal that?

Sure! I'm sure that the argumentum ad condita sursum merda can apply to a lot of things.

 

[TheFlyingBastard]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

Exactly, that's the whole point of faith. The usage of flawed logic.

And I wonder why you dispute my argument for the past few points, because this is also my point of view. Was I unclear in stating my argument when I was arguing that god is illogical, because the proof of its existence is through miracles?

Because what I'm saying is that faith uses logic (albeit flawed) to support itself. When a god defies logic, logic itself becomes meaningless in relation to it. "Nature shows that God exists" is a form of (flawed) logic that supports faith. An illogical god is by definition subject nor part to such logic. At that point it's not faith, just bare belief.

 

[AndromedasWake]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

But could you explain more about absolute logic? In one of those league of reason shows, andromedaswake talked about nothing was absolute. Not even scienitific observations, or reality. So what makes logic absolute?

Unfortunately, my poor expression of my opinion in that video has caused no end of trouble, but I choose to leave it up anyway. I'm not interested in just posting the bits that make me look good.

I do believe that reality is absolute, but what is reality? Are you looking at it around you? Your eyes and other sensory receptors receive a limited amount of information from the real Universe and your brain uses this to construct a picture. In this sense, everything you ever "see" is a simulation and the appearance of reality doesn't really make any sense. It must be interpreted by an observer from a limited amount of information.

Science works the same way. Let's take physics. We can describe to a high degree of accuracy how matter and energy interact with each other, and observe the results, but does that mean a physical model is reality? I contend that it does not. A physical model is a map of reality, written in a language that our brains can understand (mathematics.)

We know that physical models are incomplete, so whilst they explain things and make accurate predictions within a certain domain of applicability (this may be set, for example, by the scale) they eventually cease to be useful and require extension. General Relativity, for example, is very successful at describing how massive objects interact with each other via gravity, but at very small scales it doesn't work. At small scales, quantum mechanics describes fields as being quantised, but GR describes gravitational fields in terms of continuous curvature. Non-smooth curvature only occurs when the mathematics of GR encounters a singularity, and a singularity is by definition a failure to churn out a meaningful solution. So, GR is accurate only at certain scales, and becomes insufficient at others. Is GR reality?

If you believe, as I do, that reality is absolute, then GR can't be reality, just a good approximation of it at certain scales. This is the case with all physical models. They approximate reality in a way that is meaningful to us. Physical models can describe things that our senses are unaware of, which we can then go and measure using extra-biological, "enhanced" sensory receptors; scientific measurement apparatus.

Our scientific models are limited by the information from our measurements, just as our brains' simulations are limited by our senses. Scientific models go a lot further than our brains due to having more access to information, and provide us with a more complete map of reality. It's still just a map though. So what about mathematics and logic?

Both of these are internally consistent frameworks which require axioms. Mathematics is the philosophy/science of number, quantity and space, and can be applied as well. Logic is a system of proof and inference concerning strict principles of validity. Are either of these things absolute in the way that reality is? I believe they are not.

I made a very poor analogy in the video in question to physical law (specifically Coulomb's law) with which I intended to show that like physics, maths and logic provide us with certain falsifiable laws. Usually due to the way they're derived, these laws are assumed to be true until falsified by observation. The strictest of all are perhaps the logical laws, because they are the cornerstone of all further reasoning, but already we can see potential problems with enforcing them at all times. Take Schrodinger's Cat for example. In this scenario, a popular interpretation of quantum mechanics tells us that the cat is in two states simultaneously, and the particular model which gives us this conundrum agrees well with experiment. However, the logical law of excluded middle states that either something is, or is not. It cannot be both.

Which is correct? Does the logical law take precedence and automatically negate the interpretation of quantum mechanics, or is that very science imposing limits on the domain of applicability of logic? This kind of clash is crucial to understanding why we shouldn't be too quick to suppose that either physics or logic (or both) are in any way absolute. They are sets of rules we assume true on pragmatic grounds, which at least up until the 20th century were very successful on a macroscopic scale without treading on each other's toes.

In the video I tried to explain that our beliefs or non-beliefs about supernatural worlds beyond need not be held accountable for these laws, because they are merely assumed true (with good reason of course) until falsified, and not necessarily transcendent absolutes, even though they may be approximations of such things. Even the existence of an absolute reality has no bearing on belief in a god as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Gunboat Diplomat]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

I made a very poor analogy in the video in question to physical law (specifically Coulomb's law) with which I intended to show that like physics, maths and logic provide us with certain falsifiable laws. Usually due to the way they're derived, these laws are assumed to be true until falsified by observation. The strictest of all are perhaps the logical laws, because they are the cornerstone of all further reasoning, but already we can see potential problems with enforcing them at all times. Take Schrodinger's Cat for example. In this scenario, a popular interpretation of quantum mechanics tells us that the cat is in two states simultaneously, and the particular model which gives us this conundrum agrees well with experiment. However, the logical law of excluded middle states that either something is, or is not. It cannot be both.

This is a flawed analogy and it may reveal a misunderstanding of logic on your part, AndromedasWake. It's hard to think of where to start...

The excluded middle does not apply to just any "something" but to a particular class of statements called propositions. The principle was never meant to apply to objects or masses or anything of the like...

In your example, the proposition would be "the cat is in two states simultaneously." Is it simultaneously in two states or is in not that?

Not all statements are propositions...

I suspect this sort of misunderstanding is the very reason why your statements in that show have caused you the troubles you've been seeing!

Which is correct? Does the logical law take precedence and automatically negate the interpretation of quantum mechanics, or is that very science imposing limits on the domain of applicability of logic? This kind of clash is crucial to understanding why we shouldn't be too quick to suppose that either physics or logic (or both) are in any way absolute. They are sets of rules we assume true on pragmatic grounds, which at least up until the 20th century were very successful on a macroscopic scale without treading on each other's toes.

We don't just assume logic to be true, it's defined that way! The very definition of what it means for something to be true (and when I say "something," I mean a sentence) is determined by logic. Because we define logic to be truth, it is necessarily true...

 

[AndromedasWake]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

I made a very poor analogy in the video in question to physical law (specifically Coulomb's law) with which I intended to show that like physics, maths and logic provide us with certain falsifiable laws. Usually due to the way they're derived, these laws are assumed to be true until falsified by observation. The strictest of all are perhaps the logical laws, because they are the cornerstone of all further reasoning, but already we can see potential problems with enforcing them at all times. Take Schrodinger's Cat for example. In this scenario, a popular interpretation of quantum mechanics tells us that the cat is in two states simultaneously, and the particular model which gives us this conundrum agrees well with experiment. However, the logical law of excluded middle states that either something is, or is not. It cannot be both.

This is a flawed analogy and it may reveal a misunderstanding of logic on your part, AndromedasWake. It's hard to think of where to start...

The excluded middle does not apply to just any "something" but to a particular class of statements called propositions. The principle was never meant to apply to objects or masses or anything of the like...

In your example, the proposition would be "the cat is in two states simultaneously." Is it simultaneously in two states or is in not that?

Not all statements are propositions...

I suspect this sort of misunderstanding is the very reason why your statements in that show have caused you the troubles you've been seeing!

This is unrelated to the flak I've been receiving, which has been related to the promotion of science. Your critique here seems to be contradictory. You state that a proposition cannot be made about "objects of masses or anything of the like", but the definition of a proposition is a statement which expresses a concept that can be true or false....

"The cat is alive."

This sentence is either true or false, but not both, and we understand the meaning of "alive" and its negation. In propositional logic, this is a proposition. The cat's nature of being an object of mass is irrelevant, what matters is this: is the cat alive, or is it not that?

According to QM Superposition, both.

"The cat is in two states simultaneously" is a separate proposition, and not one I'm presenting for my analogy. My point is, if QM is accurate, we cannot rely on propositional logic to describe the state of the cat, as we'd be forced to conclude that it is either alive or not alive. Stating that one of these outcomes is true and the other false is to suggest that there is no superposition state and QM does not hold.

Which is correct? Does the logical law take precedence and automatically negate the interpretation of quantum mechanics, or is that very science imposing limits on the domain of applicability of logic? This kind of clash is crucial to understanding why we shouldn't be too quick to suppose that either physics or logic (or both) are in any way absolute. They are sets of rules we assume true on pragmatic grounds, which at least up until the 20th century were very successful on a macroscopic scale without treading on each other's toes.

We don't just assume logic to be true, it's defined that way! The very definition of what it means for something to be true (and when I say "something," I mean a sentence) is determined by logic. Because we define logic to be truth, it is necessarily true...

I think you can afford me the benefit of the doubt here. I am not talking about what is logically true, I am talking about the absolute nature of reality. Logic is the study of valid arguments, and whilst it may be true in of itself, it does not give us the nature of reality or demonstrate that reality must behave according to the laws of logic.

Logic is a tool, like mathematics, and the laws of logic are taken as (defined to be and assumed therefore as) true until shown to be otherwise, in the same sense that physical laws (such as Newton's law) are.

This was the entire point of my statement that logic is a map and not necessarily absolute in the sense that I believe reality to be.

 

[Gunboat Diplomat]

Re: What if God defies Logic, Reasoning & the Laws of Univer

This is unrelated to the flak I've been receiving, which has been related to the promotion of science. Your critique here seems to be contradictory. You state that a proposition cannot be made about "objects of masses or anything of the like", but the definition of a proposition is a statement which expresses a concept that can be true or false....

I'm beginning to think I'm misremembering what was said on the show. What flak are you getting? Has this been discussed on these boards?

I didn't say that propositions cannot be made about objects. I said that the excluded middle is a principle of propositions and not objects. In your original post, it sounded like you were saying that some object is or isn't, rather than a statement (perhaps of some object) being true or false...

"The cat is alive."

This sentence is either true or false, but not both, and we understand the meaning of "alive" and its negation. In propositional logic, this is a proposition. The cat's nature of being an object of mass is irrelevant, what matters is this: is the cat alive, or is it not that?

According to QM Superposition, both.

"The cat is in two states simultaneously" is a separate proposition, and not one I'm presenting for my analogy. My point is, if QM is accurate, we cannot rely on propositional logic to describe the state of the cat, as we'd be forced to conclude that it is either alive or not alive. Stating that one of these outcomes is true and the other false is to suggest that there is no superposition state and QM does not hold.

I'm sorry, I did misunderstand your analogy here...

We understand what it means for ordinary cats to be alive or dead but I'm not so sure about Schrodinger's cat. If superpositioning is true then Schrodinger's cat's life is not a proposition, at least until we look at it...

Not all statements are propositions...

I think you can afford me the benefit of the doubt here. I am not talking about what is logically true, I am talking about the absolute nature of reality. Logic is the study of valid arguments, and whilst it may be true in of itself, it does not give us the nature of reality or demonstrate that reality must behave according to the laws of logic.

Logic is a tool, like mathematics, and the laws of logic are taken as (defined to be and assumed therefore as) true until shown to be otherwise, in the same sense that physical laws (such as Newton's law) are.

This was the entire point of my statement that logic is a map and not necessarily absolute in the sense that I believe reality to be.

I think I see what you're saying now but I still don't think it makes sense...

I'm not sure what it would mean for reality to obey the laws of logic. Logic is a tool used on statements. These statements may or may not be about reality. "If I am a space alien then I am a space alien" is true regardless of reality. I would describe this as being absolute but I'm guessing you would not...

This is very different from physical laws like those of Newton. We can never observe logic to be false because it is definitionally true. Given the statements "all men are human" and "you are a man," "you are human" is a necessary consequence. There is no experiment that can falsify this relationship. We may be able to falsify the statement "all men are human" or "you are a man" but we can't falsify the relationship between these statements, including the consequence "you are human." In this sense, logic is absolute...

I can agree that logic is a map of reality but I'm not sure what it means for reality to be "absolute." I live life under the assumption that reality is shared between all of us but that's a pragmatic choice and I know of no other alternative as useful to me. Is the commonality of reality what you mean by "absolute?"