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jessemorrell
Registered Member
Date Joined Sep 2007
Total Posts : 77
| Posted 2/2/2008 1:14 AM (GMT -6) |   | WHERE DOES MORALITY AND LOGIC COME FROM?
In the Christian world-view: Morality and logic are not arbitrary inventions, but are absolute standards derived from the mind of God. And because morality and logic come from above us, and do not come from us, men are capable of being immoral and illogical. There is a transcendent standard of morality and logic which all men are subjected to, because there is a transcendent God from which the laws of morality and the laws of logic come from.
In the Atheistic world-view: Morality and logic do not come from God, but are the arbitrary inventions of men. If the atheist were to be consistent, he would have to admit that since morality and logic come from us, and therefore are not above us but below us, men are incapable of being illogical or immoral. That is because there is no universal transcendent absolute standard of morality and logic which men are under obligation to.
So in the Christian world-view, men are subjected to morality and logic. But in the Atheist world-view, morality and logic are subjected to men.
So you can see why the most contradictory and nonsensical accusations an atheist can make against Christianity is that "The Christian Church has been immoral" and "The Christian faith is illogical". Whenever an atheist tries to say that men are immoral or illogical, they are necessarily borrowing from the Christian world-view and are departing from, or being inconsistent with, their own world-view.
For the Audience of One
Jesse Morrell
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Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 2/2/2008 4:13 PM (GMT -6) | |
jessemorrell said...
WHERE DOES MORALITY AND LOGIC COME FROM?
In the Christian world-view: Morality and logic are not arbitrary inventions, but are absolute standards derived from the mind of God.
In the Atheistic world-view: Morality and logic do not come from God, but are the arbitrary inventions of men.
What about geometry? There are different systems of geometry, Euclidean or
non-Euclidean, projective, inversive, differential, and so on.
For example, do parallel lines ever intersect?
In projective geometry, all parallel lines meet at infinity.
In Euclidean geometry, parallel lines never meet.
In spherical geometry, there are no two lines (great circles) that are parallel.
So which system of geometry does God use?
Likewise, logic is just a branch of mathematics. There are hundreds of systems of logic.
Which one does God use?
Romance at short notice was her specialty. Post Edited (Laika) : 2/2/2008 3:33:53 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 2/2/2008 7:55 PM (GMT -6) | | | Laika: Likewise, logic is just a branch of mathematics. There are hundreds of systems of logic.
Jeff: Why would we have to say that the law of non-contradiction, etc. has merely to do with math? Why can't it have to do with qualities. E.g., God cannot be essentially benevolent AND essentially malevolent. What does this have to do with math?
And what do you mean by other systems of logic? Are they not just systems of concepts related in terms of the same laws of thought we use on all concepts and propositions? If not, then what?
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Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 2/2/2008 9:51 PM (GMT -6) | |
jefscott said...
Laika: Likewise, logic is just a branch of mathematics. There are hundreds of systems of logic.
Jeff: Why would we have to say that the law of non-contradiction, etc. has merely to do with math? Why can't it have to do with qualities. E.g., God cannot be essentially benevolent AND essentially malevolent. What does this have to do with math?
And what do you mean by other systems of logic? Are they not just systems of concepts related in terms of the same laws of thought we use on all concepts and propositions? If not, then what?
I'm working off of Lakoff and Nunez now. They state that symbolic logic and the logic of classes are branches of mathematics and that once there was a widespread belief that these forms of mathematics characterized reason itself....
"But recent cognitive science, concerned with the embodiement of mind, has found that these branches of
mathematics are far from adequate for the characterization of human reason..."
For example, let's have a proposition that T=Laika likes doing his own taxes. Is T true or false?
Well, Laika hates doing his own taxes but, being part Scots, Laika also hates paying money to someone else to do
his taxes. So Laika does his own taxes. Does that make T true or false? Neither. The classic system of logic cannot model Laika's peference for doing his own taxes. Like or doesn't like doesn't begin to describe it.
As for propositional logic, Lakoff and Nunez say that propositional logic is a mathematical system built on Boole's algebra of classes and it's notation. Boole thought that he could formulate the laws of thought by providing algebraic principles governing classes. But "Boole did not achieve what he thought he had achieved and what is still commonly taught as his achievement -- a rigorous calculus for the laws of everyday human thought."
They go on to say that our everyday notion of classes AND the universe itself do not contain two metaphorical inventions of Boole's that are necessary for him, the empty class (set) and the universal class (set).
"The empty class is an extremely useful metaphorical invention for a branch of mathematics, but it is not a feature of the universe any more than it is a feature of ordinary everyday human thought."
Also, "without the universal class, Boole's theory of classes does not work..... There is no universal class in our everyday conceptual systems."
Think about it. If parallel lines behave differently in different geometric systems, which geometric systems is God's?
And the logic system many use to posit God's knowlege (classical) is different from the logic system their cameras use for the control of automatic focussing and exposure.
If your camera's control system isn't limited by "the law of excluded middle", why do we think God's brain is?
Another concept invented by humans in order to make math work yet which isn't found in nature, ZERO.
Romance at short notice was her specialty. Post Edited (Laika) : 2/2/2008 9:04:23 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 2/3/2008 10:03 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Laika, I don't see how anything you said, there, answers whether the laws of thought that ground logic are mathematical before they have to do with mere concepts and propositions, per se. And depending on what you MEAN by "like" and "hate," the normal rules of logic can work for you're "hating taxes" example. But those rules can't work for undefined terms. But math symbols that aren't well-defined don't work real well either.
[quote]Think about it. If parallel lines behave differently in different geometric systems, which geometric systems is God's?[/quote]
Are you sure the word "parallel" means the exact same thing in both contexts? I'm bettting is doesn't. This is semantics going on.
[quote]If your camera's control system isn't limited by "the law of excluded middle", why do we think God's brain is?[/quote]
I wasn't aware scientists have demonstrated that any unconscious machine used the laws of THOUGHT, much less a camera. Are you sure open theism is true? Because I'm wondering how you can be so sure of it given your approach. Maybe God's thinking isn't limited to those conceptual and propositional constraints that we are limited by. In that case, He may can deduce more from propositions than we can. How can you, by this approach, rule out EDF?
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Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 2/3/2008 5:06 PM (GMT -6) | |
jefscott said...
Laika, I don't see how anything you said, there, answers whether the laws of thought that ground logic are mathematical before they have to do with mere concepts and propositions, per se. And depending on what you MEAN by "like" and "hate," the normal rules of logic can work for you're "hating taxes" example. But those rules can't work for undefined terms. But math symbols that aren't well-defined don't work real well either.
Propositional logic uses Boolean algebra, doesn't it? P V ~P
Pretty crude when one is trying to model the nuances of human thought.
I'm just pointing out that there are hundreds of systems of logic. Each is (or should be)
internally consistent, yet they are variant among themselves. That is evidence enough that
they are man-made, not absolute, out-there in the universe. Embodied in the human mind as it were.
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Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 2/4/2008 11:38 AM (GMT -6) | |
jefscott said...
Laika: Propositional logic uses Boolean algebra, doesn't it? P V ~P
Jeff: Why assume that the logical MEANING of P V ~P began with a man named Boole? Why couldn't this just be a SYMBOLIC articulation of a logical relation all rational minds assent to?
I think Lakoff and Nunez's point was, and I don't have time to track it all through their book now, was that we don't naturally assent to, or come up with, some of the constructs that are needed for boolean logic, propositional logic, set theory etc. Concepts such as zero, the empty set and the universal set. These are created as axiomatic theories are laid out and missing parts are needed.
If I remember correctly, the empty class and the universal class were invented by Boole in order to add identity and additivity to his class system. Set theory needs them as well. Yet in nature, in common intuitive conversation, we don't naturally think of the empty set or the universal set.
Look how long humans went before zero was invented.
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