Do You Have a Thinking Problem?
POSTED BY: canttakesky
UPDATED: Friday, April 24, 2026 00:33
VIEWED: 13256
PAGE 3 of 17
Just to add - I'm not saying all religions are wrong. It's just they're matters of faith and belief, not logical thought.
The only way for a belief in God to be part of logical thought is for evidence that absolutely proves the existence of an omnipotent being. A bunch of guys 2000 years ago saying that their friend definitely definitely came back from the dead does not fall under this category.
And doesn't the fact that your religious friends oppose your philosophising so strongly rather back up my point?
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Quote:A thoughtful person would probably conclude that neither is correct, and that a true answer is a good deal more complex then you’re making it appear. Myths do not emerge because someone invented an answer on the spot to a question he didn’t know, but rather through generations of oral traditions that depict in at least some truth the struggle of a people throughout their history to understand their environment. And if god did create the world, there is no reason to conclude that any scientific evidence needed to have been “faked,” but rather that scientists, having never created a world themselves, are necessarily unfamiliar with how to tie the existing evidence to a divine creation, which is a limitation of science, not god.
Originally posted by SimonWho:
1. God created the world in 6 days and faked vast amounts of scientific evidence to suggest otherwise.
2. A religious leader was once asked how the world came into being and made up what all that stuff about the Garden of Eden, etc, etc. The tale gets retold a few hundred times and then is transcribed.
Which one is the logical answer?
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:There is a difference between alogical and illogical. One is outside the purvue of logic, and the other violates the principles of logic.
Originally posted by SimonWho:
It's just they're matters of faith and belief, not logical thought.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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Quote:
Originally posted by SimonWho:
I'm not saying religions have to be wrong, I'm just saying if you apply logical thought, you generally get a very different answer.
For example, you pick up the Bible and read the account of creation in Genesis. Two possibilities leap to mind:
1. God created the world in 6 days and faked vast amounts of scientific evidence to suggest otherwise.
2. A religious leader was once asked how the world came into being and made up what all that stuff about the Garden of Eden, etc, etc. The tale gets retold a few hundred times and then is transcribed.
Which one is the logical answer?
Well, Simon, great question! To be all logical-like, you've committed the (informal) fallacy of false-dilemma: you've presented two options as if one or the other must be true, when in fact, both could be false ( http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/false-dilemma.html ). In the above, you're proposing one of two options: a concrete-literal 24-hour-day creation model (hereafter "Young-Earth Creationist Account" or YCA) of the fundamentalist type, or a made-up creation account (hereafter "Fictious Account" or FA)--and presenting these as the only two live options, one of which must be true. But obviously, these can't be our only two options: it could be the case that they are both false! Assume for the sake of argument that Augustine was correct in positing that God created the earth fully formed in one immeasurable instant. If that were the case then both the YCA account is false (because instead of 6 24-hour days of creation there was a single immeasurable instand) and the FA is false (because if God created, then the Genesis account is not fictitious). Or what if we assumed that the "days" of the Genesis creation account were 1,000 years long--again, that would make both the Young-Earth Account false (because the days weren't 24 hours) and the Fictitious Account false (because the creation story wasn't made up). It would appear that while one or the other of your two accounts may be true, it's equally possible that they could both be false. And if that's the case, then there is some other account (or accounts) that must be put in the pool of live options.
One account that I'd like to propose as a live option is the Day-Age Account (DAA). This view posits that given the fact that the ancient Hebrew language only had a vocabulary of about 3,100 words (as opposed to 4.1mil in English), each word had multiple literal definitions {1}. The Hebrew yom can mean "24-hour day" as the fundamentalists interpret it, but it can also mean "a long but finite period of time" {2}. The DAA proposes that God's creative activity took place over the course of billions upon billions of years, (granting the scientific veracity of such things as the astronomical age of the universe--about 14b years--and the geological age of the earth--about 4.57b years). Thus the earth looks old because it is old--profoundly old. There is some debate in the DAA camp about exactly how God worked during that incredibly long time-span (for instance, did He give evolution its initial push and stand back? Did He direct its every turn? Did He mold our solar system precisely, or allow it to accrete randomly?), but, really, those things are irrelevant to the scope of this argument, because the DAA account is one account for which, if true, would prove both the YCA account false (because the cosmos was not created in 6 24-hour days) and the FA false (because the creation account was not made up).
{1} The Genesis Debate, 125, ed. Norman Geisler
{2} A Matter of Days, 73, Hugh Ross
I think that the real root of your trouble with religious thinking is not so much logic as such, but your axiological commitments. If I may make the assumption, I would venture to guess that you are a material monist--that is, that you believe that only physical things exist. This view rises largely from the explanatory power of science--and to be fair, science has expla
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@SimonWho:
Don't you find it interesting that you've come up with an example to make a point (not necessarily stating that these are the only two options), and people completely missed that? That they are picking apart the way you are arguing and not discussing the point itself?
I find that interesting at least.
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I am on The List. We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"
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thats interesting... but you make a good point; the key message of the bible is that our earthly, physical bodies are only temporary, and are more or less vessels for our souls to manifest in the third dimension. the exciting concept though is the ressurrection, or Mans redemption, when we return to our "pre-fall" state, which is described as eternal(immortal), perfect, and in relationship with the living God. there are some who believe that this story of Man in our current stage is detailed by the Zodiac, of which a full cycle represents Mans prophesied redemption ( i dug up this link as an example; im curious for the opinions of the more scientifically inclined http://www.mt.net/~watcher/newun.html ). i realize the bible appears simplistic at a glance, but the more time committed to researching its different facets, the more intriguing it becomes
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Quote:
Originally posted by SigmaNunki:
[B]@SimonWho:
Don't you find it interesting that you've come up with an example to make a point (not necessarily stating that these are the only two options), and people completely missed that? That they are picking apart the way you are arguing and not discussing the point itself?
I find that interesting at least.
----
I am on The List. We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"
An argument that is fallacious is self-defeating. If SimonWho wants to advance a new argument that avoids the fallacy of false dilemma, I'd be happy to address that argument. But logically speaking, the moment a hole appears in the logic of the argument, the entire argument collapses, because it no longer functions properly. I refuse to select one of Simon's two alternatives because they are quite clearly not the only two alternatives--that being the case, I select neither and point out the fallacy instead.
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Grand High Poobah of the Mythical Land of Iowa, and Keeper of State Secrets
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Quote:ROFL. Oh my...catching my breath...
Originally posted by Causal:
Well, Simon, great question! To be all logical-like, you've committed the (informal) fallacy of false-dilemma:
THAT will teach ya to argue with a philosopher. Don't accuse a philosopher of being devoid of logic.
That was good, Causal. I sympathize with your position of being misunderstood by both religious folk and fellow philosophers. Wish people weren't so prejudiced and narrow in their world views sometimes.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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Quote:
Originally posted by SimonWho:
The only way for a belief in God to be part of logical thought is for evidence that absolutely proves the existence of an omnipotent being. A bunch of guys 2000 years ago saying that their friend definitely definitely came back from the dead does not fall under this category.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you've never taken a scientific reasoning course, or a course in symbolic logic. Because you seem to be making a number of basic logical mistakes. This time, it's a whopper: you're positing that absolute proof (based on evidence) is necessary for something to be considered logical. Science is based on inductive reasoning--it proceeds from empirical observation, to hypotheses based on those observations, to tests of those hypotheses, to theories based on those tests--but one can never use inductive reasoning to establish something absolutely, because it proceeds from observation--and it could always be the case that the observations are flawed or incorrect in some way. So insted of absolute certainty, inductive reasoning relies on probability--if something is more probble than not, it may be said to be true in the inductive sense. Science consistently revises its theories on this basis--in fact, one of the great strengths of science is precisely because it does not claim to have established something with absolute certainty--that's why we no longer have the Plum Pudding model of the atom, or the static view of the universe. Scientific theories are not absolutely certain: they change and evolve over time (and are sometimes discarded) as new observations are made. The provisional nature of scientific reasoning (based on inductive logic) does not make it illogical. So if absolute certainly is your criteria for "logical thought" (as you conceive it), you're going to have to throw out nearly all science (except certain a priori principles like basic math and the Law of Non-Contradiction). And my guess is that you're not about to do that. So if you'll accept science as part of your "logical thought" in spite of the fact that it is not known with absolute certainlty, you can't very well deny the inclusion of God on that basis.
Now, given that, there are a number of arguments on either side of a probabilistic account of the resurrection account. Keep in mind now, these probabilistic arguments rely on the same kind of reasoning that science does: they can't be established with absolute certainty--but they do proceed on the basis of logic.
Quote:
And doesn't the fact that your religious friends oppose your philosophising so strongly rather back up my point?
Not at all. Your syllogism seems to go something like this:
1) Some religious people are illogical.
2) Therefore, religion is illogical.
But it's plain that that conclusion doesn't follow! You are committing the fallacy of composition: if an individual X has a certain property, than all things of class X have that property. But that's obviously not true. Individual humans have blond hair, but you wouldn't be justified concluding that all humans did! Similarly, you're arguing here that some of my Christian friends are illogical, therefore, all things Christian must be illogical. That conclusion does not follow from the premise that some of them do.
And contra Sigmanunki, the point here is not to debate the logicality (if I may) of individual religious doctrines, but to inquire whether religion is accessible to logical thought (which I maintain that it is).
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Grand High Poobah of the Mythical Land of Iowa, and Keeper of State Secrets
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Double post!