FORMAL LOGIC

[Stephen3141]

Oh, and of course, lying about our shared reality, is part of our shared reality!

I would say that living in a conspiracy theory, and refusing to evaluate evidence
from our shared reality (that the conspiracy theory is not true), is one response
to our shared reality.

BUT, we are morally-ethically responsible before God, for all the weird theories that
we choose to embrace. Believing theories, is not a BENIGN thing.

This is why Christians should be VERY CAREFUL when people claim that something
happened, or didn't happen, when they cannot provide any credible evidence for
their claim.
Example: There are about 60 law suits filed, claiming that so-and-so won the 2020
presidential election in America. But that so-and-so had the election stolen through
massive fraud. But none of these lawsuits can provide ANY credible evidence of such
massive fraud.

Example: One radio commentator spent years telling stories about how a school
massacre never happened, and was a massive deception by the government
and the "Deep State". This goes against all the evidence of the news outlets
that reported on the school shooting.

These are examples of bearing false witness, against our shared reality.
And lying, is a sin.

 

[Helmut-WK]

I didn't state that that doesn't include material help.

You did also not state it includes material help.
English is not my mother tongue, so I misunderstood you.

I was referring to what some churchgoers / preachers fancy Scriptures say; this I think is how you are interpreting this point also.

 

[Helmut-WK]

About our shared reality...

I now understand that I mixed up »shared reality« with »our concept how reality is like«.

 

[Stephen3141]

Right! So many Christians talk about how we PERCEIVE reality, as if that WERE reality.
But it is the object of what we are "perceiving" that is our shared reality.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

... mathematics ...

Mathematics without careless mistakes ("what adds up") tends to support what we are saying here; while with careless mistakes included it combats against it.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

You did also not state it includes material help.
English is not my mother tongue, so I misunderstood you.

To expand on my formulation:

A prevalent ploy is to promote "communion" in elements of bread and wine / juice with varying concepts of consecration, substantiation, alleged "symbolism", etc.

I thought that Jesus' "ordinance" was that they were to remember His body, namely the gifts in the least of their brethren, for their providential role. It is "little ones" who shall sometimes possess the intuition to give us a cup of fresh water, for example. Likewise if you are a church leader and ensure a church attender doesn't go short, you have become a "little one".

Thus I see quibblings about "sacramental theology" * whilst vetoing the gifts distributed, as negating material help as well (I've watched this effect).

{ * In view of politics in "intercommunion" I'd rather sit out, for others' consciences. Jesus and Scripture writers wanted those Hebrews who had joined their belief to not give up the Hebrew communion bread custom while they were still synangogue members. }

I tend to think of Scriptures as a whole (premises stated elsewhere) but my utterances are lamentably laconic enforcing heavy duty interpreting by readers!

 

[OldAbramBrown]

— physical reality (including time)

Huw Price wrote Time's Arrow And Archimedes' Point (1996), an outstanding account.

 

[Stephen3141]

An analysis of an argument…

“It’s my body — keep your laws off my body!"

————— —————
An informal statement of the argument, in “pseudocode” …

(Note that I am treating this argument as a single rule.
And I am showing how a Christian worldview contradicts this rule.)

For all the different parts of my body,
If I use this part in any way ==> no one should be able to legislate about that use

————— —————
An informal observation about the argument…

Most of what we, as human beings do, involves our body
If this argument were true,
Then a fair rule of law could not legislate anything about any action that involves any part of our body

Therefore, most of what we, as human beings do, cannot legitimately be legislated about.
————— —————

From a Christian worldview…

Most of God’s moral-ethical law addresses actions that we carry out with our body.
If this argument is true,
Then most of God’s moral-ethical law is illegitimate.

For example:
“You shall not murder”
But if I commit murder using my body,
Then God’s command is illegitimate

“You shall not steal”
But if I steal using my body,
Then God’s command is illegitimate.

“You shall not make graven images and bow down to them”
But if I use my body to do this,
Then God’s command is illegitimate

“You shall not commit adultery”
But if I use my body to do this,
Then God’s command is illegitimate

“You shall not bear false witness (lie)”
But if I use my body to do this,
Then God’s command is illegitimate

It becomes very evident, very quickly, that God does not think that human being have the right to do whatever they want, using their bodies.

Because the argument is false, with regard to so many of God’s moral-ethical laws,
The argument is UNSOUND, from a Christian worldview.

————— —————

From the standpoint of a secular person…

Pretty much most of the criminal actions that a secular person would NOT want carried out upon them, would be allowed, if this argument were true.

A fair rule of law would be impossible to write.
Justice, would not be obtainable.
Global concepts of right and wrong could never be agreed upon.

Nothing to do with our body could BE PROTECTED, such as personal rights,
If nothing to do with our body could be LEGISLATED ABOUT.

Note that secular appeals to this argument, arbitrarily invoke it for a very few cases (such as the supposed right to have an abortion), while arbitrarily denying the goodness of this argument in most cases.
This means that the argument is NOT sound,
As a sound argument must be true in all cases.

The argument is UNSOUND from a secular viewpoint.

 

[Stephen3141]

More on the argument…

“It’s my body — keep your laws off my body!"

---------- ----------
Note that many Americans have trouble differentiating (seemingly) between
PROTECTING our personal "rights", and
realizing when our personal actions can DAMAGE OTHER PEOPLE.

Example:
There are many opinions that "freedom of speech" should be an inviolable right.
Few who hold this opinion, think that we should be be held morally-ethically responsible for what we say.

We like the idea of freedom of speech, when I am speaking.
But suddenly, we don't like the idea of freedom of speech when someone else is advocating that a crowd should lynch me.

Example:
Americans like the idea of a fair rule of law, that will protect them from criminal abuse.
But, many Americans want to discard their dedication to a fair rule of law,
when it guarantees someone they think is a criminal, with due process under the law.

And so, we have many who claim to be for "law and order",
who suddenly are supporting the idea of violent rioting and lynching, of people they don't like.

---------- ----------

Logic points out that a sound argument, must be applied all the time,
and work all the time.

You can't accept an argument as sound, only in the situations in which "it works for me",
while rejecting the argument in all other situations.

 

[Helmut-WK]

“It’s my body — keep your laws off my body!"
————— —————
An informal statement of the argument, in “pseudocode” …
[…]
For all the different parts of my body,
If I use this part in any way ==> no one should be able to legislate about that use

No that is a wrong formulation of the statement.

It is not about using a body part for some purpose, it is about letting something be done on the body. An informal statement:

As to anything done to my body (or parts of it), I am the only person to decide whether this will be done, no other person and no institution has to interfere with that.

This places abortion into the same category as hair-cutting, masturbation or adultery. The examples may give some arguments about that, especially from a Christian view. But the main point is something about reality:

In abortion, it is about two bodies and three persons:

1. The mother of the unborn child
2. The doctor who does the abortion
3. The unborn child

The principle formulated above could be used to prohibit a mother lat her child aborted, for this would mean to interfere with the child's body without consent from the child.

The child acts as an individual from the very start:

In experiments about cloning, cloned women were inserted into the uterus of the resp. original woman. No child developed, the child developed only up the point on nidation, with nidation it was sort of absorbed into the uterus tissue, and only a cyst developed.

The child actively let itself separated from the mother's body, so we have

1. The body of the child
2. The body of the mother
3. gravidity tissue, mixed from cells from child and mother (placenta etc.). At least in German, this term (Schwangerschaftsgewebe) is sometimes used to include the child, but this is (at least IMHO) a misleading terminology.

The child is an individual before it shows any sign of consciousness.

I leave it up to Stephen to do a more formal investigation into that matter.

PS: The issue of abortion is so heated in the USA because of the very lax Roe v. Wade ruling. in Germany, an abortion after the 12th week is legal only in exceptional cases (handicapped child, danger for mother's life).

 

[OldAbramBrown]

An analysis of an argument… ...

Are there other more basic ideas to further explore before we suddenly graduate to laws of our lands?

 

[Helmut-WK]

I write now what I had in mind when I asked about shared reality.

There are several forums I visit, some of them sporadically (CF mostly when I'm not in Germany), but three German forums I visit regularly. One Christian, two secular. Especially one forum always leads to debates about faith, with Jehova's witnesses (an astonishingly active group there), Muslims and atheists.

With JW, it usually ends up with them having no more arguments against my Biblical evidence, so they say something like »you are wrong«, but give no details of the errors they suggest I do. With Muslims, it often ends up with them relying of evidence from their religion (Qor'an, Hadiths etc.), and I relying on the Bible which they claim to be corrupted (again without conclusive evidence, for even the Qor'an does not say that). And with atheists, they often believe in science - which is not the same as to think scientific results are correct, but rather the belief there cannot exist anything »supernatural«.

While most JWs and a large portion of the Muslims are dishonest, with atheists it is often the case that the issue that is debated can neither be proved nor disproved on the »common ground« between an atheist and a Christian view.

Is there any way out of such a »stalemate« situation? Can formal logic give more help?

 

[Stephen3141]

I write now what I had in mind when I asked about shared reality.

There are several forums I visit, some of them sporadically (CF mostly when I'm not in Germany), but three German forums I visit regularly. One Christian, two secular. Especially one forum always leads to debates about faith, with Jehova's witnesses (an astonishingly active group there), Muslims and atheists.

With JW, it usually ends up with them having no more arguments against my Biblical evidence, so they say something like »you are wrong«, but give no details of the errors they suggest I do. With Muslims, it often ends up with them relying of evidence from their religion (Qor'an, Hadiths etc.), and I relying on the Bible which they claim to be corrupted (again without conclusive evidence, for even the Qor'an does not say that). And with atheists, they often believe in science - which is not the same as to think scientific results are correct, but rather the belief there cannot exist anything »supernatural«.

While most JWs and a large portion of the Muslims are dishonest, with atheists it is often the case that the issue that is debated can neither be proved nor disproved on the »common ground« between an atheist and a Christian view.

Is there any way out of such a »stalemate« situation? Can formal logic give more help?

I would say a few things.

Without using logic, we are in real trouble, trying to understand our shared reality. (This becomes a problem with Protestant Fundamentalists, who are anti-intellectual). Those who are crudely ignorant (such as the Jehovah's Witnesses), or who lie, are not predisposed to have honest discussions. Those who do not accept any truth except their holy writings (Muslims and Protestant Fundamentalists often fall into this category) may memorize a "worldview", but are unable to formulate a worldview using logic. This means that they cannot intelligently discuss philosophical primitives (such as, what exists, or what is true).

Logic is good for some things.
We cannot get all the answers we may wish for, through logic. This doesn't mean that logic is useless, just that it has limitations.
Logic gives us an interface to the hard sciences. Without this interface, our worldview may not be able to understand much of the physical universe (which is part of our shared reality).
Without logic, and its use in linguistics, we cannot properly analyze history, or written documents, or the text of the Bible.
So, even religious people who do not like logic, often do a very bad job at understanding what they think are holy writings.

Logic, as applied to the hard sciences, suggests that the current theory of Neo-Darwinian evolution, which is built on randomness, is not powerful enough to explain the complex information in biological life. This points to an intelligent creator of intelligent life, but not specifically to the Christian/Jewish God.

So, there are great advantages to using formal logic.
But, valid reasoning methods are only one component of our shared reality.

 

[PloverWing]

Logic, as applied to the hard sciences, suggests that the current theory of Neo-Darwinian evolution, which is built on randomness, is not powerful enough to explain the complex information in biological life.

Wait, how do you get that from logic?

If you're asserting that algorithms involving randomness cannot converge to a satisfactory solution, a) this seems difficult to prove (do you have a proof?), and b) surely you know that there are counterexamples in computer science -- that is, algorithms involving randomness that converge to a solution.

This points to an intelligent creator of intelligent life, but not specifically to the Christian/Jewish God.

How do you get this? If biological evolution (i.e., mutation and natural selection) turns out to be an inadequate/incorrect explanation for the origin of species, there could be a different natural process at work.

The question of how species develop is quite different from the question of whether there is an Intelligence who created the process.

 

[Stephen3141]

Wait, how do you get that from logic?

If you're asserting that algorithms involving randomness cannot converge to a satisfactory solution, a) this seems difficult to prove (do you have a proof?), and b) surely you know that there are counterexamples in computer science -- that is, algorithms involving randomness that converge to a solution.



How do you get this? If biological evolution (i.e., mutation and natural selection) turns out to be an inadequate/incorrect explanation for the origin of species, there could be a different natural process at work.

The question of how species develop is quite different from the question of whether there is an Intelligence who created the process.

The core argument of the Intelligent Design authors, is that randomness cannot produce the complex information that we see in biological life. This is a mathematical argument (which is a type of applied logic).

Go read the core Intelligent Design authors. Dembski, Behe

 

[Stephen3141]

No that is a wrong formulation of the statement.

It is not about using a body part for some purpose, it is about letting something be done on the body. An informal statement:

As to anything done to my body (or parts of it), I am the only person to decide whether this will be done, no other person and no institution has to interfere with that.

This places abortion into the same category as hair-cutting, masturbation or adultery. The examples may give some arguments about that, especially from a Christian view. But the main point is something about reality:

In abortion, it is about two bodies and three persons:

1. The mother of the unborn child
2. The doctor who does the abortion
3. The unborn child

The principle formulated above could be used to prohibit a mother lat her child aborted, for this would mean to interfere with the child's body without consent from the child.

The child acts as an individual from the very start:

In experiments about cloning, cloned women were inserted into the uterus of the resp. original woman. No child developed, the child developed only up the point on nidation, with nidation it was sort of absorbed into the uterus tissue, and only a cyst developed.

The child actively let itself separated from the mother's body, so we have

1. The body of the child
2. The body of the mother
3. gravidity tissue, mixed from cells from child and mother (placenta etc.). At least in German, this term (Schwangerschaftsgewebe) is sometimes used to include the child, but this is (at least IMHO) a misleading terminology.

The child is an individual before it shows any sign of consciousness.

I leave it up to Stephen to do a more formal investigation into that matter.

PS: The issue of abortion is so heated in the USA because of the very lax Roe v. Wade ruling. in Germany, an abortion after the 12th week is legal only in exceptional cases (handicapped child, danger for mother's life).

I'm analyzing the argument that I quote.

I am not analyzing the topic of whether or not an unborn child is a human being.

 

[PloverWing]

The core argument of the Intelligent Design authors, is that randomness cannot produce the complex information that we see in biological life. This is a mathematical argument (which is a type of applied logic).

Go read the core Intelligent Design authors. Dembski, Behe

That's an interesting idea to propose, and irreducible complexity certainly sounds like something that can be measured, but I don't remember encountering an actual mathematical argument back when I first read Behe. I may have missed something, or he may have done further work (it's been 20+ years since his book came out). Can you reproduce the mathematical argument here for me?

 

[Helmut-WK]

The core argument of the Intelligent Design authors, is that randomness cannot produce the complex information that we see in biological life. This is a mathematical argument (which is a type of applied logic).

Go read the core Intelligent Design authors. Dembski, Behe

i did not read much of them, but AFAIK the key concept is that of »irreducible complexity«.

I fear behind the scene lies the idea that evolution is unidirectional (from simple to complex), but the theory doesn't say so. The starting point is thought as very simple, so much change is to more complex organisms, but in principle the evolution can go both ways. There are examples of organisms that got less complex, e.g. some parasites, or troglodytes that lost eyes completely.

Compare to a bath tube: If you insert your ingredient for a bubble bath into the right side of the tube, most diffusion of that stuff will be from right to left, but in principle the diffusion is into all directions.

Now when I return to ID and »irreducible complexity«: New functions/organs are usually build up from existing organs or functions that get new tasks because of changes in the environment (possible current example: with melting ice, penguins need to hop higher than ever before …). The »first draft« is likely to be non-optimal.

Compare to a guy that goes to a waste-yard, takes parts of old cars and builds a bicycle. It will be clumsy and has unnecessary complexity. The same could be said for the »first draft« of a new organ or function. Theory predicts that it will be optimized by evolution, which includes the reduction of unnecessary complexity - up to the point where the complexity cannot be reduced any more.

This is a quite natural explanation of irreducible complexity, and it makes obsolete any calculations how an irreducible complex organ/function came into being »ex nihilo«.

If I missed the points of Dembski and Behe, please fill out my information gaps.

 

[Helmut-WK]

I'm analyzing the argument that I quote.

I am not analyzing the topic of whether or not an unborn child is a human being.

But you interpreted it wrongly. It was not against interference with what a persons does with some of her body parts, but rather with interference with what is done to a »body part«. I mentioned hair cutting as the first example of the category described by that argument.

In a sort of pseudo-code:

For all the different parts of my body,
If there is anything done to them with my consent ==> no one should be able to legislate about that action

Next to nothing of your analysis can be applied to the correct formalization of the argument you quoted.

 

[Stephen3141]

But you interpreted it wrongly. It was not against interference with what a persons does with some of her body parts, but rather with interference with what is done to a »body part«. I mentioned hair cutting as the first example of the category described by that argument.

In a sort of pseudo-code:

For all the different parts of my body,
If there is anything done to them with my consent ==> no one should be able to legislate about that action

Next to nothing of your analysis can be applied to the correct formalization of the argument you quoted.

The moral-ethical laws of God apply to all of us, whether or not we consent to what is done to our bodies.
This is the categorical observation that I am making, about this argument.
The argument is claiming that no law can legitimately be made, that imposes behavior on me, that I do not want.

But God's moral-ethical law, does not respect this wish.

We are NOT free to do anything with our bodies, that we wish to do.
God's moral-ethical law DOES NOT allow us to do anything with our bodies, that we wish to do.

(Even secular law, does not allow us to do anything with our body, that we might wish to do.)

---------- ----------

( I do not want to get into discussions on "evolution". Dembski's arguments in The Design Inference, is all from probability theory. But that is off topic. My point, was that formal logic is required, to make that argument.

It may be that the hard sciences come up with some theory of evolution that is not based on randomness.
But to date, they have not. And Neo-Darwinism is based first on randomness.)