Re: The logic of atheism

jwarrend@xxxxxxx wrote:

> Ben Goren wrote:
>
>> There's a reason that I picked math and logic as my example
>> natural laws instead of physics (or chemistry or...). And the
>> reason is that, as you accurately describe, it's entirely
>> possible to posit that it's possible to violate the law of
>> gravity.
>
> Well, I thnk you at least seem to assent to my argument
> that the laws of physical nature are descriptive rather than
> prescriptive.

That certainly applies to most of what most people consider to be
natural laws. But...not all. Things like the inverse square law
derive purely from geometry, for example.

> As for the laws of math or logic, I don't think those are what
> anyone has in mind when they are talking about supernatural
> abilities, so I think your use of them to be able to sustain
> the argument that a supernatural being can't exist sort of
> reinforces my point that your argument is fallacious -- you're
> redefining what "supernatural" means and then claiming that
> inability to perform a supernatural act under your definition
> equates to a fundamental impossibility of the supernatural.

Hey, it ain't /my/ problem that theists are too stupid to
understand that math and logic are part of the natural world, too.

Besides, I've yet to come across a physical impossibility that
couldn't trivially be reduced to a logical one. Take the fact that
it's impossible for me to run a one-minute marathon. A big part of
that impossibility is the fact that my body doesn't have available
to it sufficient energy in a suitable form to accelerate my mass
to the requisite velocity and sustain that velocity against the
various forces for a sufficient period of time. It is, in a very
real sense, an exercise in attempting to make 1 + 1 equal
something quite larger than 2.

> Saying that God can't make 1+1=3 is pretty much akin to claims
> like "God can't make a square circle" or "God can't make a rock
> heavier than He can lift".

Well, now you're bringing in a very specific deity who has
a very specific essential supernatural power: omnipotence. And
``omnipotence'' can /only/ mean ``able to do absolutely anything
and everything.''

If you come up with something that's impossible for an omnipotent
being to do, the first thing the omnipotent being should do is
``use his omnipotence'' to give himself the power to do the
impossible. If not, what's the point of omnipotence?

If you restrict ``omnipotence'' to only mean ``capable of anything
that is logically possible,'' then it quickly becomes apparent
that /I/ am omnipotent. Because, see? Everything that I'm not
capable of doing is logically impossible--as I explained above
with my example of the one-minute marathon--and therefore doesn't
count against omnipotence.

Also, restricting omnipotence raises another problem. Who or what
is it that binds the hands of the omnipotent? That is, who or what
created these logical laws that even the supposedly-omnipotent are
powerless against? Whatever the source, it's clearly /far/ more
powerful than this God dude.

> [. . .]
>
> It's not even clear how the ability to violate these "laws"
> would even be tested, since they are abstract concepts. How
> would God go about making 1+1 = 3? What would that even mean?

He could, as I hinted at above, use more energy than is present in
a system to accomplish some task, without adding energy to the
system.

For example, God could violate the inverse square law. Create a
light in the heavens that radiates equally in all directions and
that has the same apparent brightness regardless of the distance
from that light. You'll note that that's not a bad fit for
Christian descriptions of Heavenly Light, God's Pure Radiance,
etc.

Of course, if we're really in a Matrix-style simulation, such
a demonstration would prove absolutely nothing. Rather than a
miracle happening, all it would be is some programmers either
toggling the light bits in the computer's model of space, or
fiddling with our brains directly.

> The act cannot even be specified, because it is nonsensical,
> just as "making your mother your daughter" or "making a square
> circle" are nonsensical.

But ``making a square circle'' /isn't/ nonsensical. All I have to
do is specify my required parameters for a geometric object and
demand of the supernatural being to construct it for me. Here's my
list:

o Must be done entirely in Euclidian space.

o Must be composed of four straight line segments of equal
length.

o The line segments must intersect at their endpoints and
must form equal angles.

o All points on all four line segments must be equidistant
from a single point.

That constructing a figure that meets those four simple
requirements is impossible ain't /my/ problem--it's God's. (Or
would be, if he weren't the figment of a pipe dream.)

> The tasks cannot be performed, not because they are "very
> difficult", but rather, because they are ill-defined (in the
> case of making 1+1 =3) or logically absurd (in the case of
> making a square circle). I don't think anyone understands
> "supernatural" to mean "able to do the nonsensical". We have
> in mind the ability to suspend, exceed, or transcend the
> constraints that natural physical laws (chemsitry, physics,
> biology) have been observed to "impose" on reality.

Actually, the reasons why theists tend to shy away from
considering logic and math when talking about how powerful their
invisible hairy sky apes with buttocks are a bit interesting and
revealing unto themselves.

For one, they don't tend to understand math or physics (etc.) very
well in the first place. But they /do/ tend to think that the
former doesn't offer any wiggle room at all--which is why they
avoid it entirely--and the latter offers a great deal of wiggle
room--which is why they focus on it.

What they miss, of course, is that the two are inextricably
intertwined.

They also come from a rather primitive mindset, one in which it's
not entirely impossible that performing a rain dance (or prayer)
might incline the rain god (or God) to make a special exception
just for them because they asked so nicely. Miracles don't
``feel'' unnatural to them.

And a number of them are so befuddled that they think that their
god is a marionette artist constantly pulling all the strings to
everything. I actually had a Christian nutter assure me that it
was God who showed her where to find her lost keys after she
prayed to find them. These people are insane and possibly beyond
hope. There's certainly little point in trying to reason with
them.

>> And, if you /could/ play around with gravity (etc.), so
>> could we--assuming we had enough knowledge and access to
>> resources. Hardly seems fair to call something ``supernatural''
>> if it's open to mere morals like us, no? And, as I've said many
>> times, all it does is reduce any god that makes use of
>> such tricks to no superior morally than somebody like David
>> Copperfield setting himself up as a tin god to some back-bush
>> tribe.
>
> I don't think that shows very much intellectual honesty.
> Wouldnt' you agree that actions like creating the universe,
> foreknowing the future, and rising from the dead sort of go
> beyond parlor trickery? It's legitimate to question whether
> those events occured; I don't think it's reasonable to say that
> they are not of sufficient quality to merit designation as
> "supernatural".

Actually, I think you prove my point rather well with those
examples.

``Creating the universe'' is nonsensical. In this context,
the only meaningful definition for ``universe'' is ``the set
of everything that exists.'' And, if you think through the
implications of that definition, it quickly becomes clear that, if
``God'' exists, then the set of everything that exists already has
at least one member; thus there's existence already (even if it's
limited to God alone) and thus nothing for God to create. God
could perhaps create everything other than himself...but that
still begs the question of where he came from in the first place,
and it reduces his action to something like double-clicking on
the ``start universe'' icon on his computer. And there're lots
more insurmountable problems with the whole notion of primal
causality....

Foreknowing the future? That's easy, we do it all the time. Not
with absolute certainty, of course, but it doesn't take a
genius to have a pretty good idea of what the weather will
be like tomorrow, or what I'll have for breakfast, or the
like. The greater your knowledge of the present and the past,
combined with a greater analytical ability, and the better job
you'll do at prognostication. (Up until you start bumping into
quantum effects, of course.) Chaos theory comes into play; there
are points of rapidly diminishing returns. Yet, quantum effects
aside, chaos theory only says that things become computationally
infeasible--not impossible--to predict as the complexity of the
system increases. Supernatural powers only come into play when you
start talking about individual quantum effects--in sufficient
numbers (and it doesn't take many), quantum events are the most
reliable to predict of anything in the universe--or systems so
complex that one would need more computing power than is available
to make the prediction. The latter, you'll note, is a case of
trying to make one bit plus one bit equal to more than two
bits....

Raising the dead? Happens all the time in hospitals. So long as
damage and decay isn't too bad, there's no reason why it should
require supernatural powers to revive /anybody,/ regardless of how
long he or she has been dead. One can even envision, without
taking one single step into the supernatural, a machine that makes
some sort of a recording of a person down to the molecular level,
and another machine that can reconstruct that person from the
recording. Given that kind of technology, you could make a
recording of a person, broadcast the recording to space, turn the
sun into a nova and utterly destroy everything in the solar
system, and, millions of years later and millions of light-years
distant, raise said person from the dead by recording the
broadcast and using it to raise the person from the dead. Not that
anything like that will ever happen, of course, but there'd be
nothing supernatural about it if it did.

So, let me offer a challenge to you, since you seem to believe in
the plausibility of the supernatural. Offer up your best examples
of the potentially supernatural that you can think of. We'll
examine them and determine if they're possible at all, if they're
merely paranormal, or if they're truly supernatural.

Cheers,

b&

--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.'

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