Re: OT: Nature of God and Logic WAS: OT:Thanksgiving

"William M. Klein" <wmklein@nospam.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:UsC6j.53539$_H4.32833@fe08.news.easynews.com...
> "Judson McClendon" <judmc@sunvaley0.com> wrote in message
> news:i5B6j.18848$_m.9137@bignews4.bellsouth.net...
> <snip> 
>
> "Nature of God" and "Logic"
>   and the relationship between the two is ..
>
> (This OT thread is long enough and has wondered enough that I don't really
> need/want an ansewr, but I had to ask <G> )

Well, I've been too busy recently to follow this enormous thread, however,
there are posters in CLC whose stuff I always try to read (unless a thread
has wandered to the point where it is simply boring and has been done to
death) and Bill is one of them. Despite not requiring an answer, Bill, it is
a rainy afternoon here and I have some time available so... :-)

Before going into logical refutations for the existence of God, I'll try to
address your question simply and directly.

Early Humans realised there was much in the world that was beyond their
control. They ascribed these effects to a Supreme Cause. Thus was born the
oldest Religion on the Planet.  Fatalism. The "Will of God".

Logically, Fatalism has a single "truth value": Always "TRUE".  Therefore it
is impossible to argue against it logically, because it can never be
"wrong"... For example, if I believe in Free Will and cite examples of
choices I made which affected my Life, a Fatalist will simply say that
whatever I "chose" was pre-determined by the Will of God and that is ALL
there is.

As time passed, some thinkers (in particular, Aristotle) realised that any
particular attribute of anything represents a dichotomy (hot/cold,
light/dark, good/evil, and these dichotomies can be represented by a two
valued system: TRUE and FALSE. (Aristotle didn't see it in quite those terms
and I have taken certain liberties with what he DID see; nevertheless he
certainly realised the nub of what I'm saying...)

That gave two values for everything and permitted the development of formal
Logic. But where did this leave God? By now, Religions with multiple Deities
had sprung up in response to the stresses of "modern" (or, perhaps more
accurately: "communal") life, with different "departments" of Life being
allocated to different Gods. (The urge for a Civil Service is very ancient
in Humans; we need someone to blame when things go wrong...:-))

Throughout our recorded history, thinkers challenged the Religion as much as
they dared and many died for it. Galileo famously recanted his "heresy" when
hot irons and thumbscrews were hinted at (a very pragmatic and wise
decision), but maintained his belief once outside the Star Chamber. (It
ended up with him only being saved by influential friends and spending most
of his life under house arrest, with his research and thoughts being
secretly smuggled to printers outside Italy, and much not being available
until after his death. Emmanuel Kant used Logic (which by now was a
recognised Science, being taught in Universities) to pose his famous
syllogism:

1. There is Evil in the World.
2. If there is Evil in the World, it is because God either can't do anything
about it, or doesn't care about it.
3. Therefore God is either not omnipotent, or He is not a merciful caring
God.

(You'd think this would be fairly easy to refute (for example, an
omnipotent, caring God, might simply be choosing to allow a degree of chaos
and ness, as part of a greater plan that Man is not privy to... and so
on...), but it took the Church several hundred years, and Kant came within a
whisker of being barbequed for it. Ironic, given that he was actually quite
a devout man...).

By the 19th century, a  (kind of...) new science of Engineering had emerged,
and it was not interested in black and white two-valued logic. Engineers
recognised that to build structures and engines things had to be within
tolerences and ranges. A three-valued system? (YES, NO, MAYBE?). Well, not
quite, but definitely more than two simple values. Applying this new logic
system to Religion and Morality (which was the primary practical use for
Religion), we see that there are shades of grey. The absolutes of
Aristotelian logic become more blurred and things are relative to each
other. (For example, killing someone is worse than stealing from them, which
is worse than swearing at them, and God must recognise this... The Religions
reflected "degrees" of sin...)

(In the East, where they had never heard of Aristotle, they had had a
multi-valued Logic system based on dichotomies, with "relative" degrees of
"right" and "wrong" (TRUE/FALSE) for millennia.)

In the 21st century, using the primitive evolving tools for thinking
outlined above, Man finally came to adolescence in terms of thinking. The
rate of growth of knowledge and thought sprang forward exponentially.
Completely new sciences emerged which addressed questions which had
previously been the sole realm of Religion. 20th century sciences (like
Psychology and the understanding of Human behaviour) took unprecedented
leaps and bounds forward.

More people than ever before questioned the grounds for Religion.
Agnosticism (whether acknowledged or not) started to win the zero-sum game
for the hearts and minds of men, and Church attendences began declining as a
consequence.

No longer happy with Mystery and Dogma, equipped to draw their own
conclusions from analysis of Religious books, more and more people ended
their Agnosticism in favour of Atheism. Education, better tools for
thinking, better understanding of Logic and thought processes, including why
we had to invent Religion, all wrote the death of Religion in large letters
on the wall.

But, Education is still a privelege for most of the inhabitants of the
planet. For every literate Human Being on Earth, there are still around 3
people who are not (Unesco figures extrapolated from a non-Global sample).
Religion will not be going away any time soon. (Sadly, millions of people,
as yet unborn, will die in the name of it, just as millions have done in the
past...)

The arguments presented by Atheists like Professor Richard Dawkins are
pretty hard to refute. (I would recommend "The God Delusion" to any Agnostic
or uncommited religious person; it is a powerful case against Religions in
general and doesn't just pick on Judaeo/Christian belief.) It is arguably
possible to disprove the existence of God on logical grounds alone, but
there are still many reasons why people cling to their imaginary friend.

I am personally satisfied that Logic is not one of them.

Pete.
--
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."