lol, "when lawyers do religion".

(September 7, 2011 at 2:39 am)Ryft Wrote:

(September 5, 2011 at 7:49 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Exactly. You beg the question.

So you assert—which of course is uncompelling ipse dixit. Try demonstrating it. (Good luck.)

OK, I'll go slow this time. I have asked you to prove God exists and then to prove that this god is the Christian god.

I would assume from the way you brushed past this request that you can't. If I'm wrong, please do tell. Until I hear otherwise from you, I'll go with the assumption that you can't.

Since you can't prove God exists, you simply assume that which needs proof in your attempts to "argue from God to logic", which is called begging the question.

Now, if you are content to claim it's a matter of faith, fine, but taking this unfounded premise and then try to argue something else ("arguing God to logic") is like building a castle on air.

Establish the foundation on which you are arguing from first and then build an argument on top of that.

I don't think Ryft is actually attempting to argue for the existence of god, merely stating that god exists. The rest is just an attempt to brow beat people by providing a problem that cannot be solved due to it's being engineered exactly for that purpose.

(September 7, 2011 at 10:15 am)Rhythm Wrote: I don't think Ryft is actually attempting to argue for the existence of god, merely stating that god exists. The rest is just an attempt to brow beat people by providing a problem that cannot be solved due to it's being engineered exactly for that purpose.

I may be mistaken about the definition of begging the question. I would still maintain that the line of argument is fallacious as it is built on an assumption that should require proof but none is offered.

Arguing "from God to logic", reads to me like stating that one is "arguing from (an unproven assertion) to (something else)".

Maybe "begging the question" isn't the right term to use here but the line of reasoning is still clearly fallacious because it's not built on a solid foundation.

Now, I'm a deist myself but I don't use my belief in God to prove anything else. If I were to do so, I should be asked to first prove my beliefs are correct and then build the argument on that. And if someone can't propose a better alternative to GodDidIt or GodWillsIt, that doesn't mean that GodDidIt or GodWillsIt is the correct answer (that, I think, is argument from ignorance).

Show me the foundation is sound first. Then we can examine the structure you've constructed on that.

(September 7, 2011 at 10:15 am)Rhythm Wrote: I don't think Ryft is actually attempting to argue for the existence of god, merely stating that god exists. The rest is just an attempt to brow beat people by providing a problem that cannot be solved due to it's being engineered exactly for that purpose.

I am happy to suspend judgement until I understand more about this apologetic. But I must admit it seems more geared towards a debating tactic or language than an epistemic system.

You can suspend judgement if you like, I won't. Logical legerdemain in place of intellectual rigor. Leveraged only to make derogatory remarks about his fellow man. Remarks which are in fact a principle of his faith (which I have absolutely zero respect for).

(September 7, 2011 at 10:57 am)Rhythm Wrote: You can suspend judgement if you like, I won't. Logical legerdemain in place of intellectual rigor. Leveraged only to make derogatory remarks about his fellow man, which is of course a principle of his faith.

I do not know enough of this apologetic unfortunately. It seems to have some rigour, but also seems to be built on axioms, which are to say the least dodgy. What it is leveraged for seems, at least at this stage, to be more about winning arguments than demonstrating truth.

It's a sort of TAG, read up on Cornelius Van Til, Calvinism, etc. The existence and truth of the biblical god (and specifically their interpretation of the biblical god) is taken as an axiom, terms are then defined in a favorable manner, a circle is drawn very tightly, and voila; a god is born. Nothing new.

(September 7, 2011 at 11:15 am)Rhythm Wrote: It's a sort of TAG, read up on Cornelius Van Til, Calvinism, etc. The existence and truth of the biblical god (and specifically their interpretation of the biblical god) is taken as an axiom, terms are then defined in a favorable manner, a circle is drawn very tightly, and voila; a god is born. Nothing new.

From your understanding is there some reason why a different or all religion/s cannot adopt this approach and thus demonstrate that all gods must exist and are responsible for logic etc? What's unique about the xtian trinity?

What indeed. I believe Bahnsen wrote a paper on this. Unfortunately the argument always amounts to "Our book is consistent and theirs is not". There are of course, Muslim Presuppositional Apologetics. It's an argument designed to be used against atheists. Van Til himself was pretty much silent on world religions. Others have taken up the banner since. I remain unconvinced. Of course, that's because this argument isn't meant to be persuasive. I've never seen it used for any purpose other than the one I stated in previous posts.