Even if theism is a failure, it's still superior to atheism

[polymath257]

If p -> q, then whenever p is false, then p->q will always be true.  And, so, what's your point?

It's not the truth value of the assertion "p->q" that is of interest here, it's only that of q. When you start by a false propostion p, you can sometimes get a true propostion q by employing sound logical principles. This means that we cannot say that q is false just because p is false, we have to evaluate q on its own merits. The part in bold is extremely important here. polymath claimed that starting with false assumptions leads to false conclusions, and this isn't always true.

On a personal note, I completed a Master's degree in mathematical statistics 3 years ago, so for anyone here who just wants to show me high school math, like how material conditionals work, you really can save your breath.

Goody for you. I got a PhD in mathematics 36 years ago and have been a research mathematician since.

But you are right, we cannot say the q is false simply because p is false and p-->q. But we can say that the argument attempting to prove q is invalid.

Now, are you suggesting the the existence of a deity is independent of other axioms? That it can neither be proved nor disproved?

And if that is the case, how do we choose whether to assume q or not(q) as an axiom?

Anything involving prophecy being realized, outside of science, is making stuff up.

The effect of Al Ghazali's teachings were the decline of the Arabic Golden age and the adoption of an attitude that makes actual intellectual progress impossible. Closing the gates of ijtihad is one of the many things that lead to the decline of the Islamic civilization.

Trying to change the topic again? You just accused al-Ghazali of twisting the meaning of Qur'anic verses without providing us any concrete examples. Then when you were pressed to give one, you said you don't care, then you moved on to discuss the effects of Al-Ghazali's teachings, which you clearly never read anything about?

Furthermore, you don't seem to understand what the word "ijtihad" means, it means applying the basic elements of islamc faith and jurisprudence in order to assess, for a given contemporary issue, whether it conforms to islamic rulings/sharia or not. This activity is done routinely by Muslim scholars, all over the world, every single day and hour. The claim of "closing the gates of Ijtihad" appeared in the 3rd/4th century (in the Islamic calendar) when many amateur Muslim thinkers tried to solve legal questions of Islamic jurisprudence independently, this became a widespread phenomenon, and the ijtihad profession was threatened by the flawed work of unqualified people (think about modern-day crackpots that send papers to renowned physics journals, claiming that general relativity is wrong, or that they have a theory of everything). Some Muslim scholars reacted strongly to this and suggested to stop the ijtihad altogether, as a prophylactic measure. This suggestion was obviously abandoned later on in most, if not all Sunni schools.

But the closing of the gates also meant that independent thinking was suppressed and that lead to the decline of Islamic civilization. of course, the Mongols helped with that decline.

Al-Ghazali never spoke in any of his books against the ijtihad, this is the second time you make unsubstantiated accusations against al-Ghazali. You're really lucky the members here are essentially ignorant of Islam.

If you use false assumptions, you are guaranteed that some of your conclusions will be false. 

That's true. So not all conclusions that derive from these assumptions are false. This means that we cannot dismiss a conclusion simply because the initial assumption is false. 

But we can dismiss the argument. And, let's face it, the more faulty arguments presented in favor of a position, the worse that position looks. Theology has a very poor track record in that regard.

What, precisely, do you mean by the term 'universe'? I define it as the collection of all that exists. So there cannot be anything that exists outside of it.

If you have a different definition, please give it.

If you define it like that, then obviously the creator belongs to the universe, but this definition is not really useful here. Better definitions of the universe would be : anything that is accessible to empirical investigation, or all matter that obeys the physical laws. I am not sure if these definitions are watertight, but they should be enough for this discussion.

OK, that is a good start. Empirical investigation. How, precisely, do you define that?

As for obeying physical laws, I very much doubt that we know what the ultimate physical laws are, so we cannot tell what obeys them. I assume you would agree.

But perhaps you can clarify what is meant by the term 'physical laws'. In the process, you might want to define what it means to be 'physical'.

BTW, I usually identify 'physical' and 'natural', so your usage is interesting.

So you don't consider humans and human creations to be part of the natural world? Strange definition.

I defined natural as anything that isn't the product of human intelligence. And humans are obviously not the product of human intelligence, they're the product of human reproduction. Therefore, this definition does include humans as part of the natural world.

But the objects of human ingenuity are not, right?

Now, would a human born from in vitro fertilization be 'natural' or not? They would be the product of human intelligence, no?

So is God the product of human intelligence? No. So God is natural by your definition. Hence God is NOT outside of the natural world.

This does follow from the definition I gave, and so it's probably not sufficient for our purposes here. But even granting that the deity is part of the natural world doesn't really mean anything. The natural/supernatural distinction is completely arbitrary.

Probably a better the definition of nature, or the natural world, would be exactly like that of the universe - all matter that obeys the physical laws.

Which means we definitely need to determine what is meant by the term 'physical law'. I suspect that will require some sort of definition of the term 'physical'.

I would also like to know what it means for something to 'exist'. How would this be determined/ How could it be tested? For example, does the number 2 exist/