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Eminem placed in interesting post over in the Conversion by zeal thread. It wasn't pertinent to the thread itself, but I thought it could form the basis of a new thread in itself. Here it is:

In the first place, what makes you think logic doesn't lead to faith? Philosophers both ancient and modern can positively argue the existence of God. Before a pagan monarch (Agrippa, IIRC) who thought he was out of his mind, the Apostle Paul in the New Testament, argued that the Christian faith was in fact "true and reasonable." Some of the greatest minds who have ever lived (ie. Newton, Luther, Einstein) believe in God, and did so quite passionately. Newton, by any standard was a religious fanatic.

So does logic lead to religion? Is religion "proved" by logical argument? What's your opinion?

I think all that logic can prove is that we humans cannot comprehend the universe in our current state of knowledge and/or mental capacity. I believe that both the idea of god and the idea of no god have significant flaws, and logic can argue equally well for and against the two.

Logic is subjective. What may seem logical to one person, ie God existing, can seem completely absurd to another person. Logic is held in to high an esteem. Its late where I live, so I'll be back later to keep going.

All I can say for sure is so far I've yet to see logic lead on to religion without some fairly dubious leaps of reasoning made in between. However that doesn't mean it can't, merely that I have yet to see it do so.

What does 'can logic lead to' mean?
Sure, logic can easily lead to faith, given a few invalid deductions and some poor premises ...is this what you mean? Or do you mean 'can perfect logic be used to prove gods existence?', or what?

I agree with Frogus, logic can lead to faith or to anything, providing the premises don't need to be demonstrated as correct.

Where is Tom when you need him? He knows this stuff 1000 times better than I do

As I said to MM over in the other thread, logic and rationality is not the same. Logic is a way of deducting whether a conclusion is true or false depending on the premises. Many of the classical arguments for god's existance are perferctly logical, but they are not necessarily true because the premisses aren't necessarily true. Let's look at some logical arguments:

The Ontological argument
1. It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that God is a being than which none greater can be imagined (i.e., the greatest possible being that can be imagined).
2. God exists as an idea in the mind.
3. A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal, greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.
4. Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is greater than God (i.e., a greatest possible being that does exist).
5. But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God (for it is a contradiction to suppose that we can imagine a being greater than the greatest possible being that can be imagined.)
6. Therefore, God exists.

Simplified, this arguments rests on the assumption that god exists because we can imagine him, and it rests heavily on the definition of god as the greatest possible. There's also the premise that an idea in the mind must be "less great" than a being that exists both in mind and in reality, which makes god exist just because we define him as the ultimate greatness. Obviously, many of the premises here is not necessarily correct, and the argument has been much critisised throughout history.

The Cosmological argument
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

Perfectly logical, if the premises are true, the conclusion is true. But: Is premise 1 really true, must everything that exist have a cause? And from the conclusion, "the universe has a cause of its existence", it does not follow that this cause must be a god.

The Teleological argument
1. Design assumes a designer.
2. The universe shows evidence of complete design in its every function.
3. Therefore, there is a designer (god).

This argument exist in a longer form that goes into the perfection of our world, and argues that something so perfect must have been designed. This is obviously incorrect, since it is an argument from subjective experience. Firstly, what looks like perfection in the human is is not necessarily objectively perfect. Secondly, even if something looks perfect, that does not necessarily mean in was "manufactured" or "designed" - this argument assumes that randomness could never create anything of beauty/perfection, which is not necessarily correct either. Modern creationists in the US often use this argument and try to claim that a priori that the world around us are very perfect.

If we look at premise 2, we see that it is not necessary true that the universe shows evidence of design.

EDIT: And just when I post this, I see Tom appear... I could have saved myself the time it took to write this post! @Tom: please fill me in or correct any misrepresentation I may have done.

To answer this question I will have to explain some vocabulary so I hope you will bear with me.

Deductive argument:
This is a valid deductive argument,
Premise 1. All gnomes are mortal
Premise 2. Tom is a gnome
Conclusion. Tom is mortal
In this type of argument, if the premises are true then the conclusion MUST also be true. The example is very simple but more complex arguments all use simple logical functions.


Inductive argument:
This is an example of an inductive argument,
That is a white swan,
There is white swan number 2.
…
…
….
There is white swan number 500.000
Conclusion. All swans are white.
This kind of argument is clearly not deductive since all the premises can be true and the conclusion false. (in fact the conclusion is false because there is black swans in Australia).
All arguments fall into one of those two categories. I should stress that there is nothing wrong with inductive arguments - indeed most scientific and medical arguments are inductive.

Necessary truth
Necessity is a tricky subject but lets just for simplicity call what we discuss here ‘logical necessity’.
We can clarify that if something is logically necessary then it holds in all possible worlds. So my car is blue is not logically necessary because it seems that there are/could be possible worlds where my car is blue. But something like the statement ‘either my car, if it exists, is blue or it is not blue’ seems to hold true no matter what - in all possible worlds.

Contingent
This makes contingent fairly easy then. Something is contingent if it is true in some possible world/s. So the statement ‘my car is blue’ is a contingent statement.

One should of course not be confused and think that deductive argument establish necessary truths and inductive arguments contingent truths. Since as we saw above the conclusion of the deductive argument was that ‘Tom is mortal’ is not logically necessary. We can also make an inductive argument with a logically necessary truth:
1. 2+2=4
2. 2+2=4
…
…
…
Conclusion 2+2 always equal 4.


In the light of the above I think the question is better phrased as ‘Can we argue for the existence of god using deductive arguments?’.

As far as I am aware there is only one deductive argument that purports to show that god exists, the ontological argument. This argument, if it works, shows that god necessarily exists.

This should make us pause and think. How can something in this world necessarily exist? I have a cup in front of me but surely it is possible that there were no cup in front of me. In fact it seems that all objects in this world are contingent, me, you, the moon. It also seems that the whole universe is contingent - there is nothing that tells us that logically or otherwise that the universe must exist. But god, if he exist is only a feature of the universe so it seems strange if he must necessarily exist. But that is just a side note.

Lets look briefly at the argument.
The ontological argument was first sketched out by Anselm and is rather remarkable.
It appears to appeal to no contingent fact but only to an analysis of the concept of God.
1. God is a supremely perfect being.
2. Perfection implies existence.
3. A completely perfect being must, of necessity, possess all perfections, and hence if one were to specify the perfections of god, then existence would have to accompany omniscience and omnipotence.
Conclusion: god exists.

Of course I am not convinced this is a good argument or I would believe in god. But its a funny argument and I have not even scratched the surface (there are at least two other versions, I have given Descartes’ version, its the short one) so maybe it is best to leave it at that and not look at the criticisms of it.

On a final note I think that it is rarely helpful to pull out famous names that believe the same as you. Of course it is a good thing to have respect for the intellect and opinions of these people but one should not forget that there are other famous and intelligent people on the other side of the argument. All one should draw from this is that the issues are difficult and complex and them self deserve respect.

I can’t believe I wrote all that…

Thank you for your patience if you read it all and sorry abou the long post

Originally posted by C Elegans

Where is Tom when you need him?

Ta Daaa

Originally posted by C Elegans

EDIT: And just when I post this, I see Tom appear... I could have saved myself the time it took to write this post! @Tom: please fill me in or correct any misrepresentation I may have done.

I am not sure there is much I can add or correct. there is a lot of controversial stuff in both our posts and enough for a hundred years of discussion.

but that must wait

Thanks Tom, it is good that telepathy works

So, obviously I think logic can lead to and even strengthen faith, but it certainly doesn't "prove" anything.

posted by Tom
I am not sure there is much I can add or correct. there is a lot of controversial stuff in both our posts and enough for a hundred years of discussion.

Yes, I especially object to the "Tom is a gnome" part.

Let's see what other people post. To me, logic and faith is not contradictory, rationality and faith are. Not that it's always necessarily bad to think irrational, but we should all be aware of when we do it and not, and what the consequences might be if we think irrational in certain contexts (ie irrational belief that a mystic power will heal your child from leukemi can lead to rejection of medical treatment and the child dies, to take an extreme example that unfortunately has happened)

Originally posted by Tom

1. God is a supremely perfect being.
2. Perfection implies existence.
3. A completely perfect being must, of necessity, possess all perfections, and hence if one were to specify the perfections of god, then existence would have to accompany omniscience and omnipotence.
Conclusion: god exists.

This is a argument I've never understood, Can someone please help with explaining it abit? To me it seems like it aruges that if we define something as existing it does neccessarily exists, and not just as a abstract concept.

@Dottie: This is the EDIT: sorry, the ontological argument, Tom posted Decartes' version of it, I posted (I think) Anselm's version, which is a bit more detailed. If you read both versions, you should be able to follow the line of reasoning better, if not, I'll do my best to explain or you have to wait for Tom to return.

Originally posted by C Elegans

4. Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is greater than God (i.e., a greatest possible being that does exist).

Nope, I still dont get it... Wasnt existance a part of our definition of god? Then how can we imagine something greater just because what we defined does not exist?

Originally posted by Dottie
Nope, I still dont get it... Wasnt existance a part of our definition of god? Then how can we imagine something greater just because what we defined does not exist?

No, real existance is not part of our definition initially, in the first 2 premises god only exists as an idea. But with the premise number 3 it is established that god exists in our minds, but since a being that exists both in our minds and in reality is greater than a being that only exists in our minds, god must exist since he is the greatest possible being. So it is the combination of he exists an a idea and that existing in reality is greater than existing only as an idea, that leads to the conclusion god must exist since he is the ultimate greatness. Note that I don't think the premises are true here.

@CE: I feel stupid for not getting this, but it still seem like existance is a part of the first premise since they obviously think that existance is a property of greatness. Then the 4th point seems to confuse our 'God concept' with 'God in reality'.

guu... I feel apathy is out to get me this time...

You start to sound like Kant, a philosopher who critised that part of the argument. I don't think you are being stupid, I think you just see the flaws of the argument, like many others have done.

Try this link, I think it's pretty good.

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/o/ont-arg.htm

Ah well, bookmarked for later reading. Right now I think watching a ball bounce could stimulate my intellect

@Dotspot: OK, come over to DW:s tavern and discuss bouncing balls then. Presently I don't have anything more to say in this thread, Tom would answer you questions regarding the ontological argument much better than I can do, and I have already made my opinions clear.

Originally posted by C Elegans
The Cosmological argument
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

Perfectly logical, if the premises are true, the conclusion is true. But: Is premise 1 really true, must everything that exist have a cause? And from the conclusion, "the universe has a cause of its existence", it does not follow that this cause must be a god.

What? Are you seriously going to deny premise number 1, that "everything that exists has a cause?" It's one thing to say the premise isn't true, but another thing to disprove the established law of cause and effect.

The conclusion that God must have created the universe makes perfect sense because in order for space and time to be created, it must have been created by something that exists outside of space and time. If not God, then what?

Originally posted by EMINEM
<snip>
The conclusion that God must have created the universe makes perfect sense because in order for space and time to be created, it must have been created by something that exists outside of space and time. If not God, then what?

Just because there is something that can't be explained, dosen't mean it has to be (a) "God".
And plenty of scientists have given their "view" (faith?) on what could have happened at the "Big Bang", so their oppionion is just as plausible.
Unexplained is just unexplained at present time.