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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.skeptic,alt.magick,talk.religion.misc,alt.consciousness.mysticism,alt.pagan.magick
From: nocTifer 
Subject: Mysticism and Fallacious Godproofs
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 20:06:09 GMT

50030219 VII I am not a logician, but I like logic-puzzles and mysticism

in alt.magick, "Gremlin"  prefaced:
>> Here is an intresting proof of god I have discovored.

like ALL logical 'proofs of god', this one is based on 
fallacies and circumlocutions.

>> "This sentance is not true and God does not exist."

substitute anything for "God" in the above.

	A: -A & -B

>> If god does not exist then if the sentance is true the sentance is
>> false (a contradiction).

	if -B, then A & -A? I don't see the logic here.

because the sentence contains its own self-negation, your
contention is merely confusing, not compelling. I would
instead revise it to

	if -A & -B, then A

or "If the sentence is false and God does not exist, then the
    original sentence is true."

which is just a redaction of the following well-known paradox:

	A : -A
	This sentence is false.

neither proves anything other than the limitations of logic
and demonstrates the paradoxical eddies that language can
exhibit, investigated by Scientific Americans like Gardner
and Hofstadter in their long-running columns (yummy!).

>> If god does exist then the sentance is false 

	if -A & +B, then -A   ?

here Alex Sumner logically objects:

"Alex Sumner" :
> ..."This sentence is not true" does not automatically mean that
> the sentence is completely false....

that is correct. this says nothing about the truth of

	C: -C & +B

where C = the sentence "This sentence is false and God exists."
which has been left undetermined and undefined.

>> and there is no contradiction.

"no contradiction" is ambiguous. there is certainly a
difference between A and C above. the fallacy you are
approaching is one whose name I've forgotten but which
posits the perfection of God and that part of that
perfection must include existence (therefore, by this
logical fallacy, the God must exist; presumed proven).

in fact you've failed to sufficiently provide data for
the analysis of your logic and have jumped to a false
conclusion regarding the result, as Alex pointed out.

>> So either god must exist or we must deal with the 
>> contradiction, 

here you seem to be saying

	if -A & +B, then +B

which does not follow. your focus appears to the be
paradox which derives from your self-referential A/-A.
this you mention in the balance of this explanation:

>> which is like saying truth=lies, or there is no truth.

you're reconstructing the paradox of

	This sentence is false.

which is more like saying truth=falsity or there no meaning.
that you hook it up with the existence of any X (God, your
pink flying elephants, the square circle, etc.) is just an
artifice, and by simplification can be ignored in order to
better understand the issues of logic and paradox involved.

>> I have got a lot out of this kind of thinking, I hope it 
>> helps someone else.

there is quite a bit to be learned in logic puzzles and
their figuring. books by Smullyan on logic puzzles are 
fabulous. the summary on proofs for "God" has been pretty
well nailed down by authors like James, Russell, and
modern writers like Gardner. in particular I recommend these:

	Raymond Smullyan
	What is the Name of This Book? 

his other books are philosophical explorations of paradox,
conundrum, and the limits of philosophy (he's a magician
and a taoist! k00l!). if I could find my copy of this
book I'd give you a taste of it. it starts out with all
kinds of axiomatic premises wherein one person is known
always to lie and the other is known always to tell the
truth, then they say something and you have to figure
out which is which or what the truth is. the answers are
in the back, carefully explained. this text occupied a
good deal of my time after I'd gone through all the 
lesser puzzlebooks and wire-puzzles in my grammar and 
high school days (obtained when I started college and 
a very good supplement to my physics/math studies).


	Martin Gardner [NOTE: *not* Gerald!!]
	The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener

this is a series of articles effectively refuting a
variety of religiophilosophic positions from that of
Solipsism to the Problem(s?) of Evil and issues of
immortality. the chapter which applies to your post
is one from which I'd like to quote here, because it 
so soundly summarizes the limitations of logic in the
attempt to logically demonstrate the existence of "God".

	Are there purely logical arguments for God,
	arguments so convincing that if an intelligent
	atheist understood them he or she would become
	a theist? There are no such arguments. In
	Lecture 18 of his *Varieties of Religious
	Experience*, William James summed up the
	situation in a few sentences that could have
	been written last week:

		The arguments for God's existence have
		stood for hundreds of years with the
		waves of unbelieving criticism breaking
		against them, never totally discrediting
		them in the ears of the faithful, but on
		the whole slowly and surely washing out
		the mortar from between their joints. If
		you have a God already whom you believe
		in, these arguments confirm you. If you
		are atheistic, they fail to set you right.

	A long line of distinguished thinkers, fully capable
	of understanding the arguments yet remaining
	unconvinced, is testimony to the flabbiness of those
	"proofs." But, you may respond, is there not also a
	long line of equally distinguished theists who
	firmly believed God's exitence *could* be 
	established by unaided reason?

	Yes, and now I must explain why I qualified "logical"
	by saying that there are no "purely" logical
	arguments. If you make certain posits, posits
	unsupported by logic or science, the traditional
	proofs do make a kind of sense. From my fideist
	perspective, the posits required to confer validity
	on the proofs are not rational but emotional. They
	are made in response to deeply felt needs. Grant
	these emotive posits and the proofs become
	compelling, but the posits themselves are from the
	heart, not the head.
	----------------------------------------------------
	"The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener", by Martin
	 Gardner, Quill, 1983; pp. 192-3.
	====================================================

he goes on to consider some of the more classic 'proofs' for
the existence of God like First Cause, Design and Common
Consent, and explains the problems and fallacies with '
their exposition in wonderful prose.

it was surprising to me to discover that my auditing of my
local college's Philosophy of Religion course was seriously
attending to Proofs of God's Existence some 15 years ago.
I'd already been over these Aquinian and other Christian
baubles with an amazement that they would be taken at all
seriously, and here they were in a CA state university
treating them as if they weren't fallacies of the first
rate. of course this was one of the lower-level courses
which functioned as a kind of hurdle for Philosophy Majors
(if you hadn't considered them yet and were still some kind
of theist, then you were to be challenged here). 

the prof of the class (Voss) was extremely k00l, however, 
and understood my objections. in fact, my memory was that 
he was attempting to use these philosophical 'proofs' as a
context within which we should apply what we were learning
of the Socratic Method, refining our logic and inquiry in
a manner demonstrating our understanding not only of the
concepts, but of how Socrates reshaped the thinking of
those with whom he is said (by Plato) to have interacted.

he pointed me in the direction of nonWestern philosophers
and those whose notions of the divine didn't include so
much reliance on logic to support their contentions (e.g.
Whitehead and Indian philosophers, where I would eventually
find bridges to 'Eastern Religion'/'Eastern Philosophy'
that I'd already begun to meagerly explore. I was happy
to drop the Proof Examination and instead focus on the
individual process of knowledge-formation and how this may
or may not provide experience supporting in the hypothesis
that any kind of perception might be used for such a proof.
in effect, I was trying to use the Socratic against itself.

dropping logic out of the equation, and transplating any
kind of anthropomorphic deity for something more immanent
and experiential, I found the notion of mystical experience
and, eventually, magic, something to which I could relate
WITHOUT abandoning the materialist background which I'd
been reared and educated to believe most rational. logical
proofs thereafter took on the appearance of a kind of candy
or kid's problem, a kind of sleight-of-mind which could,
without too much difficulty, be deconstructed into its
inherent fallacious component parts. 

some believed that this opposition to logical support of
'God' indicated my departure from spirituality, and yet
my impression is that it instead served to soundly root
the basis of my spirituality in something solid, rather
than fanciful, illogical, and irrational (these latter
better left to the activities of role-playing and dramatic
ritualizing in order to inspire mystical experiences I love).

nagasiva