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Sunday, September 20, 2009
Rebutting the idea that God created logic
In "Atheism: An Irrational Worldview", Jason Lisle asserts that atheists -- by employing logic in their arguments regarding the purported existence of God -- actually presuppose that God exists since, he implies, the existence of logic depends upon the existence of God. Alternative formulations of this argument are "God created logic" or "the existence of God proves that God exists." This argument can be rebutted even without full consideration, by observing that the proposition that "logic" exists is deeply problematic.
The term logic is formed elliptically from the Latin phrase ars logica, that is, "the logical arts" or "the arts pertaining to logos" -- in a word, "reason." Given this etymology, it is plain that "logic" is not an entity but rather something abstract, a set of the "arts" or methods of establishing the truth of inferences. Sets, being abstract, do not have tangible existence. Concepts exist only insofar as the systems in which they are represented exist. Therefore, the neccesary prior existence of "logic" supposed by the theist is meaningless, since logic cannot be properly said to exist at all.
Another way of stating this is that logic is not an entity with the property of existence. This error is identical to Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
This objection is weaker and may fail if a correspondence theory of truth is assumed; I do not make this assumption and generally do not agree that the correspondence theory is valid.
Many thanks to Alex Vera and Nora Delaney, with whom in conversation we developed this rebuttal.
The term logic is formed elliptically from the Latin phrase ars logica, that is, "the logical arts" or "the arts pertaining to logos" -- in a word, "reason." Given this etymology, it is plain that "logic" is not an entity but rather something abstract, a set of the "arts" or methods of establishing the truth of inferences. Sets, being abstract, do not have tangible existence. Concepts exist only insofar as the systems in which they are represented exist. Therefore, the neccesary prior existence of "logic" supposed by the theist is meaningless, since logic cannot be properly said to exist at all.
Another way of stating this is that logic is not an entity with the property of existence. This error is identical to Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
This objection is weaker and may fail if a correspondence theory of truth is assumed; I do not make this assumption and generally do not agree that the correspondence theory is valid.
Many thanks to Alex Vera and Nora Delaney, with whom in conversation we developed this rebuttal.
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