Atheism: an irrational philosophical system

Dear Previous poster:A materialist would be greatly less inclined to be a martyr. On the other hand, if geniune Christians or even religionist who operate more on tradition and falsehood (in my opinion) were as suppressive as materialist we should expect at least one materialist martyr. For example, Martin Luther King was killled by a very angry man. One would expect the same to happen to at least one materialist especially the very vocal ones.Sincerely,Ken[This message has been edited by kendemyer, 02-27-2004]

The comment about materialist martyrs was just an aside opinion and not really the meat of my post. The following is what I'd like you to address from my last post to you. I'll paste it below:

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and even recent history the Bible has been burned and banned.

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Can you give some examples of Bible burnings or bannings? I could only find one report of the Bible being banned in Malaysia, but no reports of burnings. Certainly, nothing in the US.

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By contrast, there have been many, many Christian-led book bannings and some book burnings (Harry Potter books were burned) in just the US diring just the last couple of decades. In fact, several of the most commonly banned books were those that I was required to study in high school.

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Perhaps thign swill be a little simpler if I go back to basics.
An account in these terms is an explanation of why logic does apply. Which leads us to the first major problem - any such account must assume that logic DOES apply. That rules out any possiblity of getting an airtight proof immune to any skepticism all we can hope for is a plausible explanation, and that I beleive is possible.

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Your wording here is very difficult to unwind. Are you saying that because laws of logic are assumed, it is therefore impossible to get an airtight proof of their existence ( that is immunized against skepticism), and as such all we can hope for is a plausible explanation of why they can be appealed to? Please rephrase this so I can understand what you mean before attempting to address it.

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The second serious problem is that logic must apply to every entity involved in the account. This is where the concept that logic is imposed falls down. If logic must be imposed, it follows that prior to that imposition logic does not apply the entity it is to be imposed on. But in that case we cannot conclude that any attempt to impose logic on it will work - even if a failure is a logical impossibility. In short such a view starts by assuming incoherency - and even assuming that incoherency is the "natural" state of affairs, and once that assumption is made there is no escape from it.

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So you are saying that if logic is imposed, then it must apply to every entity that is said to have knowledge. Because God is said to have knowledge, then it must also be imposed on God, and therefore God is not necessary for the existence of those laws? Is this what you are saying?

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A God-based account could avoid that trap by asserting that God created the universe so that logic would apply - by assuming no state that can be considered prior the trap is evaded. However such an account must still explain why logic applies to God, and that is the real difficulty.

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Are you saying that one way to avoid this contingency problem would be to take the position that the laws of logic didn’t apply before Creation (making them part of creation for the purpose of use by creation), however such an account wouldn’t explain why it is that logic applies to God before it is created?

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An account based on the idea that logical truths are necessary truths avoids the problems of both the above approaches and is more parsimonious than assuming a God.

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So are you saying that the God based account really boils down to the problem of contingency, and that a better and simpler approach is to just skip the middle-man so to speak, and base their existence and applicability solely on their necessity?

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To work, then, the TA needs to show that no such account is possible and that a God-based account is possible if and only if the God involved is the Christian God. In all this discussion there has been no serious argument for either. If there IS a TA why am I still waiting to see it ?

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So you’re saying here that in order for the Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God (the argument, not God Himself) to exist, it (the TA) needs to show that:

1. the necessity of logical truths argument is not an account of them.
2. The God based approach you described above Is true, possible or revise it such that it can be made plausible.

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Am I understanding you correctly? I’ll answer after I know that I’m not misrepresenting your enquiry.

Lets deal with your points one-by-one.1) The determined skeptic can always raise the issue that any argument assumes that logic does apply - and that therefore we can only be certain of the conclusion (i.e. that logic does apply) if it is in fact the case that logic DOES apply. There is a clear circularity.2) You are not understanding the point correctly. Unless your dea of "imposing" logic means only that it is "imposed" on entities with knowledge then my argument does not single out entities with knowledge at all.
My point is thata) any explanation must assume that logic does apply to ALL entities involved in the explanation.b) for logic to be (meaningfully) imposed on an entity it must be the case that logic does not apply to that entity prior to that imposition.c) the explanation must deal with the imposition - and therefore with the entity as it is prior to the imposition, when logic does not apply to it. This contradicts a) and therefore no such explanation is possible.3) Again you are in error. My suggestion was that by assuming that the universe was created ex nihilo with the applicability of logic guaranteed from the start it is possible to avoid the problem. Since there is no prior state at all there is no prior state where logic does not apply. You are correct, however, that such an explanation still assumes that logic is applicable to God (see 2 a) above) and does not explain why.4) You are not correct in your final point. It is not even nearly sufficient to show that necessity is not an adequate account - it must be shown that there is NO possible account which takes the truths of logic as necessary truths. It is also necessary to produce an account which relies on the existence of the Christian God and cannot work for any concievable deity other than the Christian God.

These are not my points PaulK... you asked me to "go back to my [your] "Accounting" post, read it properly...", so I listed one paragraph after another of what you wrote, verbatum, followed by what I think you were tying to say in each paragraph. Now you are saying that I misunderstood 3 out of 4 of your paragraphs?If it's me who is unable to understand your writing style, then I apologize, but you're going to have to be a little more clear in phrasing your questions for my sake. I'll look at your list of comments more carefully and reply in a bit.thanks.

I think that you are clearly misreading what I do say. My style tends to the terse, and I may sometimes miss out things that seem obvious to me, but I try to be precise.For instance I do not single out entities with knowledge, yet your interpretation does for some reason. Nor do I see how you can read "an account based on the idea that logical truths are necessary truths" as referring to the simple idea that logical truths ARE necessary truths as you do rather than offering an explanation of why that is the case.Now by all means ask for clarification but please understand that communication involves both of us and that you already have a history of misreading and self-contradiction (Do you beleive that the laws of logic are abstract entities or not ? Despite saying so repeatedly you have also disagreed with it in post 138. And if they are not abstract objects what concrete existence do they have ? Are you advocating some form of Platonism ?).