Original Sin?

double

For a thousand years the Church thought circular
logic was valid. It wasn't until the rise of education
that circular reasoning was seen to be a logical
fallacy. Yet it's still used quite effectively to dupe
the dupe-able.

Quote: Evenbob

Quote: Evenbob

It's all Christians have and they rely heavily
on it. They can't prove anything with facts,
so they use reason traps to pull everything
together. If A, B, and C are correct, then
logically D, and E have to be correct also.

You'd be surprised how many people fall
for this. Lazy people, uneducated and average
intelligence people. That's why heaven would be
the most boring place imaginable, all the
good conversationalists wouldn't be there.

I'm starting to think logic is the most important philosophical field for us to study because there is a staggering, surprising, and sad lack of understanding out there. Let's analyze your argument Bob:

You certainly have not observed or know all Christians; so what you mean to say is that in your experience you have observed Christians relying on circular logic. Yet you claim ALL Christians do this - your first logical fallacy.
You claim they (meaning all Christians) can't prove anything with facts. This is demonstrably untrue for Christians can show with facts that Jesus Christ is a historical figure. Many other things about their religion can be factually shown but let this suffice for proving the error of your premise.
You next claim based on your faulty premise that they (again still referring to all Christians) use sophistry to "pull everything together" You give as an example of something that a elementary school child would know is not a logical syllogism or a "reason trap". Your example being absurd does not advance your point but instead renders your argument even more illogical.

Your next statement is open to interpretation: it could be referring to surprise that many people fall for the Christian argument, which you did nothing to disprove in your first paragraph or it more likely refers to surprise concerning how many people would fall for this - meaning your above argument. This would make it the first true statement of your post. You next make a list of the vast majority of human beings on earth - lazy, uneducated, and average people. These people you seem to infer are the only ones who make up the multitude of heaven which is the most boring place imaginable. This ignores the fact that some of the smartest men and women ever to exist were deeply devoted Christians. Your argument then claims that this huge number of uneducated folks and people of average intelligence all gathered together would be ENTIRELY devoid of good conversationalists. Not only does this outrageous claim remain unsubstantiated but it does not even follow from anything before it.

Quote: FrGamble

Yet you claim ALL Christians do this - your first logical fallacy.

I don't know them all, so you have to take it
in the manner I meant it. Certainly
most do, it's all they have.

Quote: FrGamble

2) Faithful creationists are unfortunately not being faithful to the Scriptures.

I must have missed the parts of the Bible that talk about the Big Bang, Evolution through Natural Selection and the Periodic Table.

Quote: FrGamble

The whole point of my example of Mendeleev is that God did have something to do with his discovery. If he was an atheist he would have said, "the way nature works doesn't have to make sense or form patterns, after all it is a big cosmic accident anyway."

You need to learn a bit more about science. Most scientists look for things like rules and order.

The problem of the periodic table was that ordering elements by atomic mass did not yield order in their chemical properties. This was a classic case of incomplete information. An element's mass has nothing to do with its chemical properties. What determines such properties is the number of protons in its nucleus, which determines the number of electrons in the cloud around the nucleus. This we now call an element's atomic number.

Arranged by atomic number, it's easy to set them up by columns according to chemical properties. Moreover, it's plain to see if there is a gap between elements 86 and 88, for example, there must exist an element 87. Further than that, it's chemical properties would be known in advance, making the search for that element easier in some cases (if, say elements in that group have an affinity for iron, then look at iron compounds for it).

There's a quirk in Quantum mechanics, where entangled particles share the same characteristics, such as spin, regardless of the distance between them. This bothers many physicists to this day. In particular it bothered early XX Century physicists like Einstein. IN fact, he posed the Einstein-Podolski-Rosen thought experiment to show quantum theory had to be incomplete. He was very certain of this, because the shared spin implies action at a distance.

You could draw up a list of physicists who agree with Einstein on this, and arrange them by religion, then see which of the most religious fervently believe that God does not play dice with the universe. Then contrast that with Bell's Inequality and see what the universe says is real.

Quote: Nareed

I must have missed the parts of the Bible that talk about the Big Bang, Evolution through Natural Selection and the Periodic Table.

Don't worry you didn't miss them. Those topics are not in the Bible for the same reason a chapter on the Trinity, or the Existence of God, or Jesus' Divinity is not found in "On the Origin of Species".

Quote: Nareed

You need to learn a bit more about science. Most scientists look for things like rules and order.

Good for them, it makes sense to do that because our universe does follow rules and order. However to look for patterns and order based on a strictly scientific mindset would be incorrect. We don't want to go around putting our philosophical biases in the midst of our science now do we. Before we go looking for rules and order they must be observed, furthermore if we do happen to observe patterns and order we don't want to strictly speaking assume that is the case for all things. For example if a strict scientist was watching the roulette wheel and it went black, black, black, red, black, black, black, red for multiple cycles she would conclude one of two things: someone or thing was manipulating the wheel or that this is only the appearance of a pattern and we would be unwise to look for it or trust it.
As you have already said the fact that most scientists look for things like rules and order is that they know the universe is not just random. You can count on their being patterns, order, and rules even when the data doesn't immediately show it.

Evenbob, I will agree with you that the Mormons do struggle with reasoned apologetics but unfortunately they don't have much more to go with than circular logic. I would ask you to be a little more understanding with the Christians you meet. It is one thing to hold a belief and another to express it cogently. With all due respect even you have struggled with that at times in trying to explain your reasons for believing the universe has always been here. Just because your average Jane or Joe expresses a circular argument for why they are Christians doesn't mean that they don't have deep seated and more cogent reasons why they believe in Jesus Christ.

Quote: FrGamble

Just because your average Jane or Joe expresses a circular argument for why they are Christians doesn't mean that they don't have deep seated and more cogent reasons why they believe in Jesus Christ.

Sure it does! I've never heard anything explaining
Christianity other than circular logic. You try and avoid
it because you know it's a trap, but c'mon, the
reason you believe as you do is they told you it's
true and you believed them.

When there are tremendously intelligent people like
Einstein and Asimov and Hawking telling us god doesn't
exist, you can't just ignore them. You, padre, are a
Christian because you want to be one, not because it
was proved to you to be true. That's why you can't
prove it to us.