Is Neo[Atheism] a Rational Religion?

You are allowed to ask any question you want.

Does the supernatural exist? I don't know...but I don't have a belief in it.

Exactly my same position on God. I don't know if God exists but I have no belief that a God exists.

If some convincing evidence were presented for either I would then change my mind. But I have been an atheist for over 30 years now and I can tell you that no one has even come close to presenting convincing evidence.

 

Koko and I had a long conversation on that too. He can't see the difference, even while he claims to reject both belief there is a God and belief there is no God.

 

You can't reject both.

A person is either an atheist or a theist...there is no middle position since both are statements of belief. If you don't believe a God exists then you are, by definition, an atheist.
If you believe a God exists then you are, by definition, a theist.

Not knowing whether or not a God exists is not the middle ground since what you lack, in that case, is KNOWLEDGE...you still either believe or don't believe.

 

In just 3 posts you hit all of Koko's issues. He had a long discussion with yardmeat who had said the same as you, and Koko pretended yardmeat had claimed there is a possibility other than yes or no to if God exists.

Same with me.

 

Yes you can. You can lack belief God exists and also lack belief God doesn't exist. You can simply not have a belief in either being the case. This is true, for example, of one who never thought about it.

 

I guess if you have never heard of the concept of God and had never been asked if you believe or not, you could hold a middle position

 

The third way is to claim that purple is yellow.

 

Exactly.

Either god exists or god doesn't exist.

Either the statement "God exists" is true or it is false.

Those are the only truth values the proposition can have. What Koko fails to understand is that it is possible to know that a proposition HAS such a bivalent truth value without knowing WHICH holds. He was given dozens of examples, all of which he ran away and hid from. "I don't know" is not an additional truth value. No one claimed that it was. It's an admission that one doesn't know WHICH of the two truth values holds in this case. This happens in algebra, geometry, etc. all of the time. ANY discipline that has variables includes situations in which one doesn't know the value that the variable represents. Every logic, algebra, geometry, etc. course has test questions in which the only way to reply is "Not enough information."

Again, we gave Koko many, many, many examples in which one knows that a proposition HAS a T/F truth value without knowing WHICH. I'll repeat one of the examples he ran away from: "The number of stars in the Milky Way is an even number."

There's a reason why he poses questions and demands answers but runs in fear before ever providing any answers of his own. Just be aware of that, @Nwolfe35. Not that it will come as a shock at this point.

 

Blasphemy!

Purple is plaid.

PS - why is is spelled Plaid and not Plad?

 

My point was that Koko has repeatedly claimed that there is no such difference, while also putting himself in one but not the other.

He puts himself into (2), and not into (1), and then claims they are the same, the difference only semantic.

 

It was probably originally pronounced Plaid but it changed over time while the spelling did not. Just like Knife. The K used to be pronounced.

 

Ok so then you have no belief G/god does not exist. Fair enough

 

WTF are you talking about?
Citation?

 

Nice backpedal on your BLUNDER





You tried to answered "I dont know" as a truth value to the proposition God exists and then defended that nonsense repeatedly!

What you think we forgot?

 

You hit all of the birds projections!

Oh yeh the self aggrandized logic teacher superstrawman ultra BLUNDER extraordinaire that argued he could answer a proposition with "I dont know".
Major blunder, outed himself, actually on several occasions.

Dont you guys wish and pray that you could only find so much as one citation to support the nonsense you post!

But you cant......sigh....

 

there is no such thing as a 'middle' position. there is however a 3rd position.

 

Do you find it with your third eye?

 

So how is believe !God different from !believe God?

believe yes or believe no are still beliefs.

How is 2. I have NO belief in God different from I do not believe in God?

Seems to me that if you do not believe in God you have no belief in God?

Where is this HUGE you are talking about in those statements?

Seems to me that if you stand on a soapbox and claim God does not exist you lack belief in God.

Looks like HUGE tail chasing to me!

 

Sure, it's the same one I've given over and over:
A conjunction is true if and only if its conjuncts are true. You argue that a conjunction is true, even though the conjuncts are false, which is not allowed in logic.

Not sure what you propose this proves. None of this includes any information about what is or isn't a conjunction, which is what my criticism is about.

You haven't provided your construction of a conjunction. You popped "the hat is big and green" and "yellow is red and white" out of nowhere, you have not shown that conjunction elimination applies to either of them. (Conjunction elimination may very well apply to the hat example but you have yet to show that it does).

Disagree. If your construction was faulty, you could pick any propositions at all, and get any answer out of it:

1. Socrates is a man, and all men are mortal (true)
2. Therefore 1+1=2 (true)​

This is not a correctly constructed conjunction or conjunction elimination, but the truth values are coming out correctly. Therefore, showing an example in which you get the right answer does not mean that you have constructed your conjunction correctly.

Luckily, we have a much more straight forward approach to constructing conjunctions, for instance:

1. "Yellow is green" (false)
2. "Yellow is red" (false)
3. A conjunction is only true if all of its conjuncts are true
4. The conjunction of "Yellow is green" and "Yellow is red" must be false.

Nope, you have given two statements, you haven't linked them to conjunction elimination or to each other, you're like 80% short of a proof. Conjunction elimination remains valid.

1. "Yellow is green" (false)
2. "Yellow is red" (false)
3. A conjunction is only true if all of its conjuncts are true
4. The conjunction of "Yellow is green" and "Yellow is red" must be false.

If I follow actual logic, I don't run into the problems you're getting.

Not sure what you want me to prove.
I can prove that the conjunction of "yellow is red" and "yellow is green" is false, that's all I need to show that your supposed counter example to conjunction elimination isn't valid.

You've provided no indication about which of these would be conjunctions and of what.

 

Swensson, it looks like he's trying to play yet another language trick on you.

"The ball is round and soft" is linguistic short form for "the ball is round and the ball is soft". You SHOULD say the latter when applying logic, but the former is a linguistic short cut (not a logic short cut).

Likewise, "Yellow is red and green" could be linguistic short form for "yellow is red and yellow is green", except that doesn't work here. That isn't what "Yellow is red and green" means.

Yellow only exists if both are together, like "Pie is crust and filling", which doesn't mean "Pie is crust and Pie is filling".

This word game does not invalidate Conjunction Elimination, because as you rightly stated, it does not involve Conjunction Elimination at all.

 

I mean, it's really the same trick over and over, even though I've called him out on it. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt as to whether he's dishonestly playing a trick, or genuinely haven't realised what jumps of logic he's doing. It's getting harder and harder though, since I've given the "conjunction is true if and only if conjuncts are true" argument many times, and he still hasn't addressed it.

I more or less agree.

I think technically, I might say that "the ball is round and soft" describes one "shape" (which consists of roundness and softness) and makes one statement that the ball has that "shape". Technically, that's different from a conjunction, since it's just one proposition, but the result comes out the same way as if it was a conjunction of "the ball is soft" and "the ball is round", so it's not a very important distinction.

Yeah, if "yellow is red and green" is short for "yellow is red and yellow is green", then that statement is false, since a conjunction is always false if any of its conjuncts are false. If it is short for "yellow is a mixture of red and green in an additive colour model", then it is true, but then it is not a conjunction, and therefore can't be used to test conjunction elimination. If it's short for "A JPEG picture has yellow between some red and some green", then it's also not a conjunction, and also not always true.

The pie example highlights another distinction too, "Pie is crust and pie is filling" is false, as we've mentioned. However, "pie is crust and filling" also misses some info, filling next to crust isn't a pie either, nor is filling and crust that is far apart. The conclusion is mostly that you need to be careful with what your words mean. Kokomojojo by contrast hasn't addressed and arguably not even noticed the failures he's made.

He hasn't even stated what part of conjunction elimination it addresses. It's pretty clear what he addresses, but if you write it out, it becomes pretty clear what the error is, so I'm not letting him get away with that failure to fill in the gaps.

 

Yes. As you wrote, precision of what is being said is important, lest one equivocate between meanings, which actually seems to be Koko's favourite game to play. He does the same when he criticizes Flew while refusing to address Flews own definitions and while applying meanings Flew very explicitly doesn't use. He thinks claims to "correct" Flew, but doesn't actually address what Flew wrote.

 

There are four lights!

 

and is a conjunction lol

: a logical operator that requires both of two inputs to be present or two conditions to be met for an output to be made or a statement to be executed

"yellow is a mixture of red and green in an additive colour model"

"yellow is a mixture of green in an additive colour model" -false

 

Calm down Jean-Luc