Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tl00736)

TAT wrote:

>Mary Poppins:

>>The Vietnamese Terror wrote:

>>>Let's take A=Johnny trips over the curb, and
>>>B=Johnny falls
>>>
>>>Premise:  If Johnny trips over the curb, then Johnny falls
>>>Premise:  Johnny trips over the curb
>>>Conclusion:  Johnny falls
>>>
>>>But what if the conclusion is C=Johnny balances himself and does not fall?
>>>You have left out the C possibility, which could logically happen.

>>If these premises are true, Johnny could not balance himself and not fall.
>>C is only possible if one of the premises is false.

>Mary, what I was trying to say is that you cannot squeeze life and
>astrallife into a cut and dry logic.  

You can still try.


>The problem with a cut and dry logic is that you exclude other possibilities.  

All possibilities which do not logically follow from my current premises
_should_ be excluded.  The only alternative is that some of my premises are
wrong, which is impossible.


>The logic equation above seems self-evident.  You witnessed Johnny >tripping over the curb and falling.  In the conclusion, you are only repeating >the consequence of what you have just seen.  Duh!  

On of the primary values of logic is that it enables false premises to be
corrected.  Having the premises of 1) if Johnny trips over the curb, then
Johnny falls, and 2) Johnny trips over the curb, then seeing Johnny do a
cartwheel after tripping over the curb, and then realizing that the
conclusion does not follow from the premises, leads to only three possible
conclusions.  Either the observation was wrong, one or more of the premises
were wrong, or the use of logic was wrong.  Since observations and the use
of logic are generally far more objective than the truth or falsehood of
premises, it is far more likely that an apparently illogical conclusion
means that one or more premises were wrong.  The inability to logically
determine that an illogical conclusion had just been observed will enable
the false premises to remain undetected.  Someone without the ability to
think logically might continue to believe that if Johnny trips over the
curb, he will always fall, even after observing the contrary.  Probably
very few people lack this ability so much that they would continue to
believe something this obviously false, but many other more subtle false
premises can be detected this way.  I used to believe that Jesus had died
to pay the penalty of eternal hell that I owed for my sins.  But then I
understood the Bible to say that only those who believed that he paid this
penalty for them actually had this penalty paid for them.  This logically
breaks down to the necessity of having faith in one's own faith that he
died for one's sins in order to have this penalty paid, which I concluded
to mean that there is no objective truth to his dying for anyone's sins.
Since I still cannot see any flaw in this logic, I conclude that my belief
that he died to pay the penalty for my sins was a false premise.