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Spot the logical weakness/logical fallacy

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I'm still learning so don't take what I say as representative of Objectivism, but here are my thoughts:

Believing existence itself had a cause is a misuse of the concept "cause," which is formed within existence. It's like saying time had a beginning, when "beginning" only makes sense with respect to time.

As for the first few clauses, "that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason," that is a common misinterpretation of the Big Bang Theory, which maintains only that the Universe existed as a singularity before expanding, not that the Universe exploded into existence out of nothingness (which is nonsensical).

Another clause, "then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason what so ever into self-replicating bits," is a misunderstanding of cause/effect and evolution. If you watched evolution unfold step-by-step, the entire sequence would be perfectly logical and natural, not "magical" and "without reason," unless whatever theist wrote this meant "teleological reason."

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Why do you need to respond to it? I would ask whoever you got this from to define what he means by "nothing" in the first place, since that is a tremendous over-simplification. It seems that "nothing" here means "God didn't do it" or something. In order to disprove anyone's assertion, you must first ask him to prove it, to support his use of words like "belief", "nothing", "reason", "magically", "sense", their logical realtion to atheism, etc. Otherwise you're just wasting your time, and engaging in this type of discussion is clearly an error from your part. Your first question is really the entire case for atheism, so look it up. In any case, what evidence is there to suggest that someone created us? What do you mean by "create"? Nothing is nothing, it has no capability of creating anything, since the nothingness is the absence of all things, and nonexistents have no potentiality whatsoever. I don't know what the fallacy is, appart from the obvious straw man, probably the argument from ignorance, which are enough to dismiss it.

Edited by 0096 2251 2110 8105
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The concept of a logical weakness or fallacy presumes that there exists an argument with a logical structure, but the argument is flawed in some fashion. An argument is a series of true assertions that support a particular conclusion. But what you've presented us does not constitute an argument in any sense. First, the majority of the text is not even a grammatical sentence. The long rant is just a noun phrase, not a sentence. A noun phrase is not an assertion. The last 3 words are also not a sentence, they form a verb phrase, lacking a (required) subject.

Perhaps we can be generous and rewrite this non-argument so that it at least contains two sentences. We could start by saying "Atheism is the belief...", and would have a declarative sentence (which therefore has a truth value). We could rewrite the last three words to say "This definition makes perfect sense", and thus we'd have a declarative sentence with a truth value.

An argument is more than two or more declarative sentences. For example "It is snowing in Norway. My car is yellow" is not an argument: the declarative sentences have no logical relation (i.e. the last sentence does not follow logically from the first sentence). The same with our two-sentence "argument". The first sentence is plainly not true (that is not what atheism is); the second sentence has so many possible meanings that it cannot be said to be true or false. (In fact, sentences themselves cannot have truth values, only a specific meaning of a sentence is true or false. For example "My mother bought your car" is true or false depending on the referent of "my mother" and "your car"). The sentence "This definition makes perfect sense" suffers from ambiguity and thus cannot be logically evaluated. "Make sense" is a vague idiom that refers to a number of things including "can be algorithmically assigned a compositional semantic representation", "can be understood by a speaker of English", "is logically valid", "conforms to all belief systems" or "conforms to my personal belief system". The sentence is not true on all such readings.

The author is using a clever type of rhetorical fraud. The innermost proposition ("there was nothing and nothing happened....") -- let's call that the "metaphysical claim" is obviously false. The proposition "Atheism is the belief that 'the metaphysical claim'" is also plainly false. The use of the sarcastic clause "makes perfect sense" pragmatically conveys the assertion "this is clearly false" without actually asserting "this is clearly false" (which would then require proof). Notice though that it is not obvious, grammatically, what is implied to be false. Is it the equation "Atheism is the belief that 'the metaphysical claim'". Well, because of the ungrammatical presentation of the assertion, it's hard to get that interpretation; instead, you naturally interpret the claim to be "'The metaphysical claim' is clearly false". The connection with atheism? It is implied, but not directly asserted, that atheism entails "the metaphysical claim". If atheism entails "the metaphysical claim" and "the metaphysical claim" is false, then we must conclude that atheism is false.

The proper response, then, is to expose this as intellectual fraud. It is not an argument, but it masquerades as one. If someone paraphrases this rant as an actual argument (composed of sincerely-believed assertions), then you might have something to address.

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This is very old argument out of creation. Basically the argument postulates that everything which is less complicated has to be created by something or somebody which is more complicated. Watch is created by man and man is created by god. The logical fallacy of the argument is infinite regress.

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Despite the dismissive tone, there is an obvious logical chain here. Atheism is [etc]; so, it is not the case that atheism. It is an immediate inference from the definition to the denial that this definition is instantiated in reality. The only way to get around this sort of argument is to point out that it would not persuade an atheist, and then work to make atheism more plausible to the person presenting the argument. You would do that by presenting scientific evidence and arguments from authority to lend credibility to atheism. That would break down the other person's tendency to make the inference, and strip the argument of its power.

Edited by ctrl y
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Atheism means only one thing: that you do not believe in God. It says nothing about what you actually believe in. For instance, it does not imply that you believe in evolution or in ex nihilo creation (i.e., that the world was created, somehow, out of nothing). Therefore this is a "straw man" argument against atheism. (Google straw man if you do not know what that is.)

It is, therefore, not a refutation of atheism. It is, however, a good refutation of the belief in a creation ex nihilo. Ex nihilo creation makes no sense. There is no reason to believe that there was nothing and then, somehow, all of a sudden something came out of this nothing.

The rational position is that existence is and have been and always will be. Which means: the universe, i.e., the sum of all that exists, is eternal.

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The text has a valid point. Unfortunately the argument that god created the universe still begs the question, what created God?

The only appealing answer to the cosmological argument I've read was one posted on here a few months ago (then royally poo-pooed by most replies in the thread).

The argument goes:

if you have nothing, then nothing can become of nothing

but in that case you don't really have 'nothing,' because you still have the rule 'nothing can become of nothing'

if you remove that rule, so that you have total, ruleless nothingness, then it is no longer true to say 'there is nothing, and nothing can become of nothing' (second part is wrong)

hence the ultimate state of nothingness implies 'something can become of nothing.'

from there the universe could begin, but randomly, and only blossom into the current universe when the rules generated form a non-contradictory whole, like some sort of recursive algorithm (this could take an almost endless number of steps but it doesn't matter because nobody would be around to watch)

some people made the argument that the idea that rules formally exist is a misunderstanding, but i think you can re-structure the argument to account for 'properties of existents' rather than rules

it would be interesting to debate the existence of God in light of this explanation (since it explains how God could be created)

my biggest problem with Theists is not their belief in God per se, it's the beliefs/morals they form around it

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The text is flawed. As Knast pointed out, Atheism is most certainly NOT the belief of "Nothing created Nothing". To be an atheist implies not believing in the existence of deities. Simple as that. Other conceptions of creation you choose later on is outside it´s boundaries.

The text itself tends to attract people for its cleverly structured sentences and word play. It does not, however, hold any logical ground when related with it´s title.

To bring up two more examples of erroneous thought regarding atheism:

atheism-is-wonderful.jpg

atheism.jpg

Edited by Skieski
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Then "their" is truly no justice?

Well, if you don't need reason as an epistemology, I suppose you don't need proper grammar either.

Yeah, it wasn't so much that I couldn't recognize the inherent flaw in this picture.. it's that there were so many flaws I wasn't sure exactly where to start. But yes, when people ask me about my religion, and I tell them I don't have one, they're just like "Oh so you believe we came from, like, nothing?" I never have a response other than like "Uh.. yeah."

Hahahaha, atheism says rape, robbery, murder, torutre, pedophilia, and lying is acceptable? Funny, that doesn't seem to be a problem for Christians either.

Edited by Black Wolf
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LOL I know, it´s ridiculous.

One expresses his idiotic ideas bluntly and fails at convincing anyone. The other one shares a similar idea, only he/she uses "complex and sophisticated" vocabulary which manages to confuse a big percentage of the readers into thinking "This might actually make some sense..." when, had they actually understood what it said clearly, that would have laughed.

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atheism.jpg

I'm not really sure how to respond to this. Why is more logical to believe nothing created us, as opposed to someone? Would that not just lead to infinite regression?

Who believes nothing created us? Why must 'someone' have created us? Is the only alternative "created by someone" or "nothing created us"? If a river flows through a ravine and gets blocked by a rock fall from an earthquake, a lake is created. Did someone create the lake? Was it created by nothing?

See False Dilemma

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Calling the first axiom of Objectivism "stupid" might be against some of them watchamacallem rules.

Yeah, fortunately no one is doing that. If the statement were "The first axiom of Objectivism: The belief that nothing is nothing and everything is something" that may be so, but it wasn't. And even if it were, it's still wrong. I'll have to agree with Cmac19 and his estimation of the actual statement.

Edited by 0096 2251 2110 8105
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Yeah, fortunately no one is doing that. If the statement were "The first axiom of Objectivism: The belief that nothing is nothing and everything is something" that may be so, but it wasn't. And even if it were, it's still wrong. I'll have to agree with Cmac19 and his estimation of the actual statement.

Why on earth do you say that? Please explain exactly how you disagree with that.

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Say what? That I disagree with axioms requiring belief? Don't you too?

Considering the definition of belief is:

1 : a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing

2 : something believed; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a group

3 : conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence

-<a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/belief">belief</a>

...Yes, I would say axioms require belief.

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Considering the definition of belief is:

1 : a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing

2 : something believed; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a group

3 : conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence

-<a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/belief">belief</a>

...Yes, I would say axioms require belief.

The word "belief" isn't necessary when the statement that is being examined is true. You pointed out 3 definitions, I assume you're using the last one, which provides an additional particular use of the word "especially when based on examination of evidence" as an extension, still leaving room for the contrary, which isn't appropriate when referring to axioms, since beliefs that are proven to be true automatically become knowledge.

Consider this:

"The relationship between belief and knowledge is that a belief is knowledge if the belief is true, and if the believer has a justification (reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions/evidence/guidance) for believing it is true. A false belief is not considered to be knowledge, even if it is sincere. A sincere believer in the flat earth theory does not know that the Earth is spherical. Similarly, a truth that nobody believes is not knowledge."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief

..So, no, I still don't think that the word "belief" is necessary.

Edited by 0096 2251 2110 8105
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The word "belief" isn't necessary when the statement that is being examined is true. You pointed out 3 definitions, I assume you're using the last one, which provides an additional particular use of the word "especially when based on examination of evidence" as an extension, still leaving room for the contrary, which isn't necessary when referring to axioms. A conviction that hasn't been proven to be true is a belief, since beliefs which are proven to be true automatically become knowledge.

An axiom is not a "belief which is proven". Existence is a primary, it isn't "proven". Proof presupposes existence.

An axiom is also not knowledge, since knowledge also presupposes all three axioms. An axiom is something that is held to be true automatically: a "belief", as defined in Webster's dictionary, specifically the third meaning.

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An axiom is not a "belief which is proven". Existence is a primary, it isn't "proven". Proof presupposes existence.

An axiom is also not knowledge, since knowledge also presupposes all three axioms. An axiom is something that is held to be true automatically: a "belief", as defined in Webster's dictionary, specifically the third meaning.

Yes, I forgot. Well, since that is a special case, you can simply take it as "true" and ignore the "proven to be", there, problem solved. Yes, of course, axioms as such are not knowledge, they're axioms, but you have knowledge of them. And yes, knowledge presupposes all three axioms, a belief too presupposes all three axioms, everything presupposes all three axioms. What's your point? You may experience axioms automatically, but you have to analyze them and derive your understanding of their nature and attributes from reality, it doesn't just get automatically into your head. And I don't see how it matters if knowledge becomes possible because of them, they're still "what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information" (knowledge) in any case. They are known: "a mental grasp of a fact(s) of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation." Anyway, my whole point is that "belief" still leaves room for falsehood, which is completely uncesessary when the case has been already proven, and even more so when the source of the conviction is automatically to be held true.

Edited by 0096 2251 2110 8105
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Yeah, fortunately no one is doing that. If the statement were "The first axiom of Objectivism: The belief that nothing is nothing and everything is something" that may be so, but it wasn't. And even if it were, it's still wrong. I'll have to agree with Cmac19 and his estimation of the actual statement.

Thank you, my argument was not that that is not a main focus of objectivism. my argument was that

a) that is a horribly misrepresented and badly explained version of the law of identity and..

:) that while the law of identity is the basis for objectivism it is not the entirety of the philosophy

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Thank you, my argument was not that that is not a main focus of objectivism. my argument was that

a) that is a horribly misrepresented and badly explained version of the law of identity and..

:) that while the law of identity is the basis for objectivism it is not the entirety of the philosophy

It wasn't intended to be an explanation of the law of identity. I thought it was the best way of describing the essence of Objectivism while at the same time contrasting it with the "definition" of atheism that was given. The law of identity is obviously not equivalent to "the entirety" of Objectivism, but, as Peikoff put it, Objectivism is "the primacy of existence come to a full, systematic expression in Western thought for the first time." In other words, it is the application of the law identity on a massive scale.

Edited by itsjames
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It wasn't intended to be an explanation of the law of identity. I thought it was the best way of describing the essence of Objectivism while at the same time contrasting it with the "definition" of atheism that was given. The law of identity is obviously not equivalent to "the entirety" of Objectivism, but, as Peikoff put it, Objectivism is "the primacy of existence come to a full, systematic expression in Western thought for the first time." In other words, it is the application of the law identity on a massive scale.

ahh i understand, apologies for the criticism.

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