Sunday, January 01, 2012

Are the Laws of Logic "Thoughts" of the Christian God?

Hello my readers.

Happy 2555 to all!

Yes, here in Thailand, it’s not 2012. Thailand goes by a version of the Buddhist calendar, and it’s already the year 2555 here. Perhaps you could think of me as writing to you from the future.

As I predicted in earlier messages to you on my blog, I’ve been busier than Wall Street on a bull rally since getting back to Bangkok late November. The flood waters are for the most part gone, and life for most people is back to normal. But there’s a sense of urgency to make up for lost time, both in the private sector and also in public works. Schools are even going six days a week here, which means my daughter, who’s only in kindergarten, has a brutal schedule to keep.

Unfortunately, that means I haven’t been able to keep up with my blog. I see that Nide is still going at it, and that Justin Hall and Ydemoc are continuing to engage him. They’re all welcome to continue doing so. I’m sure it will all make for some interesting reading one day, supposing I get the time.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been feasting – really, nibbling and grazing, when opportunity arises – on a paper recently published by James Anderson and Greg Welty called The Lord of Non-Contradiction: An Argument for God from Logic. In this paper, the authors set out to “argue for a substantive metaphysical relationship between the laws of logic and the existence of God” (p. 1). Specifically they aim to prove “that there are laws of logic because God exists,” that “there are laws of logic only because God exists” (Ibid.). Presumably this is the Christian god of the New Testament whose existence their argument will finally prove. They say of their own argument that it is “a fascinating and powerful but neglected argument for the existence of God.” Of course, this is not meant to be self-congratulatory, but rather a device intended to hook the reader’s interest so that he’ll continue on for the next twenty-plus pages of fun-filled reading. (I’m guessing that, for Sye Ten Bruggencate, 22 pages devoted to the development of a single argument does not constitute “argumentum ad verbosium,” since it’s intended to establish, once and for all, the existence of a deity.)