Writing for success? You are literally arguing semantics…lol
I couldn’t find a simpler link to explain what a negative statement is. Given the whole 0 - 1 = -1 is proving a negative thing I figured it would be useful
Again, it’s not a positive.
Agreed. The output of your statement is not a positive number
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We agree to agree.
This conversation helps give an understanding of why the previous discussions related to proving God exists went the way they did. Either trolling or not able to grasp the most basic concepts.
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Probably more likely that he was in a rush and derped out on negative number vs negative statement and he can’t admit the derp.
Kinda the same either way though I guess
Sure. A stubborn understanding of the facts and not allowing myself to be persuaded by ‘group think’ no matter the pressure applied, I stay close to the premises for comfort and warmth.
Nobody has disproven ‘existence’ and ‘causation’ the two main pillars of the Cosmological form. You gave it a go, but never went back. I assume those where not your words since they appear to be quoted. So the arguments stand in tact. I am just the messenger.
But if I get anybody to bother with the premises, I get what I want. Someone, more enlightened than they were before. It’s a win for me no matter what.
You can call me all the names you want. It doesn’t affect what is true and what is not. And I will not be bullied into a position I do not hold.
Your confused. I wasn’t trying to make a ‘negative statement’. The standard retort is that ‘one cannot prove a negative’. A negative number is a negative and you can prove them.
It’s a misunderstanding of what a negative is. A negative is a ‘something’. The standard ‘teapot’ retort is not about a negative, it’s about a lack of knowledge that is attainable, provided the effort be put forth.
That is not what is happening. You either can’t grasp the basic concept regarding a negative statement, or you are trolling. Those are the only options.
And here we are again. Not being disproven != proven. This brings us back to the negative statement discussion, which again, shines a light on why the more complicated versions of that went so haywire.
Based on all the responses that’s not the feeling I get. But like you said, either way it’s telling.
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Who keeps mentioning anything about ‘negative statements’? The hypothesis, is that yon ‘cannot prove a negative’. That’s not a statement about a statement. It’s a statement about a false set of circumstances. Here assuming that ‘a negative’ means ‘non-existence’. Non-existence, isn’t a negative state of being, it’s nothing.
Further, the things your saying about said ‘negative’ only prove my point. Negatives are not nothing. They are in fact something, which is why the statement ‘You cannot prove a negative’ is inaccurate at best.
And I here I thought you were a ‘both hands’ kind of guy. And your about to do that very thing…
But the arguments do exist, which come to a conclusion, which can only be one of 2 options, true or false.
You’re now assuming ‘not false’ != ‘true’ (I like the SQL reference, btw), but in the world of deductive ‘a priori’ reasoning, that’s precisely what it means. If the argument has true premises and no other conclusion can be drawn from those premises, then that argument is true.
It’s true or false, but you come back to the ‘both hands’ methodology. These arguments are either true or false. And you can only falsify the arguments. The arguments are not only not refuted, but they are irrefutable.
Can you argue against existence? Can you argue against causation? Nobody else can or ever has.
And not all these threads have gone haywire. They only do so when people get all emotional about it.
cannot prove a negative statement. If this has not sunk in by now I don’t know what else to say. 4 (or 5?) other people in this very thread have acknowledged your inability to grasp this point, let alone the other threads where there were similar interactions.
Or… as I’ve said, we don’t know.
This statement we do know. We know it to be 100% false.
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My confused is safely tucked away at home.
A negative number is a negative number. A negative number isn’t magically a “negative” by virtue of being a negative number.
A negative is the rebuttal of the positive version of something. -1 is not the rebuttal of the “positive” 1, it’s a different thing altogether.
Kinda thinking you’re right
Edit: Fwiw, I have zero intention of entering the “logical” religion debate you guys like to get into. It got way too many base assumptions that I don’t eat. I’ll bow out from here. Have fun Drew
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OK. Now why was it necessary to create, by convention, i ?
Thanks @pat!
Also thanks for recommending a video of William Lane Craig vs. Christopher Hitchens. It might not have been in this thread, but I found it entertaining and informative.
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Well I don’t think anyone here was saying to do that. I mentioned the possibility of discovering one, which would be a process. Probably a scientific process full of questioning, debate, disagreement, etc.
Religions often give a moral code considered to be perfect - but they aren’t utopian because you have to continually grow in order to increase understanding of them. Also people are not under the illusion that everyone else follows them anyways. Where’s the utopia in that?
I am not clear as to why you have brought up utopianism. What makes you think that people dropping the idea of objective right and wrong, on a mass scale will not result in dystopia?
edit:
what I’m trying to say is that religious people tend to get to a point where they question themselves more than they question the moral code that they subscribe to. There’s nothing utopian about it
Word up! I recommend it ++++. I have never seen Christopher Hitchens choose to shut up and not retort until WLC took him on.
If you notice his speeches after that, he always referred to atheists and deists. He understood he could not defeat theism, his beef was religion.
This wouldn’t mean much as it not come from him.
I have had the fortune to meet and discuss in detail about these debates with Dr. William Lane Craig himself. I spoke to him at length about this dabate and others. I requested and received a high-five over the Dr. Sam Harris debate.
And I like Sam Harris, but he was destroyed in that particular debate.
I am going to see Dr.WLC in the next few weeks. He actually lives close to me and does a class every weekend when not traveling.
I will say Dr. Harris paid him the greatest compliment an opponent could ever give… Sam Harris called him the only theist to put “The fear of God in his fellow atheists.”
Since I a member of Sam Harris’s site, I have been trying to get WLC as a podcast guest. I am not hopeful, but it would be a nice gesture.
WLC is as nice a guy as can be and he knows me by name. I am proud of that. We have talked at great length about many things, even though I brought up some criticisms about some of the the things he said about Islam. Rather than making excuses he actually agreed with my light criticisms. And to my knowledge he’s never made those criticisms again.
He’s a great person, but he is not in tip-top health. I worry about him, in that respect, he still has much to give with his mind.
Needless to say, I will defend him to death for what he has accomplished in theistic philosophy. He’s made fools of the greatest minds in atheism. But he’s always taken the high road.
I may see him this weekend or next, maybe pow-wow on this very discussion. Just for guidance.
Well I had to put I more than 4 characters, but the sqare root of -1 is i. Technically unsolvable. It’s an imaginary number. It blows up binary machines.
That’s awesome!
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Conventional math could not solve the square root of -1. The answer is i. It’s a paradox, hence was declared and imaginary number. Standard math cannot break it down. Same as standard math cannot sovle pi. But they are still useful.