Comments | zachwolff: Don't Ask

zachwolff

Don't Ask

Jun 26, 2006 11:51

The religious say - God is love -
The anarchists say - God doesn't exist -
and I worry that they're both right

Comments 10

ecopunk June 26 2006, 16:30:03 UTC

What about those who say god is irrelevant?

zachwolff June 26 2006, 21:44:28 UTC

I said don't ask!

I was playing on the sad syllogism. Adding your proposition to the mix we get "Love is irrelevant" and "The irrelevant doesn't exist". Not sure what to make of that. And who, exactly, says God is irrelevant?

anonymous June 27 2006, 02:55:32 UTC

If we're talking in the context of syllogisms, many consider the premise that God is love to be a heresy.

zachwolff June 27 2006, 17:46:02 UTC

Why? I don't get what you're saying.

zachwolff June 27 2006, 17:46:32 UTC

God is blind? Kind of attacks the whole omniscience thing, eh?

anonymous June 27 2006, 23:30:16 UTC

correct me if Im wrong, but don't you have to play with the grammar in these things? As in by making a premise that God is love the rearrangement that God is a lover also has to hold true. What does God love? Im not sure how to rearrange God doesn't exist, I guess Non-existence is godly?

zachwolff June 28 2006, 00:17:07 UTC

No, no, syllogisms are logical arguments of the form A=B, B=C, ergo A=C. Now you see where I'm going?

anonymous June 28 2006, 18:29:38 UTC

I think I got held up in the grammar side because I was thinking if A=B shouldnt B=A essentially like the commutative property in Math. So is this a bad way of going about syllogisms?

zachwolff June 29 2006, 20:59:36 UTC

It's true that A=B implies B=A, as you say, because equality is commutative. However, if my understanding of the word is correct, this has nothing to do with syllogisms (other than that they're both logical structures).

I went ahead and looked up "syllogism" to confirm things, and it seems that a syllogism is an even more particular form of logical structure than I had thought. Instead of being all arguments of the the form A=B, B=C, ergo A=C, it refers specifically to those arguments that take the form of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion, as in "All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal."

Pass the hemlock.

anonymous June 29 2006, 23:21:21 UTC

Well thanks for taking the extra effort to sort things out. Not to copout on refering to it as a heresy it's just God is Love is what people tell their 5 year olds so it seems cliche besides God hates too so that's where the contradiction/heresy comes in.