: Gideon,: You might perhaps be frustrated with my insistence that my belief in a Prime Mover comes from a process of logical deduction, and it may be true that I don't fully understand the concept of "logic." But let me ask you this: is not a process of elimination a logical way to proceed? That is what I've done in the case of the question of the origin of the universe. When I deconstruct what I know about the physical world, I come back to the same question: where did it all come from? At this point, I hit a brick wall, and I can only conclude that the answer is God. Of course it's a belief,
All fine so far.
: but I maintain, one I've come to logically through a process of elimination.
There's the flaw. To conclude that a non-physical God had created the Universe would require a) that you had eliminated all other possibilities (which would require you to be omniscient yourself!) and b) that you could use the physical and logical to detect the non-physical and alogical; which is akin to trying to use a metal detector to detect water.
Either your conclusions are too premature to be valid as "logical" or you are operating on a faulty idea of what is "logical"
: It might be that the conclusion of "God" is the one conclusion you can reach by logic, yet not be able to disprove, and yet still label a logical conclusion.
But it's not a logical conclusion. I'm not for a minute saying it's an impossible conclusion; merely it is always only a belief; and belief is at the heart of it, not logic.
That is what I'm saying; logic has no part in faith, because the defining part of faith is faith itself; ultimately, you either believe or you don't; and logic cannot strengthen or weaken either statement of faith (because atheism is a position of faith too).
You can't label it a logical conclusion unless you yourself are infinite and omniscient.
Gideon.
None.
