Jackson Wheat

February 1, 2015

My Counter to An Argument for God from Logic

The paper The Lord of Non-Contradiction: An Argument for God from Logic was
written by James Anderson and Greg Welty and attempts to prove the existence of their god
through logic. The paper begins by setting out some laws of logic, some which are
demonstrably false. The first law makes sense: true statements are true and false statements
are false. The second law which states that statements are either true or false, however, is
incorrect. Take the quadratic formula for example: x=(-b(b2-4ac))/2a. When numbers are
plugged in for a, b, and c then the formula yields two results; however, certain numbers plugged
in for the variables yield answers that do not work when plugged back into the equation
0=ax2+bx+c. These are called extemporaneous solutions and are quite common to mathematics.
One would claim that the answer is wrong, but is the formula or the work wrong? No, so how
can the answer be wrong? The third law is pretty much a corollary to the second law. It
states that no statement can be both true and false. How about this, Cats eat fish; fish are
animals that live in the water. This statement is both true and false: the first statement is true,
but everyone hopefully knows that fish are not the only animals that live in the water. Mammals,
reptiles, amphibians, and various invertebrates also live in the water.
What I then found interesting about the paper was that it says, However, our argument
does not require acceptance of these particular logical principles or any specific system of logic
(whether classical or non-classical). Why write a paper arguing logic if one does not have a
system of logic or principles of logic to use? The paper then says that there are debates over
which laws of logic one can use, but there are not debates over whether there are laws of logic. I
think that is interesting because one would have to establish objective laws of logic, which I
think would merit an entire paper or book, and where are those laws? A mathematical or
scientific process could yield objective laws of logic, but I doubt philosophy and metaphysics
could. However, the authors of the article do not worry about this and press on. The authors
continue to move on with the demonstrably fallacious laws, and I really do not have to even
continue reading the paper because its premise is false.