Does incoherence/meaningless lead to strong atheism, or non-cognitivism?
Offline I hold that incoherent/meaningless only leads to non-cognitivism, which in turn leads to weak-atheism.
Once you defined something as being incoherent, unknowable, incomprehensible, etc, you can no longer speak of it, at all, and this includes saying it does or does not exist.
Our inability to evaluate whether god exists does NOT lead to the conclusion "god does not exist". It simply means we cannot evaluate whether god exists.
It is therefore a non-sequitur to say "god is meaningless/incoherent, therefore god cannot exist".
I do think this is a pragmatic argument for saying god does not exist, but it is not a metaphysical one. This is an important distinction.
I would agree that only meaningful propositions can be shown to be true. But I also hold that only meaningful propositions can be shown to be false. To say something is false/untrue is to hold that statement IS meaningful, but factually wrong. Thus, meaningless propositions are simply meaningless, they are neither true or untrue.
Discuss.
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring" -- Carl Sagan
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Just joining the chorus of congratulations to Dr Todangst.
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Fifthed.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
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Books about atheism
Wow, thanks all.
Received my doctorate in May, officially began my post doctoral studies last week. I'm working way out here in Wyoming. Maybe I'll be able to call in on the show sometime.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
What was the Thesis on?
Anything explainable to laymen?
Heck, can we just read it ourselves? Also. . .congratulations!
Anyway, I want to address the OP topic. To start with, I'll choose a much more "down to earth" non-cognitive arrangement than the usual. So, let precosmia mean "that which happened before time." This is obviously incoherent since it implies, via before, a reference to a member outside the set of all members in the set "time." If I refine the language to its most explicit terms. . .
. . .then the question is is there an element which is both a member and not a member of any set? No, it is impossible for even a hypothetical to occupy two states which by definition preclude each other. No thing both exists and does not exist. If you should find such a thing, attach this sign to the nearest stationary object (if possible, it may already be too late!) and then run screaming in whatever direction seems appropriate.
Ultimately, all god-shaped non-cognitive situations should be reducible to set-theory-like arrangements and should then be thrown out the window as false. Therefore strong atheism.
This ignores categories.
Your argument only applies within categories. For instance, we can say X is moral or immoral if and only if X is within the category of things that can be morally evaluated, such as behaviour. It makes no sense to ask: "is my computer keyboard moral?" since it would be trying to evaluate the computer keyboard using a category (morality) which it does not, nor cannot, belong. Thus the computer keyboard is neither moral or immoral, rather it is amoral.
Likewise, we can only say something is only true or false if it first belongs in the category that enables such evaluation, which I argue is meaningfulness, thus, only meaningful statements can be evaluated as true or false. To determine whether something is true or false requires assessing the statement, which necessitates that the statement is meaningful. Meaningless statements cannot be assessed and so cannot be evaluated.
I don't see anyone claiming this.
No, they should be thrown out as meaningless. To say it is false is to say it is meaningful but factually incorrect.
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring" -- Carl Sagan
Well crud. Back to the drawing board.
Heheh, I was merely stating that as a propositional link and not as a response to anyone.