Yeah, sorry, no.
For something to be logical the only requirement is not that somewhere in there a tiny, vague semblance of logic is involved. You actually have to be logical from beginning to end.
You people seem to be under the impression that those simplified examples to teach someone the logic deduction are logical. They're not. Sorry, to disappoint you, but just because the REASONING from the point of the premises may be logical, that does NOT mean, the entire example is logical.
1. Lassie is a mammal.
2. Only pigs are mammals.
The moment you read premise 2, you should pretty much go, "What!?" You see, for premise number 2 to be logically valid, it would require you to deny massive, massive, massive amounts of facts and evidence. Which is an illogical thing to do, thus the entire thing would be illogical.
The same with creationism; for creationism to be valid, you have to deny massive amounts of facts and evidence, and NOT JUST biological ones. The result being, that it is illogical.
Right. You can disprove the second premise "Only Pigs are mammals". In my post I myself admitted that this bit of VALID LOGIC can be made invalid by disproving the premise...
...now disprove the premise in the agrument:
"God exists and God is the driving force behind evolution (i.e. 'intelligent design')".
Good luck.
(Again, I'm not saying this is my personal belief...what I believe to be true [or what in fact IS true] is not relevant to making a logical argument)
Sorry, but that's not the premise of Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design's premise is that, depending on the version:
a. God created the Earth between 5 and 10 thousand years ago exactly as the bible claims, and then try to hammer facts in that framework (and failing miserably.)
b. There are holes in the evidence for evolution, holes we do not fully understand, and instead of further research to understand those holes, we say: "God did it!"
c. From the largest cosmological structures - galaxy clusters - down to the smallest structures - the atomic and sub-atomic - all follow the same relations, the universe thus working as one single fractal function. A single fractal function can only be the product of something or someone intelligent, therefor the universe was intelligently designed.
C. is the only that is logically valid; C, of course, has nothing to do with biology and says that science is completely right about evolution, and the age of the universe (or it's even older depending on the different scientific theories this is worked on.)
A and B however, are ILLOGICAL. Why; because the claims about how evolution works (or doesn't even exist) as well as the development and age of the Earth completely defies fact after fact after fact after fact, after slews of evidence and more slews of evidence and more slews of evidence. Indeed, so-called "holes in evolutionary theory" or as these "scientists" like to call it "indivisible complexity" have already be shown by evolutionary scientists to not be indivisible at all.
Going back to my original "Pig/Mammal" example, obviously you could invaidate the logic by invalidating the premise, BUT THAT'S THE POINT...the argument itself is a logically sound one. The person making the argument won the first battle by presenting a logical argument. The "opposing debater" must now resort to invaliding the premise to invalidate the argument, but the argument itself is still valid until then.
This can easily be done with "only pigs are mammals", but as seen in my "God controls evolution" argument, it is often very hard to invalidate a premise. And until that premise can be invalidated, the argument remains a logical one.
Except that it doesn't work that way. It isn't simply god controls evolution, mostly they deny evolution altogether, and whatever other claims about holes in evolutionary theory are false as well. To go back to the pig/lassie/mammal example, creationists and intelligent design (a. and b. above) is like thusly:
1. Lassie is a mammal.
2. Lassie has a snout filled with sharp teeth for eating meat.
3. Lassie can run very fast.
4. Lassie has thick fur.
5. Pigs are mammals.
6. Dogs are mammals.
7. Dogs have the following other characteristics: snout filled with sharp teeth for eating meat, can run very fast, has fur.
8. Pigs have the following other characteristics: can't run very fast, are fat, like to roll in the mud, have no thick fur just very thin hair, and a flat snout filled with gnawing teeth for eating plants.
And then the ID/Creationists claim: We don't know Lassie is a dog, because we don't have information on his paws, tail, its insides, and more. Therefor Lassie is a pig because only pigs are mammals.
Now your reaction should be:
And that is also the reaction to ID and Creationism of everyone who even remotely understands evolution and has some knowledge of the myriads of evidence and facts that support it.
THAT is why Creationism is illogical and always will be.
To understand the logical process (and the scientific process), one must take a step back from the "truths" of the world and view the world as an outside observer who has no pre-conceived knowledge of the real world. Logic and the scientific process are based on "what if". We should look at the science of logic "with blinders on" -- that is, without worrying about the real world. A scientist who has preconceived notions of what "should be" may taint the outcome of his experiments. He must be able to prove his premises independently.
No, we should not do that at all. All this shit about whether something has some vague form of logic hidden behind utter illogical bullshit and therefor we can (erroneously) call it logical is because I claimed, rightly so, that Creationism is illogical.
But some people refuse to accept the sun is hot if I say it is, and have to go and try and argue me until the original point is long forgotten.
Science is ALL ABOUT describing the REAL WORLD. It's its SOLE FOCUS! So is for that matter creationism; or rather it likes to pretend it does. To now say, eh, forget the real world, when the science is all about the real world is ludicrous. Creationism and ID is illogical because it denies facts, they do not wish to live in the real world, they want to live in the make believe world where God created the Earth exactly as the bible claims. In order to do so, they most close their eyes and refuse to accept any fact or piece of evidence - and indeed, have even manufactured evidence to try and validate their make-believe world. This is illogical, and even less scientific - and always will be so.
Let me change the "Pig" agrument a bit...
IF Lassie is a mammal
and IF only pigs are mammals
THEN Lassie is a mammal
That argument cannot be disputed in any way. It is 100% logically sound.
Sure, but that is NOT what Creationism and ID is. Creationism and ID is what I described above with Lassie, dogs and pigs.
A logician or scientist MUST provide independent proof that invalidates "only pigs are mammals". If he does so, then fine -- the argument becomes invalid. But just the same, someone must provide independent proof of the non-existence of God to invalidate "intelligent design".
No, they do not. If all the myriad of facts about evolution contradict with what ID says about the real world, then ID is WRONG, regardless of whether a god even exists.
Now, I'm sure our gracious moderator Mr.(?)
M'Sharak wants this thread to get back on topic, so I'll get back to
your assertion that
Trekguide's explanation for the sychronization between the Mirror Universe and the 'normal' TOS universe is "illogical"...
Trekguide wrote this:
Trekguide's final point on that seemed to be that we don't need to contrive a reason for the sychronization...it should be enough for the audience that the writers are telling them
"the two Universes are synchronized somehow -- now just relax and enjoy the show". The is no "unseen ghostly force"; there is only the suspension of disbelief, which is required to enjoy many works of fiction - especially science fiction.
I agree with
Trekguide on this. If the writers are telling us that the universes are sychronized, then that's enough for me.
Now you're being illogical. You say you want to talk about about my claim that Trekguide's claim about synchronizing force is illogical; then talk about neither my claim, nor Trekguide's, but instead talk about suspension of disbelief, which in fact, was something I said myself, even BEFORE he did.
I may be wrong, but weren't you the one who argued that the "synchronized Mirror Universe" is possible because in an "Infinite Universe Multiverse", evrything that can possibly happen does in fact happen.
If that's what you said, I agree with you there.
No.
I claimed there was no synchronized Mirror Universe at all. A synchronized Mirror Universe implies there is indeed a force that is synchronizing the universe.
I argued that there is no evidence at all that the universes are synchronized, that they just happen to have the same persons in the same positions, regardless of high or low the chances are of it occurring. In this argument, to strengthen the latter one, I also for a moment, touched upon the infinite universes as something he completely glossed over.
My ultimate original conclusion touching upon this subject was simple: the mirror universe just happen to have the same persons in the same positions and we have no clue why (apart from the out of universe; the writers decreed it so) and it is illogical not to mention pointless sucking a ghostly synchronizing force out of one's thumb to try and explain it.
However, I also agree with Trekguide that the only reason for the writers of 'Mirror Mirror' to create the sychronized MU is so they could tell the story they wanted to tell (i.e. use the same actors).
Which would be a point I made, before he did.
I'm saying that your very valid scientific reason that sychronized MU can in fact exist is not relevant to a discussion about enjoying 'Mirror Mirror' as a piece of fiction. I don't need the scientific explanation behind the existince of the syncronized MU to enjoy the story, no matter how valid that explanation may be.
Which would be MY original conclusion, not Trekguide's.
Essentially, what you call "ghostly force" I call "suspension of disbelief". If you want to call suspension of disbelief a "ghostly force", then that's fine. However, if that is the case then the "ghostly force" is not illogical.
I did not call anything a "ghostly force" apart from Trekguide's imagined synchronizing force that synchronizes the Mirror Universe with "our" main universe. All I did was claim that this attempt at explaining the Mirror universe was illogical because there are a whole slew of reasons why the Mirror Universe could be the way it was without having to suck this force out of one's thumb. This argument concluding with the statement that why it is the way it is doesn't matter, it simply is.
(Incidently, his subsequent claim that the Mirror Universe doesn't follow the Butterfly or Chaos Theory is even more illogical than sucking this synchronizing force out of his thumb. Even if such a force exists, how does he know it's the Mirror Universe that is being synchronized and doesn't follow the Butterfly theory, and not the other way around, ie "our" universe doesn't follow that theory and is being synchronized to the Mirror Universe.)
Creationism and Evolution don't even address the same issue, and are not in conflict with each other. (their supporters usually are, but that's another matter) One of them addresses where life came from, the other how it survives by changing. Neither is an all-encompassing ANSWER OF LIFE theory.
No, actually they do. Creationism isn't simply about where life came from, it's about how the Earth itself came to be, how old it is, and how life lived and died across the period since Earth's creationism.
Creationism, sadly, is not just: at the beginning of the universe, there was god.
It's actually far more general than that. So general in fact, that it can't be refuted scientifically. Now, if you're talking about the Jewish timeline based off their half of the bible (which isn't actually supported by the bible itself, but rather a series of shakey assumptions) then yes, that timeline doesn't make much sense.
However, one could agrue (logically) for that rather unlikely time-table by saying that the world was created in its current state only a few thousand years ago. It's a completely unreasonable assumption, but it can be supported by strict, untestable logic.
One could, but that's not what Creationists do, now is it? And that was my ultimate point, that Creationism (and not some fictional non-capitalized conundrum) was illogical. In Creationism, man rode triceratops with a saddle on his back.
In your above example, this obviously never happened, in that example dinosaurs actually never existed.
Personally, I find the Bible far more intersting in what it doesn't say. Like how old the universe, or the Earth, or life is. As a history book, it's so vague with 'the beginning' that nothing it specifically says can be refuted. It doesn't say how long the Earth was around before the 6-day work session, or how many years (or millions of years) the whole naked man in paradise situation lasted before the big mistake.
Anyway, individual interpretations may be complete nonsense, but they're not completely devoid of some internal logic.
Actually they are; if you coldly analyze the Bible's creation story and draw out what it says, it describes a flat Earth with a dome of water on top of it, holding the stars at bay; and then once the first creation story is over, the whole creation story is repeated, but in a different order.
