gordo says:
"2 + 3 = 5 FYI is self-evidently true. Once you understand what it is saying, and what it means, you see it is true and must be true, and that there are no possible circumstances under which it will not be true, on pain of reduction to absurdity."
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Here's a definition of self evident:
self-ev·i·dent (s lf v -d nt). adj. Requiring no proof or explanation.
Okay, notice what gordy says about "Once you understand....". Well, if what he says is "self-evidently true" and needs no explanation or proof, then "Once you understand" is inapplicable and irrelevant. Ya see, to understand, a person has to be trained to know what the numbers 2, 3, and 5 mean and they have to be trained to know what + and = mean. In other words, they have to have those things explained to them and they would be trained to accept and believe that 2, 3, 5, +, and = are proven to mean what they're told that they mean. There's nothing 'self-evident' about it.
I can easily think of circumstances where "2 + 3 = 5" would not be "true" or 'self-evident'. Ask a newborn baby, or a cat, or a person who has never seen such numbers or symbols, or a person with Alzheimer's, or an alien from another planet.
The 'truth' of "2 + 3 = 5" is no more 'self-evident' than the alleged 'truth' of design in natural things, or the alleged 'truth' of a "necessary being" (the christian god, to gordy). Those things are only "true" to people who have been told that they're "true" and have accepted and believed it.
Here's gordy's whole post:
53
kairosfocus
08/09/2011
6:02 am
NG, 8:
That’s just an assertion [ --> in reply to 2 + 3 = 5]. You have no proof that something that exists, never began
Pardon, but as asked previously, can you identify circumstances under which the truth expressed in 2 + 3 = 5 will not hold?
Brazenly dismissing the matter by demanding a “proof” in the teeth of a demonstration by example, is selectively hyperskeptical.
2 + 3 = 5 FYI is self-evidently true. Once you understand what it is saying, and what it means, you see it is true and must be true, and that there are no possible circumstances under which it will not be true, on pain of reduction to absurdity.
That is, the truth claim expressed in 2 + 3 = 5 is true, it was always true and it will always be true. That is it corresponds to and accurately describes reality.
You may not like the implications, but you have no answer to the case other than to try to demand a proof that you have known in essence since you were in grade school or even Kindergarten.
In short, you have right in front of you an example of a necessary being. One that by the way is generally conceded, e.g. in the famous Russell- Coppeleston debate in the 1940′s, Russell was careful to acknowledge this first of all before making any other points.
A true proposition is true, period. that truthfulness did not begin, nor will it end. And where the truth in a sentence that refers to time — as in the author of this post is now typing — is delimited by time, the complete truth expressed in this proposition will be like that. That is, “now” can be filled in as to say between 10 to 8 am local time here and 8 or so, on this date and place.
Truth is like that, and it is seen through concrete cases.
your error continues:
I agree that fine tuning points to an intelligent designer, but it does not point to the existence of anything being eternal.
But it is not fine tuning that points to there being a necessary being at the causal root of our cosmos but — even through multiverse speculations — its contingency.
Which is most easily seen in the evidence that it has a beginning.
Have you done the half-burned match exercise? That will show you what makes things contingent: they depend on external necessary causal factors.
Absent such a factor and a contingent being cannot exist. It will not begin, or if a going concern, it will cease.
So, you have the problem of traversing the infinite in steps, which is indeed an absurdity, or else you have a root being that is not contingent.
A contingent cosmos, which is also fine tuned, points to such a root being: no beginning, no end — as not dependent on external causal factors — and with the power, capacity and purpose to design and effect a cosmos fine tuned for C-chemistry, cell based life.
Now, I acknowledge that his type of thinking is novel to most of us, that is a result of the gaps in our education and public discussion driven by the dominance of a priori materialism.
If you go back some decades, you will see that the Steady State cosmology was in part put forth as the cosmos as a whole would then be the necessary being.
But, alas for materialists, that was not the case. Our observed cosmos credibly had a beginning and is thus credibly contingent.
From that, much follows, and it puts on the table some very serious worldview issues.
Issues that are inconvenient for the reigning orthodoxy.
GEM of TKI
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What 2 + 3 = 5 has to do with anything else he says is beyond me.
