X is Y
X is not Y
Therefore, you should worship and follow God.
is a valid argument.
The Parmenides-derived argument is valid and sound.
And likewise, for “therefore, you should worship and follow Spider-Man,” right? And for “therefore you should worship and follow Captain America,” and so on?
If so, then let’s say an argument proving it unsound doesn’t exist. Which means an argument proving it unsound does exist, right? (See also: “invalid”.)
And likewise “you should not worship god”
P & -P creates an inherently valid argument for anything, however in boolean logic P & -P cannot both be true so the argument is inherently unsound.
That works. Or we could just question premise 3 and ask for either a proof or evidence of its validity “you can only refer to that which exists.” I posit the visible, tangible unicorn present in this reality that’s in front of me I just referred to that doesn’t actually exist as the one counter example needed to disprove the premise.
Yes
Yes
Yes
If we had some ham we could make ham & cheese sandwiches. If we had some cheese.
(Tip o’ the hat to Raymond Smullyan)
“If I’m not mistaken, God exists.”
“Of course God exists, if you’re not mistaken.”
“So I’m not mistaken – and, since I’m not mistaken, God exists.”
Even if your terrible argument actually proved that your god (and no other other god) existed, it still says nothing about why you should follow it, much less worship it.
A common misconception. The names of things can exist without the thing itself existing. The names of all things always exist, they are just meta-concepts. But not all things exist in and of themselves.
I can’t tell if this is a joke or not…
Well, it is and it isn’t.
The ”the visible, tangible unicorn present in this reality that’s in front of me I just referred to that” has to exist for you to determine that what is actually on front of you is not ” the visible, tangible unicorn present in this reality that’s in front of me I just referred to that.” When you refer to something, you are referring something, not a non-existence. Even ”a non-existence” exists.
See? I told you!
So ‘nothing’ must be something because there’s a word for it. And I can decide by zero because it now has some value.
Sorry, you can’t assume your premise (or really, you can’t assume the conclusion of the lemma that leads to that premise in the main argument). I provided a counter example. A real example of something I referred to that doesn’t exist. You can’t say “it exists because it has to exist because you referred to it.” It doesn’t work that way unless you assume it as an axiom. It may be an axiom in some universe, but whatever universe it is it ain’t this one.
Me either, but it’s so much fun, it reminds me of a freshman philosophy and formal logic course gone awry.
”[T]he visible, tangible unicorn present in this reality that’s in front of me I just referred to” has to exist, at least a concept, and existence as a concept is existence, for you to draw relations to it.
I guess you’re right if you draw an equivalence between a concept/form and the actual entity.
That’s going to be a tough sell, however. Most people don’t consider a representation as interchangeable with the actual thing (except in cases where the representation IS the actual thing, such as money – but even then there’s a division between me saying I have a million dollars and having a socially agreed upon bank framework in which that million dollars is represented legally).
The concept of a thing is not the thing. It is decriptive information. This is even true for the descriptions of concepts, you can describe a concept which does not exist.
Anti-God perfectly cancels out all the actions of God.
And Anti-God exists, because I just described it.
Well, I posit an uncountably infinite number of identical gods all doing the same thing at the same time! Ha, beat that!
That’s because he doesn’t exist.