gcomeau (1000+ posts) Tue Feb-03-09 05:58 PM
Response to Original message
5. I would propose you give some thought...
...to the difference between these two statements:
1. "Religion causes wars"
2. "Wars are caused by religion"
You appear to be confusing the two. Especially when you appear to be relying only on the military record of a nation that explicitly separates the church from the business of the government (like... war declarations) to try to illustrate your point.
Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top
Somebody failed basic logic.
"Religion causes wars" ... A => B
"Wars are caused by religion" ... B <= A
Logical difference between the two statements: none.
Of course, standard symbolic logic only uses left-to-right conditionals (as well as bi-conditionals but that's irrelevant here), since this concept is so obvious to anyone with a half-functioning brain that to use both would be needlessly redundant.
gcomeau (1000+ posts) Tue Feb-03-09 06:18 PM
Response to Reply #12
16. No, they are not equivalent.
"Religion causes wars" does not even passingly imply that religion is the only cause of wars.
"Wars are caused by religion" on the other hand carries an extremely strong connotation that that is the case.
Your entire post seems to be based on trying to claim the former statement is not true by disproving the latter. It's a bit of rhetorical sleight of hand. If you can find a bunch of wars that weren't caused by religion,, well then religion doesn't cause wars! Sorry, but no.
Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top
Connotation is only of relevance to the logically inept - which, to be fair, would include most leftists, thus I can understand such a concern at the DUmp.
Neither sentence is explicitly quantified. If the second statement had read "ALL wars are caused by religion" this might be relevant. Lacking that word ALL, of course only an existential quantifier can be assumed.