I have not yet had a chance to review atheist scientist Jerry Coyne's new book,
Faith vs. Fact, but after
this review by Catholic philosopher Ed Feser, I may not have to:
Faith versus Fact is some kind of achievement. Biologist Jerry Coyne has managed to write what might be the worst book yet published in the New Atheist genre. True, the competition for that particular distinction is fierce. But among other volumes in this metastasizing literature, each has at least some small redeeming feature. For example, though Lawrence Krauss’s A Universe from Nothing is bad as philosophy, it is middling as pop science. Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great was at least written by someone who could write like Christopher Hitchens. Though devoid of interest, Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation is brief. Even PZ Myers’s book The Happy Atheist has at least one advantage over Coyne’s book: It came out first.
You gotta love it. Read the rest
here.
3 comments:
Great! Not reviewing or reading this book will give you time to finish your post on traditional and modern logic.
For example, what does traditional logic say about the statement:
The moon is made of green cheese.
j a higginbotham
Harping back to older posts, how does traditional logic assess the statement given:
"P and (Q or (If R, then S))" ?
"[S]ince traditional logic doesn't believe in truth tables", what does a traditional logician do, other than perhaps say, that's not a practical example, so we won't bother with it?
j a higginbotham
What do you mean by "assess"? Do you mean determine whether it is true? If "P" is true and "Q or (If R, then S)" is true, then it's true, otherwise it's false because conjunctive statements are truth conditional. The truth of "Q or If R, then S" depends on whether you are using an inclusive or exclusive disjunction. If inclusive, then if both disjuncts are false, then it is false, and if either or both disjuncts are true, then if you are using the statement hypothetically, it is indeterminable and if you are forcing it into the truth conditionality, then it is true. "If R, then S" is false if "R" is true and "S" is false, otherwise it is indeterminible unless you consider such statements truth conditional (which, again, I don't), in which case it is true.
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