George,

FYI.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-atomism/

Moreovever, Popkin elsewhere notes Russell (with Whitehead and,Wittgenstein) Aristotelian held the classical logic was limited to classes rather propositions. "God" in the way Russell uses the word (or should say Word ;-))is in a sense God is a subject and predicate. I see him reading your example as, "God [who is in heaven (and other atttibutes)]is in heaven". If I understanding Russell correctly the classical representation of the "God" is not atomic, rather it is too generalised. Further, "God" is an indefinite pronoun, wherein do we mean, Venus, Jesus or Apollo? The word is confused because of (a) its subject-prediect form and (b) its indirect denotation as to whom God refers.

Regarding the latter (b), above, in a different sense, though, Sells makes this mistake all the time in his OLO "Forum" articles. Although, it would not address the problem of classical presenation of classes, it would be clearer for Sells to say, a God, Abrahamic God, the Christian God or the Anglican God, each towards a greater degree of specificity, yet this approach still does not really resolving the issues raises by Russell or, for that matter, by me, regarding, systematic serial analysis. Is there are Creating Agent yes/no, thence there a god yes/no, thence is that particular god revealed,thence how many gods are there, [assuming one], thence, we ask, which named god is God? Now we can can say God XYZ,and, we still hacen't addressed is there are true (other) God that is not revealed?

We have touches on Sells' liberty as a writer before in the conext of the last paragraph, wherin you held it is his article and I suggested it is a public (not exclusive) forum).

Oliver,
Thank you for the link explaining Russell’s logical atomism which, however, does not contain your sentences (a) and (b) where Russell would state something about their “logical” correctness or incorrectness. The syllogism, or tautology, I stated is of the form (this OLO does not allow me to use characters for logical quantifiers): if x belongs to S, and y does not belong to S then y is different from x. It has nothing to do with Russell’s, or anybody else’s, idea/definition of God, heaven, etc.

Yes, you can discuss Russell’s ideas of God and existence (part of which is that Russell doesn’t believe God exists), that, however has nothing to do with “logical” correctness. Of course, if you believe something strongly, you see that belief as “correct”, but you should not use logic (in the scholarly, not populist, meaning of the word) to justify your a priori beliefs (world-view presuppositions or axioms).

Are you referring to Richard H. Popkin? Quoting what?

As to Sells, I think he made it pretty clear he spoke from a Christian point of view, so he did not have to spell out whom he meant by God. When an Australian speaks about the Queen he/she does not have to spell out that he/she does not mean e.g. the Queen of Netherlands. If you have problems with Christian world-view perspectives, you can choose other - religious or not - and eventually try to compare them with Sellick’s.

Let me repeat, Sellick’s article was not about this, about comparative religion, although he probably spoke of atheists in a manner they indeed might find offending. In my opinion, this is nothing compared to what some contributors here write when referring to e.g. Christians, although I am not going into a comparative study of offenses.

I am afraid, we have been going in circles about these topics.

George,

I do follow your syllogisms. I have all along. The terms are logical as you have chosen to use them, yet there is another perspective.

I provided the Bertrand Russell link for your reference, to show the notion of logical propositions vis-a-vis logical classes.

Elsewhere, Popkin (and Stroll)refer God. If you have a copy of their "Philosophy Made Simple" primer (I suspect you do), look up Bertrand Russell outside of the Logic Chapter.

As I interpret Popkin et al. on Russell, with the sentence "God lives in heaven.", we have an issue with the word, God, because "thou art in heaven" is assumed by the word "God" in the subject-predicate form of the word. Something (called God) that lives in heaven, lives in heaven. "God" is not an atomic word.

If memory serves I had a problem with OLO supporting equations when we discused Dorac a long time back.

I do not think we are moving in circles.

I once worked on an Artificial Intelligence project with IBM where we used "Structured English" which was similar to the atomic and molecular constructions used by Russell. The Business Requirements Specifications had to be written in a written form wherein the Application Systems Developers could not err because ambiguity in what was written, in following directions. It was hard to do.

Regards.

Oliver,
I do not own the book by Popkin and Stroll but what I gather from amazon.com reviews it seems to be a good introduction to atheist (naturalist-empiricist-positivist?) philosophies, so I shall probably buy it. As far as I can understand logical atomism, it is a system rather obvious when dealing with mathematical concepts - definitions and theorems - but I really do not see to what extent it can be generalized to deal with metaphysical questions in general. This is a statement about my ignorance, not about Russell.

When you DEFINE God as “who is in heaven” then “God lives in heaven” is a tautology whatever “heaven” means; similarly if you define an Australian as a person who resides in Australia, then “all Australians live in Australia” is a tautology, the same as the syllogism I offered above.

“According to Russell, an atomic word was one which could not be defined in a way that would enable anyone to learn its meaning without acquaintance with the thing designed by it” (Jaegwon Kim, “A Companion to Metaphysics”, Wiley-Blackwell 2009, p. 379). So I would rather think that the word “God” is an atomic word “which could not be defined in a way that would enable anyone to learn its meaning without acquaintance with” the Reality it points to, a Reality that different religions and/or cultures model differently. These models then have intrinsic structures, hence are not “atomic”. However, let me repeat, I do not know how this fits into Russell’s point of view. All I can see is that Russell has its logical atoms or atomic words, Leibniz his monads and perhaps similar tendencies led Dawkins to postulate his memes.

“Structured language”, programming languages etc are different from the language one uses in prayers (“thou - or who - art in heaven” from the Lords’s prayer) or e.g. poetry.

I mentioned “going in circles” only in reference to what Sellick should or should not have written.

George,

I think Russell would be happy with, “Jesus lived in Galilee,” as an atomic sentence, because “Jesus” (subject) and “lived in Galilee” (predicate) are definite.

In the case, “God exists,” under Russell’s posit, “God” becomes the logical predicate (not the subject) and “exists” becomes a “logical quantifier” which functions as an indefinite pronoun. Elseput, “Something exists”. Said something is “a certain indefinite something” having a set of properties” (Popkin and Avrum 1993, p. 288), e.g., God (“infinite something”) lives in heaven. Indefinite somethings (e.g., God) are not atomic propositions, recalling Russell is working propositions rather than classes).

Okay, with the above in place, I previously extrapolated the notion of “God” as “something which is [fill-in the blank]”, suggesting that God [which is something (implicit)] is something (overtly expressed), is a tautology. Thus, God [who lives in heaven], lives in heaven. Some indefinite something that lives in heaven, lives in heaven.

I realise that Sells is writing from a Christian perspective and I have probably laboured my critique of his methodologies too often. I respect his beliefs but I am puzzled by his process. Were an OLO contributor to write an article, which was not a play piece, on “Relationships between griffins, dragons and vauxhalls”. I would ask the author did he/she first ascertain the reality of these creatures, before describing their relationships. That said, I will ease-up on the need for prior investigations issue, and give Sells more latitude.

Oliver
"I wonder, if, in the future, "time" and "casuality" will be so well understood, it becomes possible to know, whether or not, the universe is a closed to system and in a sense the notion of "a beginning" in the normal meaning of the word, becomes obsolete."

Many thanks for that interesting reply, I will have to ponder for a while on it to get my head around the concept.

My first thought was, making the notion of 'a beginning' obsolete would certainly upset many religious apple carts.