Ben Wallis’s counter-apologetics blog

Dr. James Anderson has recently completed, with Greg Welty, the forthcoming paper "The Lord of Non-Contradiction," in which he argues for the existence of God from the laws of logic. We may divide the argument into two portions, the first where he holds that there is a necessarily existent mind, and the second that such a mind must be the mind of God. His summary of the first part of the argument proceeds thusly: "The laws of logic are necessary truths about truths; they are necessarily true propositions. Propositions are real entities, but cannot be physical entities; they are essentially thoughts. So the laws of logic are necessarily true thoughts. Since they are true in every possible world, they must exist in every possible world. But if there are necessarily existent thoughts, there must be a necessarily existent mind" (p20). Of course this is a summary only, and in the full paper each step in this argument is carefully defended with sub-arguments. For my o...

In philosophical discussions with laypersons I often encounter references to three so-called "laws of logic." Although they may take any of a wide range of different expressions which convey an arguably greater diversity of meaning, I shall adopt for the purposes of this document a simple and specific set of formulations, given thusly: The law of identity: Every entity is the same as itself. The law of noncontradiction: No proposition is both true and false. The law of excluded middle: Every proposition is either true or false.