Physics student uses Boolean Logic to prove the FSM is the one and only god

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CatholicTrekkie

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Hello CAF!

I’m not exactly sure if this goes here, so if it doesn’t, I apologize. Please direct me as to where this properly belongs.

A friend of mine on a social networking site posted a link to this page:
scq.ubc.ca/fsm-theologebra-church-of-the-flying-spaghetti-monster-algebra/

What it is is a physic student’s attempt to show, using Boolean logic and algebra that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the one and only true god. It is fairly difficult to understand (even by me, who has a knowledge of calculus and Boolean operators), so It’s not for everyone. Essentially he uses a slew of theorems and assumptions to prove the FSM is the only true god.

Now, looking over it briefly, I came across this:
The interpretation of n is not as easy as one may expect. It represents the amount of believed influence of god in everyday’s life. In Hinduism, two terms containing n are present because of the great number of gods they believe in. The FSM Church has one n factor because its god is still alive. The other elements of Я do either have a dead messiah or no god at all.
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What he’s saying (in layman’s terms) is that Christianity’s messiah is “dead”. This, of course, is utterly false, since Jesus Christ rose from the dead and subsequently rose into heaven. Therefore, since one of his definitions is false, his entire process is false, as is his conclusion.

If anyone else cares to analyze this, you are more than welcome (even to tell me that I am completely off the mark). To tell the truth, his whole process seems to be favored towards proving the FSM as true (for more reasons than the aforementioned).
 
I’m an atheist, and it’s fairly easy to criticize the ‘discovery’ of the Physics student using a part of St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument.

The first part of St. Anselm’s Ontological argument is that God is that than which no greater can be conceived. This is manifested in Scripture, when God says "“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8). You can imagine something greater than a Flying Spaghetti Monster - a gigantic human who is going to eat it. That makes the Flying Spaghetti Monster subject to the imaginary gigantic human. That means the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not god because it is not all-powerful (omnipotence). Scripture records in several instances the maxim there is no god but God: “"On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn–both men and animals–and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD” (Exodus 12:12).

We also know that because it is possible to imagine the essence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, that makes the Flying Spaghetti Monster a part of the temporal universe. It lacks transcendence. This means the Flying Spaghetti Monster, like yourself, has a “prior cause”. It is not self-sufficient or independent, but relies on a sequence of previous causes for it’s own existence. This is diametrically opposed to the biblical conception of God. Indeed, God says to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14), demonstrating God’s own self-sufficiency. Neither can you imagine or see God - Moses was told by God that “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). This probably explains why the Jews didn’t notice Jesus’ arrival - they had no idea of God and they sincerely believed that the Messiah would be a great “warrior-prince”. They were off the mark: “”‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’" (Mark 4:12; cf. Isaiah 6:9).

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is more of a mockery against religion than a theological argument refuting God’s existence. There are plenty of good arguments refuting God’s existence, but the Flying Spaghetti Monster isn’t one of them.
 
CatholicTrekkie said:
Hello CAF!

I’m not exactly sure if this goes here, so if it doesn’t, I apologize. Please direct me as to where this properly belongs.
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Actually it has the potential to negate even itself – dear god, what have I done?
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The guy is kidding, no? That is a whole joke.
I thought on stopping here but I went the whole way through.
But I went through it and it was all the way a funny joke (he should have had a few beers too much) where applied Boolean Logic to arbitrary religous and not religious notions to see what in the end would come…
You could do the same with whatever game you find, with any matematical equantion.
 
The fsm is boiled so its not alive. If it wasn’t boiled i.e. if it is still dried and straight from the package it could have neither sauce nor meat balls added to it and would not be the fsm.
 
Ah, logic and religion. You can prove anything with logic and religion.

  1. *] Premise P1: King Ahaziah was twenty-two when he came to the throne [2 Kings 8:26]
    *] Implication: X => P1 Since P1 is true, this implication is true for all possible values of X.
    *] Reverse Implication: ~P1 => ~X Standard logical reversal of an Implication.
    *] Premise P2: King Ahaziah was forty-two years old when he came to the throne [2 Chronicles 22:2]
    *] P2 Contradicts P1: P2 => ~P1
    *] From 5 and 3: P2 => ~P1 => ~X
    *] P2 is true, the Bible says so, so ~X must also be true.

    This argument works for all possible values of X. So if X is “the FSM is not the one and only God” then the Bible itself shows, by the argument above, that “the FSM is the one and only God”.

    Of course, I prefer the version of the argument where X is “Warren Buffet does not owe rossum $50,000.”

    This is just standard logic: given a contradiction you can prove anything. Warren, if you’re reading I accept check or cash. 🙂

    rossum
 
The other flaw is that the logic makes no mention of the starting point ie. within a created order.

An operator that is missing is the Null operator, or state of non-existence.

He has to explain how the state of existence came into being, so that he was in a position to debate God’s existence in the first place.

Personally I think the “proof” of God’s existence has something to do with “zero”, or absolute nothingness. That’s just a hunch, along with a comment by an old pastor I once knew.

But proving it formally and logically is beyond my training.
 
Bob_Crowley said:
Personally I think the “proof” of God’s existence has something to do with “zero”, or absolute nothingness. That’s just a hunch, along with a comment by an old pastor I once knew.
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I’m interested, could you explain it just a bit further? 🙂
 
rossum said:
Ah, logic and religion. You can prove anything with logic and religion.

  1. *] Premise P1: King Ahaziah was twenty-two when he came to the throne [2 Kings 8:26]
    *] Implication: X => P1 Since P1 is true, this implication is true for all possible values of X.
    *] Reverse Implication: ~P1 => ~X Standard logical reversal of an Implication.
    *] Premise P2: King Ahaziah was forty-two years old when he came to the throne [2 Chronicles 22:2]
    *] P2 Contradicts P1: P2 => ~P1
    *] From 5 and 3: P2 => ~P1 => ~X
    *] P2 is true, the Bible says so, so ~X must also be true.

    This argument works for all possible values of X. So if X is “the FSM is not the one and only God” then the Bible itself shows, by the argument above, that “the FSM is the one and only God”.
    rossum
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  1. Except for the fact that that isn’t a contradiction to begin with. It’s a copiest error, which doesn’t fall under inerrancy. Ergo the Bible can be “true” without having this logical implication.
 
Pieman333272 said:
Except for the fact that that isn’t a contradiction to begin with. It’s a copiest error, which doesn’t fall under inerrancy. Ergo the Bible can be “true” without having this logical implication.
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If we can’t trust the words written in the Bible because of possible “copyist error” then what can we trust? It does show that God does not give special protection to His word to protect it from human error, so we cannot be 100% sure which parts are in error and which parts are not.

rossum
 
rossum said:
If we can’t trust the words written in the Bible because of possible “copyist error” then what can we trust? It does show that God does not give special protection to His word to protect it from human error, so we cannot be 100% sure which parts are in error and which parts are not.

rossum
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We can know what the originals, or something virtually equivalent to them, are based on the principles of textual criticism and Biblical Scholarship. See the article below for more:

tektonics.org/af/copyisterrors.html
 
rossum said:
If we can’t trust the words written in the Bible because of possible “copyist error” then what can we trust? It does show that God does not give special protection to His word to protect it from human error, so we cannot be 100% sure which parts are in error and which parts are not.

rossum
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You could go the copyist error route or perhaps the route that says reigns are sometimes counted by dynasty, as it seems the years from Omri’s reign to Ahaziah was exactly 42.

Either way, Catholics trust the Church to provide regulation in the interpretation of Scripture. We are not sola scriptura adherents. In fact, saying Scripture is inspired because Scripture says so is rather circular (and based on a misunderstanding).

Concerning the FSM, anytime you hear those words, realize you are about to hear a bunch of nonsense.
 
Thank you all for your kind responses!

Bohm, I especially liked your use of Anselm’s Ontological Argument. As for the other replies, I not recognize that his assumptions about religion are all based on false understanding. Thank you all! It was a fun read nonetheless.

I realize that from the start this was a joke, as is the whole Flying Spaghetti Monster fad. Quite honestly, the whole thing is self-defeating. If you are going to criticize religion, why would you create another “religion”? It’s all just silly and asinine, IMO.
 
Pieman333272 said:
We can know what the originals, or something virtually equivalent to them, are based on the principles of textual criticism and Biblical Scholarship. See the article below for more:

tektonics.org/af/copyisterrors.html
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The significant words are “virtually equivalent”: that is short of 100% certainty. It may well be 99.9% certainty, but that is not the level of certainty usually claimed for religious texts in the Abrahamic religions.

If part of the Bible is untrustworthy (and copyists errors must surely be untrustworthy) then all you have is yet another document which includes human errors. It may have fewer errors than some other documents, but it does contain errors.

rossum
 
rossum said:
The significant words are “virtually equivalent”: that is short of 100% certainty. It may well be 99.9% certainty, but that is not the level of certainty usually claimed for religious texts in the Abrahamic religions.

If part of the Bible is untrustworthy (and copyists errors must surely be untrustworthy) then all you have is yet another document which includes human errors. It may have fewer errors than some other documents, but it does contain errors.

rossum
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100% certitude is impossible from a historical standpoint, so your point is moot.

The second paragraph misses the point, because the Bible is inerrant, only in original form. Inerrancy does not apply to later copies of the text. The Bible taken out of context is untrustworthy, but with the various methods of textual criticism we can deduce what the original (inerrant) copy was. Or, what it was most probable to be.
 
rossum said:
Then we are agreed that the Bible, as we have it here and now, is not 100% reliable.

rossum
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Nor is any text which has ever been brought into existence. True certitude in history is impossible.
 
Pieman333272 said:
Nor is any text which has ever been brought into existence. True certitude in history is impossible.
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We know that from Biblical scholarship that the Douay Rheims is incorrect in many places. We also know that the Church has failed to update the Catechism in a timely manner based on current scholarship. We also know that the New Revised Standard Edition of the Bible has some erroneous translations. This is all known.

Even those who are experts in the original languages are challenged. There is nobody alive, who is a true expert, who can tell you with certainty the meaning of some words in the OT.

I loved Boolean Algrebra because it was possible to come up with so many new identities and theorems. It was seemingly endless, and proofs were so straightforward. It seemed like you could prove anything. No surprise that it is the logic underlying digital circuits and some aspects of program design. Not sure that it is applicable to mushy thought processes native to religion and philosophy. Mathematics is not the stuff of emotional and spiritual discourse. It is amusing to read the empirical dialogues of people like Aquinas who were confused about the differences between what was rational, what was intuitive, what was evidential, and what was empirical.

The Church still suffers from confusion over fact and fiction, evidential and empirical.
 
Rock_Happy said:
We know that from Biblical scholarship that the Douay Rheims is incorrect in many places. We also know that the Church has failed to update the Catechism in a timely manner based on current scholarship. We also know that the New Revised Standard Edition of the Bible has some erroneous translations. This is all known.

Even those who are experts in the original languages are challenged. There is nobody alive who can tell you with certainty the meaning of some words in the OT.

I loved Boolean Algrebra because it was possible to come up with so many new identities and theorems. It was seemingly endless, and proofs were so straightforward. It seemed like you could prove anything. No surprise that it is the logic underlying digital circuits and some aspects of program design. Not sure that it is applicable to mushy thought processes native to religion and philosophy. Mathematics is not the stuff of emotional and spiritual discourse. It is amusing to read the empirical dialogues of people like Aquinas who were confused about the differences between what was rational, what was intuitive, what was evidential, and what was empirical.

The Church still suffers from confusion over fact and fiction, evidential and empirical.
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Since your entire post is nothing but personal attacks and naked assertions, I am leaving it at that. Nothing proven by Scholarship contradicts Church teaching and odds are nothing ever will.
 
Rock_Happy said:
It is amusing to read the empirical dialogues of people like Aquinas who were confused about the differences between what was rational, what was intuitive, what was evidential, and what was empirical.
Click to expand...
Ignorance very often leads to arrogance… 🤷
 
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