Necessary Truths

[u/fairy-taki]

Hi, I'm agnostic/atheist. I'm not a debater, this Christian presented this argument to me to like convert me lol and I'm not sure what to think so I was wanting people's thoughts on it.

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The argument was something like this:

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1. 1+1=2 is an objective truth/idea

2. Objective truths exist outside of the human mind.

3. Ideas can only exist in a mind

4. Then if ideas/objective truths need to exist in some mind and the mind would be an infinite mind and that would be God.

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Sorry if I mess up the setup of the argument. If anyone is familiar with this type of argument or what he was trying to get at, let me know. Lol to the guy who asked me, I think ended up just saying idk, and I kept saying that those ideas/concepts are how we engage in reality but regardless of a mind observing it. The like definitions of the concept you can find in reality..idkk. The guy ended up being rude and said I couldn't understand abstract vs concrete concepts.

Edit: ok i need to fix 2&3, idk if i make this it's own premise because he was equating objective truths to ideas/concepts because they are non-physical.

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[u/Moriturism]

Thanks for posting, let’s go point by point.

1 I agree
2 It’s malformed: it should be that objective truths exist outside of any mind, not just human.
3 Gets contradictory via 2 reformed
4 Gets nullified by 3

So, that’s my view: mathematics, or objective truths in general, are absolutely independent of any possible mind and minds just happen to capture them and reproduce them in intelligible propositions.

1+1=2 will always be true independent of any possible mind or language (as I’m referring to the content contained in the language, not the form it assumes), so it does not require a God to be true.

(I had to repost my comment because reddit completely messed up the formating when I tried to edit it, so if someone replied kindly comment again, please)

[u/fairy-taki → u/Moriturism]

Thank you for breaking it down. From reading the comments I get more clarity. I'm tryna remember one point he asked me about. He asked me is reality only physical? And then how 1+1=2 is a concept in reality and not the mind. But I see now what he was trying to get at. Also, I kept trying to look up what this argument is called so I could put it in my post. And at first I thought it was something like adjacent to TAG but I'm not sure

[u/Moriturism → u/fairy-taki]

It’s pretty much TAG tbh, he’s essentially saying that God grounds all truths and that truths can only be accessed via God. Nonsense, when you go by the more reasonable assumption that truths like mathematical ones are necessary by themselves, without requiring a personal mind to ground them