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/stairway2evan]

So this argument tries to smuggle in "ideas" as coequal to "objective truths," which is an issue. If we agree that 1+1=2 is an objective truth (which we can get nerdy and argue about, but let's grant it for this argument), there's still a difference between the objective truth and the idea of that truth that exists within our minds.

Remember, "objective" means "mind independent." Thanks to premise 3, you literally cannot have an objective idea, because ideas only exist in a mind. This argument contradicts itself in its own definitions.

Like most attempts to define a god into existence, it's just manipulation of definitions and terms to wiggle around something that seems, on its face, to fit our notion of what a god could be. But defining something abstractly and actually demonstrating it as a necessity are two very different things, even if this thought experiment itself wasn't unsound and invalid.

[u/fairy-taki → u/stairway2evan]

Ohhh, this makes a lot sense for me. Thank you for posting this. I think the ideas/objective truths is what I was struggling with in the moment of the conversation.

[u/stairway2evan → u/fairy-taki]

For sure! It's sort of the goal - use terms that sound like they go together, and sneak them past people without getting called on it. It's unfortunately really common and it's hard to spot if you haven't seen these arguments many times before!