Since Revelife seems to thrive on claims to superior logic and thinking skills, here's a mind-twister for you: the
Nelson-Grelling Paradox (paraphrased here from Wiki).
There are words that naturally describe themselves, such as "short", "unhyphenated", "English", and "pentasyllabic". We call such words "autological."
There are words that do not describe themselves, such as "long" (for not being that long), "abbreviated", "French", "misspelled", and "monosyllabic". We call such words "heterological."
By these definitions, you'd say that every word belongs to one category or the other. A word either describes itself or it doesn't; a *blank* word is either a *blank* word or it isn't.
But what about the word "heterological" itself?
1) Let's say that "heterological" describes itself. But, by definition, that would mean that "heterological" would not be able to describe itself. Therefore, the word would have to be autological and heterological at the same time. Doesn't work.
2) Let's say that "heterological" doesn't describe itself. Then it would do what it says it does... but that would make the word autological. Same problem.
Yikes.
Many commenters and posters on Revelife assume that, since part (or all) of their argument is logical, it is Necessarily and Absolutely True. These arguments are often based on axioms, or fundamental assumptions that cannot be proved. The more popular axioms here are:
- God exists
- God doesn't exist
- The Bible is true/inerrant/infallible
- Science is true/inerrant/infallible
- Human life has inherent dignity and value
- Human life only has the value and dignity we attribute to it
- I'm smart
- You're stupid
The failure in logic, argument, and civil discourse happens when we fail to recognize that the validity of logic is based entirely on its foundational axioms. We tend to assume that, simply because an argument is logical, it is true.
But what do we do when our axioms, unprovable as they may be, are at odds with each other? What happens when the mechanism of logic itself fails (as in the Nelson-Grelling Paradox)?
I propose that we simply say that logic
supports an argument and that we eliminate the need to say that logic
proves an argument. This is how we cope with "real life"; we assemble information, thoughts, and lines of reasoning that support or dissuade us from making certain assumptions and conclusions about life.
In this sense, the best function of a paradox is to keep us humble, keep us thinking, and keep us in constant dialogue and encouragement of one another.
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