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Quote by Lloyd N. Trefethen

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TREFETHEN'S INDEX CARDS: FORTY YEARS OF NOTES ABOUT PEOPLE, WORDS AND MATHEMATICS

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Lloyd N. Trefethen

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“While I was at University, and afterward, I behaved in what seemed to me to be a logical manner. But now I realize that what I did was do things irrationally, and then after I would arrange the events in my mind so they seemed to follow some sort of reasonable path. That is not logic -- it is wishful thinking, and involves rewriting one's own history as one goes along. Life is not logical -- it just goes along happening, and the best anyone can do is try to deal with the present as well as they can.”

LifeLogic
Book:Traitor's Sun
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“Contrary to the standard caricature of philosophers as inveterate skeptics who have no truck with religion, among philosophers the view that the existence of God can be rationally demonstrated “enjoyed wide currency, if not hegemony . . . from classical antiquity until well after the dawn of modernity” (to quote the philosopher David Conway, writing in a book that had a major influence on Flew’s conversion to philosophical theism); and the suggestion that human reason can be accounted for in purely materialistic terms has, historically speaking, been regarded by most philosophers as a logical absurdity, a demonstrable falsehood.”

PhilosophyLogicMaterialismTheismLogical ThinkingTheism Versus Atheism
Book:The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism
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“The possibility of the existence of such a thing as "science" rests on a variety of presuppositions that neither can themselves be subjected to a "scientific" examination, nor do they provide any rational basis for giving said "science" the authority of the last word not only on general questions of human existence, but even in the specialized field of each particular scientific area. Just to give an basic example, without the words "yes" and "no", logical reasoning is not possible. No science can tell us what they mean. All formal logic is based on these two words, and formal logic itself cannot define them.”

PhilosophyScienceLogicPhilosophicalLogical Thinking
Book:O Mínimo que Você Precisa Saber Para Não Ser um Idiota
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“Well, Humpty Dumpty is one of the keenest arguers I know... he almost had me convinced that I had no valid reason to be sure that I was awake... It took me about three hours, but I finally convinced him that I must be awake, and so he conceded that I had won the argument. And then--." The King did not finish his sentence and stood lost in thought. "And then what?" asked Alice. "And then I woke up!" said the King, a bit sheepishly.”

ArgumentLogicDreaming
Book:Alice in Puzzle-Land
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“The materialistic atheist can’t have laws of logic. He believes that everything that exists is material—part of the physical world. But laws of logic are not physical. You can’t stub your toe on a law of logic. Laws of logic cannot exist in the atheist’s world, yet he uses them to try to reason. This is inconsistent. [...] The atheist’s view cannot be rational because he uses things (laws of logic) that cannot exist according to his profession. The debate over the existence of God is a bit like a debate over the existence of air.3 Can you imagine someone arguing that air doesn’t actually exist? He would offer seemingly excellent “proofs” against the existence of air, while simultaneously breathing air and expecting that we can hear his words as the sound is transmitted through the air. In order for us to hear and understand his claim, it would have to be wrong. Likewise, the atheist, in arguing that God does not exist must use laws of logic that only make sense if God does exist. In order for his argument to make sense, it would have to be wrong.”

WorldLogicMaterialismTranscendentalLogical ThinkingAtheism Quotes
Author:Greg L Bahnsen
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