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by shawndumas 4185 days ago
a valid argument is valid apart from the truth of its premises [1]. I am perfectly happy to agree that an argument's construction is formally valid and still deny it's conclusion.

all sound arguments are valid but not all valid arguments are sound.

so I ask; in what way is my argument invalid?

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[1]: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity#Validity_and_soundne...

1 comments

>so I ask; in what way is my argument invalid?

I never said it was. I said it had a bad assumption, which makes the whole thing entirely pointless and self-serving.

Entering a debate where you make your arguments using the form "Assume I am right about the thing we are debating. Now here are all of the logical conclusions of that." is completely worthless because nobody cares about the logical conclusions when the argument is about the part you are taking under assumption.

The original post was, "If God exists, I doubt he cares if we believe in him or not. I like to believe he would not be that insecure."

My response was addressing the part about insecurity. You are objecting to the original poster's thought experiment -- "If God exists" -- which I was allowing for the sake of argument.

So you are objecting to my continuation: Is this what you are intending to do?