Aquinas wrote: Thus, here is my argument:
1. In God all goodness resides
2. Truth is good and
3. The goodness of truth is found by following true things
4. Therefore, truth leads to God
This argument is valid, but the soundness is what you are disputing. The soundness of a deductive argument does not depend on whether someone accepts a premise or not, but only if the premise is in fact true. You can deny the premises in this argument all you want:
You Aquinas have the burden to prove your premises true. Making assertions absent evidence is what you've done. In # 1 above..where is your evidence for a God. You've not even defined what God is. If the def'n of God is..."all goodness resides"...that doesn't tell anyone very much. Lots of things have goodness residing in them. In # 2 "Truth is all good"..that's your assertion...since when is truth all good? Truth that hurts isn't good.
# 3 is another assertion which doesn't make much sense. What are "true things"? What is "goodness of truth" and what evidence do you have that this "goodness of truth" your words can be found?
Your whole deductive argument is a pile of words saying and proving nothing. It's a pile of B.S. basically.
1. All men have bodies
2. George Bush is a man
3. Therefore, George Bush has a body
The denial of the premises in this argument only shows that the person denying them is a moron, it says nothing about the truth of the argument.
Well let's look at your deductive argument. I understand what men means..we can agree on that without going into lengthy def'ns and discussion. I understand what a a physical body is and again we can agree. If I didn't agree with you I'd expect evidence of men, and of bodies. I'd want a def'n and proof of those things existing, since we are talking reality here not fantasy.
For premise #2, I know who George Bush is ..I can accept the claim as true, but if I didn't know I'd want the information who he is and the evidence to confirm.
So both claims 1 & 2, I can agree are true. There's no problem, it's a valid sound deductive argument.
I already explained this to another poster in the other thread we posted in, but (surprise), you didn't read it. Whether an argument is compelling or not can be argued, but without posting counter argument(s) of your own, and based on the responses you have addressed to me, all you have really demonstrated to us at this point is that 1) you fail to read arguments before criticizing them and 2) you have a very shallow understanding of logic.
My goodness you are quite a character. It's really very simple Aquinas..you can not create truths of things existing or of reality of event happening with words. You can not set up deductive arguments, in which you present premises which include things which haven't been defined or proven and expect the premises or your assertions to be accepted as true. You have to prove the premises are true. In your George Bush example it was obvious the premises were true..but not in your previous example.
Edit: it looks as if you've changed your previous response to me, while I was posting this. It's really late right now, I'll have to look at it later, tuesday.