If A, then B…or not.

Bob says my head is a scary place to visit.  Truth be told, he does occasionally admit that that’s one of the reasons he married me 35+ years ago.  To this day, he says that I’m “irregular”.  In the common sense, it’s both a blessing…and a curse.

I tried teaching myself logic from an authentically academic book.  Not the term “logic” that is generously used in everyday usage, although that idea harkens back to the true definition, I suppose.  One of the few things I got out of this autodidactic exercise, (besides that fact that I probably wasn’t going to learn this without a qualified teacher…), is that false premises lead to faulty conclusions.  In other words,

Elementary, my dear Watson

Man, I love a good mystery!  A locked-from-the-inside whodunit usually gets my attention; our girls grew up with Nancy Drew and even today Father Brown beckons to me from the teley.  So when I saw that Ian McKellen was casted for an aged Sherlock in the recent flick Mr. Holmes, I was all about that.  It quickly became one of our Friday “pizza and a movie” nights—Bob picked up the flick and I made the pizza.

Both were great!  (Well, the crust was a little too thick, but McCellan was superb…)

I continue to be intrigued how the secular entertainment industry often times, if not unknowingly, leaves the door open for otherwise Judeo-Christian concepts.  Such was my impression of Mr. Holmes.  (If you haven’t seen the movie, feel free to proceed to the next post in your Reader, but I don’t think I have any spoilers.  Of course, I’m not done composing yet, am I?)

Sherlock, now 93, is experiencing a degeneration in his mental acuity, forgetting names, events.  (I’m 57, and that’s normal life for me, but I digress.)  Since his life is built on logic and facts, he naturally turns to science to boost his cranial capacity, as he is desperately trying to recall his last case thirty years hence that was the unfortunate catalyst for his retirement. 

Science is of no help to his failing faculties, but Sherlock is surprised by the healing power of something he never truly valued—relationships.  Loving interaction with friends who are faithful, appreciation of the people around us.  In other words, the master detective realizes (better late than never) that life cannot be reduced to facts and figures (a concept that has been increasingly prevalent in our culture).  We are more than the chemicals in our brains, and we need more than what the religion of science has to offer.

Don’t mistake what I’m saying, please.  Just as a point of reference, my husband has a Ph.D. in molecular, cellular and developmental biology from Indiana University.  My father and brother are M.E’s from Purdue.  We’re all about science stuff.  God created it.

 It’s just that there’s more to life.  Much, much more.

 God puts it this way:

^“Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.'”

The God/human community of interaction.  We are fashioned for that.  We need that “something more”.  And even though Sherlock  Holmes doesn’t quite make that complete connection by the end of the movie, he’s definitely moving in the right direction.

Hats off the Hollywood on that one!

 

Genesis 2:18  Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Divinely illogical

If P, then Q, unless of course you are Aristotle’s universal affirmative, at which point all of your P’s are also Q’s, unless only some P’s are Q’s, and this mustn’t be confused with an introduction that permits us to infer a biconditionality from a pair of closed subproofs, one of which assumes P and deduces Q, the other of which assumes Q and deduces P.*   Not to be outdone by the truth value of the presupposition of sentence S.  (Where’d that letter come from?) That is, unless you have a Boolean Connective…..

I wish I had at least audited Dr. Rouintree’s logic class.

Okay, let’s bring it down more to my level:

If I go to Walmart for groceries and come home with a puppy from the nice woman in the parking lot, and don’t tell my husband, THEN….

If I get a puppy from the nice woman in the Walmart parking lot, and tell my husband, THEN….but that