Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “better”, came with an email note:
Based on an old placard I was reminded of in last week’s Freethinker newsletter.
Here’s the placard, which reads, “NO RELIGION IS BETTER THAN ISLAM. (Don’t dare to point Fingers on ISLAM We love Peace)”
. . . and the strip, which is really a double entendre:
This is closely related to the ‘I would waste no time hiring this applicant’ type of letter of `recommendation’…
There is supposedly a famous (brief!) review in the august journal “Mathematical Reviews”, namely:
“This paper fills a much needed gap in the literature”
Many of us would initially read it with the “much needed” being moved backwards past three words.
“I can’t say enough good things about this applicant.”
That original placard is wonderful!
I recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever.
An effective way to introduce students to quantification in first order predicate logic is to ask them to nail down just what’s wrong with the following failed syllogism:
* Nothing is better than a long and happy life.
* A ham sandwich is better than nothing.
* Therefore, a ham sandwich is better than a long and happy life.
Works every time! 😀
At risk of violating “roolz”; sorry, cannot resist:
Raymond Smullyan, well known logician:
Some cars are junk.
My car is some car.
So, my car is junk.
As a sometime teacher of 1st order logic (AKA quantificational logic), this is another kind of illustration of what gets explained there as—the order of negation not commuting with a logical quantifier, either ‘for every’ or ‘there exists’.
A present day illustration would be a surely common saying south of the border from me: ‘Every USian is not a racist’, which is really meant to be saying ‘Not every USian is a racist’. The latter is a fact (AKA: true fact), but last Wednesday’s Mass Murderer sponsored event was once again very emphatic evidence that the earlier statement is false.
A correct commutation of the second is ‘There exists a USian who not a racist’, which of course is a rather weak way of saying something which is true in a much stronger way. But to get into the logic of the word ‘many’ is harder and more controversial than the simple mathematical logic I’ve sometimes taught.
Bertrand Russell in 1905 wrote a long essay, very famous and self-judged to be his best ever, on the word ‘the’. And that was just the singular case, e.g. ‘the horse’. Then he wrote another on the plural, ‘the’ as in ‘the horses’. And philosophers have never stopped arguing about so-called definite descriptions ever since.
Logicians aren’t much fun, are they?
But I’ll bet the slippery, slimey nonsense being spewed right now by many Republican reps in your House of Representatives are just as often that kind of logic nonsense used in the service of really evil rhetoric, just as often as the ones they blurt which are blatantly factually false–despite the latter being almost the definition of Drumpfism.
Of course Mo meant his or her sign to mean ‘there is not a religion greater than islam’ or equivalently ‘NEG (there is a religion greater than islam)’ or, slipping into some symbols, NEG (exists R with R>islam), or, correctly commuting, ‘for all R, NEG (R>islam)’. Of course, a Xian theologian would argue ‘exists R with NEG (islam>R)’, or again equivalently commuting with the change ‘NEG (for all R, islam>R)’ .
Here I’m accepting there is a pecking order for religions, with in particular that ‘islam>R’ and ‘R>islam’ are logically equivalent to negations of each other.
OTOH, barmaid deliberately changed its meaning to the exact negation of his, followed by empirical evidence, namely ‘There is a religion greater than islam; namely the one known as NO RELIGION.’ True, except for regarding the latter as an example of the disaster infecting humanity known as organized religion.
I said we’re no fun! But it keeps me at least amused for 15 minutes! Bet you didn’t expect an answer here that drones on for so long. Just wanted to frustrate those who read this stuff on those modern contraptions known as smart phones, phones designed to make the owner stupid. That’s also supposed to be a joke of course.
Oh yeah? Well no religion is better than no religion! So take that!
I thought he’d have them in the Capitol today?!
Or perhaps borrowing from bumper stickers I’ve seen :
No Religion – Know Religion
And the swap:
Know Religion – No Religion
Both sides of the double entender are true: No other religion is better than Islam in terms of the fundamental dogma. Even more true is that having no religion is better than being a devotee of Islam. 🙂
“No other religion is better than Islam in terms of the fundamental dogma”
No, Unitarianism, mainly because it has little or no dogma at all, IS better.
Hey, maybe Mo is just sampling that masking scofflaw Van Morrison with his sign: