The Holy Trinity

I read a very amusing post in RichardDawkins.NET today about the Christian belief in the Holy Trinity (link).

A theist has mentioned that he accepts the belief that God, his son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are each 3 individual entities, but are also just 1 entity (God itself). To this Christian, "God is three and God is one". Everything is consistent.

Shuggy responded that this is a false proposition. And a false proposition implies ANY proposition. With such a proposition, the Trinity can be made to be consistent with ANYTHING.

Shuggy then proceeded to use an amusing mathematical proof to illustrate this.

So, first, we have 3 = 1 .... eqn (a)

Minus 1 from both sides, we get:

2 = 0 .... eqn (b)

Now, if we add 1 to both sides of eqn (a), we get:

4 = 2 .... eqn (c)

But since 2 = 0 from eqn (b), we can substitute this into eqn (c) to get :

4 = 0 .... eqn (d)

If we divide both sides of eqn (c) by 2, we get :

2 = 1 .... eqn (e)

But since 1 = 3 from eqn (a), we can substitute this into eqn (e) and get:

2 = 3 .... eqn (f)

Looking at all the equations we have derived, we see that we have proven:

0 = 1 = 2 = 3 = 4 and so on.

Thus, if you can believe in the Trinity, it logically follows that you can believe literally everything, regardless of whether it is true or not.