When a premise is false...

Reader Jim commented so cogently on a recent post that it behooves Moristotle to display his comment prominently:

In mathematical logic, the truth table value of the expression "If A then B" is True when "A" is False. That's why it's difficult to refute a "B" in which the subject is god. It's not conclusions (B's) that should be challenged, but premises (A's); e.g., "God exists."

"A" and "B" are of course sentences (or propositions).

A corroborating view

After receiving Jim's comment, I happily encountered the following passage, from Christopher Hitchens's brave 2007 book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything:

[Professions of faith] are—however wicked they may be—almost beyond criticism. They consist...in merely assuming what has to be proved. Thus, a bald assertion is then followed with the words "for this reason," as if all the logical work had been done by making the assertion...Scientists have an expression for hypotheses that are utterly useless even for learning from mistakes. They refer to them as being "not even wrong." Most so-called spiritual discourse us if this type.