Does Christianity Violate Logic?

[Apologiaphoenix]

Jesus cannot both know and not know. That would give Jesus both A and ~A, an obvious logical contradiction.

Jesus took on the limitations of humanity which means in His humanity, He did not know.

herefore, Jesus is a compound entity, like a chessboard. That can be both black and not-black because it is a compound of black and not-black squares.

This is again confusing natures and persons together.

Similarly, your Jesus is a compound of human-Jesus and divine-Jesus. The two are different because one knows and the other does not. Because they are different we should analyse them separately as two distinct entities.

Two distinct natures in one person.

My argument is not due to Nestorius but to Nagarjuna, the Buddhist philosopher.

It's the same concept.

As to person and nature, I accept the existence of persons, I do not accept the existence of nature/essence/soul as a concept. It is a projection by our minds onto external reality; a reification. Buddhism does not accept the existence of a soul.

Then it makes no sense to talk about humanity or anything of the sort. If you want to go the route of nominalism, then there can be nothing universal whatsoever. Sure you want to go that route?

[JimL]

Do you violate logic with Christianity?

Link

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Are any laws of logic violated by the story of Jesus? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have a saying about many skeptics that I meet that they honor reason with their lips but their heads are far from it. One such rule is the idea of logic. For many, being logical doesn’t mean following the laws of logic. It means just not believing in God and miracles because those violate logic because, well, they just do because that’s not logical.

To be fair, some skeptics will try to point out some logical contradictions in the nature of God, and this is entirely valid. If there is a logical contradiction in the nature of God, then God does not exist in the way we have conceived Him. If that is what is being done, that is not what this post is about. This post is about the claim that something like the resurrection of Jesus violates logic.

Let’s start by saying what laws of logic are. They are simple. The Law of Identity is A = A. What you are talking about is what you are talking about. Something is itself. The Law of Excluded Middle says that A is either B or non-B but nowhere in between. Something has to fall on the spectrum somewhere as either true or false. The Law of Noncontradiction says that A cannot both B and non-B in the same time and in the same sense. Contradictions can’t be true.

From here, consider a story like Cinderella. This is one that we all know is meant to be a fairy tale and not a historical reality. We can say all we want that the events in Cinderella never happened, but that does not mean that they violate logic. In the story, a fairy godmother turns a pumpkin into a coach and mice into horses.

Has any law of logic been violated? Not a one. What would be a violation is for mice to not be mice while being mice or for them to become horses and not become horses in the same time and in the same sense. It would also be the case that either the mice became horses or they did not.

Even the staunchest atheist can conceive of a story where a pumpkin becomes a coach. It doesn’t mean he thinks it would ever happen, but he can have a suspended disbelief of sorts where he watches the movie with a daughter, for example, and goes with the story as is. What he cannot conceive is a story where Cinderella has two pumpkins and the fairy godmother gives her two more and she has five pumpkins. You can conceive of a world of magic. You cannot conceive of one where 2 + 2 = 5.

So let’s look at the resurrection of Jesus. The event is the resurrection of Jesus and not anything else. It either happened or it didn’t even if it’s the case that we can’t know if it happened or not. There are no contradictions involved. A dead body coming back to life does not violate logic. You could try to argue it violates science or materialism, but not logic.

This is the case with most miracle claims out there. Whether they are true or not is another matter. Now if they violated logic, they could not be true, but in the same sense, just because they do not violate logic does not mean that they are true. Cinderella doesn’t violate logic, but that does not make it true. The truthfulness of the claim will be determined on other grounds, namely historical grounds.

In dialogue with skeptics, remember that logic refers to something very specific. Skeptics will often act like if you are logical you don’t believe in God or miracles or something of that sort. That needs to be backed. That kind of reasoning on their part is not illogical, but it is certainly not rational.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

If you equate the obvious truths of math to the obvious truths of life, the answer is yes, Christianity violates logic. 2+2 =4 and dead people don't resurrect or get beamed up to the heavens. But the supernatural isn't bound by logic, so with the supernatural you can believe any claim you want and your belief won't have anything to do with logic, and so can't be said to violate, logic. You might say christianity is not logical!

[rossum]

Jesus took on the limitations of humanity which means in His humanity, He did not know.

One single Jesus cannot both know and not know. The law of the excluded middle see to that. Either you have a logical contradiction or you have two different Jesuses.

Then it makes no sense to talk about humanity or anything of the sort. If you want to go the route of nominalism, then there can be nothing universal whatsoever. Sure you want to go that route?

Indian religions, including Buddhism, make much less of the difference between human life and other life. You may have been a god in a previous life and might be a kangaroo in a future life. Humanity is not as special in the Dharmic religions compared to in the Abrahamic religions.

As to universals, they are all reifications. We project them onto the external world, but they have no real existence there. They are our own internal mental models writ large.

The emptiness of emptiness is the fact that not even emptiness exists ultimately, that it is also dependent, conventional, nominal, and in the end it is just the everydayness of the everyday. Penetrating to the depths of being, we find ourselves back on the surface of things and so discover that there is nothing, after all, beneath those deceptive surfaces. Moreover, what is deceptive about them is simply the fact that we assume ontological depth lurking just beneath.

-- Jay Garfield, "Empty words, Buddhist philosophy and cross-cultural interpretation." OUP 2002.

[Apologiaphoenix]

One single Jesus cannot both know and not know. The law of the excluded middle see to that. Either you have a logical contradiction or you have two different Jesuses.

I don't see how I haven't answered this umpteen times. Jesus as a person has two natures and He played the game in His human nature and willingly sacrificed divine knowledge like that.

Indian religions, including Buddhism, make much less of the difference between human life and other life. You may have been a god in a previous life and might be a kangaroo in a future life. Humanity is not as special in the Dharmic religions compared to in the Abrahamic religions.

As to universals, they are all reifications. We project them onto the external world, but they have no real existence there. They are our own internal mental models writ large.

I find it interesting you say there are no universals just after talking about humanity and kangaroos.

[rossum]

I don't see how I haven't answered this umpteen times. Jesus as a person has two natures and He played the game in His human nature and willingly sacrificed divine knowledge like that.

Your "natures" are in effect essences. They reified internal models with no real external existence. I do not accept their existence.

I find it interesting you say there are no universals just after talking about humanity and kangaroos.

Kangaroos exist. The great reified universal Kangaroo nature in the sky does not.

A quote from "Funes the Memorious" by Borges:

Not only was it difficult for him to comprehend that the generic symbol dog embraces so many unlike individuals of diverse size and form; it bothered him that the dog at three fourteen (seen from the side) should have the same name as the dog at three fifteen (seen from the front).

Alternatively, there is Heraclitus: "You can never step in the same river twice because it is not the same river and you are not the same you."

The mental concept "kangaroo" is a convenient shorthand for a particular set of marsupials. It is nothing more than that; it has no deeper significance.

[Apologiaphoenix]

Your "natures" are in effect essences. They reified internal models with no real external existence. I do not accept their existence.

So what? Your refusal to accept them means that I shouldn't? I refuse to accept nominalism.

Kangaroos exist. The great reified universal Kangaroo nature in the sky does not.

A quote from "Funes the Memorious" by Borges:

And yet, despite the different dogs and kangaroos, there is some idea of dogs and kangaroos that is essential to both that separates them from other animals. This does not require a Platonic form floating in the sky.

Alternatively, there is Heraclitus: "You can never step in the same river twice because it is not the same river and you are not the same you."

The mental concept "kangaroo" is a convenient shorthand for a particular set of marsupials. It is nothing more than that; it has no deeper significance.

And Cratylus said you can never step in it once because you are changing as it is.

I am not saying some deep significance, but there is a significance. The word points out a creature that has a particular quality befitting a kangaroo. There is something that if it did not have it, it would not be a kangaroo.

[rossum]

And yet, despite the different dogs and kangaroos, there is some idea of dogs and kangaroos that is essential to both that separates them from other animals. This does not require a Platonic form floating in the sky.

And it does not require us to project those useful internal classifications outside ourselves as if they had independent external existence.

One of the causes of suffering in Buddhism is just such unreal projections. We are disappointed when the world does not meet our expectations -- there is no water in the mirage.

[Juvenal]

I was born again in 1980, IIRC. Thanks for asking.

You're welcome. I was born again a bit earlier than that. A bit later I found I'd been born as good as I'm going to get the first time.

I saw a copy of the book on my uncle's coffee table a couple years ago, which surprised me a bit since he didn't seem the type. Turns out neither he nor my aunt have cracked it open - someone gave it to them. I've gotten about half-way, twice.

Open to a random page and start reading. By the nature of the subject and design of the author, it works. Because Escher's tesselations, Bach's fugues, and Gödel's unprovable truths share the same recursive structure, a random walk through GEB makes the structure even more visible than reading it straight through.

I'm sure those names mean something to someone.

You can ask any living mathematician about Erdös. Everyone knows him. Or did, until he died in 1996. I only met him three times, each time at a nearby university where he'd shown up unexpectedly. Word got out quickly. He packed the house.

Paul Erdős was a renowned Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. He was known both for his social practice of mathematics and for his eccentric ...

Featured speakers at national conferences are rock stars in their fields, which in this case is abstract math. Math folks know Conway best for his work on the finite simple groups, the "primes" of group theory, especially his analysis of the sporadics, and even more especially for completing the classification.

Okay, your eyes are glazing, fine.

But imagine if we could sort all of the numerical primes into a finite number of categories with similar properties, like the periodic table for chemistry. That would be huge. That's what was done for the "primes" of "groups," the most basic abstract algebraic structure.

Conway published the first full "periodic table."

It means we can factor any finite group completely and analyze the factors.

Any finite group includes all of knot theory, which includes all of string theory. Physics types are kinda hyped on that.

He shows up in the popular press every time a writer needs someone to quote about infinite dimensions. Returning to recursion, he's best known to the larger public for his Game of Life, an excursion into cellular automata so simple little kids can enjoy it.

[Apologiaphoenix]

And it does not require us to project those useful internal classifications outside ourselves as if they had independent external existence.

Let me know when you meet someone arguing that.

[Juvenal]

Getting to that.

Promises, promises.

Not doing that.

Suggesting that you could.

I think classical theology with the arguments for it could get you to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, perhaps Deism, or maybe some other system where God just hasn't revealed Himself yet. Philosophy alone cannot prove Christianity.

Suggesting you'd know what philosophy can and can't prove, and that Christianity can be proven.

Which is again another assertion given without any supporting argument.

_____

The problem I see with the examples given such as the Liar's Paradox and such are that there really is no subject matter. What is being lied about?

Hence the point of bringing in real world examples, including modern washing machines and self-focusing cameras, that work on fuzzy logics, which violate the classical axioms you're determined, without study, to defend as laws ... showing the arbitrary axioms of classical logics can't be treated as laws in reality. And because they can't be treated as laws in reality, they can't be extended into laws in more abstract spaces.

Furthermore, if you want to say that there is more flexibility in reality and contradictions can be true or something of that sort, then if Christianity can work in a tight system, it can work in a more loose system so I don't see how that helps the case.

Reality is not more flexible, and thanks for letting me do my own saying, k?

_____

Let's restrict the list to people who know logics, k, and people who wouldn't laugh at your idea that arbitrary axioms are actually laws, kk?

v.

Which sounds like just saying "Let's restrict the list to people who agree with me."

Which would be every working mathematician who isn't grossly incompetent. That's not an onerous restriction.

It sounds like that only because you don't know what you're talking about, unlike "people who know logics," and not because you couldn't know what you're talking about, but because you haven't studied logics.

To be clear, I'm asking ... well not really, because the idea is absurd ... that you find someone, somewhere, who knows what they're talking about with respect to logics — or axiom sets in general — and who would actually agree with you. Specifically, not someone you "think" would agree with you but someone who actually would, and not someone picked from a list of folks who likewise don't know what they're talking about because they haven't had need to correct the omission.

If you want to post about logic, without making a fool of yourself, you have a need to correct the omission.

I like you just fine, Nick, but this is fremdschämen.

Please, just don't.

The idea though is that God is not on a list such that you keep adding things up together and lo and behold, you get God. That's what I see going on when math is used in this regard.

Adding axioms to an axiom set doesn't "add up to" anything, it subtracts. Each additional axiom is equivalent to putting another bouncer at the door, saying "and don't let those folks in, either." Eventually, if everything works right, you end up with a decent club. Occasionally, the dance floor ends up empty.

And that's what your op was asking. Is the dance floor empty? Using logic, can we exclude Christianity?

Sure.

Using just enough of it to do calculus, we see there can be no greatest infinite.

Nor did I claim I have.

That's not the claim being challenged here.

I never used Craig in the sense you think I did.

I have no interest in what you think I think you did.

Thanks as well for leaving my thinking to me, kk?

If anything, I was going against his position, and I say that as someone who considers Craig a friend. I like him, but I frankly don't use his material that much.

I included him because he's philosophically fungible enough to support your position, and because his position is relevant to the larger discussion.

In a TWeb paltalk discussion with Theonomy, lo these many years ago, I pointed out that Craig's approving citation of Hilbert's "The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality" was either an own goal against his apologetics, assuming an infinite God, or an admission the god whose existence he's willing to defend is not infinite.

Theonomy thought the latter was likely. I still have no evidence to the contrary. You could ask him if you get the chance. He's your buddy, not mine.

You could also ask him if Hilbert would have said the same about the number: 2.

The century ultimately also doesn't matter to me.

It does if we're to stay within the bounds of things we both know. I'm not big on 13th century philosophers. Anything that old, that's still useful, has long since been improved. And you don't seem well versed on anything modern.

_____

The infinite like that is not what is had in mind when talking about God. It's about a quality He has without limitation.

v.

There's a word for "without limitation."

v.

Yes,

The word is "infinite," hence ...

The infinite like that is not what is had in mind when talking about God. It's about a quality He has of being infinite.

... and if we say everything is limited, I have to ask by what. That strikes me as a system with everything being dependent on everything and not having a grounding.

Lots of people are made uncomfortable by that.

Kind of like never finding out who "is" is.

You get used to it.

What it doesn't do is exclude anything else from being infinite, or the infinite being well-ordered, and the conclusion there can be no greatest infinite.

Regards.

[rossum]

Let me know when you meet someone arguing that.

Anyone who talks about "Natures", "Essences", "Substances" etc. as invisible properties of things, with the words often capitalised.

[One Bad Pig]

You're welcome. I was born again a bit earlier than that. A bit later I found I'd been born as good as I'm going to get the first time.

Turns out that's a Protestant thing, and my chosen alternative prefers to look at the body of work and not a point in the past. There's hope for you yet.

Open to a random page and start reading. By the nature of the subject and design of the author, it works. Because Escher's tesselations, Bach's fugues, and Gödel's unprovable truths share the same recursive structure, a random walk through GEB makes the structure even more visible than reading it straight through.

Interesting. I'll have to try that. May be a while, since my free time is asymptotically approaching zero.

You can ask any living mathematician about Erdös. Everyone knows him. Or did, until he died in 1996. I only met him three times, each time at a nearby university where he'd shown up unexpectedly. Word got out quickly. He packed the house.

Paul Erdős was a renowned Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. He was known both for his social practice of mathematics and for his eccentric ...

Featured speakers at national conferences are rock stars in their fields, which in this case is abstract math. Math folks know Conway best for his work on the finite simple groups, the "primes" of group theory, especially his analysis of the sporadics, and even more especially for completing the classification.

Okay, your eyes are glazing, fine.

But imagine if we could sort all of the numerical primes into a finite number of categories with similar properties, like the periodic table for chemistry. That would be huge. That's what was done for the "primes" of "groups," the most basic abstract algebraic structure.

Conway published the first full "periodic table."

It means we can factor any finite group completely and analyze the factors.

Any finite group includes all of knot theory, which includes all of string theory. Physics types are kinda hyped on that.

He shows up in the popular press every time a writer needs someone to quote about infinite dimensions. Returning to recursion, he's best known to the larger public for his Game of Life, an excursion into cellular automata so simple little kids can enjoy it.

Interesting, thanks. My eyes glazed over attempting to grok differential equations, so I'm afraid abstract math is beyond my ken.

[Juvenal]

Turns out that's a Protestant thing, and my chosen alternative prefers to look at the body of work and not a point in the past. There's hope for you yet.

Interesting. I'll have to try that. May be a while, since my free time is asymptotically approaching zero.

Interesting, thanks. My eyes glazed over attempting to grok differential equations, so I'm afraid abstract math is beyond my ken.

Assume e and e' are identity elements in a group with operation *.

Then e = e * e' = e'

Hence the identity element in any group is unique.

_____


Don't give up on abstract math.

There's always hope.

[Apologiaphoenix]

And it does not require us to project those useful internal classifications outside ourselves as if they had independent external existence.

One of the causes of suffering in Buddhism is just such unreal projections. We are disappointed when the world does not meet our expectations -- there is no water in the mirage.

Again, let me know when you encounter someone who holds the position that they're out there with independent existence.

[JimL]

Again, let me know when you encounter someone who holds the position that they're out there with independent existence.

He's talking about internal classifications, such as mentioned above, natures, essences, substances, etc, not people.