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Does Christianity Violate Logic?

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  • Does Christianity Violate Logic?

    Do you violate logic with Christianity?

    Link

    -----

    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

  • #2
    Just a thought --- I really enjoy that you write in a style that actually uses PARAGRAPHS where 'central thoughts' are presented. And usually your stuff is worth reading anyway!
    The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

    Comment


    • #3
      I find it interested that skeptics will admit that the disciples believed Jesus rose from the dead, yet they will try and provide natural explanations to try and refute it but all which have failed. Gerd Lüdemann admits it happened but uses the Hallucination hypothesis, Pinchas Lapide who did not believe in Christ admitted it happened, and Bart Erhman says the gospels record and that they believed Jesus rose from the dead.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by ReformedApologist View Post
        I find it interested that skeptics will admit that the disciples believed Jesus rose from the dead, yet they will try and provide natural explanations to try and refute it but all which have failed. Gerd Lüdemann admits it happened but uses the Hallucination hypothesis, Pinchas Lapide who did not believe in Christ admitted it happened, and Bart Erhman says the gospels record and that they believed Jesus rose from the dead.
        Where have you been, young man!!!!
        The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Apologiaphoenix View Post
          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.
          None of those are laws, Nick. They're all assumptions, or axioms if we're speaking formally.

          Because they're useful assumptions in a wide variety of applications, they're gathered together axiomatically, most notably in creating the classical logics. But like anything else in mathematics, it should be remembered that their existence is abstract, and any relevance to the real world, no matter the ubiquity, is strictly coincidental.

          The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences
          Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty, a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

          --BERTRAND RUSSELL, Study of Mathematics

          Logic is not something taught in a freshman philosophy course. That's the introduction. To know logic, one needs to know logics as universal algebras, and that means studying universal algebras.

          Mathematical Sciences: Special Year in Model Theory and Universal Algebra
          This project will support a special year in model theory and universal algebra to be held at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1991-92.

          I was there that year.

          "Holes" in classical logics show up in the literature centuries before the first halting steps toward a classical logic were made by Aristotle, and millennia before the axiomatic development of classical logics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

          All of the following paradoxes are formally equivalent.
          All Cretans are liars. I should know, I'm a Cretan.
          The book of all books that do not cite themselves.
          The set of all sets that do not contain themselves as a member.

          Those last two share the same contradictory existence as believable liars, or more topically, tolerance of intolerance, which likewise belongs on the list.

          I'm not a Cretan.

          A liar's paradox can't be true. And it can't be not true.

          The middle can't be excluded.

          The best we can do is restrict our treatment to abstract realms satisfying the postulate. Mostly that means avoiding recursive structures. Any paradox that fits on that list can be resolved by forbidding recursion.

          _____

          But you can't forbid recursive structures. They're useful, and powerful, and relevant to the question in the OP. There is no calculus without them.

          Still, if you've got recursive structures, you've got liar's paradoxes.

          The liar's paradox can be generalized, much to the chagrin of the above-cited Russell and his colleague Alfred North Whitehead, whose Principia Mathematica was serially redacted between 1910 and 1913, before its summary execution in 1931. That was Gödel's contribution.

          Formally, Gödel constructed a negating self-reference that cannot be proven or disproven in any formal logic. Informally, he showed "This statement will never be proven in this logic" is a liar's paradox. With the publication of that first broadside, Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia mathematica und verwandter Systeme I, the curtain fell not just on Russell and Whitehead's opus, but on the golden age of classical logics as well.

          And gave us cameras that focus themselves. And washing machines that wash until clean using just enough water. And most importantly, gave mathematicians a bigger sandbox to play in.

          _____

          Back to the OP.

          Due credit to Gödel, but it was "railroading time." Georj Cantor published his proof that the real numbers are not countably infinite in 1874, and the result was applied recursively. The wolves were loosed on all things infinite, putting all of axiomatic set theory in the cross hairs. This led eventually to the introduction of subtle refinements like the axiom of choice, and the further refinements of ZF and ZFE set theories.

          And sporadically to the institutionalization of Cantor. Working on the infinite drove him nuts, repeatedly.

          And immediately, we had that there can be no greatest infinite.

          _____

          Again, this doesn't have to have any utility at all, but to the extent one wishes to argue for the existence of a being that is both infinite and supreme using a formal logic, we can say things about that being that likely don't align well with the faith of tradents.

          Please let me know if there's anything in the links you'd like to discuss.

          Regards, J

          Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

          Comment


          • #6
            Juvenal. I do consider those three laws as they are all aspects of how being behaves. I do note that nothing has been said that Christianity contradicts logic. I would really like to know if you have anything on that point.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Apologiaphoenix View Post
              Juvenal. I do consider those three laws as they are all aspects of how being behaves.
              Your abiding faith in classical logics as an ontological standard may be endearing, but I can say from experience it's not sustainable in the face of graded homework assignments.

              I do note that nothing has been said that Christianity contradicts logic. I would really like to know if you have anything on that point.
              The Christian God is a supreme infinite being and a supreme infinite being is a married bachelor in any logic.

              It's not a meaningful concept.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Juvenal View Post
                Your abiding faith in classical logics as an ontological standard may be endearing, but I can say from experience it's not sustainable in the face of graded homework assignments.
                Which is just an assertion. There are plenty of classical theologians and philosophers who have graded homework assignments and PhDs in the field who would disagree.

                The Christian God is a supreme infinite being and a supreme infinite being is a married bachelor in any logic.

                It's not a meaningful concept.
                Which is again another assertion given without any supporting argument.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Apologiaphoenix View Post
                  Which is just an assertion. There are plenty of classical theologians and philosophers who have graded homework assignments and PhDs in the field who would disagree.



                  Which is again another assertion given without any supporting argument.
                  And the juvenile continues to prove your point.... Would it help to pray for his blinders to be lifted? Or is he better off in his ignorance?
                  If it weren't for the Resurrection of Jesus, we'd all be in DEEP TROUBLE!

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Apologiaphoenix View Post
                    Which is just an assertion. There are plenty of classical theologians and philosophers who have graded homework assignments and PhDs in the field who would disagree.
                    Name one.

                    Offhand, I can think of four who would laugh at that assertion.

                    John Baldwin
                    Willem Blok
                    Joel Berman
                    David Marker

                    And myself, of course.

                    No PhD in the field would ever claim a privileged position for classical axioms. It would be gross incompetence.

                    It's time to stop pretending you know more about math than the professor, Nick. You're decades of study short of a position to judge my understanding of the field, and will frankly never arrive at such a position without giving up these prejudices.

                    Which is again another assertion given without any supporting argument.
                    There's an actual discussion waiting for you the moment you stop digging in your heels and covering your eyes, hoping the arguments will just go away.
                    Due credit to Gödel, but it was "railroading time." Georj Cantor published his proof that the real numbers are not countably infinite in 1874, and the result was applied recursively. The wolves were loosed on all things infinite, putting all of axiomatic set theory in the cross hairs. This led eventually to the introduction of subtle refinements like the axiom of choice, and the further refinements of ZF and ZFE set theories.

                    And sporadically to the institutionalization of Cantor. Working on the infinite drove him nuts, repeatedly.

                    And immediately, we had that there can be no greatest infinite.

                    If you don't understand this, you can ask. But you don't get to claim it didn't happen.

                    Regards, J

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Christianbookworm View Post
                      And the juvenile continues to prove your point.... Would it help to pray for his blinders to be lifted? Or is he better off in his ignorance?
                      Shoo.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Juvenal View Post
                        Name one.

                        Offhand, I can think of four who would laugh at that assertion.

                        John Baldwin
                        Willem Blok
                        Joel Berman
                        David Marker

                        And myself, of course.

                        No PhD in the field would ever claim a privileged position for classical axioms. It would be gross incompetence.
                        I said nothing about a privileged position. I simply said there are no laws of logic that Christianity violates. It doesn't violate the Law of Identity, Excluded Middle, or Non-Contradiction.

                        Right now I would say most any Thomist philosopher. Garrigou-Lagrange, Feser, Stump, Gilson, Wippel, etc.




                        There's an actual discussion waiting for you the moment you stop digging in your heels and covering your eyes, hoping the arguments will just go away.
                        Due credit to Gödel, but it was "railroading time." Georj Cantor published his proof that the real numbers are not countably infinite in 1874, and the result was applied recursively. The wolves were loosed on all things infinite, putting all of axiomatic set theory in the cross hairs. This led eventually to the introduction of subtle refinements like the axiom of choice, and the further refinements of ZF and ZFE set theories.

                        And sporadically to the institutionalization of Cantor. Working on the infinite drove him nuts, repeatedly.

                        And immediately, we had that there can be no greatest infinite.

                        If you don't understand this, you can ask. But you don't get to claim it didn't happen.

                        Regards, J
                        If you're talking about an infinite in math, then that is one of quantity. That's one reason also Aquinas would reject a Kalam argument as given by Craig, at least with regard to the philosophy, since there are some versions of infinite regresses he thought were possible. The infinite like that is not what is had in mind when talking about God. It's about a quality He has without limitation.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          I dream of finishing that book one day. I've tried a couple times. I just need enough free time to plow all the way through it without having to put it aside for too long.
                          Enter the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed to enter the Church; be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent. – St. John Chrysostom

                          Veritas vos Liberabit<>< Learn Greek <>< Look here for an Orthodox Church in America<><Ancient Faith Radio
                          sigpic
                          I recommend you do not try too hard and ...research as little as possible. Such weighty things give me a headache. - Shunyadragon, Baha'i apologist

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by One Bad Pig View Post
                            I dream of finishing that book one day. I've tried a couple times. I just need enough free time to plow all the way through it without having to put it aside for too long.
                            My Pastor had a quarterly retreat - a friend had a deer camp, and during off season, Robby would go there all by himself, or with one or two pastor friends, and spend 3 days just catching up on reading, praying, recuperating.... I've tried that, but I'm not as disciplined.
                            The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              And we can't know your credentials. It's the internet. Anyone can lie about credentials.
                              If it weren't for the Resurrection of Jesus, we'd all be in DEEP TROUBLE!

                              Comment

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