Getting Our Signals Crossed

As Christians, we’re commanded to love God with all our minds, as well as our hearts and souls. The mind, of course, is the tool we use to make sense of the world. It requires that we use logic and reason for it to work at all.

Consequently, to love God fully, we cannot depart from logic and reason. Though we can never fully understand an infinite being, what we do understand of him must be at least consistent with logic and reason. Otherwise, we are no longer using our minds, but risk “losing” them.

In recent posts, we have tried to set forth the classic Christian formulation of understanding God’s omnipotence. When biblical texts refer to God doing the “impossible,” we understand that to mean that God is capable of doing many things that are impossible to mere humans, such as allowing an elderly woman to become fertile again, or raising someone from the dead. We do not extend this power to extremes that require us to embrace contradictions, for embracing contradictions would be a departure from reason. For example, God does not possess the attribute of “non-goodness,” so it is nonsensical to ask if God can sin, that is, be “all good” and “not all-good” at the same time. God cannot make a square that is also a circle, to use another common example.

But the atheist is not satisfied with this response. He insists that we interpret the Bible literally. If it says that God can do all things, even the impossible, then we must accept as true that God can make a square-circle. But how does this help their case? Is this not simply circular reasoning? They begin with the premise that doing the impossible is, well, not possible. Consequently, adhering to a book that claims that the impossible is in fact possible is irrational. Holding to an irrational faith is itself irrational. Consequently, Christianity must be irrational and therefore not worthy of adherence.

But there are two principal problems with this analysis, besides the obvious circular reasoning that is employed. The first is that the bible does not demand literal interpretation. There are many places in which it speaks metaphorically, not the least of which are the words of Jesus himself, as he conveyed many ideas through the use of parables. The Bible was never intended as a physics manual. It was not written by physicists for physicists, so insisting that it be read that way is not a question of interpretation of a passage, but of taking the entire book out of context. Once again, the straw man fallacy is at work.

The second problem with the atheist’s position is that, even if we were forced to accept the words as literally true – God can even make a “square circle” - there is no way to show that God does not have this power. All we can say is that the human mind is incapable of making sense of such a claim using logic and reason. But scientists tell us that there is much more to the universe that what meets the eye. They are only now beginning to make sense of things such as dark matter and dark energy. They tell us that in the first nanosecond of the universe’s existence, there were more than 10 dimensions, which reduced down to the four that we now perceive. Other scientists posit the existence of multiple universes – the mulitverse – whose characteristics cannot be assessed because they lie beyond our ability to perceive them. Perhaps in these other dimensions, the “impossible” is not only possible but easily done.

Consider it this way: like the am/fm radio in one’s car, our minds possess limited abilities in receiving and processing the “signals” that surround us. The air around the radio is full of signals of varying kinds, but the radio is capable of capturing and converting only a small portion of them. It takes these signals and processes them to produce sound which is recognizable to our ears. Our minds are “receivers” of a sort as well, processing what our senses take in through the use of reason and logic. We are operating within the four dimensions. If there are other dimensions, other ways of knowing things, they are beyond our ability – at least at present – to access them. The car’s radio may be within range of an aircraft or marine transmission, or may be alongside a police car being dispatched to the scene of a crime. That the am/fm radio cannot process these signals is not evidence that the signals are not there. So too with us. From the perspective of other dimensions, perhaps reconciling a square with a circle is easily shown. But we will never know, at least not this side of eternity.

In the end, this challenge is easily seen for what it is. By reasoning to a result that is embedded in the premise, the challenger is sure to come up with the wrong answer, the one that he assumed when he asked the question. He is engaging in circular reasoning and getting his “signals” crossed.

Getting Our Signals Crossed