Logic vs The Bible

[mcubed]

Logic and human wisdom are two different things. It is logical that if something in our natural universe exist it came from a creator….a great meal (or a crappy one), a watch, a computer, a baby, an atmosphere, a universe. Human wisdom says there is no creator in spite of logic. If there was a creator we would have to be responsible… wouldn’t we!?! It is logical to believe in a Creator, then it is logical that He is more wise and powerful than His creation, so therefore it is logical to have faith!

 

[Animus]

According to what you're saying, our morals should be found throughout nature as well then? If they are divinely objective as you're implying this must be the case.

The only part of nature that contains any hints about morality is man, humankind. From the outside, there would be no way of seeing morality. You cannot look at the way things are and have a sense of how they should be. But as humans, we can do more than observe the natural world, we can look inside ourselves, and when we do we find that we have the belief that some things are right and other things are wrong. In fact, we are so aware of this thing inside us that cares about right conduct that we feel the need to make excuses for whenever we do wrong. If we break a promise, we say, "It was too difficult to keep", when we steal we say, "The business owners are filthy rich, it hardly even hurts them, and I really need this". But this sense that humans have cannot be observed. I suppose this is where I am being illogical; I am one person, I experience this strange sense of "ought", and from talking to other people, I have come to believe that everyone is getting a similar experience of "ought" that I am getting.

 

[mustaphadrink]

I believe you are correct with your logic here. Indeed it is true we are mere infants in the Creation. And of course since our Creator is the Father of All even moreso are we infants.

All this is logical by the Bible as well. I would say in terms of the topic of The Bible and Logic, that the Bible is the most logical book indeed. The closer to that logic you are, the better your logic become. So it is also not illogical for someone to tell you to not put too much trust in your own logic over the logic of Jesus, but rather to reconcile your logic to Jesus.

I would tend to disagree with this sentiment as the scripture makes it clear in Genesis that we are the pinnacle of God's creation because he made us in his own image. Nothing else was.

And I am of the opinion that when we have the mind of Christ, we don't need logic as a lot of what Christ does is not logical i.e. turning water into wine.

 

[mustaphadrink]

Logic and human wisdom are two different things. It is logical that if something in our natural universe exist it came from a creator….a great meal (or a crappy one), a watch, a computer, a baby, an atmosphere, a universe. Human wisdom says there is no creator in spite of logic. If there was a creator we would have to be responsible… wouldn’t we!?! It is logical to believe in a Creator, then it is logical that He is more wise and powerful than His creation, so therefore it is logical to have faith!

Praise the Lord if there are no creator's when cooking. That means I don't have to slave over a hot stove anymore as the meal will just appear. Shades of Star Trek!!

 

[Pozessed]

The only part of nature that contains any hints about morality is man, humankind. From the outside, there would be no way of seeing morality. You cannot look at the way things are and have a sense of how they should be. But as humans, we can do more than observe the natural world, we can look inside ourselves, and when we do we find that we have the belief that some things are right and other things are wrong. In fact, we are so aware of this thing inside us that cares about right conduct that we feel the need to make excuses for whenever we do wrong. If we break a promise, we say, "It was too difficult to keep", when we steal we say, "The business owners are filthy rich, it hardly even hurts them, and I really need this". But this sense that humans have cannot be observed. I suppose this is where I am being illogical; I am one person, I experience this strange sense of "ought", and from talking to other people, I have come to believe that everyone is getting a similar experience of "ought" that I am getting.

I actually understand (I think) and I agree with you. However for morals to be objective and not subjective, these morals have to be found in nature.

 

[Pozessed]

I would tend to disagree with this sentiment as the scripture makes it clear in Genesis that we are the pinnacle of God's creation because he made us in his own image. Nothing else was.

And I am of the opinion that when we have the mind of Christ, we don't need logic as a lot of what Christ does is not logical i.e. turning water into wine.

Is it mere coincidence how you need logic to come to that conclusion though.

 

[faroukfarouk]

Is it mere coincidence how you need logic to come to that conclusion though.

What about your sin? what if your mental processes, which you think highly of, turn out to have given you a blasphemous view of the true and living God, against Whom we have all sinned? and Who lovingly provided a Savior we can believe in?

 

[mustaphadrink]

I don't think we are in disagreement....maybe its just a matter of verb usage. God is unimaginable in His glory and way beyond what our minds can comprehend.

Yes that is true as I discovered recently. I was trying to come to terms with the trinity as God in three persons but I made the mistake of equating them with three human beings as that was as far as my finite mind could understand.

Then God gave me a revelation about the three persons as three individual supernatural powers each with his own specific ministry and which is revealed as a person for us to understand the concept that I understood the trinity. That is when I understood that God in each of his forms is not in space or time and that is why Jesus could rise from the dead and ascend into heaven again.

 

[Pozessed]

What about your sin? what if your mental processes, which you think highly of, turn out to have given you a blasphemous view of the true and living God, against Whom we have all sinned? and Who lovingly provided a Savior we can believe in?

My sin was part of Gods plan (I assume), if his plan is perfect (which it must be if He is perfect), my sin is perfect according to his plan.
If my mental prowess is blasphemy, it is Gods fault for creating me with that flaw, which can't be true if God can not create flaws.
In my opinion, I was saved upon creation of Gods plan, because His plan is perfect as is He. If I were not perfect he could not be perfect, or at least his plan couldn't be perfect.

 

[mustaphadrink]

I don't have an answer to that honestly. I can't really speculate what God wants or desires from us. I'd imagine its love and happiness. but His wants are outside of logic. I'm just making the claim that for something to be perfect it must be absent of imperfections.
I can't even say "how" we are acting perfectly, only that if God is perfect, according to his will so are we.

I call this the divine exchange as in "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. The old has passed away, behold the new has come"

On the cross, Jesus exchanged his holiness and perfection for our sin so that he could deal with it and provide freedom from it for us.

Philippians 2:6 Christ was truly God. But he did not try to remain equal with God. Instead he gave up everything and became a slave, when he became like one of us. Christ was humble. He obeyed God and even died on a cross. Then God gave Christ the highest place and honoured his name above all others. So at the name of Jesus everyone will bow down, those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. And to the glory of God the Father everyone will openly agree, "Jesus Christ is Lord!"

Jesus didn't come to patch up the old man, he came to give us a new man created in the image of God. That is why we have to die daily to truly reflect the image of God, which after all is perfection.

Baptism for me is an acknowledgement that we have exchanged the old for the new, a public declaration to satan that attacking my old nature is now a waste of time because it is dead which means that I am dead to sin and alive to God.

In other words I have the ability given to me by God to always put God first.

 

[Jda016]

My sin was part of Gods plan (I assume), if his plan is perfect (which it must be if He is perfect), my sin is perfect according to his plan.
If my mental prowess is blasphemy, it is Gods fault for creating me with that flaw, which can't be true if God can not create flaws.
In my opinion, I was saved upon creation of Gods plan, because His plan is perfect as is He. If I were not perfect he could not be perfect, or at least his plan couldn't be perfect.

So you believe you are perfect without Christ?

do you also not believe there is any such thing as sin?

 

[Kerry]

I call this the divine exchange as in "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. The old has passed away, behold the new has come"

On the cross, Jesus exchanged his holiness and perfection for our sin so that he could deal with it and provide freedom from it for us.

Philippians 2:6 Christ was truly God. But he did not try to remain equal with God. Instead he gave up everything and became a slave, when he became like one of us. Christ was humble. He obeyed God and even died on a cross. Then God gave Christ the highest place and honoured his name above all others. So at the name of Jesus everyone will bow down, those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. And to the glory of God the Father everyone will openly agree, "Jesus Christ is Lord!"

Jesus didn't come to patch up the old man, he came to give us a new man created in the image of God. That is why we have to die daily to truly reflect the image of God, which after all is perfection.

Baptism for me is an acknowledgement that we have exchanged the old for the new, a public declaration to satan that attacking my old nature is now a waste of time because it is dead which means that I am dead to sin and alive to God.

In other words I have the ability given to me by God to always put God first.

That is extremely close to what I believe, Yes when get saved the very notion of sinful things disgust us and that is a sign of being reborn. However, we must keep our faith in the work of the cross to continue to live victoriously and there will be times that we are tested and will put our faith in something else and it is usually our self. That's when things start to go wrong.

Baptism is an outward show of an inner change, nothing more or nothing less. Some say you must be baptized in order to be saved. To the contrary I say we must be saved in order to be baptized. I meant what sinner wants to be baptized? When we get saved or born again we now have a longing to get baptized and not the other way around.

 

[Animus]

I actually understand (I think) and I agree with you. However for morals to be objective and not subjective, these morals have to be found in nature.

I disagree. For example, you do not need a physical reality to have mathematically objective truths. 1+1=2 even if you can only talk about it in pure abstraction, and have no apples or oranges to reason about. If there were no creatures in the world, we would not be able to talk about that world being moral or immoral. It would just be volcanoes, tides, rain, wind, etc.. And so we shouldn't expect to find truths about morality in the volcanoes or the tides or anything like that, we would only find it in the creatures. And although the morality of specific societies has differed over time, the differences have never amounted to anything like a total difference. Imagine a society where people are praised for running away in battle, or for betraying the people that were kindest to them. Some moral problems are simpler than others, and these are often the ones that all societies have agreed on. But there are some more difficult moral problems that people disagree on, which I find is like difficult math problems that people disagree on. The question of rather a[SUP]n[/SUP] + b[SUP]n[/SUP] = c[SUP]n [/SUP]could be satisfied when a,b, and c were real integers and n was a real integer greater than 2 was a problem that stumped people for a long time. There were people that said they had proven it was impossible, but their proofs had errors in them. There were a lot of people that had values that were very close, but not quite. But just because people are flawed, that does not mean that there is not a correct answer, even if we never figure it out (in this case we did).

 

[posthuman]

i've never met a bird that, forsaking the truth, imagined for itself a god that better pleased it.
i've met hundreds of people that do that, though.

If you understood my reasoning, you'd realize your only confirming my point.

if man and animal are on the same footing...
but man is made both higher than animals,
and capable of sinking much lower too.

so i don't trust people; i don't trust any human reasoning applied to God, not even my own, and when i see people acting higher than animals, i attribute it to the image of God, not to the heart of people.

 

[Pie]

Killing babies was objective law at one point...

If a perfect mechanism creates something imperfect, is it a perfect mechanism? The answer here is obvious, don't think to hard.

You misunderstand the entire meaning of objective morality. If it a true reality, man's laws do not change it. Look up moral ontology.

If a perfect mechanism creates something imperfect, is it a perfect mechanism?

If man is indeed perfect, like you claim... then by your own logic, everything man creates is perfect.... including war, desolation, greed, etc. Hitler, Stalin, the Crusaders are all perfect.... The man who rapes a little girl is perfect.
So... back at ya buddy, the answer here is obvious, don't think too hard.

 

[fredjames]

Hello all. I am interested in your opinions about this. I am not trying to criticize anyone particular but I do want to discuss something said to me earlier.
I suggested we were "mere infants in this universe". I was asked how I came up with that. I replied, "it's my own logic".
I was later told that I am not to use my own logic when referencing God and the Bible.

This seems a bit skeptical to me. If we didn't use our own logic to determine the revelations God directs us towards, we would still be stuck with many laws and tribulations our society now would be morally disgusted by.

Thoughts?

If a sea can be parted into two walls that faced each other, in order to make a crossing, is that logic? Christian faith is centered and founded in the hearing of the Word of GOD and believe that they are true. even without proven facts or artifacts.

As it is written for our faith that;
1. "Faith comes from hearing, hearing of the Word of GOD."
2. "Trust the LORD (the Word, of GOD), with all you heart and lean not on your own understanding."

 

[danalee]

Okay then, please try your best to give an example on how logic has been overall more harmful than good. Use any definition of logic you like as long as it pertains to the application of intelligence I will be satisfied.

Really?

Since people could therefore say it was illogic I'm not sure if anything will apply.

Logic indeed trumps many people in many ways all the time. Making a bad business investment. Choosing the wrong partner. Are we so in denial to think people and their logic isn't something we should be careful about?

I believe the intent of being careful of their own thoughts has to do with trusting them entirely or not. In fact, I will pull out a study here if I can find it readily. It was psychological survey that many therapists have heeded and integrated into their practices in working with people. The study says that over three quarters, that is over seventy five percent of human perception is false, or contains partial falseness. That it quite a bit. That is why we tell people going through anything difficult to not make decisions on their own.

What do successful people do? They call a friend and discuss a problem. They talk to their clergy. They call their therapist. They have a heart to heart with another human.

We've learned that the human brain is a war zone. People shouldn't attempt to navigate without outside influence. In fact, periods of isolation from outside human influence causes psychosis. I can cite there as well. People who are stranded on an island are likely to go insane (even though the threshold is different in time).

So, together we have a better chance. Yet, there is still danger.

We depend on our relationship with God and he does speak to us. We are also always at odds with influences from satan.

I should pull out some bible references but they are common enough I shouldn't need to.

 

[Animus]

If a sea can be parted into two walls that faced each other, in order to make a crossing, is that logic? Christian faith is centered and founded in the hearing of the Word of GOD and believe that they are true. even without proven facts or artifacts.

As it is written for our faith that;
1. "Faith comes from hearing, hearing of the Word of GOD."
2. "Trust the LORD (the Word, of GOD), with all you heart and lean not on your own understanding."

There is nothing illogical about a sea being parted. It is illogical to say that if you have one apple, and I give you another, that you have three apples.

When the net force on a particle is not zero the particle will move. If the seas part, it is because there is a force being applied to the particle that is causing them to move (in accordance with physical laws). But the concept of invisible forces is not foreign to us at all. Gravity is an unseen force that pulls us towards large masses. God is all powerful, so He could just as easily apply an invisible force to water particles to make them move in whatever direction He pleases. This is just one of many ways that God could easily accomplish this task without breaking the laws of logic.

Logic has nothing to do with this.

 

[danalee]

My sin was part of Gods plan (I assume), if his plan is perfect (which it must be if He is perfect), my sin is perfect according to his plan.
If my mental prowess is blasphemy, it is Gods fault for creating me with that flaw, which can't be true if God can not create flaws.
In my opinion, I was saved upon creation of Gods plan, because His plan is perfect as is He. If I were not perfect he could not be perfect, or at least his plan couldn't be perfect.

Sophists would have a field day with you sweetie.

 

[fredjames]

There is nothing illogical about a sea being parted. It is illogical to say that if you have one apple, and I give you another, that you have three apples.

When the net force on a particle is not zero the particle will move. If the seas part, it is because there is a force being applied to the particle that is causing them to move (in accordance with physical laws). But the concept of invisible forces is not foreign to us at all. Gravity is an unseen force that pulls us towards large masses. God is all powerful, so He could just as easily apply an invisible force to water particles to make them move in whatever direction He pleases. This is just one of many ways that God could easily accomplish this task without breaking the laws of logic.

Logic has nothing to do with this.

Thank you dear Animus, but to an unbeliever this illogical. Your explanation is based on you faith in GOD, when all things are possible to HIM. Even if it was mentioned that an East wind blew and parted the sea. What a force it would have been to create a wall and people would have been blown away.

To an unbeliever, not even scientifically proven, this for them is illogical, doesn't make any common sense, to even perceive them, even scrapingly through your explanation. For them they need proof and in calculations and formulas.

And for us we have had GOD through CHRIST and the HOLY SPIRIT, who gave us that initial gift of faith, in order to believe further Heavenly spiritual teachings, whether the learned or unlearned.

i am sorry, if i have missed out on your point that you are trying to help make.