Biblical Logic and (Not) Proving God Exists

Author's note: holy crap this ended up being long. I was tempted to break it up into two posts, like I usually do when I try to get smart, but decided not to. I will put some pictures in to make it prettier. Also, you are now able to leave comments below if you so choose. Thanks for reading.


     I hold an opinion that a lot of people don't agree with. I think the Bible is a very logical piece of work, and that my Christian faith is a logical exercise as well. People take issue with this notion because they believe the Bible is contradictory, or don't see how a position of faith and belief can be defended or pursued in a logical fashion. But, if I accept the following things to be true:
     a) Jesus was who He said He was (God in human form)
     b) Jesus was raised from death after being crucified
then pretty much everything else falls into place. I am not a philosopher, and never took any sort of a "logic" class at any point in my education. But I majored in mathematics, which means that I essentially majored in logic, so here are some thoughts.

     I think a lot of people hear the word "logic" and think "scientific." These are two very different things, that I am going to attempt to define without looking up actual definitions. "Science" is a method of testing something that we think is or is not accurate. Isolate a variable, test the variable, interpret the results. This scientific method is applied to all kinds of areas of life and nature. So, based on my limited understanding, something being "scientific" doesn't necessarily mean it's based in physics or chemistry, it just means it was tested using some form of that method. I think most people know this, but the term "scientific" tends to get thrown around a lot these days and is losing its true meaning.
     "Logic," on the other hand, is applying a previously agreed upon or accepted system of rules to any desired presupposition. ("Presupposition" basically means "let's pretend this is true and see what follows." It's the starting point.) A presupposition doesn't have to be true, or even reasonable, for logic to be applied to it.

This picture is not just filler.

     (For what it's worth, Mr. CS Lewis himself first exposed me to this idea. In The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe the professor explains to Peter the following: It's not illogical for a fantastic wonderland to exist in the wardrobe if Lucy says one does, because Lucy isn't prone to lying or confusing fantasy with reality. Instead of starting with the presupposition "fantasy lands don't exist," he starts with "Lucy doesn't lie," and goes from there. It might not be probable, or even believable that Narnia exists, but that doesn't make it illogical.)
     If I start with the above presuppositions (that Jesus was who He said He was (God in human form) and that Jesus was raised from death after being crucified), most of the rest of the Bible makes sense. To me, it's very logical, and I am a pretty decent logician.

     What I don't try and do, ever, is prove that God exists. I can't. I don't think anyone can. Well, obviously no one can or else someone would have done so and this wouldn't be an issue. The fact that I can't prove His existence doesn't bother me, because I find His existence to be logically consistent with what I know and understand about the world, my life, and other presuppositions I have chosen to accept.
     A lot of people take issue with the fact that God's existence can't be proven. They point to "science." (Remember that science really means "a system for testing variables," but I am going to its more common definition which is "stuff we know.") "Science" has done a lot for humanity. Pretty much everything I interact with on a daily basis that is man-made has its root in science at some level. Science put a man on the moon, science puts probes on the ocean floor, and science gives us medicine and healthcare. Since science has done so much for us, a lot of people (understandably) put more stock in it than they do in the notion of a God or one of His potentially holy books. So, it's fairly logical to assume that if science, which has done all of these fantastic things in a fairly short period of time, can't prove God's existence, He probably doesn't exist. Couple that with all of the disease, disaster and death in the world, and people don't want a part of Him.

On a fairly unrelated note: who would make
their children watch this? I am terrified already!

     I differ in my presuppositions. If someone states "science can't prove God exists, so I doubt He exists" they are at some level assuming science has been trying to prove He exists. I don't think that's the case. (From what I understand, early scientists believed He existed and either used that knowledge to assume there was order in the universe, or try to prove His existence through order in the universe. Some of this was misguided: People believed that the Earth was the center of the universe because that's where God put it. So when that was proven wrong, it was interpreted as an assault on God's existence or creation, but in hindsight that's really not the case.)
     All that to say: just because we can't prove God exists doesn't make me question His existence any more than anything else might make me question His existence. (In fact, often in mathematics proofs aren't accomplished by proving something MUST be true, but by proving that it can't NOT be true. I can't prove God exists, but I can easily accept that He can't NOT exist). For me, it's a logical pursuit. I am just starting at a point that atheists don't tend to start at. I readily accept that if Jesus wasn't who he said he was, and if he didn't resurrect himself from death, then my Christian faith is pretty damn empty.

     Another presupposition of mine (I use that word to sound smart), and this one is going to be tough for me to articulate: I've stated before

            "Science is man attempting to figure out how God does what He does." -Grant Gilchrist 

which is really a pretty brilliant quote that should go on my tombstone if I ever die. Well, if I am assuming God exists, can I test the existence of the Thing that created my ability to test? Or, can I test the existence of the Thing that created the other things I test? I honestly don't know. It seems like I should be able to, but it seems pretty impossible at the same time. Can science test the existence of God? I don't think anyone is trying, and maybe they should?
     Jesus famously quoted Deuteronomy when he said "Do not put the Lord your God to the test," but I've always interpreted that to mean "don't push Him." Like when a bratty kid challenges his and mom is trying to convince the kid not to get a spanking. Don't test her, she will spank you. I don't think that's the same kind of "test" as trying to see if God exists.
     Testing God's existence happened throughout the Old Testament. People walked in ovens, seas were parted, armies went blind, etc. But the most "scientific" of all the tests, at least that I know of, came from Gideon. He basically said "God if you want me to do something, I want my jacket, which I will leave out overnight, to get wet but the ground around it to stay dry." Then that happened. Then he said "God, just to make sure, tonight I don't want my jacket to get wet and I want the ground around it wet." And it happened. He essentially isolated a variable (the jacket) and ran a couple tests on it. (He even used the word "test" in my translation).

     So, why isn't anyone testing to see if there is a God?
     Here's the obvious, main problem: Testing God (or any human) isn't a hard science. To test the existence of God, you'd have to play by that existing God's rules. We play by God's rules when we test matter and chemicals, because we are working within his system of nature. But testing God relies on an understanding of His system of Himself (if that makes any sense at all). He's a being, so He probably won't respond the same way to every test. It would take a supreme understanding of how He works and why He acts in the ways that He does. And this knowledge could really only be gained by a) assuming he exists, and b) assuming one of those holy books floating around there is actually Holy. You'd essentially have to be a believer.
     One might argue that point. That believing something, as opposed to accepting results of experiments, taints the scientific process. Ultimately, this is no different from any other aspect of the scientific method. Take Euclidean geometry, in my opinion the most basic and accessible forms of all the sciences. Euclidean geometry has a thousand proofs and theorems and laws that everyone accepts and trusts. But Euclidean geometry is based on 5 key axioms. An axiom is basically something everyone agrees is true. Something everyone believes is true. From wikipedia, the 5 Euclidean axioms (with my additions in bold):

1. "To draw a straight line from any point to any point."    (meaning one line connects two points)
2. "To produce [extend] a finite straight line continuously in a straight line."     (a line segment can be extended into an infinite line)
3. "To describe a circle with any centre and distance [radius]."     (a circle is what a circle is)
4. "That all right angles are equal to one another."     (all right angles are equal to one another)
5. The parallel postulate: "That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles."

     Look at that 5th one. It's not at all obvious. The first four make pretty good sense. The fifth one isn't obvious when you read it, but if you look into it just a bit it also is very sensible. The point being, none of those 5 things can be proved. They have to be accepted. Starting from a point of belief is necessary for any sort of proof or demonstration. This is no different with my faith in God. Well, the difference is that everyone accepts the definition of a circle, not everyone accepts the existence of a God.
     The point I am trying to make is that accepting the existence of a God would not negate any evidence that might suggest the existence of a God, it is in fact how any evidence is ever gathered.