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Subject: Re: religious tendencies ( 6 of 47 )
Posted by abde


The perception that religious people cannot explain their faith to atheists s built on a false premise. What is true is that religious people cannot relate their religious experiences to atheists in a manner that atheists can fully understand. Inevitably, any discussion of belief will fall to concepts that have no logical proof - this is not a flaw in an "argument" but simply a fact. I referred to Godel's Theorem earlier - in a nutshell, Godel (arguably in the same intellectual league as Feynman) proved that for any rules-based system (like physics, math, logic itself) there are certain statements that are neither provably true nor provably false. There is a fundamental limit to how far simple logic can get you, and not all phenomena that are physically possible can neccessarily be deduced from 1st principles.

I am not arguing that God is defined in this way - far from it - but I am pointing out that what a religious person feels yet cannot communicate to a skeptic need not be founded on logic to be valid.

For an excellent intro to Godel, check out this math project on the web by a high scool student - easy reading and well-done:

http://www.clarku.edu/~hmarek/html/godel.html

the more you think about Godel's Theorem, the more liberated you will feel, paradoxically. Poor Mr. Spock!

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