Christianity Illogical?

[mlchance]

How can something be logical if it is based on a contradiction? And in case you wonder, I am talking about the concept of the Trinity. It is not a “mystery”, it is a clear contradiction.

No, it isn’t. If you knew the definitions of “mystery”, “person”, and “being” as used in Catholic theology, you’d know this.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[Filius99993]

Illogical- Contradicting or disregarding the principles of logic.

What is logic? Not to be relativistic, but truly, logic is what we make it. And as has already been stated, Atheist tendency is to only pay attention to what is materialistic. That doesn’t make Christianity illogical, it means that an atheist is too narrow-minded to think of what’s beyond what is perceivable.

 

[ateista]

No, it isn’t. If you knew the definitions of “mystery”, “person”, and “being” as used in Catholic theology, you’d know this.

You mean redefinition??? To say that a being is both one and three is a contradiction… not a “mystery”…

 

[OTavern]

You mean redefinition??? To say that a being is both one and three is a contradiction… not a “mystery”…

I just posted this same reply on the Free Will forum. Sorry I didn’t read this thread first.

For many years scientists debated whether light comprised of “waves” or “particles.” In your words, does light have to be “either one or the other but not both?” A blatant contraction you say? No just the limitations of our knowledge where contradictory things seem to both hold true.

Let me try to provide a parallel explanation for Trinity that might make some sense.

Any self-conscious person has at least two aspects: the real being of self and a concept or “awareness” of self.

Suppose an “all-knowing” Being has “self-consciousness,” wouldn’t that entail that there would be at least two aspects to this Being? The Being Itself and, because the Being is all-knowing, an identical “replica” of the Being that would proceed from the Being’s self-knowledge? Hence, two identical “persons” in one being.

So, to counter your suggestion that there is a blatant contradiction in the idea of “Trinity,” it would seem that self-consciousness requires a minimum of two “instances” of the same being, and an all-knowing consciousness would have two indistinguishable, fully realized “instances.”

I suspect that because God is more than intellectual self-knowledge, somewhere in the “nature” of God is the necessity of a third instance, but this is not clear, possibly in the relationship between God and His proceeding “self-knowledge” (Logos).

 

[ateista]

For many years scientists debated whether light comprised of “waves” or “particles.” In your words, does light have to be “either one or the other but not both?” A blatant contraction you say? No just the limitations of our knowledge where contradictory things seem to both hold true.

These are not contradictions, of course. Reality is more complicated than a few convenient labels.

However, one of God’s alleged attributes is that God is simple - meaning that God has no “parts”. That cannot be reconciled with the Father-Son-Holy-spirit. Something is either a simple, indivisible entity, or 3 distinct entities. The contradiction is still there.

 

[john_doran]

You mean redefinition??? To say that a being is both one and three is a contradiction… not a “mystery”…

one being, three persons, NOT one being and three beings.

The trinity is the former, but only the latter is (clearly) contradictory.

 

[ateista]

one being, three persons, NOT one being and three beings.

The trinity is the former, but only the latter is (clearly) contradictory.

So those there persons (Father, Son and Holy spririt) are not beings? Does that mean that God is merely scizophrenic? And how does that mesh with the idea that God is “simple”?

Was Jesus not a “being” just a “person”? Was he not composed of the same complex material as other humans are? Did he not have a nervous system which allowed his suffering? Was his suffering a pretense or an illusion?

Did Jesus not go through a childhood and adulthood, which clearly implies change as opposed to God being unchanging and immutable?

The deeper we dig into it, the more contradictions arise.

 

[buffalo]

Illogical- Contradicting or disregarding the principles of logic.

What is logic? Not to be relativistic, but truly, logic is what we make it. And as has already been stated, Atheist tendency is to only pay attention to what is materialistic. That doesn’t make Christianity illogical, it means that an atheist is too narrow-minded to think of what’s beyond what is perceivable.

Perhaps the atheists mind is faulty in that he cannot experience God.

The Catechism states Faith is opening our heart and mind to God. This requires humility. Arrogance shuts this off completely.

So I wonder, is it

I will not be humble?

or

I cannot be humble?

 

[ateista]

Let’s examine another problem - the question of Hell.

Hell is nowadays “watered down” from being a place of fire and brimstone to simply a separation from God. No literal torture or burning as assumed any more - at least by a significant number of the believers (Catholics and more liberal Protestants - see the irony there?) - though there is another significant percentage who literally believes the fire-brimstone scenario (usually evengelical Christians).

If Hell is the separation from God, then how does that mesh with God’s omnipresence? Is now God both everywhere and everywhen - but he is absent from Hell?

The contradictions just keep mounting… or is this just another “mystery”?

One more step here. Is this existence separate from God (is it Hell?), or is God present here (so it is Heaven)? The world is supposed to be separate from God - but this existence does not even remotely resemble to the utter hopelessness and suffering Hell is supposed to be. Nor does it resemble the ultimate joy and happiness in the “place” that Heaven is supposed to be - when we are together with God.

What happened to the “tertium non datur”? We are either separate from God or we are together with God. There is no third alternative… Trampling through the third law of logic, too.

 

[davidv]

So those there persons (Father, Son and Holy spririt) are not beings?

No. From Lateran Council IV: DS 800.

We firmly believe and confess without reservation that there is only one true God, eternal infinite (immensus) and unchangeable, incomprehensible, almighty and ineffable, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; three persons indeed, but one essence, substance or nature entirely simple.

Does that mean that God is merely scizophrenic?

No

And how does that mesh with the idea that God is “simple”?

What do you mean by the word simple? You seem to imply that simple equals easy to understand.

Was Jesus not a “being” just a “person”? Was he not composed of the same complex material as other humans are? Did he not have a nervous system which allowed his suffering?

Jesus is the hypstatic union of God and man. At once divine and human. One person, two natures. His body was made up of the same types of material yours and mine are. The book of Hebrews records:but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet** without** sin. Heb 4:15 RSV

Was his suffering a pretense or an illusion?

Neither. It was real.

Did Jesus not go through a childhood and adulthood, which clearly implies change as opposed to God being unchanging and immutable?

Addressed in the CCC article 470Because “human nature was assumed, not absorbed”,97 in the mysterious union of the Incarnation, the Church was led over the course of centuries to confess the full reality of Christ’s human soul, with its operations of intellect and will, and of his human body. In parallel fashion, she had to recall on each occasion that Christ’s human nature belongs, as his own, to the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it. Everything that Christ is and does in this nature derives from “one of the Trinity”. The Son of God therefore communicates to his humanity his own personal mode of existence in the Trinity. In his soul as in his body, Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways of the Trinity:98

The Son of God. . . worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin.99

 

[buffalo]

Let’s examine another problem - the question of Hell.

Hell is nowadays “watered down” from being a place of fire and brimstone to simply a separation from God. No literal torture or burning as assumed any more - at least by a significant number of the believers (Catholics and more liberal Protestants - see the irony there?) - though there is another significant percentage who literally believes the fire-brimstone scenario (usually evengelical Christians).

If Hell is the separation from God, then how does that mesh with God’s omnipresence? Is now God both everywhere and everywhen - but he is absent from Hell?

The contradictions just keep mounting… or is this just another “mystery”?

One more step here. Is this existence separate from God (is it Hell?), or is God present here (so it is Heaven)? The world is supposed to be separate from God - but this existence does not even remotely resemble to the utter hopelessness and suffering Hell is supposed to be. Nor does it resemble the ultimate joy and happiness in the “place” that Heaven is supposed to be - when we are together with God.

What happened to the “tertium non datur”? We are either separate from God or we are together with God. There is no third alternative… Trampling through the third law of logic, too.

God is present in hell. He is just not caring for souls there.

St Faustina’s vision of Hell

 

[davidv]

Let’s examine another problem - the question of Hell.

Hell is nowadays “watered down” from being a place of fire and brimstone to simply a separation from God. No literal torture or burning as assumed any more - at least by a significant number of the believers (Catholics and more liberal Protestants - see the irony there?) - though there is another significant percentage who literally believes the fire-brimstone scenario (usually evengelical Christians).

If Hell is the separation from God, then how does that mesh with God’s omnipresence? Is now God both everywhere and everywhen - but he is absent from Hell?

The contradictions just keep mounting… or is this just another “mystery”?

One more step here. Is this existence separate from God (is it Hell?), or is God present here (so it is Heaven)? The world is supposed to be separate from God - but this existence does not even remotely resemble to the utter hopelessness and suffering Hell is supposed to be. Nor does it resemble the ultimate joy and happiness in the “place” that Heaven is supposed to be - when we are together with God.

What happened to the “tertium non datur”? We are either separate from God or we are together with God. There is no third alternative… Trampling through the third law of logic, too.

Nice strawman. This is not Catholic teaching on hell. See the CCC articles 1033 ff.

 

[ateista]

Nice strawman. This is not Catholic teaching on hell. See the CCC articles 1033 ff.

We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: "He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him."612 Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren.613 To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell.”
(Emphasis mine.)
Of course Jesus says in Luke 14:26**"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.** Not to mention the concept of “thought-crime” of 1984 - which equates a thought with the deed. What could be more illogical than that?

 

[davidv]

We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: "He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him."612 Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren.613 To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell.”(Emphasis mine.)

Of course Jesus says in Luke 14:26"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.Not to mention the concept of “thought-crime” of 1984 - which equates a thought with the deed. What could be more illogical than that?

What is more illogical is to declare a contradiction where none exists. So, “hate” cannot have different meanings in different contexts?

 

[ateista]

What is more illogical is to declare a contradiction where none exists. So, “hate” cannot have different meanings in different contexts?

I am not aware of it. Quite unlike “love”, which can have many different meanings or “faith” which has far too many meanings, “hate” is a very simple concept.

From Webster:
Main Entry: 1hate
Pronunciation: \ˈhāt\
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English hete; akin to Old High German haz hate, Greek kēdos care
Date: before 12th century
1 a: intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury b: extreme dislike or antipathy : loathing
2: an object of hatred <a generation whose finest hate had been big business — F. L. Paxson>

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hate

 

[ateista]

God is present in hell. He is just not caring for souls there.

Still loves them of course… I presume (after all God is “love”).

Just does not “care” for them? What does he God in hell? Supervises that the proper amount of misery is dispensed to the sinners - proportionate to the seriousness of their sin?

 

[ateista]

Another aspect of “hell”. Pretty much all believers assert that God does not “send” anyone to hell, everyone who is in hell “freely chooses” to be there.

Of course a “free choice” presuppses that the sinner is fully aware of the consequences of his choice. The sinner knows what is going to happen.

Now, show me someone, anyone who has a true knowledge of “hell” (not just second-hand and contradictory descriptions by others) and still “chooses” to get there. Whose “soul” does not have to be “placed” into eternal misery, who goes singing, whistling and dancing and with happy anticipation to his eternal torment… with or without fire and brimstone, with or without the worm that eats your innards. Show me just one.

Because that is what a free choice is!

 

[Filius99993]

Another aspect of “hell”. Pretty much all believers assert that God does not “send” anyone to hell, everyone who is in hell “freely chooses” to be there.

Of course a “free choice” presuppses that the sinner is fully aware of the consequences of his choice. The sinner knows what is going to happen.

Now, show me someone, anyone who has a true knowledge of “hell” (not just second-hand and contradictory descriptions by others) and still “chooses” to get there. Whose “soul” does not have to be “placed” into eternal misery, who goes singing, whistling and dancing and with happy anticipation to his eternal torment… with or without fire and brimstone, with or without the worm that eats your innards. Show me just one.

Because that is what a free choice is!

We never assert that we know if someone goes to hell or doesn’t go. We know that there is a hell, and that people are in it, but we can’t know. But we can know who is in heaven through those miraculous things that occur here on Earth by their intercession.

Again, I ask, what is logic?

 

[ateista]

We never assert that we know if someone goes to hell or doesn’t go. We know that there is a hell, and that people are in it, but we can’t know. But we can know who is in heaven through those miraculous things that occur here on Earth by their intercession.

That is beside the point. I was simply addressing the assertion that people “freely choose” to go to hell, it is not God to “sends” them there. I am asking what does the phrase “freely choose” in this context?

 

[Filius99993]

That is beside the point. I was simply addressing the assertion that people “freely choose” to go to hell, it is not God to “sends” them there. I am asking what does the phrase “freely choose” in this context?

It means we chose our actions on Earth, and God judges us decides what to do with us after our death. It’s not that difficult to comprehend.