Logic and Faith

I want to deal with the importance of logic as it relates to the validity of inference regarding our faith. In other words, I’d like to stress the importance of logic when trying to work out what exactly it is we need to believe.

We base our faith on the Bible believing we’ve received it by revelation from God. Given this belief, we can accept the truths it presents, especially regarding spiritual things, without fully understanding them or being able to relate them to the physical dimension we live in.

As C.S Lewis puts it in his book Mere Christianity (I couldn’t find the exact wording), “if we could understand the supernatural it would cease to be supernatural”. There is a danger is trying to understand all of God and his revelation to us, as it requires faith, something that no amount of logic can bestow. That’s not to say we check in our brain at the door when it comes to matters of faith, only that we must be aware that the spiritual dimension isn’t something we can grasp or receive truth about using our reasoning and powers of deduction alone.

Having clarified my belief that faith and not logic is the fundamental quality that we require for belief in God, I want to explain why I believe logic is essential for our faith.

During my first year of studies at university, I had to study “Discrete Mathematics”. Discrete Mathematics is more or less a collection of mathematical topics that are of practical relevance to Computer Science students (what I was).

A large part of what we studied was logic, and proofs. We’d be given a mathematical statement and told to logically deduce whether said statement was truthful or not. One of the popular exercises involved Knights and Knaves puzzles in which you’re given a series of statements made by various people, all of whom are either knights or knaves. In these puzzles a knight is always truthful, while a knave is always a liar. The solution lies in finding out who was is a knave and who is a knight.

A typical puzzle looks like this (taken from Wikipedia):

John and Bill are residents of the island of knights and knaves.

Question

John says: We are both knaves.

Who is what?

Solution

This is what John is saying in a more extended form:

“John is a knave and Bill is a knave.”

If John was a knight, he would not be able to say that he was a knave since he would be lying. Therefore the statement “John is a knave” must be true.

Since knaves lie, and one statement is true, the other statement must be false. Therefore the statement “Bill is a knave” must be false which leads to the conclusion that Bill is a knight.

The solution is that John is a knave and Bill is a knight.

Now, if my ability to reason and think logically is faulty, then I become incapable of making proper deductions based on the given facts. As relating to this puzzle, it could mean I try and solve it in a way that contradicts the premises of the puzzle, in other words I’d have to ignore the known truth to get a solution any different to the correct one. As relating to our faith, we can accept given statements as fact based not on the integrity of the information, but rather on the perceived integrity of the source, whether that be a written medium, spoken medium, or another person.

I want to encourage you to weigh every statement you hear or read for internal consistency, make sure it matches up with what you know to be true from God’s word, and then accept or reject based on that criteria. Please don’t let the confidence of men, the authority in their voices, or the amount of people that look up to them allow you to overlook the falsehoods that they can propagate.

Nobody is immune from believing or propagating error, but strive to walk closer to God, don’t accept anything you’re taught without examining it first, and God promises to guide you into truth.

However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. John 16:13

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