These two lines of reasoning are not in agreement. The first says that the typical omni-god doesn’t exist because it’s logically absurd while the second is gobbledegook that tries to use the irrationality of god as a proof for its existence. For the atheist, “God is beyond logic” = “The argument for an omni-god fails”, while for the theist it equals “God exists because that’s the only way I choose to explain the existence of logic.” Sorry, but this comic really bugged me today…
Renshia
Maybe that’s the whole point. The absurdity of the syntax of our tongue. that we can be saying the exact same thing but under the circumstances they are understood completely differently.
Syntax
A man staring at his equations
said that the universe had a beginning.
There had been an explosion, he said.
A bang of bangs, and the universe was born.
And it is expanding, he said.
He had even calculated the length of its life:
ten billion revolutions of the earth around the sun.
The entire globe cheered;
They found his calculations to be science.
None thought that by proposing that the universe began,
the man had merely mirrored the syntax of his mother tongue;
a syntax which demands beginnings, like birth,
and developments, like maturation,
and ends, like death, as statements of facts.
The universe began,
and it is getting old, the man assured us,
and it will die, like all things die,
like he himself died after confirming mathematically
the syntax of his mother tongue.
**************************
The Other Syntax
Did the universe
really begin?
Is the theory of the big bang true?
These are not questions, though they sound like they are.
Is the syntax that requires beginnings, developments
and ends as statements of fact the only syntax that exists?
That’s the real question.
There are other syntaxes.
There is one, for example, which demands that varieties
of intensity be taken as facts.
In that syntax nothing begins and nothing ends;
thus birth is not a clean, clear-cut event,
but a specific type of intensity,
and so is maturation, and so is death.
A man of that syntax, looking over his equations, finds that
he has calculated enough varieties of intensity
to say with authority
that the universe never began
and will never end,
but that it has gone, and is going now, and will go
through endless fluctuations of intensity.
That man could very well conclude that the universe itself
is the chariot of intensity
and that one can board it
to journey through changes without end.
He will conclude all that, and much more,
perhaps without ever realizing
that he is merely confirming
the syntax of his mother tongue.
Bengie
When your brain encounters an incongruity it can become frustrated of trigger laughter. Comedy is the art of the absurd. “God is beyond logic” is a phrase that can be used for both sides and I wanted to explore that. The comic’s resolution is completely neutral (though, you and I would recognize the superior argument)
It goes from serious to silly in three panels.
Bengie
Bartender, this lady’s next fictional beverage is on me!
Mlawliet
god isn´t beyond logic, god is in a sine function of logic and lack thereof
