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circular reasoning

how do you contradict this?

Fri, 2008-11-28 02:33 — amber123
Question:: 
ok i am probably becoming a nuisance but oh well. my question this time is i was arguing with my mother (what the hell else is new) and she told me that even though humanity has found ways of figuring out how planets and stars form now that when God created everything he controlled time and space and could do anything such as creating our earth before our sun for example even though that isn't how it works. my mom told me that god doesn't follow logic becausae he made logic i mean she asked me about what is logical about a blind man seeing or a dead guy coming alive well truth is their is no logic to it so how do i aswer that? mom says that seeing as god is all powerful then he can do whatever he wants, but to me thats sounds like a penny explanation for the stuff in the bible that makes no logicaal sense. i told her that everything has a logical explanation whether we know it or not and that even if there was a god why would he set up a logical route for planets and stars to be formed and then completely disregard it? so really i don't know how to answer these things because it seems eveytime i ask a question of something in the bible that completely disregard sience,history etc they always give me the "well God can do anything answer" which i still see as a penny answer.
Atheist Answer: 

Amber, it might be a typo but I've never seen this use of the word "penny" before. From context I'm assuming that it means "inadequate".

What your mother says is true in a way. If a god exists and is truly omnipotent, then it can do anything it wants to: form the solar system in the wrong order, make it look billions of years older than it really is, give a man the power to cure blindness by touch, and bring the same man back from the dead. Such a being, hypothetically, can change or suspend the laws of physics to achieve its goals, and also manipulate or bypass whatever constant logical constraints the universe may have.

This can have varying effects on an argument, depending. It's basically useless to argue that an omnipotent god can't do something. The possibily that a god is omnipotent pretty much guarantees that a god is possible (since it could be hiding anywhere). However, that which is possible is not necessarily true.

If we conclude from research that the Bible's stories are illogical, then we would have to dismiss logic to believe them. That means we would need an entirely different reason to believe, or we wouldn't do such a thing. So what reasons do people have to believe in the Bible besides logic?

It may be an emotional reason, like simply wanting there to be a Heaven. It might be a default, since one's family might always have believed and one follows along by sheer trust. It might be because of apparent personal experience of God: while at a charismatic church someone is "taken by the Holy Spirit" and starts speaking in tongues. (I think this is a combination of over-enthusiasm and subtle hypnosis, but it certainly does happen.) Otherwise, maybe someone has a particularly convincing dream or hallucination of God. What the hell, maybe God really does exist and comes down to say hi to some lucky sod.

So think about the people you know, for example your mother. Why does she believe, if not because of logic? (Relating back to your other question, has she ever used a bible dictionary to sort out an apparent contradiction herself?). Most importantly (and this is the reply to her which I think you're looking for), why should you believe the stories in the absence of substantive evidence or logical support as far as you can tell?

- SmartLX

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