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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Incarnation
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Does anyone understand* Incarnation? I read on the Hot Jesus thread that He was 'both fully divine and fully human'. This seems illogical unless you make the case uniquely exceptional and inexplicable, but I doubt that would have two millennia of carriage in the human imagination, so I must be missing something very obvious here. What's the deal?
* as a curious adult of moderate intelligence but theological illiteracy.
Ta.
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
How does that work for you? I wonder if Christians are happier to live with such paradoxes than atheists.
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Well, because you have to explain your claims somehow.
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Quite.
I just find it hard to believe that billions of Christians can live with this headfuck. It's kind of crucial, if you'll forgive the usage.
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Does anyone understand* Incarnation?
* as a curious adult of moderate intelligence but theological illiteracy.
Ta.
I would posit the answer is no. We certainly don't understand it in the way we understand some other things.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to express the idea somehow (please forgive the double negative). I certainly think that a good deal of thought ought to go into it. The intellectual trip comes when one person's conclusion (i.e. the creedal claim) becomes another person's starting point.
Rather we need to think things through afresh and see if we end up expressing that train of thought as "fully divine and fully human" or if we can come up with something that is easier to get our heads around.
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
He was 'both fully divine and fully human'. This seems illogical unless you make the case uniquely exceptional and inexplicable
It's uniquely exceptional and inexplicable. That's kind of the point. Indeed the words used are a human attempt to grasp something that transcends humanity; hence the problem.
It's only a problem if you think you have to fully understand something to make it true, though.
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Complex ideas by their nature often sound more believable than simple ones.
This is true, but is no standard by which to judge their truth. Or, as I posted not so long ago on another thread, are you advocating a return to describing everything in terms of fire, air, earth and water? Or Yorick, to performing diagnoses on the basis of "humours"?
[ 28. February 2014, 09:21: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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pydseybare
Shipmate
# 16184
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
This is true, but is no standard by which to judge their truth. Or, as I posted not so long ago on another thread, are you advocating a return to describing everything in terms of fire, air, earth and water? Or Yorick, to performing diagnoses on the basis of "humours"?
Agreed. I believe in the incarnation, but as I've said a lot recently, not because it is logical. I think it requires a leap of faith.
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"If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future."
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Scott Atran, the anthropologist, argues that most religions have counter-intuitive ideas in them, because humans are attracted to that, but they must not be too counter-intuitive.
Thus a bird god is fine, as it is reasonably counter-intuitive, but a Venusian bird god which was created just before the Big Bang, and eats people for breakfast, might be too much.
So the incarnation is probably counter-intuitive enough to satisfy people?
Another interesting point by Atran is that religion should be reasonably costly, but not too costly. In other words, it should hurt you to an extent, but not to a ridiculous degree.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Yorick: I read on the Hot Jesus thread that He was 'both fully divine and fully human'. This seems illogical
What's illogical about that? Can't people be two things at the same time?
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
So, Eutychus, would it be fair to say that you 'live with' the paradox by dismissing it? I would guess that most Christians have a reasonably functioning reconciliation of this paradox in their hearts, since this sort of dirt tends to make its way out again from under the carpet. If so, how do you do it? What mental framework scaffolds the illogic on a day-to-day basis?
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این نیز بگذرد
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pydseybare
Shipmate
# 16184
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
What's illogical about that? Can't people be two things at the same time?
Well, let's list a few characteristics we know about the deity: knowing all things, being all places at the same time, being outside of time...
Now explain how someone can be man (rather than superman) and retain those characteristics.
It is obviously something that requires interpretation because at first glance they're mutually contradictory.
[ 28. February 2014, 09:28: Message edited by: pydseybare ]
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pydseybare
Shipmate
# 16184
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
So, Eutychus, would it be fair to say that you 'live with' the paradox by dismissing it? I would guess that most Christians have a reasonably functioning reconciliation of this paradox in their hearts, since this sort of dirt tends to make its way out again from under the carpet. If so, how do you do it? What mental framework scaffolds the illogic on a day-to-day basis?
Well from my point of view, I rationalise to some extent by saying that Jesus Christ has something of the essence of the deity, so to some extent retained the 'character' of the deity whilst at the same time giving up the obvious usual characteristics of the creator God.
On a day-to-day basis, I think it mostly means that I understand what the Creator God is like by looking at Jesus Christ. The latter is easier to understand than the former.
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
pydseybare: Well, let's list a few characteristics we know about the deity: knowing all things, being all places at the same time, being outside of time...
Now explain how someone can be man (rather than superman) and retain those characteristics.
Simple. God knows all, is everywhere and is outside of time. He creates a part of Himself that has all these abilities, but voluntarily puts them on hold for a while. However, all the experiences this part of Him has are shared within the all-knowing, everywhere-being, outside-of-time God.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
So, Eutychus, would it be fair to say that you 'live with' the paradox by dismissing it?
What do you mean by "dismiss"?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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pydseybare
Shipmate
# 16184
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
Simple. God knows all, is everywhere and is outside of time. He creates a part of Himself that has all these abilities, but voluntarily puts them on hold for a while. However, all the experiences this part of Him has are shared within the all-knowing, everywhere-being, outside-of-time God.
OK, so explain how this 'part of himself' is fully human. In the sense that the rest of us are.
How is one fully human if one had access to godly powers that everyone else does not have? Is that not a avatar rather than a fully human person?
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"If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future."
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
How is one fully human if one had access to godly powers that everyone else does not have? Is that not a avatar rather than a fully human person?
That is a subdivision of this debate and relates to the doctrine (or discussion) of kenosis.
[ 28. February 2014, 09:55: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Well, let's list a few characteristics we know about the deity: knowing all things, being all places at the same time, being outside of time...
Now explain how someone can be man (rather than superman) and retain those characteristics.
I could make the same point about, say, Barack Obama being both black and white. These terms refer to both ethnic heritage and physical appearance. Even though the US Census would consider Obama white (they define it as "having European ancestry) AND black, he is almost universally viewed as being black because of the way he looks. "White" has an inherently flawed definition, because it is tying physical appearance (light skin) to ethnic background, in a world where lots of people with European heritage don't have light skin thanks to racial mixing.
So one could say, it's actually impossible to be black AND white, even though you can say you are to the government - but that's just an issue of the language used to describe race, rather than it being an issue of what people actually are.
I don't know that Jesus being fully human, fully divine is any different. It's probably the wrong way to correctly describe His nature, but it's the best that we can manage. The limitations of our language on this, shouldn't be the arbiter of whether the thing it is attempting to describe is true or not.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
So, Eutychus, would it be fair to say that you 'live with' the paradox by dismissing it?
What do you mean by "dismiss"?
Yorick, to put it another way: do you 'live with' the paradox that electricity can be described both as a waveform and as a stream of particles by dismissing it?
Or do you simply not believe in electricity because it has some paradoxical aspects?
[ 28. February 2014, 10:02: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
pydseybare: Is that not a avatar rather than a fully human person?
It depends what you mean by 'avatar'. I'm sure that it us nothing like us moving a puppet around on a computer screen like we did in Church of Fools, or even like what happened in the film Avatar. An almighty God could easily create a part of Him that is fully human without the restrictions these imperfect connections have.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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MrsBeaky
Shipmate
# 17663
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Posted
I am reasonably intelligent (if you measure such things by having a good degree from an excellent university).
I'm also someone who likes things to make as much sense as possible but....
The Incarnation just won't submit itself to my preferences and occasionally that makes me really frustrated, so I think I understand part of what you are getting at, Yorick.
With fifty plus years of the Christian faith already lived (blimey I'm old!), I have to say that the Incarnation has been central to my continuing to walk that path, meditating on it, wrestling with it, feeling I have experienced it then feeling it slip away, only to return again, especially in the Eucharist. The God/ Man of Galilee draws me back again and again.
I know that sounds beyond the realms of logic and will probably frustrate and annoy some people, it does that to me too...butI have found the Incarnation to be a beautiful, powerful and transformative (is that a real word?!)mystery which cannot be grasped with just the mind.
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"It is better to be kind than right."
http://davidandlizacooke.wordpress.com
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Lord Jestocost
Shipmate
# 12909
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
How does that work for you? I wonder if Christians are happier to live with such paradoxes than atheists.
To me it's the blind-men-feeling-an-elephant scenario. Is it long and stringy or big and flappy? Neither. The two seemingly irreconcilable positions are close-ups of a much bigger picture into which they both fit. I may spend a lifetime trying to get the whole picture and I never will, but bit by bit along the way I may hopefully come to understand God a bit more.
Posts: 761 | From: The Instrumentality of Man | Registered: Aug 2007
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Yorick, to put it another way: do you 'live with' the paradox that electricity can be described both as a waveform and as a stream of particles by dismissing it?
Or do you simply not believe in electricity because it has some paradoxical aspects?
Good analogy. Practically, I suppose I live with that paradox of electricity on this sort of basis- it's invisible, it makes my toaster work, and it hurts if you lick it. On a day to day basis, therefore, I tend to dismiss any scientific theoretical paradox because it doesn't really matter to me (and I would trust scientists to seek to resolve for truth any logical impossibility with the rigour of their method). Is that how it works with the Incarnation and theology? I rather thought it should matter to you.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Yorick
Another point is that humans are basically irrational beings, and their rationality is therefore highly prized. But their irrationality is very important, (reason is the slave of the passions, and so on), and has to be fed up by various means, such as art, music, literature, and so on. And I think religion also, which has a kind of rational aspect to it, but also enshrines the irrational, or trans-rational, as people say today!
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
I tend to dismiss any scientific theoretical paradox because it doesn't really matter to me (and I would trust scientists to seek to resolve for truth any logical impossibility with the rigour of their method). Is that how it works with the Incarnation and theology? I rather thought it should matter to you.
I still dispute your use of the word "dismiss" and and am not sure about "it doesn't matter to me".
Where the analogy to electricity is similar is that how the incarnation works is not important to me on a daily basis*. Where it differs is that I don't expect theologians to end up managing to tie down the incarnation in the way you seem to expect scientists to resolve the paradoxical nature of electricity.
Besides, the incarnation matters in terms of its theological import, which stands irrespective of whether it can be adequately explained in human terms.
*The doctrine of kenosis, i.e. the extent to which "Christ emptied himself" does have more significant knock-on effects in terms of believers' expectations of what they could and should be doing: see attempts to walk on water and through walls à la Bethel. But as I've said before, that's a subtopic.
[ 28. February 2014, 11:37: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
I agree with Mrs Beaky.
A fundamental point about God is that he isn't just bigger than we are. He's much bigger. Therefore, we cannot fully comprehend (in its classic meaning of grasp, get one's hands round) either him or all that he is. So any version of the statement, 'I don't understand the incarnation, or how Christ can be both fully human and fully divine. Therefore it must be wrong' quite simply does not work.
If one of our pre-suppositions is that God must be fully amenable to our own understanding, that is the wrong way round. It is better to approach him with awe and wonder, than to insist that he must fit what we expect of him.
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
True, I'm just trying to illustrate that the 'fully God, fully human' thing is not 'simple'. It just isn't.
The other possibility is that it's so radically simple that we think it can't possibly be that simple, and we try to complicate it.
Jesus, uniquely in the whole history of creation, had two "natures": the divine nature and the human nature. It's partly that uniqueness that makes it impossible to comprehend - there's no other case of a dual nature that we can appeal to for comparison. A horse, for instance, can never be both fully horse and fully cat.
If we're going to use the word "paradox", we have to use it in a specific way, not meaning something that's illogical and therefore can't be true, but as something beyond logic, and therefore can't be comprehended. It's beyond logic in the sense that there is a limit to what you can say about it. You can state the "facts" as we believe them to be, and reason from those to other things we believe about Jesus (for instance, that his temptations and his death were as real as they are for any human being, and weren't in any way privileged or illusory); but you can't reason about how a dual nature might be possible in a general sense - it's something that, apart from the unique case of Jesus, is beyond human experience.
It's at times like this I'm tempted to take Wittgensteing's maxim about philosophy and apply it to theology: "that whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent". It's speculation that complicates the issue.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
So, Eutychus, would it be fair to say that you 'live with' the paradox by dismissing it? I would guess that most Christians have a reasonably functioning reconciliation of this paradox in their hearts, since this sort of dirt tends to make its way out again from under the carpet. If so, how do you do it? What mental framework scaffolds the illogic on a day-to-day basis?
You seem to assume that it is only in the realm of theology that people have to live with paradox. In fact, paradox permeates life.
The fact that I can't understand the Incarnation doesn't bother me because there are so many other things I also can't get my mind around.
The other things I can't understand were created by God. I assume that God is more complicated than his creation. In that case, there is no reason why I should be able to understand the Incarnation.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Does anyone understand* Incarnation? I read on the Hot Jesus thread that He was 'both fully divine and fully human'. This seems illogical unless you make the case uniquely exceptional and inexplicable, but I doubt that would have two millennia of carriage in the human imagination, so I must be missing something very obvious here. What's the deal?
It's a question of categories (in the logical sense).
White, red, blue, etc. are all colours - they're all members of the category colour. It's logically contradictory to say that something is wholly white and also wholly red.
Being made of paper, made of metal, etc. are also part of the same category - it's logically contradictory to say that something is wholly made of paper and also wholly made of metal.
But something can be wholly made of metal and wholly red, because red and made of metal are in different logical categories.
In the same way, being read all over is a different logical category from being black and white; so something can be black and white and read all over.
So, Socrates can be a human being and Socrates can be wise, because 'wise' and 'human being' are in different categories. It's logically contradictory to say that Socrates is a human being and a rabbit; because 'human being' and 'rabbit' are in the same logical category.
Now - 'divine' is not in the same category as anything else. God is not coloured, or made of anything, or a member of any biological species. Therefore, there is no logical contradiction in saying that something is human and divine. (Nor would it be contradictory to say that something was a lump of wood and divine.) Quite how that works is open to debate - e.g. are there things that Jesus knew as God but didn't know as a human being - but it's not contradictory.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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pydseybare
Shipmate
# 16184
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
but it's not contradictory.
I can see you saying this, but I can't see your reasoning. How can the God who created everything, is eternal, everywhere-at-once etc etc logically also be a fallible, killable, in-one-place, non-superman human being.
Other than you asserting it is logical (or not illogical), I can't see that you have proven it is. Or isn't.
[ 28. February 2014, 13:31: Message edited by: pydseybare ]
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"If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future."
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
I believe in the incarnation, but as I've said a lot recently, not because it is logical. I think it requires a leap of faith.
People tend to use the word 'logical' loosely, without thinking through the implications.
In one sense, believing that the planets orbit the sun in ellipses goes beyond logic; you can't deduce it from any purely logical axioms. You have to look through telescopes or observe falling objects.
It's one thing to say that something can't be deduced from basic logic or observation and therefore requires a leap of faith; and another thing to say that it's logically impossible and requires a leap of faith. The former I think is defensible. I don't think the latter can actually be done - things that are logically contradictory are actually meaningless. (What does it mean to talk about a square circle?)
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
but it's not contradictory.
I can see you saying this, but I can't see your reasoning. How can the God who created everything, is eternal, everywhere-at-once etc etc logically also be a fallible, killable, in-one-place, non-superman human being.
Other than you asserting it is logical (or not illogical), I can't see that you have proven it is. Or isn't.
If it can't be proven to be a logical contradiction, then it's not illogical.
Let's divide statements into three types:
a) can be proven through logic or other pure reasoning: e.g. a triangle on the Euclidean plane with sides 3 units, 4 units, and 5 units, is right-angled.
b) can be disproven through logic: e.g. there exists a right angled triangle with sides 3 units, 4 units, and 6 units on the Euclidean plane. These are illogical.
c) can be neither proven nor disproven through logic and mathematics alone; e.g. Barack Obama is President of the United States; sheep are carnivorous; it is never moral to tell lies; etc.
Most statements are of type 'c' - the contention is that a statement is presumed to be of type 'c', until it is shown to be either a or b.
Now by 'logical' do you mean 'a' or do you mean 'a' and 'c'? It's certainly not necessarily irrational to believe statements of type 'c', even though they cannot be proven through logic.
As to how Jesus can both be omniscient and also have limited knowledge, God's knowledge isn't like human knowledge. (We don't know positively what God's knowledge is like, but we know it can't work in the same way that ours' does.) How that works out in terms of Jesus' subjective human psychology we don't know either. And so on in the case of other attributes.
It's not the case that we start out by dreaming up statements like 'Jesus is fully human and divine' as an exercise in metaphysics. Rather we start out with the evidence of the Gospel stories, and come to the conclusion that Jesus was human, but also that Jesus was God. So if we have reason to believe that from the Gospel story, then we have reason to believe that it isn't logically contradictory.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Part of our problem is that we don't know what the hell we're talking about when we speak of human nature, let alone God's divine nature. What does it mean to be fully human? It appears to be mean (for example), to possess a physical body (whether currently resident in that body or not), to be bound by unidirectional time as we normally understand it, to have a beginning, to be (at least potentially) rational, to have limitations to our knowledge and power, and so forth.
But that's all very vague--not at all a definitive statement of what human nature actually consists in. The borders are fuzzy to a lot of folk. Therefore the ongoing debates on
* when a fetus becomes "human" in nature(conception is the only logical point I can come up with, as there seems no alternate nature it could possess till then);
* what degree of deformity either mental or physical can strip someone of human nature (I would argue none);
* whether one ceases to be human at death (and therefore may be treated as an object rather than a human person);
* whether humanity and personhood are identical or simply overlapping categories;
* whether there are any cases in which a fetus/disabled person/person in a vegetative state/person with extensive cyborg parts (sci fi I know, but still) ceases to be "human" in nature and may therefore be treated as property (e.g. slavery, buying and selling vs. adoption, etc.)
There are also tendencies to mix up corruptions of the nature with the nature itself. For example, even on these boards we see all the time a confusion of "human nature" with sinfulness--people who seem to think that it is the very nature of humanity to be corrupt, and always has been, and always will be--and then argue that since God is not, cannot, be corrupt, therefore he cannot become human. But this is not true either, since sin is something that has happened to human nature, not the nature itself.
Which is all a very longwinded way of saying, if we can't even agree on what the constituents and borders of human nature are, how can we dare to say it is incompatible with divine nature? which we know even less about.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Ha, ok, well then Hume is (apparently) commenting on Plato.
I see no evidence for that inference either, I'm afraid.
And I don't think anyone's going to criticise you for not trying to furnish others' posts with citations and footnotes, especially if you miss the mark when you do.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
(reason is the slave of the passions, and so on),
He is misquoting Plato's tripartate theory of the soul there, in case anyone wants a reference.
By gum, am I? Silly me, I thought I was quoting Hume, ah well.
Incidentally, Hume actually says that “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."
I suppose the astonishing word there is 'ought'.
Echoed to a degree by Schopenhauer, who said (paraphrase coming up), that we can use reason to get what we want, but not to decide what we want.
I suppose this used to be termed a sentimentalist moral ethics? Although I think there has been a revival of interest in this recently.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Well, In The Republic Plato says that there are three parts to the soul and that in the balanced person, the logical part should be in control of the appetite and spirited part.
Which is why I thought it was a misquote. I must read Hume, it looks interesting.
Yes, in some ways, Hume is saying the reverse, which has caused plenty of discussion and controversy, as Hume of course, is often reckoned to be one of the fathers of skepticism, but this in fact, leads to a kind of anti-rationalism.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
I believe in the incarnation, but as I've said a lot recently, not because it is logical. I think it requires a leap of faith.
People tend to use the word 'logical' loosely, without thinking through the implications.
In one sense, believing that the planets orbit the sun in ellipses goes beyond logic; you can't deduce it from any purely logical axioms. You have to look through telescopes or observe falling objects.
It's one thing to say that something can't be deduced from basic logic or observation and therefore requires a leap of faith; and another thing to say that it's logically impossible and requires a leap of faith. The former I think is defensible. I don't think the latter can actually be done - things that are logically contradictory are actually meaningless. (What does it mean to talk about a square circle?)
Depends on how you define 'circle' and 'square', and whether you adhere to Euclidean geometry, I suppose. In taxicab geometry, circles are squares.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_geometry#Circles_in_Taxicab_geometry
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
Shipmate
# 11274
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Posted
"Not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh: but by the taking of Manhood into God" (Athanasian Creed)
Posts: 7328 | From: Delaware | Registered: Apr 2006
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