I have never watched Brooklyn 99, but I remember seeing a clip of when Captain Holt had a rant with a dentist. Holt argued that the medical world coopted the word “Doctor”, and that makes sense as the etymology of the word reveals that it originally meant teacher. So, calling a PhD holder a doctor is more akin to the root word than using the term for someone who treats you when you are ill. Appropriation wins again and boy was the captain so triggered! In a similar manner, the word “logic” has been largely appropriated to the world of science. At the mention of logic, the next thing that comes to mind is science. It is such that when a person is said to have a logical mind, the immediate assumption is that the person is a scientist or has a scientific mind but that is not necessarily the case.
Simply put, logic is just a correct way of thinking in a particular field. It provides a framework used in inquiring about the facts and truths related to that field. Clearly, science is the name we call man’s efforts to investigate and understand how the world works, from the smallest particle to the heaviest blackhole, and even the fabric of the universe itself. Because of the scope of science, it appears so all-encompassing as if it truly is capable of explaining everything that makes up the human experience. As an example, we humans can see visible light, but visible light is just a portion of an entire spectrum of light (the electromagnetic spectrum), which means that there is invisible light. Similarly, we hear audible sound, but there are frequencies of sound we are unable to hear, which makes them inaudible sounds. But before the discovery of the invisible and inaudible portions of light and sound respectively, the general conclusion would have been that they did not exist or were spiritual phenomena. However, science pushed the frontiers and provided a means to observe these worlds our senses are naturally oblivious of. Now, we not only observe them, we also use them. WiFi is light, your microwave oven is light, x-ray is light. But that’s the thing: though science can explain a lot, it cannot fully account for everything that makes up the human experience because science is, by definition, limited to the physical world.
Assuming humans come to the pinnacle of science, the best-case scenario would be that they would have a complete understanding of the physical world and how to harness its natural energies efficiently. Once that is achieved, it would mark the literal end of science but even that is unrealistic and impossible. So, if science is only limited to the physical world, then it means that the ever-so passionate attempt to prove or disprove God with science (or the logical framework of scientific inquiry) would be a fool’s errand as the Object in question is not a physical being. It is just like attempting to fly with a ship — a simple case of using the wrong tools for a given task. The best science can do, after all scientific methods have proved abortive in their efforts to seek the understanding of some concepts, is to allude to something else; something necessarily more suitable for the task of “proving” God. So, as fun as it is to watch Christian apologists and atheist scientists have their frequent shakedowns about the existence of God, they would never come to a conclusive agreement on the topic because (scientific) logic ends with the material world. Therefore, another logic is needed to go into the non-material world.
Science is both the bedrock and the potential zenith of our understanding of the tangible realm of existence. Its logic holds foundation in empiricism, often summarised as “seeing is believing”. Yet, beyond the veil of the seen lies a realm equally, if not more, tangible and profound, but entirely unseen. And as evidence is key to the understanding of the seen, so is evidence key to the understanding of the unseen — but it is a different kind of evidence called Faith (Heb. 11:1). Faith also has its own logic, powerfully encapsulated in the counterintuitive mantra: “believing is seeing”. So, the unseen can be seen, but only by believing. In other words, if you are seeking evidence of God, it is faith, never science, that provides the answer.
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I really really really enjoyed reading this. Good writing Philip