Assumptions

I had an interesting train of thought earlier today. It went something like this:

Logic is faulty. We know this through such logical paradoxes as Zeno’s Paradox, in which Achilles races against a tortoise. The tortoise gets a head start of say, 100 meters. Achilles is twice as fast as the tortoise, however, so it shouldn’t take him long to catch up. Achilles starts to run and covers the 100 meters to where the tortoise used to be, in this time the tortoise has moved on 50 meters. Achilles then covers those 50 meters, in which time the tortoise has moved on another 25 meters. Every time Achilles catches up to where the tortoise used to be the tortoise has moved on further again. Using this logic, Achilles can never catch up; with the two instead stuck in an infinite loop.

Of course, in the real world one object can pass another moving in the same direction, like you in your convertible past that lumbering truck on a mountain road, preferably with your top lowered and your middle finger raised (fucking truck drivers). So if we have a choice between the real world and our logical model, most people would say ‘let’s go with the real world’.

What’s more, logic is based on a number of assumptions. For example, we have to implicitly accept that 2 + 2 = 4. Yes, so far that has always been the case, but we can’t be certain. We assume it’s true because it has been true so far, but we also used to believe the world was flat, that gods lived on Olympus and that Father Christmas was more than just a hobo on minimum pay, with a red suit and a toilet paper beard.

We assume these rules hold true – even if they might well be proven wrong or only rough approximations – and we apply them in almost every facet of our lives.

That train of thought wasn’t exactly new to me (I’d followed a similar path before), but the next part was: What if faith in God was such a similar assumption? Similarly implicit as such assumptions as those that logisticians make in regards to logic?

The interesting thing about the assumptions the logisticians make is that they will find as much evidence as possible to support their position, while trying to ignore anything that might prove them wrong (like Zeno’s paradox). I think we do that with everything that we strongly believe in. It takes a very strong person to take to heart counter evidence to something they truly believe in.

That suddenly gave me an insight into why you can never debate faith. For those of you who have never tried (and I imagine you’re few in number) the problem with debating faith is that the people that have faith sooner or later use the fallacy of the impenetrable castle. This fallacy states that somebody accepts a belief based on arguments that are outside the realm of logic (i.e. they accept something as true without having any logical arguments to back it up).

I always thought of that as a weak argument, but now I realise that logic is in some ways just as much based on assumptions as faith is. To try to understand faith through logic is like trying to understand gravity through biology; it doesn’t work, for the simple reason that we are using the wrong tools.

Does that mean I’ve suddenly found faith? No, I remain an Atheist, as secure in my assumptions as the religious are in theirs. It just means that I have slightly more respect for the religious. That’s not a bad start, right?