I just read a nicely written article over at Atheism: Proving The Negative, where Matt points out the inconsistencies of the argument that “God it beyond the limitations of our logic”.
If they try to assert that God is beyond logic, beyond comprehension, or that God’s goodness (and evil) are things that we can’t fathom, then they have effectively disqualified themselves from making any assertions about him. If we can’t understand God’s goodness, or power, or nature, then we certainly aren’t entitled to assert that it is true that God exists or that God is good. If they want to say that belief is reasonable, intelligible, supported by the evidence, rational, or epistemically inculpable, then they can’t also insist that God is beyond comprehension. You can’t have it both ways.
That’s always been my plight. I don’t engage in theistic philosophical debates frequently, but the few occasions the subject matter arose, I started to feel as if my brain would implode with such arguments. How can one claim he/she knows about god’s love but could never understand god’s logic? Or, moreover, would never even want to attempt a higher comprehension? If it’s just out of his/her hands then how can he/she possibly understand the love?
He closes with another way to see the paradox:
Put the problem another way. If God is beyond our conceptual abilities, and that’s how he can co-exist with evil, or exist even though such a thing seem incoherent, THEN ANYTHING GOES. That is, why can’t it be that the only supernatural being is Satan, or Vishnu, or Sobek, or Eeguu, or the Giant Marshmallow and even though it doesn’t make any sense with all that we know about the world, the Giant Marshmallow is not subject our puny logical and conceptual limitations. This is, of course, the point of the whole Flying Spaghetti Monster movement.
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