Believers claim that God can be proven to exist through logic.
Before I go on, I must point out there’s no such thing as ‘the logic’. There are different forms of reasoning; Buddhists and Jains have their own, so why does a claimant choose this logic over the other forms? Putting all that aside, here are a few questions about the idea that logic can prove an all-powerful God’s existence.
Some say God is so unique and vast; no rules can explain, but that also means logic can’t be used to prove a god exists.
The way God is argued through logic seems to indicate God is small enough to fit inside our tiny minds that use logic or reason. These might claim that we can know of gods existence through logic but little else. Yet this is not the case, as believers often argue as much with each other about the nature of God and its attributes. It’s not just mere existence we theists use logic for.
Humans define God within the limits of their thinking. If God can’t be illogical; therefore, God must also have limitations. Because illogic (contrary or paradoxical) is not God, God has limits. It’s trying to gift-wrap God in logic whilst also claiming God can’t be gift-wrapped.
Like a coin, a coin has both heads and tails; therefore, a God that encompasses everything must also have such duality.
Logic seemingly has become more important than God since reason is the method you use to demonstrate God.
Therefore logic is more significant than God.
The claim logic can be used to prove a god smuggles in another claim; that logic can be used to prove supernatural or metaphysical. Where is the evidence logic that can do this? There is no way to test this idea other than using more logic, so you have circular reasoning, using logic to prove that the logic is logical.
The reasoning used to postulate a god is the same reasoning used to prove a god it’s claimed.
No evidence exists to prove that logic can be used to demonstrate an ontology. (Say nothing of the problem that we can’t define what reality or existence is). We forget that logic doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it was developed in concert with our observations and evidence.
Consider it as two hands; Reason vs evidence or Theory vs data. Each hand washes the other. When we have logic or a theory, it directs us to look for empirical evidence to support it. When we have empirical evidence, we can use logic or develop a theory that explains it.
When you remove the evidential aspect because there is no direct even of the metaphysical, what’s left is reason alone, and one hand can’t wash itself.
It’s also important to remind ourselves how poor we are at reason and logic. We created logic to help us describe and navigate this reality. Its use is tied to its practical effects.
A tool that works well in one domain only sometimes works well in another. We don’t use jackhammers for dentistry.
Logic is developed and tested in this empirical realm. Apologists tell us logic can be used in the metaphysical domain just as well as this one. But where is the evidence of this claim?
Another problem is our attitude towards our ideas. Logic deals with abstract concepts. It’s an unsupported claim that abstract ideas have a reality and existence beyond our thoughts, called ‘Realism’, but Nominalists reject that such statements have such a reality; they are merely ideas. The truth is reality doesn’t have to conform to our logic and reason; that is the fallacy of Reification. We are squeezing existence to fit our ideas and logic, making our ideas more important than the facts of reality.
The claim that logic can prove God rests upon several unsupported and untestable assumptions.
The broader premise is this supernatural realm works in the same way this natural realm works, so we can use the tools we have, sense and logic, to claim the supernatural.
However, where is the roof of such claims? Where is the ability to test them? How can it be claimed that logic leads to the supernatural when we can’t check it?
Such reasoning is bereft of any notions of proof and is left in the dustbin of speculative reasoning.