“The gospel is never heard in isolation. It is always heard against the background of the cultural milieu in which one lives. A person raised in a cultural milieu in which Christianity is still seen as an intellectually viable option will display an openness to the gospel which a person who is secularized will not… [as such] part of the broader task of Christian scholarship is to help create and sustain a cultural milieu in which the gospel can be heard as an intellectually viable option for thinking men and women.”
- William Lane Craig (1949 – Present)
William Lane Craig is an eminent Christian apologist, theologian, and philosopher who is probably best known for his contributions to the philosophy of religion, historical Jesus studies, and the philosophy of time. He is also a well sought after speaker and has engaged in numerous debates around the world defending the truth of Christianity.
One of the biggest misconceptions of our time is that faith is the opposite of logic. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Agreed.
However, it should also be noted that faith is not of the domain of logic, either. The very nature of logic is necessarily boundary-limited to human experience within the universe and the subjective, epistemological parsing of the same.
The notion of faith, on the other hand, is the total, existential commitment of one’s entire self to a reality which is incapable of adequate demonstration or expression on the basis of human logic.
So while faith is certainly not the “opposite” of logic, it is also not “logical.”
I don’t believe in Christianity. I think its core beliefs are largely nonsense. Having said that, I don’t necessarily consider Christianity “illogical.” One can “prove” virtually anything with logic. That is, one can create arguments and… entire theological systems comprised of arguments that are logically valid–i.e., their conclusions follow from their premises–yet, nevertheless, yield false conclusions because one or more of their premises are false.
So, again, Christianity can be quite “logical” or rational, as Thomas Aquinas and many others have shown, and still be utterly ridiculous in much of what it teaches.
It could also be logically determined that it is the right choice to have faith in certain things.
How so?