LETTERS: LOGIC CAN BE USED TO ASCERTAIN GOD

To the editor:

Sam Blackwell's May 13 column deserves much praise, not only as a well-written commentary of "Star Wars," but also as a reassuring affirmation that, like the Force of "Star Wars," a force for good does indeed exist in this world and can be experienced is we can, like Luke Skywalker, take the time to look within. I must, however, take issue with one statement presented in the column: "If you hope to ascertain God with logic, you will not." Sam cannot be faulted too much for this error, for it is a common misunderstanding fostered by a confusion of intelligence with agnosticism, or even atheism, which exists in much of the academic world today. I might have let this pass if Sam had said "with logic alone," but his mention of discussions of "proving the existence of God" and "student union at college" experiences made me realize there is an urgent need to dispel the widespread fallacy that the existence of God cannot be logically proved. This idea, a basic tenet of materialism, has become to ingrained in our society that we even find clergymen repeating it.

Logic does not exist in a vacuum. It starts with one or more a priori assumptions, i.e., ideas accepted from experience, as given, obvious or indisputable. Logic then operates upon ideas or observations that arise in our experience and proves them to be true or false within the context of the assumptions. In other words, the operation of logic and the hypotheses proved ultimately depend upon experience, either our own or someone else's experience that is accepted as truthful and authoritative. If you start with the assumption that nothing exists but matter and energy interacting in time and space, logic will not prove the existence of anything outside the domain of that assumption. On this basis, you cannot prove the existence of human consciousness with logic, but we all know from direct experience that it exists.

When evidence arises that contradicts current assumptions, the assumptions must be revisited and changed to accommodate the new facts. In the history of science, this has happened over and over again, but any new understanding or paradigm often takes years to be generally accepted. Recently, experiments in quantum physics have produced evidence of the existence of something beyond matter and energy. "Transcendental Physics," a book published by Paradigm Press in 1997, presents logical proof that this something is conscious and all-pervading and had to have existed before the first quantum of the physical universe was formed. In short, logic based on scientific evidence has proved the existence of God, a reality that can, of course, also be verified by direct experience. So it turns out that when non-quantum, i.e., non-physical, reality revealed by quantum experiments expands the domain of our basic assumptions, God can be logically ascertained.

ED CLOSE

Jackson