Not long ago, the popular podcaster Tim Pool had Andrew Wilson on his show.
Wilson is an Eastern Orthodox Christian who has made a name for himself for debating not just atheists and leftists, but Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims.
On this occasion, Pool accused Wilson of sounding like an “atheist,” of not being a “real Christian.” Wilson, you see, maintained that God cannot violate or suspend the laws of logic.
While Tim Pool disavows atheism, he also claims that he is not a Christian or an adherent of any of the world’s great religious traditions. Still, Pool insisted that he does believe in God and that, since God is all-powerful, God must be able to do anything—including violate the laws of logic.
During the Middle Ages, a question to which Christian theologians paid some attention was the following: Can God create a stone that’s too heavy for God to move?
Initially, this appears to be a dilemma:
On the one hand, if God, being all-powerful, can create such a stone, then God is not all-powerful, for now there would exist something that God was incapable of budging.
On the other hand, if God, being all-powerful, cannot create a stone that He is incapable of moving, then God is not all-powerful, for He cannot create the stone.
It didn’t take long, though, for these theologians to dismiss the question as nonsense, i.e., as a
piece of illogic. The idea of God creating a stone that God cannot move is incoherent.
God cannot violate the fundamental principles of logic, because this would be tantamount to the Supreme Being violating its own nature.
The principles of logic are:
The Law of Identity: A thing is what it is, and is not what it is not;
The Law of Non-Contradiction: A thing cannot be and not be in the same respect and at the same time;
The Law of Excluded Middle: Either a thing is, or it is not.
Being itself, reality, is intrinsically intelligible. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of anything in the world, including our very selves. Yet, from the theistic perspective that both Tim Pool and Andrew Wilson share, whatever exists derives its being from Being itself, i.e., from the Supreme Being.
The principles or laws of logic are not numbered among such things in the world as chemicals, organisms, and planets that we come to learn about. They are the very preconditions of learning about anything.
It wouldn’t be possible to have a single coherent thought if not for the laws of logic.
Now, the laws of logic, then, are not physical substances, phenomena, or processes, for if they were, they would belong to the inventory of the world. Furthermore, the physical is extended in space and exists in and over time.
The laws of logic, rather, are immaterial: They aren’t found under rocks, in closets, or only on some continents. And their origins can’t be recovered by historians or archeologists, for they have no temporal origins. They are universal and timeless.
While Pool accused Wilson of possible covert atheism for claiming that the laws of logic are not arbitrary, that they are grounded in God’s nature, it is actually Pool who, undoubtedly unbeknownst to himself, veered closer to atheist territory. Pool depicted the laws of logic as if they were creatures of God’s will that, as such, He could have chosen not to bring into being.
What Pool fails to grasp is that the laws of logic are not brought into being. They belong to Being itself and render understanding possible. Precisely because the laws of logic, being non-physical, transcend time and space, they must be grounded in a mind or nature that is itself non-physical, universal, and timeless.
The laws of logic point beyond themselves to God.
Pool clearly didn’t think his position through to its logical end. Had he done so, he would’ve realized that, by his own reasoning (such as it was), he and Wilson, despite assuming mutually contradictory stances, could both be equally correct, at the same time, and in the same regard.
If the laws of logic were arbitrary, then God could be Himself and not Himself at the same time, or make it that He exists and does not exist, and on and on.
To say that God is all-powerful (omnipotent) is to say that if something is logically possible—if it doesn’t involve a self-contradiction—then God could do it. Whatever is self-contradictory is inconceivable. It’s not just that it’s unimaginable. The inconceivable and the unimaginable are not one and the same thing. There are all sorts of things that are conceivable but because of the limitations of the human imagination, we can’t envision. Because of the finitude of our minds, an infinite number line, for example, is not something of which we can produce an image. But an infinite number line is conceivable. There’s no logical contradiction in it.
Whatever is illogical is nothing. God cannot create nothing, for whatever is created is something. Tim Pool and everyone who is inclined to argue about matters of God (including and especially Christians), should think, well, logically about them.