Most people - in the modern Western world, especially - grow up believing that logic is the consummate way of thinking. The gold standard, so to speak. To them, non-logical thinking is a sure sign of mental deficiency.
These same folks also grow up believing that science is the paragon of logical thinking and, therefore, deserves to be revered and trusted.
Those beliefs, in fact, are greatly mistaken. During the 20th century both science and math discovered the serious shortcomings of logic.
In the early 1900s Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and other brilliant physicists discovered that light and subatomic particles behave in ways that are completely not logical. These discoveries led to the founding of quantum mechanics, a whole new branch of science that’s now the foundation of modern physics.
Here are some examples of what we’ve discovered:
1. Light is a mysterious entity (called a “quantum”) that is neither tangible nor intangible - but fully both at the same time! It’s like saying something is both at the same time fully black and fully white, fully even and fully odd, fully transparent and fully opaque. It’s not logical, but it’s real. As real as the light by which you’re reading these words right now.
2. Certain subatomic particles (called “bosons”) are ghostlike, in that an infinite number of them can occupy the exact same position at the same time. The position itself, furthermore, can be infinitely small. In other words, an infinite number of bosons can occupy the exact same, infinitely tiny position at the same time. It’s not logical, but it’s real.
3. Certain parallel lines intersect or diverge. That is, certain lines can be fully parallel and fully not parallel at the same time! It’s not logical, but it’s real. For example, parallel lines on a three-dimensional sphere converge at the north and south poles. They’re parallel and not parallel at the same time.
4. In 1930 an Austrian named Kurt Gödel - arguably the most brilliant logician who ever lived - used logic to prove logic’s inescapable and fatal flaws. His achievement is called Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems. I explain them in my book Believing Is Seeing, but their gist is this: Logic is incapable of proving truths even as simple as 2+2 = 4. Logic is all the more useless if you’re trying to prove truly deep truths, such as: “God exists and he created the universe.”
I could go on and on with other examples, but no doubt you’re now starting to understand it when I say, most of reality is not logical.
As I said earlier, science itself first realized this extraordinary quirk of the cosmos during the early 20th century. From then onward, modern science has been forced to resort to concepts and theories that are patently not logical.
For example, the modern scientific concept of the quantum vacuum. The quantum vacuum is both fully nothing and fully everything at the same time. The concept is clearly not logical, but modern cosmology has been forced to concoct it as a way of explaining the origin of the universe - i.e., “In the beginning was the quantum vacuum …”
Does it matter that reality is mostly not logical? Yes!
It matters because it means that, as I like putting it: Truth is far bigger than proof.
In plain English, it matters because if you’re a person seeking to understand reality, you’ll never come close to achieving it through simpleminded “logical reasoning.”
In order to understand the universe and yourself, you must use what I call “translogical reasoning.” It’s a hypercognitive ability unique to humans.
To paraphrase the great physicist Niels Bohr, “translogical reasoning” means you recognize that: The opposite of a great truth is another, different great truth.
Please stop and let that translogical axiom truly sink in.
When it does, you’ll be on your way to seeing the universe not through the eyes of a child who reasons logically, but a grownup who reasons translogically.
You’ll be on your way to recognizing that the universe is translogical because its Creator is translogical.
That’s what happened to me, when as a young Atheist training to be a scientist at Cornell, I came to realize the childishness of logic and embarked on a long, winding Herman Hesse-like translogical journey that transformed me (slowly, grudgingly) into a Christian.
I came to understand why God in human form (Jesus) spoke translogically. It’s because God’s mind is thoroughly translogical.
The first shall be last.
A leader must be a servant.
We must love our enemies.
We must die in order to live.
These profound, paradoxical truths make no sense if you reason logically. But they make perfect sense if you reason translogically.
Jesus himself - both fully man and fully God at the same time - doesn’t make sense if you reason like a child. But he makes perfect sense if you reason, as God does, translogically.
In retrospect, I now realize that my zealous study of the universe - down to the level of subatomic particles - not only opened my eyes to reality’s translogical nature, but prepared me to understand the translogical God behind it all.
Rather than being an obstruction to my Christian worldview, in other words, modern science was its catalyst and, to this day, continues being its powerful corroborater.
If you aren’t one already, please consider becoming a Founding or Paid Subscriber. It will help support my work, and you’ll be the first to receive updates and inside information about the movie.
Thank you and God bless you.
Love,
