Believers know that Christianity makes sense

This page is dedicated to provide a centralized location for believers to offer general comments about site content.

To start things off, I would like to offer believers a little food for thought. On the About page, the overriding theme of the site is stated. It is to encourage both believers and non-believers to find common ground and to engage in mature and intellectual discussion about God, science, and spirituality. In short, the whole purpose is to help believers to logically show that Christianity makes sense.

For most believers, making sense is not so important. It is the non-believer that tries to make sense of it all. Most believers already see truth in the fundamental concepts of Christianity, so nothing needs to be proven to them. Non-believers, on the other hand, need more evidence. For believers faith IS evidence, but for non-believers there is no evidence, so nothing about Christianity makes sense to them.

Believers use common sense

One way that believers can help non-believers to see the evidence before them is to present things in common sense terms. That is to say that a common ground must be attained before anyone can be expected to receive a new or different understanding. Read my post on The Human Compulsion to get an idea of how common it is to resist something new. So, a set of commonly held and logical principles ought to help everyone to find that common ground.

I believe that the whole concept of commonality can best be illustrated by a few fundamental and even spiritual principles, provided they can be shown to be logical, as well. For practicing believers, the spiritual principles of reciprocity and agreement are well established in the Bible, and so is the spiritual principle of logic. Let’s begin with reciprocity.

A good beginning for understanding reciprocity can be put in terms of simple arithmetic. Most believers that I know hate math, but what can be more logical than arithmetic? In math, a reciprocal of any fraction is when the number on the bottom is flipped over to become the number on top and vice versa. One number is said to be the reciprocal of the other.

Take, for instance, the fraction 1/2. Flip it, and it becomes 2/1. Now, the two can see things from the one’s point of view. And it is also true of the one seeing the two’s position. But these numbers are unequal. No matter how much they try, they’ll never really see things the same way. The two sees the one as half its size, while the one sees the two as twice its size, even though they both tried.

Now consider the fraction 1/1. Flip the fraction and the points of view are the same. In fact, since both numbers are the same, the whole fraction simplifies to become the number one. And this is true, no matter how many times it gets flipped around. This is a mathematical model of how reciprocity works. In theory, there is a common viewpoint. In practice, you’ll always get a different result, when you reciprocate, unless of course you begin on common ground.

So, in practice, it is good for believers to give equal consideration to non-believers. If both can do it, a whole is obtained, and they become as one. So reciprocity would then give birth to agreement.

It is curious to note that one of the greatest champions of atheism is Dr. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist. So, practicing reciprocity, let us first look to ourselves and what we, as believers, are bringing to the table. And it never hurts to be able to look at one’s self with a little humor. Check out the comic below.

Don't be a jerk about Christianity

Now take a look at the definition of reciprocity from the viewpoint of someone in the same profession as Richard Dawkins:

Reciprocity in evolutionary biology refers to mechanisms whereby the evolution of cooperative or altruistic behaviour may be favoured by the probability of future mutual interactions. A corollary is how a desire for revenge can harm the collective and therefore be naturally deselected. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(evolution)

This is just a fancy way of saying that if you don’t treat people the way you want to be treated, they’ll eventually kick you out of the club. It is likewise interesting to note that I had no idea what would turn up, when I Googled, “define:reciprocity.” For believers, this is more than mere coincidence. But for non-believers, it doesn’t mean much. So where does that leave a believer, who is really trying to achieve a spirit of agreement? Well, if at first you don’t succeed…….do it Jesus’ way.

Matt 7:1-8

Matt 22:34-39

Although much more can be added to drive home the point, it cannot be better made. And that pretty much sums up reciprocity. As for the principle of agreement, consider this scripture:

Amos 3:3-5

Now then, let’s borrow a little bit of information about logic from wikipedia:

Logic is often divided into two parts, inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. The first is drawing general conclusions from specific examples, the second drawing logical conclusions from definitions and axioms. A similar dichotomy, used by Aristotle, is analysis and synthesis. Here the first takes an object of study and examines its component parts. The second considers how parts can be combined to form a whole.

Reread the underlined part above. Doesn’t that look a lot like what we did by considering the fraction as a way of logically understanding reciprocity? So, for those desiring a little more brain food, here is a bit more of a wikipedia breakdown on the foundational concepts of logic.

Deductive reasoning concerns what follows necessarily from given premises (if a, then b). However, inductive reasoning, the process of deriving a reliable generalization from observations, has sometimes been included in the study of logic. Correspondingly, believers must better distinguish between deductive validity and inductive validity (called “cogency”). An inference is deductively valid if and only if there is no possible situation in which all the premises are true but the conclusion false. An inductive argument can be neither valid nor invalid; its premises give only some degree of probability, but not certainty, to its conclusion.

Simplified, this is just saying that logic is about making an assumption about something, then trying to figure out if you are right or not. Then do it again. For believers, that is pretty much the foundation of the scientific method. But, where did it all come from? Isn’t it odd that Aristotle and those other Greek Philosophers believersre on the scene before Jesus.

Let’s take a look at the word logic. Etymology is a fancy word for determining a word’s origin. The word ‘logic’ is derived from combining two other Greek words. Those words are logo and ic. Believers can get a better description of this at Dictionary.com:

Look at the origin of Logic, first.

Origin:
1325-75; ME logik < L logica, n. use of neut. pl. (in ML taken as fem. sing.) of Gk logikos of speech or reason.

Now, take a look at the origin of Logo.

logo-
Origin:
< Gk logo-, comb. form of logos logos

Now this is a Greek word that believers recognize!

Last, add the suffix ic.

-ic
1. a suffix forming adjectives from other parts of speech, occurring originally in Greek and Latin loanwords ( metallic; poetic; archaic; public ) and, on this model, used as an adjective-forming suffix with the particular senses “having some characteristics of” (opposed to the simple attributive use of the base noun) ( balletic; sophomoric ); “in the style of” ( Byronic; Miltonic ); “pertaining to a family of peoples or languages” ( Finnic; Semitic; Turkic ).
Origin:
ME -ic, -ik < L -icus; in many words repr. the cognate Gk -ikos (directly or through L); in some words r. -ique < F < L -icus

John 1:1-5

Therefore, just three of the foundational principles of Christianity can be easily shown to support the initial claim that:

Annointed believers can show that “Christianity Makes Sense”

All About GOD – The Christian community for seekers, skeptics, and believers.