Much Ado about Nothing: Problems with Logical Reasoning in Theism-Atheism Debate

Abstract

Atheists feel there is no reason for religious beliefs and that they should only believe things that can be proven logically or by experiments, while theists believe they have enough reason to believe. At some point, the arguments and counterarguments keep going on without coming to a conclusion. This situation always arises when people on opposing sides of a theological dispute employ logical reasoning to establish who is right. In this paper, I argue that proving faith issues through logic is logically flawed, and that faith and reason are linked to different levels of human cognitive faculty. Both the theists and atheists’ arguments concentrate on the second level of human consciousness, where reason operates. At this level, both hypotheses can be supported by reason, so there is no conclusion. Based on the above fact, I suggest that the hypothesis for the theistic-atheistic debate should be human dependence as a religious narrative and human independence as a secular narrative to push the debate forward.