More Dreherbait: Thomas Frey lists Ten Questions he says science and religion cannot answer. I’d say religion can answer at least some of them, but as to whether those answers are satisfying, uhhhh… . Here are my favorites from his list:

1.) Why are there exceptions to every rule?

Why is it that all of our rules, theories, maxims, and models all have an exception? This is precisely the way the world works, except when it doesn’t.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have any exceptions, or would we?

On the surface this seems like a rather trite question, and if you ask the average person on the street, most will simply smile, shrug, and move on. But in a world where scientists have spent countless billions to research and understand such topics as the relationship between matter, energy, particles, and waves, everything has to make sense, except it doesn’t.

Even with our basic understanding of math, 2+2 does not always equal 4. It depends on what type of measurement scale you are using. There are four types of measurement scales – nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio. Only in the last two categories does 2+2 = 4.

So why do exceptions matter? Exceptions matter because nothing comes with 100% predictability. Yes, we can count on such things as buildings existing from one day to the next, the earth traveling around the sun in the same orbit, gravity holding us down, and the speed of light remaining reasonably constant. In fact, most of the world around has been created around natural forces that can be predicted with high degrees of probability.

For this reason, there is no such thing as absolute certainty, except our certainty that nothing is certain… maybe.

2.) Why do logic and reason fail to explain that which is true?

In many scientific circles, the only truths are those that can be explained with logic and reason. Religious people use a different metric, but they too have a way of calibrating their truths with logic and reason.

So why are logic and reason such miserable tools for explaining the world around us? It’s as if the world around us was perfect, and then someone divided by zero. Everything perfect has a touch of that one secret ingredient known as chaos.

Is order more perfect than chaos? Or is chaos just a higher form of order? How will we ever know if we can’t explain it with logic and reason?

On that second point, my older son, who is taking a course in formal logic, explained to me the difference between a valid argument and a sound argument. It’s one of those elementary things, but I had forgotten it, or maybe never learned it. A valid argument is one that’s formally correct, provided that its premisses are all true. A sound argument is one that is not only formally correct, but all its premisses are true. All sound arguments are valid, but not all valid arguments are sound. Perhaps it is the case that understanding the world we live in requires sound arguments, but sound arguments about metaphysics are impossible to make from reason alone. Discuss.