I enjoy very much BB's posts.
Her example of wave/particle duality is "spot on." Aristotle's Law of the Excluded Middle does not even apply to quantum mechanics - much less to God
Wave/particle is a human construct (model) and is not necessarily what subatomic particle (or radiant energy for that matter) is. We can treat them intellectually only as one or the other, but never as both at the same time, and always cognisent that it is just a human model.
Within that model, they are waves, not particles and waves, although they "behave" as both. The "particle" aspect of it is the vector, which is an imaginary path of an imaginary point on an imaginary wave of energy.
At the root is always one's sense of "reality." And in this case, if one's sense of reality is perception and reason - he will not only be stuck in physics, he'll only be able to accept a small "god" of his own making - one he can comprehend through Aristotlean logic
That which is subject to logic will be understood by logic. Whether we use quantum physics or Aristotelian philosophy, we cannot show how big is love.
Dear kosta, one can argue that anything that is expressible in human language is a human construct or "model." No physicist has ever “seen” an atom, let alone a sub-atomic particle. Yet there is evidence that there are such things; and so if we need to talk about them, we have to try to "model" them in such a way that they can be captured in language. Otherwise, communication about them cannot take place, and knowledge does not increase.
We do the best we can, as finite, contingent creatures to make our knowledge of the world comport as much as possible with actual reality; but our observational perspective is necessarily constrained by our relative position in space and time. And so we humans see "as if through a glass, darkly"....
My point about Aristotelian formal logic is that the Third Law is the tool of choice if you are dealing with an either/or situation: Is something true or false? Is this a case of “Yes” or “No?” Or 0/1? This is a style of thinking that is eminently suitable in digital applications: Computers, after all, are structured to make “either/or” decisions. And so to the extent that we use computers to analyze reality, this type of logic becomes more and more reinforced as the tool of choice for understanding reality.
Actually it was Einstein who said, “If two descriptions are mutually exclusive, at least one of them must be wrong.” But not all problems are reducible to “either/or, true/false, Yes/No” criteria. Many problems we encounter actually involve questions of “both.” To apply the Law of the Excluded Middle in such cases forces a reduction of reality to what fits the model, which obscures (or obviates) an important sector of the reality we are trying to understand.
For instance, it makes no sense (to me at least) to bring the Third Law to bear on what constitutes human nature. Human beings have been understood since classical times as constituted by (1) body and (2) soul, or spirit (or psyche or nous -- different terms referring to the "spiritual" aspect). That is, they are constituted by a complementarity: This is not an “either/or situation”; this is a case of both. Just as with the complementarity of particles and waves in quantum theory. You can study the body part, and you can study the soul part. But you can’t eliminate one of them and get a “complete description” of the human being.
Which is why to regard the human being as simply a physical entity gives an erroneous picture which, if taken as the basic presupposition regarding man (as has been done as you know, for instance, by Darwin and Marx, et al.) will lead to a reduction of man that gives a false picture of what he is, in his essential nature. You get that "wrong," and anything you build based on the false picture will also be "wrong" (e.g., the "dictatorship of the proletariat").
It seems to me that any complementarity (or set of apparently mutually-exclusive yet paired components if I might use that word here) is a given in the nature of things that depends on a higher principle for its reconciliation, which provides the essential context that places them into their mutual, synergistic, dynamic relations. The Third Law wrongly applied obscures the contextual reality in which events happen.
So there is logic, and then there is logic: But God is not bound by logic; indeed, God’s Truth (from our very human point of view) may be entirely illogical; but it is God’s Truth; and therefore, it is THE truth whether it is “logical” or not.
In short, God is not subject to logic. Logic is a human creation.
I think you recognize this, for you said: “…we cannot show how big is love.”
Exactly: Logic is no help there.
Well, just my two cents FWIW.... Thank you kindly for writing!