Theology | May 11, 2016
Part of the hope that Christianity can offer the late modern world is an alternative to the extremes of modern certainty and postmodern relativism, what N.T. Wright calls going through postmodernism and out the other side to "Post post modernism". Part this involves presenting modernism with some of the challenges that come from academics themselves. One of the most important is Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems, that helps show that even mathematics itself has to be taken by faith as self evident in order to be used as a tool for knowledge.
Mark Colyvan (University of Sydney) does a good job at explaining the theorem and starts to apply to human thinking and belief systems.
"Your (belief) system is consistent. How plausible is that? Not at all!"
Towards the end he offers some implications that extend beyond mathematics to all human thinking and belief in general, and while he doesn't quite say it, shows that all human thinking, including mathematics and science requires "faith" or "trust". Not blind faith, but reasoned and evidence based faith.