Are Theists Illogical for Believing in God?

[Caecilian]

Logic is a methodology for making deductions from initial postulates (axioms). It is formal, in the sense of being concerned with the form that an argument takes, rather than its content. Logic can tell you if an deductive argument is valid or not given certain axioms, but what it doesn't do is tell you if the axioms are true or false. For example:

Given the axioms
1. Dotard is God.
and
2. God is omnipotent.
then
3. Dotard is omnipotent.
is a perfectly logical conclusion.

However, its also completely wrong, because (alas!) 1 is manifestly false (sorry, Dotard).

So is religion illogical? My short answer is 'not in any intrinsic sense'.

Theists are just as capable of making logically sound arguments as anyone else. The main problem isn't with their use of logic- its with their underlying assumptions, i.e. their axioms. If you choose as your axioms propositions like 'God exists' and 'Jesus saves us from our sins' then you're in Candyland already, and whatever perfectly logical conclusions you draw from those axioms are going to be Candyland conclusions.

Where logic and religion do collide, however, is when the religionists choose axioms that contradict each other. This is the problem of incoherence. The christian god, in particular, appears to have attributes that are a) axiomatic to christians and b) contradictory, making the christian god an incoherent mess. Epicurus, writing 3 centuries before christianity, put it well:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?