We see Boolean Logic every day, though those unfamiliar with it may not realize it is Boolean Logic. Most light switches have the settings of off and on. The computer in front of you is built on Boolean logic. Maybe even the way one looks at the world is influenced by Boolean Logic - and maybe that view has become dominant. And maybe that's not good. Or bad¹.

Being the son of an engineer and raised by² that engineer, Boolean logic was a fact of life. Being the nephew of a computer analyst who then liked to womanize and drink more than write code³, the Boolean logic was reinforced by writing code while he was attending his likes. It gives the world a solid state of being. No pun intended.

But the world is bigger than that. It's bigger than '1' and '0' and all the permutations in between. Some light switches are dimmers now. Ask two people what warm is and you'll likely end up with two different objective temperatures. Is something pornography or art? Grey is neither black nor white.

I was fortunate enough to delve into Fuzzy Logic almost 15 years ago. At the time I was dealing with problems that needed to deal with subjective information and make it as objective as possible to control a piece of equipment. Fuzzy logic actually ended up being a part of the solution.

With Fuzzy Logic, inexact information can be dealt with. Something can be both right and wrong to varying degrees - called truth values. What a useful tool, allowing something to be measured in degrees of truth and false. In degrees of Right and Wrong. And I wondered why it hadn't become as common-place in the West as it had in the East.

Popular western religion seems to require a Boolean approach³. If it isn't good, it's evil. This can end up in some perverted Boolean Logic. Consider:

Everyone is a sinner. Christians are sinners. Sinners do evil. Therefore Christians are evil.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that Christians aren't evil. So there's something flawed in that logic - and the most apparent flaw is that being a sinner doesn't mean that one is evil. But then we get to evil as being defined as not being Christian and being a sinner, which simplifies to 'If you aren't Christian, you're evil.'

But there are degrees of evil made apparent in religious texts. Demons are supposedly not as evil as Beelzebub. Degrees of Good exist as well: Angels are not quite as good as God, for some reason⁴. So, by this logic, humanity exists between good and evil. And by being there, humanity is neither good nor evil. It's all a very Boolean structure until you try to explain how humanity is neither good nor evil with Boolean logic. The typical explanation would be, "Freedom of Choice", with the choice itself being to be either good or evil.

Yet, the default state of humanity by all of this logic remains neither good nor evil.

Boolean logic can't explain that. Fuzzy logic can. Humanity is both good to the xth degree and evil to the yth degree⁵. It's a sensible answer. To some, this is even a good answer.

But to some, this shakes an established way of thinking that they have and as such they will defend what they believe vigorously. They will quote scripture for this purpose, but in quoting the scripture they leave themselves open to exactly the same criticism.

There's more than one way to skin a cat. There's more than one way to read a book. When there's only one way to read something, it becomes unquestionably objective... but believing something read is unquestionably objective neither makes it so nor means that it can only be read one way.

This issue seems to be at the crux of almost every religious dispute, and yet when people question how others read a book they rarely question who wrote the book... and why the book was written with the ability to be interpreted in so many ways. Why can't there be some levels of truth and error in these books? To do that would be to admit error. It would question faith. And yet so many in religious texts had their faith questioned with a later strengthening of faith. If questioning faith is wrong, why was it right for them?

Here's a hint: Boolean logic won't help you.

¹Hopefully when you revisit this at the end of this section, you'll see what I mean.
² Or, at the least, growing up around him.
³ This isn't necessarily true. Many priests and their equivalents in Western Religions seem to acknowledge that things aren't just 'good' or 'bad'. But somehow that doesn't seem popular with the masses.
⁴Beelzebub to the left, God to the right... here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
⁵ I leave it to people with more time on their hands than I to go about defining x and y.