So then, where does the Bible say, “Logic is valid.”? Almost surprisingly, the Bible isn't much less clear than that. The word 'logic' is a derivative of the Greek word 'logos', which we know from John 1 is in fact the person of Jesus Christ (“In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God”). Simply put, God is logic. This translation of the word also fits in very well with the understanding of the Trinity Edwards and Piper hold to that I wrote about some time ago concerning Christ being the knowledge God has of Himself. God's statement to Moses, “I am that I am.” is practically a verbatim use of the first principle, the law of identity (A=A) that Aristotle formulated. Or more accurately, Aristotle’s 'brilliant' formulation in the 3rd century B.C. was only about 1000 years after Moses had recorded God saying it. God even says in Isaiah 1:18, “Come, let us reason together.” And while that treads dangerously close to trying to derive an ought from an is, or in this case an is from an ought, when God includes Himself, because of His omniscience, omnipotence and inability to lie, we may safely derive an is from an ought. We also have the abundant examples of Christ and Paul's often complicated logical arguments in the New Testament.
There is a fair amount of debate even among Christians as to the extent of the validity of the use of logic in theology. Just mention the word 'logic' in Christian circles and someone, often with an air of spirituality and perhaps in a voice meant to convey profundity, will likely blurt out, “I don't want to limit God.” or “God is above logic.” I admit there is an appearance of spirituality here, but in actuality it is a covering for ignorance or stupidity. While I whole-heartily agree that I don't want to, nor indeed am in any way able to limit God, that does not mean God has not limited Himself. We know that God is truth and cannot lie. Therefore God cannot lie. Am I limiting God by saying, “God cannot lie.”? We know God is holy. Therefore He cannot be unholy. Am I limiting God by saying, “God cannot be unholy.”? In the same way, since God is logic, He cannot be illogical.
Now that we have established the validity of logic, we have a means of deriving truth that is not explicitly revealed in Scripture. As the Westminster Confession says, “The whole counsel of God,... is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence, may be deduced from Scripture.” This would seem simple enough, but logic is often misunderstood. People often claim to know something “logically” when in fact they are committing logical fallacies (I'm reminded of the witch scene from Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail). So a brief explanation of what logic is and is not may be helpful.
Logic is the study of valid inference, or as stated above, necessary consequence. It has strict laws that must be followed. This definition itself is often misunderstood since the terms valid and necessary are often misunderstood. For logical purposes they are synonymous describing an argument in which the truth of the premises entails the truth of the conclusion. This is deductive reasoning. It can also be understood as reasoning from the general to the specific. The classic example is :
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore Socrates is mortal.
Here the reasoning goes from the general (all men) to the specific (Socrates). This is a valid argument. If the two premises (All men are mortal, and Socrates is a man) are true, the conclusion (Socrates is mortal) is necessarily true as well.
Inductive reasoning, or reasoning from the specific to the general (and what people often mistake for logic), is actually logically fallacious (and can therefore at best give us probabilities, not truths). Taking the same statements above but reasoning inductively we have:
Socrates is a man.
Socrates is mortal.
Therefore all men are mortal.
Here the reasoning goes from the specific (Socrates) to the general (all men). While the invalidity of this example is not easy to see because “All men are mortal.” is generally accepted as true, it is nonetheless invalid. Another example will show this more clearly.
Midnight is a cat.
Midnight is a good pet.
Therefore all cats are good pets.
Unfortunately we do not have the present voice of those who have been killed by large cats such as mountain lions and tigers to attest the fallacy of this conclusion, but nevertheless we know that not all cats are good pets. Here we have true premises (Midnight is a cat, and Midnight is a good pet) but the conclusion (Therefore all cats are good pets) is false. It is important to understand the only differences in this argument and the second Socrates argument are the subjects and predicates. The form is the same. Symbolically they both could have been written as
X is Y
X is Z
Therefore all Y is Z
where X = Socrates or Midnight, Y = Man or Cat and Z = Mortal or Pet
Regardless of how written and regardless of whether the conclusions are true or not, the arguments themselves are invalid and cannot prove anything. It is worth noting that this inductive reasoning (from the specific to the general) is the only reasoning available to the scientific community.
In contrast, the initial Socrates argument can be written as
All X is Y
Z is X
Therefore Z is Y
where X = Men, Y = Mortal and Z = Socrates
Regardless of the symbols used, this argument is valid. This is an important concept to understand regarding logic. Validity refers to the form of an argument, not the content. The premises in a valid argument may be true or false, but if they are true, then the conclusion is always true as well. And since this argument is valid, any subjects and predicates substituted for X, Y and Z that make true premises (All X is Y, and Z is X) will necessarily result in the conclusion (Z is Y) being true as well.
So then, to arrive at truth we must not only have valid logical arguments (deductive rather than inductive), but we must have valid arguments with true premises. As we've seen, valid deductive arguments are fairly easy to construct, but where do we get true premises? From valid deductive arguments with true premises. But again, where do we get these new true premises? From more valid deductive arguments with true premises. This reasoning would result in infinite regress (and does for the rationalist, though Aristotle unsuccessfully attempted to explain it away) except that we have truth in the form of propositional revelation in the Bible. This is my starting point, or to use more intellectual language, it's my presupposition, and therefore, by definition, unprovable. Hence it would be pointless (and Robbins says even detrimental) to try and prove that which cannot be proven. (I believe he maintains it is the work of the Holy Spirit to prove the unprovable). This commitment (that everyone necessarily has, though perhaps unknown) to some presupposition is why all reasoning is ultimately circular. There must be an unprovable beginning. (It's quite ironic, and somewhat funny, when people think they are being logical and intelligent by asking someone to prove their presuppositions. In case you don't see the humor, rather than showing their intelligence, they're showing their ignorance of even the definition of the term.) So while all reasoning is circular, not all reasoning is self-defeating. Well, I should say one reasoning is not self-defeating, namely logical deduction from the Bible, or simply biblical Christianity. All others are not only circular (as biblical Christianity is) but also self-defeating (as biblical Christianity is not). This understanding has led me to expand my view of the Bible. Growing up in Southern Baptist churches, I was taught the inerrancy and inspiration of the Bible. It wasn't until I came to a Reformed understanding that I came to see it as sufficient for “all things pertaining to life and godliness.” Now however, I've come to see it not only as true and sufficient, but exclusively true. There is no truth apart from the Scriptures (which Calvin and the other reformers taught, but I've just now understood).
The sciences, or rather ignorant and/or deceptive scientists, have somehow fooled the average person into thinking that the sciences belong with logic in the realm of truth assertion. This is simply not the case. The only method of reasoning available to the sciences is inductive reasoning and that from false premises. Einstein himself said he would never accept his theory of relativity as true, even if all of its predictions were accurate. He acknowledged that it more accurately predicted things than Newtonian physics, but through any number of points, there are an infinite number of lines that can be drawn through those points and therefore an infinite number of formulas for those lines. If there are an infinite number of possible answers, the probability of choosing the right one is 1/infinity. So not only are scientific theories not likely true, they are certainly not true. And from these certainly false theories (premises), more inductive and fallacious reasoning is done to arrive at more theories. This is done through many stages with the end result being scientists supposedly proving something and giving us truth. While many contemporary “intellectuals” have not acknowledged this, some have. Karl Popper, an agnostic and one of the most influential philosophers of science in the 20th century said,
First, although in science we do our best to find the truth, we are conscious of the fact that we can never be sure whether we have got it...[W]e know that our scientific theories always remain hypotheses... in science there is no “knowledge” in the sense in which Plato and Aristotle understood the word, in the sense which implies finality; in science, we never have sufficient reason for the belief that we have attained the truth. … Our attempts to see and to find the truth are not final, but open to improvement; … our knowledge, our doctrine is conjectural; … it consists of guesses, of hypotheses rather than of final and certain truths.
Bertrand Russell, another highly regarded secular philosopher and logician who was also quite antagonist towards Christianity, was even more condemning of the contemporary sciences when he said,
All inductive arguments in the last resort reduce themselves to the following form: “If this is true, that is true; now that is true, therefore this is true.” This argument is, of course, formally fallacious. Suppose I were to say; “If bread is a stone and stones are nourishing, then this bread will nourish me; now this bread does nourish me; therefore it is a stone and stones are nourishing.” If I were to advance such an argument, I should certainly be thought foolish, yet it would not be fundamentally different from the argument upon which all scientific laws are based.
This formal fallacy that he mentions is so common it has been named, but despite its widespread use, the fallacy of affirming the consequent is still fallacious. And yet, as Russell said, fundamentally it is upon this fallacy that “all scientific laws are based.”
My older brother, who certainly disagrees with my epistemology, acknowledged this and said that any decent scientist knows it. Perhaps he's right. He himself is quite intelligent and more well-read than I am concerning the sciences and philosophy, so it would be reasonable for him to be familiar with this understanding. However, the fact that I went through elementary, middle and high school along with five years at three different universities (and got a degree) without ever having this basic understanding of the limitations of science explained to me seems questionable. The atheists and evolutionists I've talked to certainly don't have this understanding. Even the debate about whether evolution should be taught as fact or theory is evidence that the education system doesn't understand this limitation. How could anyone argue for some scientific proposition being taught as fact when science is incapable of arriving at any fact or truth? Unless of course one is making decisions based on one's presuppositions (which one necessarily asserts as true) rather than on what is actually provable. Unfortunately most supposed and even true Christians don't understand the impossibility for science to give us truth. Nor do they have the above menioned exclusivistic view of the Bible as true.
For those who reject my view, you are in a difficult position. It's precisely because I have a Christian view of logic that I can expect your mind and thought processes to be conformed to the laws of logic. Logic is valid because God thinks logically. Man is made in the image of God, therefore man thinks, or at least should think, logically. Notice here I am arguing why logic is valid, not how we know logic is valid as I was above. Without this basis, how do you impose the standard of having to be logically convinced that I am correct? Or why do you think, supposing you were able to do it, that convincing me logically of your position should have any effect on my beliefs? The most common answer to this question from atheists is something like, “Well everybody knows that.” or, “Because....” and then nothing. And people accuse Christians of taking a “leap of faith” and being irrational. It is so ironic that the accusers are guilty of exactly what they accuse others of being but are too deceived to see it in themselves. We should never be ashamed of admitting our presuppositions. They are unprovable, yes, but everyone has them, and the Christian presuppositions are the only ones that fit in with the world we see, the way we think and the experiences we have. The evolutionist/atheist must admit (though they usually will not) that the true love that they long for, the truth they yearn to know and the purpose they hope to fulfill are logically inconsistent with their presuppositions, but they cannot disregard the reality they feel. They must live inconsistently or not live at all. The Christian alone can live and live consistently. And yet every time we sin, we act as though God does not exist.
For any seriously interested in these topics, I'd recommend John Robbins' mp3 lecture serieses which can be found at www.TrinityFoundation.org (for free via download) and Michael B. Yang's Reconsidering Ayn Rand (which draws heavily from Robbins' works as well as Robbins' mentor Gordon Clark's works). If you are already very familiar with philosophy and philosophers (or are simply much more intelligent than I am), jumping straight into Clark's An Introduction to Christian Philosophy, A Christian View of Men and Things, The Philosophy of Science and Belief in God or Thales to Dewey would probably be the most direct path. I've begun An Introduction to Christian Philosophy and have never felt like such an idiot while reading an Introduction book.
