One reason to encourage the teaching of proper reasoning is that properly interpreting the Consititution demands it. Legal reasoning is a little unique, but you have to know how to reason properly to apply the law correctly, and also to defend a strict constructionist view of the constitution. That's why some Catholics are great people to have as judges. If you have ever heard Judge Scalia debate a liberal, it is really impressive. (For the record, the right wing of the Supreme Court is all Catholic, and I include Kennedy here. Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Kennedy, and Scalia are all Catholic.)

Chuck, more to your question about logic/reason leading us to a Judeo-Christian ethic, it is interesting that the Chinese have realized they have a problem, in that the Marxist/materialist foundation of their thinking really leaves no room for ethical behavior. In their system it is definitely true that the only reason to follow the rules is because of what happens to you if you get caught. They also realized that as they move to somewhat of a more free market system this will cause a problem, as there will be little incentive to be ethical. It is a misunderstanding of capitalism that it is based on pure selfishness. If the system doesn't have an ethical system much like the Judeo-Christian system, it won't work. Interestingly, at least in some places the way the Chinese have attempted to remedy this problem is to teach the Bible. At least the Bible stories we learned as a kid. They could have chosen just Aesop's fables or some other stories, but they chose Bible stories. It wasn't a wholesale adoption of Christian faith, but they could see that ethical conduct within a capitalist system naturally followed from the Judeo-Christian ethic. Insightful on their part.

As far as reasoning toward faith goes, I disagree with the commonly held belief that idea that you can't prove the existence of God. Now, true faith is more than just rational proof. But the rational proof is there. The modus tollens syllogism I wrote about recently is one example, but here is another one. I fully expect this to cause some dissent, so feel free to argue with me. Rustin and I talked about the ontological argument when we got together a few weeks ago. I'm going to present the syllogism a little differently this time.

It is possible that a being than which no greater being can be conceived exists.
Therefore, a being than which no greater being can be conceived exists.

OK. Let's unpack that a little. This is Anselm's form of the argument. I once heard of a student in a philosophy class writing a little satire of this, proving that he could find a date. Because he could conceive of a date, a date must exist. When I first heard this myself I thought it was absurd. I can conceive of a giant, green slime monster. That doesn't mean a giant, greem slime monster exists.

But the difference between dates and giant, green slime monsters and this being Anselm spoke of is that the idea of 'existence' entails itself in Anselm's being in a way that it doesn't in the other cases. If you can conceive of the greatest possible being, but it doesn't exist, then it isn't the greatest possible being. A being that is just like it but actually exists would be greater.

On the surface this seems almost childish, yet after you have thought about it for a while it is quite elegant. Remember what deductive logic tells you. If an argument has a conclusion that follows from the premises, it is valid. If an argument is valid and has true premises, it is sound. That means the truth of the argument is guaranteed. In this case there is only one premise. The conclusion clearly follows. And the premise is clearly true. There you have it.

Things like this give me a deeper appreciation for God, and a deeper understanding. I don't need this proof for my faith. But does help me understand that God has engrained all of creation, including our rational minds, with clear evidence of Him. To me, the ontological argument for God's existence is just as beautiful as seeing a spectacular sunset and marveling at God's creation.

There is a story that one time Bertrand Russell, the great atheist philosophy, was walking down some steps and out into the yard at Cambridge (I'm pretty sure it was Cambridge). He was over heard saying, "Great God in boots! The Ontological Argument is valid!" Apparently he went on his way thinking other things and never pondered that. Our hearts need to follow our minds, and without God stirring our hearts we are blinded and won't come to true faith. But for those of us who have been so stirred, things like sunsets and the Ontological Argument are some of God's little gifts.

Chuck,

More or less, yes. My immediate point was just to point out the irony in avoiding reason in the age of reason. But what you say is more or less true, too. I don't think you can use logic/reason to bring a person to faith, not all the way anyway, but it can be a big part of the process. And if you reason correctly you can hardly avoid it. It takes an amazing spiritual blindness not to see the implications.

But I do think teaching logic/reason is avoided in public education. To some extent this is just by passive neglect, and in some cases it is deliberate. Remember Obama's friend Bill Ayers (I think that is his name) in the education department at the U of Chicago. Some liberals have infiltrated education departments for a reason (pun not intended). And they don't want people learning to think rationally for themselves. At the end of the day they don't believe in right or wrong, only power to control. So they want you to do what you are told, not think for yourself. I know I'm walking on thin ice a little, because there are a lot of good people in public education working hard, some of them doing great work, but most unwittingly going along within the system. And the system isn't designed for free thinkers.

One example of what happens when they try to promote proper thinking in public education is when they try to teach what they call 'critical thinking.' They don't teach proper reasoning, they just take a pet project, like global warming, and make sure the students are all indoctinated and emotionally charged against anyone who doubts it.

A friend of mine who is a retired prof from the U of Ottawa was in a debate with a feminist one time. He trounced her in the debate, and her only response was, "I don't accept your phallo-centric logic." It's the old, "your dead, white man way of thinking doesn't work for me" tactic.

But the bottom line is, if they want you to think what they want you to think about feminism, environmentalism, abortion, oil rigs, global warming, 'undocumented workers', homosexuals/AIDS, socialized medicine, evolution, and on and on, they can't allow you to reason for yourselves.

"Come, let use reason together..." Isaiah 1:18

Cory,

wow! I loved this stuff. I wish I had more time to pursue it.

Do you suggest that we don't teach logic anymore (or emphasize it) because it might lead us back to the judeo-christian ethic? We are thus able to foster upon the people our own codes of conduct and sexual mores, etc?

chuck

This is just a correction. In the last post I called the syllogisms 'categorical syllogisms'. Then I thought about it. Modus ponens and modus tollens are not 'categorical' but just simple syllogisms, and also established rules of inference.

Modernism to Postmodernism

In the article I gave you the link to in the last post, http://www.memoriapress.com/articles/Tortured-Logic.html,
he gives you a couple of syllogisms.

If God does not exist, then morality cannot be justified
But morality can be justified
Therefore God must exist

and

If God does not exist, then morality cannot be justified
God does not exist
Therefore, morality cannot be justified

These are both categorical syllogisms. It is deductive logic, which briefly means that if the premises are true, and the conclusion really does follow from the premises, then the conclusion is 100% guaranteed. In logic there are rules to follow to make sure the conclusion really does follow from the premises. (Incidentally, traditional logic is mostly concerned with proper reasoning from a given set of premises, not necessarily having to do with whether the premises are true.)

The first of the above syllogisms has a form called modus tollens.

If p, then q
Not q
Therefore, not p

The other is modus ponens.

If p, then q
p
Therefore, q

Both of these are examples of proper reasoning, i.e., they are both valid. However, those of us with a Judeo-Christian ethic recognize the first example here of having all true premises. Therefore it is not only valid, but sound. A sound argument is a valid argument with true premises.

The problem the enlightenment thinkers ran into is that they hadn't thought this through. They were trying to show you can have 'Good without God,' and it hadn't quite hit them that, "If there is no God, then everything is permissible," as Ivan Karamzov says in Dostoevsky's book. From about the time of Dostoevsky on people realized, as did Nietzche, that the major premise of the above syllogisms was true. So then one must decide whether the minor premise of the modus tollens or the modus ponens form is true.

If one accepts the modus tollens form, it seems to me one must reject much of what the Enlightenment accepted. Again, I'd be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. (see previous post) Although much of the Enlightenment was mistaken, not all of it. But generally speaking, if the Enlightenment was wrong, it seems prudent to back track and make sure we haven't thrown the baby out with the bath water in rejecting the Judeo-Christian view of reality. Unfortunately, that is what the major thrust of modernism has done.

So, it seems modernism embraced the modus ponens argument. What you end up with is the cognitive dissonance that most people find now. They want to say nothing is right and wrong, all the while telling you you're wrong for being a Christian. There is no right or wrong, only power.

That will lead us into some discussion of postmodernism. But one more quick point. Another name for the Enlightenment, or modernism, is the 'Age of Reason.' Supposedly we rejected Judeo-Christian thought for something more rational, and we are now at least inheritors of the 'age of reason,' if not still in it. Isn't it odd that we don't teach reason, ie logic, in the schools. I think it is that at the end of the day, the rejection of the Judeo-Christian worldview and adoption of modernism wasn't really all that 'logical'. To accept the modernist (and postmodernist) view of things we have to avoid logic, and just accept what we are told. Odd, isn't it.

So, the Ancient and Medievil thinkers embraced logic and reason much more than descendants of the 'age of reason.' It is important to understand that reality is not merely logical or rational. There is more to faith than that. But it is not irrational or illogical. Logic is important. Remember what we have talked about before, John 1:1 could just as well have been translated "In the beginning was the logic (logos), and the logic was with God, and the logic was God."

Modernism

This afternoon I just read an article from the Classical Teacher magazine. It just happens to be apropos. You can read it here http://www.memoriapress.com/articles/Tortured-Logic.html.

To start with, if you look back a ways in the blog I brought up Nietzsche, and how he is so misunderstood. He was an atheist, and he was wrong in the big picture, but there were a lot correctly insightful things in his ideas. He is a complicated character.

But for the moment let me get back to the idea of objectivity. I recently heard someone say that if something is objectively true, that means I can show it to you. If something is subjectively true it is based on my personal opinions and feelings, and I can't necessarily demonstrate it to you. Now, that is probably close to what the dictionary would say. But my point is that is a decidedly modern definition, not a Judeo-Christian definition. Up until the Enlightenment objectivity had to do with something coming from outside of ourselves, verses coming from our own tastes, desires, feelings, and opinions. Take, for example, the Ten Commandments. Are those truths objective or subjective? The Judeo-Christian perspective is that they are objective. They don't change based on our personal preferences, and they are imposed on us from outside us. They aren't a creation of our own.

The modern definition of objectivity is a little different. Things are objective only if they can be demonstrated through the senses. If you can see it, touch it, hear it, smell it, or taste it then it can be shown to be objective (another name for that is empiricism). This presents a problem for anything of a moral or religious nature. This is why at the end of modernity some people have been trying so hard to marginalize Judeo-Christian ideas which put so much stake in objective morality.

But there was a transition period in the early modern period. People like David Hume and Immanuel Kant believed in a 6th sense. It was not the same as the 6th sense in the Bruce Willis movie, but it was more or less the conscience. The conscience was a moral sense of knowing right and wrong, and it was objective in their view.

But here is where Nietzsche comes in with some profound insight. One of the goals of the Enlightenment was to establish good without God (Hume was an atheist, Kant was probably a practical atheist although a practicing Lutheran). If the Enlightenment was to throw off religious superstition they would have to show that they could prove things through reason and/or empiricism alone, without direct reference to God. The problem exposed by Nietzsche was that this 6th sense, or conscience, that was claimed to sense what was right and wrong, was really just a collection of personal tastes and opinions. The reason that people could generally agree early on in the Enlightenment about what the conscience said was because they were still recovering Christians, holding on to the old morality.

He was right. They said they wanted to prove what was 'good' without reference to God, but their ideas of 'good' were really ideas they inherited from their ancestors, who got them from God. Nietzsche realized that if God didn't exist some 'uberman' or 'higher man' would have to come along to show what was really right and wrong, and enforce it. It wasn't that he believed that whatever anyone powerful enough to enforce what he believed was ok. He believed, like the ancient Greco-Romans who he had a lot of respect for, that there was a certain way that lead to a vibrant and flourishing human life. There was some design or purpose, if you will. But it had to lead to a really powerful human life. His quote 'will to power' was kind of a mocking of Schleiermacher's (I think) quote 'will to live'. The 'will to live' was weak and pathetic in itself. Just a desire to live, to get by, was nothing. The 'will to power', to a vibrant and healthy and robust life was what was really needed. (Incidentally, that's partly why Nietzsche didn't like Darwin. 'Survival of the fittest' meant nothing to him. Mere survival, like the 'will to live' was weak.) But Nietzsche himself could not see exactly where to turn to find this Uberman. That's why he ended up speaking of an abyss.

That's about enough about Nietzsche. I just want to add that part of the reason he rejected Christianity was that to him, dying to yourself is weak and could not lead to that robust, vibrant life. Overall, I think Nietzsche was a confused and conflicted man. He knew the Enlightenment had failed, but he was left without anything to really turn to. To back up what I said a little, here's a quote from Dinesh D'Souza, a Christian writer. http://finchesandsparrows.blogspot.com/2009/04/nietzsches-abyss.html

I have more to say about the failure of the Enlightenment and Modernism, but I'll close this post for now. But before I digressed, part of my initial point was that all too often we Christians don't think with a Judeo-Christian mindset, but a modern one. This is dramatically evident in the difference between the Judeo-Christian and Modern definitions of objectivity. When discussing morality and justice, for instance, with non-Christians we don't have to assume the modern view of objectivity and we have every right to claim God's morality as objective and true.

Rustin and I had a really good chat back on the 22nd. I can't really summarize everything we talked about, we didn't follow the book exactly. Hopefully we can get together sometime in Sept. again, and Chuck and Paul, and whoever else, can join us again. Right now between work, Caleb's baseball, and a trip to Colorado (unless Caleb's team makes it to the World Series) I'm not going to have time. But September should open up a little bit.

About the time Rustin and I were leaving the church on the 22nd we were talking about postmodernism. Rustin made a comment that perhaps 'postmodernism' is going to run its course and lead to a 'neomodernism'. I've actually had a lot of thoughts sort of along those lines, but I prefer to call it a return to 'premodernism'.

This is something I've more or less adapted from what I've learned from studying the Christian philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. A helpful way to view the history of western thought is to break it down into 3 basic time periods: 1) Judeo-Christian, which includes a significant amount of modified Greco-Roman ideas, up until the 18th century 2) Modern, from the 18th to mid 20th century, and 3) Premodern. Of course this is an over-simplification, but it is useful. And it is understood that you can't throw the baby out with the bath water. Not everything about modern and postmodern thought is wrong. Modern science, for instance, can't just disregarded. That's the thing about heresy; it has a hint of truth in it.

A major concept that defined the Judeo-Christian period was the idea of teleology, or design/purpose. Things were designed for a purpose by a designer. The consequences of this are particularly striking in ethics. If you understand the proper purpose and meaning of man, and that he is created in the image of God, certain ideas of right and wrong will follow. God has established reality such that there is a certain way things ought to go. He has revealed many of these things to us, including the fact that we are created in His image, through the prophets, Christ, the Apostles, and Scripture. And an important point here is that the Judeo-Christian view recognizes the truth that has been revealed to us as objectively true.

The change in the definition of "objectivity" marks an important distinction between the Judeo-Christian and the modern worldviews. In the next couple of days I'll post something more about the modern and postmodern views of things, and about objectivity. In the meantime feel free to post your own thoughts.