Belief in the laws of logic requires presupposing the existence of the God of the Bible. I went on a tweet-storm recently, and I decided to unroll it and record it here (slightly modified) for public consumption. Is it rambling? A little. Does it shift focus halfway through? Yes. But how is it possible to talk about God as being the basis of logic without moving on to a discussion of discourse about how awesome that makes him? Good theology must lead to doxology. Well then, here goes.
Belief in God is a necessary precondition for logic. Laws of logic are unchanging mental abstractions which cannot float out in space or be proprietary of (changing) matter/energy, and which necessarily transcend all human minds (they would be true even if all ppl died).
Belief in logic is belief in unchanging, universal and immaterial mental rules which must necessarily exist within a mind possessing the same attributes. One must believe in an unchanging, universal, immaterial Mind. There is only one worldview which accounts for such an entity.
This is the biblical worldview. From “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), straight through to the “Amen” in Revelation 22:21, the Bible presents the sole worldview which accounts for logic and other abstractions we all take for granted.
In short, the God who reveals himself in the Bible is the only entity which even proposes to account for abstract objects. Even other “Abrahamic” theistic religions fall short; atheism doesn’t come close. No one has been able to come up with a suitable substitute.
Imagine if you were to try and design a worldview that could account for logic, moral absolutes, math, etc. By the time you finished, you’d have imagined up a universal, ultimate personality with probably a few differences from the biblical God, such as a lack of triune-ness.
But then you’d read the Bible and see the doctrine of the Trinity, along with the other attributes of God (holiness, self-sacrificiality, etc.) revealed therein, which you never could have imagined, and you’d be floored by how obvious and necessary these doctrines all are.
Thank God he has revealed himself to us. The more I learn about God, the more I realize how necessary all his attributes are, and how glorious and praiseworthy he is. It’s like, “Oh, yes, of course God must be like that.” But the truth is my feeble mind wouldn’t and couldn’t have invented him.
In the person of Jesus Christ, God has revealed himself fully and perfectly. In Jesus we see the attributes of God on display, and as we behold him we not only understand God better, but we actually become more like him.
The truth of God is antithetical to the mind bent on seeking its own autonomy (“set on the flesh” as Paul puts it). True knowledge about God (necessary for true knowledge of the world) starts w/ repentance and faith in Jesus. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”
^This is apologetics.
JOEL M. SETTECASE 
Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.
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I disagree, already, with this first premise of your argument.
The “laws of logic” are not entities with any sort of existence in and of themselves (unless one espouses a Platonist or Realist position, which you are clearly not doing since you affirm that these are mind-dependent). The “laws of logic” are linguistic descriptors which we utilize to better clarify our meaning when communicating with another person. They do not transcend humans. Rather, they are necessarily a construct of human language. The reason “A is not ~A” is a true statement is simply because that is what we intend to convey by such symbolic language. According to the rules by which we have agreed to communicate, we deem such a statement to be described as “true.”
You seem to be unaware that Classical Logic is not the only sort of logic which exists. It is, by far, the most commonly presented and studied logic, but it certainly isn’t the whole of the subject. For example, there are intuitionist logic systems, which completely reject the “Law of Excluded Middle” of Classical Logic. There are also multivalent logic systems, in which “True” and “False” are not the only possible values which one might ascribe to a proposition. There are logic systems in which contradictory statements are allowed, or which do not utilize certain rules of inference, or which make use of particularly odd axiom schemata.
The “laws of logic” do not require the existence of any deity. They simply require that two people agree on a common set of rules.
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Thanks for your comment. I am actually aware that there are different systems of logic, which is a far cry from saying I believe there are different *legitimate* systems of logic.
If the laws of logic are nothing more than rules consentual etiquette, with nothing (and no One) transcendent “behind them,” then they can be safely disregarded. Rules that hold their only validity through the consent individuals can be dismissed without the consent of a single individual. If not, why not? With no transcendence, there is only the immediacy of each individual conversation, and each participant’s ongoing willingness to choose to abide by these artificial rules.
However your opening line (“I disagree”) tells me you actually have no problem with the laws of logic and even the excluded middle (because you clearly think something I said was false, and therefore isn’t true–or more specifically, you disagree and therefore do not agree).
Let’s assume for a moment, for the sake of argument, that you are correct. If the laws of logic are merely subjective, person-relative, socially-agreed-upon constructs, then they *aren’t* subjective, person-relative, socially-agreed-upon constructs. Because I say so (I’m now refusing to abide by the human-language construct that humanity has, according to you, agreed upon–which, by the way, when was that meeting?) By your reasoning, you must have no problem with this. Of course I do, because of my worldview. But you shouldn’t. And yet you yourself don’t reason this way, even in your comment on my blog.
Now take the biblical position. Logic is grounded in the mind of God, who is unchanging, faithful, reasonable, infinite and all the other attributes the Bible presents him as having. Now our reasoning (yours and mine) makes sense. We can communicate with one another without wondering if the true meaning of our propositions are exactly the opposite of what they appear to mean.
You actually have to assume the reality, objectivity and transcendency of the logical laws in order to make your argument. I don’t know your personal beliefs about God and humanity, but I hope you can see that you are borrowing against my biblical worldview in order to argue against it.
The same God who created you in his image, with a mind that thinks according to the laws of logic grounded in his own mind, is the same God who will one day call you to account for actively rebelling against him and suppressing the knowledge of him that you have. In the past he overlooked that kind of groping in the darkness, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent of their sinful and rebellious autonomy and entrust their whole selves (including their reasoning) to his Son, whom he sent to pay the ultimate price for sinners like us and validated his authenticity by raising him from the dead.
Logic and life are gifts from God.
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I think you rather misunderstand what I am saying. I am not claiming that the laws of logic are up to the individual to decide. I am saying that the laws of logic are a consequence of the intention behind our language. When we speak or write words, we intend to communicate some particular set of ideas. The laws of logic are descriptive of that intention. They are not prescriptive, in any sort of way. They do not transcend the physical world any more than the words “blue” or “five” or “Ralph Waldo Emerson” transcend the physical world. All of these things are descriptive, not prescriptive, language and the laws of logic are no different.
If you and I both sit down at a chess board, you are absolutely free to move one of your pawns five spaces forward. However, if you were to do so, you would not be playing by the agreed upon rules of chess and I am not likely to understand your intention behind playing such a move. Similarly, if you and I were having a conversation and you said the words, “Socrates is mortal,” with the intention of communicating to me that Socrates is NOT mortal, then despite the fact that we have a common set of recognizable sounds between us, we would not likely understand one another. The laws of logic are a consequence of what it is, precisely, that we mean when we use words like “is” and “is not.”
So, I am not saying that an individual can simply reject the laws of logic and still communicate or argue perfectly normally and well. Rather, I am saying that the laws of logic are consequent to human communication, not transcendent of it. As such, they certainly do not necessitate anything transcendent of human communication, let alone some sort of deity.
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When you compare logic to chess and state that both rely (merely) on “agreed upon rules,” are you not calling logic a human construct? You are.
You said logic isn’t up to the “individual” to “decide,” but immediately then called it a product of “our” “intention.” So who is the “we” in that sentence, if not the very individuals you said don’t “decide?” And what is “intention” if not a “decision?”
Moving on…
Terms like “is” and “is not” do not mean their opposite precisely because the thought-forms behind our language are governed by immutable and universal laws of logic. We think in these terms because our minds are created downstream from the source of logic (so to speak) and sit in its flow.
If logic is not transcendent, immutable, universal and knowable, if instead its laws are merely conventional rules we have chosen to abide by, similar to the rules of chess, then there is nothing inappropriate whatsoever about disregarding them, changing them, or choosing to play a different game (backgammon vs. chess). Communication doesn’t work this way; logic is the only game in town.
In short, you are arguing that, because the laws of logic are necessary for effective communication, that therefore they aren’t anything more than pragmatic conventions. That’s a lot like saying, “Two plus three is five *if* we all agree that that’s the case (if we want to do math according to the way we’ve all agreed math should be done), but if we all agreed to do math differently, two plus two could certainly equal chair.” As someone who (apparently?) doesn’t think numbers are universal or immaterial either, perhaps you don’t have a problem with that? If what I just described above is *not* the case, and on your view math (and logic) *couldn’t* be changed by human changes in convention (imagine all 7 billion of us had a meeting), then what you’re describing is a universal and objective abstraction, and now you need to ground that in something other than mutable matter or finite human minds. You might not like the idea of the God of the Bible (no sinner does apart from Christ), but you can’t escape him by calling logic merely a “consequence of the intention behind our language.” Subjective human intention (even of the majority) can’t account for objective universals like the laws of logic or mathematics.
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Actually, logic DOES work this way. As I’ve already mentioned, there are other logics besides Classical Logic, and these are utilized to communicate perfectly well. In fact, we see philosophers, logicians, mathematicians, and computer scientists do this rather frequently.
That’s exactly right! Are you aware that the mathematics which is taught to schoolchildren is entirely dependent upon an arbitrary set of axioms? Are you aware that changing those axioms can lead to other mathematical systems which are every bit as consistent and legitimate as those which are commonly utilized? More directly to the point we are discussing, are you aware that there exists an entire field of philosophers of mathematics who reject Classical Logic and instead choose to found mathematics upon Inuitionist Logic which (among other things) does not have a Law of Excluded Middle?
Not at all! In fact, this is precisely the opposite of what I am saying. It is not the case that first humanity developed Laws of Logic and then humanity developed a language around those laws. Rather, humanity developed language and the laws of logic are a consequence of the use of that language. Once again, the laws of logic are DESCRIPTIVE, in exactly the same way that “blue” and “five” are descriptive. The sky is not blue because it was forced to be so by the concept of “blue.” Rather, we desire to communicate something about the sky and we label that something “blue.” In exactly the same way, the laws of logic do not force the world to act in any way; rather, we see things around us and describe those things by the laws of logic.
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