The Reason of Reason_How Reason, Logic, and Intelligibility Together are Evidence for God

by Scott Cherry

  The Reason of Reason

  Scott Cherry

  Dedications and Acknowledgements

  Dedicated to my wife JoEllen

  to our daughter Aubrey

  to our son Cameron

  my father, Robert

  my mother, Sue

  and Louann

  Also to my brother Todd because he likes Ayn Rand whom I quoted in chapter 10, and he told me he would read my first book; and to my sister Jennifer who has always been encouraging to me.

  Also to my favorite UM Dearborn philosophy profs whose instruction is exceptional and who have each made philosophy so enchanting to me, including Imran Aijaz, Maureen Linker, and Michael Rosano.

  And to some of my young student friends who have engaged me in numerous conversations in which our mutual expectations of good reason/logic have fueled my thinking on this subject. They include Ibrahim Sablaban from WSU, Ali and Bilal Assi from UM Dearborn, plus Karsten, Gino, Andrew, Ryan, Walid, Hanan, Nolita, Firas, Hussein, Hosam, Ferdous, Suhaib and more than one Mohammed.

  Thanks to my friend Blaine Seisser for showing interest and unknowingly encouraging me to finish this project, and for investing the time and energy into critiquing chapters 1-3 with insightful comments.

  Finally, thanks to my friend Tom Bear for blazing the book-writing trail and patiently walking me through the Amazon publication process with hands-on technical assistance on formatting the ebook.

  Contents

  How to read this eBook

  Preface

  1. Introduction: The Little Girl and the Logos

  2. The Logos Principle—Its Active Ingredients

  3. Meta-Cognition: Reasoning about Reason

  4. The Complementary Nature of Reason

  5. Reason, Revelation and Purpose

  6. Reason, Revelation and Validation

  7. The Logic of Reason and Laws of Logic

  8. Objections to the Logos Principle, part 1

  9. Objections to the Logos Principle, part 2

  10. The Reciprocity of Reason and Logic

  11. The Sheer Wonder of Intelligibility

  12. Intelligibility of a Mosque, a Parable

  13. Peony Gardens, Butterflies and Design

  14. Conclusions to the Logos Principle

  15. God, the Logos, and the Trinity

  Copyright notices

  How to read this eBook

  This book is intentionally formatted as an e-book. It is organized to take advantage of the ability of electronic book readers to jump from one place to another via hyperlinks. Instead of footnotes or endnotes there are hyperlinks embedded in most citations and supporting notes included in this book to offer greater explanation of the points being discussed. By clicking on one it takes you to that citation or note. If you find that a section of the main text sufficiently explains itself you can progress to the next section. But if you want to examine the references being used to support the idea you can click on the hyperlink. After reading the explanation you can then jump back to where he was reading in the main text and resume reading where you left off.

  Preface

  “In Praise of Reason”

  Dear Reader, if you are reading this I assume you have obtained a copy of my book and you’re just getting started with it. There are other possible assumptions but this one is reasonable enough. After all, this book is about reason, so much so that I could have called it “In Praise of Reason”. Here I want to give you a preview of what to expect in this book, including some heady and technical content but also a fair number of anecdotes to illustrate my ideas. Here’s one example.

  In my work and in my unique community I have numerous conversations with people who represent divergent belief systems, many of whom are college students. In the university milieu, reason and logic are highly esteemed as one should expect. I also esteem them. Here there is also a higher population of Muslims than in other places, and many are college students or will become so. In my conversations with Muslims I have come to anticipate a high expectation for me to be ‘logical’. This is my attempt.

  How would you feel if you were told you were going to ‘lose your mind’, or even just some of it, by someone you had reason to trust? By that expression I am referring to your ability to reason, of course. According to one curious ‘legend’, that is exactly what happened to Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon in the 6th century BCE, whose story I will present and analyze in full detail in chapter 2. The story is very interesting, I’m sure you will agree. How would that affect your life? If you’re anything like me and most other people (which you are) you would be seriously troubled. No doubt you would want to find any measures that could be taken to prevent this from happening to you, or to reverse it once it had happened. If you had wealth at your disposal, what expense would be too great to retain your rationality? Fortunately for King ‘Nebby’ his reason was restored and he retained his rule, but he was rather permanently affected by the experience. Wouldn’t you be?

  When I first decided to write this book it was only going to be one chapter in a book about Self-Evident Things. At that time I had been pondering a list of things about humans, humanity and reality which, it seems to me, everyone treats as self-evident (by induction). That is, we presuppose them without scientific evidence or philosophical proofs. This list would include positive things like virtues, e.g. love, kindness, generosity, compassion, selflessness; purpose, meaning, order, justice, peace, knowledge, causality, pleasure, happiness, joy; and negative ones like evil and wrongness, i.e. the opposites of all the good things. Another one is reason with its first-cousin, logic. As I approached the point of writing I chose reason as the first ‘self-evident’ thing because it seemed more fundamental and pervasive than all the rest, the closest to what could be called a “first principle” in philosophy.

  Reason and these other things captured my thoughts because empirically none of them exist. In other words, if we were to apply the standards of science and philosophy to verify or validate them we should conclude that they are not real. Yet most people say they believe in many of these things; everyone wants the positive ones and wants to avoid the negative ones, and everyone lives and functions as though they are real. Reason and logic seem the most fundamental to me because without them none of the others could exist, or at least be comprehended or appropriated. (Having said that, I visited my clergy/philosopher friend Joshua Tilley in Iowa City that summer, and he suggested that order is more fundamental than reason, and he may be right. That’s why there is a good bit of discussion about order too.) Even now, as I reflect on my own reasoning, it intrigues me that I have created a mental taxonomy, or hierarchy of ideas in which reason emerges at the top. It is utterly abstract! How is it that we humans can do something that is exponentially more sophisticated than the next most intelligent animal? (whichever one it is). Can evolution account for it? This leads me to another beautiful example of reason in-action.

  In a 2015 I saw a movie I really enjoyed called “The Martian”. (That was the year I started this book.) In this film the main character, Mark Watney, was stranded on Mars alone after the rest of the crew had to make a sudden departure due to a strong wind storm. They were in a dilemma: If they did not take off within minutes the wind would blow over their spaceship and make the return impossible for the whole crew. Watney got knocked unconscious in the storm and they could not find him in the dark, so they left without him. Their justification—and consolation—was in assuming he was dead. After all, they had to
assume something. But the circumstances really left them no other viable options. They were wrong, but we can hardly blame them for that. As sophisticated as our powers of reason are they are often wrong. Reason has its limitations. What’s incredible to me is that the propensity for being wrong has not prevented us from being right much of the time, especially after ample trial-and-error. But think about the magnitude of cumulative knowledge, assumptions, and failures that go into it!

  When Watney regained consciousness the next day he immediately had to begin making life-or-death decisions in the interest of his survival. But he knew he could not survive on Mars indefinitely, and who would want to. So his obvious goal, while surviving, was to figure out a way to communicate with the people on Earth who could possibly save him. The odds were stacked enormously against him, yet it was believable.

  Not to extend this analysis further than is warranted for a preface, but I’d like to offer just one example of the kind of reasoning Watney had to use in order to survive: He had to take inventory of his food and water supplies so he could figure out how long he could live based on this factor alone. Fortunately Watney was very clever and he figured out a way to produce more food by growing the potatoes he had. This was no small achievement, but alas! There was an unfortunate accident and his supply of new potatoes came to an end. Thus he was ultimately forced to ration his food based on a computation of the minimum required calories he needed per-day to avoid starvation. Along with controlling other essential factors he sustained his life until his glorious rescue about 560 days later. Aryan Bajwa of Quora.com said this about the film:

  The Martian is a movie that can save the world. It’s a movie dedicated to the greatest side of humanity that is so rarely celebrated in film, our can-do problem solving nature. It’s a film that embraces all aspects of human greatness—bravery, compassion, love, curiosity—but it is an unprecedented examination of humanity’s ability to set our minds to a problem and triumph over it. This film reminds us that all of the problems facing our world are surmountable, and that with the right attitude and the right math and the right dedication we can solve them all, one after another.

  Let’s reflect. In my opinion there is something significantly true about this excerpt but at the same time it’s overly generous. Thanks to reason and a ‘bundle’ of other uniquely human qualities we have a remarkable ability to solve difficult problems; but I do not believe that all of the world’s problems are surmountable. To be blunt, that is nothing less than a statement of faith on the writer’s part. It’s a kind of faith that is idealized in some movies but a kind that I do not share completely. Certainly we can ‘believe’ in reason with a high measure of confidence, but does it deserve that much confidence? Can reason really solve every problem?

  Throughout the plot there is a complex ‘web’ of rational contingencies where every fact and possibility affects nearly every possible outcome. Also, consider the meaning of the notion of ‘viable’. Not every option or possible outcome has equal truth or application value based on their likelihood of success. The human capacity to factor in all these components is enormous. Finally, make a mental list of the things that Watney had to assume or presuppose on Mars—that Mars has the same degree of predictable uniformity as Earth, and that given similar conditions potatoes on Mars would grow the same way they do on Earth, for example. The point is, I thought this movie was a winner and I was highly impressed with the way they depicted the exercise of reason on Watney’s part. When I’m engrossed in a story like this I can’t help marveling at the way reason works.

  So, why does it work? And, if it isn’t (“ahem”) foolproof, or even generally reliable then why do we employ it so much? (Pun intended.)

  These are two of the inter-related questions we will explore in The Reason of Reason. I think there are only three possible answers: The universe, God (some kind of intelligent omni-being), or ‘unknown’. If we dismiss ‘unknown’ as not a real answer at all then of course there are only two. This is philosophy, of the sort that a college undergrad encounters in, say, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy or Religion, or even Intro to Philosophy. But it is also a kind of theology known as Natural Theology. Today in academia there seems to be a great divide between philosophy and theology, but in centuries past that was not the case. They use to be two sides of the same coin. In fact, would-be clergy and theologians of a bygone era of higher education would study philosophy pre-requisite to seminary, and some still do.

  As an older, non-traditional student with an unusually flexible work/life schedule I’ve taken numerous philosophy courses, from Ancient Philosophy up through Philosophy of Science. (My debut, or ‘baptism’ into philosophy was in Islamic Philosophy which was essentially Philosophy of Religion through an Islamic lens.) That’s more philosophy than most people ever get (or want) in their lifetimes, but not enough to make me a ‘professional’ philosopher. (At the time of Socrates and Plato what qualified you as a real philosopher was being uncommonly adept with actual philosophy, also known as dialectics.) I would like to think I can spar with some of the professionals but my readers can be the judge of that: In chapter 8 I take on Dr. Michael Martin of Harvard and creator of his own web page called The Secular Web at infidels.org. In 2000 he posted the article, “Does Logic Presuppose the Existence of the Christian God?” on which I decided to redress him. I only just noticed from the homepage of Martin’s website that he apparently died in 2015, so regrettably I will never get a reply from him. On the other hand, maybe I should expect a rebuttal from one of his colleagues or protégés.

  By profession I am a non-traditional clergyman and largely self-studied student of theology, but not a professional theologian for similar reasons. Thirty-something years ago during my ‘original’ undergrad years, and later in seminary, I took only theology and no philosophy courses at all. Ironically, my formal training in philosophy now exceeds that of theology, for better or worse. Five years ago when I started on this path I did not know I would enjoy philosophy so much (though I suspected it), nor the extent of its overlap with theology. But now that I have ‘discovered’ it I confess that it absorbs and exhilarates me. I hope my book will convey that. In fact, some of the material in it I first wrote in the form of papers for my philosophy courses, which I hope makes it more ‘authentic’. But all of it is original.

  Philosophy, more than any other discipline, is concerned with the formal application of reason and logic to ‘hard’, metaphysical questions. (Of course, EVERY discipline depends on reason and logic, but not with metaphysics.) Yet in none of my courses were we ever challenged to analyze reason and logic themselves, and eventually I became cognizant of this. Questions about whether reason is even a reliable tool with which to do philosophy or any other discipline were completely ignored, at least in my courses. In post-modern philosophy I’m sure that would not be the case but the very existence of a course like that would beg the question. In any event, that is precisely the sort of question I want to tackle with you. In every one of my courses we simply presupposed reason. Why? Well, because you actually have to. What else is there? It’s our only tool for intellectual endeavors. In principle I do not object to this presupposition, and I am not a postmodernist, so I do think it is a reliable tool for doing philosophy (and theology), its limitations notwithstanding. Non-theists will readily agree.

  “What about faith?” my fellow theists will ask. Isn’t it also an important ‘tool’? Yes of course. Humans are endowed with and defined by both, among other unique qualities. But I think the question reveals a view that faith can do what reason does. I don’t think so. Faith alone cannot be a substitute for reason unless perhaps it is truly “blind faith”, but I don’t think most types are. Reason relies on forms of faith, while faith relies on the principles and faculties of reason. I will give some basic examples of this. But I am not going to set up a contest between faith and reason. I think they are like the two wings of a plane, but we will focus on reason. Speaking of wings I have a story for you.


  Allow me to preview something charming that happened to me and my household in the summer of 2015, the same summer I started to write this book. I call it the “Mystery of the Cockatiel” which is part of chapter 6 in much more detail. I share it because, among other things that I’ve mentioned and will yet mention, this occurrence was one that stimulated my thinking on The Reason of Reason. Simply put, I found a cockatiel in my backyard, hiding behind a 5-gallon bucket under the deck. Immediately I knew it was strange but not an illusion. At the same moment my reason kicked in unconsciously, if not involuntarily, and I began to consider the contingencies. 1) This bird is apparently a tropical one. 2) It should not be here in SE Michigan, but it is here. 3) Since it is a tropical bird, how did it come to be in my neighborhood and, more specifically, to my backyard? 4) Since it seems uninjured but less autonomous than other birds—and because I have both a dog and a cat—I suppose I have to take responsibility for it. 5) So what should I do with it for the short term? 6) What about the longer term?

  Within moments I had a pretty good theory of its origins and rejected the other possibilities. I assume you are applying exactly the same kind of reason and you have basically the same theory. But how can I know that about you? I also knew I had two viable long-term options, either to keep this beautiful bird as a pet or find out where it belongs. For more details you have to wait until you get to chapter 6, or skip to it. Suffice it to say it stimulated my metacognition and it did not take me long to begin analyzing my own thought processes. Why was I assuming and, more fundamentally, presupposing the things I was? And why was I so utterly confident that my theory was right? The reason is that I generally have confidence, or ‘faith’, in my basic powers of reason, and some questions lend themselves to such confidence.

  To put it in colloquial terms, reason is ‘cool’ like that.