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

by Scott Cherry

  The Reason of Purpose

  Consider the notion of Purpose, the transcendent kind. If there were such a thing science/philosophy would have no means to measure it, because that kind of purpose would be rooted in the intentionality of a transcendent source. So logically, if there were such a purpose to human existence that could only be true if there were a purposive source, or a purpose giver—a Purposer. Any transcendent purpose would have to be assigned with intention. So if there were no purposer then humanity could have no transcendent purpose other than the ephemeral kind that we assign to ourselves; we would need not look beyond ourselves. But if there were such a Purposer who has assigned purpose to us, that purpose would be transcendent and definitive. For many it would also be desirable and sought-after. However, humanity could only have access to such knowledge if that Purposer granted us access, or revealed it. This is necessarily true and would apply to other things such as postmortem destiny.

  In other words, only revelation could be the source of transcendent knowledge if it exists. On the other hand, if there were no purpose to our existence that could only be concluded by proving that a Purposer did not exist to give it, or that he had no intentionality. Many people have embraced this conclusion, but not with rational certainty. (Again, such a conclusion is hardly satisfying to those driven by the universal human desire to know their purpose.) It is argued that it is impossible to prove something does not exist, and I agree. Therefore, naturalistic science/philosophy, which denies the transcendent, is not equipped to answer the question of transcendent purpose, for it would require information from a source that it rejects a priori. This is a reasonable proposition, and after all this is a discussion of reason.

  What of the Purposer? If there is one it must be personal, for only a personal being can assign purpose or reveal something otherwise concealed. (And we all long for this sense of purpose.) For this and other reasons I and many others assert that there is such a being, who calls himself Yahweh (God). He claims to give revelation to humanity by several forms, including nature, scripture, and the person of Jesus. In these three categories there are subcategories, many of which are also subject to rational scrutiny and can therefore be corroborated using reason, though not all. But according to His self-revelation, all revealed truths must be considered using reason. In other words, reason is the normal means by which human beings apprehend and process revelation. Every proposition that is found in the pages of the Bible, for example, is exposed to the process and principles of reason. So, both the Christian and the atheist use reason to interpret written revelation, and there’s no way around that. The Christian’s reason is influenced by his faith, and vice versa, but it is certainly not replaced by faith. Conversely, his faith is informed by his reason, not replaced. They are not opposites because they work together necessarily. So a mature Christian lives by divine revelation and reason simultaneously.

  Of course, all religions are based on the belief of some form of divine revelation which has eventually been codified into a book or books. By definition they all claim to transcend reason, though this should not be confused with suspending reason. Let me offer several examples. The first one is the Bible, the foundational text for all Christian belief and practice. We Christians recognize it as divine revelation, but not for lack of reasons and corroborating evidence. Rather, Christians who are sufficiently educated in biblical studies should come to know something about the “doctrine of scripture”, a set of propositions on why the Bible is recognized as divine revelation. In other words, there is a rationale, or a kind of logic applied to the Bible as there is for all books that make truth claims. It is not merely because the Bible itself says it is God’s word, or because the church says it is, though they both do. These are part of the rationale, but only part. Without going too deep, it goes something like this:

  List 1

  A book known as the Bible exists.

  The Bible claims to be divine revelation (otherwise it would not even be a candidate).

  The Bible speaks with the claim of divine authority, often in the voice of God or Jesus.

  It provides a category of information that cannot provided by science or philosophy.

  This information comprises a comprehensive meta-narrative, message, belief system, and worldview that is unique, consistent and coherent within itself.

  This meta-narrative accurately describes Reality and the human condition the way it is, and provides an authoritative explanation for why it is the way it is.

  It describes the Problem of the human condition as well as the Solution for it. It tells us that God was not content to let the Problem overcome humanity, so he acted.

  It presents a man who lived in space-time reality, Jesus, who claimed himself as the Solution.

  The Bible is therefore totally unique and self-authenticating, not merely by virtue of its claim to be divine revelation, but also because of the rational nature of its revelation.

  There is abundant corroborating evidence for its claims to be found in the order of nature, human experience, history, archaeology, aesthetics, and science, etc.

  Conclusion: The Bible is the word of God, i.e. true revelation from the Divine Mind.

  Now, if you did not already accept the Bible as true, divine revelation this syllogism may not convince you. That’s ok. It was not my purpose to convince you. It was mainly to show a kind of logic (mine) that makes up one’s confidence of the Bible, whether it’s convincing to you or not. Allow me to make some additional disclaimers. First, probably twice as many premises could have been included, or condensed to just a few. Second, other thinkers may have articulated these ten premises differently, maybe better or maybe not as well. In that event ach would be applying his or her rational skills uniquely.

  Admittedly, some Christians would not be able to articulate what I just did because of their lack of knowledge on the subject, or because of their less-developed reasoning and/or writing skills. Indeed, if asked why they believe the Bible is the word of God, some Christians would simplistically say because their church or their parents say so. Or they don’t know why, or even don’t believe it. I contend that this is true across the board for virtually every belief system. Consider the university student who also believes things on authority, i.e. because the textbook or the professor said so. Still, if one of these Christians were engaged in an intelligent conversation and presented with these ten premises, quite often their more cogent thinking on the subject could be drawn out. In any case, others of us can do better, as I hope I just demonstrated. But many just never learn to do better.

  Christians who do not become adequately aware of the rational support for the Bible may eventually reject it. (It happens a lot at the high school and university levels.) Third, if you are a non-theist or an adherent of another religion, you may well challenge some of my premises, or all of them. No problem. It doesn’t affect my argument. Again, my goal was to show that there is a logical rationale for the Christian’s acceptance of the Bible as divine revelation. For me and many others in my circles, anyway, it is not “blind faith” or faith in church authority. Rationally, one would first become confident that the Bible is has the marks of would-be divine revelation, and then in what it teaches. In common, everyday experience, however, I realize that it may well happen in reverse: First a person becomes familiar with the teachings of the Bible though, say, family and community tradition, and later they come to believe it for intuitive reasons. Still later they may learn to approach the Bible intellectually, as I have, or may never. The point is that they could. There is such an approach that does not even resemble what skeptics are fond of calling ‘blind faith’. For those who espouse the claims of the Bible, as I do, certainly a proper faith is non-negotiable. The unidentified writer of the book of Hebrews in the New Testament states it very poignantly when he says…

  “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek h
im.” (Chapter 11:6)

  It stands to reason, then, since pleasing God is the part of the goal of Christianity and other religions, that faith is essential—but not just not blind faith. Genuine biblical faith should not be blind. I question whether it is even possible to believe things you “know ain’t so” as was once quipped by the skeptic Mark Twain. Verse one of the same chapter defines faith as being “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. (New King James Version) This means that there should be both substance and evidence to a Christian’s faith, and these are things that are usually processed through reason. For example, I said that the writer of the book of Hebrews is unidentified, but we believe that somebody intelligent wrote it. We can ‘believe’ that by using a kind of ‘rational faith’ if you will. None of us saw it being written, but we generally believe that writing is always the product of an intelligent being who, in ancient times, used some kind of hand-held instrument to apply ink to the parchment to capture rational thoughts. Epistemologically we cannot know that, but we believe it nevertheless, even though there are some other conceivable options (spirits, aliens, etc). This, I submit, is one reasonable analogy for a kind of ‘rational faith’. Based on the content of the writing itself we can rightly infer even more about the author, but to delve any deeper into this subject will require another chapter.

  Chapter 6

  Reason, Revelation and Validation

  The main point of the last chapter was that reason and divine revelation are neither mutually exclusive nor polar opposites. Rather, reason is necessary to validate and interpret even would-be revelation. Now, reason can be wrong about such things, but claims of revelation also pass through some kind of rational grid of some kind, as I attempted to illustrate with List 1. I assert that even belief systems should be subject to the tests of reason, and not every one of them automatically passes. Accordingly, they might all be wrong but they can't all be right.

  On this basis I do not accept every sacred book that claims to be divine revelation, mainly because they are rationally exclusive. I don’t just don’t dismiss them out of hand, blindly, I reject them for reasons, even though they claim to be divine revelation. I put them all through the same grid of reason which is necessary to identify something as revelation. For example, around the same time that I had my conversation with Walid I also had a good discussion with a female student at UM Dearborn named Heba about this very subject. She happened to be a Muslim too, from an Iraqi family. This was our second in-depth discussion, actually. We talked about many things related to the Bible and the Qur’an, and how we can test something that claims to be divine revelation, which both books do. At the end of our talk she gave me the challenge to find anything wrong with the Qur’an. She asserted that if I could not find anything wrong with the Qur’an then it must be the word of God and therefore Jesus could not be the Son of God. She assured me that I could not find anything wrong with the Qur’an. So there it was.

  Before she left I politely made one particular charge which is unnecessary to state here. Although she did not deny the charge she readily dismissed it as not the category she was getting at. It seemed she had some other category in mind, which was unclear to me. We continued to dialogue by email but I never could get a good grasp of the category of criteria she was driving at. (Here again a law of logic is touched upon again, that of category. Heba and I were each stuck in different categories of criteria which neither of us could wrap our minds around, so we could not successfully compare “apples with apples” at the time.)

  But more specifically, there is at least one glaring logical problem concerning the Bible and the Qur’an, namely the law of non-contradiction. This states that two opposite things cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time. The Bible claims that Jesus was executed, but the Qur’an claims that he was not (nor did he even die). Logically, either Jesus was or was not executed. Only one can be true, not both, so it is an irreconcilable contradiction (unless facts don’t really matter). Therefore, only one book or the other can be true on this point which is a major one in both religions. So logically one must choose one as true revelation and reject the other, in part or in whole, or reject both. To both faiths it is a matter of historical fact, but for one it is also a matter of historical inquiry.

  In the intellectual Christian tradition as well as the secular historical approach, whether or not Jesus was executed can be known without divine revelation per se. Indeed, that is one of the rational criteria that is applied to the Bible if not also to the Qur’an (primarily by non-Muslims). The working assumption is that any book that makes historical references can be examined by those references. If they are true then that book passes the test of history, at least. If they are not, it does not. This is no less true for a book that claims to be divine revelation such as the Bible and the Qur’an. Both make historical references. Assuming that a book of revelation contains only true historical references, the presence of false references would disqualify it as divine revelation, or at least those parts of it. That is, if a purportedly divine book states that something happened in history that did not actually happen, or if it states that something did not happen that actually did, it is disqualified as revelation—especially if that one historical event is essential to the whole.

  For the Bible the execution of Jesus is exactly that. If his execution (by crucifixion) were not historically true the New Testament of the Bible would fail the test of historicity and of coherent theology. If Jesus was not executed the whole Christian message would be invalid as it is meant to be understood. It would be nonsense. It may still be valuable for some of its other information, but not its core doctrine, and therefore it could not qualify as divine revelation in the Christian understanding in which historical events are a primary vehicle for revelation. This is a simple reasoning. Moreover, on this particular criterion the Bible and the Qur’an differ sharply, for while the Bible claims to reveal truth because of an historical event that is historically verifiable, the Qur’an claims to reveal truth in spite of that event’s verifiability, in rejection of it. The former’s claim is based on the premise of historical fact and corroboration, the latter’s posture is one that claims to be above historical fact based solely on the Muslim belief of the Qur’an’s divine status. So for Muslims, that there is strong historical evidence for Jesus’s execution is irrelevant. This violates good reason, and that is the main concern here.

  Whether you agree or disagree with my reasoning you can plainly grasp it. And, again, that is the real point. Reason is applied even to revelation, and it must be. In our conversation Heba and I both were using our best powers of reason to define and clarify the notion of divine revelation with respect to the Bible and the Qur’an. We were not praying or meditating; we were not talking to angels or expecting a heavenly light to shine down from heaven on the true sacred book. No, we were trying our level best to apply the principles of good reason, first to agree on the acceptable criteria for analyzing and comparing the two books, and second to determine if one or both of them qualify. In actual fact, some of the criteria are the same and some are different, which is why we were straining to understand each other. Sure there are people who accept a holy book on the authority of their faith community alone, and although that is not the best reason, appeal to authority is a form of reason. We use it all the time, even in combination with other forms. Some form of reason, valid or invalid, is applied even to revelation.

  The Mystery of the Cockatiel

  Let me give one final illustration about the hypothetical role of revelation with respect to reality. One summer I discovered a beautiful yellow cockatiel hiding between two buckets in my backyard; I live in Michigan. Note: Immediately your powers of reasoning go into motion, as did mine. It was an unusual find as I had never encountered a cockatiel in my yard before, in 17 years! This exotic bird in my yard was the plain fact (unless I was dreaming or hallucinating). I knew nothing else about how or why it got there. But I could reas
onably conclude certain things nevertheless. First, although there were normally other kinds of birds in my yard, I could know that the presence of this particular bird was an anomaly. Why? Cockatiels are native to Australia, not Michigan. To not think that this was unusual would have been obtuse on my part, at best. But since it was there, and I did think this, I then considered the reasonable possibilities. I could have surmised that this bird flew all the way from Australia and landed in my yard, on purpose or by accident, but that would have been unreasonable. Do we agree on that? My actual assumption was a far more reasonable one: the bird was a pet that escaped from one of my neighbors.

  Now, I actually could not know that, but I could reasonably assume it. People normally do keep these birds as pets, and they do sometimes escape, especially if the cage is kept outside in the summer. The most reasonable scenario is that is got loose and flew away from its owner. But another possibility is that the bird’s owner let it loose on purpose because, say, they got sick of cleaning up after it, or they grew weary of all its chirping, or whatever. Still another possibility is that someone wanted me to have it so they brought it to my yard when I was not looking, anonymously. Suppose one of my neighbors wanted to give me the bird as a gift. It was not out of the question; people have been known to do that with puppies and babies, etc. It was not likely, I reasoned, but possible. But if that were the case, how could I know that? …I couldn’t. At least not with the information that was available to me. No amount of scientific or philosophical inquiry could have given me the information that I lacked.

  The only way I could have known that would have been by revelation. In this case I don’t mean divine revelation, I mean human revelation. Someone would have had to communicate that to me directly, whether in person, by letter or email, or some other form. Short of that I think my actual assumptions were the most reasonable ones. However, some form of revelation could have changed my belief. If I had come home one day to find a note taped to me door saying, “Hello. You know that cockatiel you found in your backyard one day? His name is Sherlock and he’s a gift from me to you. I needed to move and I could no longer keep him. I wanted you to have him because I knew you would take good care of him. I hope you will love him as much as I did. Sincerely, Jason.”