Another soon coming post. I want to add just a little bit of clarification to my intent on the last post, and talk about the role of logic (small "L") in the Christian paradigm. Also, I didn't get to humanism in my last post. I intend to tackle that sometime soon, hopefully.

So, in my last post, I pitted God against "Logic" (big "L"), where "Logic" was the proposed ultimate foundation from the atheist. We found that Logic does not have sufficient characteristics to act as an ultimate authority, and, one of my favorite points, since Logic doesn't teach us about itself (instead we learn about it from the world around us), attempting to use it as an ultimate foundation makes it essentially unknowable. (And just in case anyone was thinking this, using the physical world as our ultimate authority doesn't work either.).

This does not mean that "logic" (small "L") is abandoned by the Christian. Instead, logic is subordinate to our ultimate authority, God. That is to say, if God does something new, then we might have to rethink our conceptions of logical laws, but since God has revealed His character to us, we are able to live and breathe having dependence on God. I wouldn't say "God is sufficient grounds for our thoughts without logic", though, because the logical laws are effective simply because they are what God wants. To abandon logic would be to abandon the thing which God has established for us, and it would also be to abandon God as ultimate. The fact that things behave logically indicates that certain logical rules are loved by God, and so those qualities of reality proceed from His character. Thus it would be wrong to say "Christianity is illogical", but a more appropriate statement would be to say "Christianity understands why logic is as it is, (that it is subordinate to God's character), and keeps things in their proper order". Or, better stated, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom".

Now, I want to point out that above is (nearly) the first verse I've quoted in the past two or three posts. This is because I'm lazy. Sometime later, if I get the gumption, I'll go back and find all the verses that are supposed to be used to defend this system and then apply them here. Alternatively, you can go read Bahnsen's PhD work for the Bible study on the topic.

As I read back over the post, I noticed that I explained a lot of difficult points in very few, sweeping words. It makes me nervous, thinking that I haven't sufficiently explained it, but I'm starting to think that it's just very difficult to explain some of these things without a dissenting voice present to point out where you skipped a logical step.

Lastly, a word on Humanism (I didn't get to it last time): I've seen two types of humanists. First, the "human value-ist", who simply says that humans are the most valuable thing for no reason. Without a working ultimate reference to justify this, I hope we can all agree that it's moronic; (because it's openly arbitrary). The second is the "human ultimist", who claims "human ultimacy". I've encountered this type in two forms: first, the "demos ultimist", who says that the human population is ultimate. Second, the "me ultimist", who says that he himself is the ultimate.

So, the "me ultimist" finds himself in a rut as soon as he's wrong about something. His ultimate foundation fails whenever he makes a mistake on his math homework. I wouldn't depend on myself as an ultimate, and neither should any other human.

The "demos ultimist" says that "the people" are ultimate. That is, he believes that evolutionary trends will push society to better and better hights all the time, so whatever the general population agrees on today must be ok, and good will always win. Ignoring the fact that this doesn't actually posit a knowable ultimate foundation, it means that anything counterculture is intrinsically evil (think Martin Luther King).

OK! That's it for today. I'm planning to skim the last two posts a couple more times and look for things that might need clarification.

"I forgot the quote!"