Foundations Conference Q&A 2019

Logic and Reason as Tools for Sound Thinking

Logic and reason, are they the same? And then there's two quotes from scripture. God says, come, let us reason together. And then Paul says that he reasoned with the people. So logic and reason, are they the same?

Logic are the laws of proper thinking. And reasoning is when those laws are employed in our thinking. Does that make sense? So the laws of logic are the laws themselves of proper thinking. And reasoning is the actual process when we're using it.

Logic doesn't have content. We put content into our minds, so to speak, and logic, when we reason, our minds are kind of processing that through logic, okay? So we think, and the laws of logic help us categorize and make sense of that, which we're thinking about.

That process is the rational process.

Yeah, I agree with Eli. Reasoning is the process of using logic, right? Now, you can use logic in a good way, or you can use logic in a bad way. So we can use logic and come to wrong conclusions, or we can use logic and come to right conclusions.

And again, when we submit our thinking to Christ and we use the laws of logic that he's given us, that's gonna be able to assess whether we've come to a right conclusion or a wrong conclusion. We test our premises, like,.

How's the, what's the one with the,.

You said it was a man, Socrates. Socrates, all men are mortal. Socrates is, oh, yeah, do it, please.

Yes, all men are mortal, in premise one. Premise two, Socrates is a man, logical conclusion. Therefore, Socrates is mortal, right?

So each one of those premises we evaluate. All men are mortal, okay, is that true? If that's true and the second premise is true, then the third premise follows and is logically true. But if that first premise is wrong, we can start off with a wrong premise, get the right second premise, and then come to a wrong conclusion.

Right, the statement that all men are mortal is the content, right, in which we are applying logic. So logic are the laws, and we supply the content, and logic helps us categorize and make sense out of the statements that we're making.

So we wanna follow the rules of logical thinking to come to logical conclusions. And of course, following logical rules can also, as you said, help us identify when there is a faulty reason. For example, someone will say something to the effect, God does not exist because evolution is true.

Now, while it's true that I don't believe in evolution, it does not logically follow that if evolution are true,.

Atheism is true.

See the problem? You say evolution's true, therefore Jesus didn't rise from the dead? Well, that doesn't logically follow. All right, now, whatever you might think of evolution as irrelevant, the point is that the structure of that argument is not, it doesn't have a logical conclusion.

And so applying those logical plots to someone's argument, as well as your own arguments, help us to reach proper conclusions and to identify faulty conclusions.

Here's a way I'm gonna show you how to put this in context.

It happens to me all the time.

My wife brings something home that she bought.

Honey, I see you bought a new whatever. How much was that?

I bought it at Walmart. That's full of red herring. Logical fallacy.

How much was it? It was on sale. We still haven't hit the conclusion yet. She's trying to logic me out from the conclusion I'm trying to come to. So when your premises don't line up,.

You're gonna come to the wrong conclusion.

So you just have to go by the laws of logic and examine, this thing's called fallacies. You can find, just type in logical fallacies online, you'll find a whole list of them. It pays to know those things.

To be able to identify self-refuting statements.

Are important, kind of like identifying fallacies.

So for example, here's a practical one. Someone will say, the concept of God is so transcendent and beyond us that even if God did exist, we couldn't know anything about him. And so that's actually a statement itself which has logical problems because if God is so beyond us that we can't know anything about him, how do you know that about God?

Namely, that if God did exist, he's the sort of God that we can't know anything about. And so to say that we can't know anything about God is to itself make a statement about God. And so that's a logical contradiction.

Another fallacy would be, you guys know who R .C. Sproul is? R .C. Sproul believes that the Bible is infallible. And somebody says, well, he's a Christian. Okay, that's called a genetic fallacy. Just because somebody who's a Christian said that the Bible is infallible doesn't mean it's wrong.

So just pointing to the person and saying,.

Well, that so-and-so said that,.

That's not a reputation of the person's argument. You're not addressing his statement. Whether he's a Christian, whether he's an atheist,.

Whether he's a Hindu,.

If he said that the Bible's invalid or inerrant, well, we have to test that.

We have to test what the actual substance.

Of that premise is, not the person.

Or if you say something to the effect that Christianity's false because look at all of the evils that have been done.

In the name of Christianity.

We can just tip our head and say, okay, evil has been done in the name of Christianity, therefore, Jesus didn't rise from the dead. That doesn't logically qualify, right? The misuse of the Christian faith.

And the abuse of the Christian faith.

Has no bearing as to whether the statements.

Of the Christian faith are true.

So we're dealing with truth, not pointing out the inadequacies.

Of Christian progress.

Just want to be able to draw those logical distinctions as well.

I probably gave you your all night.

Because we've got a lot of questions.

Let's put it out there.

We've got a lot of questions.

One of them is for you.

All right, well, all right.

All right, so the next question. I didn't understand about God not having any shape and fingers, whatever, about Deuteronomy 9, 10, Exodus 8 -3. The work of your fingers and about the 10 commandments being written in Exodus.

Who wants to go first?

Sure, yeah. We need to be very careful. I was at a stop and shop once and I had a bunch of bags in my hand.

And I was walking over to my car.

And a guy came up to me and says, do you have a moment to talk?

And I was like, okay.

And so I dropped all my bags in the car.

And I was like, yeah, so what's going on? He says, did you know that just as there is a God the Father there is also God the Mother? Now, of course, he had no idea who he was talking to. I just looked like a regular shopper.

In my mind, I was like, okay, let's go. And so he pointed to passages in scripture which applied feminine characteristics to God. Now, what's going on there? Well, God is not a woman and God is not a man, right?

And if we're gonna take those passages and descriptions of God literally and at face value, then we're gonna have to say that God is also a bird since we hide under the shadows of his wings. You see, you have to understand that when you're interpreting the Bible, we have to understand what sort of literature and literary tools that are being used to make a certain point.

In literary studies, you have something called an anthropomorphism, an anthropomorphism, and that's when you apply human characteristics to say something like someone like God. You know, the arm of the Lord is not too short to say.

Well, God doesn't have arms, right?

He's a spirit, John 4, 24. He doesn't have a physical body. You have Genesis 1, 26, where it says that we are made in the image of God. And so clearly, we have bodies, and so God has a body because we're made in his image.

Not so fast.

That assumes that the image in which we are made pertains to the physical. In Genesis 2, 7, it says that God formed man.

Out of the dust of the ground.

And breathed into him the breath of life, and man became a living soul. The image of God is not the forming.

Out of the dust of the ground.

The image of God is the breathing into us and becoming a living soul. And so the manner in which we are made in the image of God pertains to those spiritual similarities that we have. God is a rational being.

We are a rational being.

God is a spirit. To a lesser degree, we are also spirits as well. So when we see passages like this, we need to be careful and recognize anthropomorphisms and also these ideas where it says that God is seen in the Old Testament, right?

The Lord appeared to Abraham, right? Or God spoke to Moses face to face, or Jacob wrestled the apes when he says, behold, I've seen God and lived.

What's going on here?

Can you see God? Well, it doesn't look like you can because in 1 Timothy 6, 16, it says that no man has seen nor can see God. So you have now what seems to be an apparent contradiction in the Bible. In the Old Testament, you have people seeing God, and the New Testament, the apostle Paul, who knew the Old Testament very well, says that no man has nor can they.

So what's going on? Well, there's another interesting theological term you want to become familiar with, and that is the term Christophany, Christophany or Theophany. These are physical manifestations of God in the Old Testament.

God often revealed himself in ways that men could see and interact, but that is not the true essence of who God is. It is kind of God's attempt to kind of bend down and communicate with his creatures, okay?

And by the way, the Bible clarifies it.

In John 1, that no man has seen the Father except the only begotten God, who is at the Father's right hand. He has made him known. If you know the context of John 1, that's in the beginning was the Word.

The Word was with God, and the Word was God.

In John 1, 14, the Word became flesh. The Word that's spoken of is Jesus. No man has seen the Father except the Word, who is the Son. He makes him known. So if no one sees the Father, who are people seeing in the Old Testament?

I call this when Jesus photobombs the Old Testament. Jesus is the second person of the Trinity.

That functions in the role of making the Father known.

And appears to people in forms that can be seen. Now, that doesn't mean that the second person of the Trinity has a form, but it is the task of the second person of the Trinity to actually participate in the revealing, because that is what the job of the Son is.

No man knows the Father except the Son,.

And so those whom the Son chooses to reveal.

That's great.

Thank you. Wonderful.

The Reliability of Scripture and the Problem of Human Interpretation

Everything we read in the news is filtered, so how do we know if the Bible, too, is not filtered?

Man that he should lie, right? All scripture is God-free, and useful for teaching, review, correction,.

And training in righteousness,.

That the man of God be thoroughly equipped.

For every good work.

Either the scripture is true or it's not, okay?

When you read the scriptures,.

And you see the outworking of them in life, you see the fulfilled prophecies, you see the inner witness of the Holy Spirit testifying and confirming that the word is true to you, you can trust that word.

There'll be people who've tried to prove the Bible wrong.

Over and over and over and over, and they're never successful. In fact, lots of them become Christians. Lee Strobel, right? J. Warren Wallace, some of the best apologists in the country today, tried to prove the Bible false or contradictory.

So, when we read the Bible,.

If it is truly God-free, it is divine. It is divine. The problem comes in with human beings who try to interpret God's word. Human beings are flawed. We're sinful at the core. It's our minds that are stained.

So you might say, well, the Bible is true. How come everybody can't come to the same conclusion? Because we have the problem, not the word of God. The word of God doesn't change, man does. So that's why Paul also tells us to be a workman, we may not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

So understanding God's word sometimes takes work. In addition to that work, God has also blessed the body of Christ with pastors and teachers who have special giftings and talents who help interpret the word for us.

Now, ultimately, we're gonna be held responsible for everything we believe about God in accordance with his word. So don't just automatically take a teacher's word for it. Go back, test the scriptures, see if what he said is true, okay?

So either it's impossible for God to lie. We all agree with that. If it's impossible for God to lie and he said the scriptures are God-free, they're divine, then they're divine. They're without error.

There's also an important thing to recognize the logical fallacy in the question. Just because the newspapers are filtered, therefore the Bible's filtered? First, what do you mean by filtered? Is filtered mean false?

So are we saying everything in the newspaper is false? There's people who say we can't trust the Bible because it's written by man. Well, the premise there is that if something comes from man, we can't trust it.

So can I trust the validity of whether or not the person who spoke that believes what they say? If I can't trust human sources, then I can't trust anything the objector is saying in regards to the point he's trying to make.

The fact that the Bible is written by men does not logically necessitate this falsehood. A man can write an infallible book. You can make a book without any errors in it. That doesn't mean it's inspired by God, but you can.

You don't need to have divine origin to be infallible. Now we just happen to believe that the Bible's also inspired by God. We don't believe the Bible came out of heaven.

And dropped out of the clouds onto our laps.

The assumption is that because man, air, and the Bible's written by men, then the Bible must be. But what's the assumption? That God is not involved in the process. And that's a presupposition that they're bringing to their objection that you need to challenge, right?

If God exists and he has superintended.

The writing of the Bible,.

Do we have good reason to believe that the Bible has been preserved as it was originally written and as we have it now? Without the presupposition of God, then yeah, I would agree. Given normal human tendencies, yeah, we can make mistakes and lose the original message.

But I don't grant that premise. I actually believe God is superintending the process. So you add the presupposition of God that actually helps firm up the idea.

That we have good grounds to believe.

That the Bible is the word of God. Now if the person doesn't accept that, then that's gonna be another discussion, why I think God exists and why I think God has had a hand in the process of preserving scripture and things like that.

So we wanna be able to identify the fallacy in the question. You can't trust that which comes from man? Well, that objection came from a man, so I don't trust the question.

You see the problem?

So we have to be able to turn those statements on its head and show the logical fallacy inherent within them.

The Universe, Intentionality, and the Problem of Evil

How would you answer someone who constantly says the universe meant it to be? The universe is pushing me that way and the universe will work it out.

Yeah, they're giving personal qualities to an impersonal thing called the universe. And so impersonal things can't mean anything. To mean something is to have intention and intentionality is the property of persons.

It doesn't make sense to say that my coffee cup intended to, you know, whatever, coffee doesn't intend to anything. Yeah, it's like the coffee spills, well, I didn't spill it, the coffee intended to spill it, so that's what happened.

Impersonal things don't have intentionality and what that person is doing is really just equating the universe with a personal entity, which is just what the book of Romans says, they're actually worshiping the creature rather than the creator.

They're giving personalistic qualities to an immaterial something that's not itself God, which is problematic. So when you say the universe made me do this or the universe meant, that's just reflecting a world view that I think is incoherent because impersonal things don't have intentionality.

Agreed, and just think of the ramifications, this is called reductio ad absurdum, take that argument to its logical end. I can use that excuse to justify anything that I wanna do. The universe made me want to rob that bank, the universe made me want to cheat on my test in high school, the universe made me do this.

You can use that for anything and you can just throw morality out the window because if that's what the universe intended, how am I gonna overthrow the universe's intention for my life, follow? So once you start blaming or using that excuse, you can take it to a very, very unhealthy end.

Couldn't a serial killer use that and say, well, yeah, the universe pushed me.

Why did you kill that woman?

The universe.

The universe pushed me in that direction. This is the way the universe arranged my molecules in such a way and my DNA in such a way that I'm a serial killer, I can't help it.

The universe has these weird intentions. What intended the universe itself? We know that the universe didn't always exist. And so what brought the universe into existence? And if the universe is not personal, then again, how does it intend anything?

You see, this can't be God, it can't be equated to God because if the universe began to exist, it lacks the property of being eternal. It's created, where'd it come from? And was it created to be personal?

Did a personal being create the universe to be personal and intend things for you? And I think that has problems with it as well.

This next question is a big question.

So give me that.

Why does God?

Come on.

I mean, why does God allow evil in the world? I mean, I would answer it. I mean, I'm just gonna quote scripture because for everything has a purpose and God's purpose. For, you know, God allows all things for the purpose of the good, for the good of those who are called according to his purpose.

So there's purpose in evil itself. And that purpose is ultimately for the good.

Of those who are called.

And he's doing something through all of it.

In which he is going to eventually be glorified through.

That would be my short answer. Now, there's a lot of other answers. We can get into other philosophical answers, but that would be good.

Yeah, I think there is a mysterious aspect and a non-mysterious aspect to answering that question. On the one hand, there are reasons why God has allowed evil for which we don't know. Deuteronomy 29, 29 says that the secret things belong to the Lord and the things that he's revealed belong to us and our children's children.

So there's an element as to why God allows particular evils, but ultimately, because God is not random. When he created the universe, he had a specific purpose in everything that he's created and allowed to occur.

And so God has morally sufficient reasons. If the evil exists and God is good, then it seems to logically follow that God has good reasons for allowing it, even if you don't know what those reasons are.

And even if God told you what those reasons are, you might not even understand the answer to your question, since God's purposes involve much more things that extend beyond the specific evils that you yourself are experiencing.

So there are a couple of ways you could answer this question. For one, what is the sole purpose of man if not to know their creator? It might be the case that the only way to fully know our creator is for God to allow evil, because in the allowance of evil, that teaches us something about the perfect, righteous, and holy character of God and his hatred for sin.

And so, again, that doesn't answer all of the difficult emotional questions, but it does answer the logical question that within an apologetic context often comes up, that if God is all good and there's evil in the world,.

Therefore, God is not all good,.

Because if he's good, he removed the evil,.

But he hasn't removed the evil.

So maybe he's good,.

But he's not powerful enough to remove it.

You see?

So there is no logical inconsistency with God being good and there allowing evil, since it could be the case, and I think it is the case, that God has good reasons for allowing it. Secondly, you can't even make the objection that there's evil in the world, because without God, how do you know what's evil?

You need an objective standard. I would say that if evil is a problem, I would say that evil actually demonstrates the existence of God, because it presupposes an objective standard of good by which to measure something good or evil.

If God does not exist, what's evil is your opinion, and little Johnny down the road might have a different opinion than you do. How do we know which is which? On an atheistic worldview, there is no good and evil, there's just what happens in nature.

So anytime the unbeliever brings up the issue of evil and suffering, they're already operating in Christian categories, which give meaning to the very concept of evil. I would say that evil demonstrates the existence of God, and good demonstrates the existence of God, which is what I said at the beginning of the talk, that the proof for the existence of God is that without him, you can't prove anything at all.

Yeah, I would also say, because you'll hear people say, well, why doesn't God get rid of all the evil in the world? And I say, okay, if God was to get rid of all the evil in the world at 1 .30,.

Where would we all be?

If God was to rid the world of evil, what we fail to realize is the fact that we've contributed to the evil in the world. Our hearts are stained by sin, we are sinners by nature. So the actions, words, thoughts that we bring into the world are evil.

If we wanted God to get rid of all the evil, we'd be gone. So one of the reasons why God allows evil in the world is because he's merciful. He calls out on an evil,.

And the day they eat the fruit of the tree.

Of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die.

Did they die?

They died spiritually, he left them alive, and then what, he restored them. Okay, so we always, not always, the book of Genesis always talks to us about the beginnings, and it's always a glimpse into what else is to come.

If God allowed evil in the world, and stood back idly by and watched it happen, you might say, he's not a loving God. But the God of the Bible did not allow evil into the world and then sit and watch it perish.

He actually enters into the world to suffer under the very evil that you and I brought into the world. So he comes into the world to suffer with us and for us. He actually puts himself on a cross, and God pours his wrath out on Jesus to save people like us who are evil.

So what does God do? He punches evil in the face, and annihilates it, and says, I am here despite your evil, and I'm gonna save you even in the midst of us. So Jesus suffers with us and for us, and what does he do?

He rises from the dead to prove that his payment to the father was acceptable, and he's overcome evil. There is a resurrection. You repent, place your faith and trust in Jesus, and the evil of this world, okay, will be defeated in Christ.

He's victorious over evil. Now, when an atheist says, well, I can't believe in God, we can talk about this in a couple seconds, I can't believe in God because of all the evil in the world. Okay, so let's take God out of the equation.

Does evil still exist? You haven't solved the problem. You've just eliminated one possible solution to the problem, right? So if you take God out of the equation, like Eli said, now what is your reference point for good and evil?

It becomes personal preference. You like Rocky Road, I like butter pecan. Who's right? I like hugging babies, you like killing babies, or the other way around. You know, that just becomes a matter of personal preference because there's no ultimate standard for good and evil.

So if you eliminate God, you eliminate the standard for good and evil. Second, you eliminate any possible comfort that someone would take in knowing that God allowed this evil for a greater purpose. So you now might be taking comfort away from the person.

You might also be taking away the possibility of future justice. The serial killer who rapes and kills 50 women and then gets put in jail and dies, is that really justice? Ultimately, in a world that God exists in, the world we live in, there is gonna be ultimate justice to pay.

There will be a consequence of that and everything that was wrong in the world will be made right. Okay, so when you take God out of the equations, you may make things very, very worse. You may cause people to despair even more than they are right now.

Because evil exists in the world, it's a function of the goodness of God and it points to our depravity. But thankfully, he gave us a way out. He put his son on the cross to bear up under the very evil we brought into the world.

What greater demonstration of love is that? God demonstrated his own love towards us that while we were sinners,.

When?

While we were sinners, he died for us. While we were evil, he died for us. That is the greatest act of love we could ever see. And God orchestrated the whole thing. If you read Acts chapter four, it was Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Jews and the Gentiles all did what your hand predestined and foreordained to happen, that he put Jesus on the cross and crushed him in our place.

When you look at the cross, you see the awfulness of sin and what it deserves. At the same point in time, you see the incredible love of a God who would sacrifice what he held most dear to save you and I.

Evil is not a problem for God, it's a problem for the atheists.

I remember listening to an interview, I don't remember who the host was, but they were interviewing Pastor John MacArthur and they asked Pastor John MacArthur, why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?

And I think his response was very telling and emphasized really the proper context in which we're to understand this question. He says, actually, that's the wrong question to ask. You shouldn't ask why do bad things happen to good people, you should really ask why do good things happen to anyone?

You see, the assumption is that we're just these innocent people walking around and a bunch of bad things are happening to us. No, the fact that your life is finite is a constant reminder that death is knocking on the door of everyone because all of us have sinned and all of us deserve death.

That's right, what did Jesus say when there were those who approached him about a tragedy that happened in his day when this wall fell upon these people and they died? Jesus didn't say, well, they were good people, but the shame that that happens is, no, listen, unless you repent, you, too, you're gonna die in your sins.

The reality is we need to come to grips with how sinful we are and what our sin deserves and recognize that tomorrow's not promised to you and we need to do something with the gospel now. And so I think answering the question in that way really puts things in perspective.

The allowance of evil and suffering is actually an extension of God's mercy. We know biblically, we've read the back of the book, that God will make all things right, but at the same time, if God removes all evil, he might just start with you.

What is, or you, or you, hey, I'm saving my grace, all right? What is the difference between an axiom and a presupposition?

An axiom is a fundamental starting point in one's reasoning and it's not justified. It's just a starting point you start with. I'll give you an axiom. I exist, right, I start there, I exist, and then I build my reasoning off that, okay?

An axiom is an intellectual starting point that is not justified by an appeal to something outside of it, okay? So if I were to say, I believe belief A, well, how do you know A is true? Well, I'll give another argument by appealing to this other belief.

Well, how do you know that belief is true? Well, then I appeal to something outside of that to demonstrate the truth. And you can't go back forever because if you go back forever, you'll never demonstrate why you knew the thing to begin with, follow?

So people need stopping points from which you just accept as a bare kind of starting point and then build everything off. An axiom is that starting point and people have different axioms. Axioms are by definition unjustified.

You do not justify them by appealing to something more authoritative than them because if you do, then that's not your axiom. This other thing is. A presupposition is similar to an axiom in that it is an elementary starting point in one's reasoning.

And for the most part,.

They're sort of like axioms. They're not justified by appealing to something else outside of them. But unlike axioms, presuppositions, some of them can be justified and given a ground by appealing to its own necessity, all right?

So axioms are not justified by appealing to something outside of it, but presuppositions can be justified by appealing to its own necessity. I'll give you an example.

Logic.

I presuppose logic. Logic is a presupposition that I have, right? It is, in a sense, axiomatic. I start believing that logic is applicable, but I don't think it's just an unjustified starting point. It's justified by its own necessity.

Deny it and you have to affirm it, right? If someone says, I don't believe logic exists, well, you deny that. You needed logic to even formally effect sentences, okay? So the difference between a presupposition and an axiom is an axiom cannot be justified by definition, but a presupposition can be justified by an appeal to its own necessity, okay?

So that's the difference there. I'm sorry for the speaking in philosophically abstract terms, but I didn't ask the question.

Worldview Critique, Other Religions, and Internal Contradictions

All right, if another religion says, if someone from another religion says that they believe their religion is true.

By the impossibility of the contrary,.

How would you respond?

I'll filter in.

Right, right. Okay, so my argument for God's existence is that if he did not exist, you couldn't prove anything at all. I believe that God's existence is necessitated by the impossibility of the contrary.