Much of my life has been used up in contexts relating to logic: teaching it, warning about it, finding it, doubting it, believing it, defending it, diluting it, even fearing it. I have felt the beauty of the logic of the Godon people of Africa, cast in parables, and hated the logic of the Nazis, cast in ugly presuppositions like the alleged superiority of the Aryan race. The Godon logic protects feelings, invites response in its open-ended ways, and leaves conclusions to each other. It is not practical, perhaps not usable, in a scientific world, but it serves a culture rather well for those who accept it and live in it. The Nazi logic might have served some people well if they had won a great war, and compelled their logic on others – including their own people. A similar conclusion holds for Stalin’s logic for science. Wrongness ruled.
Scientists are rightly rather proud of their logic born primarily in what is called inductive logic. Induction grows from the consistency of a sufficient number of specific factors and concluding that a perception is true and may be cast in a statement (conclusion). Confidence in the logic is placed in replication – that if other persons follow the order of this study they will arrive at the same conclusion. From that point, believing that the truth has been found, the researcher proceeds to other more sophisticated contexts so to make other conclusions based on faithful commitment of what is known in delving into the mystery of the unknown, and so the order is established and progress is assumed. Violation of the procedure has been a problem for researchers, but the acts of hypocrites should not be used to downplay serviceable systems. Whatever the problems may be in working the inductive system, it is the best we have for the purpose.
Philosophers, and these must include theologians (philosophers of deity with mankind), are inveterate users of deductive logic which tends to work back from a conclusion to find the factors that justify the conclusion. This is seen, for biblical theologians in the presuppositions of Scripture that God is, and that He communicates. This is a faith matter admitted in Scripture, so must be stated as a different context than induction. Faith persons declare the conclusion, and work backward from there. They are guided in search by what they feel are inclinations – C. S. Lewis would prefer desires as motivation for tracing what appear to be logical conclusions, and following steps backward to their founding. Whatever the problems may be in the working of the system, it is the best we have for the purpose. (Repetition of the last two sentences in these two paragraphs is deliberate.) In purpose, what are you trying to find. to do, to prove?
Although the educated citizen of the world knows something about the systems, there is a general feeling, somewhat engendered by persons who ought to know better, that if we accept the one system we reject or downplay significantly the other. Science informs us about what is in here, that is to say nature which impinges itself upon us in the stuff around us in space and substance of which we are an obvious part. The key to science (induction) is nature, and we discover that it is not wise to violate nature. The key to life (beyond nature) is not subject to nature. There is no reason I can fathom why natural and supernatural can’t meet. Nature can’t reach far enough to capture the supernatural to complete satisfaction, especially when we are so taken with what we have in nature’s bounty. We are mesmerized by it. To touch the garment of the supernatural, the supernatural must do what is necessary to join the personality of the supernatural to the personality of the natural. Persons of faith find personality (conscious and creative self) of earth, is related to conscious and creative self-personality of heaven. That person we call God, and accept whatever he can give us through his Holy Spirit, his Scripture, his prayer methodology, his working in human experience (sometimes offering miracle for unique evidence related to Scriptural injunctions). Working back over 75 years of Christian life, so fulfilling, gratifying, faithful even to nature’s expectations, there is either substance to my faith to truth and reality, or my greatest gift in life, above all others, is the sense of safety, even of unassisted euphoria – all is the consequence of either truth or falsity of biblical personal faith. In either event, I would not hesitate for a moment to accept another 75 years to be lived in that faith even if it were proved to me to be false. As the Sun signifies nature to us, Christ signifies heaven. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020