The Idolatry of the Bible

Biblical inerrancy: The doctrine that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and perfectly truthful word of God [1,2,3,4,5,6]. It’s a widely held belief among mainstream Christian denominations, but have you ever wondered what exactly this doctrine entails? Because when we listen to popular Christian authorities, they seem to paint an image of God Himself picking up a pen and then scribbling down words with His own bare hands---as if God personally inscribed the letters onto some holy parchment in golden ink before handing it off to the world. How else are we supposed to interpret this idea that God is allegedly the “author of scripture [7],” or that scripture itself is “breathed out by God [8]?”

The reality, of course, is very different. We know that God could not have possibly written the Bible with His own hands, because the Bible itself explicitly names human authors. It’s right there in the very titles to half of its books: The Gospel According to Matthew, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, the Song of Solomon, the Book of Isaiah---all human authors. Even when the books aren’t declaring their own authorship outright, it’s at least pretty well understood that a human being is the one who originally wrote down the words. So when Christians continually describe the Bible as God’s word, I tend to get very confused. How exactly do the words of men get elevated to the words of God?

Broadly speaking, the most popular view seems to be that, although God did not physically write the Bible with his own hands, He still “revealed” the Bible through His prophets [9]. For example, in the Book of Galatians [10], Paul tells us that he did not receive any of this information from mere human sources, but through divine revelation from Jesus Christ (and since Jesus and God are one, any revelation from Jesus is essentially a revelation from God). Likewise, the four Gospels make no claim to being the personal autographs of Jesus, but merely second-hand accounts of what Jesus supposedly said and did. Some books make no particular mention whatsoever about their sources, but are at least understood to come from God as the original source. It’s a perfectly legitimate interpretation that most Christians are happy to endorse, but can we at least take a moment to just acknowledge what’s really going on here? Whenever you read a given passage from the Bible, you’re not experiencing the Word of God in any direct, literal sense. At best, what you’re really getting is the word of a man who merely claims to speak on behalf of God.

And hey, maybe you’re totally comfortable with that particular belief. God speaks to a prophet like Paul, Paul then speaks to us, therefore the word of Paul is, for all practical purposes, the Word of God. However, I hope you can forgive me for still feeling a bit confused. When Paul shares the Word of God with us, are we talking about a verbatim transcript of the actual words spoken by God to Paul? That is to say, did Paul receive verbal dictation from God and then transcribe His conversation word-for-word?

Actually, no. The Bible is very clearly not intended to serve as a verbatim transcript of God’s speeches, and there are even several instances where the authors openly speak on their own behalf rather than on God’s [11]. The Bible therefore cannot possibly represent God’s words in its entirety, because human men are definitely the ones doing most of the talking. Nevertheless, just because the words are not explicitly God’s, that doesn’t have to mean God is completely absent. Maybe the authors are just giving us a synopsis of what God said, or maybe He just “inspired” them with the appropriate words. Again, that’s perfectly okay if you want to believe that, and most Christians will admit exactly that when pressed. But surely, that’s all there is to it, right? God speaks to His prophets, the prophets write down a condensed summary for the rest of us, and there are no intermediate steps along the way.

Well, not exactly. For example, according the Gospel of Luke, we don’t really have a first-hand account of anything Jesus supposedly said. Rather, what we do have is a collection of second-hand accounts that were allegedly “handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word [12].” Furthermore, even though the other three Gospels neglect to say it out loud, it is at least strongly indicated that the authors are not eyewitnesses. None of these intermediate sources are even identified, either, leaving us entirely in the dark as to who these people supposedly were. We have no idea how many people were interviewed, what vetting process was used in their selection, or how far removed they are from the original events.

Let’s not forget that these alleged sources are not exactly contemporary, either. For example, most Biblical scholars agree that the book of Mark wasn’t actually written down until at least 30 years after Jesus’ death, and the other three gospels were almost certainly recorded even later than that. So any time you read a story about Jesus and his ministry, it’s important to realize that you’re not getting the word of God through some prophet. At best, what you’re really getting is the word of some guy who merely claims to know some other guy, who apparently heard it from yet other guy, who totally swears that he was there decades ago when Jesus did all the things.

Bear in mind now that none of this stuff is particularly controversial, given that the Bible itself is the primary source for this information. But let’s just ignore all of that and assume anyway that everything written down by the Biblical authors is the inspired, inerrant, and perfectly truthful word of God. Could someone please now tell me where exactly I might find an original manuscript so that I might read it for myself?

Yeah, about that. Did we forget to mention that none of the original manuscripts survived? The printing press wasn’t invented until the 15th century, which means every single copy of every single page in the Bible had to be written by hand. Paper manuscripts also have the annoying tendency to decay over time, which means all original autographs, including their immediate copies, have long-since rotted away. Consequently, any time we speak about a particular book in the Bible, we are definitely not talking about the original writings of the original authors. At best, we can only talk meaningfully about copies of copies of copies of copies that eventually got passed down to us today.

Surely though, we can trust all of those ancient scribes to perfectly preserve the original wording of the Biblical authors, right?

Not by a long shot. Ancient scribes were notorious for their tendency to commit errors, and there are countless documented examples of this stuff littered throughout the surviving manuscripts. These aren’t exactly harmless spelling mistakes, either, but massively deliberate changes with significant theological consequences. One of the most egregious examples of this phenomenon is the so-called pericope adulterae found in the book of John---or, depending on which ancient manuscript you read, not found in the book of John [13,14]! It’s the famous story about Jesus and the woman taken in adultery, and the entire thing is nothing but an honest-to-goodness textual variant. We actually have multiple surviving copies of the book of John dating as far back as the early third century, and the entire story is conspicuously absent from the earliest texts [15].

Even the very titles of the Gospels themselves are known textual variants. Nowhere in the oldest Greek manuscripts will you ever find anything that either says or implies “The Gospel According to Matthew/Mark/Luke/John.” Christian scribes deliberately added those titles centuries later, because they wanted to give respectable names otherwise anonymous accounts.

This is exactly why many Christian organizations tend to limit the doctrine of inerrancy to just the original autographs of the text [6]. It's weird, too, because on some fundamental they must realize the theological can of worms that entails. There simply do not exist any surviving autographs to point to, which means any attempt to reconstruct an original text is necessarily an educated guess. But let’s suppose we’re again feeling generous and just assume anyway that none of this is a problem. The Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God, preserved with absolute precision over countless centuries, just as the original autographs intended, and written down in modern American English.

No, of course not. That would be silly. The Bible was not written American English, but Koine Greek and Ancient Hebrew---both long-dead languages that no living human being has ever heard spoken aloud! Every time you read a modern English translation of the Bible, you’re reading exactly that: a translation. At some point in history, a human being must have physically held an ancient manuscript in his hands before painstakingly translating that document into our own native languages. Yet as anyone with any experience in translation knows, it is fundamentally impossible to perfectly preserve meaning when translating ideas from one language to another. That’s why so many different versions of the Bible exist in the first place. There is no objectively “correct” way to interpret a language, which means you eventually have to pick and choose which Biblical translation you want to read. Is it the King James Bible? The American Standard Bible? The Common English Bible? The New International Bible? The English Standard Bible? Unless you personally happen to possess perfect fluency in multiple ancient languages, then you necessarily must rely on the efforts of fallible human beings whenever you read an English translation of the Bible.

To make matters even more complicated, many of the original Greek copies of the New Testament are already translations unto themselves. Remember that Jesus is supposed to have conducted his ministry among the poor illiterate peasants of ancient Palestine, which means any words he physically spoke out loud would have necessarily been Aramaic. Greek was not the language of poor, illiterate peasants, but rich, educated elites. So it’s not just one language barrier we have to contend with, but two language barriers, the first of which is now forever hopelessly lost to time.

But hey, maybe none of that matters to you either. Maybe you believe that God perfectly preserved every last bit of essential doctrine throughout the entire history of the Bible so that we could enjoy its message today. Everything from Genesis and Judges all the way down to the Gospels and the Epistles is all perfectly inspired scripture, right? Oh, and let’s forget my personal favorites, The Wisdom of Solomon, the Book of Tobit, and the Book of Judith.

Wait, hold on a second. Do you mean to tell me that those last three books are not the inerrant, inspired word of God? Says who? The protestants? That’s odd, because the Catholics seem to be telling me the exact opposite. So fine, let’s settle this once and for all. Could someone please tell me, at what point in history did God personally come to Earth and reveal which Biblical documents are officially His inspired Holy scripture, and which ones are just the fallible concoctions of human authors?

Oh, that’s right. Never. The task of picking and choosing which books to include in the Bible was not matter of divine revelation. Men did that. Fallible human men are the ones who ultimately dug through all the ancient manuscripts before deciding which ones to keep and which ones to toss. This was almost certainly a difficult, task, too, because forgeries were definitely a widespread problem among ancient Christians. For example, in 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2, Paul himself warns openly against the existence of forged letters in his own name [16]. It’s ironic, too, given that modern scholars actually believe that this exact letter was very likely a forgery unto itself. So what criteria could ancient scholars possibly employ that would guarantee a perfect, inerrant selection of scripture, given the abundance of textual variants, alternative theologies, and even outright forgeries?

Let's be clear. It’s one thing to believe that God “inspired” the Bible in some roundabout, metaphorical sense, but it’s another thing entirely to describe the Bible as some kind of flawlessly divine relic. We’re talking about a book that was written by men, often times by interviewing the memories other men, only to then get translated by men, edited by men, summarized by men, copied by men, preserved by men, translated again by men, and then compiled by men, only to finally get promoted by men as the perfectly inerrant and absolutely truthful word of God. Not only is that blatantly dishonest, but it elevates the work of fallible, mortal men to the status Godly perfection. There’s a word for that in Christian theology, my friends. It is called idolatry, and it is a terrible, deadly sin.

Notes/References:

1. “We believe that the God who created the universe is capable of writing a book, and the God who is perfect is capable of writing a perfect book.” - Bible Munch (video)
   
2. “If one believes that the Bible is inspired by God, and is therefore God’s word to us, then it seems to me that that would imply that it is reliable in all that it teaches; and that would be what the doctrine of inerrancy affirms: that the Bible is true in all that it teaches.” - William Lane Craig (video)
   
3. “We’re going to take a look this morning at what the Catholic church actually does teach concerning the inerrancy … of sacred scripture: that is, its complete and absolute freedom, in its entirety of any error of any kind, whatsoever.” – Bruce Sullivan (video)
4. “God the Father can’t err, the Bible is the word of God, therefore the Bible can’t err.” - Norman Geisler (video)
   
5. “So in all things that they [the Bible’s words] affirm, and in all things that they deny, they are completely truthful because they are God’s words. This doctrine of the authority of scripture, the inerrancy of scripture, that scripture does not have error, what held by the Christian church without fail, without compromise from the time of the New Testament until the 1600s.” – Dr. Robert Plummer (video)
   
6. "We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit". - Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (pdf)
   
7. The Holy Spirit: Author of Scripture (link)
   
8. 2 Timothy 3:16
9. (link)
10. Galatians 1:11-18
11. See, for example, Galatians, 1:10, or Luke 1
12. Luke 1 (NIV)
    
13. Grabiner, Steven, "Pericope Adulterae: A most perplexing passage," Andrews University Seminary Studies, Vol. 56, No. 1, pp 91-114 (2018)
14. Knust, Jennifer Wright, "Early Christian re-writing and the history of the Pericope Adulterae," Journal of Early Christian Studies, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp 485-536 (2006)
15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_66
16. 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2: Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.
    

Philosophical Failures of Christian Apologetics, Part XI: The Holy Spirit

Watch the full video here.

Imagine yourself in the shoes of a typical true believing Christian. You attend church, you study your Bible, and you accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Let's also imagine that you happen to be a philosophically sophisticated individual who likes to study arguments from all sides of the debate. You therefore stumble upon a series of video essays entitled “Philosophical Failures of Christian Apologetics" and happily decide to watch them all from start to finish. For the sake of further argument, let’s just go ahead and assume that everything about the series is absolutely flawless in its presentation and thus perfectly compelling. All those big, fancy arguments for God’s existence are now officially debunked to your own personal satisfaction. The burden of proof lies with theists to positively demonstrate God’s existence, and they all have decidedly failed to meet that burden. Not only that, but you’ve even learned how science actually explains the very development of religion itself as a purely natural byproduct of human psychology and cultural group selection. 

Surely, given all of these philosophical contingencies, a true believer like yourself should find sufficient grounds to abandon your faith and adopt a more secular perspective, yes?

Actually, no, because if you really were a "true" believing Christian, then all that evidence, argumentation, and philosophical meandering would mean nothing. You didn’t reason yourself in your faith, which means you sure as hell cannot be reasoned out of it. True Christian faith is not grounded on intellectual merit, but on the incorrigible witness of the Holy Spirit:

“I think the way in which we fundamentally know that our faith is true is through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. My faith in Christ is not based upon arguments and evidence (although I have arguments and evidence). It is based upon the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.” [1]

“The way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart, and that this gives me a self-authenticating means of knowing that Christianity is true, wholly apart from the evidence.  And therefore, if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I don’t think that that controverts the witness of the holy spirit.” [2]

And so we come to our 11th Philosophical Failure of Christian Apologetics: The idea that warm, fuzzy experiences can supersede all reason, evidence, and arguments to the contrary.

Confessions like this are frighteningly common throughout the Christian world, and they tend to manifest in a number of different varieties. For example, consider the popular “statement of faith,” whereby Christian organizations freely boast to an a-priori conviction that is perfectly inerrant and thus cannot change under any circumstances [3-6]. Some philosophers have even attempted to formalize this doctrine under the cloak of sophisticated academic philosophy, like with Alvin Plantinga’s famous reformed epistemology [7]. Even ordinary, everyday Christians are often quite happy to endorse a similar doctrine through the public declaration that “nothing can shake my faith.” But no matter how it is phrased, the central message is always the same:

I’m right. I know I’m right. I cannot possibly be wrong, and nothing you say or do to me will ever convince me otherwise.

So when all is said and done, it seems that Christian “philosophy” is really nothing of the sort. Western Philosophy, as taught in every modern university, is built on a proud tradition of asking questions, challenging our assumptions, and then following the arguments wherever they lead [8]. Apologists, on the other hand, seem to think that philosophy is built on the rote assertion of a sacred doctrine followed by an unwavering defense of that doctrine no matter what.

Incidentally, this is exactly why apologists are called "apologists." The word itself stems from the Greek "apologia," meaning a "speech in defense." Many apologist organizations therefore openly refer to themselves as literal “Defenders" of the Faith. That's fine if you're someone like a lawyer who is legally obligated to defend a client, but not when your goal is to learn the truth. Honest inquiry doesn’t work unless we actively seek out errors in our understanding so that they may be corrected over time.

Consider again those classic “Top Five” arguments that apologists are so fond of defending:
 

• The Ontological Argument
• The Cosmological Argument
• The Teleological Argument
• The Fine-tuning Argument
• The Moral Argument

Ask yourself: What possible purpose do these arguments serve? By their own admission, most apologists were not actually convinced by any of that goofiness, so what on Earth would give them the naive impression that we should be convinced, either? They practically brag openly that neither evidence nor arguments played any role in their beliefs, but a combination of warm, squishy feelings and sheer force of will. That is not a good faith argument, but an implicit admission that Christian apologists are being willfully duplicitous, and they know it.

It's ironic that apologists are so weirdly reticent about this whole "special witness" thing because in principle it’s actually a really compelling argument. After all, if God is real, and if God indeed wants to have a deep, personal relationship with us, then what better way to demonstrate that fact than by personally revealing Himself to His creations? It’s everything the skeptical community has been demanding this entire time---an empirically reproducible demonstration of God’s existence! Yet, for some strange reason, both professional and amateur apologists alike seem to go out of their way to avoid any mention of this stuff in front of a skeptical audience.

Read any book, listen to any lecture, or watch any formal debate, and it’s nothing but endless rhetoric about first causes, maximal greatness, and transcendent, immaterial, spaceless, timeless, what-have-yous. The Spirit, if it's even mentioned at all, is usually little more than a philosophical afterthought. But then, ask them point-blank what finally convinced them to believe, and it is perfectly normal to suddenly hear stories about personal revelation from God Himself. It’s like an ace up their sleeves that conclusively settles the issue once and for all, yet they only ever play it when there’s nothing at stake. You almost have to wonder if apologists collectively share an unspoken realization that, just maybe, the Holy Spirit is not quite the philosophical slam-dunk they pretend it is.

But what is the Holy Spirit, really? Because if we’re going to talk about this thing in any serious detail, then it’s important to establish what exactly that idea represents. So according to mainstream Christian doctrine, the Holy Spirit is simply the third person of the Holy Trinity. That means, for all practical purposes, any experience with the Holy Spirit is actually a direct communication from God Himself. God is, after all, a single being comprised of three entirely separate, but co-equal persons, all of whom are individually also God.

If that all sounds a bit strange to you, then just remember that this is absolutely a fundamental doctrine of orthodox Christianity [9]. It's an extraordinary concept that all began in the fourth century when some guy had the audacity to argue that Jesus Christ was separate from, and subordinate to, God the Father. You'd think that such a trivial piece of theology could be debated peacefully, but apparently it was a hugely passionate ordeal of violent politics. Thankfully, the facts of the matter were finally settled through the time-honored tradition of "voting about it," followed by the usual state-sponsored oppression against all further dissent. It therefore goes without saying that this is a totally consistent and trustworthy fact about God, of which there can be no further debate.

Setting aside that philosophical can of worms, what exactly is it like to experience the Holy Spirit? That is to say, how do I recognize His presence? Can I sit down with Him and interact, somehow? Maybe talk to him or shake His hand? Will He perform miracles on demand? Does His presence have any measurable effect on temperature? Or air pressure? Or background radiation?

No, of course not. The Spirit is, after all, an immaterial being, which means nothing He does will ever produce a tangible, empirical manifestation. It’s a classic hallmark of our old friend, substance dualism, whereby the universe is neatly divided into two completely separate categories of fundamental stuff. The first kind of stuff is our familiar material universe, comprised of atoms, quarks, electrons, and photons, all doing their thing in accordance with the laws of physics throughout space and time. The second kind of stuff is then comprised of raw consciousness, or mind-stuff, apparently just floating around and thinking all on its own, completely independent of any physical laws or material interactions. It can, however, seemingly interact with other mind stuff, which is why personal experiences of the Holy Spirit are apparently limited to highly subjective impressions. For example:
 

• Some people have described the Spirit as barely noticeable intrusions---almost like a thought in your head that wasn’t really your own, but inserted there from an outside force [10]. 
• Others may describe it an innate awareness of God’s existence---as if we had a sixth-sense for divine presence in the world around us [7].
• Some people report feelings of intense euphoria, as if overcome by an electric frenzy of pure joy [11].
• Others may testify to hearing the voice of God directly as an audible sound from another person in the room [12].
• Others still may describe it as a “Burning in the bosom” or a “Stupor of thought” [13].
• Some people even claim the ability to speak in tongues, as if the Spirit is taking over their bodies and granting them the power to speak the language of angels [14].

So right off the bat, the very idea of a special witness from the Holy Spirit is already on hopelessly shaky grounds. We cannot even talk about the Spirit without presupposing a giant mountain of dubiously incoherent doctrines, and every alleged encounter with Him is almost universally vague. Those who do claim to experience Him cannot agree on what it’s supposed to be like, and what it's usually "like" is either boringly mundane or oddly creepy. The only consistent rule seems to be that "you’ll just know it when you see it," and as long as it leads you to do good, Christian things, then nothing else matters [15].

But before we get carried away with any frustrated dismissal, it’s important to acknowledge the fact that people who share these experiences are generally being completely sincere. Furthermore, it is not difficult to find such testimonials from around the world and throughout history. Something is therefore causing this phenomenon, and it's important to ask ourselves what exactly that cause might be. Are these experiences the result of a legitimate, supernatural communication? Or are they just another natural part of being human?

That may sound like a simple question, but you would be amazed at how impossibly difficult it can be for apologists to differentiate between experience and cause. We have plenty of any of anecdotal reports of spiritual encounters, and they are all immediately rendered true by the principle of mental incorrigibility---I had an experience, that experience was very unique, and so I choose to label that experience as “A special witness of the Holy Spirit.” However, it’s another thing entirely to attribute such experiences with an external cause---i.e., telepathic communication from the spaceless, timeless, omnipotent creator of the universe, who also happens to be the God of the Bible. That is a synthetic proposition, which means the rules for truth assignment are now totally different.

I find it baffling how guys with actual PhDs habitually struggle with one of the most basic principles in all philosophy---in this case, the principle of external world skepticism. All it says is that no synthetic proposition can ever truly be “known” with absolute, unwavering certainty, because there will always exist an infinite multitude of possible explanations for sense data. At best, we can only derive tentative conclusions through a preponderance of empirical data and predictive models. So even if you personally went through some kind intense, spiritual experience, that does not mean we should immediately presume a supernatural cause for such experiences, nor does that presumption get to supersede all further evidence and argumentation forever.

It cannot be overstated that human sensory perception is notoriously easy to fool. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of well-documented illusions, heuristics, biases, hallucinations, and disorders littered throughout the cognitive faculties of ordinary people. Many of these illusions are nearly identical replicas to the alleged manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and many more of them can even be conjured on demand under controlled laboratory conditions. Some Christians will even admit openly to a belief in actual, literal demons who run around imitating the Holy Ghost for their own nefarious ends [16,17,18]. It therefore stands to reason that Christians, of all people, should feel extra motivated to carefully examine this whole “special witness” thing, lest we find ourselves ensnared by the cunning deceptions of the devil himself.

This is exactly why human beings invented science. Despite the inherent fallibility of our subjective perceptions, it is still possible to generate real, working knowledge with a high degree of practical confidence. All we have to do is follow a few simple rules. 

For example, one of the most important rules in the philosophy of science is the principle of replicability. That is to say, if indeed the Holy Spirit is real, and if indeed God wants us all to feel His presence, then presumably I shouldn’t have to take your word for it every time it happens. I should personally be able to replicate that experience for myself, and there should be a simple procedure I can follow to generate further experiences on demand.

Sadly, this is not at all the case. There is no universally prescribed method by which to conjure the Holy Spirit, which means there is no way to formally establish any causal connection with His behavior. Instead, most encounters with The Spirit seem to be entirely random, as if God were a fickle child who only shares His presence with some people, but not others.  

Even on the rare occasions when people do offer up a procedure, it inevitably fails to produce the expected results. For example, one of the most dramatic illustrations of this problem can be found in Latter Day Saint theology, which holds that anyone can experience the Holy Ghost for themselves. All one has to do is read the Book of Mormon, ponder its message, have a little faith, and then ask God in prayer whether or not this stuff is true [19]. If done correctly, then God will supposedly manifest the truth to you personally through the power of the Holy Ghost.

All right, then. Show of hands: How many of you Mormons, non-Mormons, and ex-Mormons tried exactly that, but did not immediately experience the promised results? That’s right. Millions of you. The overwhelming majority of people who try this experiment will categorically fail to replicate the outcome.

Which leads us to yet another key principle in the modern philosophy of science: falsifiability. If people consistently follow your prescribed formula and then fail to produce the promised results, we may immediately conclude that your claim is false. It makes no difference how elegant your theory may be, nor does it matter how good it makes you feel. The world officially does not work in accordance with your described rules, which means you are objectively and demonstrably wrong.

But what about the people who do generate the promised result? We cannot just discount their experiences entirely. Maybe we just did the procedure incorrectly, or maybe there are hidden variables that we just failed to account for. That’s fine, which is why science has provided yet another rule to help us vet their claims: Consistency. That is to say, if people really are producing the expected results, then presumably those results ought to be internally consistent with each other, right?

But of course, that isn’t the case, either. For every Mormon who claims to know the truth by the power of the Holy Spirit, there exists an equal number of Baptists, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others, who all say the exact same thing about their own religions, and with equal conviction. Yet they cannot all be correct, because the doctrines of salvation for one faith are often damnable heresies for another.

Which brings us to yet another foundational principle in the philosophy of science---Parsimony (also known as Occam’s Razor). Given multiple explanations for the same phenomenon, all of which have equal explanatory power, the one with the fewest assumptions is always to be preferred. So given the fact that people around the world are having regular experiences of an apparent spiritual nature, which explanation do you think makes more sense? That a fickle God would manifest Himself entirely at random using inconsistent and barely perceptible impressions towards mutually incompatible conclusions? Or that, just maybe, human beings have a natural tendency to generate these experiences entirely on their own?

Remember that this is still a perfectly valid question to ask, even if the Holy Spirit really is a thing. So let's be completely generous and just assume anyway that a small subset of all these experiences are indeed perfectly legitimate. By admission, apologists would still have to accept the fact that millions of other people are still having similar, counterfeit experiences through perfectly naturalistic means. I myself have personally experienced countless psychological intrusions, intense euphoria, deep guilt, vague intuitions, and even outright voices, but never once did it occur to me that this stuff was the result of supernatural telepathy. It’s perfectly normal and healthy to have these experiences, and virtually everyone has them on a regular basis. That little voice in your head looking out for you prompting you to make good decisions; it wasn’t a magical disembodied spirit. It was you all along!

There’s a lot more going on inside your head than pure, conscious reasoning. At any given moment, your brain is soaking in the perception of your surroundings, building connections, and reacting to stimulus, and it does all of this without the immediate permission of your conscious self. That’s a good thing. We don't always have the luxury to carefully reason through difficult problems, but must instead react in the moment out of pure intuition. That same intuition, however, is only as good as the training we put into it, which is why religious organizations fight so hard to co-opt that intuition with a supernatural bias. It’s a deliberate ploy designed to sidestep our rational minds and replace them with impulsive, uncritical loyalty.

How exactly do you think apologists respond when faced with such an overwhelming preponderance of contradictions, null results, and alternative theologies? Most of the time, they don’t even really talk about it at all---as if it never even occurred to them that other religions exist, or that other believers might have equal conviction to their own, or that some people might just honestly fail to replicate any spiritual encounters. It's like an institutionalized rejection of other human experiences, whereby the spiritual manifestations of other people are just ignored or denied. Then on the rare occasions when they do muster the courage to acknowledge this issue, the responses are almost comical in their smug arrogance and outright bigotry.

For example, reformed epistemology holds to the existence of a sensus divinitatis, or divine sense, that unambiguously reveals God’s existence to everyone [7]. Not just any God, mind you, but specifically the Christian God of the Holy Bible. That way, anyone who claims ignorance to the reality of Christianity is “without excuse" and may thus immediately be dismissed as a damned liar.

Or, alternatively, if they really are being sincere, then it must be the result of a malfunction in their divine sense---almost like a kind of spiritual blindness, whereby our innate God receptors just get clogged up somehow. However, the only thing that can allegedly cause such a problem is sin, which means we can now dismiss any such individuals as a bunch of wicked Hitlers who simply love evil more than God [20].

Or, alternatively again, if you really do experience the Holy Spirit, but just not in the same religious context as they do, then obviously you must be mistaken. The Holy Spirit is, after all, unmistakable for those who truly feel it, which means whatever it is you think you felt was necessarily some kind of spiritual counterfeit [21].

There you have it. According to mainstream Christian apologists, all those Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans, animists, atheists, and everyone else throughout history who failed to convert to Christianity are either spiritually blind, intellectually dishonest, or just outright sinfull. So let's stop beating around the bush and just summarize this doctrine for what it is, shall we?

We're right, you’re wrong, and if you disagree, then you’re stupid and evil. 

That really is the ultimate foundation for the majority of Christian apologists. They know it, and they admit it.

It's hard to fully articulate just how terrifyingly dangerous this kind of doctrine can be. When people cease to believe in their own fallibility, then it is only a matter of time before violent fanaticism enters the equation. By definition, a dogmatist cannot be reasoned with, nor can a false doctrine ever be defended reasonably. Reason itself therefore cannot settle any disputes, which leaves blunt authority as the only viable alternative. To make matters even worse, the very act of disagreement is not interpreted as a simple intellectual confusion, but an implicit moral failure. Nonbelievers are automatically presumed guilty of unspecified crimes by the mere virtue of their nonbelief. Violent oppression is thus easily justified, which makes violent resistance an eventual necessity.

So in the end, the Holy Spirit is yet another embarrassing pile of philosophical failure compounded with dangerous social undertones. We’re talking about an absolute, unwavering conviction in confusingly nonsensical doctrines derived entirely from squishy, subjective sensations that every competing religion on Earth can apparently replicate, only to then lie about it after the fact by pretending this was a serious, academic debate. It’s a shameless betrayal of everything Western Philosophy stands for. It exploits vulnerable human psychology, it demonizes nonbelievers, it justifies violence, and it rejects every known standard of honest inquiry. It allows no possibility for the correction of error, which means any errors within it shall remain errors forever, because error is not even the point. Truth doesn't matter to these people, but only the imposition of authority.

Even the very word itself is a linguistic betrayal of just how absurd this doctrine can be. Spirit is derived from the Latin word spiritus, meaning breath and air. [22]. The Bible itself often refers to the Holy Spirit by name through the Greek word pneuma, which likewise carries the meaning of breath, wind, and air [23]. Even the Hebrew sections of the Old Testament often refer to the Spirit of God as ruach, meaning breath and wind [24].

This is not a coincidence. Ancient cultures almost universally equated wind and breath with the idea of a spiritual life essence. For example, the Chinese word for a spiritual life force is qi, which also happens to translate into air and breath [25]. Ancient Hindu philosophy uses the Sanskrit word prana to describe a cosmic life force connected with breathing [26]. Old Nordic languages often used terms like önd and andi to mean breath and soul [27].

The obvious explanation is that ancient people didn’t understand how air works, and so they just filled in the blanks with whatever observations they could. For example, air can be felt, but not seen, and strong breath seems to feel very similar to wind. Living things have a tendency to breathe a lot, and things which die tend to stop breathing altogether. The only natural conclusion is that air itself must be comprised of a mysterious vital essence that animates living creatures. Air, breath, and soul, therefore all became the same thing, which is why one word was so often used to encapsulate all three concepts [28]. Heck, there are even remnants of this idea manifest in our modern concept of ghosts, which are often depicted as anthropomorphic clouds or semi-transparent vapors [29]. It’s a dead giveaway that, for all of the sophisticated philosophical pretense, the doctrine of Holy Spirit is, quite literally, nothing but a bunch of hot air.

Notes/References

1. William Lane Craig “Dealing with Christian Doubt.” (link)
2. William Lane Craig “Dealing with Christian Doubt" (alternate) (link)
3. "By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.” – Answers in Genesis
4. “The sole basis of our beliefs is the Bible, God’s infallible written Word, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. We believe that it was uniquely, verbally and fully inspired by the Holy Spirit and that it was written without error (inerrant) in the original manuscripts. It is the supreme and final authority in all matters on which it speaks.” – Josh McDowell Ministries
5. “The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are without error or misstatement in their moral and spiritual teaching and record of historical facts. They are without error or defect of any kind.” – Biola University
6. “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” – NAE
7. Plantinga, A., Warranted Christian Belief, Oxford University Press, Grand Rapids, 2000
8. "You see, I myself really do not know yet, but wherever the argument, like a wind, tends, there we must go.” – The Republic of Plato
9. “History of Trinitarian Doctrines,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
10. Foy, T. S. “Practice Hearing God's Voice” (link)
11. (link)
12. (link) (link) (link)
13. Doctrine and Covenants, Section 9
14. (link)
15. Matthew 7
16. John 4:1
17. (Link)
18. Gaunt, D. C., “Recognizing Satan’s Counterfeits” (link)
19. Moroni 10:3-5
20. “Therefore, when a person refuses to come to Christ it is never just because of a lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis fails to become a Christian because of a lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with god.” – William Lane Craig (Reasonable Faith, page 47). 
21. "The answer is that the witness of the Holy Spirit is unmistakable (though not indubitable) for him who has it and attends to it. He who has it should, indeed, conclude, that the Mormon is lying or, more charitably, sincerely mistaken. The Mormon has probably been misled by a counterfeit experience, and the non-veridicality of his experience shouldn’t lead you to doubt the veridicality of your experience.” – William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith Question of the Week #167, “Counterfeit Claims to the Witness of the Spirit” (link)
22. EtymologyOnline.com – “Spirit”
23. EtymologyOnline.com – “Pneuma”
24. Strong’s Concordance (link)
25. Wikipedia – “Qi” (link) 
26. Manorama: So What Actually Is Prana? (SanskritStudies.org) 
27. See Wiktionary and BruteNorse.com
28. See "Ancient Theories of Soul" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
29. See, for example, Casper the Friendly Ghost or Helena Ravenclaw

The Language of Logic

There's a classic episode of the original Star Trek series wherein Spock takes command over a stranded away team after crash landing on a distant planet [1]. As the team desperately works to repair its crippled shuttle, hostile aliens repeatedly hamper their efforts with violent attacks. Frustrated by the danger, some of the crew members demand permission to vaporize the monsters with their phasers, thereby eliminating the threat. Spock, however, refuses, and insists that a nonlethal show of force will be sufficient to scare them away without bloodshed. He immediately orders the crew to implement his plan, but it unfortunately backfires terribly. Rather than run away in terror, the aliens respond with more ferocious attacks than ever, and they even manage to kill another member of the crew. It’s a thrilling bit of drama that culminates in a heated argument between Spock and McCoy:

Spock: “Most illogical reaction. We demonstrated our superior weapons. They should have fled.”

McCoy: “You mean they should have respected us?"

Spock: “Of course."

McCoy: “Mister Spock, respect is a rational process. Did it ever occur to you they might react emotionally? With anger?”

Spock: "Doctor, I am not responsible for their unpredictability."

McCoy: "They were perfectly predictable to anyone with feeling. You might as well admit it, Mister Spock. Your precious logic brought them down on us."

Spock [some time later]: "Strange. Step by step, I have made the correct and logical decisions. And yet two men have died."

Skeptical writer Julia Galef once analyzed this episode for her presentation at Skepticon in 2011 [2], and I think she makes some very profound points about the Hollywood portrayal of logic. Remember that Spock is supposed to serve as a living embodiment of pure, logical reasoning, yet his behavior is clearly nothing of the sort. After all, how logical could your decisions really be when they consistently fail to produce an expected outcome? But rather than take responsibility for the obvious flaws in his own reasoning, the guy practically blames the world itself for not doing what he wanted.

Now in all fairness, Hollywood fiction writers are not exactly experts in logic, nor do they have much incentive to fill that role. Still, that does not excuse such a dismal portrayal of logical reasoning. Very few people have the luxury of studying this stuff in any formal capacity, which means the rest of us have little choice but to fill that void with whatever scattered fragments we can find in our popular culture. The natural result is thus a widespread confusion over what exactly logic is, how logic works, and how competent we really are at applying logic to our daily lives.

To illustrate, if we take the Vulcan philosopy of logic at face value, then a logical agent is apparently someone who just suppresses their feelings. Thus, to be logical is to simply be dispassionate, unimpulsive, and unintuitive. Any decisions based on such a mindset are good and correct, by definition, no matter the consequences. But if that’s all that logic is, then why would anyone want to adopt it? The central message seems to be that too much logic does nothing but turn us into unfeeling robots that get people killed!

It’s important to understand that logic is an essential building block to our modern lifestyle, and we only hurt ourselves by misrepresenting its inner workings to the public. Logic is not just a mere suppression of emotion, but a collection of mental tools designed to help us understand the world. Life is filled with serious problems that affect all of us on a global scale, and we cannot expect to solve them through brute intuition alone. It takes hard work to analyze this stuff and formulate solutions, yet the very tools we need for that process are being needlessly muddled and demonized by our media.

But what is logic, really? This is not an easy question to answer, and even respectable authorities are sometimes hesitant to give a truly definitive statement [3]. Some authors describe logic as the study of correct reasoning [4,5], or the study of valid inference [6]. Others describe logic as thinking about thinking [7], or maybe the science of reasoning and arguments [8,9]. These are all perfectly valid descriptions, but they also tend to lack a certain philosophical clarity. It’s a lot like trying to define what a sport is, in that plenty of vague definitions exist, but any hard answer you give will inevitably make certain groups of people very angry. Nevertheless, just because a definition can never be absolutely 100% perfect, that does not mean we should completely refrain from trying. There’s a whole world of needless confusion out there, and it only takes a few simple thought experiments to provide real insight.

To begin, suppose I were to pick up a baseball and place it in your hands. What exactly would you experience? Naturally, you can see it, touch it, taste it, and smell it. It has mass, volume, texture, and a definite position in space and time. Clearly, it’s the most tangible manifestation of a material object that there ever was.

But suppose I were to ask you to hold a game of baseball in your hands. Now what do you experience? What exactly does that even mean? Does the game occupy a particular position in space? Can you touch it? Weigh it? Measure its volume?

Of course not. But why? What’s the difference?

Obviously, the difference is that a game of baseball is not a tangible object. It’s something people do. When you observe a game of baseball, you’re not exactly watching a “game,” per se. Rather, a far more accurate description is that you are watching people as they play baseball. That is to say, they are engaging in a process defined by rules. As long as they are collectively choosing to follow the rules of baseball, then we can say they are playing baseball. And when they choose not to follow the rules, they are simply not playing baseball; they are doing something else.

By analogy, logic operates under a very similar principle. It is not a singular entity unto itself, nor does it occupy any particular location in the universe. It is, however, a process that people engage in. It’s something you do. When people choose to follow the rules of logic, then we simply say that they are being logical. And when people fail to follow the rules of logic, then they are not being logical. Unlike baseball, however, which defines the rules for an athletic activity, logic is like a set of rules built into human language. It’s a way of expressing ourselves rigorously so that ideas can be clearly communicated and then formally analyzed.

This is an important point to emphasize, because there is a huge community of hack philosophers out there who habitually fail to understand such distinctions. It’s especially common among religious apologists wherein a lack of spatial extension is immediately equated with literal transcendence beyond the limits of our material universe [10, 11]. One classic manifestation of this confusion is the famous Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God [12], which actually tries to derive God’s existence from the very laws of logic themselves. It’s all loosely based on a naïve viewpoint called Logical Realism, wherein logic is treated as a singular force unto itself, existing objectively and independently of any human influence---almost like an ethereal energy field that surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the very fabric of space and time.

The reality, of course, is that logic is fundamentally a human invention. Just as English, Spanish, and Japanese are all linguistic conventions created by humans, so too is logic just another similar kind of convention. Many systems of logic are even literally described as formal languages, which is in direct contrast with informal, or natural languages.

To see why this distinction might be important, suppose you were to hear someone utter the following natural-language sentence:

I saw the man on the hill with the telescope.

This is a perfectly well-constructed English sentence, but you may have noticed that it also exhibits a peculiar quality. Namely, the meaning of this sentence is unclear. Do I have the telescope? Does the man have it? Or does no one have it, and the telescope is just sitting on the hill? There is no objectively correct answer to this question without some sort of external context to back it up.

This is a well-known property of natural language called ambiguity---the quality of allowing multiple interpretations for a given sentence. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, mind you, and there are plenty of situations where it might even exist intentionally. For example, a pun is a specific style of joke that deliberately utilizes ambiguity for comic effect. Poets and songwriters will often deliberately exploit ambiguity to add multiple layers of meaning to their writing [13]. Hucksters and snake-oil salesmen may even use ambiguity to make extravagant claims without necessarily promising anything concrete.

That’s all fine and dandy for some, but what happens when ambiguity leads to costly misunderstandings? For example, maybe I want to borrow money from a bank, or perhaps launch rockets into space. These are situations that demand as little ambiguity as possible and so require the use of much stricter language. A formal language can therefore be thought of as any structured set of rules that attempt to mitigate ambiguity. Scientists, engineers, computer programmers, lawyers, and mathematicians are all particularly fond of formal languages because the very nature of these professions are all built on precise communication.

To demonstrate, let’s use formal language to clarify the meaning of our natural-language sentence:

I saw the man, and the man was on the hill, and the hill had a telescope.

Notice how this sentence is much clearer than its predecessor, thanks in no small part to our use of the word AND. It’s a textbook example of a little tool called the logical connective, in that it literally connects propositions together to form more complex expressions. There’s a whole bunch of them you’re probably familiar with, such as NOT, OR, XOR, IF-THEN, etc, and they all fall under the scope of classical propositional logic.

This is by no means a unique system, either, and there are all kinds of interesting sentences we could construct though alternative logical frameworks. For example, suppose I were to tell you that

For every car on the highway, there exists a driver.

This charming little sentence was brought to you by First-Order Logic, which tells us how to use tools like the universal quantifier (for every) and the existential quantifier (there exists).

Another fun system you may have heard of is called Modal Logic, and it basically gives meaning to words like possible, necessary, and actual. These words are called modal operators, and they allow us to construct such happy sentences as

It is possible to paint a car red, but it is necessary to put wheels on it.

That’s all well and good so far, but there’s much more to logic than a bunch of wordy tools for constructing fancy sentences. Often times, we need to analyze the interplay between ideas, which makes it awfully nice to define some formal way of expressing those relationships. That’s why no system of logic is ever truly complete without some corresponding deductive system to go with it. In its simplest form, a deductive system is very similar to the idea of grammar that we typically associate with natural languages. Only rather than govern the flow of words in a single sentence, a deductive system governs the flow of sentences within an argument.

To see how this works in practice, let’s borrow a page from the classic Mel Brooks' film, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, by considering the following English sentences [14]:

1. The king’s illegal forest to pig wild kill in it a is.
2. It is illegal to kill a wild pig in the king’s forest.

Notice that both of these sentences contain the exact same collection of words, but in different arrangements. The first arrangement is generally considered “bad” in the sense that the words failed to follow the proper rules of English grammar. As a result, your brain was most likely unable to derive any coherent meaning from it. In contrast, the second arrangement is generally considered “good” because it correctly followed the rules of grammar. That’s why your brain was able to make sense out of it in accordance with established conventions.

By analogy, an argument behaves very much the same way. Simply begin with a collection of sentences, called premises, and then apply some rule of inference to see whether or not a conclusion supposedly follows. To demonstrate, consider the basic structure of a classic syllogism:

1. All men are mortal.
2. Socrates is mortal.
3. Therefore, Socrates is a man.

Now compare that against the following:

1. All men are mortal.
2. Socrates is a man. 
3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Once again, we have the exact same scenario as before in that both arguments contain identical words, but with different arrangements. Just as grammar dictated the proper flow of words in a sentence, we can clearly see that logic dictates the proper flow of sentences in an argument. The first argument is thus said to be invalid for the simple reason that it failed to follow the rules of a formal syllogism. Likewise, the second argument is said to be valid because it does follow the rules.

Bear in mind now that there is no universally correct way to stick words together in a natural language sentence. Languages around the world happily mix and match the flow of nouns, verbs, adjectives, conjugations, and the like, and no one complains about which arrangements are objectively “real.” The only thing that matters is for us to agree on a given convention so that meaningful communication can take place. Anyone who refuses to follow the agreed-upon rules for English grammar will thus find themselves unable to talk effectively with other English-speaking humans.

By extension, the exact same principle applies to logic. There is no universally correct way to stick sentences together in an argument, but there are rules we have agreed upon for the sake of communication. The very sentence All men are mortal, is really just a declaration of a simple rule: You show me an example of a thing that is a man, and I shall henceforth agree to label that thing as a mortal. Why exactly should anyone feel compelled to do that? Because that’s just what it means to say that all men are mortal! So when you finally do come to me with the proposition that Socrates is a man, then all we have to do is follow the rule by declaring Socrates to be a mortal as well. It has nothing to do with some objective state of external affairs, but a convention of language and understanding. In principle, I could even violate that convention outright by refusing to accept the mortality of Socrates, but all that would result is a bunch of needless confusion and frustration. It would like saying “hey guys, let’s play some hockey” before throwing a football at the goalie and then shouting “checkmate” at the referee. It’s not playing by the rules.

This idea is important, because it directly conflicts with a classical philosophical principle known as rationalism---the idea that pure, deductive logic is the ultimate source of all human knowledge. According to many popular schools of thought, such a doctrine would actually have you believe that the deepest mysteries of life, the universe, and everything, can all be perfectly well-understood by sitting in an armchair and thinking really hard about them. Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz were all particularly famous for holding this sort of view, and we can easily spot their influence in more modern philosophy as well. For example, the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God is a classic manifestation wherein the very idea of God Himself can supposedly be used to deduce His own existence. It's a textbook case of blatant philosophical question begging because pure logic, in and of itself, will never tell you anything about objective reality. At best, it can only tell you whether or not your attempts to describe reality have been formulated correctly.

To demonstrate, suppose I were to fill an entire argument with complete, nonsensical gibberish like so:

1. All flurbles are snuffins.
2. Zarky is a flurble.
3. Therefore, Zarky is a snuffin.

Notice that we again have a perfectly valid argument in the simple sense that it merely follows the correct rules of logic. Never mind the fact that flurble, snuffin, and Zarky have no accepted meaning within the English language. The conclusion follows logically from the premises in accordance with the syllogistic convention. You show me an example of a thing that is a flurble, and I will agree to categorize such a thing as a snuffin.

Clearly, something very important still seems to be missing from our logical framework. After all, why should I, or anyone else for that matter, accept the proposition that all flurbles are snuffins? By who’s authority should anyone feel bound by this declaration? Does the dictionary contain some entry that categorizes them accordingly? Is there a children’s show where the characters follow this rule? Maybe there’s an obscure corner of Madagascar where scientists have experimentally uncovered this phenomenon? Or what if some old lady next door to me just happened to utter that little fact the other day, and she’s never been wrong before?

This is why you generally can’t do logic without some formal system of semantics to go with it. After all, we can agree all day on the basic structure of a given deductive system, but it won’t do much good without some authority by which to establish premises in the first place. To that end, it generally helps to associate our propositions with some kind of indicator that officially denotes their authoritative “correctness.” In logic, this is known as a truth-value, and is typically expressed through a binary set containing the elements True and False {T,F}. Thus, to say that a proposition is “true” is to basically say that you accept it as a premise, and so you agree to abide by the formal conventions of some deductive system. Propositions that are “false” would then naturally fail in that regard.

That’s pretty intuitive so far, but it’s important to always keep in mind that we don't have to adopt a binary set of truth values. For example, some systems of logic actually use three truth values instead of two, and are thus referred to as tri-state logics {T,F,U}. Another well-known system is called Fuzzy logic, and it utilizes an entire spectrum of truth-values by mapping them across all real numbers between 0 and 1. In principle, you could even walk to a chalkboard right now and invent your own completely original logic that uses 17 truth values on alternate Thursdays. Again, there is no objectively correct system to use, other than whatever collection of rules we happen to agree upon for the sake of communication. And since the binary system just so happens to be simple, familiar, and functional, it almost always ends up being the de facto presumption under most situations.

Once we’ve finally agreed on an official system of truth values, the next step is to formally establish which propositions are true and which ones are false. In logic, this is known as a truth assignment function, though many references will also call this an interpretation. Thus, to interpret a logical proposition is to assign it a truth value accordingly.

To demonstrate, consider again the simple proposition that all men are mortal. Is that true or is that false? One interpretation could be that every human being we’ve ever encountered has been mortal so far, and so we might as well just take it for granted that all future humans will be mortal as well. Alternatively, you could say that the English dictionary specifically defines “mortality” as an inherent property of human beings, thus making it true by definition. For that matter, maybe you think the old lady next door is the ultimate authority on all things mortal, and so if she says it, then it must be true.

These are all perfectly valid interpretations in the simple sense that they tell us how to assign truth values to a given proposition. So if you happen to abide by one of these interpretations, then great. We can finally build arguments on premises that are officially true. If, however, you reject these interpretations entirely, then that’s great too. All it means is that you have arbitrarily chosen to assign truth to propositions in accordance with some other set of rules.

Remember that in the formal context of propositional logic, truth is just a label that we assign to propositions. That means propositions can either be true or they can be false, but there is no such thing as raw “essence of truth” unto itself. So whenever you come to me with a simple proposition like all men are mortal, then sooner or later that proposition must be interpreted if we ever expect to do any logic on it.

At least one common method of interpretation is to simply assert a small handful of propositions outright and then see what happens. Propositions like this are called axioms, and they serve as very powerful building blocks for many formal languages. For example, according to the language of natural numbers, it is simply a rote fact of life that, for any natural number n, n=n. Why exactly should that be the case? Because we say so, that’s why! It’s just one of the things we demand to be true whenever we talk about natural numbers. It's no different from demanding that all bachelors be unmarried men. All languages are built on rules, and there is nothing wrong with declaring those rules as a foundational property of the language itself.

Once the axioms of a language have been officially established, the next step is to begin deriving new propositions in accordance with some deductive system. Any new true propositions generated in this fashion are called theorems, and they represent the heart and soul of virtually all mathematical inquiry. That's why we say mathematics is an invention and not a discovery. Everything you were ever taught about the nature numbers, sets, functions, etc, all began as little more than a collection of arbitrary axioms being operated upon by logical rules of inference.

If that all sounds a bit circular to you, then just remember that axioms technically have nothing to say about objective reality. Rather, they simply define the foundational rules for a particular language. If that language happens to work well at describing practical scenarios with functional precision, then all the better. But it’s important to always keep in mind that there is nothing physically forcing us to adopt a particular axiomatic system. In principle, we could easily mix and match the rules all day, and there are plenty of situations where it might even be beneficial to do so.

For example, take the classic Peano axiom that there is no natural number n such that n+1=0. Where exactly is it etched in stone that we must absolutely adhere to this axiom from now until eternity? Why not just discard this rule entirely and then replace it with something whacky like 12+1=1? Now we suddenly have a perfectly self-consistent system where all sorts of funny things can happen, like 7+8 = 3, and 10+11 = 9. It’s nothing mysterious or unfathomable. It’s just modular arithmetic, and people around the world use it every day as a practical system for telling time.

This has all been a tiny, oversimplified sampling of the rich tapestry that exists within the world of modern logic, but hopefully we can begin to recognize the essential properties that make logic distinct. When all is said and done, a logic is little more than a formal language coupled with a deductive system and semantic interpretations. Granted, this is not necessarily a perfect definition, and there are probably plenty of experts who would take issue with the finer details. That’s fine, but we can clearly see that logic is far more than a mere absence of emotional impulsivity. It’s not an ethereal force that governs the universe, either, but a linguistic convention built on rules---rules that are designed help express ideas rigorously and then analyze the interplay between them.

So the next time you find yourself stranded on a distant planet surrounded by hostile alien monsters, just remember that it’s okay to feel a little bit emotional. But no matter what feelings may be aroused in any given moment, you’re eventually going to have to start making decisions, and presumably you’d like those decisions to improve the situation. Often times, we may not even have the luxury of careful deliberation, but must instead act upon brute, intuitive impulse. However, on the rare occasions when we do have time to think about a problem in detail, then it usually helps to have some official system in place for evaluating information, formulating a plan of action, and then coordinating that plan among your peers. So step back, take a breath, and use your logic!  

Notes/References:

1. "The Galileo Seven," Star Trek, Season 1, Episode 16
2. J. Galef, "The Straw Vulcan," Oral Presentation at Skepticon 4 (2011) [link] 
3. C. DeLancey, A Concise Introduction to Logic, Open SUNY Textbooks (2017)
4. I. M. Copi, C. Cohen, and K. McMahon, Introduction to Logic, 14th ed, Pearson Education Limited (2014)
5.  P. Suppes, Introduction to Logic, Van Nostrand Reinhold (1957)
6. Columbia University, The Columbia Encyclopedia,  8th ed, Columbia University Press (2018)
7. S. Guttenplan, The Languages of Logic: An Introduction to Formal Logic, 2 ed, Wiley-Blackwell (1997)
8. P. Hurley and L. Watson, A Concise Introduction to Logic, 13th ed, Cengage Learning (2017) 
9. L. T. F. Gamut, Logic, Language, and Meaning, Volume 1: Introduction to Logic, University of Chicago Press (1991) 
10. W. L. Craig, "Do the laws of logic provide evidence for God?" ReasonableFaith.org (2016) [link] 
11. J. Warner, "Is God real? Evidence from the laws of logic," ColdCaseChristianity.com (2019) [link]
12. M. Slick, "The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God" (2008) [link] 
13. "The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry." - William Empson
14. Video clip link

Inspiring Philosophy's Loopy Lark through the Land of Logic

If there is one thing you can always count on from an Inspiring Philosophy (IP) video, it is a philosophical train wreck of muddled confusion. So when IP finally came out with a video called The Laws of Logic Defended, you would think this should have been the first presentation I could actually get behind. After all, I like to consider myself a pretty logical guy, and I even have some formal training in mathematical logic and proof theory. Unfortunately, IP is not your ordinary, everyday apologist. Even when it comes to something as simple as a defense of basic logic, he still cannot help but get his entire presentation wrong. Not just erroneous, mind you, but often deliberately manipulative and transparently unethical.

To give a crude analogy, suppose someone is about to argue against the recreational use of heroine. In principle, this is something we should all be able to agree upon because heroin is highly addictive and mentally disabling. But what if the principle argument was that too much heroin literally causes your skin to turn inside out? Or that heroin is a mechanism for injecting demons into your body and getting possessed by Satan? That’s what it’s like to listen to IP defend logic.

Speaking broadly, the single, foundational blunder that permeates this entire presentation is the simple fact that IP does not understand logic. He does not know what logic is, he does not know how logic works, and he has no clue that logic is an ever-changing human construction. In IP’s world, logic is like an ethereal force interwoven into the fabric of space and time. At one point, he even draws a picture of the universe resting inside a bubble of logic, as if the laws of logic somehow encompass the physical behavior of nature itself. It’s a dead giveaway that the guy has never even touched an actual textbook on the subject. He has no authority whatsoever, yet he still felt the overwhelming compulsion to put together an entire video anyway.

I personally find this sort of behavior highly irritating. To me, it is inherently dishonest to pretend to be an expert in things you obviously do not understand. In IP’s case, however, I have to wonder if it might just be a classic example of Dunning-Kruger effect. The guy is so woefully uneducated about logic that he literally cannot fathom how uneducated he is. He thus self-evaluates as being rather competent and then plows right ahead with full confidence.

For what it’s worth, the word logic does tend to mean different things under different circumstances, which makes it somewhat forgivable that most people do not really understand it. If, however, you actually open a formal textbook on the subject, then there is a consistent theme on which experts do tend to agree: Logic is essentially a bunch of highly formalized rules built into human language. For example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says that:

A logic consists of a formal or informal language together with a deductive system and/or a model-theoretic semantics.

The immediate implication is that there is no such thing as a singularly “correct” logic, but rather a varied assortment of competing and complementary logics, each with their own distinct areas of focus. At best, you can really only speak of “good” logics that are meaningful and descriptive for certain applications, and “bad” logics that fail to help us communicate effectively. When you follow the rules of logic in your speech, then we would simply say that you are being logical. Conversely, when you fail to express an argument through the rules of logic, then you are simply not being logical.

This is an important point to emphasize, because it immediately undermines IP’s entire argument before he even opens his mouth. To quote his own definition,

Logic simply is a description of everything that is and everything that is possible. 

This is very clearly an embarrassing misconception. How on Earth does IP expect to defend the laws of logic when he cannot even define that word correctly? It reminds me of the old adage about playing checkers against an opponent who is playing chess. Only in IP’s case, it’s more like he’s playing Go Fish with a sack of marbles while all the chess players are in a different building down the street.

Another thing that really jumps out at me from this presentation is the way in which IP deliberately lies and manipulates for no reason. His use of weasel words is particularly blatant, but he also has a bad habit of cherry-picking, quote-mining, and oddly-ambiguous phrasing. There is even a thinly-veiled attack against atheists, as if atheists have to literally deny logic in order to deny the existence of God. It’s all so clumsy, too, and it really makes me wonder how this guy could possibly gather such a loyal fan base. But loyal they are, and IP no doubt earns quite the generous income from his many donations. That’s why I feel compelled to publicly analyze his arguments in detail so that maybe a few of his potential sponsors find something better to do with their money.

To begin, IP opens as he always does by saying something really weird.

Can we trust the laws of logic? Is logic safe from criticism? Or is it just another man-made construct built on sand? 

I realize that IP is being somewhat rhetorical here, but the very nature of his questions reveal a profound bias. Namely, what exactly does IP have against “man-made constructs?” The conversation has barely even begun, and he is already imposing a rather bizarre presupposition. Either logic is a transcendent, singular force unto itself, or it is nothing but a worthless creation from a bunch of bumbling morons. He speaks as if human beings are utterly incapable of creating a formal system of logic that has any significant value.

Another funny thing about this opener is IP’s use of the word “trust.” Pray tell, what does it even mean to trust the laws of logic? IP is speaking as if we cannot directly justify the use of logic, but must instead take it on a kind of faith. It’s a constant theme that permeates the entire discussion, and it shows how little IP understands about the nature of logic.

The next question that needs to be asked at this point is, Exactly which "laws of logic" is IP referring to? As I said earlier, there is no such thing as a singular, unifying school of logic. There are actually many distinct systems of logic, all with competing interpretations within them. Not all of these logics are even compatible with each other, either, which means sooner or later you have to pick and choose which logics you intend to apply. I assume from the context that IP is defending classical propositional logic, but he also seems to reject several tenets of that system as this video progresses.

Remember that logic is not a force to be trusted; it is a tool to be exercised. The reason why logic seems to work so well at "describing the universe" is because we specifically invented logic to help us do exactly that. If logic were not useful at formulating meaningful arguments, then we would simply discard it and invent something else that does (and then call that thing “logic” instead). Thus, for all practical purposes, people who fail to exercise logic are essentially using words incorrectly. The consequence is nothing more than ambiguity and miscommunication.

Many argue the laws of logic are not true, and use a form of Russel’s paradox to show this.

Notice that we’re not even 30 seconds into the video, and IP is either being inexcusably lazy, or just outright dishonest. The phrase “many argue” is a textbook example of Weasel Words---a deliberate manipulation tactic designed to make an argument appear more relevant than it actually is. It is also intentionally vague enough so that we are unable to check out the source for ourselves. For instance, who exactly are these “many” people supposed to be? How influential are they? Where can I read their arguments for myself? Are these people serious academics with PhDs? Or is IP getting this from Billy, the angry basement-dweller with an internet connection? He simply does not say. We are therefore left wondering whether such people even exist at all, or if they are just a figment of IP’s imagination.

It turns out that I’m not the only person to ask these questions, and there are plenty of comments on his video wondering the same thing. On at least one occasion, IP actually gave an answer, which you can see here:

There's our answer, folks. This entire video is a response to some random anonymous doofus on the internet. Thank you, Inspiring Philosophy, for saving us from this terrible menace.

The thing that makes this even more infuriating is the way in which IP specifically frames it all as a direct accusation against atheists. He does not come out and say it in so many words, but that is exactly how his fans have interpreted it. A simple perusal of his video comment section quickly reveals dozens of fanboys railing against the silly atheists, and IP makes zero effort to publicly correct this perception. Just look:

So it’s not that atheists are all out there denying logic; it's just that a bunch of atheists are out there denying logic. At least, that's the interpretation IP is more than happy to encourage.

Here is a simple argument of how they try to show the laws of logic are not true or objective.

Premise 1: Assume that the laws of logic are true.
Premise 2: All propositions are either true or false.

Premise 3: The proposition "This proposition is false” is neither true nor false.
Premise 4: There exists at least one proposition that is neither true nor false.
Premise 5: It is not the case that all propositions are either true or false.
Premise 6: It both is and is not the case that all propositions are either true or false.

Notice again that IP gives zero citations as to where exactly this mysterious argument is coming from. I even tried to Google it myself, but I could not find a single example of anything remotely similar. It therefore seems to me that, for all practical purposes, IP might as well be inventing it out of nothing. I don’t know what to say, other than congratulations on your amazing straw man, dude.

But hey, if that’s how IP wants to play it, then fine. I can play that game too. According to some, reason and logic are enemies of God. In fact, here are some direct quotes to that effect:

Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.

Or it that wasn’t convincing, here’s another doozy:

If, somewhere within the Bible, I were to find a passage that said 2+2=5, I wouldn’t question what I’m reading in the Bible. I would believe it, accept it as true, and then do my best to work it out and to understand it.

Still not satisfied? How about this one?

It is entirely right, rational, reasonable, and proper to believe in God without any evidence or argument at all.

The irony here is that I don’t have to hide behind weasel words to make my point. The first quote is from Martin Luther, the second quote is from Pastor Peter LaRuffa, and the third is from Alvin Plantinga---all Christians of significant influence and notoriety. So if IP wants to pick on atheists for denying logic, then perhaps he should take a cold, hard look at his own camp, first. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

So if this argument works, it would show we cannot trust the laws of logic. However, there are several problems with this argument and line of reasoning that need to be addressed. First, the argument breaks down in premise 2. Not all propositions are either true or false. 

The premise that all propositions are either true or false is called bivalence, and it is a core presumption in classical propositional logic. That means when IP rejects this principle, he is effectively rejecting a fundamental law of logic in order to defend the laws of logic. That’s not a very good start.

In principle, IP could easily avoid this little trap by simply admitting to the existence of different systems of logic. But you have to remember that IP views logic as an objectively potent force unto itself, independent of human intervention. He is therefore not allowed to accept logic as a human invention because that would immediately render it unreliable (i.e., “built on sand”). So no matter how IP proceeds, he has no choice but to trip over his own ignorance and bias. The result, as we shall see, is a clumsy mess of awkward nonsense.

A proposition can be defined as a statement or assertion that expresses a judgement or opinion.

Sentences like this are hilarious to me because they perfectly demonstrate how little IP has studied logic. When I Googled the word “proposition,” this was the verbatim definition that came up in my search. However, when I actually looked up the definition from an academic source, the result was something very different. According to Richard E. Hodel’s textbook, An Introduction to Mathematical Logic, a simple proposition is a declarative sentence that is either true or false and has no connectives. Likewise, a proposition is a declarative sentence that either is a simple proposition or is built up from simple propositions using one or more of the connectives not, or, and, if-then, and if-and-only-if.

To be fair, the distinction between these two definitions is a bit subtle, but it does illustrate the extent of IP’s “research” for these videos. He completely avoids any contact with authentic, scholarly references, but instead relies entirely on 10-second Google searches to get his information. It also shows that, again, classical logic requires all propositions must be either true or false. IP is flat-out denying a fundamental law of logic in his defense of the laws of logic.

Consider the statement “Easter is the best holiday.” This cannot be proven true or false. It is just an expression of opinion.

I find it truly baffling that IP thinks this is supposed to be compelling. All we have to do is ask ourselves what exactly we mean by that statement. For example, if we take this proposition to mean “It is my opinion that Easter is the best holiday,” then we absolutely have a statement of truth. Sure, it may just be my opinion that Easter is the best holiday, but it is verifiably true that I hold to this opinion (or, if I do not hold such an opinion, then it would be false).

Alternatively, we could take this proposition to mean something more like “It is an objective fact that Easter is the best holiday.” However, that proposition has a truth value as well. By definition, opinions are subjective facts that only apply to individuals and their preferences. It is therefore a contradiction in terms to speak of an objectively correct opinion, and the proposition simply becomes false.

So no matter how we interpret his proposition, there exists a definite assignment of truth. IP’s very best example of an unprovable proposition is almost trivially easy to prove (depending on how you interpret it).

So you can have propositions that are neither true nor false. Nothing in logic or language denies this.

Again, classical bivalent logic absolutely denies the existence of any “alternative” truth values beyond true and false. I don’t know what else I can say to this, other than IP is just categorically wrong.

The sad thing about all this is that IP is actually headed in a very worthwhile direction with his discussion. The Liar’s paradox is a textbook example of the kind of proposition that binary logic struggles to deal with. That’s why we have, for example, systems of tri-state logic. Unfortunately, that would again require IP to acknowledge the existence of multiple logics, which he has specifically refused to do from the outset. It would also force him to completely overhaul his entire conception of truth itself.

Remember that IP thinks logic is an objective force of nature unto itself and thus independent of human design. By the same token, IP also tends to think of truth itself as something very similar. If we take the more modern approach, however, then truth is just a label that we assign to propositions. This immediately solves the liar's paradox by rendering it undecidable because there is no procedure you can apply through axioms and rules of inference to arrive at a final truth value (at least, not if you want to preserve consistency). The only problem with this approach is that it forces us to give up on any platonic ideal of truth. Truth, in effect, is reduced in meaning to the bare procedure that was constructed to assign it (at least, for analytic propositions it is). For us pragmatists, that's perfectly acceptable because we're not interested in some nonsensical platonic ideal of truthiness. We just want a system of communication that allows us to talk at each other effectively. For IP, unfortunately, that's not allowed. He has to believe in his magical world of metaphysical mystery.

So the rest of the argument breaks down if premise 2 doesn’t even work. So building on that, let’s consider this statement:

“Carloman was murdered by his brother Charlemagne so he could have the throne for himself.”

This statement is either true or false. However, we cannot be sure if it is true due to lack of information. We do not have enough records or evidence to confirm whether or not Carloman was murdered or died naturally. It is simply beyond the scope of our knowledge today. Which brings us to the next problem with this argument. This argument itself is based on Gödel’s theorems, which many think shows logic doesn’t work. But in a nutshell, they actually only show that no consistent system of axioms, whose theorems can be listed by an “effective procedure” is capable of proving all truth. In other words, Gödel’s theorems show we cannot fully prove something is true, just because it seems like it is or is consistent. All Gödel did was show we are limited in having total proof of something. But even without Gödel, that is intuitively obvious. Many things will always just be 99% probably true, but absolute certainty will always be beyond our reach.

This paragraph is so hopelessly muddled that I literally stared at it in confusion for two minutes before thinking of something to say. For starters, the uncertainty surrounding Carlomon’s death has absolutely nothing to do with Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. That’s because Carlomon's death is a matter of synthetic propositions where truth is assigned in accordance with a preponderance of empirical data. In contrast, Gödel’s theorems are a statement about the nature of language itself. More specifically, they have to do with the ability to derive theorems out of axioms through the formal exercise of rules of inference. IP's attempt to somehow conflate the two is just clumsy. It’s as he's just mish-mashing a bunch of fancy words together in the hopes that it will make him sound all smart and sophisticated to his fans. For those of us who are actually trained in the material, however, it is almost painfully obvious that IP has no clue what he’s even talking about.

Secondly, notice the repeated use of weasel words: Many think that Gödel’s theorems show logic doesn’t work. Seriously, who exactly are these people? I have never once encountered a single human being in the entire universe who claims this. IP is again arguing against total phantoms, all with the same unspoken subtext that, no really, it’s atheists.

Thirdly, IP has deliberately misrepresented Gödel’s theorems. The quote he gave here was copied verbatim from Wikipedia, but with a few key words removed. For reference, this is the actual quote in its entirety, but with the missing bits underlined:

The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure (i.e., an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of the natural numbers.

Notice that IP specifically removed any mention of arithmetic and natural numbers. This is important, because it limits the context in a way that contradicts IP’s interpretation. He must have done this on purpose, too, because I see no possible way to accidentally remove such a key piece of information. The guy just flat-out lied to his audience, all so he could invent some obtuse interpretation about logic that doesn’t even apply to its original context.

So because of that, we can also deny premise 3 and say that it is a false dichotomy.

This sentence is especially confusing, in that IP is now outright contradicting himself. He just spent the last two paragraphs explaining in great detail that not all propositions have to be true or false, and now he is denying a premise claiming that not all propositions have to be true or false! Seriously. Read that premise again:

Premise 3: The proposition “This proposition is false” is neither true nor false.

You just categorically denied the very thing you set out to prove, you imbecile!

I can explain how and why if we reduce the problem to mathematics, which can show the statement “this statement is false” can actually be solved. Allow me to explain using the work of G. Spencer Brown.

The proposition can be represented as X = -1/X. Now like the statement in our argument, if you try to solve with x = 1, the equation will yield negative 1. If you try X = -1, then positive 1 comes back. The solution oscillates between one and negative one, like true or false. One being true, and negative one being false, just like our proposition. If you say it is true, then it can’t be because it claims it is false. If you say it is false, then it cannot be true in claiming it is false. Same problem, just represented mathematically.

So how do we escape this vicious cycle? The solution is to use i, which is also the same as the square-root of negative one. If you substitute x for i, you get i = -1/i, and negative one over i is also i. Thus, mathematically, the problem can be solved, because i transcends the paradox.

This is the part where IP really flies off the rails, and it is truly baffling where he got the idea to present this information. For starters, G. Spencer Brown is essentially no one. The guy has almost no historical significance or philosophical influence to speak of. Secondly, I attempted briefly to read through G. Spencer Brown’s book, and all I found was a meaningless word salad of incoherent gibberish. To illustrate, these are the first words Brown writes in the forward to the text:

The theme of this book is that a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an outside from an inside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin to reconstruct… the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical physical, and biological science, and can begin to see how the familiar laws of our own experience follow inexorably from the original act of severance. 

The book pretty much rambles endlessly in this style of prose, and it only gets worse the deeper you dig into it. The idea that IP actually read through this thing in any rigorous detail is therefore just laughable to me. It’s like the guy randomly found this book in his attic one day and decided to shoe-horn it into his presentation.

Academic credentials aside, I still did my best to charitably interpret the underlying train of thought. Basically, Brown is saying that the equation x^2 = -1 has no solution within the set of natural numbers. Thus, something other than a natural number is required in order to solve it. By analogy, classical binary logic cannot assign a truth value to the Liar’s paradox. Thus, a new system of logical truth values must be invented that does.

This stuff is important, because it completely undermines IP’s central thesis---the idea that the laws of logic can be “trusted.” Clearly the laws of classical binary logic are not trustworthy because they completely break down when exposed to self-referential negations (remember, this is IP’s own argument!). In practice, the usual way to solve the problem is to simply invent a new system of logic that rejects bivalence. In a sense, that’s exactly what IP even suggests, too, but he seems to be utterly incapable of realizing it. Instead, he seems to think that some universal, capital-L “Logic” must have existed the entire time, and really we humans were just applying the wrong logic from the beginning.

To make matters even more awkward, IP seems to treat imaginary numbers as a mysterious mathematical entity with properties totally beyond our comprehension.

The only problem is that we cannot epistemically understand the mathematical usage of i.

This claim is just laughable. Mathematicians are very well-acquainted with the “mathematical usage of i.” The imaginary unit is, by definition, the number that produces -1 when squared (Seriously, that’s all it is). It is no more transcendent or mysterious than the idea that -1 is, by definition, the number that produces zero when incremented. IP quite obviously does not understand any of this, and he is apparently just projecting that ignorance onto all mathematicians and philosophers across the globe.

Thus, Godel was proven right, and not the absolute skeptic who doubts logic is true.

I’m just going to recap IP’s argument over the last few sentences and see if you can make sense out of it.

1. Imaginary numbers "transcend" integers.
2. By analogy, the liar's paradox transcends true and false.
3. Therefore, Gödel was right.
4. Therefore, logic is true.

Seriously, dude. How do you have patrons?

There is no contradiction in logic. We just cannot know or prove all truth or fully understand everything. Just like with our proposition, we cannot know the answer due to our epistemic limits. But the fact that we are limited and unable to totally prove logic does not mean the laws of logic are not true.

Now it almost sounds as if IP thinks we cannot even prove logic. That is to say, we cannot prove how Carlomon was killed because of “epistemic limits,” even if we are perhaps very confident of a particular answer. By the same token, we cannot exactly prove logic per se, but just have to take it on a kind of faith.

This is again a classic example of how little IP understands logic. Starting with a few definitions of some basic terms (e.g., true-value, axiom, connective, etc.), plus a few basic rules of inference, it is actually very easy to derive every so-called “law of logic” you can think of. It’s all right there in every standard textbook on mathematical logic, and it does not require any faith or trust. All it requires is your willingness to abide by some simple definitions and rules.

The other thing to remember is that you just cannot deny the laws of logic. Any attack on the laws of logic is self-refuting.

As the philosopher Thomas Nagel says,

“We cannot criticize some of our own claims of reason without employing reason at some point to formulate and support those criticisms.”

In other words, to attack the laws of logic, you have to assume your attack on logic is logically formulated. If you actually didn’t think the laws of logic we true, you would not be relying on logical reasoning to show the laws of logic are not true. It completely undermines your very argument, because showing your conclusion, the laws of logic are not true, means your logical reasoning used to acquire that conclusion didn’t work.

It’s called a proof by contradiction, you jackass. I've seen you use it a hundred times in your own videos. The argument you gave us assumed a very specific law of logic, only to derive a conclusion that violated the laws of logic. You cannot complain about “self-refuting arguments” when the very logic you speak of is also apparently self-refuting. Either bivalence is a law of logic, or it is not. If it is, then we have a contradiction, and logic is screwed. It not, then everything is fine and dandy.

This is of course because it is also impossible to think or imagine something where logic doesn’t apply. You can’t simply escape logic and step outside of it like a set of boundaries. It is not something changeable. If something is outside of logic, then it is nothing. Logic simply is a description of everything that is and everything that is possible. Nothing can be outside of logic, so to speak. Any thought you have will be logical and definable in some sense.

Here, let me show you something:

It is true that I am married and it is true that I am not married.

There. I just violated logic. What are you going to do about it?

Notice that the universe did not implode on itself, nor did any philosophical logic police come rushing to arrest me. All I did was put words together wrongly, and so your brain failed to cohere them into a meaningful idea. That’s what happens when you violate logic.

The reason why it is so difficult to describe something where logic doesn’t apply is because logic itself is the basis by which we describe things in the first place. Logic is a formal set of rules built into language. If, however, you start viewing the world through the eyes of a creature without language skills (say, for example, a dog or cat), then all of a sudden it becomes very easy to navigate the world without logic. Just act entirely on stimulus and instinct, making no use of formal propositions in your behavior. That is a world entirely outside of any formal logic.

As Nagel says, “in skepticism about logic, we can never reach a point at which we have two possibilities with which all the evidence is compatible and between which it is therefore impossible to choose. The forms of thought that must be used in any attempt to set up such an alternative force themselves to the top of the heap. I cannot think, for example, that I would be in an epistemically identical situation if 2+2 equaled five, but my brains were being scrambled—because I cannot conceive of 2+2 being equal to five. The epistemological skeptic relies on reason to get us to a neutral point above the level of thoughts that are the object of skepticism. The logical skeptic can offer no such external platform.”

Basically, Nagel thinks you have to assume logic to deny logic. At least, that’s what I think he’s trying to say, because it’s nigh-impossible to confidently interpret this incoherent word salad. He also commits a blatant fallacy of arguing from ignorance, too. For example, in the world of modular arithmetic, it is actually perfectly consistent and meaningful to let 12+1 = 1. We even do it all the time in real life. It’s called a clock. This entire paragraph does nothing except show to the world that Thomas Nagel apparently doesn’t understand logic any better than IP does.

If you’re dealing with an epistemic skeptic, a good position to remember is particularism. Particularism is a formal response to the skeptic who doubts logic and knowledge.

We do not doubt or are skeptical of something unless we are given good reason to think so.

For example, we do not doubt all the mathematical knowledge which shows us 2+2=4. Unless the skeptic can give us reason to think so. We do not doubt we are conscious and our cognitive faculties work, unless the skeptic can give us reason to think so. The skeptic of course disagrees, and thinks we need to prove knowledge claims are 100 percent true, or else we should doubt them. The particularist turns this on the skeptic, and reminds him/her we do not doubt knowledge or intuition unless the skeptic can give us good reason to think we should. For example, perhaps we doubt our intuitive perspective “the sun is small than the earth,” because we have good evidence in astronomy and physics to think so. However, we do not doubt things like the laws of logic because we don’t have good reasons, like with the size of the sun, to doubt them. And the skeptic has not provided any, other than the mere possibility they might be false and that we cannot be 100% sure.  But those are not good enough reasons to throw out knowledge and intuition.

So because not all propositions need to be true, we have already accepted we cannot be 100% certain in truth of all things. Attacks on the laws of logic are self-defeating. Through particularism, we have no reason to doubt our knowledge. We can see the attack on logic is an utter failure. The epistemic skeptic does nothing more than a clever trick, and fearmongering from a mere possibility. The laws of logic are objectively true, and there is no reason to doubt them.

Yeah, whatever. I don’t even care anymore. Virtually everything IP has said up to this point was categorically wrong, and even occasionally outright deceptive. This entire discussion could have been completely avoided with a single sentence:

It is not necessary to impose such a strict interpretation of bivalence onto logic. 

BAM. Problem solved. Instead, we have to wade through this endless quagmire because IP doesn't know what a "textbook" is.

The sad thing about all of this is that IP works very hard to assemble these arguments in defense of Christianity. Yet, as this essay clearly shows, IP does not even have a grasp on the basic fundamentals of logic itself. At the same time, however, he seems to think very highly of his ability to do logic. He is thus cursed with a high degree of confidence that only leads to a series of embarrassing failures with each and every presentation. That sadness is only amplified even further by the deliberate malice and manipulation he brings to the discussion. How does this guy ever expect to make a compelling case for Christ when he cannot even educate himself on the very rules of reason itself?

Thanks for reading.