Tag Archives: Reason

Does reason top all considerations?

7 Oct

If you ask people to distinguish features that mark human beings as different from the animal kingdom, most would respond first that it is our self-awareness or our ability to think and to reason that sets us apart from other creatures.  For example:

  • The power of reason enables us to go against instinct and dash INTO a burning building to rescue a child.
  • The power of reason enables us to subdue passions and wrong feelings and choose the better way and say NO to MORE chocolate or another glass of wine!
  • Self-awareness allows us to learn from past experiences (we hope!) and design a more beneficial course of action

So do we or should we default to clear, rational thinking at all times?  Do decision-analysis models whether from the simplicity of the Ben Franklin two-column approach to the more sophisticated decision trees provide all we need for life? Another way to pose this question is to say: Is Reason the ultimate authority to which we submit our lives?

Recently and without haste I’ve been reading and re-reading John Flavel’s short book on fear. Link to book is here

Flavel was an English Presbyterian minister and author, living in the 17th century.  What struck me was his explicit case for submitting to God’s authority in SOME matters, thus leaving behind or placing 2nd our best sense of a matter derived solely from human reasoning.

Say what?  Didn’t God endow mankind with the very ability to think, to reason?

Yes! By all means.


Furthermore, in the New Testament, the Greek word ‘logismos’ is used.  This term translates as argument or thinking or system of thought.

Educated readers of the Bible will know that ‘logismos’ relates to ‘logos’ or the word.  The Apostle John writes in his very first chapter of the book bearing his name.  In the beginning was the Logos or Word, and the Logos or Word was with God, and the Logos or Word was God.

So, yes, God DOES give us the ability to think and use words to make decisions. But there are times and situations where our thinking will fall short and not be sufficient.  God alerts us to future situations where this is the case, so we should NOT be surprised!

Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.”As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts“.

God unequivocally teaches that there will be circumstances when His ways and thoughts trump our assessments and best reasoning.

Here’s the 64-million-dollar question: How do we know WHEN we are to use reason and WHEN we are to submit to God’s ways?

John Flavel describes the rule of faith as God’s way.  In his book, he teaches HOW to fight fear.  Fear is a normal reaction to our everyday evil world.  Evil in our hearts and evil all around us.  If we are to remain peaceful within, despite circumstances, then we CANNOT let our reason be the final arbiter used to describe or inform or make sense of what our senses provide us.

Here is how Flavel explains:  (p. 106-107 of his book):

  • You must keep your thoughts under the government of faith. Whoever sets aside the rules of faith and measures things by the rule of his shallow reason is HIMSELF (caps, mine) the problem.  If we permit reason to judge all things and derive its conclusions from the appearance of second causes, our hearts will have no rest day or night.  Instead, it will keep us in continual alarms.  The best people are prone to measure things by this rule – to judge all of God’s designs and providences by reason. 

When he mentions the ‘best people’, think ‘the intelligentsia’ of the day who might be tempted to assume that a belief in God is not rational.

Bottom line for us moderns is to use and develop our ability to think and discern and draw conclusions, but measure them through the grid of God’s truth, how He describes reality.  After all, He created all that is.

Logical Gal and the bias against circumstantial evidence

12 May

circumstantial evidence and cat

Ask 9 out of 10 passers-by and they will most likely maintain that circumstantial evidence is weak.

And maybe one piece is, but I have been learning that there is POWER in the cumulative effect of multiple pieces of circumstantial evidence.

My tutor is a cold-case detective, J. Warner Wallace.  The only cases he works are cold murder cases that date back 10 to 30 years.  There is no date beyond which one cannot be tried for murder in the state of California.  A cold case is one that is old, unresolved and left untouched, gathering dust until someone decides to re-open it.

Detective Wallace recounts in his book about the ultimate cold case, the murder of Jesus Christ, Link to the book available at Amazon, how he has to instruct jurors on the 2 kinds of evidence.  Most Americans have no idea that one can convict a suspect of murder on the basis of circumstantial evidence alone!  But you need a lot of it.

Cold Case Chr - the book


Here is a brief primer: There is direct evidence and indirect evidence.

  • Direct is when you have Bob testify that he saw Frank stab the victim
  • Indirect is when you see a bloody knife in Frank’s car, plus blood on Frank’s pants, and you hear Frank threaten the deceased victim.  A

Inferences drawn from multiple pieces of indirect or circumstantial evidence  (think 20-30) can add up to a powerful case against a suspect.  In fact Wallace himself says his ONLY convictions have been in circumstantial cases.

The standard for the burden of proof in such criminal cases is ‘beyond a reasonable doubt‘.

Beyond a reasonable doubt

Wait a minute!  Think about what that phrase actually means – ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’.

In order for your doubt to be valid, you have to have a REASON such as:

  • ” I don’t think Frank could have stabbed the victim because the defense showed us a transcribed interview with a restaurant waitress and some colleagues and his ex-wife.  It seems as though Frank was at this very same ex-wife’s birthday party along with his former colleagues at IHOP at the time the victim is purported to have died (as determined by the autopsy)”

But the degree of proof the prosecution must provide is NOT beyond ANY shadow of a doubt.  Doubt and uncertainty are woven into life.  Where does anyone ever  have 100 % certainty?  The confidence the jurors must feel must be such that they can come up with no reasons to infer otherwise than that the suspect committed the murder.

So the next time you hear someone denigrate circumstantial evidence, “Oh, that’s just circumstantial!”, push back gently. Ask: “What’s wrong with circumstantial evidence?”  They probably won’t know how to answer.  Most people tend to parrot, unthinkingly, what they have picked up, floating in the air!

Question:  what beliefs have you absorbed without examining them?