One of the silliest snarks of modern man is the appallingly ignorant assertion that biblical reasoning is "primitive" naive, and childlike in its reliance on "God" when we can now see that life can be explained using "science" and attributing to natural laws what was once in the realm of superstition. Human reason - properly understood - displaces God and that whole supernatural construct of a world. I am torn between being gob stopped amazed at how dumb this is, and sorrow for the poor dunderheads who assert this. Again, human reasoning ITSELF is a powerful argument for God. I have posted this before, but here it is again if you missed it:
1) Human reasoning itself relies on certain "laws of logic" to be able to operate at all. Socrates and the Greeks codified these, but you don't have to be a Greek historian to understand that something cannot be true and false at the same time, something cannot be itself and not itself in the same way in the same space, etc. If you wanna look these "laws" that govern our thinking, look up the laws of logic.
2) These laws are not "invented" by men, as they are universal, transcendent and man's mind MUST conform to them. If they were human conventions (dependent on the mind of man), we would expect them to be variable and varied, since there are over 7 billion different sources for these laws of logic. Rather we find that whether we agree or disagree about anything with anyone, anywhere, ALL people use these basic "laws" of thinking and conform their thinking and arguments to these laws. They are EXTERNAL to man.
3) So, these external, transcendent laws of thinking exist. However they are not "empirical," or material. You cannot touch them, manipulate them, adjust them, see them etc. They are products of THOUGHT only. Therefore, they must come from a MIND. ...... however, they do not come from a HUMAN mind, but must come from a mind which transcends time space and all conceivable thought of man.
The above is a curt, crude cite of a really elegant argument for God. It is kind of a rework of what medieval theologicans call the "ontological argument for God" and has been dusted off and honed a bit so that today they call it the "transcendent" argument. The more one looks at it, the more compelling it becomes.
In light of that, I find the celebrations and invitation to WORSHIP the "all wise" God in Proverbs to be delightful Especially chapter 8, where there is kind of rolling description of the vast intellect and the GOODNESS OF THAT INTELLECT rooted in pre-history and expressing itself both in a vast expanse and meticulous detail in all of creation, and coming to an apex in the creation of man. I find it especially happy that this sloppy excess (yet well ordered) overflow of cognition, understanding, planning,control, power, goodness, foresight and insight..... is offered to us freely. We are invited to "dive in" and promised that this very vastness of "mind" can be ours, poured into us and providing a source of wonder, delight, amazement, guidance and .... well... HAPPINESS.
Learn to love the wisdom of God. Learn to use it as a springboard to worship. Learn to use it as a springboard to humility about your own mind, and thus find true mind expansion as the eternal God teaches you to think "after" Him and thus be able to use your own mind in a delight of expansion that will shock and amaze you. (This exhortation is to me, though I don't mind if you make it your own
)
God is REALLY smart. A huge factor in the coming age will be the delight in diving in to that infinite intellect, and seeing our own grow for eternity.
1) Human reasoning itself relies on certain "laws of logic" to be able to operate at all. Socrates and the Greeks codified these, but you don't have to be a Greek historian to understand that something cannot be true and false at the same time, something cannot be itself and not itself in the same way in the same space, etc. If you wanna look these "laws" that govern our thinking, look up the laws of logic.
2) These laws are not "invented" by men, as they are universal, transcendent and man's mind MUST conform to them. If they were human conventions (dependent on the mind of man), we would expect them to be variable and varied, since there are over 7 billion different sources for these laws of logic. Rather we find that whether we agree or disagree about anything with anyone, anywhere, ALL people use these basic "laws" of thinking and conform their thinking and arguments to these laws. They are EXTERNAL to man.
3) So, these external, transcendent laws of thinking exist. However they are not "empirical," or material. You cannot touch them, manipulate them, adjust them, see them etc. They are products of THOUGHT only. Therefore, they must come from a MIND. ...... however, they do not come from a HUMAN mind, but must come from a mind which transcends time space and all conceivable thought of man.
The above is a curt, crude cite of a really elegant argument for God. It is kind of a rework of what medieval theologicans call the "ontological argument for God" and has been dusted off and honed a bit so that today they call it the "transcendent" argument. The more one looks at it, the more compelling it becomes.
In light of that, I find the celebrations and invitation to WORSHIP the "all wise" God in Proverbs to be delightful Especially chapter 8, where there is kind of rolling description of the vast intellect and the GOODNESS OF THAT INTELLECT rooted in pre-history and expressing itself both in a vast expanse and meticulous detail in all of creation, and coming to an apex in the creation of man. I find it especially happy that this sloppy excess (yet well ordered) overflow of cognition, understanding, planning,control, power, goodness, foresight and insight..... is offered to us freely. We are invited to "dive in" and promised that this very vastness of "mind" can be ours, poured into us and providing a source of wonder, delight, amazement, guidance and .... well... HAPPINESS.
Learn to love the wisdom of God. Learn to use it as a springboard to worship. Learn to use it as a springboard to humility about your own mind, and thus find true mind expansion as the eternal God teaches you to think "after" Him and thus be able to use your own mind in a delight of expansion that will shock and amaze you. (This exhortation is to me, though I don't mind if you make it your own
)God is REALLY smart. A huge factor in the coming age will be the delight in diving in to that infinite intellect, and seeing our own grow for eternity.