How logic, consciousness, and rational thought point beyond matter to a transcendent Mind.
“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord.”
—Isaiah 1:18
If everything you believe is just the result of random firings in your brain, can you trust any of it? Before you answer—pause and consider who’s answering: you, or your neurons?
In today’s age of AI simulations and viral internet debates, people question nearly everything: religion, morality, even reality itself. But they rarely question the one thing they use to question everything else—reason. Why do we trust logic? Why do we assume our thoughts are valid? And if the universe is nothing more than atoms and accident, why should we trust any thought that comes from it?
The answer may shock you: If naturalism is true, reason collapses. But if Christianity is true, reason is not only preserved—it is expected.
Let’s make that case, step by step.
Two Syllogisms That Expose the Problem
Syllogism 1: Why Naturalism Self-Destructs
- If naturalism is true, all thoughts are the result of non-rational, physical causes.
- Non-rational causes cannot produce rational conclusions.
- Therefore, if naturalism is true, rational inference is impossible.
- But rational inference exists and is trustworthy.
- Therefore, naturalism is false.
Syllogism 2: Why Reason Points to God
- Rational inference requires a rational cause.
- The best explanation for our capacity to reason is a transcendent, immaterial Mind.
- Therefore, a rational, immaterial Mind exists—i.e., God.
Materialism Can’t Explain Reason
At its core, naturalism teaches that everything—including our thoughts—is caused by physical interactions. Your beliefs are just the result of chemicals in your brain. But here’s the issue: chemicals don’t reason; they react. Sodium doesn’t “believe” in chlorine. It simply bonds.
As C.S. Lewis put it,
“If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents—the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms.”¹
But if that’s true, we have no reason to trust any belief—including the belief in naturalism.
Even atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel admits this tension:
“It is difficult to understand how a purely physical process could produce the rich mental life that we have, including the capacity for reasoning.”²
Evolution Doesn’t Solve It
Some argue that evolution gave us reliable reasoning because it helped us survive. But survival doesn’t require truth—only usefulness. If a caveman believes lions are invisible but that they’ll kill him unless he runs away, he survives. But he’s still wrong.
Alvin Plantinga made this razor-sharp point: if evolution is unguided and naturalistic, the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable is low.³ Evolution selects for fitness, not truth. And sometimes, false beliefs help survival more than true ones.⁴
So once again, if naturalism is true, then we have no reason to trust the very tools we use to argue.
Reason Is Not a Material Thing
You can’t see logic under a microscope. The law of non-contradiction doesn’t weigh anything. Yet you use it every day. Philosopher Victor Reppert puts it plainly:
“Reasoning is the process by which we infer conclusions from premises using laws of logic. But laws of logic are not physical; they are abstract, invariant, and universal.”⁵
That means they aren’t products of the physical brain. They belong to the realm of mind—not matter.
And if human reason is based on immaterial logic, then it is more plausibly the result of an immaterial Source: a rational, eternal Mind.
A Long Legacy of Reasoning Toward God
This isn’t a new insight. The early Church recognized it long ago. Augustine wrote, “If there is something more excellent than reason, it is God. If not, then reason itself is God.”⁶ In other words, either God grounds our reasoning, or reason becomes our god. But reason, like light, only makes sense if it comes from a greater source.
John’s Gospel makes this claim boldly: “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The word Logos means not only “word,” but “reason,” “logic,” and “order.” The Christian claim is stunning: the foundation of the universe is rational—not random. Not chaos, but coherence. Not molecules—but Mind.
A Culture That Borrows from God to Deny Him
We live in a world where people post memes to mock religion—while relying on logic that only makes sense if Christianity is true. They write, “God is a myth,” as if that sentence has meaning—yet on naturalism, sentences are just neural firings. Meaning is an illusion. Logic is a phantom. Truth is an accident.
The irony? The atheist must borrow from God to doubt Him.
An Invitation
If you trust your mind, if you believe your thoughts are capable of finding truth, then you already stand on ground naturalism can’t provide. Reason doesn’t evolve from randomness. It flows from the Logos—from the mind of God, who made you in His image. You were given reason not just to argue—but to seek.
And if you follow that reason all the way home, it will lead you to Him.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
– John 1:1-5
Endnotes
¹ C.S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 22.
² Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 35.
³ Alvin Plantinga, “Naturalism Defeated?” in Naturalism: A Critical Analysis, eds. William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland (London: Routledge, 2000), 10.
⁴ Ibid., 11.
⁵ Victor Reppert, C.S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003), 58.
⁶ Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 2003), Book X.
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