We live in a very emotion-driven culture now. Don’t get me wrong – emotions are good, but usually not when they’re in the driver’s seat of our lives. While our emotions may produce great poetry and stirring songs, they make for very short-sighted guidance counselors. Ever done anything really stupid when you were mad? I know I have. It felt like the right thing to do at the time… but later my lapse in judgement was all too obvious. Yet we are bombarded with messages every day discouraging us from slowing down and thinking through our actions, and instead doing what “feels right”.

“Obey your thirst.”
“Just do it.”
“Order in the next 5 minutes!”

Whether it’s advertisers appealing to our lust with bikini-clad models eating burgers, or politicians competing in a popularity contest to see who has the biggest cult of personality, or popular songs glorifying “acting like we’re animals”, it is typically our emotions and baser urges being appealed to. But are we just animals driven by instinct and momentary urges? Aristotle would say “no”. His classic definition of man is that we are “rational animals”, different from mere animals because we are capable of reasoning. Christians can also agree with Aristotle on this, for the Bible tells us that we are “created in the image of God”.[1] In other words, we have the distinct ability as humans to reason, even if we refuse to do it sometimes. So how do we combat this reductionist obsession with mere animality and reclaim our humanity? I’d like to suggest a reacquaintance with logic.

A solid grasp of classical logic is one of the best life skills one can develop because it hones the reasoning that’s needed in every part of your life. That this is a skill sorely lacking in today’s world is highlighted by the first 5 words to Peter Kreeft’s excellent Socratic Logic textbook: “This book is a dinosaur.”[2] If you’ve ever wondered why “common sense” doesn’t seem to be very common these days, that’s because it is quickly going the way of the dinosaur, for logic is the heart of common sense. The 3 Laws of logic (Identity, Non-contradiction, and Excluded Middle), are so basic and self-evident that small children can easily grasp them. Once these are understood, various principles like the Principles of Sufficient Reason and Causality follow and build on them.[3] And yet, these are precisely what relativistic, “post-modern” views denigrate.

But there is something else that logic provides: stability. Emotion is a chaotic and fickle thing, ebbing and flowing, always threatening to rise to such extremes as to overwhelm us. Logic is the always predictable, all-deadening countermeasure that dampens both high and low extremes. Stability is achieved when logic steadies emotion, guiding it in its general course while allowing those variations that make us human. It provides a foundation for clear thinking based on objective truth that doesn’t change. Emotion may tell you to run the guy off the road that cut you off; that “if it feels good, just do it”; that “love” is love even if twisted into something harmful; that gender is just a social construct even if biology says otherwise; but logic reminds us that our actions have consequences and that the truth is what corresponds to reality and cannot be ignored. Logic helps us ride out our emotional roller coaster and remember that life won’t always be as good as it is in our best times, nor as depressing as it may be in our worst times. It helps us to articulate our beliefs coherently (or figure out that our beliefs aren’t coherent in some cases). It helps us to see through the deceptions of others and to be honest ourselves, for the Law of Identity corresponds to truth itself. It helps us to dialogue with others by reminding us that both parties in a debate serve the “common master” of truth, as Peter Kreeft would say. We should not seek to win a debate or quarrel at any cost, but rather seek out the truth of the matter with our opponent: no matter who wins, may we both scour our beliefs of error and draw nearer to truth.

Perhaps you’re wondering why I keep harping on logic on a site about defending the Christian faith. That’s because logic is more compatible with Christian thought than any other worldview. Eastern religions are sometimes justified as using a “both-and logic” instead of an “either-or logic” that Westerners are used to (of necessity because of the Law of Non-contradiction). But this notion that truly contradictory statements can be compatible has one problem: it’s simply not compatible with reality. On the other side, atheists often have to oppose causality to get out of the need for a Creator that comes with the universe having a beginning. Christianity does not have these problems. Indeed, logic and reasoning are part and parcel of the Christian faith. So the more people become familiar with sound reasoning, the more they will find themselves in conflict with any other view besides Christianity.

[1] See Genesis 1:27, 9:6 in the Bible. See Augustine’s City of God (Book XII, Chapter 23) and Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica (Part I, Question 3, Article 1, Reply to Objection 2), for examples of traditional Christian interpretations of the imago Dei.
[2] Peter Kreeft, Socratic Logic, (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, Edition 3.1, 2010), Preface.
[3] Although there are different formulations of the laws and principles mentioned above, Kreeft summarizes them as follows (Kreeft, ibid, pp. 220-1):

• Law of Identity: x is x. Or, whatever is, is. (Yes, it really is that simple).
• Law of Non-contradiction: x is not non-x (i.e. “The same property cannot both belong and not belong to the same subject at the same time in the same respect” – Aristotle).
• Law of Excluded Middle: Either x or non-x (i.e. there is no 3rd, middle alternative between existence and non-existence, between true and false, or between a statement and its negation).
• Principle of Sufficient Reason: Everything that is has a sufficient reason why it is – both why it exists and why it is what it is.
• Principle of Causality: Everything that acts or changes has a reason or cause why it acts or changes.

Another good (and less intimidating) book than Kreeft’s college level textbook is D.Q. McInerny’s short Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking, appropriate for younger grades. Travis Lambert recently wrote a short and nicely illustrated book explaining logical fallacies to very young children in fairy-tale fashion, entitled “The Fallacious Book of Fables”.