Kenneth Samples says that they certainly are not incapable. As a matter of fact, Samples notes that the Bible mandates intellectual virtues: both the Old and New Testaments implore believers, he says, to value and practice critical thinking principles such as discernment, reflection, testing, analysis, discipline, and intellectual renewal.
Samples has done this himself as he earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy and social science from Concordia University and then his M.A. in theological studies from Talbot School of Theology. He notes that for centuries, Christianity’s greatest philosophers and theologians have argued that faith and reason are indeed compatible with each other. He claims that many of the advancements in the study of logic through the centuries have come from the work of Christian-oriented scholars. In his fine logic textbook, A Concise Introduction to Logic, contemporary logician, Patrick
Hurley, lists ten “eminent logicians,” five of which have deep connections to historic Christianity.
Samples points out that the New Testament calls Jesus Christ “the logos,” which is the Greek for “word” or “reason” or “logic.” Samples, a scholar at the think tank “Reasons to Believe,” asks, how do atheists justify such enterprises as logic, mathematics, and induction when they assert that their brains and sensory organs were the accidental, chance product of an evolutionary mechanism. He says, that in itself lacks reason. He says that Christians can trust our reasoning because the processes were bestowed upon us by a rational God.
This is Carl Ramsey and that’s Another View of the News.
Let us know how God is blessing you! Please share your comments below.