THE EXISTENCE OF ABSOLUTE LAWS OF LOGIC AND CONSCIOUSNESS (TRANSCENDENT) ARGUMENT

Everyone understands that there is a difference between your physical brain and your nonmaterial mind. Your thoughts in your mind are private to you. If a neurologist operates on your brain, the neurologist may be able to locate the area of the brain where neurological activity correlates with a thought, but the neurologist can’t determine exactly what you are thinking. Your mind is also intentional, which means your mind is thinking about something other than your mind itself, like a problem, worry, or hope. But your physical brain does not exist outside of itself.  If you have a nonmaterial mind, it is reasonable to infer that your mind is the result of a nonmaterial mind giver/creator. Your mind, thoughts, wills, desires, and sensations cannot be measured physically, but your brain can be weighed, measured for length and width, and calculated for mass. These nonmaterial aspects of your mind are particularly true if your mind bears any similarity to the mind of the mind giver/creator, which we call God.  J. Warner Wallace, God’s Crime Scene: A Cold Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Devinely Created Universe, (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2015), chapter 5.

Although we live in a physical universe, we still experience and make free will choices and decisions to love or hate, to act morally or immorally, and praise or condemn one another as though our choices and decisions are our own. This requires us to be responsible for our choices and decisions and allows us to hold others responsible for their choices and decisions.

But if our free will is an illusion because our behavior is the result of our deterministic pre-programed brains, nerve cells, molecules, and chemical reactions, then we could not be held legally responsible for our actions that harm others. This materialistic view of our conscience contradicts our legal system that operates in reality and holds individuals legally responsible for their actions that harm others. Persons are agents who are capable of acting as first causes. We are not limited by the causal laws of physics and chemistry in regard to our thoughts and wills. Our choices and decisions are not the result of random, indeterminate forces. If our collective life experiences are to be refuted, the evidence to the contrary will have to be clear and convincing. If the evidence is not clear and convincing, we can reasonably trust our collective life experiences. J. Warner Wallace, God’s Crime Scene, chapters 6-7.

There are three fundamental laws of logic that we use to reason and determine reality. 1. The law of identity: if a subject of a statement is true, then the statement is true. For example, if a statement such as “It is raining” is true, then the statement is true. More generally, the law of identity says that everything is itself and not something else.

2. The law of noncontradiction: a statement cannot be both true and false in the same sense. For example, a statement such as “it is raining in a specific time and place” cannot mean “it is not raining in the same specific time and space.”  3. The law of the excluded middle: a statement is either true or false. For example, a statement such as “it is raining at a specific time and place” is either true or false. There is no other alternative.  These fundamental laws of logic govern all reality and thought and are known to be true because they are intuitively obvious and self-evident. Those who deny them use these laws to contradict themselves. J.P. Moreland, What Are the Three Laws of Logic? (Apologetics Resource Center, https://arcapologetics.org/three-laws-logic/2015). The laws of logic are nonmaterial and exist independently of human minds. First, human beings change, but logic does not change. They measure truth across time, culture, and human belief. These laws of logic apply equally to all of us all the time, as do the laws of physics and math. Second, the laws of logic allow humans to communicate and make sense of the external world. We do not invent our own laws of logic. Third, all debates presuppose that an objective truth exists outside the mind of each debater. Each debater tries to show his or her claims are closer to the objective truth than his or her opponent. Fourth, the absolute truth is that it is impossible to deny the laws of logic without using them. They are self-evident reasoning methods we use to discover the truth about the world. Any statement to the contrary is self-refuting. For example, if someone states, “There is no truth.” You can answer, “Is that true?”  Therefore, the laws of logic and reason are not mere conceptions of the human mind. The best explanation for our minds’ ability to use logic and reason to determine truth and reality is our minds were built by a source of truth, reason, and reality.  In other words, our minds were designed and created by God to know God and his creation. Frank Turek, Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case, (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2014), chapter 2.