Logical Proof of God
By Joel Settecase*
If you're a naturalist and you're claiming that the universe is rational, congratulations—you've just handed over the keys to your worldview. Because the moment you assert that the universe is rational, you're no longer standing on the ground of naturalism. You're borrowing capital from a worldview you reject. In this debate with David Cheevers, that became crystal clear.
Here's the heart of the argument: if you start with the triune God of Scripture, then you have the necessary preconditions for intelligibility, logic, and reason. But if you start anywhere else—including naturalism—you have no rational justification for believing in reason itself. In fact, your own epistemology and metaphysics actively work against the idea of universal, immaterial, unchanging laws of logic.
Let me break it down.
Is Christianity Logical?
This isn't a game of piling up evidence on a neutral table and seeing who wins. That's not how worldviews work. This is about starting points. You bring your metaphysics, your epistemology, your theology (or anti-theology), and so do I. We critique each other's worldviews internally.
So when David asked why reason must be grounded in God, the answer was simple: because reason has to arise from a consistent epistemology and metaphysics. A worldview that contradicts itself internally is necessarily false.
Naturalism assumes a universe made only of matter and energy, always in flux, governed by blind, purposeless forces. Yet, it also wants to affirm the reality of universal, invariant, immaterial laws of logic. That is a contradiction.
Laws of Logic Are Not Material Things
Take the laws of logic: identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle. These are not molecules. You can't weigh them, can't shove them in a petri dish. They're abstract, conceptual, mental entities. They are thoughts. Thoughts exist in minds, not in matter.
So then, how do you get laws of logic in a purely material universe?
You don't.
Any attempt to say otherwise smuggles in concepts from theism. You can't say, "Well, maybe the laws of logic just are," and think that helps. That kind of brute fact assertion is exactly what you accuse Christians of doing. Worse, it's arbitrary. It's special pleading.
If the laws of logic are absolute, unchanging, immaterial, and universal, you need a metaphysic that gives you that. You need a mind that is absolute, unchanging, immaterial, and universal.
You need God.
Why Is God Necessary for Logic?
The Christian worldview begins with a rational God who created humans in His image. That’s why you and I can reason at all. Our reasoning isn’t a lucky accident of stardust bouncing into order. It’s derivative of God’s own rational nature.
Romans 1:20 says God’s invisible attributes—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made. And Colossians 2:3 tells us that in Christ "are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."
Logic is not above God, as if He submits to some external standard. Logic is the way God's mind works. The laws of logic are reflections of the thinking of the triune God. That's why they're reliable. That's why they apply everywhere. That's why they never change.
Does Logic Prove God?
David's move in the debate was to say, "Well, maybe the universe just is rational." But if you say that, you're not a naturalist anymore. You've become a pantheist. Or a panentheist. Or something else that has smuggled in theism through the back door.
You're now saying the universe has the same attributes we ascribe to God: it's rational, conceptual, possibly even personal. It has intentionality. But once you're doing that, you're no longer talking about blind forces. You're talking about a mind.
And if you say the universe is a great big mind, congratulations—you just joined theism. You just rebranded Yahweh as "the universe."
What Is the Relationship Between God and Logic?
One common objection goes like this: "Well, you don't know everything about the material world. So how can you say logic isn't part of it? Maybe science will explain it someday."
That sounds humble, but it actually undermines itself. You're making a universal claim about what might be universally possible based on an admitted lack of universal knowledge. That's self-defeating.
On the other hand, I don't claim exhaustive knowledge. I claim certain knowledge, revealed by a God who knows all things. The God of Scripture doesn't guess. He doesn't hypothesize. He reveals. That’s the foundation of Christian epistemology: not our ability to know everything, but the fact that we know the One who does.
Proverbs 1:7 says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." Not the end of it. The beginning. You can't even start rightly without God.
Logical Proof of God Starts with Revelation
This is key: I'm not standing on some neutral platform using logic to get to God. I'm standing on the revelation of God, using logic that is given to me by God, to point out the internal inconsistency of any worldview that tries to do otherwise.
When someone says, "You're using logic to prove God, so you're assuming what you're trying to prove," they miss the point. Logic isn't something I'm using to get to God. Logic only makes sense if God is already there. You can only swing that hammer if you're standing on the floorboards. But the floorboards were God's idea.
The Christian doesn't borrow logic from a secular world. The secular world borrows logic from the Christian God and then tries to pretend it owns the lumber.
Is Logic a Gift from God?
Earlier, David argued that we can't really know whether the immaterial exists, because all we observe is the physical. But that assumes the very thing in question. It assumes that knowledge only comes through empirical observation.
That is not a neutral assumption. That's an epistemological commitment to empiricism or physicalism. But where did that standard come from? Why trust it? And why should anyone else?
Christianity doesn't say you need exhaustive knowledge of the universe to make truth claims. Christianity says that truth is what corresponds to the mind of God. We can know it because He has spoken.
Did God Create Logic?
Every time the naturalist opens his mouth to object, he's proving my point. He invokes logic, reason, morality, intelligibility—all things that presuppose the God he denies.
He asks questions. He demands coherence. He appeals to truth. He expects communication to be meaningful. All of that only makes sense in a world created and governed by a rational God.
Psalm 36:9 says, "In your light do we see light." That's not poetic fluff. That's epistemology. You can't even see anything clearly until you see it in the light of God.
Conclusion: There Is No Logic Without the Logos
If you're trying to ground logic in nature, you're trying to squeeze diamonds from gravel. The properties required to make logic possible do not exist in a purely material, impersonal universe.
But they do exist in the mind of the Triune God.
God is not one possible explanation among many. He is the necessary precondition for all rational thought. Without Him, the very concept of truth collapses. With Him, everything falls into place.
John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the Logos." Not in the beginning was particles. Not in the beginning was chaos. In the beginning was reason Himself. And He has spoken.
* This article was written by ChatGPT based on the transcript of my debate stream.
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