Why do we make so many mistakes in life?  How can it be we are so deceived about so many things?  It all has to do with our reasoning processes…

When Noah Webster wrote our first American Dictionary in 1828, he defined the word reason as “to deduce inferences justly from premises. Brutes do not reason; (he wrote) children reason imperfectly.”

A premise he defines as “a first or antecedent proposition.”  In other words, it’s the foundational idea.  In reasoning (to deduce inferences justly) we either state a conclusion based on the foundational idea we know; or we examine ideas we know, in order to find the foundation idea on which they are based.

In the former we show what can be expected because of what we know.  In other words, because we know a root, we can predict the fruit.  We call this inductive reasoning.  In the latter, we trace back through the ideas or events we do know (the “fruit”), in order to discover what we do not know (the “root”).  We call this deductive reasoning.

So where did reasoning, itself, come from?

It came from the God who made us.  He thinks this way.  He stated in Isaiah 1:18, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD…”  Continue reading →