gjm on Nostr: Thanks for another thoughtful reply. Your response though actually highlights the ...

Thanks for another thoughtful reply. Your response though actually highlights the exact type of pivot I was describing earlier. When you mention that God is a logical necessity for you, you are using your own human intellect, observation, and reasoning process to reach a conclusion and then step through the door. Everything you wrote, including your appreciation of Anselm's framework, is the result of your brain actively evaluating inputs and attempting to make sense of reality.

The paradox rises once you step through the door. By adopting Anselm's credo ut intelligam (I believe so that I may understand) or claiming that human understanding must bow to divine authority, you are essentially using reason to establish a foundational position, and then using that same reason to justify suspending or subordinating critical intellect whenever it conflicts with the system.

If human reason is competent enough to evaluate reality, conclude that God is a logical necessity, and recognize biblical authority in the first place, it cannot suddenly become untrustworthy or flawed the moment it interrogates the framework from within. To trust reason as the key that unlocks the door, but then label it as fallen or “lean not on your own understanding” when it leads outside the lines, feels like an internal double standard.

Regarding wisdom and its relationship with fear, awe and reverence, these are cognitive appraisals processed in the human brain. Wisdom itself is not an external download, it is the distillation of knowledge, real world experience, and honest reflection. Defining faith as bowing the intellect sounds like humility from inside the system, but another perspective is that it acts as a mechanism to avoid the discomfort of sitting with uncertainty or admitting where a system lacks coherence.

There is also a subtle cognitive bias at play when we lean on pre packaged apologetics or institutional authority, such as William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith or selected proof texts. Borrowing pre made argument structures can give the appearance of intellectual rigor, but it often serves to protect foundational priors from raw, unshielded examination.

For me, moving away from that prepackaged framework was never about arrogance or spiritual superiority. It was simply refusing to drop the tool of reason after using it to walk through the door. Taking full, undelegated responsibility for my own mind means applying the exact same standard of cognitive discipline to every claim.

Appreciate the ongoing dialogue and the sharp ideas. 🙂