Top X July 12, 2025 Devotional
July 12, 2025
DAY 6
Nothing illustrates the limits of reason more powerfully than the history of western philosophy and reasoning. The great quest in the west has been to find certitude, a set of assertions that could provide reason with a foundation, because they were indubitable. The base of theory, the edifice of human truth claims, needed a foundation free from all “prejudging, bias, and conjecture” as Nicholas Wolterstorff puts it. Only a building of knowledge constructed in this way could provide “scientia,” or genuine truth. This quest has failed completely. Foundationalism is dead, not only in departments of philosophy but in the philosophy of science itself. Our age is aware of the limits of reason and the impossibility of discovering, by rational processes alone, a set of indubitable certitudes. This does not mean that propositions and beliefs, both scientific and religious, cannot be justified in rational ways.
How much confidence do you have in reason?
Reason never, even in science, operates in a vacuum apart from self-interest, culture, and a host of other influences. Do you believe this?
FAMILY TIME—
Take a trip to the library. Walk through the book stacks. Reflect together on how much there is to know.
Remember together that there is far more unknown than known about the world!
