In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. Whoever is on the side of truth listens to Me. ~ Jesus

Once the train of reason has left the tracks, it can go anywhere. Consider that logic requires a true premise. Where can a Secularist find a true premise?

Truth is absolute by nature. When Secularists pull out a premise, how do they know the premise is true? They need a premise for the premise. How do they know that the premise for the premise is true? They need a premise for the premise of the premise. This problem has no end for the Secularist. It is infinite regression.

Only Divine revelation solves this problem. God speaks truth into our hearts (innermost minds) through Scripture or the various means of Divine revelation mentioned in Scripture. It seems that He generally gives this Divine revelation by several means each confirming the other, the Scripture being among the various means and having the most reliable authority. One of the means is often a brother or sister speaking by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12).

The human mind does want to get in here to interpret Scripture (in preference to what the Holy Spirit is saying through Scripture) or as an alternative to the Holy Spirit’s leading, but Christ’s sheep know His Voice. We never have an excuse when we are drawn away by our own lust. The Secularists are also without excuse, since God has revealed Himself to them through the things that He has created.

Yet, all Secularists have the same problem. They wander without a known true premise. Sometimes, they have true premises, since God reveals things to them. They think those premises are assumptions, since they refuse to acknowledge God. They think that the Divine revelation you receive from the Holy Spirit is assumption. They think that you believe the Bible is God’s Word without error because you are using circular reasoning. If you tell them that God revealed this to you, they assume that what you call “Divine revelation” is mere assumption. Everything, to them, seems to be assumption, since they are intent on denying God’s existence and they are refusing to acknowledge Him.

The sad state of the Secularist is that God turns them over to their own reprobate mind to think their own self-generated thoughts that have no basis in truth. They can’t have a premise that they can know true. They can have a true premise; they just can’t know that it’s true. It’s not that God stops revealing things to them. If God did that, they would be dead in a week. They would step in front of buses, walk off cliffs, eat poison, or do other things that would end their lives. Secularists know things. They just can’t tell the difference between Divine revelation and assumption. Assumptions consist of made-up stuff. Secularists will insist they their own assumptions are better than that–more reliable. They will “prove” their assumptions with other arguments that are based on assumptions. The Divine revelation they receive is reliable. In Christ is hidden all wisdom and knowledge. God’s rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. However, without the ability to acknowledge Christ, the Secularist loses the ability to know the difference between what the Secularist makes up (assumes) and what God reveals as truth. The Secularist can’t tell the difference between reality and make-believe. For the Secularist, every conclusion comes from made-up stuff. This is the upshot of the Münchausen trilemma.

All fallacies fall into one of two categories. First is made-up stuff. Here’s a partial list: hypostatization, bare assertion, reasoning from a presupposition, ipse dixit, outright lie, bold-faced lie, half-truth, blind authority, and hypothesis contrary to fact. Second is smokescreen. Smokescreens attempt to hide the fact that everything is being made up, that reason has left the tracks, that there’s no true premise. Here’s a partial list of smokescreens: false appeal to authority, red herring, circular reasoning, flawed evidence, coercion, false bravado, infinite regression, message control, fallacies of choice, false comparison fallacies. Of course, there are hundreds of these two types of fallacies. The point is that these two types of fallacies are the only options for Secularists. They have no other options. They’re forced to live in a land of fantasy. And, they project their fantasies on you. If God gives you something as simple as, “God is good,” they project their fantasy on that and claim that you are assuming this to be true.

It’s not just conscious thinking by the Secularist that is a problem. The human mind has several parts. There is the will. There is the conscious reasoning part. There is the part of which we are seldom aware, the heart, innermost mind, conscience, or reins. I don’t know all about this part. I don’t know whether these are all the same thing exactly, but they seem to be at least closely related. And they seem to be the place where the worldview resides. The worldview is a total representation of the entire Universe in each person. Books have been written about the limiting problem of paradigms. Every technological advance has come by someone breaking out of the paradigm. Peer review was brought in to find a way out of the problem of paradigms/worldviews, but peers are limited to those who agree, and the result is even worse than having no peer review. Now, the illusion of reality is made stronger. The confirmation bias is a group effort. Group-think takes over. Strongholds are built in individual minds and in the group consensus. These strongholds contain truth and lie all mixed together so that they are humanly impossible to sort out. Only the Holy Spirit can free us.

The worldview is a total representation of the entire Universe in each person. Books have been written about the limiting problem of paradigms. Every technological advance has come by someone breaking out of a paradigm. Peer review was brought in to find a way out of the problem of paradigms/worldviews, but peers are limited to those who agree, and the result is even worse than having no peer review. Now, the illusion of reality is made stronger. The confirmation bias is a group effort. Groupthink takes over. Strongholds are built in individual minds and in the group consensus. These strongholds contain truth and lie all mixed together so that they are humanly impossible to sort out. Only the Holy Spirit can free us.

Did I mention that we all have worldviews? Each of us has one. Denominations are built around the same sort of confirmation bias that the Secularists use. The only way out is to allow the Holy Spirit to minister truth to us. We must stop resisting the Holy Spirit. When we read Scripture, for instance, our attitude ought to be that of allowing the Holy Spirit to teach us and show us where our understanding is incomplete or in error. When we limit the Holy Spirit to only showing us those things that we already think that we know, we also confirm our bias. When we fail to acknowledge Him, we lose the ability to know the difference between reality and make-believe. He has power to tear down our own strongholds, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t force Himself on anyone–not even on us as Christians.