Foundations

It could take a lifetime to explain the logic by which these principles relate to each other and why I believe them to be true. I do not hold them to be self-evident; the reasons behind them do not come easily or quickly. I state them here so that my readers will understand the foundations of my writing and my thought (…and I hope you won’t just take them as an opportunity to dismiss what I have to say.)

The Principles:

1. Any belief system must be based on faith. (All thought must have premise.)

Faith is simply a confidence or trust in something. Whether this is faith that what we see and taste and touch is actually real and is truly the way we perceive it to be, or whether that is faith in a being we are unable to see or touch, it is still a trust we cannot verify.
Likewise, any idea or thought must have something upon which it is built. No idea is self-sustaining, and therefore all reasoning must be circular reasoning, based upon some premise, which “proves” itself (or is self-evident).

2. There is a creator who designed this universe and particularly our world.

We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.
– Albert Einstein

3. Reality (and each person in it) requires the reference point of the creator to exist.

Reality is not what you perceive it to be. Nor is it what you want it to be. Reality is what it is because that is what it was created to be. It is what He said it is.

“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
-Colossians 1:16

4. Some laws are intrinsic to the fabric of reality.

A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own identity; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.
-Ayn Rand

5. There are deep truths by which life can be understood.

This principle is the most difficult to quantify, and is not at all obvious or simple.  The best example is the structure of a house. Though it is covered by walls, it may still be felt in places, where the walls are more solid, and less easily bowed or shifted. In places, it is left bare, like the rafters and columns in a cathedral, cut and polished to perfection. So it is with this world–there is an underlying framework to reality that supports its structure and defines its shape.

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