Axiomatic Thought

It seems a very common occurrence amongst children of a certain age who are beginning to perceive the causal relationship to begin to ask the question 'why?' whenever they are presented with a fact of any sort. I know I was one. And I, like, I suspect, many children, took it further. Whenever I was presented with the answer to my question, I immediately asked again, 'why?'. As in, why was the answer really an answer that solved my query? And I would ask it again and again - an infinite regression of causalities. My father, who almost always bore the brunt of this, began to respond by simply saying 'because'. I thought that was a cop-out at the time, a way to gloss over the fact that he indeed had no justification. But now I realize that there was a deep (perhaps unintentional on his part - I can't tell) truth in that response. It is this: that all reasoning must start from some firm base whose justification is by fiat. If there is no such base, then there is no system. Each step must be justified by another, necessitating an infinite amount of reasoning for any logical step, no matter how small - and no mind can build and maintain such a system.

I can hear the response now in my head: if all reasoning must start from axioms, why do you attack religion so much? Why is the axiom: 'God is all powerful and this is what God says' inferior to your own axiomatic system? I maintain that my axiomatic system is so fundamental that few, if any, could dispute the premises. And by this axiomatic system, God is excluded and sent back to the dark irrational parts of the human psyche from which he emerged.

The key is that not all axiomatic systems are created equal. Critically, each axiom within a system represents a vulnerability, a weakness, of that system. It is a point that is self-justified, and self-justification is the weakest of all justifications, since self-justification means it is true only because it is assumed to be so. Nothing else supports it. Thus, an axiomatic system grows weaker and leakier as it grows in size - more axioms means more trouble spots that had to be patched up. A collection of axioms as large as the Bible, Torah, Koran, or Vedas is rife with problems. Their reasoning is so shaky that virtually every argument must introduce new axioms (every time God says another thing, it is another axiom) to help it stumble feebly from one conclusion to the next. By the time it's interpreted and argued, the whole mess is full of logical errors and sore spots, ready to collapse with the first insightful attack on it.

Ideally, axiomatic thought should work by Ockham's Razor: as few and as emotionally and psychologically acceptable axioms as possible, and reasoning from then on. With an axiomatic system like that, the weaknesses are fewer and firmer, and although attacks are still possible, they do not cause the immediate self-destruction of the system.