Review: Introduction to Logic by Jason Lisle

Jason Lisle. Introduction to Logic.  Green Forest, AK: Master Books, December 10, 2018. 192 pp.

5 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

Do you want to improve your reasoning ability as a Christian?  Christian apologist Jason Lisle has written for us an introduction to the laws of logic.  Some who read this review might be thinking: Christian and logic?  Yes the two are compatible.  Jason Lisle’s book on logic follow a long tradition of Christian works on logic such as hymn writer Isaac Watts in 1725 with his Logic: The Right Use of Reason in the Inquiry after Truth, Methodist founder John Wesley’s A Compendium Of Logic, and Gordon Clark’s textbook on logic, etc.  Jason Lisle himself is an astrophysicist who is involved with Creation ministries and previously I enjoyed his book titled Ultimate Proof that give a detailed introduction to Presuppositional Apologetics.  Seeing how good Dr Lisle writes I was looking for a book that I can introduced my daughters to the laws of logic and critical thinking and this book exceeded my expectation!

There are thirty eight chapters in this book.  The first two chapter lays out the relationship of logic to the Christian worldview.  That’s a good foundation and Lisle’s presuppositional apologetics perspective makes this book stands out to me for being explicitly biblical and Christian.  Chapter three through five then lays out some introductory matters with logic (why study logic, what are propositions, arguments, inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning) before going more a theological/apologetics direction again form chapters six to ten with discussion about the biblical basis for laws of logic, and what’s the logical status of Christianity.  Chapters eleven onwards to the rest of the book is dedicated to logic proper and also logical fallacies both formal and informal ones.

I really did enjoyed this book.  It was helpful as a tool to teach my daughters logic.  The kids can only take no more than two chapters at a time.  Still it was helpful.  I’ve been teaching my daughters about the structure for humor and jokes are logical fallacies and while the book obviously is not meant to be funny this observation I felt explain why going over this book the girls laughed a lot with examples of logical fallacies and bad reasoning.

Lisle was precise and nuanced.  After each lessons he helpfully provided definitions that were explained in the chapter.  This was helpful as a learning aid for my daughters.  I really enjoyed the book’s discussion about circular reasoning since I rarely see logic text make the point that we are all circular to a point and that there’s a difference between worldview cogency versus what Van Til calls vicious circularity.  I thought the examples Dr. Lisle gave were great for learning purposes.  This book is really a good resource and I plan to have the girls use this as reference for their future homeschooling as we start having them learn how to write essays.  Great book, I recommend it.