Instead of just pushing ahead, I often feel the need to follow every branch and clip off every possible problem that arises in my mind. Not the sort of things other people might notice, but what matters to me. I’m often thinking of things that I’m responding to or referencing even if I don’t get into them.

Even though I have a large background in religion and Biblical study, I try to keep that perspective out of my reasoning. The Bible can make its own points just fine, I’m doing my own work, working from the human dialectical end of things. I don’t like taking things for granted or appealing to authority, so I don’t like arguing from within that framework. Because I can’t take for granted that my audience will know or agree with what the Bible says, I try not to invoke it. I’m also the sort of person to whom appeals to authority would not be convincing, so I don’t like to use any argument that stands or falls on such an appeal.

So you won’t hear me quoting the Bible much, although if you lined it up against a lot of my own arguments and conclusions you would likely find a lot of sycretistic content. In my opinion, if you think something is true, you should be able to find your way to it by other means than mere assumption. The truth should prove itself. And you might learn something in the process, for example why it must be so.

I also have a hatred of citations. I always have. I write in a fairly formal manner because that’s how I think and talk, in a very structured way. But I don’t like to turn an exploration of thought into an academic paper or an intellectual autopsy or a tedious bibliography. If it’s useful to me or my audience to refer to some other source for further information, I’ll mention it. But I spent plenty of time in my youth digging around in academic papers and came to realize their limitations, one of which is alienating the average reader through too much formalism and too much internal referencing. All very useful for specialists within the field, not very useful to people outside it. And I hate to feel like I’m just dissecting someone else’s thoughts rather than following a live one in my own mind.

My entire technique for writing is to just sit down in an armchair and let my mind run. I probably fancy myself a Hercule Poirot, able to discover by mere internal cogitation what would require immense effort and searching by someone else. And it’s amazing what you can discover merely by searching inside your mind. It’s wonderful to read books and get confirmation or disconfirmation about a theory on empirical grounds, as well as new material and information to consider and integrate. But my favorite method is still to simply sit down and turn the eye inward and let analysis do its work.

Often I hear things and I get intuitions. I can tell if there is something wrong with something I’ve heard, or if there is something important someone has said. I may not know what was wrong with it, but I know that if I sit down and think through the consequences and run it through the wringer of my thoughts, it will come out. So I sit down and try to squeeze it out. Generally speaking, my analytical method is extension and connection. Take an idea to its possible conclusions, see if it can be universalized, consider how it could be applied consistently across other possible cases and how it works in those circumstances. Then see if the idea can be connected to and made to nest with other important ideas, see if they can be made to fit into a coherent working whole. Essentially, run it in simulation, in a larger, connected ecosystem of thought, and see what the end results after a time might be. Most things will give up their secrets in this kind of mental simulation.

If I had to consider what my project is, I think it is the same as Milton’s. To justify the works of God to man. Don’t let the terms trip you up. However it is that you most easily conceive of God. That which makes the principles of the universe what they are. Whatever drives its structure and purposes and distinctness. The highest conception of the good the beautiful, the true, the complete. God by definition; it doesn’t have to be God by revelation or religious faith.

I do this largely by trying to justify the works of God to myself. I require quite a bit of convincing. I’m fairly willing to consider believing that nothing means anything and life’s all a senseless joke. I think existentialism and nihilism and bare materialism make a very good case. I’m extremely skeptical. And I don’t see why that strong position should be sacrificed for anything less than something vaster and far better than myself. Small gods and domesticated “pet” religions cannot stand up to and survive the event horizon of the vast gulf of darkness out there that seeks to swallow all life and meaning. So I seek that which cannot be devoured. That with enough gravity of its own to pull me into its orbit and draw me into its celestial sphere.

On another subject, I don’t enjoy making emotional appeals. I don’t mind provoking or being provoked to emotion, so long as it is adequately earned and comes of its own accord. But I hate, hate, hate feeling emotionally manipulated. I’ve walked out of talks because I believed that the speaker was too deliberately trying to manufacture an emotional experience for me. To me, that shows a lack of condidence in the substance of your material, that you don’t believe it has power on its own it move people but must be ginned up. It’s a cheap way of convincing people. I’m not saying I don’t think it isn’t effective. It’s ridiculously effective! And a position established without the use of good reasoning is unlikely to be easily dislodged by good reasoning. That’s both an indictment and an advantage.

Having been a businessman, I know the power of marketing. I know the value of the shallow and the short term. I know the power of manipulation. But I just have such a hard time using those methods because I hate so much having them used on me. I don’t like being drawn or led. I like having things laid out before me, then being able to look things over myself make my own choices, and then step in and follow the trail because I see its value.

Of course this endlessly frustrates my wife. I recoil from persuasion. And I often make strong counterarguments to an idea. But if you just accept all that and let me come to the idea in my own time and go through the challenges and counterarguments, there’s a good chance I will come out the other end believing in your position very strongly, the more so because I have fully tested and convinced myself and not gone along simply because you wanted it.

That’s me, though. I want you to listen to me because I know everything and I’m always right!