September 28, 2025

The quote in question, drawn from discussions around F.H. Bradley’s 1874 pamphlet “The Presuppositions of Critical History,” attempts to sidestep the pitfalls of naturalism by leaning on what it calls the “principle of analogy.” It states: “Nor is naturalism the issue when the historian employs the principle of analogy. Bradley showed in the presuppositions of critical history, no historical inference is possible unless the historian assumes a basic analogy of past experience with present experience. If we do not grant this, nothing will seem amiss in believing stories that a man turned into a werewolf or b, changed lead into gold.” On the surface, this sounds reasonable enough—like a scholarly way to filter out fairy tales from facts. Bradley, as a British Idealist, argued that history isn’t directly accessible to the senses, making it inherently subjective, and thus historians must presuppose some continuity between past events and our current experiences to make any inferences at all. Without this analogy, he warned, we’d be stuck accepting absurdities, from shape-shifting beasts to alchemical wonders.

His statement presupposes that he thinks sensations—that is, empiricism—make knowledge reliable, which is incorrect. The Bible rejects empiricism, but logic also shows that sensations to prove sensation is circular; also, what you sense is not the thing itself and so the conclusions of sensation violate the laws of identity and contradiction.

While the quote brushes aside naturalism—a worldview that reduces everything to material causes—as the core problem, it misses the deeper rot: the anti-logic baked right into empiricism itself, which analogy relies upon. Empiricism, that darling of historians who fancy themselves scientific, starts with sensations and observations as the foundation for knowledge. This approach directly violates the law of identity and indirectly (or sometimes directly) tramples the law of contradiction. Analogy, far from being a savior, is just induction in disguise—a guesswork method that adds information not present in the premises, leading to conclusions that don’t logically follow. And when your method systematically produces non-sequiturs, you’re not building knowledge; you’re shacking up with skepticism, which in the end denies the very laws of logic it pretends to uphold. If we’re serious about truth, we need a better starting point—one that’s self-authenticating and deductive, rooted in God’s revelation through Scripture.

To unpack this, consider first how empiricism sabotages the laws of logic from the outset. The law of identity states that a thing is what it is—A is A, without equivocation. Sensations, however, are fleeting impressions: the warmth of the sun on your skin, the sight of a crumbling artifact, or the scent of aged parchment. These are not true or false, invisible premises in the incorporeal mind; they carry no invisible subjects or predicates or logical structure. To leap from a sensation to a premise about reality—like “this ancient coin proves a Roman emperor existed”—requires you to fuck the law of identity by transforming the category of a material sensation into the category of invisible subjects and predicates. In addition to this direct violation of logic, observation incurs more violations: the sensation itself isn’t identical to the proposition you’re deriving from it. You’re smuggling in assumptions about uniformity, causality, and reliability that the raw data doesn’t provide. It’s like claiming a shadow is the same as the object casting it. And so, observational conclusions violate the laws of identity and contradiction.

Analogy’s Anti-logic

Analogy is an inductive argument, which is invalid. That is, X, R, T, and F all have characteristics 1, 2, and 3. Also, X, R, and T have characteristic 4. Thus, F has characteristic 4 as well.

The problem with an invalid argument from analogy is that the conclusion has more information than the premises provide. It is a non-sequitur. Or to bring it back to the basic laws of logic, it violates the law of contradiction. The premises do not state that F has characteristic 4, but the conclusion does. The premises do not have the knowledge that F has characteristic 4, but the conclusion claims that it does have the knowledge. This is a contradiction. To say you don’t have the knowledge and do have the knowledge violates this basic law of logic. This is why analogy arguments are anti-logic. In normal speech, we call this lying, or making up sh#t.

Worse still, empiricism slaps the law of contradiction, which insists that a thing cannot be both A and non-A at the same time in the same sense. When historians build on empirical observations, they inevitably turn to induction to generalize from particulars: “I’ve seen gravity work a thousand times, so it’ll work tomorrow.” But induction’s conclusions always contain more information than the premises allow—a non-necessary leap that could be false even if the premises are true. This isn’t logic; it’s anti-logic, a non-sequitur fallacy dressed up as method. In Bradley’s case, the principle of analogy assumes that past events mirror our present experiences in some uniform way. Why? Because without it, as he notes, we’d have no grounds to dismiss werewolf tales or lead-to-gold transmutations. My first response is, so what? But as shown above, analogy is inductive: it compares isolated instances (past reports vs. current norms) and infers a connection without necessity. The conclusion—”this ancient miracle claim is improbable because it doesn’t align with my experience”—adds more information than the premises provide and so it violates the law of identity; it adds non-necessary bridges that force the violation of logic. In addition to these direct violations of identity and contradiction, it also violates contradiction by implying that the past could be both analogous and non-analogous, depending on the historian’s whims. One day it’s “natural” laws ruling out miracles; the next, some anomaly gets a pass because it fits a narrative. Contradiction creeps in because anti-logic, non-necessary leaps allow the user to pick the conclusion they want.

Bradley’s own work, influenced by German theologians like Baur and Strauss, reflects this tension. He argued that historical testimony must be judged against our current worldview, presupposing a unity in history that allows for critical evaluation. Yet, this unity isn’t deduced from a necessary first principle; it’s assumed empirically, based on non-necessary observed patterns. As snippets from his text reveal, he posits that inference relies on universals, not mere particulars, but then grounds those universals in subjective experience rather than absolute truth. The result? A philosophy of history that’s inevitably skeptical. In addition to this, if all historical claims are filtered through personal analogy, who’s to say your analogy trumps mine? One historian sees continuity in natural laws; another spots divine interventions. This is an interesting stupid outcome, but it is not our argument. Our argument is that history, because it is based on the trinity fallacy of empiricism, analogy, and observation, violates the laws of logic, and this leads to skepticism. Without a self-authenticating standard, knowledge dissolves into doubt. Skepticism claims we can’t know for sure, but to assert “I know that I don’t know” is a contradiction—affirming knowledge while denying it. It’s the ultimate self-refutation, like a man yelling, “I can’t speak!” Bradley’s analogy, meant to rescue history from absurdity, instead plunges it into this abyss, where conclusions float free from premises, untethered by logic.

Now, if this empirical house of cards crumbles under logic’s weight, what’s the alternative? We turn to a deductive epistemology anchored in God’s revelation, as Scripture demands. In my Systematic Theology: 2025, I outline this in the sections on Epistemology and Defective Starting Points. The Bible isn’t just another historical document to be analogized; it’s the self-authenticating first principle, divinely dictated and infallible. God, being Spirit, Intellectual, and Unstoppable, reveals truth: We can apply premises from His Word that lead to necessary conclusions, which reflect His thinking. Deduction applies contradiction, identity, and excluded middle without adding non-necessary category leaps—if the premises are true, the conclusion must be. History, then, isn’t reconstructed via shaky analogies but deduced the bible.

Take the resurrection of Jesus, an event Bradley’s analogy would likely dismiss as non-analogous to “present experience.” Empiricists scoff: “Dead men don’t rise; it violates natural laws.” But Scripture starts with God’s sovereignty: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), establishing His direct causality over all events. From this, we deduce that miracles aren’t anomalies but normal workings of His choices, as in Acts 10:38 where Peter attributes healings to God overpowering Satan’s oppressions. We do the same; no induction needed; it’s a necessary inference from divine revelation. Skeptics might cry foul, but their doubt stems from a defective starting point—human sensations over divine revelation. As I argue in “The Fucking Nonsense of Empiricism,” observation-based knowledge is superstition, a logical void between premise and conclusion. Bradley’s analogy principle, by ignoring this, still condemns history to the same anti-logic fate.

Let’s add a dash of frankness here—it’s almost comical how intellectuals like Bradley twist themselves into knots to avoid the obvious. They claim analogy saves us from gullibility, yet it opens the door to whatever bias the historian packs in his lunchbox. One era’s “natural” is another’s myth; today’s science fiction becomes tomorrow’s fact. Without Scripture’s anchor, you’re not critiquing history—you’re fabricating it. And skepticism? It’s the coward’s creed, pretending humility; it denies the law of contradiction while using it. But God doesn’t play those games. His Word commands faith, not doubt: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). From this premise, we deduce a coherent history: creation, fall, redemption, eschatology—without contradiction.

In the end, ignoring empiricism’s anti-logic to champion analogy is like polishing a sinking ship. It admits the method’s flaws but presses on anyway. Any knowledge of history can only be revealed or deduced by God’s word. Anything less is human speculation. God’s Word is the only self-authenticating first principle. Cling to that, and history becomes not a puzzle of analogies, but a testament to divine sovereignty.