Circular reasoning goes like this:
Eva: “These fossils are 100 million years old.”
Manny: “How do you know?”
Eva: “Because the rock layers in which we find them are 100 million years old.”
Manny: “How do you know the rock layers are that old?”
Eva: “Because the fossils that are buried therein are 100 million years old.”
Such a fallacy is obvious to everyone except those who are blindly bent on believing in evolution. Circular reasoning “consists in making two propositions reciprocally prove each other” (Bales, Christian, Contend For Thy Cause¸ page 91) and is such a procedure proves nothing—it is a logical fallacy.
Are we likewise guilty of using circular reasoning in proving the inspiration of the Bible by saying, “The Bible is the inspired Word of God because it tells us it is, and we believe what it tells us because it is inspired of God”? True, if that is all upon which we have to base our belief, it would be circular reasoning. However, we are able to prove that the Bible is inspired of God due to evidences and characteristics contained in the Bible itself which can only be the result of the mind of God. The logical argument is as follows: If the Bible contains characteristics which are capable only by God, then God wrote the Bible. Such characteristics include: prophecies made and fulfilled, scientific foreknowledge, and its amazing unity of numerous doctrines by forty different writers of different backgrounds and different lands during a fifteen-hundred year time span. Since such features can be accomplished only by God, and since they are contained in the Bible, then the Bible is written by the inspiration of God. Such is not circular reasoning; it is reasoning right!
Gary Henson