Every system of thought begins with some ultimate principle. If it does not begin with God, it will begin with some dimension of creation–the material, the spiritual, the biological, the empirical, or whatever. Some aspect of created reality will be “absolutized” or put forth as the ground and source of everything else–-the uncaused cause, the self-existent. To use religious language, this ultimate principle functions as the divine, if we define that term to mean the one thing upon which all else depends for existence. This starting assumption has to be accepted by faith, not by prior reasoning. (Otherwise it is not really the ultimate starting point for all reasoning–something else is, and we have do dig deeper and start there instead.) (41)