God exists.

If my opponent will allow, I will introduce some new argumentation this round in response to some of his critiques and not merely defend the arguments set forth in round 1. I am going to specify that I am arguing not merely for an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God, but specifically the triune God of the Bible. Transcendental Arguments and Skepticism The arguments that I have provided and the ones that I am about to provide are dealing with the necessary conditions for particular experiences. So far, that experience has been knowledge. My opponent made a summary of the general form of my arguments. He then says that if you accept the first premise as true, but doubt the existence of God, you must then doubt whether you know anything at all. In part, I agree. Given the idea that God is necessary for knowledge, you must either accept that God exists or you must take a dive into extreme skepticism. But, suppose you accept the first premise but doubt that God exists. In what way would you doubt that God exists? If you have knowledge that leads you to think that God does not exist then you have knowledge. That completes the argument and you must have drawn a wrong conclusion from that knowledge. What you cannot do is say that the first premise is true and that you have knowledge that God does not exist. My opponent sums up his idea by saying that, “If the existence of God is necessary for knowledge, and we have no reason to believe in God, then we have no way of knowing that we have knowledge.” Here he is taking his naturalism for granted. Rather than saying we have a reason not to believe in God, he assumes that we need a reason to believe in God. When establishing that we have no reason to believe in God, we assume knowledge. Here is what my opponent is trying to turn my argument into: 1. If God did not exist, knowledge would not be possible. 2. I have no reason to believe in God. 3. Therefore, I have no knowledge. The problem with his syllogism is getting to premise 2 – especially when stated as a *lack* of something. Because, if knowledge is used or assumed in stating premise 1, then you can appeal to my syllogism and defeat the second premise of his syllogism. My opponent wants to say that an independent reason is necessary for belief in God even if we take the first premise to be true, but he has not given a sufficient reason to believe this. God’s supposed incompatibility with Knowledge My opponent wants to say that naturalism can account for knowledge (which I will address a little further on) and he wants to say that God’s existence is incompatible with knowledge due to the possibility of deception. A little further below, I am going to argue that God must be good. So, for the moment, if we take God to be good, then we will not accept the idea of his deceiving us as normative. But, there is perhaps a greater problem with this thought. It doesn’t touch the argument as he himself has formulated it: 1. If God did not exist, knowledge would not be possible. 2. Knowledge is possible. What he says doesn’t touch the first premise because it is not a denial that without God knowledge is not possible. What he is instead saying is that with God, deception and false belief is possible. This also doesn’t touch the second premise, because the possibility of deception does not deny the possibility of knowledge. God’s Cognitive Faculties My opponent would have you believe that we need to explain God’s knowledge in a similar fashion to the way I am trying to explain our own. But it seems more likely that God’s knowledge of himself and his knowledge of creation is self-contained. His knowledge of creation exists because creation exists according to his design and not merely because of investigation. I would also add that my argument from omniscience would likely require this to be the case. Investigation would not be able to lead to an omniscience since you would not only need all of the facts of the universe, you would need them throughout time so that either you could be sure they don’t change over time, or so that you could understand how they change over time. Fallibility and Omniscience My argument concerning omniscience is not quite an argument from fallibility. It is an argument that there must exist someone with omniscience that has created the environment and our cognitive faculties and has imparted some form of knowledge in order for us to know anything reliably. But, I am not arguing that without that our fallibility is our undoing. It is that we cannot gain any true knowledge to even begin to build on if that were not the case. Suppose there is a jigsaw puzzle with 10,000 pieces. Suppose you are given 4 of those pieces. You can’t look at the box or any other pieces. You don’t even know how many pieces there are. You arrange the pieces you have in such a way that seems to make sense to you. You claim that you have solved part of the puzzle and that as you get more pieces, you will build on what you have started. Unfortunately, you have no way of knowing if you have actually gotten any of it correct without the assistance of someone who knows what the puzzle is supposed to look like. But, this isn’t because of fallibility but finitude. You can’t succeed because by yourself you don’t have what you need to succeed. Fallibility would be more along the lines of having what you need, but lacking certainty because you have the possibility of error. Cognitive ability, Evolution, and Naturalism My opponent has taken for granted that Naturalism can provide the means of proper function without direction from an intelligence, but evolution: // There is no reason to think that naturalism will not be able to explain why our cognitive faculties are so well adapted to get at the truth. The explanation will likely come from evolutionary biology, and certainly not from theology.// I know that my opponent also brings up the possibility of a finite, non-God (as defined for this debate), tinkerer who created us with our cognitive faculties designed for truth. But, if my argument about omniscience is correct, then this tinkerer would at least have to have omniscience in order to create such a scenario. And, if the only ultimate way to gain omniscience is to have defined the relationships between the facts yourself, then he would also have to have omnipotence. He tries to argue for a definition of proper function, “So proper function with regard to cognition would mean doing what serves your life, which generally involves trying to get at the truth.” But it is not obvious that the truth generally serves your life. If false beliefs can also serve your life, what reason do we have to connect proper function with true beliefs? Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against Naturalism uses this to bring belief in Naturalism into question: 1. If we have evolved via natural selection, genetic drift, genetic mutation, or similar mechanisms, then our cognitive faculties have also arisen via these mechanisms. 2. If our cognitive faculties arose from naturalistic evolution, are they reliable? 3. Natural selection is concerned with survival, rather than true beliefs or true information from the external world. Natural selection doesn't care what you believe; it is interested only in how you behave. 4. The ability of our cognitive faculties to understand truth, given naturalistic evolution, is then dependent upon the connection of belief and behavior. 5. There is not a necessary connection between belief and survival behavior; many false beliefs can lead to survival behavior. 6. Evolutionary naturalism is self-defeating. Given evolutionary naturalism, beliefs produced by our cognitive faculties cannot rationally be believed to be reliable. This includes the belief in naturalism. The Moral Argument My argument for a benevolent God rests on his being the basis of having any kind of objective ethics. The basis of the argument is strikingly similar to the one for knowledge: 1. If God did not exist, then there could not be any moral facts 2. There are moral facts 3. Therefore God exists Many people might object to premise 1. I will outline the argument for it, which I am borrowing from Glen Peoples at rightreason.org. I am only going to outline it for this round since I am running out of characters. 1. If there are moral facts, then their basis is either natural or supernatural (where these two are construed as mutually exclusive categories) 2. The basis of moral facts is not natural 3. Therefore if there are moral facts, then their basis is supernatural 4. The most plausible way to think of a supernatural basis of moral facts is in terms of a supernatural person who brings moral facts about. 5. Therefore, if there are moral facts, the most plausible way to think of their basis is in terms of a supernatural person who brings moral facts about. I would add to this that if there is a God who brought about the moral facts of the world, then he must be good since he is the very source of how we would define “good.” The Trinity Argument Within the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, you have a plurality of persons and a unity of being. So, ontologically, neither unity nor plurality is ultimate. Rather, unity and plurality are co-ultimate. 1. The ontology of the universe is such that either (a) unity is ultimate and not plurality, or (b) plurality is ultimate and not unity, or (c) unity and plurality are co-ultimate. 2. If unity is ultimate and not plurality, then knowledge of the universe (even in part) is impossible. 3. If plurality is ultimate and not unity, then knowledge of the universe (even in part) is impossible. 4. Knowledge of the universe is not impossible. 5. Therefore, the ontology of the universe must be such that unity and plurality are co-ultimate. The reason that ultimate plurality destroys knowledge is that facts are not ultimately related to one another. The reason ultimate unity destroys knowledge is that facts are not ultimately distinguishable from one another.