Logic Presupposes God: a Transcendental Argument for God's Existence

= = = Intro = = = In the end of the last post, I intimated that Pro would be unable to answer all the objections of TAG - & I was right. There are numerous important points which have been somewhat neglected, So even at this stage, TAG fails. As for the argument from ignorance, I specifically asked how God’s nature would account for LA, with Pro replying that the attributes of God & LA were somewhat similar. But Pro has failed to show how God's nature accounts for LA. As philosopher Doug Krueger puts it: “ If your argument fails to explain something, then it’s just plain not an explanation.” (1) = = = Fallacies and flaws of TAG = = = The objection over essences & such has consumed much of the debate, so who’s right? While essences are fundamentals to an object (2), LA are fundamentals to existence. A=A not because of some law or rule which itself exists, but because it is the nature of A to behave that way (3). Therefore, the distinction is one of behaviour (nature of existence) & ontology (essences), which are CATEGORICALLY DIFFERENT! But to concede Pro’s argument for a second - that LA are essences, & so they do in fact exist, even still essences are not CONCEPTUAL by nature, but are : “ . . . things which the mind may grasp, but not mental entities.” (P378). (4) So here still, the cLA & the existent LA are still divided, even if we accept Pro’s argument . He seems to win the battle & lose the war. And we see this division when Pro distinguishes “logic” - “a process of the mind” from LA - an essence. This is essentially (sorry) parallel to what I have been arguing all along - that TAG may be able to defeat most or even all objections, but to do so it has to do what all bad arguments do - it has to differentiate definitions, content and even its own aim and by doing so by flaunts, ironically, one of the rules it uses as evidence of God - the law of identity. Now of course, if my rebuttal is successful, not only is P2 falsified, but P1 doesn’t even make sense. = = = Futility of TAG = = = Here, Pro successfully defends many of his key points. I still think this at odds with Slick’s version of TAG, but, Pro’s argument has been a good deal better than Slick’s. But in the very last sentence, over accounting for God, he gives the game away. He says that “God accounts for himself”. But if God can be described as a necessary being, why not just account for LA as being necessary preconditions to existence, in which LA are the way they are necessarily. A always equals A, in all possible worlds. Such a position, in fact would be stronger, because as Kant noted, while denying LA is self-refuting (a point elucidated by Pro), denying God is not. So one would have seemingly good grounds for dismissing TAG outright. Lastly, it seems not that logic presupposes God‘s existence, but God presupposes logic‘s existence, for the same reason I said before - in order to presuppose anything (including God), things like the law of identity are assumed, whether we realise it or not. = = = Epistemology = = = On epistemology, the problem here is assumption . . . IF God exists & IF LA exist, & IF He was interested in human affairs, & IF He deemed it necessary to do so, then He MAY illuminate these truths IF He could find some way to communicate with us. And this is the problem - too many assumptions. But worse than this, Pro seems to contradict himself. He refutes my scriptural objection by saying that LA are self evident: “ I don’t see why LA have to be explicitly spelled out in scripture or whatever for this argument to work - presumably people thought something can’t not be identical with itself long before Aristotle . . . “ And then asks me, “how do we get to know them (LA) without God?” Pro assumes that the truth of LA are both self-evident and that they require God’s intervention. This is a contradiction. Either we can know them without God, or we can’t. If LA are self-evident, we don‘t need God, if LA are not self-evident not, we may need God. Again, TAG becomes different, depending on the situation. I would answer that we know LA because not only do they appear to describe all things which exist and have never been falsified, but they appear to be necessary truths. God seems superfluous. This is perhaps the only point of the argument where I feel Pro is significantly weaker than Slick. While Slick ignores or at best merely implies epistemology, Pro attempts to use this to his advantage, but instead invites more objections to TAG. = = = TANG = = = 1) On point 1, I actually agree with Pro here, but this response from Pro again has consequences. The first point is that although we both agree with each other, we both disagree with Slick, who made the equivalence between external and internal contradiction. This is a minor point. The major point is the consequences of Pro’s position, which seems to entail that logical consistency is necessary for ALL things, while God’s nature (his omnibenevolence and so on) only applies to Him. Yet if Pro is to account for LA by God’s nature, how can something that exists be opposed to God’s nature (like lying) and not be logically impossible, as both stem from God’s nature. I take the obvious answer to be that because, while omni benevolence is a feature of God’s nature, logical consistency is a feature of all things that exist - including God’s nature (God cannot be all-powerful and impotent). Again this has been my position all along. The final point regards the point of LA being accounted for by God’s nature because they share the same attributes (transcendent, absolute, conceptual, etc). If this is the case (as TAG argues), then surely things which are not transcendent, not absolute, not conceptual come from a different source. 2) Pro intimates here that God’s nature being bound by LA doesn’t necessarily disqualify Him from being the source of LA. Firstly, it is intuitive that this would be the case, & indeed seems to be the case for all other “laws” which God created. Secondly, we seem to have a infinite regress of LA. If God’s nature accounts for LA, and thus why things are consistent with themselves, what accounts for why God’s nature is what it is? And so on, ad infinitum. = = = Conclusion = = = On many points, Pro has actually won his case and refuted many of my objections. However, far too often, Pro has either dropped key points (fallacy of division & the bridge between the properties of LA and their source - both left unresolved, dropped by Pro in R4), changed TAG for different purposes ( aim of TAG, epistemology), as well as being unable to show his approach as superior to mine (what LA are). = = = Sources = = = 1) http://sguthrie.net... 2) http://en.wikipedia.org... 3) Theoretical Bullsh!t youtube video "Slick Logic" 4) Grayling, A.C, (1975), Philosophy 1, Oxford University Press, UK.