Presuppositional Arguments For God Are Incoherent Fallacious Nonsense!

Thanks Pro. I. Preface I would like to thank Pro for offering this open debate. It seems Pro misunderstands what presuppositional apologetics is and strawmans many of the stances that arise from such arguments. Remember the resolution is “Presuppositional Arguments For God Are Incoherent Fallacious Nonsense”, Pro sets himself a lot of qualifiers to prove against a general argument. Prima facie I don’t see how Pro can ever meet his burden of demonstrating such. To hammer this point home I will present a valid form of such an argument. II. Definitions These are my working definitions for my arguments. Knowledge - Justified True Belief [1] God – Entity in which knowledge and logic are grounded Note the argument doesn’t aim to demonstrate any specific God, nor any other superficial attributes it may have (Omnipotence), although omniscience is a likely collory from the entity demonstrated. III. Presuppositionalism Background: Before dealing with the evidence at hand, one needs an epistemological basis for which they interpret said evidence, and the conclusions that can be drawn from them are hinged upon the grounding of one's worldview. The epistimological problem of induction, and hence scientific enquiry in secular circles is well known to philosophers.[2] Take the following statement: “The only source of truth is scientific” This single statement is self-refuting, there is no way to scientifically demonstrate that statement, and even if there was, then it would become a viciously circular argument. This problem extends to every single secular system of epistemology, they all beg the question. They have to, and a simple way to demonstrate this is with the child’s game of ‘why?’ or ‘how do you know that?’. As irritating as this game may be, it highlights an important philosophical point, that ultimately we simply do not have a justification for how we come to know things. Recall the definition of knowledge I have given: “Justified True Belief” The key word here is ‘justified’. I argue that there simply is no way to ultimately justify anything one claims to know without presupposing a logical entity in which logic and reason is grounded into. An entity which grounds some things with certainty, such as its own existence and the coherency of the logical absolutes and maintains them. When interpreting evidence we use our reasoning and logic, but by what means can we know if our reasoning and logic are valid? Con cannot say he uses his reasoning to justify his reasoning, because of course this is obviously another viciously circular argument.[3] The Argument There are many ways in which this can be formulated, I will give a basic version of a presuppositional argument: P1. Without presupposing God, one cannot justify their reasoning & logic. P2. You must justifying your logic & reasoning C. You must presuppose God This is a valid modus tollens syllogism, another example using the same notation is given below.[4] P1. With no humans dying, there will be no funerals P2. There will be funerals C. People are dying In notation: P1. ~X -> ~Y P2. Y C. X I will briefly outline a defence of both premises, although I have already established this in the background section. Defence of Premise 2. This is easily defended, not justifying one’s logic and reasoning is epistemological suicide, since there is no connection to your truth claims to the truth of reality itself. You cannot claim to be using logic if the very logic you are using is of questionable reliability, how will you show your cognitive faculties and reasoning to be valid to even a fraction of a % without appealing to another question-begging premise? Pragmatically, it cannot be done. Defence of Premise 1. This I mostly defended in the introduction. Presupposing God gives an objective basis to ground logic and reason into, and gives a platform from which we can know some things for certain, such as the soundness of the logical absolutes, and God’s existence, and that these facts are known a priori. These basic facts allow us to build our logical systems in a sound and valid manner. We can trust our cognitive faculties to be reliable which would be impossible to do under naturalism/atheism cf. Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism (more on this later). Atheist/Naturalist Knowledge Claims: In order to win this debate debate, Pro need to demonstrate his logic and reasoning are of sound foundation, and that they are valid. Attempts to make logical objections and arguments against me in this debate will only be question-begging otherwise, since he is methodologically ‘jumping the gun’ in making epistemic claims without solving the issues with the basis of his epistemology first, which is what the presuppositional argument addresses. Therefore, Pro is trapped in a dilemma: 1. He needs to justify his logic and reasoning 2. He cannot justify his logic and reasoning Since the very process of justifying logic and reasoning will inevitably result in Pro having to use logic and reasoning to justify it, yielding a circular argument. IV. Collaries Pro strawmans the presuppositional position by falsely asserting “Science, Logic, Morality, Free Will and Induction all cannot exist without God Existing.” I would actually like Pro to support this claim with evidence. I would only go as far as to assert logic, science & induction are directly affected by the argument, and the others are barely relevant. Science & induction are important because they are philosophical tools to garner knowledge about reality, and require a logical foundation, which makes it a collary to the presuppositional argument. The others I struggle to see the direct relation. V. Further problems with naturalism The question may be perceived as a debate tactic, but it’s also a very serious one, which is as follows: "Is is possible for you to be wrong about everything you claim to know?" If the answer is no, then the follow up is, how can you be certain of that? Under naturalism there is no such thing as omniscience, and hence in the vastness of everything there is to know, of which most theists and atheists will admit ignorance over the vast majority of, there is THAT much stuff that could contradict what you claim to know. Hence, without certainty you can never claim you cannot be wrong about everything you claim to know, the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against yourself in having your claimed truths correspond to reality. If the answer is yes, then you essentially concede this debate, since again you cannot justifiably make knowledge claims, they are just guesses, firing in the dark. Everything that you think you know that you could appeal to to justify any knowledge claim it itself contingent and unsound. For the atheist/naturalist, either answer leads to epistemological suicide, and hence reality should be unintelligible. Their position becomes much like the following statement: “This sentence is false” Such a statement can never fulfil its own truth conditions, and becomes self-defeating. The same applies to atheism/naturalism. VI. Argument from Reason This is an argument closely related to Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism, and I will only sketch an outline of the argument in this round and may expand on it later. It’s another way of illustrating the futility of naturalism. The argument is taken from C. S. Lewis [6]: P1. No belief is rationally inferred if it can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes. P2. If naturalism is true, then all beliefs can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes. P3. Therefore, if naturalism is true, then no belief is rationally inferred (from 1 and 2). P4. We have good reason to accept naturalism only if it can be rationally inferred from good evidence. C. Therefore, there is not, and cannot be, good reason to accept naturalism I have affirmed P1 and P2 already in this debate, once we accept the conclusion from these 2 premises, it quickly becomes apparent that naturalism is self-defeating, and as such we must presuppose supernaturalism (which involves God, or at least some omniscient entity). VII. Conclusion Pro has a massive burden to overcome in affirming the topic of debate, I wish him bets of luck in doing so. VIII. References 1. http://plato.stanford.edu... 2. http://plato.stanford.edu... 3. http://www.logicallyfallacious.com... 4. http://mathworld.wolfram.com... 5. http://www.calvin.edu... 6. http://en.wikipedia.org...