debate-points, philosophy, logic, existence-of-god, presuppositionI was in a debate recently with a Christian whose stance was the “presuppositional” argument - there is surprisingly very little advice/info online on how to respond and reason with Christians who employ this stance.
The presuppositional argument (or a form of it), for those who do not know, is the idea that only the Christian worldview can properly explain the existence of things like “logic”. Basically, if you encounter one of these Christians, they will ask what your “basis” is. If you say observational and mathematical proof is how you come to the truth, they will argue that you’re “presupposing” that those things are the same for the entire universe, thus your entire worldview is flawed. They will say their worldview is consistent, since all things stem from God (including things not measurable/observable, i.e. logic), while the atheist worldview cannot adequately explain the existence of such things.
In my opinion, the argument breaks down at the same place they attack ours. They are of course “presupposing” that the bible is the infallible word of God. Of course, when has pointing out how flawed the bible is convinced these people?
Has anyone encountered this (or similar) arguments from Christians, and if so, how did you respond?
I don’t have to presuppose that physical laws and logic work the same across the entire universe for the result of observations to be valid. The concrete statements that I make work across the portion of the universe that I happen to live in. If my “basis” collapses for some other portion of the universe, than I’ll find a new “basis” when I get there.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that science is an iterative process. Science never delivers truth but only an increasingly accurate approximation of it. This means that we don’t have to be in possession of some absolute truth. We simply need to be making falsifiable statements and attempting to falsify them. While it seems like a huge difference, there would in reality be little difference between discovering that some feature of logic was different at some other point in the universe and discovering that Newtonian physics fails to account for the perihelion of Mercury. They are both the falsification of a theory and call for the creation of a new one.
This is the fundamental distinction between the scientific/atheistic world view and most religious ones: science adapts and fundamentalism doesn’t.
Also, the argument that “believing that the laws of logic, etc. are the same all over the universe leads to an inconsistent world view” is patent nonsense and, frankly, is indicative of an origin in a mind that doesn’t know what consistent means. It may of course be wrong but that has very little to do with contradicting itself. There are lots of ways for a hypothesis be wrong and still have perfect consistency.
A way to refute this argument is to turn it around.
I happen to have a part of the universe at hand to test it to see if it conforms to my conceptions of how the universe functions. By this example, until it can be presented otherwise I have sufficient evidence to believe my conclusions are the best information to base my understanding of the universe on. There is no evidence as yet to suggest that my conclusions are not valid, within the limits of my available knowledge. Religion presupposes that “all things stem from God”. With no evidence of god in existence in my observable universe. It is their position that presupposes the universe to be different than what is observable.
Therefore the evidence in my immediate universe holds more validity than their assumption about an invisible one.
Good question.
Yes, I’ve seen this argument used quite often by John Lennox in his multiple debates against Dawkins. Dawkins just concedes that rationality is a highly mystifying thing that evolved out of a need to navigate the ordered universe that we find ourselves in. We don’t have an explanation for why the universe is rational and ordered – you pretty much just invoke the Anthropic principle (modern M theory) to get to there…
I’m not going to say this defense is deeply satisfying, but I will share it with you and tell you that you can find it here.
People have already responded correctly to your post, but you seem not yet satisfied. I quote:
“Your response is wonderful and adequate for any rational human being. Unfortunately, the “presuppositionalist” isn’t concerned with empiricism, and finds it inadequate. He would say that using math and repeatable observation to determine proof is begging the question. The experience I had with this person was quite maddening as you can imagine, as he would be essentially asking me how I could know the number 2 was the number 2, and things like that. I hope I am making sense of this nonsense, if not, let me know and I will try harder! (Haha!) – Anahamkarah”
First of all, how does he know that god exists? He presupposes just as much. Second, when he goes let’s say to a shop to buy a car, what does he do: 1/ Pray to god to ask for his guidance in which car to choose. 2/ Ask the dealer for information, compare prices and technical aspects of the cars, etc…
If he does 1/ there is little that can be done, the guy is totally off his rocker. Don’t bother trying to convince him. If he does 2/ he is himself agreeing that empiricism is a valid method, regardless of wether it presupposes God or not, so he can’t attack you on that point. He might do a combination of 1 and 2, but ask him what has weighed most in his decision, if he still says 1: nutter. If not, you got him by the balls.
Let me summarize: if you are gonna attack rationality, ask yourself first if you will do it using rationality, in which case you try to undermine your tool using the tool, or if you are gonna do it using irrationality, in which case there is not much left to say.
When I encountered this type of argument, it was called the Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God, or TAG for short, rather than presuppositional apologetics. That might be why you weren't able to find a lot of information online on how to respond to this kind of argument.
For those who are not familiar with the argument, TAG is an argument that tries to prove the existence of God by demonstrating that Christianity can account for logic but that naturalism can't. In other words, TAG tries to prove that Christianity a better explanation for how the universe behaves than naturalism can and thus that atheists should convert to Christianity.
It's usually presented like this:
The above is the short version of Matt Slick's presentation of TAG, which is the version I have come across the most often. The full version can be read here.
There are many ways to refute TAG. Below are the counterarguments that I find the most persuasive. It's not an exhaustive list, by any means.
A common answer, by atheists, to TAG is that no one needs to account for the laws of logic. They are just this way, for no reason with no cause. It's just the way they are.
Proponents of TAG will argue that "Simply saying they exist is not an answer." However, adopting such a position is a dangerous one for a theist as this position has dramatic consequences for him.
According to Christians, God has the attributes he has for no reason with no cause. If God's attributes were this way for a particular reason, it would imply the existence of another consciousness capable of modifying the attributes of God and that is not what they believe. Therefore, God's attributes are just this way, for no reason with no cause. It's just the way they are.
It directly follows from that that logical absolutes are just this way, for no reason with no cause, because they are part of God's attributes.
In other words, the Christian ends up at the same place as the atheist in regards to logical absolutes - they just are the way they are - and he has to account for the existence of God on top of it. He'll likely try to argue he doesn't have to account for the existence of God, at which point you can tell don't have to account for the existence of logical absolutes if he doesn't account for the existence of God.
A poor understanding of logic is at the foundation of TAG. First of all, the phrase "logical absolute" is not used in academia. In fact, if you google it you'll notice that all the results are about TAG. That's because it's a phrase made up by apologists to help their rhetoric.
The real term to described what they call a logical absolute is a law of logic.
Proponents of TAG believe, or try to persuade others that, laws of logic are prescriptive. That's false; they are descriptive. That is, the laws of logic don't tell the Universe how to behave but rather describe, to us, how the Universe behaves. In other words, the laws of logic are mere explanations of how certain aspects of the Universe behave and that is why you don't need to give an account for them: they exist only in our own minds, as we created them.
You can try to ask the theist if he believes that God can create a logically impossible object, like a square circle. If he does answer no, then you can point out that he too has to account for logical absolutes.
A common counterargument to that argument is that God cannot behave in a way that is not consistent to his own nature. However, that is demonstrably false: if God created imperfect creatures (ie humans) even though He is perfect then He should be able to create a square circle.
The argument that "A person's thoughts reflect what he or she is" is fallacious. More precisely, it's a fallacy of composition. It is not because something is true of some part of the whole that it's necessarily true about the whole.
Wikipedia's example for this fallacy is:
- Atoms are not visible to the naked eye
- Humans are made up of atoms
- Therefore, humans are not visible to the naked eye.
By that logic, only a citrusy and liquid mind could conceive of orange juice. Needless to say, that's absurd. Humans minds can think of orange juice despite not being citrusy nor liquid. Likewise, human minds can conceive logical absolutes despite not being transcendent, absolute, or perfect.
Here’s a completely different answer that honestly strikes me as off-topic but seems to have been requested in the comments to my other answer.
I resolve the “difficulty” the same way that theists resolve their difficulties: with faith. Specifically, I take it on faith that
and that’s quite enough faith for me thank you very much. Essentially, the reading of this argument that was insisted upon in the comments to my other answer seems to be relying upon the same principle which requires axioms in mathematics. It is impossible to prove or (in the case of science) observe everything which we would like to take as a fact. In the case of mathematics, that leaves us having to take axioms and in the case of science, that leaves having to take some things on faith.
Pragmatically, I think that my first answer addresses the correct (i.e. dismissive) reading of the argument. This one might address a more philosophical reading of it. Of course it might be totally off topic as well. One (or at least I) can never really tell with philosophy.
I heard Dinesh D’Souza give a version of this in his recent debate against Michael Shermer. He claimed that we were just assuming, with no reason, that the speed of light was the same everywhere as it is here.
He claimed that we know how fast light travels from this lightbulb because we can measure it. But we are just assuming that light from a star a billion lightyears away is traveling at the same rate. Since we can’t possibly know (he went on to say) that light travels the same speed over there as it does over here, we can’t possibly judge how far away that star is, or how old the universe is.
That was the first time during that debate that the skeptics erupted into laughter.
I’ve never encountered this argument. It doesn’t make sense to me that there could be parts of the Universe where the laws of logic do not hold. Where an object could have a property and not have that property at the same time, where 2+2 does not equal 4. Impossible to have a logical argument with someone professing such beliefs. I’d just throw up my hands and walk away.
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