Matt Slick's CARM site: Just did the Atheist Experience show. It was interesting. My "opponent" was named Matt. Cool name.

Now, of course he claims victory, as do I. But, after the show, where I presented TAG, I emailed him this:

"I'm watching and listening to you after the show.

Implying that I am a liar, is a problem. If you can't answer the argument, you should not attack the person. Yet, you had no problem saying it publically that you thought I was lying.

You failed to offer a 3rd option to explain the nature of logical absolutes. If you can't, then you're argument can't go any further....

http://www.christiandiscussionforums.org/v/showthread.php?t=158131

The Transcendental Argument for God TAG, tries to prove the existence of god by stating that some basic properties of the human experience can't be explained any other way. TAG'ers claim that logic; the laws of nature and morality can't exist without god. God and the entire universe is a manifestation of the "god consciousness" a great story but at some point I think they need to prove something outside the universe exists, as well as, explain which came first god or consciousness. Without god, consciousness couldn't have existed, and consciousness couldn't exist without god! Therefore god exists but not in the way that anything else that exists - exists.

They have proven nothing about god. Their logic also requires a rock to be something that it wasn't just a moment ago! When we perceive a rock (perception is a firsthand form of awareness) I do not need to construct a proof in order to validate it. It is on the basis of perception that I can recognize that an object is itself, that a rock is a rock, not a mushroom. From this instance of perception, I already have the material to form the principle: If a rock should exist, it must be a rock (facts that are merged into a whole) discovered firsthand in reality.

3rd option to explain the nature of logical absolutes: The Christian worldview states that God is absolute and the standard of truth. Therefore, the absolute laws of logic exist because they reflect the nature of an absolute God. Logical absolutes are products of the Christian worldview there are no absolutes in history, science or logic. The TAG'ers are trying to use logic to prove god exists because they believe logic is an absolute law. Logical reasoning is not an absolute law that governs the universe. It was logical that it was impossible to go to the moon in the 1600 hundreds (a logical conclusion) given the science of that day. If something is logically impossible today, does that mean it is impossible, period. It was also believed at one time that Euclidean geometry was a universal law, we now know that the rules of Euclidean geometry are not universal. Logic is not a set of rules that govern human behavior. Humans may have logically conflicting goals. It's obvious that whether something is logical or not depends on other factors. Therefore there are no logical absolutes.

Evolution is how (logic) cognitive skills evolved in order for man to survive. The more difficult it was for an organism to survive the smarter it became. Logic did not produce humans - humans developed logic.

The TAG'ers proof of God's existence lies in the fact that God's existence is the necessary presupposition for all human knowledge. Man, as a limited being, must start their knowledge with God's revelation in order to know anything at all and interpret the universe at all. God, as the measure of all things, is where our reasoning comes from. This is not a "scientific theory" it is a statement that belief in god is required for the world to make sense. They do not explain how belief in god does anything for understanding, or give any example of belief making anything in science, history, logic etc. more understandable. They claim understanding of these very topics requires divine revaluation. This means that if we didn't believe in god history, logic or science would no longer exist. However, atheists and many theists believe history, logic and science all go on whether anyone believes in god or not.

The transcendental proof for God's existence is that without god, it is impossible to prove anything, and the Christian worldview in its entirety is true, and anything that does not agree with it is false. If God's revelation is rejected, then the skeptic is left in foolish ignorance because his philosophy does not provide the preconditions of knowledge and meaningful experience.

However, if god needs human reasoning to be validated, then human reasoning is more important than god, and in that case god would not be imperative, and would not be god. A god that needs man to validate him can't be god.

"Logical absolutes are products of the Christian worldview there are no absolutes in history, science or logic"

Thanks for explaining this is such detail. I had to look at the web page before I could really understand all of it, but I get it. I've stopped looking for the 3rd option.

If you start with a false premise any answer is wrong. Logic is not absolute. Nobody proved logic is absolute. You did prove that there is no absolute law of logic.

"Man, as a limited being, must start their knowledge with God's revelation in order to know anything at all and interpret the universe at all."

There must be a whole bunch of us they missed when they were passing out "gods revelation" since most Americans are at the bottom of the list in science and math according to polls and (most Americans are Christians). Looks like I found another falsity. Garbage in garbage out.

We know what is 'logical' may not always be logical, therefore 'absolute logic' is not true. Logic changes as/and when new facts come to light. Absolute truths are whimsical but not useful. Claims of anything as an absolute truth breeds fanaticism. If a theory is sound it would be presented for testing. I do not know of a "God revelation" theory that has been submitted for testing. Unless something is submitted for testing it is no more than an unsupported claim pseudoscience. We should just give the same status to their claims and beliefs as we currently given to scientific theories, which have survived testing, I guess.

What TAG'ers are calling absolute logic that comes from God's revelation is not subject to verification. They have to prove there is a God first. If they come up with evidence that would justify a rational belief in all the rest of their claims, but first they need to come up with a "god" hypothesis that can make better sense of the way things are than the scientists, historians scholars, etc. have. If God revelations are not used in any model; plays no role in any explanations, cannot be used to predict any events, does not describe any thing or force that has yet been detected, and there are no example of God's revelation's presence, then it probably does not exist. Until we have more information about God's revelation than we do at the present time, it is not valid. Claims of belief are not scientific theories.

If TAG is right intelligence/logic could not have evolved through 'natural selection', since the TAG theory is a supernatural intelligence made everything. That is not a scientific answer. Intelligence evolved as a cognitive strategy in humans to meet the complex demands of their survival. The more difficult it is to survive the more intelligent the organism. Intelligence has to evolve, because evolution is how new traits appear and intelligence is definitely a new trait that evolved well after the basic original bacterium. Evolution operates by natural selection: traits that help an organism survive to reproductive age, and that help it to produce offspring that do the same, and will be in evidence in those succeeding generations. Traits that did not do this will disappear with the organisms that died before they could pass them on. The prolonged action of 'natural selection' can be expected to leave traces behind in the structure of modern organisms. And when scientists go looking for those traces they invariably find them in droves. Natural selection operates by preserving small, favorable variations that occur naturally in any population of organisms. Over time these variations accumulate to the point that large-scale change is the result. This implies that natural selection works by modifying structures already present in the organism. It does not craft new, complex systems from scratch. Intelligence (abstract thinking) evolved specifically to allow our ancestors to deal with evolutionary novel problems. Demonstrating that performance on an evolutionary novel problem (an abstract reasoning task.) What modern man is learning (from birth) is what it has taken mankind to learn for millions of years. So, our intelligence is also based on the fact that we are learning what it has taken millions of years to develop in terms of knowledge. None of the TAG'ers ID'ers or Creationists theories have been proven; all of the arguments to date against evolution have been proven wrong, and no new theory has been presented by anyone. I want a testable theory and supporting evidence before I become a believer. So, show me the theory.