Saturday, February 26, 2005
Four hundred years ago, the representatives of the Church refused to look into Galileo's telescope. Eventually the Catholic Church apologized. Today, through the use of arguments like TAG, Christians are able to refuse once again to look science in the eye.
This works well as a debate tactic. Through the use of TAG, a debater can feel justified in refusing to address directly any forceful evidential or philosophical arguments, merely stating that logic, science and reason make no sense outside of a Christian world view (which is the world view being argued in the first place). When a debate is done in this way, it doesn't really matter who is sitting in the opposite chair. The Christian believes himself to be the winner at the outset. The debate itself is merely a footnote. The Christian claims that logic can't be used, because its use somehow confirms that which it is trying to support.
I have to wonder, however, whether any Christian really finds it intellectually satisfying to argue against Atheism by ignoring the bulk of what Atheism has to say. Certainly TAG, used in this manner, satisfies the urge of some to put their heads into the sand and automatically reject the vast amount of reasoning that goes against the Christian world view (i.e. the Argument from Nonbelief, the Argument from the Disembodied Mind, the Argument from Evil, the Argument from Divine Hiddenness, the Argument from Incoherence, and many others). But I try to retain enough confidence in humanity not to think that this argument should be intellectually effective nor satisfying on a large scale. Advocate of TAG, John Frame, refers to TAG in this way:
"I do agree that a full defense of TAG would require a more complete apologetic. That's why in my two apologetics books I warn against using TAG as a 'magic bullet'. TAG presupposes a whole system of definitions and sub-arguments. But it is good in that it describes the fundamental direction of any legitimate apologetic, namely to show that any meaningful thought presupposes the Christian God." (emphasis mine)
Mr. Frame is using the words "meaningful" and "legitimate" in a strange way. Is it legitimate merely to assumes that which the question seeks to establish? If you would like to know how TAG is argued among professional philosophers, you may follow this link:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/michael_martin/martin-frame/index.shtml
The argument becomes complex, and picks at the smallest of philosophical distinctions. But the crux of the matter is that TAG makes so many controversial presuppositions that it should not be relied upon unless those presuppositions are first satisfied and argued. Here are some snippets from the discussion above, by Michael Martin ...
And another ...I have argued that on the view of God assumed by TAG, logic is dependent on God. Consequently logic would be contingent, not necessary. In reply Frame has maintained that logic is an aspect of God's nature. According to him logic is both dependent on God and necessary since God is necessary. In response to this I maintained that logic is not dependent on God since one can deny the existence of God without inconsistency but one cannot deny logical principles such as the law of contradiction without inconsistency. In his third reply I took Frame to be saying that I was mistaken since God's existence was logically necessary and therefore His existence could not be denied without inconsistency. Frame now says that he never claimed that God's existence is logically necessary but only that God is a necessarily existing being.
But what does this mean? According to Frame, a necessarily existing being exists in all logically possible worlds. However, in possible world semantics if a proposition is true in every possible world, it is logically necessary. So if God exists in every logically possible world, then the proposition that God exists is true in every logically possible world and thus the proposition that God exists is logically necessary. Apparently, I did not misinterpret Frame after all.
So the question is, why should one suppose that God's existence is logically necessary or (what amounts to the same thing) that one is logically inconsistent in denying the existence of God? Frame gives no reason except to say that the Bible says that it is. However, few Christians have accepted this interpretation of the Bible. If Christians accepted this interpretation, they would believe they could refute atheists easily. They could simply show that atheists contradict themselves and there would be no need for the traditional arguments for the existence of God-- for instance, the Cosmological Argument, Teleological Argument, Argument from Miracles, etc. However, most Christians have realized that refuting atheism is not so easy. Indeed, the only Christians I know who maintain that atheists contradict themselves are those few who uphold the Ontological Argument, an argument with deep flaws.
Frame also throws out the tantalizing claim that he attributes to the late Greg Bahnsen that only theism can account for the universality and necessity of logic. But, as far as I can determine, although Bahnsen often made such a claim he gave no argument for it. Certainly Frame gives no argument for it.
TAG makes it easy to do a debate in the sense that it creates a large rhetorical hammer which claims to destroy all atheological arguments. But be careful of explanations which explain too much. In particular, TAG assumes that god is logically necessary due to the claim that he "exists in all possible worlds". TAG advocates, however, do not support the idea that god exists in all possible worlds, they merely assume it as a base belief. At its core TAG assumes what it wants to establish. Atheism as a disbelief in god does not do this.
Eventually, Christians will need to remove their Christian glasses and look through Galileo's telescope, or through Hubble's, or into the microscope of biology, and come to grips with all of the corresponding implications.
