mandangalo18
New Member
There is a fatal flaw to theism that isn't exploited enough. People who believe in a God who created the Universe usually confuse the logical relationship between "object of consciousness" and "subject of consciousness". Here's a syllogism I came across that expresses this. If the premises are true, and the structure valid, then the argument is logically sound.
1) To believe that a theistic creator God exists and is responsible for reality, the believer must imagine that their deity was "before" existence, in a non-spatial, timeless void without anything. That alone is a consciousness, conscious of nothing or only itself without time, space, energy, location, dimensions, fields, concepts, knowledge, symbols, natural law, logic or matter. Believers imagine that their deity was a primordial, immaterial, non-spatial consciousness that wished existence to instantiate.
2) Consciousness is an irreducible primary
3) Consciousness at the most common denotative rung on the ladder of complexity consists of awareness of existence
4) Consciousness of consciousness necessarily requires primary consciousness to first obtain awareness of existence
5) Prior to existence there could not have been anything to be aware of
6) Without anything to be aware of, there could not have been any awareness
7) Without awareness there could not have been any consciousness
8) From 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 there could not have been a primordial consciousness prior to existence
9) Creator Gods are defined as primordial consciousness
10) From 8 and 9 it follows that Creator Gods Cannot exist
To accept that a consciousness created everything, one must accept an informal fallacy of linguistics: pure self-reference. The onus is on the theist to explain why we ought to. Consciousness can be its own object only if it is a secondary object. You can't be conscious without something to be conscious of. And you can't have consciousness unless it's consciousness of something that exists. It's impossible to be purely introspective; a statement cannot refer purely to itself. It's like saying "This statement is true".This really puts Creator-God theists in a difficult position, as they have to affirm the Primacy of Metaphysical Subjectivity. That's fancy talk for they have to affirm the view that perception creates reality, as opposed to reality existing independent of perception. People who hold this view need to explain why recording devices (video, sound, etc...) are able to record things that a human cannot possibly be around to observe or perceive. Presuppositionalists necessarily affirm the Primacy of Metaphysical Subjectivity.
This seems to be an effective rout to use on presuppositionalists. Unlike apologists such as WLC who assume classical First Principles and [mis]use reason to conclude that God exists and the Bible is true, presuppositionalists use "God" and "The Bible" as their epistemological foundation; the prerequisite to all human knowledge. Most of us use more classical First Principles such as "existence" "identity" consciousness" "non-contradiction" or "excluded middle" as our epistemological foundation. The presuppositionalist assumes the truth of The Bible and a Creator God, forcing them to "presuppose" disputed history, and Metaphysical Subjectivity. Fancy philosophical terminology aside, presupposing disputed history as true fact is laughable.
These guys often make the argument: "If God does not exist, then objective morals do not exist." From which rationalists recognize a modus tollens conditional that needs to be validated :
If God does not exist, then objective morals do not exist.
Objective morals do exist
Ergo, God does exist
If the presuppositionalist can demonstrate the denial of the consequent, and that it is necessarily and causally tied to the antecedent, then the argument is logically valid.
Of course, they can do neither, nor can they show the mechanism by which we become aware of "God's Moral Standard". So, to get around this annoying gnat of a problem, they created a formal system for begging the question, straw manning, special pleading, and evading the burden of proof. Seriously. In the same way that Aristotle created the system of traditional formal logic, presuppositionalists created their own forms; valid structures of arguments.
The modus tollens above is of the valid form
If P, then Q
not Q
Ergo, not P
But if you're a presuppositionalist, that's an invalid form. "God" can never be the conclusion, since "God" is presupposed. If you're a presuppositionalist, concluding "Objective morals therefore God" is like concluding "bachelor therefore unmarried". Objective morals and God are tautologous. So the presuppositionalist asserts that it is not properly expressed as a classical modus tollens, it is properly expressed as:
If objective morals do not exist, then God does not exist
Carl makes moral claims as though morality is objective
Ergo, Carl presupposes God
They are basically arguing with the form
If P, then Q, because Q is the precondition of P
They actually spell this out in formal pseudo-logic.
I don't think it's worth much time debating with someone who presupposes that disputed history is true, or someone who purposefully and systematically begs the question and explicitly embraces that fact.
1) To believe that a theistic creator God exists and is responsible for reality, the believer must imagine that their deity was "before" existence, in a non-spatial, timeless void without anything. That alone is a consciousness, conscious of nothing or only itself without time, space, energy, location, dimensions, fields, concepts, knowledge, symbols, natural law, logic or matter. Believers imagine that their deity was a primordial, immaterial, non-spatial consciousness that wished existence to instantiate.
2) Consciousness is an irreducible primary
3) Consciousness at the most common denotative rung on the ladder of complexity consists of awareness of existence
4) Consciousness of consciousness necessarily requires primary consciousness to first obtain awareness of existence
5) Prior to existence there could not have been anything to be aware of
6) Without anything to be aware of, there could not have been any awareness
7) Without awareness there could not have been any consciousness
8) From 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 there could not have been a primordial consciousness prior to existence
9) Creator Gods are defined as primordial consciousness
10) From 8 and 9 it follows that Creator Gods Cannot exist
To accept that a consciousness created everything, one must accept an informal fallacy of linguistics: pure self-reference. The onus is on the theist to explain why we ought to. Consciousness can be its own object only if it is a secondary object. You can't be conscious without something to be conscious of. And you can't have consciousness unless it's consciousness of something that exists. It's impossible to be purely introspective; a statement cannot refer purely to itself. It's like saying "This statement is true".This really puts Creator-God theists in a difficult position, as they have to affirm the Primacy of Metaphysical Subjectivity. That's fancy talk for they have to affirm the view that perception creates reality, as opposed to reality existing independent of perception. People who hold this view need to explain why recording devices (video, sound, etc...) are able to record things that a human cannot possibly be around to observe or perceive. Presuppositionalists necessarily affirm the Primacy of Metaphysical Subjectivity.
This seems to be an effective rout to use on presuppositionalists. Unlike apologists such as WLC who assume classical First Principles and [mis]use reason to conclude that God exists and the Bible is true, presuppositionalists use "God" and "The Bible" as their epistemological foundation; the prerequisite to all human knowledge. Most of us use more classical First Principles such as "existence" "identity" consciousness" "non-contradiction" or "excluded middle" as our epistemological foundation. The presuppositionalist assumes the truth of The Bible and a Creator God, forcing them to "presuppose" disputed history, and Metaphysical Subjectivity. Fancy philosophical terminology aside, presupposing disputed history as true fact is laughable.
These guys often make the argument: "If God does not exist, then objective morals do not exist." From which rationalists recognize a modus tollens conditional that needs to be validated :
If God does not exist, then objective morals do not exist.
Objective morals do exist
Ergo, God does exist
If the presuppositionalist can demonstrate the denial of the consequent, and that it is necessarily and causally tied to the antecedent, then the argument is logically valid.
Of course, they can do neither, nor can they show the mechanism by which we become aware of "God's Moral Standard". So, to get around this annoying gnat of a problem, they created a formal system for begging the question, straw manning, special pleading, and evading the burden of proof. Seriously. In the same way that Aristotle created the system of traditional formal logic, presuppositionalists created their own forms; valid structures of arguments.
The modus tollens above is of the valid form
If P, then Q
not Q
Ergo, not P
But if you're a presuppositionalist, that's an invalid form. "God" can never be the conclusion, since "God" is presupposed. If you're a presuppositionalist, concluding "Objective morals therefore God" is like concluding "bachelor therefore unmarried". Objective morals and God are tautologous. So the presuppositionalist asserts that it is not properly expressed as a classical modus tollens, it is properly expressed as:
If objective morals do not exist, then God does not exist
Carl makes moral claims as though morality is objective
Ergo, Carl presupposes God
They are basically arguing with the form
If P, then Q, because Q is the precondition of P
They actually spell this out in formal pseudo-logic.
I don't think it's worth much time debating with someone who presupposes that disputed history is true, or someone who purposefully and systematically begs the question and explicitly embraces that fact.