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TAG

Page history last edited by Erwin Genuino 14 years ago

TAG's main argument is that, God is the source of everything, our morality, knowledge and logical thinking. In this point of view, a Christian definitely will agree on this, simply because you cannot just point out to something or someone those events, ideas and thoughts come from them, instead you are to ask yourself, where do this all starts? That question will bring us to the truth that there is a God that exists. People nowadays believe that God exists mainly because of the Scripture or Bible. The Bible is our Basic instruction on what we should do in order to be fruitful and prosperous in our stay here in earth glorifying God and Him alone. Therefore, Christians believe that all of this came from God because if not, it is like they are just making a fool of themselves so might as well, every Christian in this point of view must have a strong Faith, otherwise everything is just fallacy. This is what you call Arbitrariness; it is defined as that the statements should not be believed simply out of convenience, tradition or prejudice. These modern times, beliefs heavily relies on individual's point of view, but then Christians believed also and always considered that logic, morality and science does not come from them and their own minds but it started somewhere or to someone. More than anything, what supports this argument is that Christians may not see physically the God that they believe in but what is important is the experience that everyone feels. Another thing, how can you even feel the experience and how valuable it is in a person's life if it does not come from a sovereign God? Several criticisms of the TAG have emerged. One says that TAG is not a distinctive form of argument: this objection claims that the form of the TAG is really just a reworking of the standard deductive and inductive forms of reasoning; it claims that there is really not much difference between Thomas Aquinas and Cornelius Van Til. The TAG does not fulfill the necessary prerequisites for an Argument of Proof – that is, to have already proved the foundational premises before the conclusion is made. Any premise that has not been proved, by its very nature, is an assumption and is considered to be begging the question. An assumption, by definition, might be wrong. Therefore, an Argument of Proof cannot be based on foundational premises that are assumptions. Every premise must be proven prior to the conclusion being made. Those versions of TAG that are dependent on the foundational premise that “something not conceptual must be physical” yet this notion has not been proved. Therefore, that premise is an assumption. Thus TAG cannot be offered as proof. The TAG moves from conceptual necessity to necessary existence. This criticism argues that proving the conceptual necessity of a worldview doesn’t establish its ontological reality. In other words: one may need think about the world in a certain way in order to make sense of one’s experience and knowledge, but that doesn’t prove that the world actually is that way. David P. Hoover has raised this objection in his article “For the sake of Argument”. The TAG uses another form of begging the question, circular reasoning: the TAG assumes, from the beginning, what it intends to establish by its conclusion. The TAG does not provide a uniqueness proof: even if the TAG can prove the existence of a god, it doesn’t prove that of the Christian god. Any sufficiently similar god, such as Allah, would do. John Warwick Montgomery presented this objection in the article “Once upon an A Priori…”, presented in Van Til’s festschrift, Jerusalem and Athens. In argumentation, apologists will attempt to demonstrate that only the Christian worldview satisfies these conditions and is therefore coherent. However, Van Tillian presuppositionalists also point out that these conditions are applicable only because they themselves presuppose Christianity. To say that Christianity is true because it meets these conditions is to say that a greater standard exists than that of the God of the Bible. However, if you accept the fundamental Christian assertion that the Bible is the direct word of God, then such a charge would be without warrant as the Bible would then be the final epistemological authority of Christianity. Using this rationale, the preconditions of intelligibility are determined merely by Scripture not by autonomous human reasoning. But the divine origins of the Bible are not universally accepted, and the idea of the Bible being a product of man rather than being from a divine source has been debated in modern circles since at least 1878 when Julius Wellhausen first published Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels. The question has yet to be definitively answered by scholars. A critique of the argument from morality is that since there is no evaluative domain from which to demonstrate a source for morality, it can’t be said that morals are anything more than opinions that we force other people to follow. On the other hand, it cannot be demonstrated that the source is absolutely subjective either. Without a measurable source of morality, it cannot be demonstrated absolutely that morality has either an objective or subjective source. Criticism of Matt Slick’s version of TAG says that it can be dismissed because logical absolutes are truth statements based on the law of identity, and are not things. When these are confused, the argument becomes circular. A truth statement is a concept, which does not exist without a mind to think it, as stated in Matt’s definition. For example, if you make the law of identity statement, “This apple is an apple, and it is not not an apple”, the truth about the apple is not contingent on the mind making the statement, the statement itself is the thing contingent on the mind. At the point of this confusion, the argument becomes circular, a form of begging the question and offers of an explanation are not necessary since the premise is flawed and no logical syllogism can be made. The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God is something which should be known by everyone in this world. This is important for us people to learn where are source of faith is coming from. God, who is our source of faith, is the only one. But for different religious points, they may have their own God to believe. For me, no matter what religion it is, there is only one God in our hearts. Our beliefs and thoughts may be different from others but for me it is not important. What is important is that people should learn that faith is important. The way they believe on the existence of God is something which is just a bonus. God is always in our hearts and he always will remain in it as long as we believe in him. For me, no argument can prove the existence of God. It is purely faith that can touch our hearts, faith, and belief and also, which can prove that God exists. Faith is important, believe that God is real, and he will touch your heart.

 

 

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