Saturday, June 22, 2013

Proof That God Exists?


In the always entertaining world of apologetics it's chock full of colorful characters whose arguments are so bad they almost seem like parodies (Who'll forget Ray Comfort's Banana Man blunder?). There is a field of presuppositional apologetics rightly called presuppositionalism, where you're supposed to win the argument by presupposing that god's very existence is necessary right from the start. That brings me to an idiot presuppositional apologist called Sye Ten Bruggencate who's website proofthatgodexists.org claims to be able to "prove" to you that god exists just by using logic.

His tactic that he claims can prove god exists says that in order for you to use reason, logic and to even think, god must exist as a prerequisite for that to be even possible. As you can tell it makes awfully large claims but his evidence is lackluster. On his website, you are given a series of multiple choices asking you whether absolute truth exists. The only choices available to you that steer you to the conclusion make you agree that logic "is unchanging, ... not made of matter, and ... is universal." Hmmm, what else is like that?

Now I don't disagree. I accept that absolute truth exists. I've written about that here. I accept that logic itself is not material, although material minds have to exist to make sense of it. If you've gotten to the conclusion on his website it means that "Truth, knowledge, and logic are necessary to prove ANYTHING and cannot be made sense of apart from God. Therefore...

The Proof that God exists is that without Him you couldn't prove anything."


Then he goes on to quote Romans 1:18-21 and assert that his "proof" is self evident. Let's examine his where his argument goes awry. 

Sye Ten is trying to make the case that since logic is immaterial, universal and unchanging, and god is said to also have those same properties, then admitting that logic exists is tantamount to admitting god exists. His website says "Any contrary view to the God of Christianity being the necessary starting point for rationality is reduced to absurdity. You have to assume God in order to argue against Him." In other words, for anyone to even try to rebut his argument, according to him, they have to declare the Christian god to be real. 

Or do they? Couldn't a Muslim make the same exact argument? I don't see why not. And it would "prove" a different god to be true. Although logical truths are immaterial, unchanging and universal, they are natural. In a universe with no god, one plus one would still equal two, not three or four or anything else. Sye Ten's entire argument is based on the presupposition that absolute truth and logic cannot exist naturally. 

I think it is because he assumes that materialism believes in a world with only physical objects. That's why I prefer to be called a naturalistwhich is a larger umbrella term that includes materialism and physicalism, but is defined as "a worldview with a philosophical aspect which holds that there is nothing but natural elements, principles, and relations of the kind studied by the natural sciences." The existence of immaterial logic falls quite well into that definition of naturalism, so I could leave it right there. 

But, how does Sye Ten know he's got the truth? I don't know because I haven't researched the reasons he gives for justifying his knowledge, but it's probably safe to assume that he doesn't have one other than the presuppositional assertion that he's got the truth, probably because he's got the bible and the bible says its true! 

Bad apologists sure do love their circular reasoning.


2 comments:

  1. Sye's "proof" consists of asserting the "impossibility of the contrary" (logic is impossible without God), but never bothering to show his work.
    There's no proof there.

    Unfortunately such word games aren't limited to amateurs like Sye - "The Lord of Non-Contradiction".

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  2. Or do they? Couldn't a Muslim make the same exact argument? I don't see why not. And it would "prove" a different god to be true.
    Don't be silly - Islam is a false religion (because it isn't Christianity) and so this argument could not be used to prove Allah exists :-)

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