An Examination of Panabaker's "TAG roughly stated"
and the Presuppositionalist Apologetic Strategy

by Anton Thorn

 

On occasion an apologist on the Van Til List will submit a presentation of the "transcendental argument for the existence of God" ("TAG") in the form of a syllogism, giving readers a rare look at how this enigmatic argument is supposed to work as conceived by those who seem to think it is sound. Since this is quite unusual in my experience (some have even told me privately that they do not think that TAG can be stated as a formal syllogism), I'm always curious to see what is presented.

In a submission to the Van Til List dated December, 2000, Mr. Todd Panabaker offered just such a presentation with some explanatory comments, thus supplying readers with an inside look at the mechanics of just how this argument is supposed to prove the existence of the Christian God. To my disappointment, however, I found Panabaker's presentation of TAG to be seriously deficient in support, and consequently extremely uncompelling. In this paper, I examine Panabaker's "TAG roughly stated," and show why it must fail.

Mr. Panabaker's original e-mail to the Van Til List can be accessed in the Van Til Archives at the following URL:

http://www.ccir.ed.ac.uk/~jad/vantil-list/archive-Dec-2000/msg00085.html

 

Part I: Panabaker's Conception of TAG and Debating Scheme:

Todd Panabaker writes:

My arguement is God necessarily exist because without him nothing can exist. "How do you know this?" Without God there is no logic, no morality, no uniformity. " I use, believe, and see all these things but I don't believe in your God." To which I reply, " your world view does not account for these things nor could they even exist in your world yet you continue to use, believe and see these things. You have demonstrated that you do believe in my God even though you do not acknowledge it. TAG roughly stated. [sic]

From this I derive the following syllogism of Panabaker's argument (which he identifies as "TAG roughly stated" ["TAGrs"]). The first premise is supplied by Mr. Panabaker, while the second premise is implied and from these the conclusion is inferred:

Premise 1: God necessarily exists because without him nothing can exist.

Premise 2: Something (the universe) exists. (Existence exists.)

Conclusion: Therefore, God must exist.

Certainly this construction of Panabaker's argument follows a valid format (modus ponens) since, if both premises are found to be true, the conclusion would necessarily follow. [1] But the question is not whether or not the argument is valid (a valid argument can be supplied to virtually any end, legitimate or arbitrary). The question is: Is the argument sound?

For the argument to be sound, both premises must be true (i.e., they must correspond to the facts of reality).

Premise 2 states "something exists" and is non-controversial. This premise is self-evidently true and is accepted.

This leaves Premise 1 for our examination. What reason are we given to accept the claim that "God must exist for without him nothing can exist?" Is the supposed truth of this claim self-evidently justified? No, it is not. What evidence is given in support of this claim? The perceptually given facts of reality? How would the perceptually given facts of reality support such the claim that "nothing can exist" without God? Indeed, simply perceiving the objects in our sensory fields does not lend this premise any support or credence whatsoever, unless of course we simply assume its truth, which would be begging the question. Besides, the Christian God is supposed to be invisible (I Tim. 1:17), and unless we are presented with evidences of this being by means of other sense modalities (I don't hear any voices, for instance), then it seems that pursuing perceptual evidences in support of Premise 1 will be unproductive.

Is the truth of Premise 1 justified by some derivation from the perceptually available facts of reality? If so, what would be the steps of that derivation, and how are they objectively secured? Through a process of reason? Or through a process of faith? Objectivism does not flinch at rejecting claims posited on the grounds of faith, so we have only to turn now to the question of whether such a premise can be rationally justified.

To see if there are reasons why we should accept Premise 1, let's look at the brief dialogue which Panabaker provides as accompaniment to his rendition of "TAG roughly stated." Anticipating a critical response to his announcement of Premise 1 of TAGrs, Panabaker imagines the following dialogue with a non-believer:

Non-believer: "How do you know this?"

Apologist: "Without God there is no logic, no morality, no uniformity."

Non-believer: "I use, believe, and see all these things but I don't believe in your God."

Apologist: "[Y]our world view does not account for these things nor could they even exist in your world yet you continue to use, believe and see these things. You have demonstrated that you do believe in my God even though you do not acknowledge it."

When the non-believer asks the apologist how he knows (or more pointedly, how does he substantiate) Premise 1, observe that the apologist offers the equally questionable claim that, "Without God there is no logic, no morality, no uniformity." This answer brings us no closer to addressing the non-believer's initial question, for the non-believer here is asking for the apologist to identify the means ("How do you know this?") by which he supposedly knows what he is claiming to be the case. If anything, the apologist's response to this question serves only to put more distance between the apologist's claims and his substantiation of those claims, for now he draws attention to more abstract issues, issues which are far from irreducible. Logic, morality and uniformity are abstractions (indeed, the former two are extremely complex abstractions), and these cannot be asserted coherently outside the context of more fundamental concepts.

Thus, we have the apologist offering a red herring - and portraying his critic as following it - when instead he should be focusing on addressing the question at hand. In doing so, he simply begs the question rather than resolves it. What the apologist attempts to do (and will succeed, if the non-believer indulges the apologist's reasoning) is, first, to remove the focus of debate from an examination of the his reasons for asserting Premise 1 of TAGrs (assuming he does have reasons for asserting this premise), and, second, to replace the questionable premise with a new focus (how does the non-believer justify his use of logic and morality and his assumption of the uniformity of nature?), leaving Premise 1 completely undefended.

When the non-believer rightly points out that he uses logic and morality and assumes the uniformity of nature, the apologist then retorts that the non-believer, supposedly as a consequence of his non-belief in Christianity, cannot "account for these things nor could they even exist in [his] world yet [he] continue[s] to use, believe and see these things." Assuming it were true that this unwitting non-believer indeed could not "account for" these things (logic, morality and the uniformity of nature), how does this in turn support TAGrs's Premise 1? This was what the apologist was called to defend in the first place, yet he ignores his onus and now attempts to place a new onus on the part of the non-believer.

This route is, sadly, not unusual with presuppositional apologists arguing some version of TAG. [2]

In typical encounters with presuppositionalists, I have found that either non-believer fails to justify his use of logic and morality and his assumption of the uniformity of nature (he might say in response to the apologist's last statement, "Huh?"), or, if he attempts to answer the apologist's questions about logic, morality and/or uniformity in nature, any explanation he offers is dismissed as inadequate by the apologist (either for a legitimate problem detected in that explanation, or simply because it does not satisfy the apologist's arbitrary criteria). Consequently, the apologist claims victory, thus reinforcing (in his mind) his commitment to the Christian faith, and proceeds with his program of disabling the non-believer's certainties and disarming his confidence in so-called "non-believing presuppositions." Nowhere does the apologist actually attempt to offer genuine support for Premise 1 in TAGrs, and in the process of evading his onus of providing such support, he engages a reversal by shifting it to the non-believer. This evasion is precisely the goal of presuppositionalist apologetic strategies, and this reversal is precisely the mechanics of its execution.

 

Part II: Why Premise 1 of Panabaker's TAGrs should be rejected:

In the dialogue which he imagines between himself and a non-believer, Panabaker demonstrates that he does not intend to substantiate his questionable Premise 1. So, he asserts it without support, and consequently justifies the non-believer's rejection of Premise 1.

In addition to this lack of support, however, there are solid reasons to consider Premise 1 invalid as a truth claim. So even if Panabaker or other apologists do present reasons in support of Premise 1, they would also have to deal with the following points of contention before it could be taken seriously.

  1. Incoherence of the notion 'god':
  2. The first problem with Premise 1 is the irreconcilably problematic nature of its constituent notion 'god'. Philosophers have shown that the notion 'god' is inescapably incoherent. Atheologist Theodore M. Drange, for instance, focuses on this problem in detail in his essay Incompatible-Properties Arguments: A Survey (1998). In the opening of his essay, Drange defines what he means by "incompatible-properties arguments" and so-called "God-vs.-world arguments:

    Atheological arguments (arguments for the nonexistence of God) can be divided into two main groups. One group consists of arguments which aim to show an incompatibility between two of God's properties. Let us call those "incompatible-properties arguments." The other group consists of arguments which aim to show an incompatibility between God's existence and the nature of the world. They may be called "God-vs.-world arguments." A prime example of one of those would be the Evidential Argument from Evil. [3]

    In his article, Drange demonstrates how the characteristics which Christianity attributes to its god cannot be integrated coherently or without contradiction. Additionally, he considers possible objections to his points, and then shows why they fail and why the incoherence which he demonstrates prevails.

    For instance, in his fourth argument, which Drange calls "the immutable-vs.-all-loving argument," we find that the pairing of the concept 'immutable' with the idea of 'all-lovingness' causes an inescapable incompatibility (since "To be all-loving, it must be possible for a being to be affected by events," but God is said to be "immutable" and "An immutable being cannot be affected by events"). Because of this incompatibility (and the failure of attempts to defend against it), the notion 'god' which attempts to integrate these ideas is incoherent, and thus we are justified in rejecting it.

    In addition to the instances of incoherence identified by Drange, there is incoherence between the notion of an immortal and perfect being ("god") and the concept 'purpose' which Christians unthinkingly attribute to their deity. [4] How can an immortal and perfect being have a purpose? The concept 'purpose' applies only to those beings which have mortal needs. For instance, man requires food and shelter in order to exist (for without them he will die), and such facts give purpose to his choices and actions (e.g., to find food and build shelter). An immortal and perfect being, however, cannot suffer need since 1) it cannot die, and 2) to suffer need would necessarily imply that it is not perfect (since to be perfect means to be complete and lacking in no essential detail). An immortal and perfect being, assuming one could exist (and so far, we have no reason or evidence to entertain such an assumption seriously - all we have is the claim that one exists), could not have a purpose, for ascribing purpose to such a being necessarily implies needs which are unfulfilled until that purpose has been fulfilled. Thus, to speak of "God's plan" as so many Christians are fond of doing, is to ignore such incoherence.

    Although this "incompatible property" argument does not make its way to Drange's list, it is just as damning to the notion of the Christian 'god' as any which he rightly crafts for his survey. And because of the incoherence which plagues the notion of 'god' so conceived, we are fully justified in rejecting any proposition which asserts the legitimacy of such a notion. Consequently, we are correct in rejecting Premise 1 of Mr. Panabaker's "TAG roughly stated."

    Other "incompatible properties" can be pointed out by setting certain biblical claims side by side to see if they cohere. For instance, in connection with the claim mentioned above that "God does not change," we can see that this claim is incompatible with the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on the Incarnation, the "Incarnation is the mystery and the dogma of the Word made Flesh," and refers to the Christian idea that Jesus was God sent to earth in the body of a human being. This dogma finds its literary inspiration, among other places, in the first chapter of the gospel of John. In John 1:1, the author states, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Here there is a definite equivalence of "the Word" with God. Additionally, we have the claim in John 4:24 that "God is a Spirit," and in Luke 24:39, it is said that "a spirit hath not flesh and bones." So, in its normal state, the Christian God does not have a body of flesh. However, in John 1:14 we read, "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…" Thus, if "the Word" is God, as we read in John 1:1, and "the Word was made flesh" as we read in John 1:14, then this logically means that God became flesh. But how can this be if God does not change? [5]

    Christians have attempted to get around this problem by claiming that Jesus is eternal, that he is the "Alpha and Omega," the beginning and the end. (Cf. Rev. 1:11) For instance, Ephesians 1:4 states, "According as [God the Father] hath chosen us in [Jesus] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love." And in I Peter 1:19-20, we read, "But with the precious blood of Christ, as a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times…" Believers take these verses as substantiation of the claim that Jesus is forever, thus hoping to assuage the conflict between the claim that "God does not change" and the claim that God ("the Word") "became flesh." [6]

    However, far from even addressing the incoherence between the position that "God does not change" and the very idea of the Incarnation, this attempt to answer it sadly brings to the fore an additional problem as a result of attempts to resolve earlier problems. For if we accept that Jesus "was foreordained before the foundation of the world" to be the Redeemer of the chosen, then this must mean that the Fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden was all part of God's plan to begin with! Since Jesus' act of redemption, his death on the cross, which is the essential factor of the Christian formula for atonement, was intended as "a reversal of the Fall" [7], the foreordination of Jesus as the Redeemer "before the foundation of the world" necessarily presupposes that Adam was foreordained (i.e., intended by design) to fall into sin. Thus, Christians only confuse the issue and lead themselves into a minefield of yet more contradictions when they affirm man's free will. [8] But how can one hold that man has free will when he has been foreordained to fall into sin, which would necessarily be the case if Jesus' act of redemption was "foreordained before the foundations of the world"? Apologetic efforts to spin the Christian religion out of these self-incriminating contradictions have themselves been shown to fail. [9] On this point, Charles Watts, in his essay The Death of Christ, points out that

    We are aware it is said that God gave man a free will; but this is only another theological error. There can be no freedom where circumstances impel in one direction, as, according to the account, they did in the Garden of Eden. Besides, we read that the plan was arranged "before the foundation of the world" (Ephesians i. 4; 1 Peter i. 19, 20).

    We see then that, not only is the idea of God itself incoherent as defined by religionists, but the philosophical development of a religious worldview becomes all the more incoherent as it is patched together in order to undo more fundamental errors.

    Consequently, since Premise 1 of TAGrs assumes a perfidiously questionable term, namely "God," a term signifying a notion that is durably demonstrated to be incoherent, we are right to reject it.

  3. The fallacy of the stolen concept:

Another problem with Premise 1 is that it wants to commit the fallacy of the stolen concept. The claim that "God must exist in order for anything to exist" fails to acknowledge the truth of the primacy of existence metaphysics, as provided and validated by Objectivism. [10]

The claim that "God necessarily exist[s] because without him nothing can exist" assumes that the fact of existence finds its source in a form of consciousness, namely an act of God's will. By pretending that existence as such is so dependent, the defender of this view commits the fallacy of the stolen concept by asserting a concept (in this case, the 'consciousness' of God) prior to its genetic root, namely the concept 'existence'. Since asserting the concept 'consciousness' as metaphysically and/or epistemologically prior to the fact of existence necessitates the assertion of a consciousness of nothing, such assertions are self-defeating and incoherent.

What such ideas want to assert - in terms of essentials - is the idea that the existence of things finds its source in a form or act of consciousness. Thus, the concept 'consciousness' is asserted prior to existence, as if the function of consciousness were to create its objects rather than to perceive and identify them. The solution to such errors is to recognize that existence is fundamental, irreducible, and independent of consciousness. But this would render the notion of a universe-creating act of consciousness obsolete, and consequently put all gods out of a job, and theists will likely not accept this because they want their god to exist.

 

Conclusion:

Even before citing the problems with Premise 1 of Panabaker's abbreviated rendition of the transcendental argument for the existence God, we are justified in rejecting it because Panabaker demonstrates unwillingness to substantiate it. Quite simply, he gives us no reason to accept it, as I point out in Part I. And when we consider the problems of incoherence and conceptual-hierarchical transgression (stolen concepts) which contaminate Premise 1, as shown in Part II, we are obligated to reject this premise if our goal is to achieve objectivity and maintain rationality in considering such an argument. Given these problems and the unlikelihood of any attempt to rescue such a premise from its commitment to fallacious reasoning, we are justified in rejecting TAG as an unsound argument.

  

Anton Thorn

________________________________

Notes

 [1] To better follow the form of a modus ponens argument, we could derive the following syllogism from Panabaker's statements:

Premise 1: If things other than God exists, then God must exist.

Premise 2: Things other than God exist.

Conclusion: Therefore, God must exist.

Since this argument is essentially the same as the one which I examine above, I do not see any problem in examining the latter in my paper, especially since its initial premise follows Panabaker's remarks almost verbatim.

[2] Indeed, it seems to be quite the norm. I have reviewed Christian apologist Greg Bahnsen's side of his debate with Gordon Stein in The Great Debate numerous times, and I cannot find where Bahnsen actually supports his claim that the God of the New Testament exists. Instead, we have him pulling the same stunt Panabaker does here, namely shifting the onus to the non-believer and assuming that, since the non-believer does not provide satisfactory answers to his questions, the apologist's claims must be true as if by default.

[3] See also Drange's Arguments from Evil and Non-Belief.

[4] I have published a fuller development of the argument which I am about to present in my essay Why an Immortal God Cannot Value.

[5] In addition to this problem, readers may want to review my essay Christianity and the Worship of Contradiction which presents a concise argument showing why the object of Christian worship, the "god-man" Jesus, is irrescindably self-contradictory.

[6] The idea that "God does not change" also paints a very bleak picture of God, since God is held to be wrathful. If a wrathful God does not ever change, then that God is eternally wrathful, and this can only mean that God is eternally miserable, as I point out in my anecdote An Unchanging God?

[7] See the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on the Doctrine of the Atonement.

[8] Both the Catholic and the Reformed Christian religions make provisions to affirm man's free will. The Catholic Encyclopedia (s.v. Free Will), for instance, reasons that,

Unless man is really free, he cannot be justly held responsible for his actions, any more than for the date of his birth or the colour of his eyes. All alike are inexorably predetermined for him. Again, the difficulty of the question was augmented still further by the Christian dogma of the fall of man and his redemption by grace.

The same article admits that the "question of free will… ranks amongst the three or four most important philosophical problems of all time." Similarly, the Westminster Confession of Faith, which summarizes positions assumed by the Reformed Christian religion, holds that "God has endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined good, or evil." (Chapter IX: Of Free Will.)

[9] The issue here is whether or not the existence of evil and/or of suffering can be reconciled with a perfect, omniscient, omnipotent and all-good creator God. The attempt to accomplish such a reconciliation has been called a 'theodicy', after Leibniz. (See for example the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on Theodicy and Kenneth Cauthen's short essay Theodicy.) These attempts, in its many variations, have shown themselves unable to withstand critical scrutiny. See for instance Freedom and the Free Will Defense and R. M. Adams's Theodicy of Grace by Richard Gale; The Argument from Logic for the Non-Existence of God by Steven Conifer; Does the Free-Will Defense Constitute a Sound Theodicy? by Niclas Berggren; Theodicy: How Belief in God is Irrational by Michael Gordon; The Arguments from Evil and Non-Belief by Theodore Drange; and The Freewill Argument for the Nonexistence of God by Dan Barker. See also Antony Flew, "Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom," in Peter A. Angeles, ed., Critiques of God: Making the Case Against Belief in God, (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997), pp. 227-237.

[10] See for instance Ayn Rand, "The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made," Philosophy: Who Needs It, (New York: Signet, 1982), pp. 23-34; Leonard Peikoff, "Reality," Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, (New York: Meridian, 1993), pp. 1-36; David Kelley, "The Primacy of Existence," (1985) (audio recording: Institute for Objectivist Studies, 1999), et al. Online, see my essay The Issue of Metaphysical Primacy.

 

Copyright © by Anton Thorn 2002. All rights reserved.

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