I keep coming back to this video about once a year to refresh me on the argument - I think this is the best version of the argument available on TH-cam, it's concise, clear and easy to understand. Very well done! Please accept this small donation as a thank you for the video and congratulations on your engagement! I would love to hear a part 2 to this video where you expand on the latter part, a concise version of the argument why the Orthodox Christian view / theology of God necessarily follows from the transcendental argument for God. You could summarize this argument shortly at the beginning and then follow up with why Orthodox theology follows an why it's the best and most accurate worldview to explain reality etc. In any case, this video has been very important to me, thank you again and God bless! EDIT: Listening through this again, you do mention the reasons as to why Orthodox Christian theology is the most coherent and only true paradigm for reality and you have certainly talked very deeply on those topics (essence energy distinction, logos, nous etc.) in other videos, but I still think it would be helpful to have all that in a condensed form, like another 30-45min video, part 2 of this one, where you concisely explain all the reasons as to why the Orthodox Christian paradigm is the only true one following from TAG. Just an idea for an video for you, I'm sure you don't lack for those, but thought I'd mention it in case you would find it interesting to try and condense some of those very complex theological concepts into a concise form using philosophical language to make it more approachable to atheists etc. Apologies for the long comment.
Don't sweat it, man. We can tell you're passionate. As a matter of fact, though this is seemingly unrelated, I'm actually going to go to an orthodox church this week and see if I want to become orthodox, since the theology makes more sense to me. I'll update soon, if I don't update in a month, then someone please remind me😂
@@kazumakiryu157 Glory to God! I'm not sure why you commented under my comment, but I'm very happy to hear about that nonetheless! I'm sure you will feel at home at the Orthodox Church, I'm not sure of your background, but when I went the first time I felt right away that this is ancient living faith compared to the Finnish Lutheran churches where I had gone as a kid, which felt modern and disconnected. Anyway, I'd be happy to hear of your experience afterwards and God bless!
Wow. Powerful statement. I'm just curious, were you very well studied in science and philosophy before you converted. Would love details! Thank you! Glad you are a citizen of heaven now!
I ceased being an atheist when I realised engaging with the sprachspiel of theists was futile. Discussing the mythology of the ancient Hebrews is another ball game. I am now an agnostic.
@@bob-e5z No, it was because theists could arrange pre-existing words into sentences to form their syllogisms. The words existed already so their syllogisms regarding the untestable could be built. Engaging in this form of sport produced no results of worth for me so I chose "I don't know" instead. They don't know just like me but they enjoy the game so much they still play it. I don''t care. Meanwhile the mythology of the ancient Hebrews remains as viable as any other mythology. The difference is the Seventh Law of Noah which makes them your judges, no thanks. (They have already built the Supreme Court of Mankind in preparation for their rule .Ben Gurion spoke about it in his Life Magazine interview.)
2:40 TAG - The Transcendental Argument For the existence of God (The Orthodox Christian God) 5:09 Cornelius Van Til 7:48 Can you Prove [non-material thing] in a material way? 9:05 A priori Deduction vs Induction [Sense-Data] ---> Deduction 11:13 Paradigmatic Level 14:27 "It's Self-Evident" is it? Why is it self evident? 16:04 Getting your opponent to see The Paradigm Level Thinking. 17:10 Assuming God begs the question? Wrong. 18:58 Fundamentally Circular. *Theories of Truth* 19:44 True because It Corresponds To The World 20:44 True because It Is Coherent. 29:11 You have to start with assumptions in order to accept some proof as valid and other proof as invalid. How do you know the proof you are accepting is valid? 31:33 Generalist Argument for Deism 32:42 How do you account for Truth? Reason? Meaning? These are essential for Life. 34:04 Simple, Singular, Essence. 1. Simple, Concentric Circles. 35:18 Source of and Beyond Hinduism - Brahma Islam - God Paganism - Creation/Matter Panpsychism - Universal Mind Dialectics 37:56 _God History and Dialectic_ 38:23 Essence Energy Distinction You don't completely know David Patrick Harry You do feel his energies when you interact with him 41:48 Filioque Di-ad
lol ive listened to Jay's TAG and related vids so many times, i love it cause i never heard it explained like that and never heard it explained so well and never heard the proof articulated out like that. so good. thanks for making a vid about it too, this is great
Frank turek is another i enjoy. He handles confrontation with non believers expertly and watertight. When it comes to debate amongst Christian’s on wether orthodoxy or another practice is more accurate it’s hard to beat Jay.
@@jerrylong6238 i get that you either find it funny/silly or you’re legitimately a hasbara type antagonist . Regardless, its rather alarming to see you waste time with unsolicited flippancy and insults rather than offer anything of substance within a serious discussion. I pray since you found this video, that its message ultimately finds you. Cheers
"Atheist: Hmmm, well that does make sense. I've never heard anybody argue for God that way. Can you tell me more about the Christian God? I'm interested in learning who he is." This made me chuckle more than it should, for obvious reasons. Keep up the great work enjoying your material!
Thats exactly why people dont use just philosophy to proove things anymore, you can do mental gymnastics to proove absolutely anything, but you cant show the archeological strata the millions of hebrews supposedly left on their forty-year trip that should have lasted a week..
@@rodrigorafael.9645 to my knowledge, that trek occurred through a desert. How can you expect to find archeological strata; in a desert; thousands of years after the fact. Not to mention that even if you did, carbon dating (I'm presuming this might be the method people would think to use first) man made objects is unreliable because the date of manufacture supercedes the formation of the material itself when analyzing data for historical timeline placement. Not to mention that even if this data were available and reliable, you're still presupposing a world view through which you're going to interpret the data, because the world itself is theory laden.
Thanks for these videos, they are such a great gift. You present these ideas in a very professional yet simple manner, something not very common on youtube. I have been attending an Orthodox Church and it seems to be growing with younger generations. With hope in Christ, let our faith and works send the gospel's message to the ends of the Earth. Amen
@@ChurchoftheEternalLogos I was sent a link to this video by Kyle, that dishonest apologist TH-camr that constantly lies to his followers. I suffered through it and was left seriously underwhelmed by your argument. The entire thing is pretentious word salad filled with assertions presuppositions all wrapped up in one giant special pleading and begging the question fallacy. I realize the your verbose style of stringing long complicated words together might fool people that do not understand those words but to those of us that do it is just pretentious waffle. Right of the bat you fail because you assert that it is the responsibility of Atheists to provide an alternative explanation to your assertions about our existence. Throughout the video you constantly misrepresent what Atheism is (just like Kyle) which is fundamentally dishonest and you should be deeply ashamed of yourself for being so deceptive. Your position 'stands or falls' on its own merits and the views or opinions of those that disagree with you are utterly irrelevant to your argument. It is just a poor quality false dichotomy fallacy. "If I can prove the Atheist wrong then by default I will be right" TAG is just pure nonsense, you could apply it to ANY worldview or ANY god and dishonestly come to the same conclusion to justify any worldview. Claiming that it provides proof and evidence for 'your' god is just a special pleading and conceit. You asking Atheists to stand away from the window from a paradigmatic perspective is rich irony from someone who has clearly never done that himself. Hypocrisy. You state 17 min in that TAG is begging the question which is the only true thing you said but you then insert another false dichotomy fallacy by asserting that the Atheist will do the same and that by proving them wrong you will prove yourself right. This is dishonest as I have already pointed out that your argument stands or falls on its own merits and the opinions and world view of others is irrelevant. Therefore TAG is just a begging the question fallacy and can be dismissed as having zero value. Your reference to Gödel is spurious, you are comparing abstract concepts that we accept as real (but still accept as abstract) like numbers and reason with a god that 'you' are asserting is a real thing. If you want to believe in an abstract god that has no substance then it might work but as soon as you assert that this god 'actually' exists in some form other that as a concept in your brain then the argument collapses. By this argument you would need to consign Jesus to a mere abstract concept. Sloppy 20 min; Coherency theory of truth. Another giant begging the question fallacy and another false dichotomy fallacy. Atheists DO NOT offer an alternative they simply say that they do not believe you, nothing more. This is just dishonest. 21.23 min. """the Christian world view is the most coherent world view that exists"""" Begging the question and special pleading fallacies. Claims are not evidence. Debate with an Atheist. Wow, now this really was appalling, disingenuous, dishonest and utterly puerile, shame on you. It is once again a false dichotomy fallacy wrapped in assertions and presuppositions. Even hypothetically assuming that your imaginary Atheist could not justify anything on your list it does not mean that 'your' god is real. There are NO presuppositions in Atheism, more dishonest misrepresentation. You cannot use Gödel here as you are arguing apples with oranges. Replace 'your' god with universe farting Pixies and your terrible argument would reach the conclusion that the Pixies created everything. The last point on your debate is just your wet dream and is never going to happen. Beyond sloppy and juvenile arrogance. ""'My god is logos"" Baseless assertion Final Slide Implications of TAG What a load on nonsensical arrogant waffle. "All the other gods are really 'my' god" Strange since another orthodox told me that they are all demons. This entire slide again is a begging the question and special pleading fallacy. You have all your circles but have utterly failed to demonstrate the dot in the middle. So to wrap it up your argument fails on many level but the main one is trying to use Gödel by comparing abstract concepts like reason and numbers with something that would need to actually exist in some form beyond the abstract in order to be relevant to Christianity. What a waste of an hour of my life. This is some really poor quality epistemology and just a bunch self justification.
I think this is the best version of TAG out here on TH-cam, definitely the easiest to understand, very well done! Please expand on the last part more if you can, the part about why the Orthodox Christian view / theology of God follows from TAG. You did well for that as well, but I think it could be expanded. Also you don't mention that the theology of many protestants have the same absolute divine simplicity mistake as they have in Catholic theology, but that's not a major omission as it wasn't the focus of this video. Thank you very much for a clear well worded version of the argument, God bless! EDIT: Came back to the video once again and noticed autocorrect had butchered my original comment with random Finnish words... Sorry about that, fixed. I come back to this video about once every year to refresh my mind about the argument.
Brilliant explanation. The problem becomes when indifferent people stay at "I dont know" and "I will never know", they may have a buffet type world-view but they hate the idea that there is a single Truth and Faith.
I actually want to prematurely apologize for the above comment. I'm not actually a troll, I just find these sorts of fantasy debates a bit silly, an almost nothing like an actual conversation one is likely to have. But, I did appreciate the content of this video.
@@AquinasBased Oh, I think they understood what was said. They just think it's BS, which often happens when the conclusion is presupposed. If I want to make a cake I don't start with the unknowable, I start with the proper ingredients in the correct proportions which have been tested many times to end up with a successful cake. I may even watch a video demonstrating how a cake was made. You can't 'prove' God. No one can. Most atheists don't want tortured reasoning, we want a demonstration or a way to test the hypothesis.
Fantastic presentation! I always felt the evidentialism somehow was like “believing in God from an atheists perspective”, which made all of the arguments feel empty. This argument is a game changer. You can’t deny this argument without denying your own self as necessary for argumentation, therefore this argument somehow takes an existential point of view rather than a rationalistic one.
Correct. The immaterial does precede the material, and personal the impersonal. Why? Because the Logos, the Son of God the Father, the Divine Mind of God, existed from eternity, though he was begotten it was before causation and time. Therefore, their personhood, the Trinity proceeds all, and it is this personhood of God that we interact with and know our God. Unlike other traditions who posit just a simple unknowable, nonpersonal essence.
It's all so baby's first philosophical mind-screw. Teenager blown away by his first 100 level philosophy class, totally convinced that since he never thought about any of this no one else did either kind of stuff.
Strawman. The video argues that Christians and Platonists can justify their presuppositions, while atheists cannot. It is not merely stating “therefore God” but rather presenting a case for why certain worldviews provide a coherent foundation for logic and reason, whereas atheism struggles to do so.
@@wjd_iii I dont get how a made up unfalsifiable claim can be a coherent foundation for logic and reason. By this reasoning saying "Thunders are made by Zeus" is more coherent than "I dont know where thunders come from". If I have an unfalsifiable answer to something we dont know I dont have a more coherent world view of someone that just says that he doesnt know. Also I dont see why atheism struggles on proving axioms of logic and reason when you can just see that they are sound in every possible scenario and everything built from them works and is sound itself. Finally the TAG argument is based on too much unfalsifiable hypothesis ad hoc: axioms must come from something under them (cause I said so), these things are trascendentals (cause I said so) and they cant just be, they also must come from something else (cause I said so) and this something is God, which is also the only exception to the hypothesis that "everything must come from something" that I used since now, making the argument circular. This is why I think is just another God of the gaps: there must be a justification to axioms cause the fact that they work is not sufficent, we dont know what this justification is so it must be god.
@@pianetaerrante96 It’s not that we lack a justification for axioms. Rather, the Triune God of Eastern Orthodoxy provides the most coherent explanation for the existence of metaphysical absolutes (logic, identity, mathematics, etc). Claiming that atheism is “sound in every possible scenario” does not justify how you know that to be true. This claim is not only unfalsifiable, it's also literally incorrect because atheism can't explain the existence of immutable concepts like mathematics through evolutionary processes like natural selection.
So, when you assume God exists, you can build a logically coherent argument and worldview. When you assume God doesn’t exist, your arguments are necessarily logically inconsistent and your worldview is fantasy/delusion. That’s the power of faith.
When you pretend you are talking to god and can't tell that it's just your imagination, you're psychotic. Get out. Stop supporting the brainwashing of children and mentally ill adults.
@@iantaylor95 People who think they are talking to god are just hallucinating. Psychosis from brainwashing is absolute. It's sad that you pretend to be a man when you have imaginary friends. Real men don't play with stuffed animals.
@@haywardjeblomey6505 "Real men" lol anyone who lives by little rules in sayings is laughable, you have no idea. What do "real men" do? Do they do what good people already tend to do? What are you doing exactly? In this world here. Do you live to try to belittle people? Only making yourself seem like you have a small speck of understanding that only lives up to definitions of sayings his daddy taught him. Do YOU know what you're doing here? No one does. At the least, in your circle of understanding, there has to be reasons for things. If you don't believe in God or a Creator that's cool, stop trying to prove everyone's as crazy or crazier than you and just get on with your life and stop spreading negativity. Be a "real man" lol
Amazing summary of this essential topic! I hope you don't ban me for saying this, but a hugely overlooked evidential argument to follow the transcendental argument is the overwhelming proof the earth is measurably flat and stationary. Aside from the many verses in scripture that plainly say the earth is fixed and does not move - Job 38:14 states, "The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment." We can see way too far for the earth to be a globe of ANY size. And, as Jay Dyer likes to indirectly admit, "Space is fake and gay".
@@orthodoxfinland5056 Who could not believe in space? It's all around us. It just happens to be contained within the firmament - which is why we enjoy a pressurized atmosphere. What's beyond the firmament? Maybe the "waters above"? Jay knows that NASA and the moon landings are bogus - and has stated that he leans towards the geocentrism taught by Robert A. Sungenis. However, there is no measurable curve. Give Jay some time...
Please do not confuse symbolic thinking with materialistic thinking. In our everyday experience as conscious agents the earth certainly is flat and in the center, but materially it is absolutely not and the evidence for that is overwhelming. This doesn't contradict anything that is written in the Bible.
Two things: 1. Why do the 'trancendentals' need to be justified? What benefit is there is justifying them? 2. How exactly does a god justify them? And what unigue quality does a singular god posess, that nothing else does, that allows it to justify these trancendentals? (I'm also not quite sure what you mean by 'essence', I would appreciate if someone could explain that to me)
1. Everything has to be philosophically justified. The benefit is figuring out what must be the case due to logic and reason. Why would anyone want to have an entirely incoherent contradictory world view and then criticize others on the grounds of things the cant justify to exist or be true in the first place. 2. Transcendentals are in the mind, but they are objective so not just subjective for every person's mind. Clearly the preexist the ordering of matter, that is why matter has the objective patterns it has i.e. fractals, geometry, and so on. Therefore they have to exist in a divine mind, God. Then the debate gets into the essence of God which is a whole other bag of worms to debate.
If your first principles aren’t justified, then none of your conclusions can be justified either. Therefore, if you cannot justify your presuppositions, then you are left with relativism and nihilism, unable to critique any other position in an objective way.
@@ChurchoftheEternalLogos the problem with this argument is that, while it in theory proposes an internally consistent explaination, this explaination is not proven to be the only or the best explaination. To use a god to explain these pre material froms is in my mind no better than using a god to explain material phenomena that are not well understood(e.g. the sound of thunder comes from Thor's hammer).
Kurt Godel Incompleteness theory. Sorry but you're clearly wrong. This is done WITH EVERY FORMAL SYSTEM OF LOGIC. Can't prove reason without rational arguments. Can't prove numbers without numbers. Can't prove the existence of language without language. You prove those things without starting them then we can talk.
On an completely unrelated note, it would be cool if you did a video on why Christ was not immediately recognized by his apostles and those who new him after His Resurrection. It is one of the most enigmatic elements of the story, and I suspect it contains many jewels of edification to be uncovered. I haven't seen anyone give a very satisfactory understanding of this event. God bless and keep it up.
Please read Luke 24:16 "they were kept from recognizing him", as well as Luke 24:31-32 《Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him,and he disappeared from their sight.32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”》 Freedom is a prerequisite for love! You could neither love by force nor be loved forcibly! Where there is no freedom there is no love! If they were forced by their senses to accept the power of the resurrected Christ they wouldn't have had the chance to recognise Him because of their love in their burning hearts! For this reason they were kept from recognizing him in order to open their eyes as a result of a burning heart! This is how faith works ever since!
P.S. your comment is not on a completely unrelated tone! Nobody would ever be forced by any proof to believe in God because what really matters is loving God in a burning heart! If anyone is forced by his senses to believe in God, he will not have the chance to freely love God!
I can't find your comment on Farrell and whether he was aware of TAG. I don't know if he would have described it the same way, but the basis of the approach is spelled out in his series on "God, History, & Dialectic" where he explains what went wrong with reliance on the theological cultural paradigm of Augustinism.
I am an Atheist and I have heard this argument before. Several years ago, Phil Mason and Eric Hovind debated this and other related ideas. I will go back and reexamine their debate to see if I misunderstood anything. But last time I watched it, I was persuaded in favor of atheism.
I recommend the Greg Bahnsen vs Gordon Stein debate. I looked up what debate you were talking about and was pretty underwhelmed. I had never heard of either gentlemen.
Im not suprised the recentdebate between oppy and fraser showed how fraser had better points but regardless their initial discussion about argument was great and generally beliefs are preconcieved notions and argumenta cant convince the peraon being argued against only their own curiosity. The better thing to do woukd be to read. Bexause that is true curiosity.
Apophatic theology in an argument m (“I am not convinced God is evil. I am not convinced God is limited..”) avoids adding presuppositions within the TAG framework. It’s similar to the atheist who says “I am not the one making a claim so I don’t need to provide evidence.”
I came here for enlightenment: what are the laws of logic? how can we understand them from more fundamental elements? I'm leaving as clueless as I came. It seems to me that it's better to presuppose those laws than to create yet another unexplainable entity to ground them.
@@skeptcodelaws of logic are conceptual , absolute and universals. Concepts are immaterial and grounded in minds. The universal mind of the christian god grounds logic and truth.
So thankful for this video. Probably the most important video in my subscriptions. Can you please share your reading list at some point? Preferably in order of importance.
IMO the TAG is the best argument for God.I'm going to have to listen to this again, and I want to read that book because I'm still having trouble understanding how panentheism, panexperialism and some form of neoplatonism are not right. I understand that some realities must be experienced and can't be dialectically explained from a finite point of view (obviously Infinity is one example) and True knowledge requires grounding; it seems to require a language built into or around us that reflex ultimate Truth and ultimate Language (the Word) although God is outside time, I do subscribe to past eternalism because I find it absurd to believe that time "began" and creation EX "nihilo" seems absurd because the idea of stepping outside of reality into a nothing (and by this I don't mean no-thing) to observe reality seems ridiculous; reality has to come from God or eternally be a part of God imo; there is only One Infinite yet irreducible uncaused Everything that must The self-aware I for any type of grounding to exist; it also seems rational that i, the finite self, yet which must be a subset or interconnected with actual entities for relationship to occur end time; i (the "nous"?) must be aware of experience & irrreducible too for finite grounding; it's obviously logically impossible for a collection of particles to claim to know anything about the objective world or that there presuppositions of reality and language are adequate, especially since adaptation rewards fitness, not truth; and we continually have revolutions in physics which changes the way we think about reality. anyway, I could probably go on and on but this is long enough so I will free listen to your video and hopefully take a look at that book soon... I'm sure it's just me not quite understanding how this can't be right. thanks for your deep insight and your videos, they are very helpful
@John Buckner - You mention/speak a lot in a short space here. I'm not going to try and address/reply to all your thoughts as thought would be a undertaking. But reading what you wrote I can't help but think that perhaps a relevant component that is not mentioned here is the idea of apophaticism. It is a crucial component in the orthodox understanding of reality/epistemology. Also, out of curiosity: Have you read Fr Justin Popovich's article "St Isaac the Syrian and the theory of knowledge" ??
@@RollOut82 I just remember that apophatic theology Is a claim that God (Or the essence of God?) can only be described by what it is not? No sorry I haven’t read anything by that author.
Why is it that I cannot safely cross a busy street while actively disbelieving in the reliability of induction, but can safely cross while disbelieving in your god? Could it be that your god is an unnecessary presupposition?
TAG overlooks that logic and morality can be grounded in human experience or the nature of reality itself, without needing a deity. By dismissing these alternative explanations, TAG fails to convincingly demonstrate that God is necessary-it merely asserts it without substantial evidence.
Low lQ take , grounding logic and truth in human experience is incoherent. If you mean human minds that is also false because human minds are not universal
You’re only asserting that; prove it logically I could say, you could ground it in anything at all, A unicorn foot eg. That doesn't mean that the arguments good Again it's just an assertion Im open to hear it out though, just attempt to prove your position
@@mudpuppin3tt3s Grounding morality and logic in something observable like human experience or nature isn’t really arbitrary like grounding them in a unicorn or a deity because human experience and the natrual world are tangible, observable, and consistent parts of our reality. Unlike abstract or supernatrual assertions that rely on faith. Grounding these concepts in human nature and natrual phenomena is based on evidence and reasoned observation, making it a more rational approach than something supernatrual. I’d also argue that morality is a human construct that is shaped by historical, cultural, and social contexts rather than something a deity has imposed on us. As our society evolves so too does our understanding of morality
@@ExpertContrarian i cant even see the comment your referencing, yes saying true things is good. So if you act like a r 3 t4 r d i can call you that , cry more
At the 1:10 mark there is already a glaring error. There is no such thing as "the atheistic worldview". There is not one worldview that all atheist follow nor is atheism a worldview. It's a negation, a response to a single issue. That is not a worldview.
Great discussion. New to this channel. Saw you on Friar Deacon's channel. Dr. Frank Turek has a great book against atheists called I Don't have enough faith to be an atheist. Very good
I don't get it. How did you prove God's existence? Sure, you can presuppose him, but that isn't 'proving' something, right? What is your definition of proving something?
I don't think that Godel's incompleteness theorem (not theory, theorem) works the way it is presented here. The first incompleteness theorem says that any axiomatic system satisfying a few basic requirements (i.e. axiomatic systems with any real-world utility for analysis) will allow statements that cannot be proven true or false in that system. I suspect this is not the theorem being referenced in the video because it only referenced unprovability rather than the soundness of a system. The second incompleteness theorem says that no axiomatic system satisfying a few basic requirements (same sort of thing as before) cannot be proven to be consistent (meaning free of contradiction) within that axiomatic framework. That is, you can never be absolutely sure you didn't accidentally sneak a contradiction into your axioms. That is not "assuming the existence of numbers to prove the existence of numbers". The existence of numbers can be justified from more basic set-theory axioms that don't assume the existence of numbers from the start. What we are assuming is that those set-theory axioms don't include a contradiction that we have missed over the past century or so.
Dr. Frank Turek's book- I don't have enough faith to be an atheist is a good one. You can watch his seminars on it on his channel CrossExamined. Very good and entertaining
I've Been recommended Dr. Jason Lisle's "Ultimate Proof of Creation" and Also some papers on this argument by dr. Russ Manion and Dr. Fr. Deacon Ananias Sorem (Erik Sorem). Also Bahnsen
TAG is not begging the question since it is a transcendental argument, the problem is rather that it is not clear that the Triune God of the bible is the precondition for all that the things the TAG's advocates claim.
Good question! Remember that if you're try this argument in real life, then part of your anticipated defense is the claim that every worldview *must* contain unproven assumptions. Seems like maybe there's a few weak points here, hm?
@@nervouskrystof Oh wow. Yeah, try that one out. Tell people they need to argue non-contradiction into existence because otherwise its not real. They'll find that super convincing, I bet.
@@nervouskrystof The whole argument falls on its foundation. Logic and Math, and so on, are human inventions. Nothing more or less. We can justify them easily, we made them, that is why they exist. Logic is a method we humans invented to draw conclusions, we invented it based on what we observe in the physical world. Which is why it is objectively true. Nothing strange about that, it is objectively true because we based it on objectively true observations. Such as, we cannot make two opposite choices at the same time. Math is a language we humans invented based on observations of the physical world. We can for example see round shapes in nature, we can also see two of things, and three of things. 1,2 3 are just words and concepts we humans invented to talk about the physical world.
I suppose my question would be this: Why is presupposing God’s existence to explain God logically valid, but presupposing any of the transcendental categories to prove the transcendental categories, not logically valid? Why is the circular reasoning given a concession in this case? And before somebody on either side replies with some sarcastic comment, don’t bother, because I won’t respond. I’m trying hard to understand this argument.
The argument is claiming without the presupposition of God the possibility of knowledge is impossible because knowledge, like logic, is metaphysical. Circularity is the problem for all worldviews, same as an atheist presupposing empiricism despite empiricism being dependent on transcendental categories without justification of their existence. Therefore, justification moves from foundationalism to coherency (theory of truth) given that which is being analyzed is a worldview and therefore not empirical. The argument is making a positive claim due to the impossibility of the opposite. Therefore logically sound argument whether one agrees with it or not.
@@ChurchoftheEternalLogos Thank you for the reply! I appreciate your time. My concerns would be as follows: 1. You say that ‘without the presupposition of God, knowledge is impossible.’ I agree. But couldn’t knowledge seize to be real at all? Couldn’t we just deny the first presupposition altogether, and say God doesn’t exist? Why is knowledge necessary? 2. The argument, as you say, is impossible to contradict. But again, couldn’t one deny the existence of Knowledge altogether, thereby removing God as a necessary presupposition? I’m not sure why the God presupposition is necessary, because as I said in the prior concern, couldn’t knowledge just not exist? Thanks for your time. I do appreciate the help.
@@boxingboxingboxing99 for 1, a counter argument goes: No. Knowledge is not metaphysical. Knowledge is a state of the brain - it's essentially storage of sensory input. You can remove "knowledge" from someone using a scalpel. Knowledge is no more metaphysical than waves in the ocean, and that's just water in a certain configuration, just like knowledge is just brain chemicals in a certain configuration.
@@boxingboxingboxing99 You cant deny knowledge when making knowledge claims, that is self defeating and reduces to absurdity. Im not going to tell you that the orthodox worldview is the only worldview that satisfies the preconditions for intelligibility (as its not, the christian worldview fails due to the inability to solve causal regularity, problem of induction, universal atemporal laws of logic being intelligible preceding the bible, worldviews with stronger more coherent metaphysics like hermeticism and types of panendeism) But you cant just deny the existence of knowledge, any claim you make becomes meaningless and absurd. Just adhere to some type of panendeism with hermetic metaphysics and youre fine lol
Because you can’t disprove the laws of logic without using logic. All this stuff is further proof that when a theists viewpoint doesn’t match with reality, they will start attacking reality itself.
@@theTYTAN3 Well, I didn't give all the things that logic doesn't account for, but regardless no. Why? Because holding the universe on your back doesn't explain how the universe got there. The universe doesn't have anywhere in its claim that it's eternal. Here are a few questions I'd like you to answer though: Do you exist? Are you made up of matter? Is everything made of matter? Does truth exist? What is truth? Are morals subjective? Does good and evil exist? What happens after death? If you don't want to answer them, that's fine, but being hostile and putting an initial comment that shows curiosity doesn't really indicate "I don't actually want to have a conversation".
@tjpg25 The universe began when Arathanu poured its will into its shell. Does having an explanation for how the universe got here make a theory more credible? The contention of the big bang is that the universe expanded from a singular hot dense point, that point may have been always there, the idea of time may not have been coherent. From everything we've observed, the universe follows the law of Conservation of mass, as far as we know matter can neither be created nor destroyed it simply changes state, an eternal universe is quite possible. Do you exist? Yes. Are you made up of matter? Most likely Is everything? As far as im aware. Does truth exist? Yes What is truth? Truth is what comports to reality. Are morals subjective? Seems that way. Does good and evil exist? Yes What happens after death? Seems like after we die, the matter that made up our bodies will continue to exist and change states eternally, but I have no indication that our consciousnesses would continue on without active brains.
Reason truth and you exist. What does that mean? What is the meaning of Being in general, not just beings such as the list you offer? God in the Orthodox doctrine is the giver of possibility, which is ontologically prior to actuality. In other words, the Christian is asking what is the precondition of existence, rather than simply grounding other beings arbitrarily to one particular being, but instead grounding it in that precondition of Being in general.
A good reason why classical apologetics cannot be bad is that the bible itself appear to use the cosmological and teleological argument for God. Have you ever read the use of TAG in the bible?
@@emjayy1233 Yes trivially, every claim will make presuppositions. Your comment also made a bunch of presuppositions. Thus, stating that there is a bunch of presuppositions for a statement is trivial and is not argument for anything.
@@JB-yb4wn the basic idea is that to use something like Logic or any "transcendental" we have to ground it on something for it to not be arbitrary. God is the only coherent explanation since God, at least the Orthodox version, contains within himself all the transcendentals. I heard one Orthodox call the Logos the collection of all the Forms or something similar.
@@delgande God is arbitrary, there are many faiths on this planet and you don't even know which Christian god is the correct one, let alone whether your god is grounded in anything but people's gullibility. Ask any Muslim or Hindu whether your god is the only transcendental being in the universe. Just so that you know, your god is anything but transcendental, he kills children by bear mauling, 2 Kings 2:23-25, their crime? Calling someone "baldy".
That people in the comments come here and say "Yeees i have finally found an argument that i like and understand wich gives the illusion of proving what i already belive" is a big tell of how little evidence people have for this god of theirs. Presupposing a god isnt the answer. If TAG actually proved that a god exist we would have had a nobel price awarded for someone ACTUALLY proving a god exist long ago.. it would be world wide news and EVERYONE would know that a god exists for sure. We wouldnt still have debates about it on the daily. We wouldnt have multiple religions. If there was evidence in the same way as we know that the sun is hot it would have been known. But it isnt. Why is this? Its because this argument doesnt hold up. The Templeton foundation for example spends millions and millions of dollars every year to support anything that can lead to proving religious and spiritual claims as true. They dont have TAG as the final peice of the puzzle. Why? Think people. Think.
@@nervouskrystof like that was the entire argument? Lael Do u honestly think that proving christianity as a fact wouldnt give u a Nobel price? :) it would be the greatest discovery mankind has ever made.
I am not christian, but I realized logically speaking their must be a god because with all the talk on higher dimensions that physics says must exist led me to asking the question: who alone must exist at the highest dimension which informs all the others?
When they say “prove god exists”, wouldn’t it be easier to simply respond by asking, “what kind of proof are you asking for and through which model of reasoning?” And then giving examples of the models they are likely operating from? And then pointing out the incoherence of those models, etc?
Damn there's lots of big words in this video that I've never heard of. It's gonna be hard to reference these explanations to my friends and convince them :D
@@juzhang6665 Oh it is far from shutting my mouth, quite the opposite. Which God (or indeed Gods) does this argument prove the existance of.. you have a selection of tens of thousands that man has imagined over the last 10,000, maybe 20,000 years that man may have pondered on such things. In fact, it is possible that man has had superstion about supernatural beings for 100-200,000 years or more, since there is evidennce to sugest that even pigions are superstitious wheh you provide food at random occasions only to see them recreate what they were doing the previous time in the faith that they will get food again, such as turning 360' clockwise to get food, but we of course know that they got food because the scientist pressed the food release button. Ohh dear, yeahh this drivel filled video sure shut me up lol
As an atheist, I'm fine with accepting that i can't justify any of my foundations for things like knowledge and reason, I just don't care, since i still emotionally like to reason and feel like i can have knowledge of things, whether or not it's metaphysically justifiable doesn't matter to my desire to do it anyway. I can also just say the same about the religious worldview, where any arguments like TAG are themselves unjustifiable because i don't think reason and knowledge can be justified in the first place, and arguments like TAG use reason to justify themselves. Same with being a moral anti-realist, i don't think morality is a thing that exists or is objective, yet i still take it into account when making decisions and evaluate positions based on it's morality, not because it's logically justified, but because i just feel like it, simple as.
You're understating your position. You *have* to believe things like induction and non-contradiction. That's just how human brains work. You don't have a choice. For someone to suggest you do otherwise is for them to suggest you should have typed your comment with your trunk instead of your hands. Now, if you stare at that for too long it starts to look pretty weird. But TAG is just taking this strangeness and saying "I don't know, therefore God," and is no more sophisticated or justifiable than any other iteration of that phrase.
@paulsmart4672 there are unending examples of people not believing in non-contradiction or induction. What a bunch of New Atheist babble. And you clearly don’t understand TAG and want to pretend you do
@@michaelfetter5413 Insults and boasts. It upsets you to see this pseudophilosophy criticized, so did you want to try to defend it, or did you just need to let me know your feelings are hurt?
@@davidspencer343 >"how isn't it incredulity or special pleading to say I can't imagine a naturalistic answer for inteligibility by my god could suffice?" That's not even what the argument is. The argument is that without a universal mind, there's no grounding for transcendental categories, the invariance of logic and identity over time. Listen to Jay Dyer's call-ins, his atheist opponents regularly make their position to be that they don't have a justification for those things. If you think your description of the argument is correct, then could you point out the time stamp where the inference was made on the basis of "I can't imagine a naturalistic answer to intelligibility"? If the maker of the video says this, then he's made a mistake and is presenting it in a different way to most others.
@adam.summerfield sure I'd love to explain why I think this. Don't be mad for me disagreeing lol ill be honest and won't name call or anything. Both premises are un supported.the first one says you CANT but doesn't give evidence for it. That sounds like incredulity. You don't know you can't. You just claim it. And if an athiest doesnt know either that doesnt releive the burden of proof or show it CANT be possible. Another says, altho it's seemingly impossible, that god could do it. Also, with no evidence. Just a claim. Sounds like special pleading. Not asking if you agree, but does that make sense why I might see it that way? Even if I'm wrong
I thought apophatic theology would be “god is not impersonal. God is not evil. God is not limited to our extent of wisdom. God is not limited to our extent of knowledge, etc”?
This is fantastic. Thanks. I need help though. How do you deal with agnostics who claim, "I dont know, i'm just going off what I can observe, you're the one making the claim". I've heard Jay say that there isn't really an agnostic position, that there's either Atheism or Theism. Can someone elaborate on that for me? Many friends in my life end on, "I dont know what laws of logic are. It's possible it's just a convention that seems to work. And since it gives us practical results that we can work with, we stick with it It could be wrong, but it following logic produces food, computers, and logic. I dont need to know what it is to see the results. And sure, morality is a preference. I have mine, you have yours, and we hope society gets along". I know you and Jay have talked about their being no neutral ground. But their position does appear neutral. Similar to JFG's position (the public space dude). And also I've had people stump me with "Sure, what if I grant you that Orthodox Christianity has a slightly better cohering worldview than any other one. Ok. So what? It still means nothing. It adheres better than other worldviews, but that in no way, shape, or form, makes it THEE correct worldview. Why are you assuming humans know the correct worldview, or will ever know the answer. You're the one making this bold claim, I'm simply saying I dont know. " I'm not sure how to rebut this argument. Does it fall into traps mentioned in this video that I'm missing...or is there another line of attacking this?
Maybe you could ask them, if they say they are sceptical of everything, then, they must also be sceptical of scepticism it's self. This forces a person to take a step forwards and actually believe in some thing. And discredits they're stated position, that they are sitting on the sidelines. And have no position of there own.
@@richardparke7844 They hedge it. They admit they dont know for sure, but they say they're not the one making the positive claim.The argument is something like: I dont know for sure why we're here or how it ALL works, but empiricism gives real world results across time. So why not use it? We use logic and reason not because we can prove or give a justification, we use logic and reason because it works and gives results.. We can make predictions and than prove them, this apple will fall when dropped, let's do the experiment, however, your position of Orthodoxy doesnt have this predictive power. You can't show me your God, or prove your God. I'm not saying he CAN'T exist, but a white unicorn God can also exist. I'm not making a positive claim about anything. I'm doing what works, while you're living in fairy tales.(that'd be the general type of argument), and to me it does appear positionless and nuetral, and I dont know how to wake the sails out of that because it's much more honest and humble than an outright atheists position.
I don’t know if Jay does this, but some presups define god such that, if you accept their definitions, neutrality is impossible. For instance, if god is defined as “something all people know exists,” then saying you don’t known he exists would be a denial of that particular version of god. It’s all in service of muddling epistemology (how and what we can know) with ontology (what actually exists). Ontologically, god either exists or he does not. Epistemically, one can be agnostic if one does not know the answer.
Good video, especially liked the ending. I think it gives a bit more clarity to the Orthodox framework. I will mention, though, since we've been kind of going back and forth on this, that Sikhism does mention God as person. In the Mool Mantar(the preliminary description of God) they have the line Karta Purakh usually translated as 'creative being personified'. Not debating or arguing just saying. Looking forward to the follow up video. Video that goes more in depth on Karta Purakh: th-cam.com/video/ag_KvfXUKEk/w-d-xo.html
Thanks brother, much appreciated. From my understanding Sikhism takes an understanding of God very similar to Islam, which would fall back into the same Neoplatonic framework of dialectics. However, I don't know this for certain. I'll check out the link. Hope all is well. God bless 🙏
@@ChurchoftheEternalLogos I think one of the main troubles when dealing with interfaith is that understanding one faith is hard enough, to then attempt a comprehensive investigation of another, with an objective mind, is quite the task. Here is a video where he goes into the concept of One: th-cam.com/video/M7A9qZEBVh8/w-d-xo.html
The way I usually handle this is to say, “You know I’ve always believed there must be a reason without god to value truth, but I’ve never come across it. Why should we believe a thing just because it’s true? After all, the general atheist argument is they disbelieve in god because he doesn’t exist. But why does that matter?”
As an atheist, there is no objective reason to value truth, it's just useful for us practically to have beliefs that correspond most accurately with reality, along with the emotional satisfaction of feeling like you know the truth. It's not something we do because of reason, but because it lets us advance whatever irrational goals we have
This is the final retreat from evidence. If you could actually demonstrate a god existing in reality, none of this would be necessary, you’d just point to your god.
Oh no it isn't. As of this writing, presuppers are saying that presupp should be taught like calculus (and only to willing students at that) and not debated AT ALL; that even acknowledging a difference of opinion is sacrificing their overwhelming truthiness in light of atheists failure to acquiesce to the presup paradigm (whatever that means). They're right because they're right because they can't not be right, and now they refuse to even discuss the matter like adults. That speaking with non-believers (of presup) is a surrender of their most basic, fundamental, a priori, convictions and is a pointless (and heretical) waste of their time. THAT is the final retreat.
How does TAG prove Christianity in particular though? It just proves a generic creator of some kind. This is why many find presuppositionalism to be an unbiblical apologetic, and it's why most reformed people have moved on from it.
Did you check out the video brother? I state that TAG proves theism multiple times throughout and in the last slide I address why Christianity in particular. The continuation of TAG in regards to how religions then account for these transcendentals is the real debate. Only a few rise to the challenge. The question then turns to contradictions in regards to cataphatic statements about the essence of God, i.e. absolute divine simplicity/neoplatonism/Islam/Pantheism. Usually a nonChristian ends with, well, God is totally beyond all reason so we really can't know anything about him i.e. impersonal. This comes to the Personhood of God (collapsing the dialectic) and the correct beginning point for Christian theology, we worship a personal God who has revealed himself, therefore to not start theology with revelation and personhood is to reject how we know the Christian God. Therefore, TAG taken to its ultimate ends, proves Christianity. We have a personal God who revealed his transcendency by way of his immanency (incarnation), again personhood and scripture. TAG proves that we then go to Biblical apologetics, but to start there is not understanding the problem in the first place, especially with atheist. The objection from Reformers is dumb because they still aren't addressing the presuppositions of their opponent, proving there has to be a God in the first place, and yes it does ultimately come back to scripture. Its sad apologists don't get this. I would say its mostly because of Sola Scriptura and Protestant presuppositions they don't get it.
Church of the Eternal Logos - TAG doesn’t automatically lead to Christianity though. You have to bring in evidences eventually. You can’t just say “we have revelation” without giving some proof of the revelation to back it up. That proof is what the apostles focused on (“that you might know that you have eternal life”). Not sure I understand what you’re saying about sola scriptura at the end there. You admit that it was Protestants that popularized TAG again and then you say it’s Protestants that deny TAG?
Dude, everything you're saying is covered in the video. Just watch the video. You're not understanding what I'm saying. TAG proves theism. Take it further: Which theism can best account for the transcenedentals? How does one know they account for those transcendentals? Do They contradict themselves in cataphatic statements and dialectics? Which tradition has personhood to know God (this is when evidentialist claims start). Which form of Christianity can fully account for the personal interaction and collapse of dialectics? Orthodoxy. Evidentialism and TAG are not in opposition like you claim. Evidentialism doesn't force the opponent to justify. Once then Tag is proven, then there are only a few theisms that can account for everything, evidentialist claims start (historicity of the Bible, cosmological argument, ontological argument, miracles, resurrection, lives of the apostles). Yes Van Til popularized TAG, does that mean TAG never existed before Van Til? Its in Aristotle... It's in the Church Fathers. You have to first prove God, to then prove which God.
Church of the Eternal Logos - I agree that TAG can be used as a baseline starter for a discussion with an atheist, but that’s only about 2 sentences of the conversation. Then you have to provide evidences for “the hope that is within you.” The problem is that the presuppositional method rarely moves beyond those two sentences. That’s why the Jay Dyer and Dillahunty debate was going in circles for hours. Had Jay then moved onto explaining why he believes that the unifying principle is personable and knowable, some progress could have been made there. But “presupp” people just like to stick to repeating TAG over and over because it’s a way that they can “own” non-believers.
@@ConciseCabbage The reason the Dillahunty debate went in circles is because Dillahunty largely didn't understand the argument, let alone well enough for Jay to move on to why he believes the Christian, personal God is true in particular. Only certain religions are even capable of accounting for the necessary transcendentals, namely Orthodox Christianity. All the others fall into some incoherent position that can't justify anything, like ADS. TAG is the most biblical argument, evidentialism is what's unbiblical.
I have a question. If we can be circular and proof God by presupposing God, couldn't an atheist just be circular and proof logic by presupposing logic?
I think they can but they need more than just logic. They need the law of non-contradiction, the law of identity just to name a couple whereas the Christian only needs to presuppose God. This is where TAG is coherent and atheism is not.
@@karikovacs3824 Modern day physics seem to speak against both those laws though. IF there are 11 dimensions, which most leading physicists agree on is very possible, then two opposites can be true, a cow can be a universe, and so on. If true, most logic is out the window.
@@joe5959 no I grasp the argument perfectly well, it’s complete bullshit. In all my study of philosophy, I have never seen an argument that relies more on misdirection and false assertions.
How would a TAG theist argue against an objection similar to Graham Oppy's position re cosmological arguments? In particular, any position the theist takes regarding why God exists is equally available to the atheist to explain the transcendentals. If God is eternal or necessary, the atheist may take the position that transcendentals are eternal or necessary. The two are on equal argumentative footing, but the atheist position achieves greater parsimony. In other words, the atheist can use language, reason, number theory I argument for any of the reasons the theist can provide for using God in argument. Now a TAG proponent might say the atheist has exploded ontological baggage by making so many things brute / assumed (as the very end of this video notes). But this is easily dissolved. The atheist can simply start with a single transcendental paradigm. Presupposing just one thing that has all necessary transcendentals within it. Now the theist and the atheist both agree this transcendental paradigm exists, but the theist adds extra ontological baggage by also presupposing a god to create the paradigm. I agree TAG could be strong against a pure empiricist with little understanding of philosophy. But it is possible to both be atheist and understand that every metaphysical inquiry ends with brutes.
Here’s my question to you: it seems as though all TAG does is demonstrate that we must assume God unto our worldview in order to be coherent. Why would if follow that God exists in actuality? In other words, why is the conclusion ontological and not merely an epistemological one? I’m a fan btw.
Kurt Godel Incompleteness theory. Because that is true with all formal systems of Logic. You can't prove language without first starting with language. You can't prove numbers without first staring with numbers. You can't prove reason without making rational arguments. If God is the l source of logic, the same schematic for proving formal systems of logic would hold true.You can't prove God without starting with God, because any other method to prove his existence would be assuming the same transcendentals that only exist due to his existence. Hope that helps. God bless 🙏
Thomas W. - Ultimately we are limited to only tools within our universe to “prove” anything about it, which one could argue Godel demonstrated cannot be done. So TAG simply demonstrates that Christians have a much more coherent world view than atheists who must be arbitrary in their faith. However, the coherence comparison coupled with the testimony of the Gospels, the revelation of the Bible, the tradition of the church, etc, all confirms what is written on the heart. To deny the truth, you must deny your own belief in morality, along with all the obvious transcendental categories. So claim to deny these things, but they sure don’t live this way. In fact, just by entering into a debate they demonstrate their faith.
Even Bahnsen himself said it wouldn't change anyone's mind but just shut them up. But I haven't even seen it do that much. I'm a Christian but TAG is a non-starter even though it is correct.
TAG doesnt establish a christian god, more of a deistic/panendeistic one. Just like literally every other argument for god, the act of an acausal entity entering this world is completely incoherent and has devastating effects for knowledge and the problem of induction
Thank you for the video. I don't understand why it makes more sense to presuppose God rather than just saying "I don't know." What am I missing? Are you saying philosophy demands an explanation so God is the best, most coherent explanation? Why do we need to presuppose something rather than just leaving the question open? Thanks again.
Because a godless worldview smacks of death! If there is no God, nothing really matters as long as death is the overall winner! If there is no God, everything is pointless as long as everything ends up in the realm of death! If there is no God, we are just moribund bodies! The question about God is an issue of life and death! However a godless answer is an apotheosis of death!
Leaving the question open is a thesis which is antithetical to the certainty of life! The lack of an answer about God is a discordance which leads to the disharmony of life's song! Life is like a song, that has a certain theme! That theme lies in the universal truth that only Life gives birth to life! Such a theme is in perfect harmony only with the belief in a God who is the absolute LIFE and the ultimate LOVE! Only the beauty of such a belief could ever be consistent with a meaningful explanation of the first cause of life! Only the beauty of such a belief could ever be consistent with a meaningful explanation of the great cause to live!
Because to question at all presupposes unjustified transcendentals, truth, knowledge, logic. Did you watch the whole video? The question about justifying questioning itself, as it presupposes truth, logic, math, knowledge.
Chris, I wish your questions were derived from a subconscious impulse to explore the truth! Anyway, come and see! Have a glance at the Orthodox side of Christianity! Exploring the mystical depth of the Orthodox Church is a real revelation! Orthodox Christianity is a living faith, and you get it from living persons by being connected to a local, living community! You are always welcomed to experience the fullness of Life! Christ is risen and the human race is risen!
Language, math and laws of logic are descriptors of reality. As long as they comport to reality they are good. For example, Newton Law of gravity was good until Enstien improved it. Saying god(s) is the transdental of reality boils down to god of the gaps. We all start at the same position, we perceive reality through our senses. God of the gaps.
Not an argument saying “I don’t have a answer now but maybe we will get a answer later” is not a good argument I can say the same thing when atheists bring up arguments against God that I can’t answer what you said is just a atheist cope and gravity is something that can be observed in the universe lol
@Alex.K957 difference being, when I say I don't know; that's as far as I go until more information becomes available. Theist, I don't know, leads to god(s).
I don’t get the comparison. For something like gravity and the Big Bang you have empirical evidence for its existence even though you can’t give a full explanation.(god of the gaps) Logic, numbers , self ,past,etc can’t be empirically proven like gravity. So they have to be arbitrary assumed. Isn’t the point of atheism you don’t believe what you can’t prove. Thus you can’t believe in logic. But you are using logic to come to a conclusion. How do you justify them.
@@AustinoleWhat will you say when the answer never comes, and you live of the notion that maybe one day a answer will come? You are denying the answer which is God the Trinity! It has been the answer for transcendentals and it is the only answer that is known, so stop waiting for a answer and go to the answer which is already here! Or are you one of the ignorant ones who as the Saints say is one who knows God exists but still denies him?
The laws of logic come about due to multiplicity or differentiations. If there is a multiplicity, then each must be different from each other. For a thing to NOT be another thing, is to be other than that thing. To be other is to be different. This is where logic comes from the laws of logic relate to differentiation. Logic itself being plural. It works on differentiation, and breaks down at the non-plural singularity, or Plato’s ONE in the first hypothesis of the Parmenides. I suppose similar to how the laws of physics break down at the singularity.
That image of "Christ" beside the calendar looks very similar to the image produced by the Hindu group MonasteryIcons. If that's the same image that was produced by the pagan group, I'd recommend getting rid of it and replacing it with an icon of Christ produced by Christians. God bless.
17:24 nope you didn’t get around or address the circularity. even if my worldview is false doesn’t make yours true. TAG assumes what it sets out to prove and expects opponents to justify their own assumptions without addressing the foundational assumptions of TAG itself. you’re literally already assuming the christian worldview is the most coherent worldview to explain these transcendentals which is still question begging and is just false the laws of logic and mathematics could just be features of reality rather than transcendentals concepts like for example its not that case that the universe can’t contradict itself because of the law of logic it could just just be a feature of the universe that things can’t contradict itself so there’s no need for transcendentals. they are just features of reality. you also misunderstand godels theorems. they state that in any sufficiently complex formal system, there are true statements that cannot be proven within the system, but they do not suggest that all reasoning is inherently circular. instead they show limitations in formal systems but not in reasoning as a whole. godel’s theorems highlight limitations in formal systems rather than endorsing circularity in reasoning. circular reasoning can be avoided by properly grounding assumptions or using different methodologies that don’t rely on the assumptions being questioned. logic isn’t the thing in question nor reasoning and mathematics. GOD AND THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW IS WHATS IN QUESTION AND THE ASSUMPTION BEING QUESTIONED. saying “well these things are circular and are valid” doesn’t automatically make your circular argument valid. you have to still prove your argument through its own merit not whataboutism. also you make a false equivalence in your empirical and inductive claim they are based on observable evidence and can be tested against reality. the assumption of empirical methods doesn’t rely on the unverified assumption of a specific worldview but on the capacity to make repeatable and falsifiable observations. coherence alone does not establish truth. a coherent worldview must also correspond to external realities and evidence. a worldviews coherence doesn’t guarantee its truth unless it also matches observed facts and evidence.
@@asylumyeah well if im understanding your second paragraph correctly, you are implying that the universe could contradict itself. Was wondering if you had an example of that being the case?
@ yeah that’s not what i’m implying at all. i’m saying contradictions aren’t secured by some transcendental law it could just be the case things can’t contradict themselves because of the nature of reality
Oh, my. This is the blind leading the blind. I'm a third of the way through the video and I have yet to see an argument presented except maybe "the atheistic worldview" can't justify logic, transcendentals, experience, etc. and I can therefore win by default. This is what passes for good reasoning?
This video states that the theist is presupposing one thing, God. However, in jay dyers debate vs dillahunty, dillahunty asks jay how many presuppositions he has and jay says that he has the same amount as Matt. Matt then says that shouldn’t jay only be presupposing god since god is his justification for metaphysicals and jay continues on to explain why that is not true. I only point this out to point out the contradiction. Is this video incorrect or is jay incorrect?
The video makes extensive use of the transcendental argument for God. This argument claims that logic, reason, morality, etc require an absolute, immaterial foundation in order to make sense, and that this foundation can only be God. However, this argument commits the fallacy of begging the question - it assumes at the outset the very conclusion it is trying to prove. To demonstrate, consider one of the video's core arguments: 1. Logic requires an absolute, immaterial foundation 2. Only God provides such a foundation 3. Therefore, God exists. Premise 2 already assumes God's existence in order to establish God as the foundation for logic. So the argument presupposes God in order to conclude God's existence. It is circular reasoning. Additionally, premise 1 is not an empirical claim but rather a metaphysical assumption. There are many philosophical perspectives that reject the need for absolute foundations for concepts like logic and reason. For example: - Pragmatism argues that the truth and validity of ideas is determined by their practical usefulness, not their ability to be grounded absolutely. - Historical relativism argues that systems of logic and rationality develop contingently within particular cultural contexts. There are no timeless, universal logical absolutes. So in summary, the transcendental argument for God's existence fails because: 1) It begs the question by presupposing God in its premises. 2) Its key premise about logic requiring an absolute foundation is an unproven metaphysical assumption, not an empirical fact. Beyond this central flaw, the video makes other philosophical errors: - It misrepresents Hume, who never argued we "just have to assume" induction works. Hume argued induction cannot be logically justified at all, but we rely on it due to custom and mental habit. - It portrays the correspondence theory of truth as the only alternative to a coherence theory. However, there are other theories like pragmatism, relativism, etc. - It claims Godel's incompleteness theorems justify circular reasoning in logic. This is a misinterpretation of Godel's technical results in formal arithmetic. the video utilizes questionable reasoning, makes inaccurate representations of key philosophers, and does not succeed in providing a sound logical argument for God's existence from first principles. A more robust philosophical defense is needed. It would be useful to demonstrate the flaws in the video's arguments using more formal logic notation. Here's an attempt at that: Let's look at one of the video's key syllogisms: 1) Logic requires an absolute, immaterial foundation (Premise 1) 2) Only God provides such a foundation (Premise 2) 3) Therefore, God exists (Conclusion) Translating this into analytic notation: 1) ∀x (Lx → Fx) 2) ∀x (Fx → Gx) 3) ∴ ∃x (Gx) Where: Lx = x is logic Fx = x requires an absolute, immaterial foundation Gx = x is God This is an instance of affirming the consequent, which is a formal logical fallacy. Here is an illustration: 1) If it is raining, then the grass is wet (If P, then Q) 2) The grass is wet (Q) 3) Therefore, it is raining (Therefore, P) This is invalid reasoning, because even though rain (P) would imply wet grass (Q), wet grass (Q) does not definitively imply rain (P). There are other possible causes for Q besides P. The same applies to the original syllogism. Even granting that God (G) would provide the kind of absolute foundation required by logic (F), it does not follow that anything which requires such a foundation (F) must therefore be God (G). There could be other potential sources for the absolute foundation of logic besides God. So in formal terms, ∀x (Fx → Gx) does not validly imply ∃x (Gx). Affirming Fx does not axiomatically affirm Gx, because Fx could potentially arise from sources other than Gx. This demonstrates that the key inference in the video's syllogism commits a formal logical fallacy by affirming the consequent. Let me know if illustrating it symbolically in analytic notation is helpful! I'm happy to clarify or expand on this further.
The creator of this video argues that God is the most coherent explanation for metaphysical absolutes. This is not the same as claiming that God is the only possible explanation. Coherence in this context refers to explanatory power and consistency within a given worldview. Consider the analogy: “The grass is wet. Therefore, the most coherent explanation is that it rained.” This does not exclude other possible explanations (sprinklers, dew, etc), but it suggests rain as the most consistent and probable cause given the broader context. Similarly, the argument for God as the foundation for logic and reason is based on coherence rather than exclusivity. Arguing that concepts like logic and reason are entirely culturally contingent leads to a circular position. If all truth is relative, then the statement “all truth is relative” is also relative, which undermines its own claim. A worldview that denies any absolute foundation struggles to provide a stable basis for logical consistency. Your critique seems to rest on the assumption that any metaphysical claim must be empirically verifiable. However, metaphysical assumptions underpin all worldviews, including atheism. The question then becomes which set of assumptions offers the most coherent and comprehensive explanatory framework. The video suggests that theistic assumptions provide a more consistent foundation for logic and morality than atheistic ones, which can lead to nihilism if they reject metaphysical absolutes entirely. Finally, you misrepresented the video’s arguments due to your own a priori assumptions. For example, assuming that logic does not need an absolute foundation without addressing the arguments presented for why it might is a form of presuppositional bias.
Lol this is the giga chad of apologetics but unfortunately most atheist will stick their fingers in their ears on this one. Even as a Christian it took me a while to appreciate the arguments sye ten brugencate uses. He's actually quite brilliant with the way he simplifies presupposiomism and TAG
This totally ignores Evolution. Evolution provides the answer for the preconditions. logic, morals etc is a result of evolution. TAG presuposes that God exists which is a faulty argument since it wants to prove that God exists.
@boxingboxingboxing99 How do I come to know anything? I process information and make a rational, more than likely type of conclusion. Tons of information available leads to this conclusion. If you would like to provide that information that can distinguish an existent thing/being/entity from a mere mental concept then by all means...
Logic is a formal language like C++ or VisualBasic. They are descriptive terms for the behavior of nature. I accept these laws because to refute them would require me to assume they were true. So no God presup needed there. Induction at its root cannot be justified, it is a known problem of philosophy. To trying to solve this problem by appealing to a God who created an orderly universe merely ignores the problem. Plus, if it is the orderly universe that serves to solve this problem, I need only presuppose that instead. Objective Morality is also an unresolved philosophical problem. To truly be objective it must exist as a fundamental law of reality, free of anything for which it is it contingent upon. Objective morality cannot be rooted in an intelligent God for the same reason it cannot be rooted in humans, it would be subject to that entity for its truth. The argument fails because the same result could be achieved by presupposing an orderly universe, or a different God/s, or an undiscovered law of nature. That's the thing about presuppositions, they require no prior justification to accept.
Objective morality remains an unresolved issue in a godless philosophy! However, a godless worldview smacks of death! If there is no God, nothing really matters as long as death is the overall winner! If there is no God, everything is pointless as long as everything ends up in the realm of death! If there is no God, we are just moribund bodies! Philosophy is a question about life and death! However a godless answer is an apotheosis of death!
Your whole syllogism derives from the false presupposition that moral values could ever exist all alone by themselves! If there is no person to value, there is no one able to value! If there is no one able to value, there is no moral values at all! Therefore the validity of the moral values lies in the objectivity of an Absolute who values the reality! Only God could ever be such an Absolute! Only God could ever know everything! Only God could ever be totally independent of anything else! Only God could ever judge in a perfectly fair way! The validity of the moral values lies in the objectivity of the totally Absolute God Who values perfectly!
Dimitris Peiraias “If there is no person to value . . .” Is God the only person that does or ever could exist? Or is he the only person whose suffering or happiness you feel obliged to care about? To care about another person’s suffering, do you really need an infinite being suffering along with them? Or are you saying that we need God to account for moral rules that have nothing to do with other persons’ suffering/happiness (e.g. much of sexual and dietary morality)? In this case, I agree with you but am naturally unconcerned with such “morality” (until someone shows that there *is* a God). God, in your system, seems to be merely a competitor to the concerns we already care about.
I wish your comment was derived from a subconscious impulse to explore the truth! Truth is a reality which lies in an Absolute which is not dependent on anything else. Otherwise everything would have been a subjective perception with no universal validity! In such a case the lack of objectivity implies that reality would have been a quicksand that leads to irrational confusion and a constant state of uncertainty. However, reality is a certainty by definition! The real issue is that we have to realise the presence of such an Absolute on which reality is based! Only an Absolute, which is not dependent on anything else could ever be the stable base of comprehending the reality! Only an Absolute, which is totally free, is not dependent on anything else! Therefore, only a God Who is Free Love could ever be the Absolute Truth! Such a Truth unveils what is beyond all understanding! The Unknown and yet Known mystery of Truth is a revelation of Love which lies in Life's miracle! Knowing Truth is about experiencing the Uncreated God Who is Love! Love isn't about being confused in a constant uncertainty of egoistic alienation from the reality of the Other! Love is about an absolute Union of Persons without confusion or change or separation or division! Since forever, our God the eternal Father exists with His only-begotten Son and His Lifegiving Spirit! God is The Perfect and Absolute Love, The Power of Life! Jesus Christ the Son of God, by uniting man and God in His own one person, reopened the path for all people to have union with God. You need to make a choice between Love and uncertainty! I wish you Love for your Life! You may experience God's power and be wrapped in awe! You may be filled with God's love and be profoundly affected! You may be enlightened by God's light and emerge from any darkness! You may partake of God's life and live for real! May God's Life be your Life, so that you may experience Life that is Life to the full! God bless you and Live for real, my friend!
@@dimitrispeiraias in your opinion of if there is no god everything is pointless. That doesn’t mean people can’t give meaning to things and themselves. We can make things matter all on our own. You may need a god to make things matter, but that doesn’t mean everyone else needs it to have purpose.
23:14 That is such a laughably awful steelman you should be embarrassed for having published such a travesty. But I guess that's based on the same atheist caricature that shows up in every apologists' anecdote that is just an infinite loop of "Durrrrrr.... just matter and motion.... Durrrrrrr.... we're just meat machines... Durrrrrrrr." Even if we ignore that, your apologetic still fails on a number of levels, first and foremost you harp about the atheist not being able to justify their worldview, but last I checked the Christian worldview runs into the same epistemic dead end (or loop or infinite regress) as every other worldview. Claiming "God did it" isn't a justification, it's a cop out, and a circular one at that. And yes, every attempt at complete epistemic justification will necessarily end in circularity (or a brute fact, or infinite regress) that doesn't mean that choosing circularity solves the problem of epistemic justification. It still isn't justified. You're just arbitrarily claiming that your version of circularity is okay. It isn't. It's actually worse than a brute fact since with a brute fact you just have to assume the truth of _one_ thing, whereas with epistemic circularity you have to assume the truth of _two or more_ things. Another defeater for the TAG is the logical Euthyphro Dilemma. (Is God necessary for logic or is logic necessary for God?) If you chose the 2nd horn, then it's obvious that God isn't grounding logic. If you choose the 1st horn then you're suggesting that logically prior to God instantiating logic, God did and didn't exist. (No law of noncontradiction) And if you try the moral Euthyphro copout (It's God's _nature._ ) you still haven't solved anything as nothing is grounding _why_ it is that God's nature is _necessarily_ logical. (and how you know that) Trying to ground that runs you smack dab back into the Munchhausen Trilemma again. (epistemically invalid circularity, infinite regress or brute fact) And of course one could also just contest whatever it is the TAG asserts as being obviously true (that we have knowledge, intelligibility, or whatever else the claim happens to be) and actually force the theist to _justify_ that claim rather than just accepting it. Because it's obvious that we _believe_ we have knowledge, intelligibility, or whatever else the TAG clams, but actually _justifying_ that premise is an entirely different discussion. And without justification of *all* premises, the argument doesn't hold. And sure, the theist may claim that I haven't demonstrated that I can even use logic and reason so my arguments don't hold, I'll remind them that they haven't justified the use of logic and reason yet either. (at least not if they're judging their own worldview by the same standards they are judging everyone else's) That said, the complaint is just a disguised genetic fallacy (a form of ad hom where the argument is ignored because of who is presenting it instead of the merits of the argument) and the tired old cop out of "you're borrowing from my worldview" isn't even relevant since it's an internal critique and I'm granting you your entire worldview for the sake of argument. (That's how internal critiques work.)
If I understand correctly, transcendental categories are coherent, contingent, universal and independent of the human mind (logic, meaning, numbers, shapes, meaning and so on) and the way TAG justifies them is by saying that they must be deliberately created, because coherency can only be the result of intelligent design from an intending mind, it arguea from the impossibility of the contrary. Coherency can't come out of incoherency itself, just like you can't get something out of nothing, existence out of nonexistence etc. So there's only two options, is the coherency and interlocking of universals intentional or unintentional? Well, atheists deny the idea that there's a creator, and since there's no creator in their world view, there's no agent that can intend, so therefore there is no intention behind the transcendental coherency, and therefore the atheist must take the position, among other unjustifiable positions, that coherence can indeed emerge out of the lack of coherence, that order emerges by itself out of chaos, that intention can emerge by accident, and so on. Or the atheist can say that they don't need justification, but he would be being arbitrary, and lose the debate because he can't justify his position, which is what you come to do in a debate.
@@PabloCardonaMusic _" they must be deliberately created, because coherency can only be the result of intelligent design from an intending mind, "_ And that assertion is never justified, merely asserted. So the rest of the argument fails. _"Coherency can't come out of incoherency itself, "_ Another unjustified assertion. _" you can't get something out of nothing, "_ Another unjustified assertion. _"existence out of nonexistence"_ Another unjustified assertion. You're simply appealing to intuition. Intuition is often wrong.
@@ajhieb 🤦♂️ but IT IS justified, I literally said it's from the impossibility of the contrary. "incoherency is/can be coherent" is a self refuting circular statement. It's like saying "Words have no meaning" while appealing to the meaning of words to say that sentence, thus refuting it. Or like saying "Knowledge is impossible" while making a claim that requires you to have knowledge about what the words in that sentence even mean, thus proving knowledge is possible. Ironically you use the word "intuition" which is a metaphysical whose existence you can't justify or account for in your worldview, where everything is meaningless matter with chemical reactions.
@@PabloCardonaMusic _"I literally said it's from the impossibility of the contrary. "_ That's _literally_ not a justification. It's just another (unjustified) claim. _" "incoherency is/can be coherent" is a self refuting circular statement. "_ So what? That doesn't prove or justify anything relevant. Not to mention is moving the goalposts from your earlier unjustified assertion: _"Coherency can't come out of incoherency itself"_ _"It's like saying "Words have no meaning" while appealing to the meaning of words to say that sentence, thus refuting it."_ No. It _would_ be like that if that was analogous to your original assertion that: _"Coherency can't come out of incoherency itself, "_ but it isn't analogous, so it isn't like that. _" Or like saying "Knowledge is impossible" while making a claim that requires you to have knowledge about what the words in that sentence even mean, thus proving knowledge is possible. "_ The definition of knowledge as laid out by presuppers (requiring total epistemic certainty) is impossible. That doesn't mean I can't still make knowledge claims. It just means your definition is broken. _"Ironically you use the word "intuition" which is a metaphysical whose existence you can't justify or account for in your worldview, where everything is meaningless matter with chemical reactions."_ You're making more knowledge claims you can't justify.
@@PabloCardonaMusic Furthermore... As for the use of "intuition" you're the one that needs to justify it in your worldview (which you haven't yet) because you're the one trying to (fallaciously) make an argument from intuition, not me. I have no need, nor do I claim any intuition in my worldview. Again, I'm just pointing out the laughable bad job you're doing with your "justification." As for your original claim: _"transcendental categories are coherent, contingent, universal and independent of the human mind"_ You've yet to demonstrate these categories actually exist, and that things with these specific properties exist within the categories you've defined. So literally _nothing_ about this first claim has been justified yet. Yes you did go on to say _"TAG justifies them is by saying that they must be deliberately created,"_ I can "justify" ghosts by saying they must be dead people. Does that make ghosts real? No, of course not. Learn how justification _actually_ works and get back to me. Oh wait... there's more! _" because coherency can only be the result of intelligent design from an intending mind,"_ Yet you provide no justification for this assertion either. Again, this is just broadly stated as if it's a brute fact. I don't accept that it's a fact, brute or otherwise. Again, this is the problem with anything that relies on the TAG. It's fool's gold. It _seems_ airtight to the uninformed mind because it claims to be airtight. It _claims_ a lot of things, but it doesn't deliver on the justification on those claims, so it can be dismissed just like any other Unjustified claim, like Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster. But that's not all that's wrong with it, that's just the foundational stuff that doesn't let it get off the ground. There's plenty of other problems down the road too, so by all means, keep coming back with more claims, and I'll help you dig that hole a little deeper.
I keep coming back to this video about once a year to refresh me on the argument - I think this is the best version of the argument available on TH-cam, it's concise, clear and easy to understand. Very well done! Please accept this small donation as a thank you for the video and congratulations on your engagement!
I would love to hear a part 2 to this video where you expand on the latter part, a concise version of the argument why the Orthodox Christian view / theology of God necessarily follows from the transcendental argument for God. You could summarize this argument shortly at the beginning and then follow up with why Orthodox theology follows an why it's the best and most accurate worldview to explain reality etc.
In any case, this video has been very important to me, thank you again and God bless!
EDIT: Listening through this again, you do mention the reasons as to why Orthodox Christian theology is the most coherent and only true paradigm for reality and you have certainly talked very deeply on those topics (essence energy distinction, logos, nous etc.) in other videos, but I still think it would be helpful to have all that in a condensed form, like another 30-45min video, part 2 of this one, where you concisely explain all the reasons as to why the Orthodox Christian paradigm is the only true one following from TAG. Just an idea for an video for you, I'm sure you don't lack for those, but thought I'd mention it in case you would find it interesting to try and condense some of those very complex theological concepts into a concise form using philosophical language to make it more approachable to atheists etc.
Apologies for the long comment.
Don't sweat it, man. We can tell you're passionate. As a matter of fact, though this is seemingly unrelated, I'm actually going to go to an orthodox church this week and see if I want to become orthodox, since the theology makes more sense to me. I'll update soon, if I don't update in a month, then someone please remind me😂
@@kazumakiryu157 Glory to God! I'm not sure why you commented under my comment, but I'm very happy to hear about that nonetheless! I'm sure you will feel at home at the Orthodox Church, I'm not sure of your background, but when I went the first time I felt right away that this is ancient living faith compared to the Finnish Lutheran churches where I had gone as a kid, which felt modern and disconnected. Anyway, I'd be happy to hear of your experience afterwards and God bless!
@@Ethnarches to be honest, I have no idea as well. But thank you for the kind words. God bless.
Why would you want a refresher on a fallacious debunked argument?
@@torquemadatheapostate8768 Go on, debunk it.
This argument is what converted me from Atheism to believing in God back in 2018.
Wow. Powerful statement. I'm just curious, were you very well studied in science and philosophy before you converted. Would love details! Thank you! Glad you are a citizen of heaven now!
That is hilarious
I ceased being an atheist when I realised engaging with the sprachspiel of theists was futile. Discussing the mythology of the ancient Hebrews is another ball game. I am now an agnostic.
@@Simon.the.Likeable That statement makes no sense, you stopped not believing in a god due to the obnoxiousness of theists? like what?
@@bob-e5z No, it was because theists could arrange pre-existing words into sentences to form their syllogisms. The words existed already so their syllogisms regarding the untestable could be built. Engaging in this form of sport produced no results of worth for me so I chose "I don't know" instead. They don't know just like me but they enjoy the game so much they still play it. I don''t care.
Meanwhile the mythology of the ancient Hebrews remains as viable as any other mythology. The difference is the Seventh Law of Noah which makes them your judges, no thanks. (They have already built the Supreme Court of Mankind in preparation for their rule .Ben Gurion spoke about it in his Life Magazine interview.)
2:40 TAG - The Transcendental Argument For the existence of God (The Orthodox Christian God)
5:09 Cornelius Van Til
7:48 Can you Prove [non-material thing] in a material way?
9:05 A priori Deduction vs Induction [Sense-Data] ---> Deduction
11:13 Paradigmatic Level
14:27 "It's Self-Evident" is it? Why is it self evident?
16:04 Getting your opponent to see The Paradigm Level Thinking.
17:10 Assuming God begs the question? Wrong.
18:58 Fundamentally Circular.
*Theories of Truth*
19:44 True because It Corresponds To The World
20:44 True because It Is Coherent.
29:11 You have to start with assumptions in order to accept some proof as valid and other proof as invalid. How do you know the proof you are accepting is valid?
31:33 Generalist Argument for Deism
32:42 How do you account for
Truth?
Reason?
Meaning?
These are essential for Life.
34:04 Simple, Singular, Essence.
1. Simple, Concentric Circles.
35:18 Source of and Beyond
Hinduism - Brahma
Islam - God
Paganism - Creation/Matter
Panpsychism - Universal Mind
Dialectics
37:56 _God History and Dialectic_
38:23 Essence Energy Distinction
You don't completely know David Patrick Harry
You do feel his energies when you interact with him
41:48 Filioque Di-ad
I’m so drawn to orthodox Christianity because of people I’ve observed who are and are actually LIVING out the faith.
Jennifer i would recommand you to watch father spyridon bailey a great man of God. GBU
what do you mean by living?
@@randominternetguy1499 I think u mean “what do you mean by LIVING?”
@@randominternetguy1499 probably something similar as this:
th-cam.com/video/ClGKmklPHns/w-d-xo.html
I mean, you could find this in any faith..
lol ive listened to Jay's TAG and related vids so many times, i love it cause i never heard it explained like that and never heard it explained so well and never heard the proof articulated out like that. so good. thanks for making a vid about it too, this is great
Thanks Annie for checking it out. Glad you liked it. God bless 🙏
Frank turek is another i enjoy. He handles confrontation with non believers expertly and watertight. When it comes to debate amongst Christian’s on wether orthodoxy or another practice is more accurate it’s hard to beat Jay.
Proof of what? Do you mean when Jay proved he is a moron?
@@LogosBKC So Jays meat is hard to beat, huh?
@@jerrylong6238 i get that you either find it funny/silly or you’re legitimately a hasbara type antagonist . Regardless, its rather alarming to see you waste time with unsolicited flippancy and insults rather than offer anything of substance within a serious discussion. I pray since you found this video, that its message ultimately finds you. Cheers
"Atheist: Hmmm, well that does make sense. I've never heard anybody argue for God that way. Can you tell me more about the Christian God? I'm interested in learning who he is." This made me chuckle more than it should, for obvious reasons.
Keep up the great work enjoying your material!
I appreciate that, thanks for checking out the video. God bless 🙏
Cause it was quite ridiculous yes
@@guyjosephs5654 tips fedora
Thats exactly why people dont use just philosophy to proove things anymore, you can do mental gymnastics to proove absolutely anything, but you cant show the archeological strata the millions of hebrews supposedly left on their forty-year trip that should have lasted a week..
@@rodrigorafael.9645 to my knowledge, that trek occurred through a desert. How can you expect to find archeological strata; in a desert; thousands of years after the fact. Not to mention that even if you did, carbon dating (I'm presuming this might be the method people would think to use first) man made objects is unreliable because the date of manufacture supercedes the formation of the material itself when analyzing data for historical timeline placement. Not to mention that even if this data were available and reliable, you're still presupposing a world view through which you're going to interpret the data, because the world itself is theory laden.
Great summation of TAG. Will be using it for reference.
Thanks brother. God bless 🙏
Thanks for these videos, they are such a great gift. You present these ideas in a very professional yet simple manner, something not very common on youtube. I have been attending an Orthodox Church and it seems to be growing with younger generations. With hope in Christ, let our faith and works send the gospel's message to the ends of the Earth. Amen
Thank you very much. That means a lot. Amen. God bless 🙏
@@ChurchoftheEternalLogos I was sent a link to this video by Kyle, that dishonest apologist TH-camr that constantly lies to his followers.
I suffered through it and was left seriously underwhelmed by your argument.
The entire thing is pretentious word salad filled with assertions presuppositions all wrapped up in one giant special pleading and begging the question fallacy.
I realize the your verbose style of stringing long complicated words together might fool people that do not understand those words but to those of us that do it is just pretentious waffle.
Right of the bat you fail because you assert that it is the responsibility of Atheists to provide an alternative explanation to your assertions about our existence.
Throughout the video you constantly misrepresent what Atheism is (just like Kyle) which is fundamentally dishonest and you should be deeply ashamed of yourself for being so deceptive.
Your position 'stands or falls' on its own merits and the views or opinions of those that disagree with you are utterly irrelevant to your argument.
It is just a poor quality false dichotomy fallacy.
"If I can prove the Atheist wrong then by default I will be right"
TAG is just pure nonsense, you could apply it to ANY worldview or ANY god and dishonestly come to the same conclusion to justify any worldview.
Claiming that it provides proof and evidence for 'your' god is just a special pleading and conceit.
You asking Atheists to stand away from the window from a paradigmatic perspective is rich irony from someone who has clearly never done that himself. Hypocrisy.
You state 17 min in that TAG is begging the question which is the only true thing you said but you then insert another false dichotomy fallacy by asserting that the Atheist will do the same and that by proving them wrong you will prove yourself right.
This is dishonest as I have already pointed out that your argument stands or falls on its own merits and the opinions and world view of others is irrelevant.
Therefore TAG is just a begging the question fallacy and can be dismissed as having zero value.
Your reference to Gödel is spurious, you are comparing abstract concepts that we accept as real (but still accept as abstract) like numbers and reason with a god that 'you' are asserting is a real thing. If you want to believe in an abstract god that has no substance then it might work but as soon as you assert that this god 'actually' exists in some form other that as a concept in your brain then the argument collapses.
By this argument you would need to consign Jesus to a mere abstract concept.
Sloppy
20 min; Coherency theory of truth. Another giant begging the question fallacy and another false dichotomy fallacy. Atheists DO NOT offer an alternative they simply say that they do not believe you, nothing more.
This is just dishonest.
21.23 min. """the Christian world view is the most coherent world view that exists""""
Begging the question and special pleading fallacies. Claims are not evidence.
Debate with an Atheist.
Wow, now this really was appalling, disingenuous, dishonest and utterly puerile, shame on you.
It is once again a false dichotomy fallacy wrapped in assertions and presuppositions.
Even hypothetically assuming that your imaginary Atheist could not justify anything on your list it does not mean that 'your' god is real.
There are NO presuppositions in Atheism, more dishonest misrepresentation.
You cannot use Gödel here as you are arguing apples with oranges.
Replace 'your' god with universe farting Pixies and your terrible argument would reach the conclusion that the Pixies created everything.
The last point on your debate is just your wet dream and is never going to happen.
Beyond sloppy and juvenile arrogance.
""'My god is logos""
Baseless assertion
Final Slide Implications of TAG
What a load on nonsensical arrogant waffle.
"All the other gods are really 'my' god"
Strange since another orthodox told me that they are all demons.
This entire slide again is a begging the question and special pleading fallacy.
You have all your circles but have utterly failed to demonstrate the dot in the middle.
So to wrap it up your argument fails on many level but the main one is trying to use Gödel by comparing abstract concepts like reason and numbers with something that would need to actually exist in some form beyond the abstract in order to be relevant to Christianity.
What a waste of an hour of my life.
This is some really poor quality epistemology and just a bunch self justification.
You're an orthodox in mind and in heart. Thank you for not being arrogant.
Thank you brother. God bless 🙏
@@ChurchoftheEternalLogos Are those slides of yours available somewhere?
@@ChurchoftheEternalLogos What is the intro music to this?!
I know this video is a few years old, but I’m new to the TAG argument and this has been invaluable. Thank you so much, God bless you.
This is so good, I’ve learned so much from this channel. This guy deserves like 500k subscribers for all this good content, does he still make?
What a truly great comprehensive collection of materials! I will be using it myself, thank you so much! Many greetings from an ortho-bro in Germany!
Jimbob brought me here
Subscribed
thank you brother!
Really. I love his work. What was it from?
@@ChurchoftheEternalLogos Just a few DMs we went back n forth with eachother on. He sent me your page specifically and recommended your work.
exact same story here!
Wow. It all clicked when I watched this video - amazing stuff. Definitely gonna rewatch every so often!
Well done... and great responses to critics below. Thumbs up! God bless
David, this was excellent. Punchy and loaded with wisdom. God bless and thank you.
I think this is the best version of TAG out here on TH-cam, definitely the easiest to understand, very well done! Please expand on the last part more if you can, the part about why the Orthodox Christian view / theology of God follows from TAG. You did well for that as well, but I think it could be expanded. Also you don't mention that the theology of many protestants have the same absolute divine simplicity mistake as they have in Catholic theology, but that's not a major omission as it wasn't the focus of this video.
Thank you very much for a clear well worded version of the argument, God bless!
EDIT: Came back to the video once again and noticed autocorrect had butchered my original comment with random Finnish words... Sorry about that, fixed. I come back to this video about once every year to refresh my mind about the argument.
This was amazing. Subbed, going to rewatch and make notes on this. Thank you Brother.
Brilliant explanation. The problem becomes when indifferent people stay at "I dont know" and "I will never know", they may have a buffet type world-view but they hate the idea that there is a single Truth and Faith.
You may have encountered some that “hate” the idea, but that doesn’t translate to everyone that doesn’t believe or doesn’t know-right?
I dint know is a valid answer. My admission of not knowing , doesn't make yourself right by default.
Why do you need faith if you have truth? (and indeed, as the misguided gentleman in the video states, "proof") lol
You totally nailed Richard Strawkins
I actually want to prematurely apologize for the above comment. I'm not actually a troll, I just find these sorts of fantasy debates a bit silly, an almost nothing like an actual conversation one is likely to have. But, I did appreciate the content of this video.
There's a quote I've heard "if Richard Dawkins has an Alabaman accent, he would've been nothing more than the village screamer."
W O R D S A L A D
I appreciate the PowerPoint style of the video, it’s great reading along. Thanks!
@@CHURCHISAWESUM
Too much dressing. 😂
seriously? Calling something you don't understand wordsalad.
@@AquinasBased Oh, I think they understood what was said. They just think it's BS, which often happens when the conclusion is presupposed. If I want to make a cake I don't start with the unknowable, I start with the proper ingredients in the correct proportions which have been tested many times to end up with a successful cake. I may even watch a video demonstrating how a cake was made. You can't 'prove' God. No one can. Most atheists don't want tortured reasoning, we want a demonstration or a way to test the hypothesis.
@@AquinasBased I understand what the video is saying: just another god of the gaps fallacy with complex philosophy on It = Word salad
@@pianetaerrante96 Do you know what God of the gaps fallacy is? lol
meanwhile I’m stuck talking to people who affirm subjective morality and objective morality in the same breath 😭
Fantastic presentation! I always felt the evidentialism somehow was like “believing in God from an atheists perspective”, which made all of the arguments feel empty. This argument is a game changer. You can’t deny this argument without denying your own self as necessary for argumentation, therefore this argument somehow takes an existential point of view rather than a rationalistic one.
If I'm not mistaken this implies that the immaterial precedes the material, and that the personal precedes the impersonal.
Correct. The immaterial does precede the material, and personal the impersonal. Why? Because the Logos, the Son of God the Father, the Divine Mind of God, existed from eternity, though he was begotten it was before causation and time. Therefore, their personhood, the Trinity proceeds all, and it is this personhood of God that we interact with and know our God. Unlike other traditions who posit just a simple unknowable, nonpersonal essence.
Awesome and insightful video. Thank you!
Great breakdown of the TAG argument!
Long story short: nobody can justify their presuppositions, therefore God! Wow! Amazing!
It's all so baby's first philosophical mind-screw.
Teenager blown away by his first 100 level philosophy class, totally convinced that since he never thought about any of this no one else did either kind of stuff.
Remember that this "argument" should be the "checkmate" on atheism.
Its a checkmate if you don't know how to play chess.
Strawman. The video argues that Christians and Platonists can justify their presuppositions, while atheists cannot.
It is not merely stating “therefore God” but rather presenting a case for why certain worldviews provide a coherent foundation for logic and reason, whereas atheism struggles to do so.
@@wjd_iii I dont get how a made up unfalsifiable claim can be a coherent foundation for logic and reason. By this reasoning saying "Thunders are made by Zeus" is more coherent than "I dont know where thunders come from".
If I have an unfalsifiable answer to something we dont know I dont have a more coherent world view of someone that just says that he doesnt know.
Also I dont see why atheism struggles on proving axioms of logic and reason when you can just see that they are sound in every possible scenario and everything built from them works and is sound itself.
Finally the TAG argument is based on too much unfalsifiable hypothesis ad hoc: axioms must come from something under them (cause I said so), these things are trascendentals (cause I said so) and they cant just be, they also must come from something else (cause I said so) and this something is God, which is also the only exception to the hypothesis that "everything must come from something" that I used since now, making the argument circular.
This is why I think is just another God of the gaps: there must be a justification to axioms cause the fact that they work is not sufficent, we dont know what this justification is so it must be god.
@@pianetaerrante96 It’s not that we lack a justification for axioms. Rather, the Triune God of Eastern Orthodoxy provides the most coherent explanation for the existence of metaphysical absolutes (logic, identity, mathematics, etc). Claiming that atheism is “sound in every possible scenario” does not justify how you know that to be true. This claim is not only unfalsifiable, it's also literally incorrect because atheism can't explain the existence of immutable concepts like mathematics through evolutionary processes like natural selection.
Finally i understand!Best ever explanation!
So, when you assume God exists, you can build a logically coherent argument and worldview.
When you assume God doesn’t exist, your arguments are necessarily logically inconsistent and your worldview is fantasy/delusion.
That’s the power of faith.
Its amazing how the refuse to acknowledge this.
When you pretend you are talking to god and can't tell that it's just your imagination, you're psychotic. Get out. Stop supporting the brainwashing of children and mentally ill adults.
@@haywardjeblomey6505 does someone hear a few too many voices in their head?
@@iantaylor95 People who think they are talking to god are just hallucinating. Psychosis from brainwashing is absolute. It's sad that you pretend to be a man when you have imaginary friends. Real men don't play with stuffed animals.
@@haywardjeblomey6505 "Real men" lol anyone who lives by little rules in sayings is laughable, you have no idea. What do "real men" do? Do they do what good people already tend to do?
What are you doing exactly? In this world here. Do you live to try to belittle people? Only making yourself seem like you have a small speck of understanding that only lives up to definitions of sayings his daddy taught him. Do YOU know what you're doing here? No one does. At the least, in your circle of understanding, there has to be reasons for things. If you don't believe in God or a Creator that's cool, stop trying to prove everyone's as crazy or crazier than you and just get on with your life and stop spreading negativity.
Be a "real man" lol
This is an excellent presentation. I will need to refer back to it often.
Amazing summary of this essential topic! I hope you don't ban me for saying this, but a hugely overlooked evidential argument to follow the transcendental argument is the overwhelming proof the earth is measurably flat and stationary. Aside from the many verses in scripture that plainly say the earth is fixed and does not move - Job 38:14 states, "The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment." We can see way too far for the earth to be a globe of ANY size. And, as Jay Dyer likes to indirectly admit, "Space is fake and gay".
Jay doesn't actually disbelieve in Space. It's a meme
@@orthodoxfinland5056 Who could not believe in space? It's all around us. It just happens to be contained within the firmament - which is why we enjoy a pressurized atmosphere. What's beyond the firmament? Maybe the "waters above"?
Jay knows that NASA and the moon landings are bogus - and has stated that he leans towards the geocentrism taught by Robert A. Sungenis. However, there is no measurable curve. Give Jay some time...
Using your flat earth model please explain the grand procession of the equinox, I'm interested how deep stupid gets.
Please do not confuse symbolic thinking with materialistic thinking. In our everyday experience as conscious agents the earth certainly is flat and in the center, but materially it is absolutely not and the evidence for that is overwhelming. This doesn't contradict anything that is written in the Bible.
Earth is Flat spread the Truth
Two things:
1. Why do the 'trancendentals' need to be justified? What benefit is there is justifying them?
2. How exactly does a god justify them? And what unigue quality does a singular god posess, that nothing else does, that allows it to justify these trancendentals? (I'm also not quite sure what you mean by 'essence', I would appreciate if someone could explain that to me)
1. Everything has to be philosophically justified. The benefit is figuring out what must be the case due to logic and reason. Why would anyone want to have an entirely incoherent contradictory world view and then criticize others on the grounds of things the cant justify to exist or be true in the first place.
2. Transcendentals are in the mind, but they are objective so not just subjective for every person's mind. Clearly the preexist the ordering of matter, that is why matter has the objective patterns it has i.e. fractals, geometry, and so on. Therefore they have to exist in a divine mind, God. Then the debate gets into the essence of God which is a whole other bag of worms to debate.
If your first principles aren’t justified, then none of your conclusions can be justified either. Therefore, if you cannot justify your presuppositions, then you are left with relativism and nihilism, unable to critique any other position in an objective way.
@@s.larson5632 Amen. 🙏
@@ChurchoftheEternalLogos the problem with this argument is that, while it in theory proposes an internally consistent explaination, this explaination is not proven to be the only or the best explaination. To use a god to explain these pre material froms is in my mind no better than using a god to explain material phenomena that are not well understood(e.g. the sound of thunder comes from Thor's hammer).
Kurt Godel Incompleteness theory. Sorry but you're clearly wrong. This is done WITH EVERY FORMAL SYSTEM OF LOGIC. Can't prove reason without rational arguments. Can't prove numbers without numbers. Can't prove the existence of language without language. You prove those things without starting them then we can talk.
On an completely unrelated note, it would be cool if you did a video on why Christ was not immediately recognized by his apostles and those who new him after His Resurrection. It is one of the most enigmatic elements of the story, and I suspect it contains many jewels of edification to be uncovered. I haven't seen anyone give a very satisfactory understanding of this event. God bless and keep it up.
Please read Luke 24:16 "they were kept from recognizing him", as well as Luke 24:31-32 《Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him,and he disappeared from their sight.32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”》
Freedom is a prerequisite for love! You could neither love by force nor be loved forcibly!
Where there is no freedom there is no love!
If they were forced by their senses to accept the power of the resurrected Christ they wouldn't have had the chance to recognise Him because of their love in their burning hearts! For this reason they were kept from recognizing him in order to open their eyes as a result of a burning heart! This is how faith works ever since!
P.S. your comment is not on a completely unrelated tone! Nobody would ever be forced by any proof to believe in God because what really matters is loving God in a burning heart! If anyone is forced by his senses to believe in God, he will not have the chance to freely love God!
I can't find your comment on Farrell and whether he was aware of TAG. I don't know if he would have described it the same way, but the basis of the approach is spelled out in his series on "God, History, & Dialectic" where he explains what went wrong with reliance on the theological cultural paradigm of Augustinism.
Would love a simplified video for teens, that also points to why the E.O best shows the way
@i-love-cats75What kind of logic?
I am an Atheist and I have heard this argument before. Several years ago, Phil Mason and Eric Hovind debated this and other related ideas. I will go back and reexamine their debate to see if I misunderstood anything. But last time I watched it, I was persuaded in favor of atheism.
I recommend the Greg Bahnsen vs Gordon Stein debate. I looked up what debate you were talking about and was pretty underwhelmed. I had never heard of either gentlemen.
@@DirtyHairy01 , Using your flat earth model, please explain the grand procession of the equinox. I'm interested how deep stupid gets.
Im not suprised the recentdebate between oppy and fraser showed how fraser had better points but regardless their initial discussion about argument was great and generally beliefs are preconcieved notions and argumenta cant convince the peraon being argued against only their own curiosity. The better thing to do woukd be to read. Bexause that is true curiosity.
James Morss whether ur an atheist or not that’s a stupid statement
IndyDefense Who created God? No one, He’s Eternal. If someone did create God, that person would be God. It’s a bizarre question.
Apophatic theology in an argument m (“I am not convinced God is evil. I am not convinced God is limited..”) avoids adding presuppositions within the TAG framework. It’s similar to the atheist who says “I am not the one making a claim so I don’t need to provide evidence.”
Very useful video. Love it!
I appreciate it, thanks for checking it out. God bless 🙏
Great work. Thank you for putting it together for us.
I hope my dumb mind gets this! God bless and greetings from Orthodox Greece.
I came here for enlightenment: what are the laws of logic? how can we understand them from more fundamental elements? I'm leaving as clueless as I came. It seems to me that it's better to presuppose those laws than to create yet another unexplainable entity to ground them.
Divine conceptualism you need a divine mind to ground the laws of logic and other transcendental categories in
@@ScootTooner I don't see how. Positing yet another mind has no explanatory power whatsoever
@@skeptcodelaws of logic are conceptual , absolute and universals. Concepts are immaterial and grounded in minds. The universal mind of the christian god grounds logic and truth.
@@spilledbeans4226 I mean that's just another claim. Begging the question and special pleading. You need to demonstrate that
@@davidspencer343TAG demonstrates this. Take a philosophy class.
So thankful for this video. Probably the most important video in my subscriptions. Can you please share your reading list at some point? Preferably in order of importance.
Thank you brother, glad it was helpful. Yea I'll do that someday. Hope all is well. God bless 🙏
IMO the TAG is the best argument for God.I'm going to have to listen to this again, and I want to read that book because I'm still having trouble understanding how panentheism, panexperialism and some form of neoplatonism are not right.
I understand that some realities must be experienced and can't be dialectically explained from a finite point of view (obviously Infinity is one example) and True knowledge requires grounding; it seems to require a language built into or around us that reflex ultimate Truth and ultimate Language (the Word)
although God is outside time, I do subscribe to past eternalism because I find it absurd to believe that time "began" and creation EX "nihilo" seems absurd because the idea of stepping outside of reality into a nothing (and by this I don't mean no-thing) to observe reality seems ridiculous; reality has to come from God or eternally be a part of God imo; there is only One Infinite yet irreducible uncaused Everything that must The self-aware I for any type of grounding to exist; it also seems rational that i, the finite self, yet which must be a subset or interconnected with actual entities for relationship to occur end time; i (the "nous"?) must be aware of experience & irrreducible too for finite grounding; it's obviously logically impossible for a collection of particles to claim to know anything about the objective world or that there presuppositions of reality and language are adequate, especially since adaptation rewards fitness, not truth; and we continually have revolutions in physics which changes the way we think about reality.
anyway, I could probably go on and on but this is long enough so I will free listen to your video and hopefully take a look at that book soon... I'm sure it's just me not quite understanding how this can't be right.
thanks for your deep insight and your videos, they are very helpful
@John Buckner - You mention/speak a lot in a short space here. I'm not going to try and address/reply to all your thoughts as thought would be a undertaking. But reading what you wrote I can't help but think that perhaps a relevant component that is not mentioned here is the idea of apophaticism. It is a crucial component in the orthodox understanding of reality/epistemology.
Also, out of curiosity: Have you read Fr Justin Popovich's article "St Isaac the Syrian and the theory of knowledge" ??
@@RollOut82 I just remember that apophatic theology Is a claim that God (Or the essence of God?) can only be described by what it is not?
No sorry I haven’t read anything by that author.
Why is it that I cannot safely cross a busy street while actively disbelieving in the reliability of induction, but can safely cross while disbelieving in your god? Could it be that your god is an unnecessary presupposition?
“Safely” doing something does not provide an epistemological justification for it. I can safely cross the street without believing atoms exist too.
How do you know that you cannot safely cross the street without believing in the reliability of induction?
Thanks!
TAG overlooks that logic and morality can be grounded in human experience or the nature of reality itself, without needing a deity. By dismissing these alternative explanations, TAG fails to convincingly demonstrate that God is necessary-it merely asserts it without substantial evidence.
Low lQ take , grounding logic and truth in human experience is incoherent. If you mean human minds that is also false because human minds are not universal
You’re only asserting that; prove it logically
I could say, you could ground it in anything at all, A unicorn foot eg.
That doesn't mean that the arguments good
Again it's just an assertion
Im open to hear it out though, just attempt to prove your position
@@mudpuppin3tt3s Grounding morality and logic in something observable like human experience or nature isn’t really arbitrary like grounding them in a unicorn or a deity because human experience and the natrual world are tangible, observable, and consistent parts of our reality. Unlike abstract or supernatrual assertions that rely on faith.
Grounding these concepts in human nature and natrual phenomena is based on evidence and reasoned observation, making it a more rational approach than something supernatrual.
I’d also argue that morality is a human construct that is shaped by historical, cultural, and social contexts rather than something a deity has imposed on us. As our society evolves so too does our understanding of morality
@@spilledbeans4226ad hominem. Would your creator(imaginary) want you acting this way?
@@ExpertContrarian i cant even see the comment your referencing, yes saying true things is good. So if you act like a r 3 t4 r d i can call you that , cry more
I came here because of J Money Dyer to get a better understanding of the transcendental argument. Thank you 🙏 cheers and God bless.
Good video, thank you!
Thank you for checking it out. God bless 🙏
Jay Dyer: will scream at you if u dont understand his argument
David: formally apologises for not putting the umlauts on someone's name
At the 1:10 mark there is already a glaring error. There is no such thing as "the atheistic worldview". There is not one worldview that all atheist follow nor is atheism a worldview. It's a negation, a response to a single issue. That is not a worldview.
It is a worldview that asserts that god does not exist.
Great discussion. New to this channel. Saw you on Friar Deacon's channel. Dr. Frank Turek has a great book against atheists called I Don't have enough faith to be an atheist. Very good
I don't get it. How did you prove God's existence? Sure, you can presuppose him, but that isn't 'proving' something, right? What is your definition of proving something?
I don't think that Godel's incompleteness theorem (not theory, theorem) works the way it is presented here.
The first incompleteness theorem says that any axiomatic system satisfying a few basic requirements (i.e. axiomatic systems with any real-world utility for analysis) will allow statements that cannot be proven true or false in that system. I suspect this is not the theorem being referenced in the video because it only referenced unprovability rather than the soundness of a system.
The second incompleteness theorem says that no axiomatic system satisfying a few basic requirements (same sort of thing as before) cannot be proven to be consistent (meaning free of contradiction) within that axiomatic framework. That is, you can never be absolutely sure you didn't accidentally sneak a contradiction into your axioms.
That is not "assuming the existence of numbers to prove the existence of numbers". The existence of numbers can be justified from more basic set-theory axioms that don't assume the existence of numbers from the start. What we are assuming is that those set-theory axioms don't include a contradiction that we have missed over the past century or so.
Quick question: Is there a book that lays this argument out in more detail and in way that's suitable for lay persons like me to understand it? 🤔
I too am wondering this. I understood some of this video but it still confused me
Van tills “the defense of faith”
Dr. Frank Turek's book- I don't have enough faith to be an atheist is a good one. You can watch his seminars on it on his channel CrossExamined. Very good and entertaining
I've Been recommended Dr. Jason Lisle's "Ultimate Proof of Creation" and Also some papers on this argument by dr. Russ Manion and Dr. Fr. Deacon Ananias Sorem (Erik Sorem).
Also Bahnsen
TAG is not begging the question since it is a transcendental argument, the problem is rather that it is not clear that the Triune God of the bible is the precondition for all that the things the TAG's advocates claim.
I tried this with an atheist and he asked why he needed to justify any of these things. What's the answer to this?
Good question!
Remember that if you're try this argument in real life, then part of your anticipated defense is the claim that every worldview *must* contain unproven assumptions.
Seems like maybe there's a few weak points here, hm?
If they can´t justify any of those things then they are arbitrary, do not matter and do not exist.
@@nervouskrystof Oh wow.
Yeah, try that one out.
Tell people they need to argue non-contradiction into existence because otherwise its not real.
They'll find that super convincing, I bet.
@@paulsmart4672 did you even watch the video?
@@nervouskrystof The whole argument falls on its foundation. Logic and Math, and so on, are human inventions. Nothing more or less. We can justify them easily, we made them, that is why they exist.
Logic is a method we humans invented to draw conclusions, we invented it based on what we observe in the physical world. Which is why it is objectively true. Nothing strange about that, it is objectively true because we based it on objectively true observations. Such as, we cannot make two opposite choices at the same time.
Math is a language we humans invented based on observations of the physical world. We can for example see round shapes in nature, we can also see two of things, and three of things. 1,2 3 are just words and concepts we humans invented to talk about the physical world.
I suppose my question would be this:
Why is presupposing God’s existence to explain God logically valid, but presupposing any of the transcendental categories to prove the transcendental categories, not logically valid?
Why is the circular reasoning given a concession in this case?
And before somebody on either side replies with some sarcastic comment, don’t bother, because I won’t respond. I’m trying hard to understand this argument.
The argument is claiming without the presupposition of God the possibility of knowledge is impossible because knowledge, like logic, is metaphysical. Circularity is the problem for all worldviews, same as an atheist presupposing empiricism despite empiricism being dependent on transcendental categories without justification of their existence. Therefore, justification moves from foundationalism to coherency (theory of truth) given that which is being analyzed is a worldview and therefore not empirical. The argument is making a positive claim due to the impossibility of the opposite. Therefore logically sound argument whether one agrees with it or not.
@@ChurchoftheEternalLogos Thank you for the reply! I appreciate your time.
My concerns would be as follows:
1. You say that ‘without the presupposition of God, knowledge is impossible.’ I agree. But couldn’t knowledge seize to be real at all? Couldn’t we just deny the first presupposition altogether, and say God doesn’t exist? Why is knowledge necessary?
2. The argument, as you say, is impossible to contradict. But again, couldn’t one deny the existence of Knowledge altogether, thereby removing God as a necessary presupposition? I’m not sure why the God presupposition is necessary, because as I said in the prior concern, couldn’t knowledge just not exist?
Thanks for your time. I do appreciate the help.
@@boxingboxingboxing99 for 1, a counter argument goes: No. Knowledge is not metaphysical. Knowledge is a state of the brain - it's essentially storage of sensory input. You can remove "knowledge" from someone using a scalpel. Knowledge is no more metaphysical than waves in the ocean, and that's just water in a certain configuration, just like knowledge is just brain chemicals in a certain configuration.
@@ChurchoftheEternalLogos”circularity is the problem of all worldviews” Congrats, you debunked your own argument
@@boxingboxingboxing99 You cant deny knowledge when making knowledge claims, that is self defeating and reduces to absurdity.
Im not going to tell you that the orthodox worldview is the only worldview that satisfies the preconditions for intelligibility (as its not, the christian worldview fails due to the inability to solve causal regularity, problem of induction, universal atemporal laws of logic being intelligible preceding the bible, worldviews with stronger more coherent metaphysics like hermeticism and types of panendeism) But you cant just deny the existence of knowledge, any claim you make becomes meaningless and absurd. Just adhere to some type of panendeism with hermetic metaphysics and youre fine lol
Still not sure why presuming God to prove God is any better then presuming the laws of logic.
Because you can’t disprove the laws of logic without using logic. All this stuff is further proof that when a theists viewpoint doesn’t match with reality, they will start attacking reality itself.
Because logic doesn't have anywhere in its claim, usage, or beliefs that it's eternal and exists without a human mind.
@tjpg25 Arathanu, the great Turtle who holds the universe on his back, meets all of those "requirements" you made up, Should I assume he exists?
@@theTYTAN3 Well, I didn't give all the things that logic doesn't account for, but regardless no. Why? Because holding the universe on your back doesn't explain how the universe got there. The universe doesn't have anywhere in its claim that it's eternal.
Here are a few questions I'd like you to answer though:
Do you exist?
Are you made up of matter?
Is everything made of matter?
Does truth exist?
What is truth?
Are morals subjective?
Does good and evil exist?
What happens after death?
If you don't want to answer them, that's fine, but being hostile and putting an initial comment that shows curiosity doesn't really indicate "I don't actually want to have a conversation".
@tjpg25 The universe began when Arathanu poured its will into its shell. Does having an explanation for how the universe got here make a theory more credible?
The contention of the big bang is that the universe expanded from a singular hot dense point, that point may have been always there, the idea of time may not have been coherent. From everything we've observed, the universe follows the law of Conservation of mass, as far as we know matter can neither be created nor destroyed it simply changes state, an eternal universe is quite possible.
Do you exist?
Yes.
Are you made up of matter?
Most likely
Is everything?
As far as im aware.
Does truth exist?
Yes
What is truth?
Truth is what comports to reality.
Are morals subjective?
Seems that way.
Does good and evil exist?
Yes
What happens after death?
Seems like after we die, the matter that made up our bodies will continue to exist and change states eternally, but I have no indication that our consciousnesses would continue on without active brains.
Reading "Logos Theology" had me cracking up ngl
How is the circular logic of "God exists" superior to "reason exists" or "truth exists" or "I exist?"
That's not circular
@@thBrilliantFool explain?
Reason truth and you exist. What does that mean? What is the meaning of Being in general, not just beings such as the list you offer?
God in the Orthodox doctrine is the giver of possibility, which is ontologically prior to actuality. In other words, the Christian is asking what is the precondition of existence, rather than simply grounding other beings arbitrarily to one particular being, but instead grounding it in that precondition of Being in general.
Reason, truth, and you would be incapable of creating and sustaining a universe on your own worldview
Because where on the paradigm level
A good reason why classical apologetics cannot be bad is that the bible itself appear to use the cosmological and teleological argument for God. Have you ever read the use of TAG in the bible?
Bunch of presuppositions you already made there
@@emjayy1233 Yes trivially, every claim will make presuppositions. Your comment also made a bunch of presuppositions. Thus, stating that there is a bunch of presuppositions for a statement is trivial and is not argument for anything.
@@andrejuthe lmao you really don't get it do you
@@emjayy1233 Lmao, of course you don't! How could you get anything to anyone by just stating trivial and self-evident things? 😂
@@andrejuthe Its about being able to justify presuppositions. Did you even watch the video?
Protestant here. Although I'm not orthodox, I love your argument for the existence of God.
Atheist here. Although I haven't lost my my mind, there is no argument for "gawd".
There are some alright protestant proponents of tag van til is one
dr bahnsen too
@@JB-yb4wn the basic idea is that to use something like Logic or any "transcendental" we have to ground it on something for it to not be arbitrary. God is the only coherent explanation since God, at least the Orthodox version, contains within himself all the transcendentals. I heard one Orthodox call the Logos the collection of all the Forms or something similar.
@@delgande
God is arbitrary, there are many faiths on this planet and you don't even know which Christian god is the correct one, let alone whether your god is grounded in anything but people's gullibility. Ask any Muslim or Hindu whether your god is the only transcendental being in the universe. Just so that you know, your god is anything but transcendental, he kills children by bear mauling, 2 Kings 2:23-25, their crime? Calling someone "baldy".
That people in the comments come here and say "Yeees i have finally found an argument that i like and understand wich gives the illusion of proving what i already belive" is a big tell of how little evidence people have for this god of theirs. Presupposing a god isnt the answer. If TAG actually proved that a god exist we would have had a nobel price awarded for someone ACTUALLY proving a god exist long ago.. it would be world wide news and EVERYONE would know that a god exists for sure. We wouldnt still have debates about it on the daily. We wouldnt have multiple religions. If there was evidence in the same way as we know that the sun is hot it would have been known. But it isnt. Why is this? Its because this argument doesnt hold up. The Templeton foundation for example spends millions and millions of dollars every year to support anything that can lead to proving religious and spiritual claims as true. They dont have TAG as the final peice of the puzzle. Why? Think people. Think.
no nobel prize = its false? not an argument
@@nervouskrystof like that was the entire argument? Lael
Do u honestly think that proving christianity as a fact wouldnt give u a Nobel price? :) it would be the greatest discovery mankind has ever made.
I am not christian, but I realized logically speaking their must be a god because with all the talk on higher dimensions that physics says must exist led me to asking the question: who alone must exist at the highest dimension which informs all the others?
Yeah. Our idea of God will become more clear to society when science progresses far enough.
There is a "god" but it's certainly not the god of any human religion, let alone christianity
When they say “prove god exists”, wouldn’t it be easier to simply respond by asking, “what kind of proof are you asking for and through which model of reasoning?” And then giving examples of the models they are likely operating from? And then pointing out the incoherence of those models, etc?
wow this comment section is just so sad lol
It is sad how weak your faith is. 🤣
I’m confused why the atheist can’t simply also put the Gödel card when the Christian presses him on the unjustifiablity of logic under his paradigm
Damn there's lots of big words in this video that I've never heard of.
It's gonna be hard to reference these explanations to my friends and convince them :D
studying some basic philosophy & logic will be helpful and give context!
This approach can shut someone’s mouth 😂 but will never convince anyone
@@juzhang6665 Oh it is far from shutting my mouth, quite the opposite.
Which God (or indeed Gods) does this argument prove the existance of.. you have a selection of tens of thousands that man has imagined over the last 10,000, maybe 20,000 years that man may have pondered on such things. In fact, it is possible that man has had superstion about supernatural beings for 100-200,000 years or more, since there is evidennce to sugest that even pigions are superstitious wheh you provide food at random occasions only to see them recreate what they were doing the previous time in the faith that they will get food again, such as turning 360' clockwise to get food, but we of course know that they got food because the scientist pressed the food release button.
Ohh dear, yeahh this drivel filled video sure shut me up lol
As an atheist, I'm fine with accepting that i can't justify any of my foundations for things like knowledge and reason, I just don't care, since i still emotionally like to reason and feel like i can have knowledge of things, whether or not it's metaphysically justifiable doesn't matter to my desire to do it anyway. I can also just say the same about the religious worldview, where any arguments like TAG are themselves unjustifiable because i don't think reason and knowledge can be justified in the first place, and arguments like TAG use reason to justify themselves. Same with being a moral anti-realist, i don't think morality is a thing that exists or is objective, yet i still take it into account when making decisions and evaluate positions based on it's morality, not because it's logically justified, but because i just feel like it, simple as.
you clearly don't emotionally like to reason too much
Just because you feel like it? Oh yeah, this definitely won’t lead to something bad.
You're understating your position.
You *have* to believe things like induction and non-contradiction. That's just how human brains work. You don't have a choice.
For someone to suggest you do otherwise is for them to suggest you should have typed your comment with your trunk instead of your hands.
Now, if you stare at that for too long it starts to look pretty weird.
But TAG is just taking this strangeness and saying "I don't know, therefore God," and is no more sophisticated or justifiable than any other iteration of that phrase.
@paulsmart4672 there are unending examples of people not believing in non-contradiction or induction. What a bunch of New Atheist babble.
And you clearly don’t understand TAG and want to pretend you do
@@michaelfetter5413 Insults and boasts.
It upsets you to see this pseudophilosophy criticized, so did you want to try to defend it, or did you just need to let me know your feelings are hurt?
No athiest finds tag conviencing. It just sounds like an arguement from incredulity and special pleading
You misunderstood the argument, and plenty has converted because of how strong the argument is.
@@joe5959 how isn't it incredulity or special pleading to say I can't imagine a naturalistic answer for inteligibility by my god could suffice?
@@davidspencer343 >"how isn't it incredulity or special pleading to say I can't imagine a naturalistic answer for inteligibility by my god could suffice?"
That's not even what the argument is. The argument is that without a universal mind, there's no grounding for transcendental categories, the invariance of logic and identity over time. Listen to Jay Dyer's call-ins, his atheist opponents regularly make their position to be that they don't have a justification for those things.
If you think your description of the argument is correct, then could you point out the time stamp where the inference was made on the basis of "I can't imagine a naturalistic answer to intelligibility"? If the maker of the video says this, then he's made a mistake and is presenting it in a different way to most others.
@adam.summerfield sure I'd love to explain why I think this. Don't be mad for me disagreeing lol ill be honest and won't name call or anything.
Both premises are un supported.the first one says you CANT but doesn't give evidence for it. That sounds like incredulity. You don't know you can't. You just claim it. And if an athiest doesnt know either that doesnt releive the burden of proof or show it CANT be possible. Another says, altho it's seemingly impossible, that god could do it. Also, with no evidence. Just a claim. Sounds like special pleading.
Not asking if you agree, but does that make sense why I might see it that way? Even if I'm wrong
@@adam.summerfield that’s not an argument. That’s a claim without evidence
I thought apophatic theology would be “god is not impersonal. God is not evil. God is not limited to our extent of wisdom. God is not limited to our extent of knowledge, etc”?
This is fantastic. Thanks. I need help though. How do you deal with agnostics who claim, "I dont know, i'm just going off what I can observe, you're the one making the claim". I've heard Jay say that there isn't really an agnostic position, that there's either Atheism or Theism. Can someone elaborate on that for me? Many friends in my life end on, "I dont know what laws of logic are. It's possible it's just a convention that seems to work. And since it gives us practical results that we can work with, we stick with it It could be wrong, but it following logic produces food, computers, and logic. I dont need to know what it is to see the results. And sure, morality is a preference. I have mine, you have yours, and we hope society gets along". I know you and Jay have talked about their being no neutral ground. But their position does appear neutral. Similar to JFG's position (the public space dude). And also I've had people stump me with "Sure, what if I grant you that Orthodox Christianity has a slightly better cohering worldview than any other one. Ok. So what? It still means nothing. It adheres better than other worldviews, but that in no way, shape, or form, makes it THEE correct worldview. Why are you assuming humans know the correct worldview, or will ever know the answer. You're the one making this bold claim, I'm simply saying I dont know. " I'm not sure how to rebut this argument. Does it fall into traps mentioned in this video that I'm missing...or is there another line of attacking this?
Maybe you could ask them, if they say they are sceptical of everything, then, they must also be sceptical of scepticism it's self. This forces a person to take a step forwards and actually believe in some thing. And discredits they're stated position, that they are sitting on the sidelines. And have no position of there own.
@@richardparke7844 They hedge it. They admit they dont know for sure, but they say they're not the one making the positive claim.The argument is something like: I dont know for sure why we're here or how it ALL works, but empiricism gives real world results across time. So why not use it? We use logic and reason not because we can prove or give a justification, we use logic and reason because it works and gives results.. We can make predictions and than prove them, this apple will fall when dropped, let's do the experiment, however, your position of Orthodoxy doesnt have this predictive power. You can't show me your God, or prove your God. I'm not saying he CAN'T exist, but a white unicorn God can also exist. I'm not making a positive claim about anything. I'm doing what works, while you're living in fairy tales.(that'd be the general type of argument), and to me it does appear positionless and nuetral, and I dont know how to wake the sails out of that because it's much more honest and humble than an outright atheists position.
@@richardparke7844 I consider myself agnostic as the most accurate label to my worldview and I agree
I don’t know if Jay does this, but some presups define god such that, if you accept their definitions, neutrality is impossible. For instance, if god is defined as “something all people know exists,” then saying you don’t known he exists would be a denial of that particular version of god. It’s all in service of muddling epistemology (how and what we can know) with ontology (what actually exists). Ontologically, god either exists or he does not. Epistemically, one can be agnostic if one does not know the answer.
I would love to see this person debate with Alex O’Connor or Matt Dilahunty about the existence of his god.
Watch Jay Dyer debate Matt Dillahunty
dilahunty can't comprehend TAG
Like @randomworkings3600 said, Jay Dyer did a good debate with Matt Dillahunty. He also debated CosmicSkeptic.
@@deejaythedeejay I don’t think Dyer’s debated CosmicSkeptic. He’s reacted to debates of his, but they haven’t spoken.
@@randomworkings3600 Maybe I was looking at that, I can try and check
Good video, especially liked the ending. I think it gives a bit more clarity to the Orthodox framework. I will mention, though, since we've been kind of going back and forth on this, that Sikhism does mention God as person. In the Mool Mantar(the preliminary description of God) they have the line Karta Purakh usually translated as 'creative being personified'. Not debating or arguing just saying. Looking forward to the follow up video.
Video that goes more in depth on Karta Purakh:
th-cam.com/video/ag_KvfXUKEk/w-d-xo.html
Thanks brother, much appreciated. From my understanding Sikhism takes an understanding of God very similar to Islam, which would fall back into the same Neoplatonic framework of dialectics. However, I don't know this for certain. I'll check out the link. Hope all is well. God bless 🙏
@@ChurchoftheEternalLogos I think one of the main troubles when dealing with interfaith is that understanding one faith is hard enough, to then attempt a comprehensive investigation of another, with an objective mind, is quite the task.
Here is a video where he goes into the concept of One:
th-cam.com/video/M7A9qZEBVh8/w-d-xo.html
The way I usually handle this is to say, “You know I’ve always believed there must be a reason without god to value truth, but I’ve never come across it. Why should we believe a thing just because it’s true? After all, the general atheist argument is they disbelieve in god because he doesn’t exist. But why does that matter?”
As an atheist, there is no objective reason to value truth, it's just useful for us practically to have beliefs that correspond most accurately with reality, along with the emotional satisfaction of feeling like you know the truth. It's not something we do because of reason, but because it lets us advance whatever irrational goals we have
@@matthewbluman9799Find God☦️
This is the final retreat from evidence. If you could actually demonstrate a god existing in reality, none of this would be necessary, you’d just point to your god.
I swear, atheists are some of the most miserable, and epistomologically bankrupt people on the planet
@@joe5959bingo
@@joe5959I feel fine
Oh no it isn't. As of this writing, presuppers are saying that presupp should be taught like calculus (and only to willing students at that) and not debated AT ALL; that even acknowledging a difference of opinion is sacrificing their overwhelming truthiness in light of atheists failure to acquiesce to the presup paradigm (whatever that means). They're right because they're right because they can't not be right, and now they refuse to even discuss the matter like adults. That speaking with non-believers (of presup) is a surrender of their most basic, fundamental, a priori, convictions and is a pointless (and heretical) waste of their time. THAT is the final retreat.
That would be like the code in Windows being conscious getting together and trying to point out Bill Gates😅 Where is Bill I don't see him!??😅
That concludes this video and it concludes how much I don't know!
How does TAG prove Christianity in particular though? It just proves a generic creator of some kind. This is why many find presuppositionalism to be an unbiblical apologetic, and it's why most reformed people have moved on from it.
Did you check out the video brother? I state that TAG proves theism multiple times throughout and in the last slide I address why Christianity in particular. The continuation of TAG in regards to how religions then account for these transcendentals is the real debate. Only a few rise to the challenge. The question then turns to contradictions in regards to cataphatic statements about the essence of God, i.e. absolute divine simplicity/neoplatonism/Islam/Pantheism. Usually a nonChristian ends with, well, God is totally beyond all reason so we really can't know anything about him i.e. impersonal. This comes to the Personhood of God (collapsing the dialectic) and the correct beginning point for Christian theology, we worship a personal God who has revealed himself, therefore to not start theology with revelation and personhood is to reject how we know the Christian God. Therefore, TAG taken to its ultimate ends, proves Christianity. We have a personal God who revealed his transcendency by way of his immanency (incarnation), again personhood and scripture. TAG proves that we then go to Biblical apologetics, but to start there is not understanding the problem in the first place, especially with atheist. The objection from Reformers is dumb because they still aren't addressing the presuppositions of their opponent, proving there has to be a God in the first place, and yes it does ultimately come back to scripture. Its sad apologists don't get this. I would say its mostly because of Sola Scriptura and Protestant presuppositions they don't get it.
Church of the Eternal Logos - TAG doesn’t automatically lead to Christianity though. You have to bring in evidences eventually. You can’t just say “we have revelation” without giving some proof of the revelation to back it up. That proof is what the apostles focused on (“that you might know that you have eternal life”).
Not sure I understand what you’re saying about sola scriptura at the end there. You admit that it was Protestants that popularized TAG again and then you say it’s Protestants that deny TAG?
Dude, everything you're saying is covered in the video. Just watch the video. You're not understanding what I'm saying. TAG proves theism. Take it further: Which theism can best account for the transcenedentals? How does one know they account for those transcendentals? Do They contradict themselves in cataphatic statements and dialectics? Which tradition has personhood to know God (this is when evidentialist claims start). Which form of Christianity can fully account for the personal interaction and collapse of dialectics? Orthodoxy. Evidentialism and TAG are not in opposition like you claim. Evidentialism doesn't force the opponent to justify. Once then Tag is proven, then there are only a few theisms that can account for everything, evidentialist claims start (historicity of the Bible, cosmological argument, ontological argument, miracles, resurrection, lives of the apostles). Yes Van Til popularized TAG, does that mean TAG never existed before Van Til? Its in Aristotle... It's in the Church Fathers. You have to first prove God, to then prove which God.
Church of the Eternal Logos - I agree that TAG can be used as a baseline starter for a discussion with an atheist, but that’s only about 2 sentences of the conversation. Then you have to provide evidences for “the hope that is within you.”
The problem is that the presuppositional method rarely moves beyond those two sentences. That’s why the Jay Dyer and Dillahunty debate was going in circles for hours. Had Jay then moved onto explaining why he believes that the unifying principle is personable and knowable, some progress could have been made there. But “presupp” people just like to stick to repeating TAG over and over because it’s a way that they can “own” non-believers.
@@ConciseCabbage The reason the Dillahunty debate went in circles is because Dillahunty largely didn't understand the argument, let alone well enough for Jay to move on to why he believes the Christian, personal God is true in particular. Only certain religions are even capable of accounting for the necessary transcendentals, namely Orthodox Christianity. All the others fall into some incoherent position that can't justify anything, like ADS. TAG is the most biblical argument, evidentialism is what's unbiblical.
I have a question. If we can be circular and proof God by presupposing God, couldn't an atheist just be circular and proof logic by presupposing logic?
I think they can but they need more than just logic. They need the law of non-contradiction, the law of identity just to name a couple whereas the Christian only needs to presuppose God. This is where TAG is coherent and atheism is not.
@@karikovacs3824atheism does not necessarily require either law.
@@karikovacs3824 Modern day physics seem to speak against both those laws though. IF there are 11 dimensions, which most leading physicists agree on is very possible, then two opposites can be true, a cow can be a universe, and so on. If true, most logic is out the window.
Change title to: how to argue God to fools who believe anything
Retype your comment to "im a lazy reddit atheist who cannot grasp the argument"
@@joe5959 no I grasp the argument perfectly well, it’s complete bullshit. In all my study of philosophy, I have never seen an argument that relies more on misdirection and false assertions.
How would a TAG theist argue against an objection similar to Graham Oppy's position re cosmological arguments?
In particular, any position the theist takes regarding why God exists is equally available to the atheist to explain the transcendentals. If God is eternal or necessary, the atheist may take the position that transcendentals are eternal or necessary. The two are on equal argumentative footing, but the atheist position achieves greater parsimony.
In other words, the atheist can use language, reason, number theory I argument for any of the reasons the theist can provide for using God in argument.
Now a TAG proponent might say the atheist has exploded ontological baggage by making so many things brute / assumed (as the very end of this video notes). But this is easily dissolved. The atheist can simply start with a single transcendental paradigm. Presupposing just one thing that has all necessary transcendentals within it. Now the theist and the atheist both agree this transcendental paradigm exists, but the theist adds extra ontological baggage by also presupposing a god to create the paradigm.
I agree TAG could be strong against a pure empiricist with little understanding of philosophy. But it is possible to both be atheist and understand that every metaphysical inquiry ends with brutes.
Here’s my question to you: it seems as though all TAG does is demonstrate that we must assume God unto our worldview in order to be coherent. Why would if follow that God exists in actuality? In other words, why is the conclusion ontological and not merely an epistemological one? I’m a fan btw.
Kurt Godel Incompleteness theory. Because that is true with all formal systems of Logic. You can't prove language without first starting with language. You can't prove numbers without first staring with numbers. You can't prove reason without making rational arguments. If God is the l source of logic, the same schematic for proving formal systems of logic would hold true.You can't prove God without starting with God, because any other method to prove his existence would be assuming the same transcendentals that only exist due to his existence. Hope that helps. God bless 🙏
Thomas W. - Ultimately we are limited to only tools within our universe to “prove” anything about it, which one could argue Godel demonstrated cannot be done. So TAG simply demonstrates that Christians have a much more coherent world view than atheists who must be arbitrary in their faith. However, the coherence comparison coupled with the testimony of the Gospels, the revelation of the Bible, the tradition of the church, etc, all confirms what is written on the heart. To deny the truth, you must deny your own belief in morality, along with all the obvious transcendental categories. So claim to deny these things, but they sure don’t live this way. In fact, just by entering into a debate they demonstrate their faith.
Even Bahnsen himself said it wouldn't change anyone's mind but just shut them up. But I haven't even seen it do that much. I'm a Christian but TAG is a non-starter even though it is correct.
There’s nothing correct about it. It doesn’t convince anyone because everybody knows it’s a false premise
TAG doesnt establish a christian god, more of a deistic/panendeistic one. Just like literally every other argument for god, the act of an acausal entity entering this world is completely incoherent and has devastating effects for knowledge and the problem of induction
Thank you for the video. I don't understand why it makes more sense to presuppose God rather than just saying "I don't know." What am I missing? Are you saying philosophy demands an explanation so God is the best, most coherent explanation? Why do we need to presuppose something rather than just leaving the question open? Thanks again.
Because a godless worldview smacks of death!
If there is no God, nothing really matters as long as death is the overall winner!
If there is no God, everything is pointless as long as everything ends up in the realm of death!
If there is no God, we are just moribund bodies!
The question about God is an issue of life and death! However a godless answer is an apotheosis of death!
@@dimitrispeiraiasThanks for the comment. My question is logically how is proposing God more reasonable than leaving the question open?
Leaving the question open is a thesis which is antithetical to the certainty of life!
The lack of an answer about God is a discordance which leads to the disharmony of life's song!
Life is like a song, that has a certain theme! That theme lies in the universal truth that only Life gives birth to life!
Such a theme is in perfect harmony only with the belief in a God who is the absolute LIFE and the ultimate LOVE!
Only the beauty of such a belief could ever be consistent with a meaningful explanation of the first cause of life!
Only the beauty of such a belief could ever be consistent with a meaningful explanation of the great cause to live!
Because to question at all presupposes unjustified transcendentals, truth, knowledge, logic. Did you watch the whole video? The question about justifying questioning itself, as it presupposes truth, logic, math, knowledge.
Chris, I wish your questions were derived from a subconscious impulse to explore the truth!
Anyway, come and see! Have a glance at the Orthodox side of Christianity!
Exploring the mystical depth of the Orthodox Church is a real revelation!
Orthodox Christianity is a living faith, and you get it from living persons by being connected to a local, living community!
You are always welcomed to experience the fullness of Life!
Christ is risen and the human race is risen!
Language, math and laws of logic are descriptors of reality. As long as they comport to reality they are good. For example, Newton Law of gravity was good until Enstien improved it. Saying god(s) is the transdental of reality boils down to god of the gaps. We all start at the same position, we perceive reality through our senses. God of the gaps.
Not an argument saying “I don’t have a answer now but maybe we will get a answer later” is not a good argument I can say the same thing when atheists bring up arguments against God that I can’t answer what you said is just a atheist cope and gravity is something that can be observed in the universe lol
@Alex.K957 difference being, when I say I don't know; that's as far as I go until more information becomes available. Theist, I don't know, leads to god(s).
I don’t get the comparison. For something like gravity and the Big Bang you have empirical evidence for its existence even though you can’t give a full explanation.(god of the gaps)
Logic, numbers , self ,past,etc can’t be empirically proven like gravity. So they have to be arbitrary assumed.
Isn’t the point of atheism you don’t believe what you can’t prove. Thus you can’t believe in logic. But you are using logic to come to a conclusion.
How do you justify them.
@@AustinoleWhat will you say when the answer never comes, and you live of the notion that maybe one day a answer will come? You are denying the answer which is God the Trinity! It has been the answer for transcendentals and it is the only answer that is known, so stop waiting for a answer and go to the answer which is already here! Or are you one of the ignorant ones who as the Saints say is one who knows God exists but still denies him?
If God is real please help me understand and know who you are.
The Father 👑 The Son ☦️ The Holy Spirit 🕊
Amen.
Good...knock and you shall receive...
Update?
The laws of logic come about due to multiplicity or differentiations. If there is a multiplicity, then each must be different from each other. For a thing to NOT be another thing, is to be other than that thing. To be other is to be different. This is where logic comes from the laws of logic relate to differentiation. Logic itself being plural.
It works on differentiation, and breaks down at the non-plural singularity, or Plato’s ONE in the first hypothesis of the Parmenides. I suppose similar to how the laws of physics break down at the singularity.
That image of "Christ" beside the calendar looks very similar to the image produced by the Hindu group MonasteryIcons. If that's the same image that was produced by the pagan group, I'd recommend getting rid of it and replacing it with an icon of Christ produced by Christians. God bless.
Yea, I've been made aware thanks though. God bless 🙏
17:24 nope you didn’t get around or address the circularity. even if my worldview is false doesn’t make yours true. TAG assumes what it sets out to prove and expects opponents to justify their own assumptions without addressing the foundational assumptions of TAG itself.
you’re literally already assuming the christian worldview is the most coherent worldview to explain these transcendentals which is still question begging and is just false the laws of logic and mathematics could just be features of reality rather than transcendentals concepts like for example its not that case that the universe can’t contradict itself because of the law of logic it could just just be a feature of the universe that things can’t contradict itself so there’s no need for transcendentals. they are just features of reality.
you also misunderstand godels theorems. they state that in any sufficiently complex formal system, there are true statements that cannot be proven within the system, but they do not suggest that all reasoning is inherently circular. instead they show limitations in formal systems but not in reasoning as a whole.
godel’s theorems highlight limitations in formal systems rather than endorsing circularity in reasoning. circular reasoning can be avoided by properly grounding assumptions or using different methodologies that don’t rely on the assumptions being questioned. logic isn’t the thing in question nor reasoning and mathematics. GOD AND THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW IS WHATS IN QUESTION AND THE ASSUMPTION BEING QUESTIONED. saying “well these things are circular and are valid” doesn’t automatically make your circular argument valid. you have to still prove your argument through its own merit not whataboutism.
also you make a false equivalence in your empirical and inductive claim they are based on observable evidence and can be tested against reality. the assumption of empirical methods doesn’t rely on the unverified assumption of a specific worldview but on the capacity to make repeatable and falsifiable observations.
coherence alone does not establish truth. a coherent worldview must also correspond to external realities and evidence. a worldviews coherence doesn’t guarantee its truth unless it also matches observed facts and evidence.
Can you give an example of the universe contradicting itself?
@ why would i need to do that?
@@asylumyeah well if im understanding your second paragraph correctly, you are implying that the universe could contradict itself. Was wondering if you had an example of that being the case?
@ yeah that’s not what i’m implying at all. i’m saying contradictions aren’t secured by some transcendental law it could just be the case things can’t contradict themselves because of the nature of reality
@ okay that makes more sense thanks. I guess the question is whether that nature is intentional or not.
Oh, my. This is the blind leading the blind. I'm a third of the way through the video and I have yet to see an argument presented except maybe "the atheistic worldview" can't justify logic, transcendentals, experience, etc. and I can therefore win by default. This is what passes for good reasoning?
This video states that the theist is presupposing one thing, God. However, in jay dyers debate vs dillahunty, dillahunty asks jay how many presuppositions he has and jay says that he has the same amount as Matt. Matt then says that shouldn’t jay only be presupposing god since god is his justification for metaphysicals and jay continues on to explain why that is not true. I only point this out to point out the contradiction. Is this video incorrect or is jay incorrect?
The video makes extensive use of the transcendental argument for God. This argument claims that logic, reason, morality, etc require an absolute, immaterial foundation in order to make sense, and that this foundation can only be God. However, this argument commits the fallacy of begging the question - it assumes at the outset the very conclusion it is trying to prove.
To demonstrate, consider one of the video's core arguments:
1. Logic requires an absolute, immaterial foundation
2. Only God provides such a foundation
3. Therefore, God exists.
Premise 2 already assumes God's existence in order to establish God as the foundation for logic. So the argument presupposes God in order to conclude God's existence. It is circular reasoning.
Additionally, premise 1 is not an empirical claim but rather a metaphysical assumption. There are many philosophical perspectives that reject the need for absolute foundations for concepts like logic and reason. For example:
- Pragmatism argues that the truth and validity of ideas is determined by their practical usefulness, not their ability to be grounded absolutely.
- Historical relativism argues that systems of logic and rationality develop contingently within particular cultural contexts. There are no timeless, universal logical absolutes.
So in summary, the transcendental argument for God's existence fails because:
1) It begs the question by presupposing God in its premises.
2) Its key premise about logic requiring an absolute foundation is an unproven metaphysical assumption, not an empirical fact.
Beyond this central flaw, the video makes other philosophical errors:
- It misrepresents Hume, who never argued we "just have to assume" induction works. Hume argued induction cannot be logically justified at all, but we rely on it due to custom and mental habit.
- It portrays the correspondence theory of truth as the only alternative to a coherence theory. However, there are other theories like pragmatism, relativism, etc.
- It claims Godel's incompleteness theorems justify circular reasoning in logic. This is a misinterpretation of Godel's technical results in formal arithmetic.
the video utilizes questionable reasoning, makes inaccurate representations of key philosophers, and does not succeed in providing a sound logical argument for God's existence from first principles. A more robust philosophical defense is needed.
It would be useful to demonstrate the flaws in the video's arguments using more formal logic notation. Here's an attempt at that:
Let's look at one of the video's key syllogisms:
1) Logic requires an absolute, immaterial foundation (Premise 1)
2) Only God provides such a foundation (Premise 2)
3) Therefore, God exists (Conclusion)
Translating this into analytic notation:
1) ∀x (Lx → Fx)
2) ∀x (Fx → Gx)
3) ∴ ∃x (Gx)
Where:
Lx = x is logic
Fx = x requires an absolute, immaterial foundation
Gx = x is God
This is an instance of affirming the consequent, which is a formal logical fallacy. Here is an illustration:
1) If it is raining, then the grass is wet (If P, then Q)
2) The grass is wet (Q)
3) Therefore, it is raining (Therefore, P)
This is invalid reasoning, because even though rain (P) would imply wet grass (Q), wet grass (Q) does not definitively imply rain (P). There are other possible causes for Q besides P.
The same applies to the original syllogism. Even granting that God (G) would provide the kind of absolute foundation required by logic (F), it does not follow that anything which requires such a foundation (F) must therefore be God (G). There could be other potential sources for the absolute foundation of logic besides God.
So in formal terms, ∀x (Fx → Gx) does not validly imply ∃x (Gx). Affirming Fx does not axiomatically affirm Gx, because Fx could potentially arise from sources other than Gx.
This demonstrates that the key inference in the video's syllogism commits a formal logical fallacy by affirming the consequent. Let me know if illustrating it symbolically in analytic notation is helpful! I'm happy to clarify or expand on this further.
This is great.
Least schizophrenic and mentally ill ath*ist
@@ReplyToMeIfUrRetarded most kind dumbass theist ^^^
Finally someone with a brain in this comment section.
The creator of this video argues that God is the most coherent explanation for metaphysical absolutes. This is not the same as claiming that God is the only possible explanation. Coherence in this context refers to explanatory power and consistency within a given worldview.
Consider the analogy: “The grass is wet. Therefore, the most coherent explanation is that it rained.” This does not exclude other possible explanations (sprinklers, dew, etc), but it suggests rain as the most consistent and probable cause given the broader context. Similarly, the argument for God as the foundation for logic and reason is based on coherence rather than exclusivity.
Arguing that concepts like logic and reason are entirely culturally contingent leads to a circular position. If all truth is relative, then the statement “all truth is relative” is also relative, which undermines its own claim. A worldview that denies any absolute foundation struggles to provide a stable basis for logical consistency.
Your critique seems to rest on the assumption that any metaphysical claim must be empirically verifiable. However, metaphysical assumptions underpin all worldviews, including atheism. The question then becomes which set of assumptions offers the most coherent and comprehensive explanatory framework. The video suggests that theistic assumptions provide a more consistent foundation for logic and morality than atheistic ones, which can lead to nihilism if they reject metaphysical absolutes entirely.
Finally, you misrepresented the video’s arguments due to your own a priori assumptions. For example, assuming that logic does not need an absolute foundation without addressing the arguments presented for why it might is a form of presuppositional bias.
Doesn't TAG just add one more axiom base layer?
Lol this is the giga chad of apologetics but unfortunately most atheist will stick their fingers in their ears on this one. Even as a Christian it took me a while to appreciate the arguments sye ten brugencate uses. He's actually quite brilliant with the way he simplifies presupposiomism and TAG
Thank you very much for this video.
I would love to watch you have a debate with AronRa
AronRa values evidence (as all sensible people should). He doesn’t do well with these sorts of naval gazing arguments and gets confused and angry.
I still don't fully understand it but it is easier to follow than most videos on TAG.
This totally ignores Evolution. Evolution provides the answer for the preconditions.
logic, morals etc is a result of evolution.
TAG presuposes that God exists which is a faulty argument since it wants to prove that God exists.
God is a mental construct, thats it.
How do you know that?
@boxingboxingboxing99 How do I come to know anything? I process information and make a rational, more than likely type of conclusion. Tons of information available leads to this conclusion.
If you would like to provide that information that can distinguish an existent thing/being/entity from a mere mental concept then by all means...
@@boxingboxingboxing99this argument is displaying that
Logic is a formal language like C++ or VisualBasic. They are descriptive terms for the behavior of nature. I accept these laws because to refute them would require me to assume they were true. So no God presup needed there.
Induction at its root cannot be justified, it is a known problem of philosophy. To trying to solve this problem by appealing to a God who created an orderly universe merely ignores the problem. Plus, if it is the orderly universe that serves to solve this problem, I need only presuppose that instead.
Objective Morality is also an unresolved philosophical problem. To truly be objective it must exist as a fundamental law of reality, free of anything for which it is it contingent upon. Objective morality cannot be rooted in an intelligent God for the same reason it cannot be rooted in humans, it would be subject to that entity for its truth.
The argument fails because the same result could be achieved by presupposing an orderly universe, or a different God/s, or an undiscovered law of nature. That's the thing about presuppositions, they require no prior justification to accept.
Objective morality remains an unresolved issue in a godless philosophy! However, a godless worldview smacks of death!
If there is no God, nothing really matters as long as death is the overall winner!
If there is no God, everything is pointless as long as everything ends up in the realm of death!
If there is no God, we are just moribund bodies!
Philosophy is a question about life and death! However a godless answer is an apotheosis of death!
Your whole syllogism derives from the false presupposition that moral values could ever exist all alone by themselves!
If there is no person to value, there is no one able to value!
If there is no one able to value, there is no moral values at all!
Therefore the validity of the moral values lies in the objectivity of an Absolute who values the reality!
Only God could ever be such an Absolute! Only God could ever know everything! Only God could ever be totally independent of anything else! Only God could ever judge in a perfectly fair way!
The validity of the moral values lies in the objectivity of the totally Absolute God Who values perfectly!
Dimitris Peiraias “If there is no person to value . . .”
Is God the only person that does or ever could exist? Or is he the only person whose suffering or happiness you feel obliged to care about? To care about another person’s suffering, do you really need an infinite being suffering along with them?
Or are you saying that we need God to account for moral rules that have nothing to do with other persons’ suffering/happiness (e.g. much of sexual and dietary morality)? In this case, I agree with you but am naturally unconcerned with such “morality” (until someone shows that there *is* a God).
God, in your system, seems to be merely a competitor to the concerns we already care about.
I wish your comment was derived from a subconscious impulse to explore the truth!
Truth is a reality which lies in an Absolute which is not dependent on anything else. Otherwise everything would have been a subjective perception with no universal validity!
In such a case the lack of objectivity implies that reality would have been a quicksand that leads to irrational confusion and a constant state of uncertainty.
However, reality is a certainty by definition!
The real issue is that we have to realise the presence of such an Absolute on which reality is based!
Only an Absolute, which is not dependent on anything else could ever be the stable base of comprehending the reality!
Only an Absolute, which is totally free, is not dependent on anything else! Therefore, only a God Who is Free Love could ever be the Absolute Truth! Such a Truth unveils what is beyond all understanding!
The Unknown and yet Known mystery of Truth is a revelation of Love which lies in Life's miracle!
Knowing Truth is about experiencing the Uncreated God Who is Love!
Love isn't about being confused in a constant uncertainty of egoistic alienation from the reality of the Other! Love is about an absolute Union of Persons without confusion or change or separation or division!
Since forever, our God the eternal Father exists with His only-begotten Son and His Lifegiving Spirit! God is The Perfect and Absolute Love, The Power of Life!
Jesus Christ the Son of God, by uniting man and God in His own one person, reopened the path for all people to have union with God.
You need to make a choice between Love and uncertainty! I wish you Love for your Life!
You may experience God's power and be wrapped in awe! You may be filled with God's love and be profoundly affected! You may be enlightened by God's light and emerge from any darkness! You may partake of God's life and live for real!
May God's Life be your Life, so that you may experience Life that is Life to the full!
God bless you and Live for real, my friend!
@@dimitrispeiraias in your opinion of if there is no god everything is pointless. That doesn’t mean people can’t give meaning to things and themselves. We can make things matter all on our own.
You may need a god to make things matter, but that doesn’t mean everyone else needs it to have purpose.
23:14 That is such a laughably awful steelman you should be embarrassed for having published such a travesty. But I guess that's based on the same atheist caricature that shows up in every apologists' anecdote that is just an infinite loop of "Durrrrrr.... just matter and motion.... Durrrrrrr.... we're just meat machines... Durrrrrrrr."
Even if we ignore that, your apologetic still fails on a number of levels, first and foremost you harp about the atheist not being able to justify their worldview, but last I checked the Christian worldview runs into the same epistemic dead end (or loop or infinite regress) as every other worldview. Claiming "God did it" isn't a justification, it's a cop out, and a circular one at that. And yes, every attempt at complete epistemic justification will necessarily end in circularity (or a brute fact, or infinite regress) that doesn't mean that choosing circularity solves the problem of epistemic justification. It still isn't justified. You're just arbitrarily claiming that your version of circularity is okay. It isn't. It's actually worse than a brute fact since with a brute fact you just have to assume the truth of _one_ thing, whereas with epistemic circularity you have to assume the truth of _two or more_ things.
Another defeater for the TAG is the logical Euthyphro Dilemma. (Is God necessary for logic or is logic necessary for God?) If you chose the 2nd horn, then it's obvious that God isn't grounding logic. If you choose the 1st horn then you're suggesting that logically prior to God instantiating logic, God did and didn't exist. (No law of noncontradiction) And if you try the moral Euthyphro copout (It's God's _nature._ ) you still haven't solved anything as nothing is grounding _why_ it is that God's nature is _necessarily_ logical. (and how you know that) Trying to ground that runs you smack dab back into the Munchhausen Trilemma again. (epistemically invalid circularity, infinite regress or brute fact)
And of course one could also just contest whatever it is the TAG asserts as being obviously true (that we have knowledge, intelligibility, or whatever else the claim happens to be) and actually force the theist to _justify_ that claim rather than just accepting it. Because it's obvious that we _believe_ we have knowledge, intelligibility, or whatever else the TAG clams, but actually _justifying_ that premise is an entirely different discussion. And without justification of *all* premises, the argument doesn't hold.
And sure, the theist may claim that I haven't demonstrated that I can even use logic and reason so my arguments don't hold, I'll remind them that they haven't justified the use of logic and reason yet either. (at least not if they're judging their own worldview by the same standards they are judging everyone else's) That said, the complaint is just a disguised genetic fallacy (a form of ad hom where the argument is ignored because of who is presenting it instead of the merits of the argument) and the tired old cop out of "you're borrowing from my worldview" isn't even relevant since it's an internal critique and I'm granting you your entire worldview for the sake of argument. (That's how internal critiques work.)
If I understand correctly, transcendental categories are coherent, contingent, universal and independent of the human mind (logic, meaning, numbers, shapes, meaning and so on) and the way TAG justifies them is by saying that they must be deliberately created, because coherency can only be the result of intelligent design from an intending mind, it arguea from the impossibility of the contrary.
Coherency can't come out of incoherency itself, just like you can't get something out of nothing, existence out of nonexistence etc.
So there's only two options, is the coherency and interlocking of universals intentional or unintentional? Well, atheists deny the idea that there's a creator, and since there's no creator in their world view, there's no agent that can intend, so therefore there is no intention behind the transcendental coherency, and therefore the atheist must take the position, among other unjustifiable positions, that coherence can indeed emerge out of the lack of coherence, that order emerges by itself out of chaos, that intention can emerge by accident, and so on.
Or the atheist can say that they don't need justification, but he would be being arbitrary, and lose the debate because he can't justify his position, which is what you come to do in a debate.
@@PabloCardonaMusic _" they must be deliberately created, because coherency can only be the result of intelligent design from an intending mind, "_ And that assertion is never justified, merely asserted. So the rest of the argument fails.
_"Coherency can't come out of incoherency itself, "_ Another unjustified assertion.
_" you can't get something out of nothing, "_ Another unjustified assertion.
_"existence out of nonexistence"_ Another unjustified assertion.
You're simply appealing to intuition. Intuition is often wrong.
@@ajhieb 🤦♂️ but IT IS justified, I literally said it's from the impossibility of the contrary. "incoherency is/can be coherent" is a self refuting circular statement. It's like saying "Words have no meaning" while appealing to the meaning of words to say that sentence, thus refuting it. Or like saying "Knowledge is impossible" while making a claim that requires you to have knowledge about what the words in that sentence even mean, thus proving knowledge is possible. Ironically you use the word "intuition" which is a metaphysical whose existence you can't justify or account for in your worldview, where everything is meaningless matter with chemical reactions.
@@PabloCardonaMusic _"I literally said it's from the impossibility of the contrary. "_ That's _literally_ not a justification. It's just another (unjustified) claim.
_" "incoherency is/can be coherent" is a self refuting circular statement. "_ So what? That doesn't prove or justify anything relevant. Not to mention is moving the goalposts from your earlier unjustified assertion: _"Coherency can't come out of incoherency itself"_
_"It's like saying "Words have no meaning" while appealing to the meaning of words to say that sentence, thus refuting it."_ No. It _would_ be like that if that was analogous to your original assertion that: _"Coherency can't come out of incoherency itself, "_ but it isn't analogous, so it isn't like that.
_" Or like saying "Knowledge is impossible" while making a claim that requires you to have knowledge about what the words in that sentence even mean, thus proving knowledge is possible. "_ The definition of knowledge as laid out by presuppers (requiring total epistemic certainty) is impossible. That doesn't mean I can't still make knowledge claims. It just means your definition is broken.
_"Ironically you use the word "intuition" which is a metaphysical whose existence you can't justify or account for in your worldview, where everything is meaningless matter with chemical reactions."_ You're making more knowledge claims you can't justify.
@@PabloCardonaMusic Furthermore... As for the use of "intuition" you're the one that needs to justify it in your worldview (which you haven't yet) because you're the one trying to (fallaciously) make an argument from intuition, not me. I have no need, nor do I claim any intuition in my worldview. Again, I'm just pointing out the laughable bad job you're doing with your "justification."
As for your original claim: _"transcendental categories are coherent, contingent, universal and independent of the human mind"_ You've yet to demonstrate these categories actually exist, and that things with these specific properties exist within the categories you've defined. So literally _nothing_ about this first claim has been justified yet. Yes you did go on to say _"TAG justifies them is by saying that they must be deliberately created,"_ I can "justify" ghosts by saying they must be dead people. Does that make ghosts real? No, of course not. Learn how justification _actually_ works and get back to me. Oh wait... there's more! _" because coherency can only be the result of intelligent design from an intending mind,"_ Yet you provide no justification for this assertion either. Again, this is just broadly stated as if it's a brute fact. I don't accept that it's a fact, brute or otherwise.
Again, this is the problem with anything that relies on the TAG. It's fool's gold. It _seems_ airtight to the uninformed mind because it claims to be airtight. It _claims_ a lot of things, but it doesn't deliver on the justification on those claims, so it can be dismissed just like any other Unjustified claim, like Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster.
But that's not all that's wrong with it, that's just the foundational stuff that doesn't let it get off the ground. There's plenty of other problems down the road too, so by all means, keep coming back with more claims, and I'll help you dig that hole a little deeper.