Transcendental argument for the existence of God Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Transcendental reasoning is an inference pattern based upon the prerequisite conditions for the possibility of a given fact. All major philosophical systems have employed transcendental arguments.The Transcendental Argument for the existence of God (TAG) is an argument for the existence of God which attempts to show that logic, science, ethics, and more generally, every other fact of human experience and knowledge, are preconditioned by the existence of the Christian God. That is, one could not make sense of any of them apart from the conditioning belief in the existence of the Christian God. This argument is commonly used by presuppositional apologists, and is considered by some of them (especially those of the Van Tillian variety) to be the only valid method of apologetical argumentation.
The TAG aims to prove God's existence from the impossibility of the contrary. Christians and non-Christians alike appeal to logic, science and ethics, in their daily lives no less than in their specialized fields of study. It is the contention of the proponents of TAG that only the Christian-Theistic worldview, as found in the Bible, provides the necessary preconditions that can account for science, ethics, logic, mathematics, morality, induction, or any of the many other facts of human experience and knowledge. The Christian God, being completely logical, uniform, and good, exhibits his character in the created order and the creatures themselves (especially in man). Therefore, they contend, Christianity must be true because it provides the only possibile basis for the intelligibility of all human experience and knowledge.
This reasoning contents that all other worldviews (Atheism, Buddhism, Islam, etc), if carried out to their logical conclusions, are reduced to either absurdity, arbitrariness or inconsistency.
TAG is a transcendental argument, meaning that it is proved by demonstrating the impossibility of the contrary. Christian theologian Robert L. Dabney described the impossibility of the contrary by stating: "It is not we that cannot see how the opposite comes to be true...[it is that] we are able to see that the opposite cannot possibly be true." (See also Immanuel Kant and Self-Reference).
The basic form of the Transcendental Argument for the existence of God argument is fairly simple: "If A is the precondition of B, and B (is true/exists), therefore A (is true/exists)". The validity of the first premise ("A is the precondition of B") is usually established by a form of argument known as reductio ad absurdum.
TAG asserts that one's worldview eventually must boil down to a single set of governing presuppositions which are the foundation of all other beliefs. If we believe A, and we believe A because of B, and we believe B because of C, and so forth, eventually we come to a belief that is the foundation of all our other beliefs. For the Christian, the existence of the the self-attesting God revealed in the Bible is that fundamental, independent, foundational belief. The only alternative, they argue, to starting our reasoning with the Christian God, is to start with self as ultimate (i.e., autonomy) which leads to the problems that are allegedly exposed by TAG. So TAG challenges the core beliefs of the non-Christian's worldview, attempting to show where those foundations lead to arbitrariness, inconsistencies, or absurdity.
For example, TAG argues that the moral relativist must secretly rely on the existence of the Christian God to make sense of any moral value-judgment. In the Christian worldview, there is an all-good God whose own character is the basis for the predication of right and wrong to any thought or action. In creation he has equipped man to be a moral being, and in his self-revelation he reveals how man should act, and commands him to do so. Thus, man does have an absolute standard of morality by which to commend or condemn one's thoughts or actions. On the other hand, the relativist cannot commend or condemn any action -- not murder or the opposite, not rape or the opposite, not the holocaust or the opposite, for to do so would be an exposure of his reliance on the notion of absolute morality, and would be based on unacknowledged presuppositions and assumptions about right and wrong which he claims to reject. No moral commendations or condemnations, it is argued, can be accounted for from the relativist's own worldview, instead they are derived from unconsciously "borrowed capital" from Christianity, which the relativist in turn uses even in his arguments against the truth of Christianity.
Objection: TAG implies that non-Christians have no true knowledge of the world, themselves or God.
Answer: TAG proponents do not claim that non-Christians are not logical or moral, or that non-Christians are unable to engage in scientific inquiry or mathematics. Rather, they argue that on a non-Christian worldview there is no theoretical basis that can make sense of these activities and thought-patterns, even though non-Christians (as human beings created in God's image) must be inconsistant with their worldview in actual practice because this is actually God's world.
Objection: TAG denies the validity of utilizing (Christian) Theistic evidence.
Answer: TAG asserts that Christianity is, in principle, both self-coherent and consistent with the external world -- i.e. does not lead to absurdity, arbitrariness or inconsistency. It is the responsibility of the proponent of the argument to show that these assertions are true, and part of that demonstration must consist of appeal to emperical evidence. Thus, TAG actually assumes the validity of Christian-Theistic evidence, rather than repudiating them; proponents simply understand those evidence within the context of the entire Christian worldview, rather than regarding them as so many 'neutral' facts outside of it.
Objection: TAG depends on perfect knowledge of an absolute moral system. This requires the assumption of a perfect God, perfect communication from that God to the writers of the Bible in its present form (after deletion of "heretical" writings, translations, etc.), perfect understanding of its meaning by TAG proponents, and perfect transmission of that moral system to less erudite consenting and non-consenting adults.
Answer: TAG only depends on the existence of an absolute moral (and logical) system and knowledge of its existence, not on perfect knowledge of the system itself. Just as one may not know exactly how or why each piece of a certain model car operates the way it does, and yet argue that without a certain car factory one could not own such a car, so one may be ignorant or unclear of the precise workings of the system of Christian morality and logic, and yet argue that apart from the existence of the God revealed in the Bible one could not make sense of the facts of human experience and knowledge.
Objection: TAG assumes God is the creator of man, and that God equipped man with standards of morality.
Answer: ...?
A number of Apologists have used TAG, including Cornelius Van Til, Greg Bahnsen, John Frame, and Michael Butler. Also see Michael Martin's Transcendental Argument for the Non-existence of God.
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