If I Ever Debate an Atheist…
Posted by BryanNov 17
…on the existence of God, I think my opening statement will be:
“Bananas squid bubbles five pepsi.”
And then I would sit down.
Then, when the moderator would ask me to explain myself, I would say:
“You see, my opponent is an atheist. This means that he doesn’t believe that anything exists outside of matter necessarily. ‘The universe is all there was, is, and ever will be.’ Everything that exists is a collection of atoms. This means that nothing can exist outside of matter. Yet the laws of logic are outside of matter- they certainly aren’t made up of atoms!
But for language to work, the laws of logic must necessarily exist. Meaning and syntax demands it. If there is no such thing as the law of non-contradiction, then words can have any meaning you want and syntax falls apart. If this is true, then what I just said is about as good of an opening statement as you will get, and since words can have any meaning, I declare that ‘bananas squid bubbles five pepsi’ sufficient enough to win this argument. But of course ‘winning’ means nothing, because it could mean ‘to win’ or ‘to lose.’ Either way, let’s call this a draw and go get some lunch.”
13 comments
Comment by Hannah on November 17, 2008 at 11:30 pm
hahahaha. I’d pay money to be at that debate.
Comment by Danny on November 17, 2008 at 11:55 pm
That’s pretty funny. The only problem is that many atheists do believe in a necessarily existing matter, the cosmic point if singularity. Language, like mathematics, tends to fall outside of the physical realm, although technically, you’re talking about a sound wave.
I’m up for lunch though!
Comment by Bryan on November 17, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Danny
I’m always up for lunch
Language as a sound wave is absolutely the movement of matter. I certainly would never deny that. However, in order for the movement and vibration of atoms (sound wave) to have meaning, syntactical and dictionary, the laws of logic must be employed. Those are not at all material in any way, and thus must transcend matter.
Oh, and thanks for the follow on twitter!
Comment by Scripture Zealot on November 18, 2008 at 1:26 pm
You like potato and I like potahto
You like tomato and I like tomahto
Potato, potahto, Tomato, tomahto.
Let’s call the whole thing off
Comment by Mike on November 21, 2008 at 3:14 am
Somebody’s been reading presuppositionalism…
Comment by Bryan on November 21, 2008 at 9:06 am
The sad thing is that I haven’t. Not for awhile now anyways. I’ve been stuck in a few 2 Corinthian commentaries writing a paper. This is how I distract myself from paper writing…
And no. The break can’t come soon enough.
Comment by CD-Host on December 2, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Bryan –
You really don’t think atheists have counter arguments to the “without god there is no logic” argument? That argument has existed for over 2200 and was countered by Sextus Empiricus (from whom we get the empiricism) 1800 years ago to the point it is rarely raised anymore.
Comment by Bryan on December 2, 2008 at 7:35 pm
I absolutely believe they have counter-arguments. I’ve come across them many times- just as I have counter-arguments for no basis of morality, etc.
The point is that I don’t find them to be valid at their core. I.e.When they use logic, or morality, they are borrowing from another world-view, not their own. They don’t have a foundation from which to derive anything beyond what is physical, and thus no foundation for logic, morality, mathematics and so on. Empiricism is good in-so-far as explaining what is going on, but is often times unable to explain why, beyond a regression of cause-and-effect. There isn’t a naturalistic explanation for these things that is coherent with the naturalistic world-view- it must be borrowed.
And I don’t think that saying it is hardly used anymore is fair- Van Til and Bahnsen certainly used it quite often, as does Doug Wilson, N.T. Wright, and others more contemporary. Wilson used it in his debate against Hitchens. John Lennox uses the transcendental argument often, most recently in a debate against Dawkins. Again, it’s not that atheists don’t utilize logic (they must to debate), but simply that it is, at its root, contradictory to their world-view.
Comment by CD-Host on December 2, 2008 at 8:44 pm
You are right, I stand corrected that does get used in reformed arguments like Francis Schaeffer, Van Til… I meant that it is not used inside of philosophy, as opposed to apologetics, but I certain didn’t write that.
Anyway, I personally actually have never seen the contradiction. One can believe that logic provides a method for deriving things knowable from the senses from other things known by the senses as verified by experience without having to believe in any sort of higher philosophy. And atheists do believe in higher philosophy.
In any case I do believe Sextus gives you the natural regression. He regresses to the most basic level, “I experience X”.
Comment by Bryan on December 2, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Just as you can’t see the contradiction, I can’t unsee it
I would say that the reason Sextus can say “I experience X” and derive logic from it is because logic does exist. I don’t think that he is able to give the foundation for the existance of logic, just recognize it’s existence.
For example, if logic exists (which it does of course), I would expect an empiricist to derive it from experience. What I cannot expect is that the naturalist would be able to give the grounds for that logic… they can say “this is what we see” but not “this is why we see what we see” when it comes to logic. Certainly, they can give a superficial explanation such as “when Y happens in this scenario, the result is always X, therefore Y will produce X given this scenario.” That is logic at work. They can certainly experience that. But if we ask “Why does Y always produce X in this scenario” they must go beyond their world-view for an explanation. They would, probably, argue for natural law- but a law is by definition not a material thing. The naturalist, as I see it, is at a loss for explanation of nonmaterial things, though they certainly believe in their reality.
Comment by Bryan on December 2, 2008 at 8:58 pm
And I will definitely spend some time rereading and giving more thought to Sextus when I get some down time.
Comment by Bradley Davis on December 2, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I agree with you Bryan, and I think you’ve answered the questions pretty well, although I do think empiricism can be a difficult thing to deal with, because it’s an extreme. If you insist on empiricism to answer everything, you won’t get an answer to everything, because everything is not experiential (cf. Ravi Zacharias, The Grand Weaver).
Empiricism can be helpful about learning certain aspects of the things we observe, but not much more. When it comes down to it, Bryan, you’re right. Just like every other worldview, empiricism must borrow from somewhere else to answer the questions of Origin, Meaning, Morality and Hope. There’s no getting around it. That’s the main flaw in Sam Harris’ writing.
Anyway, I know I haven’t contributed anything that you didn’t already know… I’m just vain enough to want to put my two cents in.
Comment by Hannah on December 3, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Interestingly, modern neuro- and psycholinguists have begun to do research on the biology of language, with some very interesting findings in how our brains are ‘wired’ for language and grammar [see Stephen Pinker's 'The Language Instinct'], and though they attribute this to the wonders of the evolutionary process, it still begs the question of where the logic and intelligence for language came from in the first place, as it’s not material, which is exactly your point, Bryan. Though neurolinguistics is quite capable these days of empirically describing humans’ capability for language, I find their triumphant answer to actually be the question they need to answer – what is the ontological basis for language? Ultimately their hope is the evolutionary answer of something coming from nothing, which is entirely dissastisfying to me.