A Critique of Sye Ten Bruggencate’s
www.proofthatgodexists.org
Originally published on Incinerating
Presuppositionalism.
A visitor to my website recently
informed me about a
debate he had on Premier
Christian Radio with a presuppositional
apologists named Sye Ten Bruggencate.
I’ve seen Sye’s website
before (it is located here: http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/).
On this site, Sye seeks to prove the existence of his
god by leading visitors through a series of pages which present various
alternatives regarding the laws of logic, mathematics, science and morality.
The first four steps ask the visitor to affirm whether or not the laws of
logic, mathematics, science and morality even exist. If at any point the
visitor disaffirms the existence of one of these features, he is taken to a
page which reminds him that he makes use of what he has denied on a daily
basis. So the visitor is compelled to affirm the existence of the laws of logic,
mathematics, science and morality.
At Step Five the
visitor is asked to decide whether those laws, whose existence he has just
affirmed, are “immaterial” or “material.” It is at this point that I think Sye’s proof begins to suffer its most profound problems.
The alternative “immaterial” versus “material” strikes me as a false dichotomy,
since “immaterial” only tells us what something is not, not what it is.
This negative term is contrasted with its positive counterpart, namely
“material,” suggesting that these are the only two options available. The
descriptor “immaterial” has no positive meaning of its own and could refer to
just about anything one imagines (for according to Christian apologist Peter
Pike, imaginary things are “immaterial” – see here).
Sye’s case might raise fewer suspicions if his
question at Step
Five asked whether the laws of logic, mathematics, science and morality
were material or not material. This correction would improve things
two-fold: first it would undo the mistake of treating “immaterial” as if it had
a positive meaning; also, it would generate a question which Sye seems unprepared to ask: If the laws of logic,
mathematics, science and morality are not material, then what are they? It
would be erroneous to suppose that calling them “immaterial” satisfies this
question.
By framing the alternatives in the manner which he chooses, Sye
seeks to tip the scales artificially in favor of his desired conclusion. But we
will find that, even though he does this to give his position an advantage, it
does not work. Let’s explore the two alternatives as Sye
understands them.
If we click the box in Step Five which
says “Laws of logic, Mathematics, Science, and Absolute Morality are Material,”
we are scolded with the following statement:
If you believe that laws of logic,
mathematics, science, or morality are made of matter, please show me where in
nature these laws are. Can you touch them, see them, smell them, hear them, or
taste them? Rather than have you produce a material, physical law I will narrow
down the field for you... just show me the number '3' somewhere in nature. Not
'three things,' not a written representation of the number 3 but the real
physical, material number 3.
Statements like this strongly suggest that Sye has something *conceptual* in mind when he speaks of
“the immaterial.” This is because his example of something “immaterial” is the
number ‘3’, which in fact is a concept (Sye
disqualifies objects in the quantity of three and symbolic representations).
This raises yet a further question about the terms in which Sye
chooses to inform his proof:
Why doesn’t he frame his question about
the ontology of the laws of logic, mathematics, science and absolute morality
in terms of conceptual versus material instead of “immaterial” versus
material?
The reason why Sye does
not cast the alternatives in these terms is most likely because (a) he probably
has no conceptual understanding of logic, mathematics, science and morality,
and (b) doing so would jeopardize his case for theism. Not only does
Christianity not have a theory of concepts (which would explain why Sye does not treat these issues as conceptual phenomena),
his god is not supposed to be merely a concept, but an independently existing
being.
The problem is even worse for Sye. As noted above, at
Step Five Sye contrasts “material” with “immaterial.”
Another expression which he uses to designate “the immaterial” is the term
“abstract entities.” Does Sye really want to say that
his god is “abstract” in nature, like the number 3 or any other abstraction? I
wouldn’t think so. Abstractions are not living entities, they have no
consciousness of their own, and they are not independently existing entities:
they require minds to form and make use of them. But the Christian god is
supposed to be an independently existing entity possessing its own
consciousness, not needing a mind which forms it (such as in the believer’s
imagination).
So just by citing a concept as an example of something “immaterial,” Sye is letting on that “God” refers to something psychological
rather than existential, to something in his mind rather than an independently
existing entity. Concepts are products of a mental process. By characterizing both
“God” and concepts as “immaterial,” Sye is saying
that his god is analogous to products of a mental process. Only instead of
constituting genuine knowledge about the world (as in the case of concepts
formed on the basis of perceptual input), Sye’s god-belief
finds its residence in his imagination.
If at Step Five
we click the box which says “Laws of Logic, Mathematics, Science and Absolute
Morality are Immaterial,” we are taken to Step Six, which has
us decide whether these laws “are universal or up to the individual.” Again we
seem to have a false dichotomy on our hands. Sye
asks: “Does 2 + 2 = 4 only where you are, and only because you say it does, or
is this a universal law?” Sye
implies that something must be universal in order to be what it is independent
of our personal dictates and circumstances. But I’m sure that Sye would agree that this is not the case. In contrast to
universal laws and truths, particular objects exist independent of our
conscious intentions, and our actions in regard to them show that we recognize
this, albeit perhaps only implicitly.
At any rate, most will likely agree (and rightly so) that the equation 2 + 2 =
4 (assuming equivalent units) applies everywhere and not just in one specific
location and not just because we might happen to say it does. If this is what
is meant by universality in this context, then one can agree that the laws of
logic, mathematics, science and morality apply everywhere and are thus
universal in this sense. (I have presented the proper understanding of
universality in my blog Demystifying
Universality.)
Before proceeding with Sye’s proof, however, it
should be noted that Sye contrasts “universal law”
with something being the case because someone says so. This is noteworthy for
it is in the theistic worldview where we find the view that a consciousness has
the power to speak things into existence and alter them according to its will. Sye keeps this aspect of his theism safely out of view
while suggesting that such a position is antithetical to universality as such
in the dichotomy he introduces at this point.
If we take the option at Step Six which
affirms that the laws of logic, mathematics, science and morality are indeed
universal, we are then asked at Step Seven to
affirm whether or not those same laws unchanging. Sye
summarizes how far we’ve come once we’ve made it this far in his proof:
You have acknowledged that laws of logic,
mathematics, science, and absolute morality exist, that they are not made of
matter, and that they are universal. The next question is whether you believe
they are changing or unchanging.
We are asked to decide whether or not, on our own
view, the law of identity, for instance, or 2 + 2 = 4, man’s need for values,
etc., can be altered in some way or another, either on its own or by means of
some external force. Of course, there’s no good reason to suppose that these
laws will do this, we do not experience them changing, and the idea that they
could or would change seems entirely self-refuting.
Indeed, what would cause the laws to change? But causality is one of
those laws. To expect a cause to change the laws invokes the laws. But couldn’t
they change without a cause? No, because causality is the identity of change;
if there’s change, that change – because it exists – would have identity, and
thus the law of causality would be in play.
Apologists like Sye, however, think that this state
of affairs implies or entails the existence of a god which makes this
state of affairs – namely the immutability of the laws in question – obtain, or
at any rate that this would not be the case unless their god were real. Of
course, with reasoning such as this, we are still left with imagining
the god in question, and projecting it as the solution to what may in fact not
be a problem at all in the first place (I say this because we have The
Axioms and the Primacy of Existence). Besides, presuppositionalists
do not make a very clear case for why their god is a necessary precondition for
the existence, universality and immutability of the laws of logic, mathematics,
science and morality. In fact, it seems that these laws imply the very
opposite: that the very notion of a god is completely arbitrary, even
antithetical to them.
At this point, we come to the ”preproof”
page in Sye’s case, where he announces:
To reach this page you had to acknowledge
that immaterial, universal, unchanging laws of logic, mathematics, science, and
absolute morality exist. Universal, immaterial, unchanging laws are necessary
for rational thinking to be possible. Universal, immaterial, unchanging laws
cannot be accounted for if the universe was random or only material in nature.
We saw above that characterizing the laws in
question as conceptual in nature – i.e., as generalized identifications
composed of concepts – is vastly preferable to characterizing them as
“immaterial,” which ignores their conceptual nature and leaves them subject to
whatever arbitrary investment one’s imagination may ascribe to them. In fact,
recognizing that these laws are conceptual in nature explains the remaining two
attributes: universal and unchanging. Universality is essentially the
open-endedness of conceptual reference. For instance, the concept ‘man’
includes not just one man or five men, but all men who exist, who have existed
and who will ever exist. It is because of this open-endedness that we can speak
of men in the past and in the future as well as in the present,
and still have the same essential features in mind – i.e., a biological
organism possessing the faculty of reason. Concept’s
owe their open-endedness of reference to the process of measurement-omission
which is a key aspect of concept-formation, an action performed by the mind.
There’s no mystery here, so there’s no reason to attribute universality to
something beyond man’s own mental abilities.
Similarly with the attribute of immutability: conceptual reference rests on the
proper orientation of the subject-object relationship and the process by which
concepts are formed. The orientation between consciousness (the subject) and
its objects does not change; the subject and its objects do not and cannot
switch places. Moreover, the truth of the axiomatic concepts ‘existence’,
‘consciousness’ and ‘identity’ do not change. For instance, the fact that there
is a reality (“existence exists”) does not change. The immutability of
conceptual reference is thus grounded in facts, facts which do not conform to
conscious intentions, facts which obtain regardless of the actions of any
consciousness (whether real or imagined).
So in a sense, just by preferring to characterize these laws as “immaterial”
instead of conceptual, Sye has stacked the
deck against their real nature in order to underwrite them with theistic
presuppositions which have no basis in reality whatsoever,
and which in fact violate the very axioms which ground those laws in the first
place.
Sye says that these laws “cannot be accounted for if
the universe was random or only material in nature.” But they can be accounted
for if the universe exists independent of consciousness (the primacy of
existence ensures this), if the axiom of consciousness is true (there are
organisms which possess the faculty of consciousness), and if one has a theory
of concepts which explains how conceptualization is possible. And we have all
three of these in the philosophy of Objectivism.
Meanwhile, Christianity defaults on all three of these points. For one thing,
it holds that the universe does not exist independent of consciousness. It
holds to the primacy of consciousness, claiming that the universe was created
by an act of consciousness, and that its contents conform to the dictates of
that consciousness (to its “will”). Moreover, Christianity in essence denies
the axiom of consciousness, for it must assume that consciousness can exist
without an independent object (see my blog Before
the Beginning: The Problem of Divine Lonesomeness).
Lastly, Christianity has no theory of concepts, which means its adherents have
no philosophically native means of understanding the nature of concepts or the
processes by which the human mind forms them.
It is because of these fundamental problems that I wager that Sye’s proof ultimately relies on an argumentum ad ignorantium - an argument from ignorance. It is
primarily because one lacks knowledge of the axioms, the issue of metaphysical
primacy and concept theory that one would seek to exploit the resulting
mysteriousness of the nature of the laws of logic, mathematics, science and
morality and attribute them to the “supernatural”.
Sye continues, saying:
The Bible teaches us that there are 2
types of people in this world, those who profess the truth of God's existence
and those who suppress the truth of God's existence. The options of 'seeking' God, or not believing in God are unavailable. The Bible
never attempts to prove the existence of God as it declares that the existence
of God is so obvious that we are without excuse for not believing in Him.
Sye must appeal to the contents of a
storybook in order to affirm the antithetical categories into which he
wants to fit all men. In doing so, he seeks to wipe out the sheer honesty of
many non-believers: those who honestly do not believe any mystical claims,
including the claim that a “God” exists. It is honesty which is the casualty of
such pronouncements, and this is what we need to understand. If Sye’s proof were built on honesty, why does it seek to
exploit ignorance in such a predatory manner? Blank out. Again, he appeals to
the storybook, acknowledging that it presents no arguments for the existence of
its god, but rather “declares” – i.e., merely asserts, without argument
– its existence, claiming (with blatant contradiction at Romans 1:20) that its
existence is “so obvious that we are without excuse for not believing in Him.”
What the bible offers, and what Sye repeats here, is
essentially an accusation against non-believers. This is one of the oldest
tricks in the book: if someone doesn’t believe your claims, accuse them of some
moral shortcoming. In this case, we’re accused, given our non-belief in Sye’s god, of purposely “suppressing the truth.” The
allegation here is that we are willfully and deliberately denying something
that we really know to be true. But again, neither Sye
nor any other apologist has any rational basis for making such a charge. He
cites no facts or evidence to support his claim; rather, he simply repeats what
the sacred storybook already says. The passage where he gets this comes from
the apostle Paul. Paul wrote this passage some 1900 years ago, long before anyone
reading this was even born. In other words, we were accused of this moral
breach before we even existed, without trial, without a hearing, without
weighing any evidence, without any investigation into any of our souls.
Essentially, we have the theist saying, “Well, if you do not confess that my
God exists, then I’m going to accuse of denying what you really know!” This is
somehow supposed to compel us. Who would want people to believe his claims on
such a basis? Wouldn’t that make one’s own confidence in said belief all the more shaky? It is noteworthy that apologists want to make
the issue a moral matter. Are they not tipping their own cards by doing so? Are
they not tacitly admitting that their god-belief is ultimately a matter of choice
by telling us that we’re immoral for essentially choosing not to
believe? Should we just up and choose to believe that Sye’s
god exists, with no reason other than that we do not want to be guilty of his
charge of “suppressing the truth”? Should we just retreat into our imaginations
on Sye’s say so, on the basis of fear of the
imaginary consequences of the alternative, and agree with his claim that his
god is needed for any proof in the first place?
I trow not.
So it appears, upon inspection, that what Christians really mean by “believe in
Him” is nothing more than “imagine Him.” For no matter what the
apologist offers in defense of his god-belief, we still have no alternative to imagining
his god which he insists exists.
This conclusion bears out in the claim which Sye presents as his “proof”:
The Proof that God exists is that without
Him you couldn't prove anything.
This hardly constitutes any kind of proof. Indeed,
it seems merely to be the opinion of someone who already believes the
claim that said god exists in the first place. In fact, I see no reason why
someone who believes in the Muslim god could not make essentially the same
claim about his god:
The Proof that Allah exists is that
without Him you couldn’t prove anything.
To bring the point home, we could imagine any god
in place of Sye’s “God” and wonder why it would not
stick for that god for the kinds of reasons Sye
supposes it works for his god:
The Proof that Blarko
exists is that without Blarko, you couldn’t prove
anything.
I’m guessing that Sye
would not find these latter two variations on his own them very compelling.
Finally, after all the steps in Sye’s presentation
are exhausted, we come to the question what do you believe?
We are given only two options at this point:
“I believe that God exists”
and
“I do not believe that God exists”
If we choose the first option, Sye
finally rewards us by taking us to his site’s main page, where he asks
visitors who have not gone through his eight-step program to go to his proof’s
first step. For those who made it here by following the desired alternatives of
Sye’s proof and choosing the “I believe that God
exists” path, Sye writes:
For those who have gone through the proof
to get here, it may have been a huge step to finally admit that God exists.
While it may be a relief to finally make such an admission, it is just the
first step, not the last.
He apparently thinks it requires a lot of courage
to “admit that God exists,” even though after going through Sye’s
proof we still have no alternative but to imagine the god whose
existence he’s been trying to prove. Nothing has changed in this regard: before
Sye’s proof, we could only imagine his god, and now
that he’s presented his 8-step proof, we can still only imagine it. We cannot
perceive this god, we cannot conduct a conversation with it, we
cannot verify its existence by asking it to reveal itself in some unmistakable,
demonstrative manner (such as levitating a book from the book shelf – something
that should be easy for the creator of the universe to do). True to presuppositional form, Sye’s god
remains marooned in our imagination, even after all his gyrations about
absolute truth, the laws of logic and universality. Indeed, while I went
through the steps of Sye’s proof, I never experienced
any compulsion to “admit that God exists.” Rather, I sensed only that our leg
was being pulled.
But Sye makes it sound like “admit[ting]
that God exists” lifts some terrible burden off our shoulders. But there was no
burden there in the first place. There is no strain in recognizing the fact
that there is a fundamental distinction between what is real and what is merely
imaginary. In fact, if there’s any “relief” to be achieved, it is in grasping
the nature of this fundamental distinction and “admitting” that the imaginary
is not real, even if Sye’s god doesn’t like it. But
surely even Sye Ten Bruggencate
recognizes the fact that there is a fundamental distinction between what is
real and what is imaginary, does he not? If so, why then does his proof show no concern for this fact?
Why does Sye not tell us how we can distinguish
between his god and what is merely imaginary? Why does he not build any
safeguard into his proof which ensures that the god whose existence he wants to
prove is not something we set up in our imagination as we go through its
several steps? And if he were to build such a safeguard into his proof, how
would it integrate with the terms of his proof, and how would it affect its
intended conclusion? We may never know.
If we go through Sye’s eight-step proof and choose
the latter option, namely “I do not believe that God exists,” Sye will naturally be disappointed. Only stubbornness and
hardheartedness could lead one to choosing this option. It is by choosing this
option that we are lead to a new page
where Sye scolds us yet again. There he writes:
Denying the existence of God is not
unbelief but an exercise in self-deception. You may know things, but you cannot
account for anything you know.
Is it truly an instance of “self-deception” when
one recognizes the fact that there is a fundamental distinction between what is
real and what is imaginary? Indeed, it seems that ignoring this distinction is
a telltale indication of self-deception, and I have yet to see how god-belief
is possible without downplaying this distinction. If something does not exist,
then how can denying its existence when someone insists that it does exist,
constitute an instance of self-deception?
Sye betrays the inherent argumentum ad ignorantium nature to presuppositionalism
when he tells us “you may know things, but you cannot account for anything you
know.” He grants that his visitors can know things, but essentially says that
they don’t know how they know what they know. How does he know
this about those who visit his website? Is he omniscient? Does he confuse
himself with the god he claims he worships? He may have never made their
acquaintance before, and yet he professes to know that they can’t know how they
know what we know. He apparently takes his website’s visitors for fools.
Perhaps Sye is expressing a hope here, namely the
hope that his visitors are unable to “account for anything” they might happen
to know. But why would he hope this? Or perhaps he’s projecting his own
ignorance here. Either way, he seems to think he’s on safe grounds here, since
he provides no support at all for his claim about people who may very well be
complete strangers to him. He talks about being able to “account” for one’s
knowledge, but presents no basis to “account” for the knowledge he claims for
himself about people he’s never met. Sye is telling
us that the basis for his visitors’ knowledge is a mystery to them. And yet
isn’t this precisely what Christianity ends up teaching about the “knowledge”
believers are supposed to claim for themselves when push comes to shove? Look
at what presuppositional apologist John Frame tells
us when he wrestles with the question of how the believer can “account for” the
“knowledge” he is supposed to claim for himself:
I cannot explain the psychology here to the satisfaction of very many. In this case as in others (for we walk by faith, not by sight!) we may have to accept the fact even without an explanation of the fact. Somehow, God manages to get his Word across to us, despite the logical and psychological barriers. Without explaining how it works, Scripture describes in various ways a “supernatural factor” in divine-human communication. (a) It speaks of the power of the Word. The Word created all things (Gen. 1:3, etc.; Ps. 33:3-6; John 1:3) and directs the course of nature and history (Pss. 46:6; 148:5-8). What God says will surely come to pass (Isa. 55:11; Gen. 18:149; Deut. 18:21ff.). The gospel is “the power of God unto salvation” (Rom. 1:16; cf. Isa. 6:9-10; Luke 7:7ff.; Heb. 4:12). (b) Scripture also speaks of the personal power of the Holy Spirit operating with the Word (John 3:5; 1 Cor. 2:4,12ff.; 2 Cor. 3:15-18; 1 Thess. 1:5)10. Mysterious though the process may be, somehow God illumines the human mind to discern the divine source of the Word. We know without knowing how we know. (Presuppositional Apologetics: An Introduction - Part 1 of 2: Introduction and Creation)
Frame
construes the problem as a matter of psychology, but what we’re really after
here (and what Sye is presumably interested in) is a
matter of epistemology, not psychology. For what we’re supposed to be
concerned with is giving an “account for” the knowledge we claim to have,
right? So this in itself is quite an admission on Frame’s part: it tells us
that he has no epistemological “account for” the “knowledge” he claims to have
acquired from a supernatural source. And that would be accurate: knowledge that
is dispensed from a supernatural source would have no epistemological
basis, since it would not be knowledge which one infers from previously
validated knowledge, but which would have been forcibly inserted into his mind
by means of irresistible magic.
And this
analysis is not at all uncalled for: Frame admits that the bible fails to
“explain… how it works,” but mentions that it involves some kind of “power,”
a power which is powerful enough to “direct… the course of nature and history”
(so how could puny little man resist it?). This “power” is something which “operat[es] with the Word”
which the believer reads in the sacred storybook, so just by reading the
storybook the believer is supposedly giving this power access to his mind to do
whatever it chooses to do. Frame himself concedes that he does not understand
how this all works, calling the “process” by which this power inserts knowledge
into the believer’s mind “mysterious,” insisting that “somehow” his god
“illumines the human mind to discern the divine source of the Word,” while
failing to explain how this supposed illumination is any different from the
believer’s own imagination. It is at this point that Frame throws up his arms
in utter cognitive resignation to make the damning admission “We know without
knowing how we know.”
This is the philosophical heritage of presuppositional
apologetics. And yet, given this concession of defeat on a most important
epistemological matter (indeed, the most important matter for the believer if
there were any!), Sye wants to exploit the
non-believer’s supposed inability to “account for” what he knows. Presuppositionalists have always told us that non-believers
cannot “account for” their knowledge, so Sye tells us
nothing we haven’t already heard. But if accounting for knowledge were in fact
so important to Sye, why doesn’t he make up for
Frame’s admitted defeat and get down to the business of accounting for his own
so-called knowledge, beginning with explaining how we can reliably distinguish
between what he calls “God” and what he may merely be imagining?
The silence on these points is indeed deafening!
But if Christians can give themselves a pass when it comes to giving an
“account for” their knowledge and ultimately appeal to “mystery,” why is it an
issue of the non-believer is unable to articulate the epistemological grounding
of his own knowledge?
Perhaps it is because – and this is what we should expect if Christianity were
in fact false – Christianity has no genuine epistemology, and non-believers –
who claim no supernatural source for the knowledge they have – should have an
epistemological basis for the knowledge they have, since they acquire their
knowledge through processes governed by the nature of their consciousness and
its perceptual contact with reality. In other words, while believers should not
be expected to provide any epistemological accounting for the knowledge they
claim to have about “the supernatural” (since such “knowledge” is summarily
arbitrary in nature), non-believers do not claim to acquire their knowledge
from some “supernatural” source, but instead rely on their own faculties to
discover facts, formulate general principles and infer higher-level truths
through some understandable process. So the Christian is right on schedule in
giving himself a pass, since he has no “account for” the knowledge he claims,
and he is clever in challenging non-believers to explain how he acquires the
knowledge he has.
But this does not in any way justify the believer’s appeal to “mystery” or some
“supernatural power.” By taking this route, the believer announces that his
god-belief rests ultimately on his own ignorance: he has no idea how to
“account for” knowledge at all, and yet it is on the basis of this ignorance
that he hopes to establish the validity of his god-belief. The circular
tail-spin of crash-and-burn presuppositionalism
leaves its practitioners stranded on a deserted island, unable to fend for
themselves, unable to do nothing more than rest on the futile hope that some
unsuspecting victim will come along and fall for his pretenses.
That being said, it is true that many non-believers do find it difficult to
wrestle with presuppositionalism’s devises and
challenges. There are, among others, two fundamental reasons why this may be
the case. For one, while individual thinkers do have a great store of knowledge
in their minds, they typically do not learn the processes by which they acquire
knowledge in an explicit, systematic manner. They started learning knowledge
when they were toddlers, and just continued with the processes that they
naturally developed over time, never really understanding how their knowledge
relates to what they perceive, never exploring how they form a concept, never
identifying the process by which they can infer general truths from what they
are aware of directly. Since their childhood, the processes by which they
acquire their knowledge has been automatized,
something they do without fully understanding how they do it. In this way, many
non-believing thinkers’ orientation to their own knowledge is no different from
what Frame indicates about the religious knowledge he claims when he concedes
that “we know without knowing how we know.”
The solution to this is not what the presuppositionalist
offers, which is to retreat further into the cave of his religion’s darkness,
but to recognize the fact that since consciousness and knowledge both have
identity, they can both be understood, since knowledge is essentially a process
of identifying that which has identity. This is where Objectivist epistemology,
the objective theory of concepts, sheds light where presuppositionalism
can only prey on ignorance. (For details, see Ayn
Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.) I contend that,
without a theory of concepts, one will be unable to answer presuppositionalism’s
challenges in any definitely resolute manner.
Sye’s next statement is noteworthy:
Arguing
against God's existence would be on par with arguing against the existence of
air, breathing it all the while.
It’s curious
that Sye would compare “arguing against God’s
existence” with “arguing against the existence of
air,” for his proof makes it clear that his god is supposed to be immaterial
while air is undeniably material in manner. We do in fact breathe air, and can
feel it rushing into our lungs and out our noses as we breathe. We can directly
sense air, since our air channels are equipped with nerve endings which
register the passage of air as it moves across them. But the Christian god is
supposed to be immaterial, invisible, and beyond the reach of our senses. It’s
said to be “out there” some place, but without any ability on our part to
perceive. All we can do is imagine it (which we aren’t supposed to talk
about). So Sye’s comparison of his god with the air
that we breathe, is at the very least highly questionable.
If Sye could say this about his god, couldn’t we say
this about anything we imagine?
Sye then says:
You use the
universal, immaterial, unchanging laws of logic, mathematics, science, and
absolute morality in order to come to rational decisions, but you cannot
account for them.
How does Sye know that we “cannot account for them”? If we have the
objective theory of concepts, we surely can “account for” logic, mathematics,
science and morality, since these are conceptual in nature. Indeed, how could these
endeavors be possible to any consciousness lacking the ability to form
concepts? Blank out! Sye certainly does not explain
this. He does not even consider this question. I have already discussed the
proper understanding of universality (see here). Universality is essentially nothing
more than the human mind’s ability to form open-ended classifications of
reference (namely mental integrations) into which new units can be integrated
when they are discovered or considered. There is nothing mysterious about
universality when it is understood as an aspect of conceptual awareness. But
notice that presuppositional apologetics does not
encourage an *understanding* of universality, but instead seeks to utilize
universality as a point of ignorance against the non-believer.
Similarly with the quality of being “immaterial”: since Sye
is talking about universality, he’s clearly talking about the mind’s ability to
formulate open-ended classifications of reference. But the mind does not
experience its own activity in the same manner that it experiences the concrete
entities which it perceives in the world. The mind acts according to its own
nature, and this activity is certainly different from the nature of the objects
of which one is aware by means of sense perception. A tree which one perceives
is different from the concept ‘tree’ which one forms in his mind to integrate
and identify the many trees he perceives.
Sye continues:
These laws
are not the only way God has revealed himself to you, but they are sufficient
to show the irrationality of your thinking, and expose your guilt for denying
Him.
The “laws” to
which Sye refers here, if they have any objective
basis, are not the means by which an invisible magic being “reveals” itself to
human beings, but in fact the conceptual form in which human minds identify and
integrate general truths which they discover about the world in which they
exist. There’s nothing otherworldly about these laws. In fact, they pertain in this
world precisely because they are formed on the basis of what is discovered in this
world. The reason why religious thinkers treat them as indications of a
supernatural dimension is precisely because they do not understand their
inherent relation to this world, which again implicates the argumentum ad ignorantium nature of presuppositional
apologetics: the apologists do not know how the laws of logic, mathematics,
science and morality can be derived by the human mind from their awareness of
the world around us, therefore they couldn’t possibly be derived from awareness
of the world around us. Consequently, they must derive from some awareness
alien to this world, they must derive from a
supernatural mind. After all, goes the reasoning, this world is nothing but
matter in constant flux, particulars that are ever-changing. So how could these
laws, which are “immaterial,” unchanging and universal find their basis in this
world? If such reasoning were true, how could these laws have any applicability
in this world if they didn’t have any basis in it? Again, to address such
questions, apologists appeal to the supernatural: because the laws reflect the
nature of a supernatural being, and the supernatural being created this world
(this world which is a chaos of particulars constantly undergoing change).
Still we are left with imagining something beyond what we perceive, beyond what
we can infer from an objective basis, beyond what we can reach by means of
reason. You just have to have faith in the apologist’s claims that the defense
he gives for his god-belief is true, for it will never make sense on the basis
of reason.
Sye’s presumptuousness seems to know no bounds when
he writes (again, he’s writing this to whoever happens to visit his website and
finds his way to this page):
There is a
reason that you deny the existence of God and it has nothing to do with proof.
I can show this to you. Examine what your initial reaction was to the proof of
God's existence offered on this website. Did you think that you could continue
to deny God because you are not a scientist, or philosopher but 'Surely
somewhere, sometime, a philosopher or scientist will come up with an
explanation for universal, immaterial, unchanging laws apart from God?' Did you
try to come up with an alternate explanation on your own? OR Did you even
consider that the proof was valid?
The problem
with Sye’s proof is not whether it is valid or
invalid. Validity is a formal concern in logic; one can produce a valid argument
that the earth rests on the back of a giant tortoise swimming through space.
The question is whether or not Sye’s argument is sound,
and this should be his concern. It should be our concern as well, for even if
we object that Sye’s argument is invalid, it would
not take a lot of effort to make it valid, and then what? The concern should be
whether the premises in Sye’s argument are true as
well as whether or not they in fact support his intended conclusion. On this
note, Sye’s argument does not make it clear how the
conclusion that his god exists follows from the premises that the laws of
logic, mathematics, science and morality are “immaterial,” unchanging and
universal. He insists that such laws “cannot be accounted for if the universe
was random or only material in nature” (Sye makes
this claim on the pre-proof page). But it does not follow
from this that his god therefore exists. Nor does Sye’s
claiming that these laws “reflect the very nature and thinking of God” given their so-called
“immaterial,” universal and unchanging nature (as he does here). It is one thing merely to claim
that these laws “reflect the very nature of God,” another thing entirely to
prove (a) that said god exists and (b) that the laws in question actually do
reflect its nature. Sye has merely presented the
claim that they do (thus assuming the existence of his god, which is what he
was supposed to prove in the first place); he has not at all come close to
accomplishing the latter tasks.
Notice Sye’s glaring presumptuousness in speaking on
behalf of his visitors, most of whom he will never personally meet. How does Sye know that any given reader’s reason for rejecting the
claim that his god exists has nothing to do with proof? Presuppositionalists
are constantly asking non-believers to “account for” their knowledge; why
doesn’t Sye “account for” what he claims to know
here? It could be that readers find Sye’s “proof”
deficient (they’d be right to do so), and this would be sufficient to reject
its conclusion. Sye says that he can show that his
readers’ rejection of the claim that his god exists by examining their initial
reaction to his website. But even Sye does not know
what his readers’ initial reaction to his website may be. That he does not know
this is given away by the fact that he must ask his readers questions in order
to probe for those reasons. Sye notes several
possible initial reactions, but hardly provides an exhaustive list. It could be
that his readers came to his website with a willingness to let Sye make his case, and upon examining his case found it to
be insufficient to the task he put before himself. It may be the case that some
readers are simply being honest when they examine Sye’s
case and find it surreptitious or deceptive. Would Sye
fault any of his site’s visitors for being honest?
Sye clearly wants to forestall any alternative to his
god-belief:
Hoping that an alternate explanation for universal, immaterial,
unchanging laws can someday be found apart from God, is a blind leap of faith,
or wishful thinking. Isn't it interesting that this is exactly what
professed unbelievers accuse Christians of?
In other
words, Sye chides putting hope in what merely be
imaginary as an alternative to putting hope in what believers can only imagine.
A leap of faith in favor of some mystical concoction of human imagination which
starkly departs from the realm in which we exist is to be preferred over man’s
potential when it comes to what he may produce in the future (human beings have
quite a track record, from the Empire State Building to the Declaration of
Independence).
But all of this is for naught, for we already have a rational
explanation for the universal, unchanging and objective laws which Sye has in mind. And that explanation is found in the
philosophy of Objectivism. (If what he presents to us on his site is any
indication, it appears that Sye has no familiarity
with this philosophy; he certainly does not interact with it.) So there is no
need to “hope” that “someday” an “alternative explanation” can be “found apart
from God” (as if positing “God” explains these things to begin with!). No “leap
of faith” is required, either for some imagined future explanation or for some
supernatural deity which one can only imagine. No “wishful thinking” is needed.
And yes, hoping, leaps of faith, and wishful thinking, are indeed the kinds of
things non-believers observe Christians indulging in when it comes to their
god-belief. And no, non-believers are not constrained to doing the same, so
long as they choose rational philosophy.
But rational philosophy, the philosophy of Objectivism, is precisely what
believers do not want to consider. Indeed, does Sye consider
the possibility that there is a rational alternative to his god-belief? Not
that I can see.
Does Sye Ten Bruggencate
present a genuine proof for the existence of “God”? Not if what is imaginary is
distinct from what is real. If his god were real, why would Sye
rely on the usual tactics of presuppositionalism to
demonstrate its reality? I submit that he relies on these tactics precisely
because his god is not real, and yet wants it to be real.
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