(August 11, 2009 at 7:50 pm)Tiberius Wrote: Now I'm confused. Either the TAG states that God created morality (and is thereby nulled by the fact that there are other explanations, and the argument is based on mere assumption (and is not a proof). Or TAG states that morality is because of God (it is transcendent or whatever), which is again nulled by the same fact and is still based on assumption.The TAG does not state that God created morality. You have no reason to be confused about it; you just stated that TAG did state this, and now you are saying vaguely that "either it did, or it didn't, in either case, it's invalid because it's not an evidential argument."
But that was the case from the beginning. The argument could not be an evidential argument, because it starts by presuming a worldview of Christian orthodoxy, in the sense of foundational belief, and compares it to a worldview of atheism, which does not affirm a foundational belief in Christian orthodoxy. That does not "null" the argument, it means the argument is analytic, not evidential. That an argument is analytic, not evidential, does not null an argument, anymore than it nulls an argument that it is evidential, not analytic. And if it did, you would have provide rational reasons to say that it does, beyond the mere reassertion that "it does".
(August 11, 2009 at 7:50 pm)Tiberius Wrote: Either way, TAG isn't a proof of anything. One could just as easily say that the FSM or Richard Dawkins is responsible for logic / morality.That is a red herring/straw man, since those are not the worldviews the argument does analyse, and certainly not real worldviews to begin with. You are using this as an excuse to ignore the analysis of the argument of the viewpoints it does analyse, since any other viewpoints are irrelevant to the analytic conclusions about the epistemic structures that it actually does analyse.
(August 11, 2009 at 7:50 pm)Tiberius Wrote: (1) Knowledge is possible (or some other statement pertaining to logic or morality)The argument is rather that if the logical order of the universe doesn't transcend human minds, and it is not an objective conceptual reality independent of human minds, then it is not possible to say that it does not, and perfectly reasonable to say that it does, since to say the opposite would be invoking the law of contradiction which is self-refuting after the fact of the objective non-reality of this law.
(2) If there is no god, knowledge is not posssible
(3) Therefore god
I agree with statement (1), but (2) is a non-sequitur. It is an assumption and simply does not follow through. In fact I'm a little bit disappointed by this argument, given that Arcanus sticks by it so strongly. The argument itself gives nothing to explain (2), it just states it.
The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.
-G. K. Chesterton
-G. K. Chesterton