I was a Van Tillian for many years - it was really the only form of apologetics I followed. I still find it the best for my own purposes but I don't often try to explain it to atheists. Though I find it intuitively powerful I can't seem to get across the basic idea and so get bogged down in rabbit trails that lead nowhere.

That Wiki isn't very helpful in understanding what TAG is about. I haven't listened to the Bahnsen lectures but I do have his book on Van Til, as well as Frame's, and they would give you a much better idea of the concept. Comparing TAG to the cogito most likely caused Van Til to roll over in his grave.

http://www.reformed.org/apologetics/...artin_TAG.html

This is a debate between Frame and Micheal Martin who came up with a witty reply to TAG called TANG - the Transcendental Argument for the Non-existence of God. It will give you a better overview of the substance of the argument.

Van Til basically converted Kant's idea of the transcendental and applied it to apologetics. He asks the question - What are the presuppositions necessary for the universe, reason, knowledge, logic, science and morality, to exist and make sense? By presupposition he doesn't mean assumption, but what are the ontological necessary preconditions for these things to be rational? The answer is that unless the Christian theistic absolute personal (Van Til often used the phrase "self-contained ontological Trinity" because it included all the necessary ideas) God exists, literally nothing else makes sense.

I think perhaps the greatest contribution by Van Til was in his critique of atheistic worldviews. He generated a huge volume of work and much of it was demonstrating the inability of any philosophy to account for the universe and especially for humans, reason, morality, etc. He never wrote any systematic work so his "system" is very difficult to piece together from his work, but Bahnsen did a very good job in his book on Van Til - it's basically a selection of Van Til's stuff with running commentary. But I think he really nails the reasons why human thought is inadequate to explain reality and I still think in Van Tillian terms about a lot of the subjects of apologetics and philosophy.

After giving it a bit of thought, I'd have to agree. I would qualify it, though, by saying that God doesn't explain things such as the order of universe, rationality, consciousness, advanced intelligence, etc... Instead, those things explain God. God doesn't explain anything; everything explains God.

What do you think constitutes an explanation?

how fitting that Sunday's comic on SMBC was this.

There's a fundamental difference between the God of the Philosopher and the God of the Ordinary Believer.

The God of the Philosopher is, indeed, a device to explain aspects of the universe. She is almost like an axiom as much as an actual supernatural being. If you know anything about Descartes, for instance, you'll see how he uses God in exactly this fashion. The thing is, though, is that this God isn't necessarily or usually a personal God, She doesn't intervene (or isn't needed to intervene) in human affairs, She doesn't exist to save you (or at least doesn't necessarily exist to do so), etc.

The God of the Ordinary Believer is a personal God who cares about each and every one of us (or at least each and every believer). However, She doesn't necessarily explain anything about the universe or the nature of reality. Indeed, She tends to make things more difficult to explain, because Her existence actually requires that believers carve all sorts of exceptions to and cast doubt on things that we know about the world but which this type of intervening God improbable.

So it is perfectly plausible to say God may explain things. But the God that most believers profess belief in generally doesn't explain anything.

I understand the distinction you're making (without necessarily agreeing). I don't really care whether people are referring to God as some kind of abstract construction or as the entity they pray to in some kind of attempt at a personal relationship.

What I'm asking from theists (or anyone really) is what an explanation actually involves. You say the God of the philosophers could plausibly be an explanation - how? What is it about an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent creator which explains rationality (Or what is it about any other conception of God if you dont think omni3 is what captures the philosopher's god)?

In my mind an explanation both reduces the number of disparate phenomena we observe and allows us to predict new things we haven't yet seen. If it doesnt do the first it's just a relabelling. If it doesnt do the second, it's just a description.

bunny:

Here's an example, straight from Descartes.

He wants to know whether his senses providing him with truthful information. After all, there are times (when you are dreaming, drunk, hallucinating, insane, etc.) when they do not provide you with truthful information. So how, then, can we know that we are not simply dreaming / hallucinating 24 hours a day and all the things we think exist really don't exist?

Descartes' answer? Because a benevolent God would never do that to us. (It's more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea.)

Another example of God providing an explanation for something is the issue of the first cause of the universe. As you surely know, a lot of people have a problem with the Big Bang in that if that is the explanation of how the universe started out, then what caused it? What threw the switch, if you will.

Positing a God as a first cause provides an explanation for that. She can be the first cause / "unmoved mover".

Note I am not saying these are "good" explanations-- only that the concept of God can have some explanatory power for some people. But, again, this isn't really the same type of God that believers tend to be positing.

I'm obviously not being clear. I know there are a number of phenomena people think are explained by God - I'm not looking for some examples. According to my view of an explanation "God is the cause of the big bang" doesn't fit the definition of an explanation - since it neither reduces the number of phenomena we need to explain, nor does it allow us to predict anything new. When you say:

"...only that the concept of God can have some explanatory power for some people..."

I think you are restating the fact which causes my puzzlement. What I am looking for is someone who considers "God caused the big bang" to be an explanation of the big bang to outline exactly what it is that warrants labelling it an explanation.

Well, it depends on how you define "explanation". If you define it as "something that, if provided, requires no additional information whatsoever to completely close the system", then no, God doesn't provide an explanation for anything, because then you get to "well, who created God?".

But if you define "explanation" as "pieces of information that assist a person in understanding a phenomenon", then positing God as an explanation for the Big Bang certainly does provide such information. You still have to explain God, as you note, but the notion that perhaps someone flipped a switch does provide information that assists some people in understanding how the Big Bang took place. (I suspect it's wrong information, but that's a separate issue.)

And this is why I say that the God of the Philosopher is basically as much an axiom as a supernatural being. It's basically on the level of "OK, assume God, now do these questions have answered?".

At first thought, I'd say the reason why. The reason why constitutes an explanation.

Behind the God question is the inference from the seen and/or the known to the unseen and/or unknown. Newton, for example, asked why the apple fell to the earth and surmised the force of gravity is the reason why the apple fell to the earth. Or more current, the occurrence of red-shifts leads to the question of why the red-shifts occur and from here we surmise the force of dark energy is the reason why the red-shifts occur.

So, in a like manner, when we ask why rationality occurs - God is the reason why rationality occurs. Rationality explains God, or, the occurrence of rationality is an explanation of God.

I'll try to post a response to the rest of what you say in a bit, but I just want to note that these examples are not all alike. I don't think it makes sense to place God in a causal relationship of any kind to rationality. As far as I can tell, most Christian apologists who make this claim (I'll include Bahnsen here), just don't seem to understand the philosophical issues around the foundation of logic and rationality.

Until I know what people mean when putting forth God as an explanation for each of them, I won't be able to tell whether I agree with you. I am also suspicious that 'explanation' is meaning something different in each case - either that or it's meaning something trivial.

Having said that I know that NotReady (for instance) has a very strong and cogent view on this - though he tends to phrase it not so much as "There is no way to explain rationality without God." but rather "There is no way rationality can exist without God." a related, but different claim I think.

I would say the two are different but both are true. "Explain" would speak to epistemology, "exist" to ontology.

There is a use of explanation I do find equivocal. Craig formulates the Liebniz cosmo argument, the principal of sufficient reason, as:

1) Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause
2) If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
3) The universe exists.
4) Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence (from 1, 3)
5) Therefore, the explanation of the existence of the universe is God (from 2, 4).

It seems to me that 1) equivocates on explanation. Saying that God is necessary is an explanation of why God has no explanation, which I find perfectly reasonable as there must be something ultimate that can't be explained.

This is a question to which there is no unique yes or no answer, since, in general, whether A explains B is a function of the necessarily arbitrary (with respect to your process of reasoning) premises of your process of reasoning.

I think that when theists say that God "explains" rationality, logic, or science, they usually mean that believing God justifies our belief that using the procedures of these disciplines will lead to true beliefs. Typically this view is the result of believing that non-theist (especially naturalist) accounts of these disciplines have serious problems in showing why these procedures are truth-producing, whereas if God exists, then God would want us to be able to discover the truth, and so God would give us the means to do so, i.e. logic, reason, and science.

Notice that once again this is not an explanation of how God made these disciplines such that their procedures are truth producing, but rather his motivation for doing so. Also it is common for the theist to claim that since God is omnipotent, how God did this is sort of beside the point--God is not, after all, constrained by physical (or even causal) laws, and so coming up with a causal explanation is impossible. Thus, the only kind of explanation that is possible would be, what is God's motivation for making these disciplines truth-producing?

The last point is worth emphasizing a bit more. God doesn't function as an explanation of how the universe was created. When the universe was created, it was not done so by God following certain basic laws on universe building. Rather, as an omnipotent being, God is not constrained by any kind of causal framework, and so you cannot explain God's creation of the universe in causal terms. But since scientific explanation is explanation in terms of causes (I know this is a big assumption, but most variants would have similar implications), this means that God cannot function as part of any scientific explanation.

Does he have any answer to skepticism? I mean, as you present it the argument goes:

1) Knowledge is possible,
2) If God doesn't exist, knowledge is not possible,
3) Therefore God exists.

However, the skeptic claims that (1) is false. If she is correct, the argument is unsound. Kant's project in the Critique of Pure Reason was in part to show that the skeptic was wrong. Does Van Til have a response as well?

Also, I don't see how this works for logic, can you clarify? What foundational principle of logic is coherent if God exists, but incoherent if God doesn't exist?

Jib likes to ask questions, doesn't like answering them so much.

FYP.

I'm not looking for 'the unique' answer, I'm looking for yours (assuming you think God explains the various things in the OP). I was speculating that 'the Bible is completely true and understandable to us' was one of your premises.

I realise there isn't going to be a proof that God is an explanation and that it depends on the meaning of the word. According to me, I don't think God is an explanation - I'm not saying the people who do are necessarily wrong, I suspect they mean something different from the phrase than I do.

That is one of my premises. I accept that God caused the universe. Beyond that, "explains" remains too vague for me to know how to answer your question specifically.

One problem I find with arguments like this (Jibninjas sent me a Craig podcast which I think featured precisely this argument) is the dichotomy of 'necessary vs externally caused'. I think there is a lot of assumptions behind this (though it may be defensible) which need to be spelt out.

I take a pretty traditional view of necessary/possible/contingent based on possible worlds. If 'necessary' is a synonym for 'uncaused' it's not clear to me that it inherits the properties of a necessary object as per the possible worlds interpretation. If necessary is taken in the usual way - I think there is some work to do in establishing that 'externally caused' is equivalent to contingent.

Your last sentence is debatable in my view - I'm not convinced that there has to be only one thing which can't be explained. I've never understood why an infinite regress of explanation can't exist (that's how things seem to me - answer a question and you just develop the ability to ask some new, previously unthought of questions. I don't see why an explanatory chain ever has to finish). More controversially, I guess, I'm not convinced that a 'circular chain' of explanation is nonsensical, though I admit that if it does mean something, it's hard to get your head around exactly what that is.

Cheers.

Thanks for this - it makes a lot more sense than anything I was able to come up with.

If God doesn't exist then Van Til would phrase it that all human predication is meaningless. He used many different descriptions and many different (sometimes very perceptive) illustrations. One of his most famous is that of a man made of water in an infinite ocean of water trying to climb out of the water on a rope made of water. Another way he would put it is that all atheistic worldviews result in abstract universals which can't be put in touch with abstract particulars(brute facts). So there would be no escape from skepticism, but that would itself be meaningless. As for logic, there would be no ultimate foundation for it since all of reality at base would be irrational - logic would just be a temporary, pragmatic tool with no real meaning or certainty - and it would be abstract and could never describe the material world.

BTW, the skeptic who claims that knowledge isn't possible is self-contradictory, right?

o.O

dognitive cissonance

('God is love' anyone?)