That thing that flew ever your head just now was the point.

I wasn't aware that anyone using TAG ever appealed to modal logic. Reference?

John Frame, in the "Transcendental Arguments" article from the IVP Dictionary of Apologetics says:

I conveniently bolded the modal terms for you here. Essentially, Van Til argues that because Christianity is the only worldview that justifies intelligible reality, any criticism or belief that assumes intelligible reality presupposes the truth of Christianity. Thus, the attempt to criticize Christianity ends up depending on its being true (similar to the logic of Descartes cogito). As for why Van Til didn't use modal logic, I don't know, maybe he wasn't familiar with it.

He didn't use modal logic because he wasn't making a modal argument. Here is a quote from Frame's book, Cornelius Van Til, An Analysis of His Thought, in the chapter where he discusses Van Til's method called Reasoning by Presupposition:
This last sentence indicates the kind of idea that finally showed me that Van Til's claims of absolute certainty are bogus. The house having a foundation is an empirical fact and like all empirical facts (including my phrase "the universe makes sense") it can't be shown objectively with absolute certainty. It is a premise in an argument, and even if the argument is logically valid given the premise, the truth of the the conclusion still only attains to probability because one or more premises can only be known by finite human minds as probable - maybe the house doesn't have a foundation, maybe the universe doesn't make sense, maybe objective morality doesn't exist, maybe things can begin to exist without a cause, maybe the appearance of design just happened.

BTW, the Frame article supports what I said about the other theistic proofs:

Here's an interesting passage from Frame's book where he discusses Van Til's indirect method and then shows how a kind of TAG can be achieved using the direct method:

That sounds a lot like the extended version of WLC's KCA.

This line of "what's wrong with meaninglessness?" is one that I struggle to agree with, which is a big reason why I struggle with accepting atheism in general. Existence without meaning seems like a huge waste of time imho. And then people say "oh well I find meaning everyday in my family, friends, art, etc. I don't need any greater purpose than that". But then when you consider that after you all die and cease to exist, it'll be as if you never existed at all, it seems stupid to say that other mortal beings are all one needs to have meaning. Given human mortality, existence as we know it is 100% meaningless if nothing happens after we die. It doesn't really make sense that that should be the case imo.

I've also never understood why people try to defend their religion by referencing the very source that non-believers dispute as authentic. Like, there's just no logic in that at all. Stop wasting your time dude.

This has never made sense to me. Consider my lunch. I could have a nice bacon sandwich, or I could have a dog-food sandwich. Both are roughly equivalent nutritionally, both would cease to exist in a few minutes. But it seems that the final destination being the same either way does not give me no reason to prefer one over the other. The same goes for life. The meaning and purposes I assign to my life matter to me now, and the fact that they won't matter after I die is completely irrelevant.

What do you mean by waste of time? You are just replacing meaninglessness with "waste of time", and so your sentence is a tautology.


You dont exist now, so you wont cease to exist.

The good thing is , that meaninglessness is also meaningless. Neither meaningful, or meaningless, have any meaning ( )



In what way doesnt it make sense? Just because you dont like it, doesnt mean it doesnt make sense, or isnt true.

Sorry, I'll clarify. By "waste of time" I mean that things that are meaningless should not exist in the first place. I actually had this argument a few months ago, where someone asked me why my criteria for what should exist is based on meaning or purpose. I could not properly answer him other than to say that imo purpose/meaning is a pretty good way to measure whether or not something should exist. It stemmed from my argument that since non-existent things (bear with me here, I realize that non-existent things are not actually things, but our language does not allow me to say it any other way) have no purpose (since they don't exist), it should follow that things that exist should have a purpose, and perhaps must have a purpose.


Forgive me for asking for a deeper explanation on this one lol. But "I think, therefore I am," right?


It doesn't make sense that people should not exist, then come into existence, then exit existence again after having experienced conscious existence. fwiw, sometimes I wonder if reincarnation could be true in some sense actually, if not a traditionally imagined afterlife. Now naturally you'll just say that I'm scared of exiting existence because I can't imagine what that would be like, since it would be literally nothing, like before I was born. And yeah, it's an uncomfortable thought, sure. But still, it seems to me that it would be unjust for the Universe (or Ultimate Reality, or whatever you want to call the Cosmos) to contain something like love, or beauty, without putting any real objective value in it. And if there is no afterlife, no reincarnation, just nothingness and non-existence after death, it must be concluded that human values like love and beauty are not actually objectively valuable beyond our relatively short and ultimately meaningless lives. That in turn would force us to question why we value love and beauty in our world at all, since they would then be nothing more to us in life than a pacifier is to a crying baby. And if it is all an illusion, if love and beauty are not actually valuable except to make us feel artificially happy while we pass through existence for 80 years, I don't really see the point in living in the first place, tbh. Because then what difference does it make if I exist or not? What impact, what significance do I (and each of us) bring to a world full of people who bring nothing to the world either? I mean just imagine, if the Earth blew up tomorrow and Humanity ceased to exist, how would that affect anything else even in our Solar System, let alone the galaxy or the universe? It ultimately makes no difference if anyone or anything is here or not.

It makes perfect sense to me.

You are coming from a preconceived position of "Things must have a purpose".

Why should things have a purpose( other than because you said so, or because you think they should)?

Your logic seems very unsound, you are making a leap thats not there in the logic

1) things that dont exist have no purpose
2) therefore things that exist have a purpose

2 doesnt follow from 1, and 1 seems pretty nonsensical to me

Its like saying

all cars are blue
therefore all non cars are not blue


No. This goes to the very core of western belief, but "you" arent, in any meaningful way. The thing that you think of as you, it doesnt actually exist.




Again, you are starting from the premise of "everything must have a purpose".
and extrapolating backwards.

Ok, but you still haven't explained anything. So you're saying that the "self" doesn't exist in other words? I'd be ok with that actually. Ever since I watched the TED talk by Jill Bolte Taylor I'm very open to the idea of the self as we perceive it being an illusion. In fact I think that means that a good analogy for death could be "like a raindrop into the ocean".

http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_...f_insight.html

Why does premise #1 seem nonsensical to you? Please explain how things that don't exist could have a purpose then. Also, I'm open to suggestions for other criteria as to why things should exist, if purpose is not necessarily one of them. I mean, I suppose you could ask "why is it that things that exist should have a purpose at all?" But if that's your question, then it's implying that the existence of the very cosmos is not only random, but pointless. And there I go again with a tautology, because our language doesn't allow me to express what I mean without using a synonym like "purpose" or "the point" or "meaningful" or "useful" or "teleological". I give up, cause I dunno how to explain what I mean without getting yelled at again.

Are you saying I was yelling at you? sorry if it came across that way, wasnt intended.

I am not saying that things that dont exist DO have a purpose, im saying its nonsensical to talk about things that dont exist having any properties at all

Sorry, I shouldn't have implied that you were yelling at me, it's just hard to tell the tone that people are taking over 2p2 haha. And I'm pretty frustrated that I can't really describe what I mean very well either.

But yeah, I agree that non-existence cannot have properties of course. But still I can't understand why something that does exist should be able to exist for no reason.

I view life as meaningful.
IMO my view is axiomatic in nature. A similar example would be something like, "I find the sunset beautiful". I cannot provide an articulate argument for why I find beauty in the sunset and yet the fact remains I find the sunset beautiful. The fact that so many (all?) persons view life as meaningful or significant is a sort of evidence in itself. I think this is also what John Piper is alluding to in the OP video. Therefore I conclude there is something more to life than the temporal existence we know about.

I follow your line of reasoning Arch. and I sympathize with your viewpoints. In my mind, the fact that we exist dictates we have purpose. I can't explain it and yet I sense I know it.

Is all life really meaningful? I mean its nice to think so but I wonder how much we see life as being meaningful because we want it to be. Not even God holds all of us this way.

Its pretty clear here that God does what He wants regardless of life, that there may be created people with the express purpose to be shat on--some arnt even that lucky. Some are made simply to be destroyed [as 19-21 imply and 22 expressly state].

God may love us but He certainly doesn't make or view us equally.

The potter can do whatever the **** he wants because pottery doesn't have feelings and can't suffer. So, not the greatest analogy....

But more generally I sorta think that death isn't necessarily as bad as we human beings make it out to be, if God exists that is.

And that's exactly what Paul was saying here. We dont shouldn't feel sorry for what God does with us because we are just pottery to Him. What He does, He does, and we should be happy with it; even if it's for no purpose.

We're just a bunch of clay.

Again, you are coming from a pre conceived position of "Things that exist (must) have a reason"

Why? Why should things that exist have a reason to exist?


Perhaps it may also help if you give me a definition of reason. Eg, lets say we know that god created us because he was bored and wanted company, does that give meaning and reason to life? If so , why?

You realise that this is totally subjective, and in no way means there is an inherent, objective meaning or reason to life, right?

"For the question of purpose, the analogy I like to use: there’s a certain existential dread as an artist, a painter, when you’re facing the blank canvas and anything could happen. You’re on much safer ground if there are lines with numbers in there that tell you what to color in which places. But the great art does not come from coloring books; it comes from creativity." – Sean Carroll, Ph.D., physicist, Cal Tech

I think this is incredibly insightful. There does seem to be this fear that if our purpose comes from ourselves and not dictated to us by the universe - or a god - that it might not be good enough. This seems, to me, to be a failure of courage and imagination rather than the clear-eyed realism it's proponents make it out to be.


Source of quote:

Could you link to some external explanation for your views on this (or perhaps you have explained it elsewhere in RGT)? On the one hand I think you might mean something about "what you mean by 'you', or the self, is not an actual thing", and I think I can get a handle on what you might mean. But I don't think that is quite it, and while it might be the most base axiom I can hold, I am quite certain that my existence is self-evident because I am 'experiencing' reality (whatever that reality is).

(I don't want this thread to get off topic.)


As far as 'meaning', I don't understand what adding a creator to the mix does as far as adding anything. As far as I understand with Christianity for example, our ultimate purpose is to praise / worship God. I find no meaning in this whatsoever, particularly if you understand that this God does not need to be worshiped in order to exist. Alternatively, "God has a plan", but we have no idea what it is. Since it is not our plan, and we could't even know if we were even following it, how could we derive any meaning from it?

I am happy to try and explain, since it seems like the most important discovery anyone can make. It can get a bit confusing, because peoples ideas of what "self" is can vary, or can jump about and be redefined depending on the situation. But in general, its as I said, a personal "you" doesnt exist in any form whatsoever. There is no thinker, chooser, or decider. There is no owner of the body. No you who holds personality or character traits. No you who is good at football, but bad at maths, and so on.


Thats just it, "you" are not experiencing reality. There is no you over here, and reality over there. No you "inside", with reality "outside". The experiencer and the experience are one and the same . There is no little you in the head, watching a screen, and receiving input from outside ( the homunculous idea). Its all a single process, light from sun->bounce off object-> enter eye-> converted to electricity->processed by brain->thought or action occurs. At no point in the chain of events is there any personal you interceding, choosing, or deciding.

It cant even be said that the body is experiencing, since there is not a body and an experience, they are one and the same.

I guess you might reply "ok, but the body exists, and that could be counted as a self", but the body doesnt cease to exist, the chemicals and atoms that make up the body are still around after death, so I feel its unlikely that you actually mean that there is only the body. "you" werent born, you are just a continuation of a process, a biological organism, running totally on automatic.

We might agree that "existence exists" but none of that existence is a "you".
Its just existence, doing its thing.


If you want to ask me any questions, and feel its derailing the thread, you could open another one, or PM me, or I could link you to some websites that discuss it in more detail.

I think this is a common way of expressing it in the west, but in eastern Christianity they would say rather that the ultimate end is union with God. To me the distinction seems pretty profoundly important, although there's a lot to unpack out of it.

"For He was made man that we might be made God." -- Athanasius (4th century)