For the Sake of Science

I’ve decided that when the fancy strikes me I’m just going to make a post about some argument for the existence of God. I recently did it with the first cause argument (and it was incredibly easy). Today I am going to address the transcendental argument:

The argument proceeds as follows:

1. If there is no god, knowledge is not possible.
2. Knowledge is possible (or some other statement pertaining to logic or morality).
3. Therefore God exists.

This is another easy one. The very first premise is incorrect. Knowledge is simply a description of how accurately we perceive the world around us relative to any verification method. For example, a child has knowledge when his parents tell him the stove is hot. His verification method is his parents. They may be wrong, but that is entirely immaterial – remember, knowledge does not itself mean accuracy, but it is instead a measure of accuracy based upon any verification method. (Naturally, some verification methods will be better than others. For instance, verifying a contention using science will always be superior to verifying something using a holy text since the former case involves rigor whereas the later is merely faith.)

So what we have here is that knowledge is not something which is based upon the existence of any god. It is something which is defined by humans and which describes how we take in and process information. We can go further and look at the evolution of consciousness, but that would be getting into the gritty details, something which is not required in order to defeat the transcendental argument. So let’s rewrite it:

1. If there is no god, that has no bearing on whether or not we have knowledge.
2. Knowledge is possible.
3. Nothing has been said about any god.

Filed under: Philosophy | Tagged: Arguments for God's Existence, Transcendental argument |