The laws of logic are rules. And these rules can, but need not, be stated on proposition form according to which they would be truth-apt. The laws of logic, in themselves, are not the kind of thing that has any truth value; only propositional statements expressed in the some language is capable of having any truth-value. Thus, saying that the laws of logic are truths is false, or sloppy at best. Therefore, the conclusion that the laws of logic are metaphysically dependent on the existence of God does not follow necessarily. The argument is deductively unsound.

I posted the following reply:

Your criticism is dealt with (implicitly) on page 4 of the paper. Just substitute “truths about the laws of logic” for “laws of logic” and the argument goes through just as well. If there’s at least one necessary truth, that’s enough for the argument. Do you want to deny that there are any necessary truths?

Derek posted a reply, which deserves further comment. However, since I don’t want to clutter Justin’s combox with technical discussion, I’m copying Derek’s reply here, with my comments interspersed:

The discussion on propositions in page 4 is found wanting. Here’s why: The English statement “Snow is white” and the German statement “Der Schnee ist weiß” are two different sentences about the same proposition.

This isn’t quite correct, at least on the conventional understanding of the sentence-proposition distinction. The sentences aren’t about a proposition; they’re about snow. Rather, the sentences express or contain a proposition: one and the same proposition, to be sure.

This is pretty elementary. If indeed snow is white, then the fact that snow is white is a proposition that merely obtains, without its needing to be expressed in any language whatsoever in order for it to obtain.

As I see it, this confuses propositions with facts (or states of affairs). Propositions can be true or false; they don’t ‘obtain’. Facts ‘obtain’; they aren’t true or false. Generally speaking (problem cases aside) a proposition is true if and only if the fact which serves as its truth-maker obtains.

Now in that case, the fact that snow is white — the proposition — is the *truthmaker*. It is a truthmaker for the possible truth of the sentence “Snow is white” or “Der Schnee ist weiß”, which are truthbearers; they are truth-apt sentences, which may have a truth-value assigned to them. This is a fairly non-controversial, standard way of parsing out the distinction between propositions and sentences.

I dispute this. Conflating facts and propositions is not at all a “fairly non-controversial, standard way” of distinguishing propositions from sentences, at least not in the literature I’m familiar with. To take one representative example:

The term ‘proposition’ has a broad use in contemporary philosophy. It is used to refer to some or all of the following: the primary bearers of truth-value, the objects of belief and other “propositional attitudes” (i.e., what is believed, doubted, etc.), the referents of that-clauses, and the meanings of sentences. . . .

Propositions, we shall say, are the sharable objects of the attitudes and the primary bearers of truth and falsity. This stipulation rules out certain candidates for propositions, including thought- and utterance-tokens, which presumably are not sharable, and concrete events or facts, which presumably cannot be false. These consequences fit well with contemporary usage.

McGrath’s definition is quite standard: propositions are truth-bearers, not truth-makers (facts). So Derek’s usage is idiosyncratic, not ours. Of course, he’s free to define words as he pleases. But we defined ‘proposition’ in an entirely conventional fashion in our paper, and our usage is consistent throughout. So if Derek wants to take issue without our definition, he’s out on a semantic limb. In any event, none of this has anything to do with the cogency of our argument.

Continuing with Derek:

I think it is *far more* controversial to claim that propositions (1) are truthbearers, since this unnecessarily multiplies the amount of truthbearers in question (beside the truth-value for proposition p, you also have a truth-value for sentence “p”), and that propositions (2) have a “nature” to them, namely that it is their “nature” to bear truth-values. This metaphysical view of propositions must be defended: that propositions have a “nature” to them is not self-evident. This “nature” of propositions sounds like a rather spooky property, if it is. Or is it that, more nominally, “nature” merely describes class-membership?

If Derek thinks that characterizing propositions as primary truth-bearers is controversial, he’ll need to take that up with the dozens of contemporary philosophers who do just that. Again, this is a standard definition in the literature. What’s more, that definition doesn’t carry any “spooky” metaphysical implications. Derek is reading more into the definition that he ought to. All we claim in the opening section of the paper is that propositions are primary truth-bearers, which means only that propositions are those things (whatever exactly they turn out to be) that (1) bear truth-values and (2) do not bear those truth-values in virtue of something more fundamental (hence primary truth-bearers). By dint of definition, then, propositions must be distinct from both sentences (which don’t bear truth-values fundamentally, as Derek’s “snow is white” example illustrates) and facts (which don’t bear truth-values at all).

As for multiplying entities beyond necessity, Derek’s own example proves our point. Sentences can’t serve as primary truth-bearers precisely because two different sentences (one English, one German) can express one and the same truth. What is that one truth? A proposition.

At any rate, page 4 could have been more precise about these issues. By the time it is said in page 4 that the laws of logic are propositions, we already have prima facie reasons to doubt that. Without a clearer account of propositions, it becomes hard to see in what sense *rules* such as the laws of logic are propositions. A rule, properly speaking, is the kind of thing that one follows. It is unlike a proposition, which is the kind of thing that one represents, say, by the utterance of a linguistic expression. A proposition is not a rule for the reason that one does not follow a proposition. A proposition is a proposition. A rule is a rule. To say that “the laws of logic are propositions” (page 4) is to problematically conflate rules with propositions.

There are a number of things to note here. First, we were very precise about our definition of ‘proposition’ in the paper. The problem is simply that Derek doesn’t like our definition. Well, he can substitute whatever word he prefers to refer to primary truth-bearers, but none of this is relevant to the cogency of our argument.

Second, Derek claims that the laws of logic are better construed as rules rather than propositions, but he gives us no reason to accept that. He simply asserts it. We, on the other hand, give a good reason for construing the laws of logic as propositions: the laws of logic are language-independent truths (see section 1 of the paper).

Third, as I already pointed out, even if we prefer to construe the laws of logic as rules, that doesn’t affect the argument, because we can simply reformulate the argument in terms of “truths about the laws of logic”. Derek simply ignored this point; but it shows why his criticism is superficial.

Finally, observe that Derek also didn’t answer my question about necessary truths. If he agrees that there are some necessary truths, that’s enough to fuel the argument; in which case, he’ll need to come up with a more substantive criticism. If he denies that there are any necessary truths, he’s even further out on a philosophical limb than his non-conventional definitions would suggest.

I think James’ note is too quick. For what sort of ontological containment is at play here? Clearly many sorts of containment, such that A contains B, don’t support the inference that P(A) if P(B) for just any property P. Consider mereological containment, where A contains B just if B is a part (or perhaps proper part) of A. A very large clock tower — Big Ben, say — has many proper parts less than 1′ tall. But it doesn’t begin to follow that the same goes for Big Ben; it doesn’t follow that Big Ben, too, is less than 1′ tall.

Much the same goes for spatial containment, which James’ himself seems to dismiss as a relevent sort of ontological containment. My carton of non-fat milk and the refrigerator in which it’s contained have, among other things, very different dimensions and construction. Further, the milk can have soured and yet it still be false that the same goes for the refrigerator.

Perhaps, then, the relevant notion of ontological containment is that displayed by sets and their members. But this, too, won’t do, for of course while 7 is prime, then same can’t properly be said of (e.g.) the set of natural numbers of which 7 is a member.

Of course there’s much more to be said here. No doubt there are other notions of ontological containment which will support the general inference above, as well as (otherwise) faithfully capturing what the panentheist means to assert. Or perhaps we need to look more closely into relevant types of property; perhaps there are properties of some type, such that any property of that type does apply to the container if they apply to the contained item.

These are useful comments that raise some important issues. Here are some thoughts in response:

1. I agree, of course, that “if A contains B, and P(B), then P(A)” isn’t true for just any kind of containment and any property P. But consider the specifics of the argument: if God contains the world, and the world is a mixture of good and evil, then God is a mixture of good and evil (and thus, as I went on to argue, God cannot serve as the ultimate standard of goodness). This specific inference strikes me as a quite reasonable, and I doubt I’m alone. In fact, one might view it as an argument from the transitivity of containment. If A contains B, and B contains C, then A contains C. I cannot think of any kind of containment that violates this principle. So unless I’m missing something obvious, the inference appears cogent.

2. This raises the important question: What kind of containment is in view here? And the short answer is: Whatever kind of containment is typically had in mind by panentheists when they claim that the universe is ‘in’ or ‘within’ God. In my original post I characterized it as ontological containment. Here’s an attempt to define the notion a little more precisely: X ontologically contains Y if the being of Y can be considered (to some extent, in some non-trivial sense) the being of X. This is most obviously the case when Y is a part or a constituent of X.

So, for example, Harry ontologically contains his body insofar as his body is a part of him; his body’s being is also his being. Thus, to strike Harry’s body is no less than to strike him. Similarly, if Harry’s body is infected with the ebola virus then he is infected. These examples are particularly apt in the present context, because panentheists frequently analogize the relationship between God and the world to the relationship between humans and their bodies.

To take another example, consider Bertrand Russell’s “bundle theory”: objects are nothing more than ‘bundles’ of compresent properties. On this view, the red apple ontologically contains the property of redness (sharing it with myriad other red things, but that’s beside the point here). It may not be formally correct to say that the property is a part of the apple, but it is at least a constituent of it. The being of the apple includes the being of the property of redness. (Other than the being of its properties, what being does the apple have, according to this theory?)

3. Given this understanding of ontological containment, it seems hard to avoid the conclusion that if God ontologically contains the world, and the world ontologically contains evil, then God ontologically contains evil. God would be a mixture of good and evil, ontologically speaking, rather than absolutely good. And that gives rise to the normativity problem I detailed in my earlier post.

4. Why did I take this notion of ontological containment to apply to panentheism? Several reasons. First, it seems to follow from the etymology and standard definition of panentheism (“all-in-God-ism”) given that panentheism is a claim about the ontological relationship between God and the universe. Second, I take it to be a fair generalization from the various forms of panentheism I’ve encountered in my reading over the years. Third, it’s suggested by the very words Michael Sudduth used to describe his own panentheism:

Consequently, I now accept a panentheistic metaphysics in which the universe and human souls are, to put it roughly, in the being of God.

5. A panentheist, as one commentator suggested, might be tempted to appeal to the privation theory of evil to explain how God need not be polluted by the evil of the world. I don’t think this move will work, for the simple reason that the privation theory must apply to God in the same way that it applies to the world. If a privation of good in the world entails that the world is (partly) evil, by the same token a privation of good in God (by virtue of his containing the world) entails that God is (partly) evil. And presumably the same goes for any other theory of evil. It’s hard to conceive of a containment relation that would serve the panentheist’s purposes but isn’t transitive with respect to evil. (And it’s his burden, not mine, to identify that relation.)

6. So where do we go from here? As I see it, the panentheist has basically two options. Option A would be to accept my characterization of panentheism in terms of ontological containment, but argue that my argument against panentheism (so construed) is fallacious. Option B would be to reject my characterization of panentheism. In that case, however, I think the panentheist owes us an alternative characterization. What does he mean when he says that everything is “in God” or “in the being of God”?

In sum, what we’re looking for here is some substantive notion of containment or participation that (1) is intelligible enough for us to evaluate claims that appeal to it, (2) usefully differentiates panentheism from theism, and (3) offers the sort of philosophical or theological benefits that panentheists think can’t be delivered by a theistic metaphysics.

I’m not going to comment on his conversion testimony or on the complex personal experiences and circumstances that led to it (only some of which are mentioned in that testimony). However, I do want to remark on one particular statement:

Consequently, I now accept a panentheistic metaphysics in which the universe and human souls are, to put it roughly, in the being of God.

There are many reasons why I reject panentheism, but in this post I want to mention just one. Panentheism comes from the Greek words for ‘all’, ‘in’, and ‘God’ — literally, “all-in-God-ism”. On this view, God is neither fully distinct from the universe (as in classical theism) nor identical with the universe (as in pantheism). Instead, the universe exists ‘in’ or ‘within’ God. The prepositions ‘in’ and ‘within’ are obviously not meant in a spatial sense (as in “Bob is in the kitchen”). Rather, they’re meant to capture the idea of ontological containment. God pervades and encompasses the universe in such an intimate fashion that there is an overlap or intersection between the being of God and the being of the universe. While God is more than the universe, there is no clear ontological distinction between God and the universe (which includes us, of course).

It’s not difficult to see the attractions of a panentheistic view of God. Who wouldn’t like to imagine that they’re within God — that their soul participates in the divine? Who wouldn’t like to think that — to put it somewhat crudely — they’re part of God? Such a view can do wonders for your self-esteem! (On the other hand, if you already have high self-esteem, panentheism nicely validates it.) Likewise, panentheism is convenient for legitimizing your lifestyle choices, whatever they happen to be. If it’s good enough for God, it’s good enough for me — and since it’s good enough for me, it must be good enough for God!

Despite these practical benefits, however, it seems to me that panentheism has a fundamental metaphysical flaw. According to biblical theism, God created the universe out of nothing and is ontologically distinct from it. There is a clean Creator-creation distinction. Moreover, God is not merely good (as though God were being judged by some external standard of goodness) but is goodness itself. God is the Absolute Good, the ultimate standard by which any other good is judged to be good. God is the norm and the universe is the normed (i.e., that which is subject to and judged by the norm). To use the classical categories, God is the Good, the True, and the Beautiful — originally, perfectly, and normatively. The universe is merely good (in part), true (in part), and beautiful (in part).

For the panentheist, however, matters must be very different indeed. Since the universe is in God, insofar as there is good in the universe there must be good in God. So far, so good — so to speak. But by the very same token, insofar as there is evil in the universe there must be evil in God. If the universe is a mixture of good and evil (which I take to be an obvious truth) then God must also be a mixture of good and evil, on the supposition that God contains the universe. Whatever pollutes the universe unavoidably pollutes God, on account of the ontological overlap between God and the universe.

It follows that God cannot be the Absolute Good. If the panentheist takes seriously the reality of evil, he ought to conclude that God is not pure goodness. But then God can’t be the ultimate standard of goodness. So who or what is? The answer must be: nothing. For that standard would have to be independent of God, yet the panentheist maintains that everything is in God (“all-in-God”). In short, the root problem with panentheism is that it conflates the norm and the normed. Consequently, the very distinction between good and evil is obliterated. When there is no Absolute Good, there is no good at all — and therefore no evil.

Some may consider this line of argument simplistic. I grant that it’s simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s simplistic. The strongest philosophical arguments are often the simplest to state and to grasp. (Think of Descartes’ cogito ergo sum or Aristotle’s argument for the law of non-contradiction.) The basic logic of my argument is straightforward. Either the universe is ontologically distinct from God or it’s not. If it’s not, the problem raised above immediately arises.

This isn’t just a debate over abstract metaphysics; it has significant religious consequences. A radically different ontology inevitably leads to a radically different soteriology. According to the Bible, we have all fallen short of God’s glory (Rom. 3:23). As a result, we rightly stand under God’s judgment and must seek atonement and forgiveness. On the panentheist view, however, God’s glory has fallen short. (Short of what? we might ask.) How then could God stand in judgment over us? If there’s a problem with me, there’s a problem with God. We’re all in this together! So let’s all work together to overcome evil — you, me, and God — even if it’s not entirely clear what target we’re all supposed to be shooting for. (Then again, perhaps it’s simpler to bite the bullet and deny the ultimate reality of good and evil. No good, no evil — no problem!)

A lot more could be said, of course, but this will do for now. To summarize: one reason I’m a biblical theist rather than a panentheist is because I believe that there is an Absolute Good, that there is a real distinction between good and evil, and that there is real evil in the world.

References

1. Upper, D. (1974) The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of “writer’s block.” Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 7, 479.
2. Molloy, G.N. (1983) The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of “writer’s block”: a replication. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 57, 566.
3. Hermann, B.P. (1984) The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of “writer’s block”: a partial failure to replicate. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 58, 350.
4. Olson, K.R. (1984) Unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of “writer’s block”: a review of the literature. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 59, 158.
5. Skinner, N.F., Perlini, A.H., Fric, L., Werstine, E.P., and Calla, J. (1985) The unsuccessful group-treatment of “writer’s block.” Perceptual and Motor Skills, 61, 298.
6. Skinner, N.F., and Perlini, A.H. (1996) The unsuccessful group-treatment of “writer’s block”: a ten-year follow-up. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 82, 138.

Ben’s Proposal

Given what Ben writes in his post, it appears he is committed to all of the following claims:

1. There are some necessary truths, i.e., some propositions that are necessarily true.
2. Propositions exist contingently.
3. Propositions are dependent on minds; in the absence of minds there can be no propositions.
4. A proposition is not identical to any particular thought, but is instead a sort of “similarity class” of thoughts.
5. A possible world is a maximally consistent set of propositions that describes a hypothetical state of affairs.
6. We can meaningfully distinguish between truth-at-w and truth-in-w, where w is some possible world; only the latter entails the existence of a truth (a true proposition) in w. To say that some proposition p is true-at-w is only to say that p is a member of w; it is not to say that p exists in w and is true in w.

I assume that Ben is committed to (1) because he doesn’t contest it, because he’s a sensible level-headed fellow, and because he’s a mathematician (mathematical truths being paradigmatic necessary truths). But he’s also committed to (2) because he wants to argue against the claim that propositions exist necessarily so as to evade the theistic argument.

(3) follows from Ben’s assumption that “propositions exist in any world only insofar as beings with sufficiently-developed minds express them.” Indeed, he thinks that propositions exist contingently precisely because he thinks the only minds that exist are contingent minds (but not necessarily human minds; I’m guessing Ben is open to the possibility of non-human contingent minds, e.g., advanced alien life forms).

(4) is stated directly in his post:

For since we consider multiple thoughts to express a single proposition p, then since those thoughts are not identical to each other they cannot all be identical to p. Instead, we need to say something to the effect that p is a sort of “similarity class” of thoughts, i.e. that the different thoughts among human beings all exhibit some similar structure or character, as we might say that there is only one Ace of Spades, even though it has multiple incarnations.

My impression is that Ben isn’t firmly committed to this account of propositions, but thinks that at least something close must be true. For now I’ll assume Ben is committed to (4) unless he expresses a different view. (In any case, what I argue below can be easily adapted to apply to similar views.)

As for (5) and (6), these are affirmed in the fourth paragraph of his post:

Regarding the first point of disagreement, we appeal to a distinction made by Robert Adams in his paper “Actualism and Thisness” (1981). Adams prefers to treat possible worlds as maximally-consistent sets of propositions which tell “world-stories,” that is, which describe hypothetical states of affairs imagined by us. We can then distinguish between a proposition p being true at a world w, whereby it appears in the set associated with w, and being true in w. The latter sort of truth involves the proposition not only existing here in the actual world where we can use it to describe a hypothetical state of affairs and assign it a truth value in that capacity, but also existence within w, where denizens of that world can express it and assign it a truth value from their own point of view. Given that propositions exist in any world only insofar as beings with sufficiently-developed minds express them, this distinction seems intuitive and meaningful, and hence required in order to avoiding conflating existence inside a non-actual world of some truth there with its existence here in the actual world. Indeed it appears to have been championed quite independently of Adams, including by myself before I read his paper, and by Kit Fine under the labels “inner” versus “outer” truth (cf. “Plantinga on the reduction of possibilist discourse,” 1985).

Some Problems

In response, I’m going to point out some problems for Ben’s proposal before focusing in on one significant issue he needs to address.

In the first place, his definition of possible worlds as maximally consistent sets of propositions is vulnerable to a Cantorian objection (put forth here by Bill Vallicella). That is one reason why Greg Welty and I used a different definition of possible world in our paper.

Second, Ben’s understanding of propositions seems to reverse the relationship between thoughts and their propositional content. Propositions are primary truth-bearers and possess original intentionality (i.e., they are intrinsically ‘about’ things; they are not ‘about’ things in virtue of something more fundamental). A thought such as my belief that squares have four sides is true in virtue of its propositional content; it is true because the proposition that squares have four sides is true. So in an important sense propositions are logically prior to thoughts.

According to Ben’s proposal, however, thoughts are prior to propositions, since propositions are a sort of “similarity class” of (human) thoughts. On this view propositions are true (or false) in virtue of the thoughts that constitute them. But this gets things back to front.

Third, it follows from (4) that if propositions exist they are abstract entities (thought-types rather than thought-tokens). As such, they’re at least partly external to any particular human mind, and they’re not identical to any human thoughts or parts of human thoughts. But elsewhere Ben has written:

Certainly you [Anderson] never say that propositions are conceptually out of reach. But you do seem to suggest that propositions are external to our thoughts, i.e. they are not themselves our thoughts or parts of our thoughts. To my reckoning, that puts them conceptually out of reach.

By Ben’s own reckoning then, propositions (as he construes them) are “conceptually out of reach.” (I don’t agree with his reckoning, but the point is that if it’s a problem for my position it’s equally a problem for his.)

Fourth, Ben’s proposal has the odd consequence that nothing was true before human minds (or any other sufficiently developed minds) came into existence and nothing would be true if all such minds were annihilated. Assuming for the sake of argument that the only sufficiently developed minds in the cosmos are human minds, if a nuclear holocaust were to wipe out the entire human race then it would no longer be true that 2+2=4, that the sun is more massive than the earth, and that E=mc². Bizarrely, it wouldn’t even be true that a nuclear holocaust had wiped out the entire human race.

Fifth, there simply are too many propositions — too many truths — for them to depend on human minds in the way Ben suggests. For example, for every natural number N there is the truth that N is not a purple armadillo. But most of these propositions, even though we know they’re all true, have never been entertained by any human mind and were true well before they were entertained by any human mind. (The counter that they might have been entertained by superior alien minds doesn’t have much mileage to it, for reasons obvious enough.)

Moreover, Ben takes possible worlds to be maximally consistent sets of propositions. It’s widely accepted, I think, that sets are ontologically dependent on their members; so if these possible-world-sets exist then their member propositions must exist too. Yet surely no human being has entertained every proposition in the set that is the actual world, never mind all the other possible worlds. So whose minds furnish the metaphysical basis for all these (arguably innumerable) propositions?

Finally, there are difficulties in explicating the distinction between truth-at-w and truth-in-w. Ben suggests that p is true-at-w iff p correctly describes w (or more precisely, describes the state of affairs that would obtain if w were actual). Thomas Crisp has pointed out that it’s hard to see how p could be true-at-w without being true-in-w. Doesn’t it seem obvious that if p correctly describes w then p would be true if w were actual? But if that proposition were true then (as we argue in the paper) it would exist. Nevertheless, Ben has a response to Crisp’s objection:

It seems to me, however, that Crisp’s key premise that p describes w iff, were w actual, p would be true is false. Our intuitive understanding of what descriptions are informs our statements about descriptions — not the other way round. As long as we have such an understanding, we are not required, I don’t think, to explicate it in English, or to construct a definition in terms of possible worlds semantics. If this bothers Crisp (or Anderson), then we can do as well with the following: p describes w iff, were w actual, p would be the case.

The trouble with this response is that being the case isn’t a property of propositions, and even if it were, one would still be stuck with a property-bearing entity (bearing the property being the case instead of the property being true). So the existence of propositions in w still hasn’t been eliminated. Perhaps this problem can be patched up in some other way, but even then Ben hasn’t addressed the other “awkward consequences” of the truth-at-w/truth-in-w distinction. So the viability of this distinction remains in doubt.

A Challenge: Making Sense of Necessary Truths

I now want to focus on one particular challenge that Ben needs to address. Since he’s committed to (1) he owes us an account of what it means for a proposition to be necessarily true, and one that is consistent with his other commitments. Here I’ll consider four possible accounts and point out why each one is unsatisfying with respect to Ben’s position.

Account #1: p is necessarily true iff p is true in every possible world.

This is perhaps the most natural explication of necessary truth, but clearly it’s one Ben wants to avoid because (as I think he concedes) it entails the necessary existence of propositions.

Account #2: p is necessarily true iff p is true in every possible world in which p exists.

This account avoids the entailment of the previous one by employing a weaker conception of necessity. A proposition p is necessarily true if it cannot fail to be true; that is, there is no possible world in which p exists but is not true. The problem with this account (as we point out in our paper: fn. 30) is that it has some absurd entailments. For example, the proposition that propositions exist turns out to be necessarily true, despite the fact that (according to this view) propositions exist contingently.

Account #3: p is necessarily true iff p correctly describes every possible world.

This account would seem to be attractive for Ben, since it employs his idea of truth-at-w (as opposed to truth-in-w). It apparently avoids the entailment that propositions exist in every possible world, but the question is whether it’s consistent with his other commitments. Remember that on Ben’s view, propositions arise from, or are abstractions from, actual human thoughts. But how could actual human thoughts have enough content to support all necessary truths? How could the human minds that exist today (never mind in earlier generations) sufficiently represent every possible world so as to allow necessary truths to “come out right” (i.e., to actually have the modality we take them to have)?

Account #4: p is necessarily true iff p is a member of every possible world.

This account is similar to the last insofar as it also appeals to the notion of truth-at-w. Recall that Ben defines possible worlds as maximally consistent sets of propositions. Why not say then that a necessary truth is just a proposition which is a member of every one of these sets?

The problem here, once again, is that human minds simply aren’t numerous enough and complex enough to account for all the propositions that constitute all these possible worlds. The domain of possibilities is far, far greater than the domain of actual human thoughts. In mathematics alone, there are countless truths that have been, and never will be, entertained by human minds. So it seems clear to me that this fourth account, while it may avoid the unwelcome (to some) entailment that propositions necessarily exist, can’t be reconciled with the sort of conceptualism or quasi-conceptualism that Ben wants to endorse.

I’ve suggested four accounts of necessary truth, none of which seem viable for Ben in light of his modal and metaphysical commitments. I believe the burden lies with him to come up with a coherent alternative account that can be reconciled with (1)-(6).

The ball is in your court, Ben!

By this rejection of God, agnosticism has embraced complete relativism. Yet this relativism must furnish a basis for the rejection of the absolute. Accordingly, the standard of self-contradiction taken for granted by antitheistic thought presupposes the absolute for its operation. Antitheism presupposes theism. One must stand upon the solid ground of theism to be an effective antitheist.

(Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology, p. xi)

“Antitheism presupposes theism” is one of Van Til’s best lines, because it captures in a nutshell the genius of presuppositional apologetics. It’s not merely that theism is true; it’s not merely that theism can be shown to be true; it’s that theism can be shown to be true by any attempt to prove it false. One can prove theism to be false only if, as a matter of fundamental metaphysical fact, theism is true — which is just to say that antitheism is self-defeating.

The paper I co-authored with Greg Welty gives one line of argument (there are others) in support of Van Til’s pithy and provocative slogan. As we conclude:

[I]f the laws of logic are metaphysically dependent on God, it follows that every logical argument presupposes the existence of God. What this means is that every sound theistic argument not only proves the existence of God but also presupposes the existence of God, insofar as that argument depends on logical inference. Indeed, every unsound theistic argument presupposes the existence of God. And the same goes, naturally, for every antitheistic argument. The irony must not be missed: one can logically argue against God only if God exists.

The last statement is really nothing more than a paraphrase of Van Til. Moreover, our paper sheds light on how one might understand the term ‘presupposes’ in Van Til’s famous statement. (I don’t claim that this is exactly how Van Til meant it, but I do claim that it’s consonant with his overall apologetic vision.) We have argued that the laws of logic should be understood as divine thoughts — more precisely, as divine thoughts about the essential relations between divine thoughts. Thus the relationship between God and the laws of logic is none other than the relationship between God and God’s thoughts.

On this view, ‘presupposes’ can be cashed out in terms of metaphysical preconditionality: X presupposes Y just in case Y is a metaphysical precondition of X; which is to say that X can be the case only if Y is the case (where Y pertains to some metaphysical state-of-affairs, e.g., the existence of a being with certain attributes). Clearly the existence of God is a metaphysical precondition of there being divine thoughts, just as the existence of humans is a precondition of there being human thoughts. In the absence of humans, there can be no human thoughts; in the absence of God, there can be no divine thoughts. So if we’re correct that the laws of logic must be divine thoughts, the existence of God is a metaphysical precondition of the laws of logic.

I take it that antitheism is more than just atheism. Atheism is simply the rejection of theism. (Some will want to distinguish between negative atheism — the absence of belief in God — and positive atheism — belief in the absence of God.) Antitheism, however, doesn’t merely deny theism; it opposes theism. And one of the ways it opposes theism is through argument. Antitheists oppose theism by arguing that belief in God is false, irrational, irresponsible, dangerous, and all the rest.

Insofar as logical argument depends on laws of logic, antitheism depends on laws of logic. Without laws of logic there could be no antitheism — at any rate, no logical antitheism. But if the existence of God is a metaphysical precondition of the laws of logic, it follows straightforwardly that the existence of God is a metaphysical precondition of antitheism. In other words: “Antitheism presupposes theism.”

One might think that a more modest, quasi-fideistic form of atheism escapes this sort of self-defeat. An atheist of this stripe might put it as follows: “I deny that theism is true, but I don’t think that the non-existence of God can be logically proven or argued. Since my atheism doesn’t depend on the laws of logic, it doesn’t presuppose theism, even if you’re right that the laws of logic presuppose theism.”

No doubt there are some such atheists, just as there are fideistic theists. But while their atheism may not depend on the laws of logic, they will surely rely on the laws of logic in other areas of life, whether they recognize it or not. In any case, it’s not clear that this weak atheism doesn’t depend on the laws of logic in other ways. (Consider, for example, the logical force of the word ‘since’ in the paragraph above.)

Let us suppose, however, that there could be an extraordinarily modest form of atheism that didn’t depend at all on the laws of logic. Could it avoid the sort of presuppositional refutation that Van Til had in mind? I think not. Consider the following reductio argument:

(1) God does not exist. [assumption for reductio]

(2) It is true that God does not exist. [from (1)]

(3) There is at least one truth (namely, the truth that there is no God). [from (2)]

(4) If there are truths, they are divine thoughts.

(5) There is at least one divine thought. [from (3) and (4)]

(6) If there are divine thoughts, then God exists.

(7) Therefore, God exists. [from (5) and (6)]

Obviously the most disputable premise in the argument is (4). So what good reason is there to accept it?

While our paper doesn’t explicitly argue for (4), it nonetheless suggests an indirect argument for it. We argue, in effect, that if there are necessary truths, they should be identified with divine thoughts. But what about contingent truths? Couldn’t the atheist maintain that (1) is a contingent truth and that contingent truths don’t have to be divine thoughts?

There are several problems with such a response. First, Plantinga’s modal ontological argument shows at least that if God possibly exists then God necessarily exists. It follows that the only coherent form of atheism is “Anselmian atheism”: if the claim that God exists is false then it must be necessarily false.

Secondly, and more generally, one’s theory of propositions shouldn’t be more ontologically complex than it needs to be. (Recall that we argue in the paper that truths are propositions, that is, primary truth-bearers.) Shouldn’t we expect all propositions to have the same metaphysical basis, regardless of their modality? It would be a strange theory of propositions which held that some propositions are divine thoughts while other propositions are something else altogether (e.g., human thoughts or brain-inscriptions).

Thirdly, and more decisively, one can argue from the claim that propositions are thoughts (a claim we defend in the paper) that contingent truths must also be divine thoughts. Assume that God’s decision to create was free and contingent, in which case there is a possible world in which there is no creation; a possible world in which only God exists. (For simplicity’s sake I’m ignoring theistic platonist schemes in which there are necessarily existent abstract objects distinct from God.) In that possible world, there is at least one contingent truth: the truth that God freely chose not to create. But if that truth — that true proposition — is a thought, it must be a divine thought (because the only mind is God’s mind). So both contingent and necessary truths — in other words, all truths — should be identified with divine thoughts.

Finally, we can argue that if there are contingent truths, there must also be necessary truths. According to the most intuitive and widely accepted system of modal logic (S5) the modal status of a proposition is the same in every possible world, thus whatever is contingent is necessarily contingent. So for every contingent truth P there is a corresponding necessary truth, namely, that P is not a necessary truth. (There are other arguments in the neighborhood: e.g., for every truth P there is a corresponding necessary truth, namely, that P is either contingently true or necessarily true.)

It therefore appears that any form of atheism that denies the existence of God must presuppose the existence of God. But what about the agnostic, who rejects both theism and atheism? It’s not difficult to see how the argument above can be adapted so as to defeat agnosticism on the same basis:

(1′) I don’t know whether or not God exists.

(2′) It is true that I don’t know whether or not God exists. [from (1')]

(3′) There is at least one truth (namely, the truth that I don’t know whether or not God exists). [from (2')]

(4) If there are truths, they are divine thoughts.

(5) Therefore, there is at least one divine thought. [from (3') and (4)]

(6) If there are divine thoughts, then God exists.

(7) Therefore, God exists.

Moreover, even if the agnostic affirms neither atheism nor theism, he should at least accept that theism is either true or false: either God exists or God does not exist. But then the same line of argument can be launched from that premise (which, we should note, is a necessary truth):

(1”) Either God exists or God does not exist.

(2”) It is true that either God exists or God does not exist. [from (1'')]

(3”) There is at least one truth (namely, the truth that either God exists or God does not exist). [from (2'')]

(4) If there are truths, they are divine thoughts.

(5) Therefore, there is at least one divine thought. [from (3'') and (4)]

(6) If there are divine thoughts, then God exists.

(7) Therefore, God exists.

So we can see that antitheism, atheism, and agnosticism all presuppose theism, if the argument that necessary truths are divine thoughts is sound. In fact, it ought to be clear by now that by the same underlying argument we can show that any ‘ism’ presupposes theism. God’s existence is presupposed by any philosophy, ideology, or belief-system that is committed to at least one truth (whether explicitly or implicitly; even nihilism is implicitly committed to the truth of nihilism).

This leads neatly to another of my favorite Van Til quotes:

It is the firm conviction of every epistemologically self-conscious Christian that no human being can utter a single syllable, whether in negation or affirmation, unless it were for God’s existence. Thus the transcendental argument seeks to discover what sort of foundations the house of human knowledge must have, in order to be what it is.

(Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology, p. 11)

In this post I have suggested one way in which the core contention of Van Til’s transcendental presuppositionalism can be defended. Both negation and affirmation involve propositions: to affirm is to ascribe truth to a proposition; to negate is to ascribe falsity to a proposition. Without propositions, then, there can be neither affirmations nor negations. And if propositions are none other than divine thoughts, it follows that both affirmation and negation presuppose the existence of God. Without God there could be neither affirmation nor negation, neither argument nor knowledge.

Of course, I have assumed here that the core argument of our paper is cogent. My purpose in this post has not been to defend that argument, but merely to show how its conclusions can be deployed in support of some of Van Til’s most distinctive claims.

Here’s the abstract:

In this paper we offer a new argument for the existence of God. We contend that the laws of logic are metaphysically dependent on the existence of God, understood as a necessarily existent, personal, spiritual being; thus anyone who grants that there are laws of logic should also accept that there is a God. We argue that if our most natural intuitions about them are correct, and if they’re to play the role in our intellectual activities that we take them to play, then the laws of logic are best construed as necessarily existent thoughts — more specifically, as divine thoughts about divine thoughts. We conclude by highlighting some implications for both theistic arguments and antitheistic arguments.

While we don’t discuss Van Til or presuppositional apologetics in the paper, those so inclined will recognize this as a more robust exposition of a common presuppositionalist argument and they’ll also appreciate (I hope) the concluding remarks.

Dawkins’ piece reflects his trademark rhetorical devices — condescension, mockery, faux outrage, and a dash or two of genuine wit — but what stuck me most was the complete absence of any moral categories in his criticism of Craig and his views. Dawkins regards Craig’s views as ‘horrific’, ‘revolting’, ‘shocking’, and ‘deplorable’. But none of these descriptors function as objective moral evaluations of Craig or Craig’s God. In reality, they reflect little more than Dawkins’ feelings about Craig and Craig’s God (and the feelings of those who share Dawkins’ jaundiced outlook on the world).

I suppose this shouldn’t be surprising, given Dawkins’ published views on the nature of morality. For example, in The God Delusion he rejected and ridiculed the notion that there are moral absolutes. But if there are no moral absolutes, then there are no moral principles that absolutely rule out genocide. According to Dawkins’ moral outlook, then, genocide could be morally justified in some circumstances — just as late-term abortion is morally justified in some circumstances (as Dawkins apparently believes). Isn’t it therefore an open question whether the Old Testament ‘genocides’ were morally justified given the circumstances? Given Dawkins’ own premises, isn’t that question at least worthy of… debate? (I should state for the record that I don’t believe the destruction of the Canaanites was an instance of genocide; I’m just granting Dawkins’ characterization for the sake of argument.)

In the end, all Dawkins has really told us is that he won’t debate Craig because he finds Craig’s views personally offensive. It’s not that Craig’s views are unethical; it’s not that they’re immoral; it’s certainly not that they’re wicked or evil. It’s just that Dawkins finds them extremely distasteful. Dawkins is disgusted — and that’s all there is to it. Even if that were the real reason for his refusal to debate Craig, it would hardly be a compelling one. The only virtue of Dawkins’ dubious explanation, if it can be called a virtue, is its consistency with his moral nihilism.

Update: Here are some entertaining commentaries on Dawkins’ piece:

• “Richard Dawkins’s refusal to debate is cynical and anti-intellectualist” (Daniel Came)
• “Richard Dawkins’s Delicacy” (James Barham)
• “Richard Dawkins for Prime Minister” (Dominic Bnonn Tennant)
• “Why Craig Won’t Debate Dawkins: An Unofficial Official Statement” (Paul Manata)

To grant that marriage could be redefined is to capitulate to a postmodernist anti-realism according to which all social structures and institutions are mere human conventions and there is really no such thing as human nature, understood in traditional metaphysical terms. We must insist that marriage is not something that can be defined and redefined as we see fit. Marriage is a divine institution, not a human social construction like chess or money that we invented for our own purposes. There wasn’t a point in time at which humans ‘defined’ marriage in the way that, say, a foot was once defined as 12 inches. Marriage was bestowed upon us, not created by us.

If the traditional view of marriage is correct then the idea that we could redefine marriage to include same-sex partnerships is on a par with the idea that we could redefine elephants to include hippopotamuses. Only the most deluded postmodernist would say that elephants were defined by humans. (Don’t make the mistake here of confusing elephants with the English word ‘elephant’. Words don’t have trunks and tusks.) But of course, we humans didn’t define humans any more than we defined elephants. To think otherwise would be to put the cart before… well, the cart. And if marriage is grounded in the very nature of human beings, as the traditional view maintains, then we humans didn’t define marriage any more than we defined ourselves. Nor are we in any position whatsoever to redefine marriage. It simply can’t be done — and Christians, along with other traditionalists, should be quick to point out the presumption and absurdity of claims to the contrary.

The very fact that these consultations have been launched in the first place, never mind their final outcomes, reveals just how deeply Western culture has sunk into the mire of postmodernism.

Apologies to Randal Rauser, whose first name I managed to misspell. (It was an ‘L’ of a mistake to make!) I’m told the error will be corrected the next time the AD site is updated.