TANG

***QUOTE***

How might TANG proceed? Consider logic. Logic presupposes that its principles are necessarily true. However, according to the brand of Christianity assumed by TAG, God created everything, including logic; or at least everything, including logic, is dependent on God. But if something is created by or is dependent on God, it is not necessary--it is contingent on God. And if principles of logic are contingent on God, they are not logically necessary. Moreover, if principles of logic are contingent on God, God could change them. Thus, God could make the law of noncontradiction false; in other words, God could arrange matters so that a proposition and its negation were true at the same time. But this is absurd. How could God arrange matters so that New Zealand is south of China and that New Zealand is not south of it? So, one must conclude that logic is not dependent on God, and, insofar as the Christian worldview assumes that logic so dependent, it is false.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/michael_martin/martin-frame/tang.html

***END-QUOTE***

1.God did not “create” logic. Logic is not an effect of divine mentality.

Rather, logic is constituted by the mind of God. Martin is confusing a necessary condition with a causa process.

The logical laws are mentalistic. They are conceptual relations.

They are dependent on the mind of God in the sense that anything mental is dependent on the existence of a mind. If there were no mind, there would be no mental properties or conceptual relations.

Human logic is a property-instance of divine mentality.

2. X can be “dependent” on Y without either X or Y being unnecessary, just as a set is dependent on its members (e.g. the Mandelbrot set).

Logic is necessarily dependent on a necessary Being.

That doesn’t make it contingent, in the sense that it could be otherwise—anymore than an abstract object like the Mandelbrot set is a contingent object.

3. Martin also fails to state his secular alternative.

Continuing with Martin:

***QUOTE***

Consider science. It presupposes the uniformity of nature: that natural laws govern the world and that there are no violations of such laws. However, Christianity presupposes that there are miracles in which natural laws are violated. Since to make sense of science one must assume that there are no miracles, one must further assume that Christianity is false. To put this in a different way: Miracles by definition are violations of laws of nature that can only be explained by God's intervention. Yet science assumes that insofar as an event as an explanation at all, it has a scientific explanation--one that does not presuppose God [2]. Thus, doing, science assumes that the Christian worldview is false.

***END-QUOTE***

1.This is a stipulative definition. But shouldn’t our first concern be with realty rather than methodology or semantics?

2. What does it mean to say that science disallows the miraculous?

There are first-rate scientists who don’t define science that way. That’s not how Isaac Newton defined science. That’s not how Don Page defines science.

3.Of course, the Bible doesn’t define a miracle as a violation of natural law.

4. There are competing definitions of natural law in the philosophy of science. Is a natural law descriptive or prescriptive?

5. I deny that science presupposes the uniformity of nature. What it presupposes is that a uniform cause will yield a uniform effect.

Given a certain type of cause, a certain type of effect will follow.

A miracle doesn’t “violate” that principle. At most, a miracle changes the underlying cause.

6. The aim is not to make sense of science. Rather, the aim is to make sense of reality. Science is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. At most, the question at issue is not making sense of science, but science making sense of reality.

Martin’s definition is prejudicial. What science can discover the miraculous is just that—a question of observation.

7. Martin is also assuming scientific realism, but that’s not the only game in town.

Continuing with Martin:

***QUOTE***

Consider morality. The type of Christian morality assumed by TAG is some version of the Divine Command Theory, the view that moral obligation is dependent on the will of God. But such a view is incompatible with objective morality. On the one hand, on this view what is moral is a function of the arbitrary will of God; for instance, if God wills that cruelty for its own sake is good, then it is. On the other hand, determining the will of God is impossible since there are different alleged sources of this will (The Bible, the Koran, The Book of Mormon, etc) and different interpretations of what these sources say; moreover; there is no rational way to reconcile these differences. Thus, the existence of an objective morality presupposes the falsehood of the Christian worldview assumed by TAG.

***END-QUOTE***

1.This is simplistic. Morality is not a function of God’s arbitrary will.

Rather, God’s law is preadapted to the nature of the creature, as well as the nature of the world. God designed human nature, and God also designed the natural habitat of man.

God wills his creatures to have a certain nature. And God, by creation and providence, emplaces his creatures within a certain type environment—which he also designed.

Divine law, human nature, and providential circumstances are mutually preadapted.

2. To say that “determining the will of God is impossible since there are different alleged sources of this will (The Bible, the Koran, The Book of Mormon, etc) and different interpretations of what these sources say,” begs the question in a couple of key respects.

It assumes, without benefit of argument, that one cannot verify a genuine revelation or falsify a spurious revelation.

It also assumes, without benefit of argument, that all interpretations are equally good or bad.

But Martin doesn’t believe this. As an atheist, he denies all revelatory claimants. Yet he would be in no position to do that unless he had some criterion for the validation or falsification of revelatory claimants.

In addition, Martin would be unable to critique the Bible or the Koran unless he were able to interpret the Bible or the Koran for himself.

Clearly he believes that he is able to rightly construe the meaning of the Bible or the Koran for purposes of refuting the same.