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| by Editor Erik Wait |
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At the theoretical level we can anticipate two objections to the presuppositional approach of argumentation. The first theoretical problem is that “presuppositionalism proves too much.” According to the presuppositional argument the unbeliever cannot justifiably knowing anything. Critics then respond by saying that the presuppositional argument asserts that “the unbeliever cannot knowing anything” and yet obviously many unbelievers know all sort of things such as science, math, history, the laws of logic etc. However this objection is a stereo type (and thus a straw man argument) of presuppositionalism which proves that the critic is not really listening. The presuppositionalist asserts that the unbeliever does know things but that he cannot JUSTIFY what he knows. True knowledge is justifiable true belief. Thus the presuppositionalist asserts that the unbeliever’s knowledge is not true for it is not justifiable within his worldview. If the unbeliever was true to his espoused assumptions then indeed knowledge would be impossible. But because he is actually operating out of the world view which he seeks to suppress (the Biblical world view) he can actually conduct science, math, history, logic etc. Thus Van Til asserts that anti-theism presupposes theism and thus ultimately the unbeliever does know that God exists but only suppresses what he KNOWS to be true. ON THIS fact presuppositionalism hinges!
The second theoretical problem is that “presuppositionalism proves too little.” There are two subdivisions of this accusation against presuppositionalism: First, the transcendental argument requires supplementation and thus it is not as distinctive as presuppositionalists think for it cannot stand alone. Thus because it requires supplementation it is not as far from traditional apologetics as presuppositionalists suppose. This argument was raised by former Westminster Theological Seminary professor John Frame in Apologetics to the Glory of God (see pg. 71). The problem with Frame’s argument is that he fails to distinguish traditional like arguments and the traditional arguments themselves. Van Til did not reject the traditional arguments per se, only in the methodology in which they were used, that is outside the Christian world view and in an attempted neutral fashion. Thus the transcendental argument is not an end all argument but is foundational and is a general strategy. All other arguments must be used within the transcendental argument! In addition, according to Frame the transcendental argument is not all that distinct for indirect arguments (unless God no causality) and direct arguments (causality therefore God) are not all that different. However, indirect arguments are NOT merely a rhetorical reworking of direct arguments. The direct argument (cosmological) asserts that God is merely the ultimate link in the chain of causes whereas the indirect argument (transcendental) states that apart from the existence there is an impossibility of cause at all! The direct argument (cosmological) asks, “What is the first of all the causes?” whereas the indirect argument (transcendental) asks, “What would have to be true in order to think about causes at all?” Thus contrary to Frame the transcendental argument is not merely a fancy way of rephrasing the direct arguments. [84]
The second subdivision is that the transcendental argument does not prove Christianity to be the only system which can provide the necessary preconditions for intelligibility. The problem with this objection is that it is not possible to discuss every opposing world view at a time. Thus the presuppositionalist deals with each opposing view individually. However, all opposing views fit into categories which the transcendental argument refutes categorically.
Answering The Problem of Religious Language
At this point we turn from the theory to the practice of apologetics in three different kinds of settings of attacks on Christianity: philosophical, scientific, and religious. Today the question or attack against Christianity is always to ask, “Is talk about God even meaningful?” Two of the most popular attacks on Christianity in philosophy is the meaning of religious discourse; God, immortality, miracles, salvation, prayer, values, ethics. The challenge by philosophers is that talk of this kind is not really meaningful in a cognitive sense. The view that has been adopted over the last 30 or 40 years is that religious utterances are worse than false, they make no sense at all. When philosophers assert that “God talk” is meaningless they are asserting something far stronger than that to say that “God talk” is false for it asserts that “God talk” is meaningless altogether for cannot be verified and thus they make no significant claims about the world or human experiences. The utterance or exclamation “ouch!” is not meaningful for it makes no claims but is merely expressive in its linguistic function. It is likewise asserted that religious talk is merely emotive rather than informative language. Thus “God talk” or religious language is meaningless in the following ways:
The first is the Verification Principle’s challenge of religious language: According to it sentences can be classified into two categories: those whose truth can be determined by an analysis of the sentence itself, and those whose truth can be determined only extra linguistically. The former class of statements are true in virtue of logical form and meaning relations among the predicates used. (They can be known with absolute certainty, but unfortunately they do not tell us anything interesting about the world.) According to the popular tradition, statements can be analyzed into a linguistic component and an extra linguistic factual component (which is circumscribed by a range of confirmatory experiences). A statement is meaningful if and only if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable; in the latter case the statement's truth of falsity would make a possible difference to experience, whereas in the former case the statement's truth is trivial. The specific meaning of a statement is the procedure followed to verify it, the empirical method used to confirm or infirm it. An analytic statement, then, is a statement which is confirmed no matter what; in it the linguistic component is all that matters in determining its truth. Because Christian language speaks much of things not verifiable by the empirical method it is said to be without meaning and contain no “truth value.” However, if one applies the verification principle to the verification principle one finds that IT does not meet its own standard for meaningfulness for the verification principle cannot be verified by the verification principle! Thus the logical positivist, like the Christian, holds a particular view of man, reality, and the world as a whole and the verification principle is itself a religious prejudice. [85]
The second is the falsification principle’s challenge of religious language: The falsificationist is dedicated to the natural science, just as the logical positivist is, except they were aware of the errors of the logical positivist’s assertion of the verification principle. According to the falsification principle religious language does not belong in the field of science because science is of an empirical nature which does not include religion. For the falsificationist what makes genuine science scientific is that the theories which it will affirm are on principle falsifiable by empirical methods. Thus according to the falsificationist in order for a statement to be meaningful it must be potentially falsifiable by empirical methods and subject to refutation. Antony Flew observed that Christians hold to their religious beliefs even when there seems to evidence which refutes their belief, they qualify their terms and rearrange their arguments but they will not concede that their belief may be wrong. Thus Flew asserted that religious talk was meaningless because it was not subject to the falsification principle because he saw it merely as fideist assertions rather than meaningful discourse. [86] However, is the falsification principle falsifiable? If it is not, then the Christian asserts the falsification principle is by its own definition meaningless because IT is not subject to the falsification principle! If the falsification principle is falsifiable, and thus potentially false, then Flew removes all ability to be dogmatic about his own principle. In addition, Flew confuses actually proving a position to be false with convincing someone that the position is false. Thus because someone tenaciously holds to their position regardless of arguments against it he assets that it is meaningless because it is not potentially falsifiable and thus doesn’t meet with the standard of the falsification principle. But in making such a statement Flew removes the possibility of asserting ANYTHING positively or dogmatically including the falsification principle .
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