Over my short time here on YouTube I’ve had a fair amount of requests to take on Matt
Slick’s Transcendental Argument for god, and I can understand why.
On the surface the argument seems hard to understand, and in turn, hard to debunk, but
as the philosopher Alex Malpass demonstrated to Slick himself, it’s not.
It’s actually easy to convey and easy to debunk.
The difficulty is in how Slick presents it, and in how he conflates it with another one
of his arguments – which I’m not going to take on within this video.
This, is Matt Slick’s Transcendental Argument – Debunked.
The full defence of Slick’s Transcendental Argument can be found on Carm.org, but as
you can see from this screenshot, it’s fairly lengthy, and most of his defence is either
clarifying definitions or making assertions that are universally accepted, which is useful,
but the argument itself is at the end of his defence, and it goes as follows: If we have
only two possible options by which we can explain something and one of those options
is removed, by default the other option is verified since it is impossible to negate
both of the only two exist[ing] options.
God either exists or does not exist.
There is no third option.
If the no-god position, atheism, clearly fails to account for Logical Absolutes from its
perspective, then it is negated, and the other option is verified.
Atheism cannot account for the necessary preconditions for intelligibility, namely, the existence
of logical absolutes.
Therefore, it is invalidated as a viable option for accounting for them and the only other
option, God exists, is validated.
Now what Slick has attempted to do here, and as his first premise actually states, is present
a disjunctive syllogism, which simply stated, is ‘a logical argument of the form that
if there are only two possibilities, and one of them is ruled out, then the other must
be true.’
Or in its logical form it is: A or B. Not B. Therefore A. In addition to this, he insists
that his second premise, that “god either exists or does not exist”, is a valid dichotomy
because the two positions are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive, meaning that both
positions can’t be true, and that one must be true because between them they cover all
possibilities – and, if he’s willing to slightly tweak the wording for clarification
purposes, he’s right – either the Christian god exists or the Christian god does not exist;
this is a valid dichotomy.
But now we move on to his third premise, and this is where things get a little bit… tricky,
slippery and slicky.
When Slick states that “if the no-god position, atheism” he is conflating the ‘Christian
god does not exist’ proposition with, and only with, the atheist position (which is
not the only ‘Christian god does not exist’ position); Buddhism is a ‘Christian god
does not exist’ position; Hinduism is a ‘Christian god does not exist’ position;
Egyptian Polytheism is a ‘Christian god does not exist’ position; and the list goes
on and on and on and on, meaning that even if the atheist position cannot account for
logical absolutes (which is an assertion I don’t accept), it does not logically follow
that only the Christian god can.
Or in other words, Slick’s third premise commits a subtle, but game-ending, Black and
White Fallacy, because it implicitly asserts that only one of two positions can account
for logical absolutes (that being Christianity or atheism), when, as we’ve just demonstrated,
these aren’t the only positions.
And this puts Slick in a very difficult situation.
He must either go back to the drawing board and comprise a new argument, or, he has to
adopt the impossible Burden of Proof of first knowing every single position (or worldview)
currently known and currently unknown, and then prove that each of these positions cannot
account for logical absolutes, before he can legitimately say that ‘the only other option,
God exists, is validated’...
Which, as I’ve just mentioned, is quite literally impossible… and this means that
it’s checkmate – game over.
Now I’d normally leave it here, but after much consideration I’ve decided to really
hammer home this flaw by composing a very similar argument that suffers from exactly
the same flaw and in exactly the same way, but without the fluff – and so for what
it’s worth, please consider the following: Valhalla either exists or does not exist.
There is no third option.
If the no-Valhalla position, Hinduism, is negated, then the other option is verified.
Hinduism is negated, and therefore it is invalidated as a viable option and the only other option,
Valhalla exists, is validated.
Just as within this argument the Hindu position is but one of many positions that don’t
posit the existence of Valhalla, in Slick’s argument atheism is but one of many positions
that don’t posit the existence of the Christian god, and hence, just as the Valhalla argument
commits a Black and White Fallacy, so does Slick’s Transcendental Argument – and
because of this, the conclusion of both arguments are Non-Sequiturs.
And finally, I’m going to point out just one more ridiculous flaw with Slick’s argument…
if we switch the word ‘god’ with ‘Zeus’ then the argument proves the existence of
Zeus, because, ‘If the no-Zeus position, atheism, clearly fails to account for Logical
Absolutes from its perspective, then it’s negated, and the other option is verified.
Now there are many more flaws with Slick’s Transcendental Argument, and I’ve left a
few links in the description to others exposing them (including Alex Malpass), but within
this video, I’ve deliberately chosen not to point them all out, because, if I’m honest,
they’re not necessary, and considering that people already find this argument confusing,
I’ve decided to keep my response simple.
And so, to recap, Slick’s Transcendental Argument for god is flawed because: Premise
three commits a subtle but game-ending Black & White Fallacy, and consequently; Premise
four (the conclusion) is a Non-Sequitur.
Anyhow, as always, thank you kindly for the view, and I’ll leave you with potently relevant
quote from Upton Sinclair.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his
not understanding it!