Introduction
The metatheoretic breakdown of atheism began in 1929, when Wilbur Marshall Urban discovered that naturalism's own universal claims and universal assumptions, deductively refute naturalism itself. Naturalism renders itself merely the product of the universally determining naturalistic factors it specifies. Consequently, what naturalism asserts about itself implies its own incoherence and meaninglessness, because it too is merely causally eventuated by naturalistic factors and nothing more. But what is historically fascinating, is that even though naturalism was thereby exposed as self-destroying with deductive logical finality, within three decades philosophical atheism produced, completely aside from naturalism, three pivotal deductive arguments for atheism, discovered and elaborated by British philosopher Antony Flew from the 1940s through the 1980s.
His first deductive argument for atheism was that since there is no way to verify or falsify belief in God, it is consequently incoherent, and therefore meaningless. God is claimed to be an invisible Gardener who eludes all attempts at detection, and is therefore indistinguishable from something just imagined or made up, or nothing at all.
Flew's second deductive argument for atheism, Stratonicianism, argued that it's impossible for there to be an overarching explanation of the universe itself or the total reality, because the criterion of explanatory adequacy within the world is the only meaningful model of explanation we have, or can possibly have. In other words intra world explanations, explanations of things within our world, are all we have to go on and all we use, and are the only possible basis of any explanation of anything including the total reality itself. An overall explanation is no explanation at all because it makes no sense in relation to our possible experience of explanation.
Flew's third deductive argument for atheism, called the presumption of atheism, argued for the logically prior necessity, of procedurally assuming atheism by default in analyzing anything, since God is not a requirement for any argument, to either be begun, or validly concluded.
These three arguments had a devastating effect on belief in God among intellectual influencers in the Western world in the decades that followed, assisted by the emergence of various relativistic perspectives such as pragmatism, subjectivism, social constructivism, conventionalism, naturalized epistemology, and postmodernist perspectives generally. It is clear that by the beginning of the 1970s Antony Flew was, far and away, the greatest and most influential atheist mind in history.
However. In 1971, Antony Flew's finest student, American-Canadian philosopher Kai Nielsen, in his book Ethics Without God, stated the following simple but unprecedented observation. In any possible argument for God's goodness, we are already assuming an ultimate criterion for anything to be considered good, in order to even begin analyzing the issue. The goal of analysis is to find an argument that is good. But how can a non-moral good decide what a moral good is. Which means that logical validity is a required prior universal and ultimate good as the only standard for knowing what is good in any sense and in any realm, whether in theory or in ordinary everyday moral aspects of life. In my opinion, this single, prior-criterion point, makes Kai Nielsen, the greatest thinker of all time. Yet the greatest atheist thinker who ever lived single-handedly saved, belief in God, by accident, while thinking he was deductively refuting belief in God. Because his prior-criterion observation inadvertently led to the discovery, by an obscure American metatheoretic analyst in 2012, of two ultra-deductive arguments for the existence of God.
These arguments are based on the entire comprehensive system of deductive argumentation rules, formal logic, and general empirically-informed rationality, which, when taken together, prove God's existence in such a way, that any opposition to it, assumes all the same God level, and God like, characteristics about general rationality itself, in that same process of trying to argue against it. So this reflexive, metatheoretic moral criterion argument, reveals an ultimate level of moral goodness that is necessarily already assumed in all possible analysis, including all possible moral analysis. And that is the same system of inquiry that you are assuming at this very moment, as you analyze, what I am saying.
Consequently. Traditional arguments cannot possibly prove God's goodness, nor can any other possible argument, because all possible arguments for the goodness of God must already assume that it is an obligating, ultimate moral good to always try to think in an empirically-informed rational way in general, whether about God or anything else. And that must be done in order to survive, in order to reflect, and in order to thrive in a commonly real world. And a prior moral ideal that we must always, already assume in analysis itself, to be the ideal good by which all things are to be first, morally and ethically evaluated, second, the necessary instrument of all our knowledge of reality in a timelessly necessary intuition of the total, and third, is indistinguishable from a morally good, ultimate, and perfect, mind, or Logos. Or God.
1 The Fake Problem of Evil
You don't add anything to the world by calling it God. And you don't add anything to something everyone dislikes by calling it evil.
It's logically impossible for there to even be, a problem of evil. If morally perfect goodness is in question, then evil is a myth, and the concept of evil is meaningless.
To recognize any alleged evil, assumes that the perfect good is real and known, problem-free enough to give this fake problem its precious reality: instances of evil. The idea of the ultimate perfect good is the only thing that enables us to identify deviations from it.
The fake argument is that alleged evils are a problem for what defines them. This fatal assume-G-in-order-to-deny-G mistake in logic depends on an implicit transcendent goodness, to give evil, its desperately needed reality. But requiring transcendent goodness in order to define and recognize evil beyond human negative attitudes, contradicts the problem-of-evil conclusion itself, that there can be no such goodness, at all. The argument requires perfect goodness, as its standard of contrast, in order to even give evil its meaning and recognizability. So it assumes perfect goodness—the opposite of the whole point of the argument—in order to conclude that there is not, and cannot be, any such goodness, much less a being that embodies it.
The problem of evil was supposed to get rid of goodness. But goodness is required to give evil its reality. The so-called problem of evil is little more than hypocrisy by fake shallow people, who try to hide their most basic assumptions, and definitions, in order to protect their claims from being questioned.
Are instances of irrationality, proof that there are no good reasons for anything? If the problem of evil is legitimate, does it apply to anyone who brings sentient beings into a world that contains evil and causes suffering and death—that is, parents, and not just God? Are instances of suicide proof that life is not good? Are instances of suffering in your own personal life, an indication that you're evil to go on living, because you yourself are causing your own suffering and evil, by keeping yourself alive, completely apart, from any suffering and evil, that you might cause to other people?
The so-called problem of evil is a self-contradictory goodness-dependent mistake in logic, and consequently has no basis, for trying to fault, much less deny, a perfect God-level goodness, which it must implicitly and illegitimately assume, in order to deny. It avoids what the word “evil” precisely means. It ignores the standard of perfect God-level goodness implicitly assumed, in order to recognize evil in the first place. It’s a fake problem perpetuated by fake people, a pretended problem that itself assumes the perfect God-level goodness it wants to get rid of.
2 Metatheoretic Atheism
The common claim that no one can know X, asserts X’s unknowability itself as an item of knowledge about X. The claim that everything is merely the efficiently caused product of determining factors such as natural selection, evolution, survival and reproductive advantage, instincts, genetics, or environmental influences, itself gets an arbitrary exemption from those influences in order to be proclaimed as some kind of objective universal truth. It's even claimed—without any evidence or argument—that there are no possible objectively-true universal claims, even though that denial about universal claims is itself stated as objectively and universally true.
These and similar claims have been repeated constantly throughout our culture for at least a century, and the question has arisen about what standards there could possibly be for believing those kinds of universal claims and denials about all universal claims in the first place? Those unaddressed lingering questions have in turn resulted in two new arguments for atheism, arguments operating at the highest possible level of analytic generality, belief authority, and life applicability.
Both arguments involve theorizing about theory itself. They are the Prior Moral Criterion Argument, and its logically parallel generalization, the Prior Truth Criterion Argument. Because they are self-referring, metatheoretic, and universal, they are ultra-deductive, an entire level of generality higher than standard ABC reasoning examples in geometry, mathematics, and logic. They also assume a prior system of inquiry that is reliably accurate with regard to testing claims for truth in a commonly real world.
They are based on general reason or rationality itself. This includes the entire system of common sense and principles of logic, as well as the ultimate or court-of-last-resort standards or criteria that govern our thinking about anything generally, including our assessments and theorizing about moral and ethical obligation. Thinking must function with these ongoing cognitive values, obligations, principles, basic concepts, and definitions in order for us to be able to think at all.
But the components of general reason preclude God—in advance. Because reason is universal, the preclusion of God is comprehensive. Consequently these two new arguments are logically and metatheoretically deductive, decisive, and final. That's a first in the history of human thinking, atheist or not. Those arguments are consequently fatal to all arguments that ignore the point of Kai Nielsen’s remark about the necessity and consequences of a prior, higher-authority criterion.
Consequently, to even discuss the question of God’s existence is to already accept God-precluding standards of an independent truth-indicating, morally-obligating rational system necessarily used to survive and flourish. Those standards are fatal to belief in God. In fact, belief in God already depends on those standards of general rationality to make sense of the concept of God itself. But reason not only does not need God for anything, as the prior standard for deciding what is true about anything, it precludes God prior to analysis.
The first metatheoretic argument for atheism is The Prior Moral Criterion Argument: Any moral argument for God’s goodness already must assume a logically prior, ultimate, comprehensive, God-precluding moral good to identify what any moral argument for God is trying to prove, prior to analyzing the issue.
Therefore, there is no God and any moral argument for God is necessarily based on a prior atheistic God-precluding moral good that stands on its own. Any moral argument for God already requires God-precluding atheistic assumptions and criteria about moral goodness, including the assumed moral good of rational thinking, and the moral obligation to reason as the only way to survive and flourish.
The second metatheoretic argument for atheism is The Prior Truth Criterion Argument: The prior standards of analysis already preclude God as even a relevant factor in deciding what is true about the issue of God’s existence. Therefore, there is no God and any argument for God is based on atheism.
3 Metatheoretic Belief in God
Those new deductive arguments for atheism are successful as far as they go operationally, legitimizing atheism as a given starting point in terms of immediate analysis for surviving in the dark world. But that process of how the principles by which those arguments and all thought is governed, or how it ought to proceed, is itself indistinguishable from the existence and behavior of an Ideal Mind that is in turn, all of its aspects taken together, indistinguishable from God. Using those arguments, atheism has unwittingly proved the existence of God with metatheoretic finality. It has ignored what reason itself already assumes and what it implies, in how it necessarily operates as an ultimate influence-transcending mind that must necessarily be referenced and appealed to in order to evaluate and judge all things. Rational atheism necessarily assumes qualities of God in reason itself, without any justification for them. Rational neutrality itself assumes what is indistinguishable from an influence-transcending God of Mind based on what must be assumed in order to theorize for or against God, and arguing for or against these qualities necessarily assumes them.
The first metatheoretic argument for belief in God is The Prior Ultimate Moral Person Criterion Argument: Any moral argument for God’s goodness already must assume a logically prior, ultimate, comprehensive, directive and obligating moral good functioning indistinguishably from a communicating mind in order to identify what any moral argument for God is trying to prove, prior to analyzing the issue. Only minds direct or obligate other minds. Therefore, there is necessarily a morally good God and any moral argument for God is necessarily based on an already-assumed standard for what is moral good which is indistinguishable from an ultimate mind. Any moral argument for God already requires God-assuming principles and criteria for what is moral goodness and moral good, including the assumed moral good of rational thinking, and the moral obligation to reason as the only way to survive and flourish.
The second metatheoretic argument for belief in God is The Prior Truth-Deciding Person Criterion Argument: The prior standards of analysis are already assumed to be God as the necessary mind-obligating factor in deciding what is true about anything, including the issue of God’s existence and personhood. Therefore, God is necessarily assumed in our thinking and any argument against God is based on a suppressed belief in God in what is assumed and implied in that process of argumentation itself.
Because reason has a belief-deciding authority that is ultimate, universal, and comprehensive, it is indistinguishable from a God of mind in how we must view it, use it, refer to it, appeal to it, and act on its authority in order to think, survive and flourish. Truth is what fits into an already-existing equivalence-class system of truth-testing principles, criteria, and so on, which when taken together as a comprehensive system of thought, is indistinguishable from an ultimate mind or God. Asking how I know this is assuming it by requesting reasons for it, as if reason does in fact decide what is a mind or person or God.
To argue against these principles is to reconstruct that same system all over again, as ultimate, comprehensive, and decisive about all possible things that can be thought about, including God, mind, personhood, and that system itself. It simply cannot be argued against, questioned, or even thought about without assuming it in those processes.
Impersonal things don't obligate. Non-personal entities and concepts cannot have any authority for obligating persons to think according to any rules or principles. That’s why reason necessarily functions as a person, because reason is the only possible standard for deciding what a person is in the first place. By directing all thinking, reason also assumes an ultimate perfect goodness as well, not just because it is itself the ideal of how to think, but also because it necessarily assumes an equally comprehensive and ultimate good which all thinking must constantly approximate. Reason’s necessarily-assumed independent neutrality, immunity to influences, and exemption from verification and falsification is a fatal problem for atheism, and reveals reason’s transcendental status as the God Of Thought, existing above everything, affected by nothing. Both logically and existentially, there is simply nowhere else to go without repeating the same appeal.
Want to argue against it? Using what? Reason? You're going to use and appeal to reason to somehow demonstrate that reason is not the God of Mind? This is the key to the evasiveness and direct self-contradictions of both the scientific establishment and academia about the God issue, both of which avoid discussing or even mentioning metatheoretic criteria and reflexive analysis of universal claims.
It is your own mind that decides what's real in all senses, but because we are prone to be mistaken due to our limited abilities and our tendency to knowingly and deliberately contradict ourselves, our goals, and our values, we can decide what’s real only by basing such decisions on the ultimate criteria embodied in the system we call reason. Reason is instantiated in us as the image of God in the mind, in the exact same way that an operating system is imaged onto an electronic storage device such as a computer hard drive.
So the issue of the existence of God is really about personhood in relation to this ultimate notion of sentient reason as necessarily the image of God. In the logical beginning is the Logos, deciding all issues. So what is necessarily used to get to either belief in God or atheism, turns out necessarily itself to be God already. Reason comprehensively exemplifies a God’s-eye view of the total reality. Reject or deny that claim, and you’re doing the exact same thing that the claim asserts and describes.
Reason is necessarily, in all the core essentials, indistinguishable from the classical notion of God, precisely because reason decides all issues about personhood as well as everything else including God.
Furthermore, God is manifested in our awareness of moral obligation, but that’s only because moral obligation is already built into general reason’s governing and influencing our beliefs and our behavior, which specifies obligations logically prior to acting on our assessments of how to think and live. Reason is necessarily the Logos, indistinguishable from an obligation-imposing subject outside of and separate from ourselves, yet comprehensively functioning within us, in spite of our limitations due to finite resources for verifiable and falsifiable certainty, and that strange tendency to deliberately contradict our own assumptions, standards, values and goals.
Reason is the sovereign critic of every sphere of knowledge. The belief-deciding authority of reason is already God-level. Reason is all-knowing as the truth-evaluating instrument of all possible knowledge, ultimately authoritative and sovereign as the final court of appeal, omnipresent as the universally decisive inferential factor throughout space and timelessly eternal across all moments of time. And it is transcendent in being neutral and immutable or unchangeable in being, immune to all influences. General rationality operates at the highest conceivable level of governing analytic authority over all issues concerning all domains of predication including all the same issues about itself.
General rationality assumptions metatheoretically dictate the standards for defining everything in the first place, including minds, persons, standards, reason, logic, language, meaning, purpose, goodness, evil, God, and general rationality itself. We must refer to these standards because we are limited and have personal histories of deliberate self-contradiction in relation to our own goals, purposes, values, and ideals. We just don’t perfectly actualize that ideal system of standards in our lives, and often even forget them or forget to apply them, or misapply them, even though we are somehow mysteriously called back to them, in order to recognize our defections from those standards. Without the logically necessary, God-like, and morally-obligating authority of reason, neither God's existence nor anything else can be concluded.
So essential aspects of God's being must be assumed in whatever we use to decide whether or not God exists. And that is the central issue of both atheism and belief in God in relation to the necessity, universality, adequacy, efficacy, and ultimacy of reason.
Consequently, this system of universal rationality—a system of necessary and logically basic assumptions—is as ultimate and mind-like or person-like as any personal ultimate God is conceivable of being. There is nothing that those guiding assumptions do not already cover in our thinking about ourselves and the world. They are the image in us of a God-like mind, however imperfectly they are instantiated in us individually in our lives.
And my actions in relation to that ideal are whatever they are only when judged by that same rational standard. All criticism and all thinking assumes ideal rationality. As Sam Harris has said, certain logical relations are etched into the very structure of the world. They are etched into us as well, as parts of that world.
Any contemplation of these ultimate assumptions of mind such as reason, formal logic, the rule-set of an ordered context of reality, a hierarchy of values, and the obligation to proceed in your life according to a system of rules of thinking results in an endless stream of new knowledge when applied to our ongoing experience of the world. The rules of reason are a precondition, not simply of experience but of communication and therefore of society. Consequently, these ultimate decisive rules and ideals of thought actually convey knowledge and even wisdom by merely thinking about our world of objects, our experience, our history, our belief systems, and our lives in relation to those rules and ideals of general reason.
And the fact that we must assume and refer to those standards of rationality implies an equally ultimate purpose. Use the standards for what? Why use them in the first place? And an ultimate purpose necessarily depends on a hierarchical set of ultimate values. This system of assumptions is a unified instrument of thinking, which necessarily obligates, defines, and influences the mind as the ultimate operating system for thinking about anything. Consequently, all thinking necessarily both assumes and references an already idling engine, an unchanging, and enduring supervisory system of thinking made up of prescriptive evaluative standards of thinking assumed simultaneously just to be able to think or even get out of bed in the morning. Reason doesn’t actually do anything. Yet it makes all the difference in the world every day of our lives. It’s absolutely inert. But it decides everything and makes inquiry itself possible.
Arguing against this merely re-invokes it. And the rationally necessary is necessarily the experientially real, because any argument denying that is self-contradictory in trying to rationally necessitate its own truth about the experientially real. Reason is the only thing that can decide these matters. The knowledge of everything about God, including arguments in support of that belief that God exists, is decided completely and only by the power and authority of reason. If one recognizes the necessary ultimacy and universality of reason, the Logos of Reason logically follows. So the essential properties of our own system and standards of thinking are a system of mind, an equivalence-class system that is indistinguishable from the essential defining properties of a classically-construed concept of God. "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God." --The Gospel of John. "Reason deserves to be called a prophet, because by showing us the consequences of our actions in advance, it predicts the future. That’s why reason is an excellent power of restraint when we are possessed by some base passion, some fit of anger, some covetous desire, that will lead us to do things we will regret." --Schopenhauer
4 Lingering Questions
Throughout the entire history of human thinking, the problems with fundamental assumptions, universal claims that refer to themselves, the claimed reductions of universal domains of objects to various causal and explanatory factors, and the background criteria of general analysis, have been obscured, evaded, sublimated, or ignored.
Consider a common universal claim that refers to itself, such as the subjectivist claim that all truth is subjective. Because of the word "all," that claim includes itself in what it's talking about. So how does subjectivism affect its own truth? And why is that never talked about in relation to a handful of views like subjectivism, such as social constructivism, relativism, determining-factor reductionisms (genetics, society, etc.), and conventionalism?
And generally, across all human cultures, why are self-referring and self-reducing universal claims, thought-governing criteria, theory choice, and basic assumption preferencing, either ignored or given an exemption from scrutiny?
Consider the claim that the laws of logic are not universally valid laws of reality. Is that claim itself, a universally valid law about reality? By what standard? Or think of the claim that there's no predefined rationality. Does that claim itself, depend on predefined rationality to even make sense, itself? Is reason's neutrality and immunity to influences, verification, and falsification, itself, implicitly assumed to be transcendent, immortal, and eternal? Think of the question about why should rational principles used to discover truths in various fields, all be the same? Is that question itself a request for the same cross-disciplinary rational principles that it questions?
Is the claim—that reality is a useless notion—itself a useless notion about reality? If all perception is theory-laden, is that claim about all perception itself theory-laden? Is the claim—that rationality is not objective because no one approaches life in an objective way without bias—itself an objectively rational, universal claim without bias? Is the claim—that observations and beliefs are merely perspectival constructs—itself merely a perspectival construct? Does the claim—that there's no point of view from which one can define knowledge itself without begging the question in favor of one's own view—itself question-begging in favor of itself? Is the denial—that there cannot be any objective truth or objectivity in adjudicating truth-claims including one’s own—is that denial itself objective and true? Is the claim—that all observations, beliefs, and narratives are theory laden—itself theory-laden? Is the claim—that there's no neutral standpoint from which to approach the world—itself neutral? If there's no Archimedean point outside science from which to question science, how could that fact itself be known without assuming that same outside vantage point?
Is the claim that X is unknowable itself an item of knowledge about X? By what standard? Is the claim, that knowledge is impossible, itself an item of knowledge? Is the claim that there are no objective, invariant, universal truths itself an objective, invariant, and universal truth?
Is the claim—that what is real for one linguistic group may be unreal for another—itself real across linguistic groups? Is the claim—that there's no objective truth, no God’s-eye view of things—itself a God’s-eye objective truth? Is relativism itself true relative to the beliefs and evaluations of an individual or group that accepts it? Why does it universally quantify its terms and objects? Is relativism itself merely made true for those who accept it, and only by merely accepting it arbitrarily? Is relativism itself the objective truth that there are no objective truths? Is relativism itself merely an expression of preference or habit? How can relativism be advocated or recommended to others as if it is itself an objective trans-personal universal truth? Is the claim—that truth is relative to a linguistic community—itself relative to a linguistic community? If what is true for one person is false for another, why is that claim itself stated to other people in the first place as a universal claim about the objective status of all truth and knowing for all individuals? If all truth, morals, and ethics, really are relative, why is the question about the relativity of relativism itself dismissed as ridiculous?
Do relativists and subjectivists themselves assume special access to some privileged realm of timeless, transcendent, self-validating truth in order to claim that everyone’s beliefs are merely person-relative and subjective? It’s often heard that because values are relative, one ought not impose one's values on others. Part of this self-referential inconsistency can be seen merely from a close examination of the term “impose”. If values are person-relative, and one of someone’s values is the value of telling others how they ought to live, then on what basis can a relativist criticize, reject, or even question the values that person happens to hold? If values are relative, how could it be “wrong” to impose values, if the value of not imposing values is itself relative? If values are person-relative, then how can anyone be faulted for living in accordance with their own value of imposing values on others? Do relativists want the assumed benefits, such as toleration, from believing that values are relative, while also assuming that their own values are not relative in being able to condemn others for imposing their values on others? If relativists assert their own value of condemning others for imposing values on others, does that allow others to value their own value-impositions as the right thing for them to do? Do relativists get to exempt their own views from being relativized, so that it’s wrong to impose values only from within their own value scheme, and that it has nothing to do with anyone else? Can relativists get others’ attention only by appealing to non-relative values that somehow obligate others, which contradicts their own relativism? Are relativism and subjectivism equally capable of insulating sociopathic behavior from criticism? Why are relativism and subjectivism stated as universal absolutes if their whole point is the denial of universal absolutes? How do relativism and subjectivism affect their own truth? Is the claim that there's no way to know that the basic principles of rational thinking are not merely subjectively legitimate attitudes, itself a merely subjectively legitimate attitude?
If cultural relativism and social constructivism undermine all accepted standards of truth and objectivity, is that claim itself just irrational mystery mongering? Is relativism itself merely whatever the relativist makes of it under a currently favored description?
Is the claim that all our beliefs are merely the products of determining influences itself merely a product of those influences? How could you decide whether beliefs are determined if that decision process itself is also the mere product of those influences? When do you get to add the label “true” to “merely produced by determining influences,” especially with regard to determinism itself and believe in it? If truth is merely the cognitive product of the comprehensively explaining and determining factors that determinism specifies, how can any theory be claimed to be true, including determinism itself?
Is the claim—that causes other than our own sovereign judgment can and do decide our beliefs, nullifying any possible degree of objectivity or even agency—itself merely the product of those determining causes? How can a theory be true, if that theory says that all theories themselves, and beliefs in them, are merely the products of whatever universally determining causes that theory specifies? Is belief in the theory of determinism itself merely the consequence of the theory’s specified determining causes, such as our heredity, upbringing, and environment? Is the truth of determinism itself merely the non-cognitive causal eventuation of the wider context of causal conditions and relations that caused the theory of determinism to arise in the brain? When do you get to add the label “true” to “determined by x, y, z, . . .” with regard to determinism itself or the belief in it?
How does determinism affect the belief that determinism is true or theory choice in general? Why is determinism brought up about everything except itself and the belief in it? If mental processes are totally determined, then are people determined either to accept or reject that determinism itself? If the only reason for believing determinism is that people are already causally determined to believe it or not believe it, then why think that reflecting or deliberating about the truth of determinism or anything else is meaningful or coherent? If your own thought life is merely the byproduct of your material make-up and external stimulation, then why think the decision to believe that determinism is true—is itself rational and true? And if all theories and beliefs are merely the products of those causes, then how do they get exempted from scrutiny themselves, yet still be claimed to be true about all of our beliefs? How is believing determinism is true any different from having a toothache?
How can anything you believe be true, if the bodily states supporting our ability to believe things have evolved only under survival pressure? Is the choice to believe in determinism itself determined? Is the claim, that all views are determined by non-rational factors and consequently are not to be trusted, itself untrustworthy on its own terms?
Does skepticism rely on the objectivity of reason and classical logic while denying it to everyone else? Does skepticism reject the conditions required for its own doubts to make sense? How does the skeptic know that doubts must be refuted in order to know something? Can the skeptic justify their own reasons for doubting anything? Must skeptical doubts themselves be known with certainty? Why must Humean skeptics use rational arguments to prove reason’s inability to produce truth? Because if the proof is successful, concluding that reason cannot produce truth at all, then how can reason prove anything, including that proof itself, if there would then be no reason to accept the skeptical arguments themselves? If you stop trusting reason because of skeptical arguments, then what reason was there for accepting the skeptical arguments themselves to begin with? How can skeptical arguments be accepted for distrusting reason if any worldview including skepticism itself must assume reason in formulating and arguing its own position?
How can you doubt your own thinking ability without relying on your thinking ability to argue for doubting it? Is skepticism itself and its challenges and requirements as uncertain and unknowable as all the other items of possible knowledge it denies? Is the skeptic’s claim that all things are inapprehensible itself inapprehensible? Is skepticism’s claim,that no one has any knowledge, itself an item of knowledge? Is skepticism’s claim, that there’s nothing that can be known, itself an assertion of knowledge? Does skepticism’s claim—that the only thing anyone can know is that they can’t know anything—itself assume knowledge of all the things assumed to be unknowable? And would that require other exempted items of knowledge to explain that claim of universal unknowability? Does anyone claiming to know skeptical claims assume that they know their own existence, that they know the meaning of that claim, that they know the claim is true, and many other arbitrarily exempted items of knowledge? Do deniers of knowledge know the meaning of that claim, that the claim is true, and many other arbitrarily exempted items of knowledge? Are denials of knowledge arbitrarily-exempted items of knowledge themselves? Do skeptical claims assume that one knows the requirements for whether or not something is doubtable, that one’s doubting is justified, that one exists as a doubter, that doubts are meaningful, can be expressed, justified or not, and that one can know that truths are doubtful? Are skeptical questions themselves requests for reasons which assume principles of inquiry, logic, the value of inquiry, and an obligation to have reasons for claims, beliefs, and even denials?
Is the denial of all possible truth itself a truth? Is that skeptical claim—that there is no truth—itself a true claim? Is skepticism itself a set of knowledge claims about the possibility of knowing that are themselves exempted from questioning? Do Hume’s claims about habits and mere constant conjunction relativize themselves? Is Hume’s habit theory of belief an exception to its own universality? Does skepticism take shelter under the protection of reason by using rational arguments to prove the mistaken reasonings alleged in all other views? If you no longer trust reason, what reason is there to believe skeptical arguments for distrusting reason? Does the claim that knowledge is impossible imply that knowledge of the possibility of error is itself impossible? Is the skeptical assumption, that the mere possibility of error implies the actuality of error—itself an arbitrarily self-exempted assumption? Are skeptical assumptions about certainty themselves certain? If we're always being tricked by some being who is causing us to have sensory experiences of an external-to-mind reality when no such reality exists, then what enables us to know that fact itself or even be able to distinguish between what's real and what's not real in the first place or even analyze it? Do skeptical claims themselves—claims about relations between objects of thought and if-then conditional implication, claims that skeptical arguments can decide what is real or true and what is not—have the same problems they allege about all other claims? How can the skeptic know that there are questions or problems or distinctions between known and unknown? What is the skeptic’s standard for what can be questioned, without exempting skepticism’s assumptions about its own criteria? How can a skeptic know a criterion for what does or does not count as knowledge?
Are the assumptions behind skeptical questions arbitrarily exempted from those questions themselves? How does the skeptic know that there is a burden of proof, that in order to know anything one must have a method, criteria, and reasons for knowledge claims? Why does skepticism avoid self-reference issues in its own universal claims and assumptions about the requirements of knowledge? Are skeptical claims about human fallibility and past deceptions themselves items of knowledge? How does a skeptic know that the possibility of one's current beliefs being mistaken is a reason to doubt them?
Does empiricism itself have any empirical evidence or sense experience that justifies believing it? If a knowledge claim must in some way be related to what is sense-perceptible, what sense-perceptible object is that relational claim about knowledge and sense-perceptibility, itself related to? If all knowledge must be traceable to the senses, then what senses must knowledge of that traceability claim itself be traceable to?
Is existentialism itself unexplainable and absurd?
Is idealism itself a mere mental construct about alleged objects of external perception?
Is logical positivism itself meaningless because it can't be logically analyzed into elementary tautologies or be empirically verified or falsified? If nothing is allowed to count against logical positivism’s claims, then is logical positivism itself asserting anything that can be either true or false?
Is Willard Quine's holistic naturalized epistemology itself even a theory, when the revisability principle that maintains the hierarchical network of beliefs cannot itself survive its own revision as just another belief in the network? Is the claim, that all observations are theory-laden and all theories are underdetermined by observational evidence, itself theory-laden and underdetermined by observational evidence? If according to Quine’s holism, all generalizations are revisable in principle, is that universal claim itself revisable? When in the entire history of human thought or science has that revisability claim itself ever actually been revised? Has anyone even tried to revise it? Has that revisability doctrine ever even been seriously questioned?
Does anti-foundationalism treat its own assumptions as having all the characteristics of the grounding assumptions claimed by foundationalism to be irreducibly basic?
Does nominalism use its own assumptions and basic concepts as having all the characteristics of the universal abstract objects it denies?
Is Marxism itself merely an economically determined set of brain events, the product of economic class warfare, the passive reflection of natural processes and economic conditions, an ideology that is itself relative to a passing economic structure? If, as Marx held, the material conditions of life determine consciousness, then how could anyone ever detect any qualification of the determining influences of economic conditions that is not itself already tainted by those same influences? If theory is always merely an expression of class interests, is Marxist theory itself merely an expression of class interests? If humanity is merely the totality of social relations, is Marxism itself merely the product of social relations? If we are all merely the products of society, then isn’t society already self-transforming with or without any efforts to transform it? If our moral ideas and attitudes are determined by the kind of society we live in, then are Marx’s moral ideas and attitudes merely the result of the kind of society that Marx lived in? And how do you even critically analyze those ideas if that criticism itself would also be merely the product of those same societal causes and nothing more than that?
If diagnosing our social problems itself depends on the same things that caused those problems, how can there be any possible resolution? And how can any proposed solution even make sense if it too is merely the product of the specified determining causes? And assuming Marxism, how could one possibly decide between competing views of what ought to be done to solve our problems—or your problems? How can there be any radical change in society or in your life that is not already determined by socially external conditions outside of human agency as specified by Marxist theory?
If all truth claims, scientific paradigms, subject positions, and ideas about Marxist theoretic practice are themselves relative to or constructed in some specific localized or culture-specific discourse, then how can any Marxist view prescribe either the conditions for its own scientific or theoretically warranted status or judge the ways that other discourses are guilty of ideological misrecognition?
How do you know what is pragmatic? To say it’s practical or useful just pushes the problem to what is practical or useful. Is utilitarianism itself merely useful for being happy and not even a theory?
Is social constructivism itself merely a social construct? If all knowledge is socially constructed, is that claim itself socially constructed? Does peer agreement theory arbitrarily exempt itself from its own restrictions? Is the claim—that knowledge is merely a construct of one's social linguistic structures— itself merely a construct of the claimant’s social linguistic structures?
Is behaviorism itself merely an observable, quantifiable product of the environmental conditioning it says determines everything about us?
Is psychologism itself merely the product of psychological factors? Is the reduction of logically prior ideas, to mere feelings of certainty and convictions of subjective evidence motivated by the desire for security and definiteness, itself merely a feeling of certainty about subjective evidence motivated by the desire for security and definiteness? Is psychologism itself merely the product of psychological causes in the mind of the theorist that advocates or argues for psychologism? Was the concept of God that Freud rejected, along with his atheism, determined by Freud’s relationship with his father? Was Freud’s claim, that his views applied to all theorizing, contradicted by his own self-exemptions?
Why do metatheoretic standards of human thinking get exempted from scrutiny? Why is logic never taught to children even though it's no more complicated than basic arithmetic? The pervasive dismissiveness and evasions of academia, the scientific establishment, and the general culture won't make this problem go away.
If physical matter is the only reality, how can materialism itself be true, in addition to being merely a physical object or merely a function of physical objects? How can physicalism or materialism even define reflection, abstraction, or mental representation without assuming that they transcend matter and the physical? Does materialism use mentalistic concepts in constantly referring to convictions, opinions, knowledge, understanding, memory, intelligence, ideas, and intuitions in denying the legitimacy of mentalistic concepts? Does the eliminative materialist get a pass on its loose talk when it makes claims about science? If, according to materialism, science gives us the only accurate picture of reality, and physical matter is the only reality, how were those materialist claims themselves derived from empirical data? Is eliminative materialism itself, by its own claims, merely a set of physical objects in the brain, objects that can be empirically verified? If material objects themselves have already made that decision for us—before we even become conscious of them to analyze them—then how do we decide between conflicting evidence assessments? What physical or material objects demonstrate that there is such a thing as a neutral vantage point from which to evaluate anything? Is the theory of materialism merely a set of belief-determining molecules?
If the only factors relevant to justification are internal factors, is that claim itself a trans-internal external claim? How can one know that internal factors, even though necessary, are a sufficient condition for justification? Is the claim—that we have no awareness of any external justifying factors itself a supervisory external claim about external factors? Is Descartes’ universal claim about all sensation and cognition—that it’s not contradictory to deny the external world—itself a claim about an external world? What does “it” and “there is” refer to in the claims that “it” is not contradictory and that “there is” no contradiction, as well as his universal claims about reality in general? If what is real or true is merely an illusion, is the illusion itself real and true? How could that ever be detected?
How can everything be a simulation, if that knowledge of the simulation is itself already assumed to be part of that same simulation? Is the simulation itself real? How do simulation claims get exempted from scrutiny?
6 Belief In Jesus
From biblical writings in attributed historical order: Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6) Anyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame. (Psalms 25:1) My soul waits only on God. My salvation comes from him. (Psalms 62:1) Like sheep, all of us have strayed away; each of us has turned to our own way; and the Master has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6) To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:12) God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16) Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. (John 3:36) Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life and will not be condemned; they have crossed over from death to life. (John 5:24) No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:44)
There is salvation in no one else, because there is no other name given among people under heaven, by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12) Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved. (Acts 16:31) God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1st Thessalonians 5:9) God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. (2nd Thessalonians 2:13) No one is justified by the works of the law, but through belief in Jesus Christ, and we have come to believe in Jesus Christ so that we are justified by belief in Christ and not by the works of the Law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law. (Galatians 2:16)
I don’t put aside the grace of God, because if righteousness could be gained through human effort, then Christ died for nothing. (Galatians 2:21) Those who believe are children of Abraham. (Galatians 3:7) The writings foresaw that God would justify the nations by means of belief. So those who have belief are blessed along with Abraham, the man of belief. (Galatians 3:8-9)
All who rely on human effort are under a curse. (Galatians 3:10) No one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.” (Galatians 3:11) Christ redeemed us from the curse of human effort by becoming a curse for us. (Galatians 3:13) If a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But the scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through belief in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe. (Galatians 3:21-22) You are all children of God through belief in Jesus Christ. (Galatians 3:26) He has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. (Ephesians 1:13) You have been saved by grace, through belief. It's the gift of God---not because of what you yourself do, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8) Learn from us the meaning of the saying, Don't go beyond what is written. (1st Corinthians 4:6) For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (1 Corinthians 5:21) We don't write you anything you can't read or understand for yourselves. (2 Corinthians 1:13) If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old has passed away. Look, the new has come. (2 Corinthians 5:21) The time of God's favor is now. The day of salvation is now. (2 Corinthians 6:2) I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes. (Romans 1:16) This righteousness from God comes through belief in Jesus Christ. Everyone has sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came through Jesus Christ. (Romans 3:23-24) A person is justified by belief apart from human effort. (Romans 3:28) To the person who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, their belief is credited as righteousness. (Romans 4:5) The promise comes through belief, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all. (Romans 4:16) God recommends his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8) Death came to all because all sinned. (Romans 5:12) Sin will no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. (Romans 6:14) Sin's income is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23) Christ is the end of human effort to be righteous in front of God, so that there can be righteousness for everyone who believes. (Romans 10:4) If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9) You believe and are justified with your heart, and with your mouth you confess and are saved. (Romans 10:10) Everyone who calls on the name of the Master will be saved. (Romans 10:13) If by grace, then it's no longer by works. If it were, grace would no longer be grace. (Romans 11:6)
He saved us, not because of righteous things we have done, but because of His mercy, through the cleansing and regenerating by the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:5) He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24) Christ has suffered for sins once, the just has suffered for the unjust, so that he might bring us to God. (1st Peter 3:18) We have not followed cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and arrival of the ruler Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses to His revealed essence. (2 Peter 1:16) The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (1 Peter 3:9) He has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time. (2 Timothy 3:15) Today, If you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts. (Hebrews 3:15) We do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved. (Hebrews 10:39) God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. (1 John 5:1) Whoever has the Son has life; and whoever does not have the Son does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you will know that you have eternal life. (1st John 5:12-13)
7 Bibliography
Angeles, Peter., Critiques of God, 1976.
Bartlett, Steven J., and Suber, Peter. Self-Reference: Reflections on Reflexivity, 1987.
Blanshard, Brand. The Nature of Thought, 1961.
Boyle, Joseph Jr. Doctoral dissertation: “The Argument from Self-Referential Consistency” Georgetown University, 1969.
Flew, Antony. God and Philosophy, 1966; New Essays in Philosophical Theology, 1964.
Hackett, Stuart, The Resurrection of Theism, 2ed. 1982; Reconstruction of the Christian Revelation Claim, 1984; Rediscovery of the Highest Good, 2009.
Harris, James, Against Relativism, 1992.
Nielsen, Kai. Ethics Without God, 2ed. 1990.
Smith, George Hamilton. Atheism: The Case Against God, 1976.
Urban, Wilbur Marshall. The Intelligible World, 1929; Beyond Realism and Idealism, 1949.
