Our old friend Rhology is back for a visit from the blog Rhoblogy for this segment of True Free Thinker’s guest blogger program.
Following is the guest post:
I’ve listened on occasion to the Atheist Experience podcast. For me it’s about as easy to listen to as I expect the Bible Answer Man is for an atheist (not that I’m a big BAM fan), only less well-produced and with (mercifully) far fewer commercials and requests to buy Hank’s latest book. It can get a bit repetitive, but recently they took a turn for the entertaining when Matt Slick of CARM.org decided to give them a call. I’ve long considered giving them a call myself but have always been too lazy. Matt Slick’s a decent pinch hitter. 😉
He called their show twice, on 15Feb09 and then again on 22Feb to continue the conversation, and they discussed the 2nd time for a good 45 minutes with one of the hosts Matt Dillahunty. These two dialogues have made some hay in the blogosphere and I won’t attempt to track it all down now, but the AthExp blog around that time is a good place to start.
The topic of each dialogue was the Transcendental Argument (TAG) for God, Matt Slick’s version of which is found here.
Now, the way Matt Slick typically (in live format) goes about laying out the TAG is a bit strange to me, given that he relies heavily on the concept->mind linkage, but perhaps he finds it successful and probably he’s far more well-read and experienced in such things than I. At any rate, it seemed to come to a head in a more effective way with Matt Dillahunty than it previously had with other atheists I’d heard, possibly b/c Matt Dillahunty is sharp and was fair, and Matt Slick didn’t waste a bunch of time as he often does complaining about being interrupted all the time.
I recommend starting to listen to the 22Feb show around minute 57 or so, b/c they did go around in circles a bit, Matt Slick having insisted they are conceptual, Matt Dillahunty denying such. 59:04, Matt Slick seizes upon Matt Dillahunty’s clear laying out of his idea of the nature of logic’s existence:
Matt Dillahunty: “Logic is purely conceptual and is contingent upon a mind to use…They (the laws of logic) don’t depend on anything…Reality depends upon them.”
Matt Slick: “You said they’re non-physical. So what other options are there?”
Matt Dillahunty: “I don’t know.”
Matt Slick (and me, in my mind): “You don’t *know*?”
Matt Dillahunty: “They’re abstract. They’re abstract.”
Matt Dillahunty continued: “This is one of the things I find most laughable about apologists and I won’t even ask for you to not take this personally. Once again you get to this point where “I don’t know” is such a bafflingly unacceptable answer to you.
This is the colossal arrogance of the theist position, that they’re unable to say ‘I don’t know, maybe we’ll find out someday’. And instead of accepting an ‘I don’t know’, they just go ahead and leap to the first thing that seems most reasonable to them.”
Matt Dillahunty continues, saying that this would take us to the point of having to consider all the other possibilities and rule them out, but that’s obviously not going to help.Matt Slick (and again, I in my mind) says: “I’d like that.” Zing!Matt Dillahunty retreats to the “Well, prove to me God exists, without a fallacy.”
Matt Slick continues to ask for a 3rd option.
Matt Dillahunty won’t even attempt it! Anyway, I recommend you listen at least from minute 55 or so of that 22Feb show. It’s well worth it to listen to Matt Dillahunty squirm and then act like it’s no big deal that he doesn’t understand that a request for a 3rd option is perfectly legitimate if one rules out the physical and the conceptual.
Matt Dillahunty wants to keep it at “non-conceptual”, but how is that very helpful? He’s just hoping that his self-enforced agnosticism will let him off the hook with his listeners. Fail. This brings me to an interesting realization – often atheists will question me “What is God? Describe His nature.” Gordon Stein did it (and was subsequently famously dissected) during the Bahnsen-Stein debate (see here for video).
Dan Barker loves to insist that “God is Spirit” is totally unacceptable, since we have no concept of what “spirit” is.
TracieH of the AthExp, who was herself on the air during these same shows, recently raised similar questions.
Right back at you, I will now respond to my atheist interlocutor(s). The well-known Atheist Experience apparently thinks “I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer to the question of the nature of the laws of logic. But it’s a big victory for atheism if you don’t understand the concept when we tell you the nature of God? (of interest with regards to the law of logic may be the post A Finite Regress?).
I mean, this is one of the things I find most laughable about atheists and I won’t even ask for you to not take this personally. Once again you get to this point where “I don’t know” is such a bafflingly unacceptable answer to you. This is the colossal arrogance of the atheist position, that they’re unable to say ‘I don’t know, maybe we’ll find out someday’. And instead of accepting an ‘I don’t know’, they just go ahead and leap to the first thing that seems most reasonable to them. Cheers.
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