Using Presuppositional Thinking to Prove that Something is Eternal

Presuppositional thinking is a term that most simply means the act of presupposing; a supposition made prior to having knowledge (as for the purpose of argument). For more information on presuppositional thinking, Dennis McCallum has an interesting article on the web that I suggest you take a look at.

Example:
a. All men are mortal
b. Socrates was a man
∴ Socrates is a mortal

It is important to use presuppositional thinking when arguing philosophical conclusions. In this section we will use this kind of thinking to show that something must be eternal. Later, we will use the same kind of thinking to show that this eternal is the theistic God.

Now that we have a basic understanding of general revelation and religious pluralism we can move forward with how we are to know God through general revelation. I will show that there is general knowledge (from general revelation) that all humans have access to and that therefore all humans ought to know the Eternal, as well as show that this reference to the Eternal is the same as the concept of God. This is based on the idea that if a person can do something, then they are therefore required to do thus, or in other words, “if a person cannot do something then they cannot be required to do it; or, if they ought to do it they must be able to do it” (2). If coming to know the eternal God is a requirement of all humans then this “implies that they must be able to know God through means at their disposal anywhere anytime. Therefore, the knowledge of God cannot be restricted to the sacred writings, temporally and geographically isolated, of one religion” (2). The fact that this has, and continues to be done, further proves that the clear knowledge about general revelation has been rejected, resulting in people relying in scripture alone to know the Eternal. Instead, what needs to be known is that scripture already assumes general revelation; accordingly, all persons should be able to have this general knowledge without, and before, reading a sacred scripture.

None is eternal is false:
First, in order to understand general revelation, I must show that there is something eternal (in contrast to the claim that nothing is eternal). This can be done through the use of reason to show that “none is eternal” is a self-contradiction, or implies a self-contradiction. To say that none is eternal, which can be referred to atheism, is a contradiction when is rationally proved; furthermore, making this implication false. When nothing is eternal, this implies that something, such as creation, came from nothing. This cannot be true as it is a self-contradictory statement because all would have to come into existence from something non-existent, resulting in an uncaused event. Everything that happens is an event, so to say that being came from non-being in this uncaused event is an irrational assertion. It is important to understand that being can only come from being and that “if being could come from non-being then there would be no distinction between being and non-being (‘a’ could be ‘non-a’)” (3). To believe this would be to deny reason; as rationality is human nature, this would be to deny what should be clearly known. Atheism believes that everything had a beginning, which means all it temporal, but what is the causation of this beginning? As I stated before, it cannot be the case that everything came from nothing as that is an irrational, contradictory statement. If there is one thing that can certainly be know, is that something must come from something else. This leads us to believe that something must be eternal or that even all is eternal.

All is eternal is false:
When we look at views that fall under all is eternal, we find contradictions, while rejecting the use of reason, within the view of general revelation that violate how to know the Eternal. One view that believes all is eternal, through Indian philosophy, is Advaita Vedanta “which says that all is one, all is the Eternal, and this Eternal is changeless” (2). Advaita Vedanta states:

“Brahman—the ultimate, transcendent and imminent God of the latter Vedas—appears as the world because of its creative energy (māyā). The world has no separate existence apart from Brahman. The experiencing self (jīva) and the transcendental self of the Universe (ātman) are in reality identical (both are Brahman)” (4).

This is essentially arguing that everything, such as the self and the material world, are not temporal, but in fact eternal. Another view similar to this that believes all is one, is Buddhism, which is the belief that people are stuck in an endless (eternal) cycle of rebirth until they have the ability to reach Nirvana. Nirvana, for Buddhism, is a spiritual state of eternal nothingness (5). This can be deduced by a representation of a flame (the self) being extinguished into the air (when one dies to reach Nirvana), while the smoke in the air is the eternal state of nothingness, implying that the self is eternal. Both Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism believe that all is one, or all is eternal. I then question, what exactly is it that is eternal? If all is eternal, then this implies that all matter is also eternal. As I stated earlier, matter cannot be eternal because it must be self-maintaining, it must preserve itself. Since material parts are finite and will not be forever, we know that these material parts are not self-maintaining. These views also believe that if all is eternal, then the self must as well be eternal. The self, or the soul, cannot be eternal for the reason that, if the self were eternal, then it would have infinite knowledge. We know this to be false because “the soul goes through unique events in time (growth in knowledge, enlightenment, etc.)” leading us to believe that if the self were eternal, it would already have this knowledge and this growth would not occur (3). It is clear to say that as human beings, we do not have infinite knowledge; therefore, the self cannot be eternal. These contradictions lead us to the final concept that some is eternal, and that this Eternal, or God, is known through a clear general revelation rather than scripture alone, precisely because scripture assumes general revelation.

This argument is summed up as follows:

Something must be eternal.
If nothing is eternal then all is temporal.
If all is temporal then all had a beginning.
If all had a beginning then being(existence) came into being from non-being(nothingness)
Being from non-being(existence from nothingness) is logically impossible.
∴This is sufficient to prove that something must be eternal.

(2) Anderson, Owen. “The Presuppositions of Religious Pluralism and the Need for Natural Theology.” Forthcoming, Sophia, 2009.
(3) Anderson, Owen. Benjamin B. Warfield and Right Reason. Maryland: University Press of America, 2005.
(4) Menon, Sangeetha. “Advaita Vedanta.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/, 2007.
(5) Loades, Ann and Loyal D. Rue. Contemporary Classics in Philosophy of Religion. Illinois: Open Court, 1991.

Terms and Questions to Ponder

I sometimes feel as though my novel definitions clearly explain what I’m discussing, but I do realize it may be important to simply list and define. I will also list some words I will mention in future posts. So here goes:

Religious Pluralism: (rel. comparative religion) is a loosely defined expression concerning acceptance of different religions.
General Revelation: refers to the general truths that can be known at all times by all people about God through nature.
Special Revelation: how God has chosen to reveal Himself through miraculous means. Special revelation includes physical appearances of God, dreams, visions, the written Word of God, and most importantly – Jesus Christ.
Eternal: Being without beginning or end; existing outside of time. Often referred to as God.
Sacred Text/writing/scripture: writing that is venerated for the worship of a deity. Examples include The Bible and The Koran.
Fideism: Reliance on having blind belief alone rather than scientific reasoning or philosophy in questions of religion.
Skepticism: doubts are raised against certain beliefs or types of beliefs because the evidence for the particular belief or type of belief is weak or lacking.

I would also like to bring up some questions for discussion and get your thoughts on these issues before I get into explaining them.

1.) Is it possible to prove the existence of God without the use of the Bible? Why have traditional proofs for the existence of God failed?
a. Traditional arguments include the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, and the ontological argument.
2.) Are there rational reasons to not believe in God? Is unbelief a sin? Are we expected to believe in God? If we are expected to believe in God then we must be able to know God, how?
3.) Is faith enough to believe in God? Why or why not?
4.) Why is reason important when proving the existence of God?

Some questions to ask yourself:

1.) What is your most basic belief?
2.) How do you define God?
3.) Do you think the study of philosophy of religion is important? Why, or why not?

The First Step: Denying Religious Pluralism and Understanding General Revelation

The possibility of adhering to only one religion today, and to consider it the only true religion, may seem unattainable, even absurd. In fact, for hundreds of years man has fought with people of other religions because each religion thinks they hold the real truth. If allowing different religions throughout the world keeps man in constant turmoil, the need for a religious commonality, though seems absurd, should actually be the goal for humanity. By using the reason within our own human knowledge there must be a way to solve these divisions and find common ground. Indeed the only way to solve these divisions is to have an understanding for a clear general revelation. Today, the difficulty of religious pluralism may lead one in an overwhelming paradox; given that there is no universal scripture leading everyone to the same higher Truth, the theory of general revelation proving God’s existence, must be accepted as the starting point for religious belief for all humans.

The central idea behind religious pluralism is to have an understanding that one’s religion is not the only religion while keeping a peaceful relationship between these groups; this is the belief that more than one religion can teach the truth. John Hick, being the most influential philosopher with the association of religious pluralism, believes that all religions hold the same basic orientation and share the same hope for salvation. For Hick, the Ultimate Reality (God) is at the center of all religions and that although these religions are different, they are also complementary and that they each are at attempts to approach this Reality.

Another way to interpret religious pluralism is to understand the term by Rosemary Reuther called ‘ecclesial ethnicity’. This is to say that a person is generally apart of their religious community due to being born into that religion; therefore, “one’s religious commitment is usually a matter of ‘religious ethnicity’ rather than of deliberate comparative judgment and choice” (1). John Hick’s pluralistic view of religion leads us to believe that, regardless of ethnicity, all religions have something in common making it possible to compare them. If this be the case, then Hick would conclude that the concept of the Ultimate Reality is the commonality.

My claim is that religious pluralism only delays conflicts we have in the world, it does not solve them. It does not solve these disputes precisely because not all religions lead to the same Ultimate Reality. In order to rationally understand what this ultimate reality is we need to have a full understanding of what general revelation is. This is our starting point. This starting point of knowledge shows the possibility that humans can know some things about what is eternal. The term transcendent is particularly important in theology as it is generally used in reference to God, as God is beyond the material world. To understand the concept of God you must first understand that this means there must be something eternal, which I will later argue. So in referring to God, the transcendent, I mean the Eternal.

Comprehension of the correct view of the Eternal is the key aspect to having knowledge of general revelation. In Theism, for example, they believe in one God, the eternal who created all things. In here, we will come to learn that there must be something eternal, without beginning, and without end, that is the creator. Although, many religions do not believe in a single Eternal, if even an Eternal at all. How do we come to an understanding of the Eternal and if it even exists? With the proper use of reason we can reveal the existence and nature of the Eternal and that this knowledge can be known by all persons at all times. It is also important to be consistent when determining the recognition of the Eternal. It would be inconsistent to say that the material world is eternal because this concludes that the material world is self-maintaining, and thus produced its own parts, and therefore itself. This view, like many others, is inconsistent with the use of reason, henceforth, sets up the need for a clear general revelation of what we can know about the Eternal. By understanding general revelation we are able to find that there is a common knowledge about the Eternal that is accessible to all humans. It may be argued that many people don’t have the access to knowing the Eternal, and that without this access they are then not required to seek knowledge about the Eternal. This is a false analysis and demonstrates that general revelation has been rejected.

(1) Hick, John. Problems of Religious Pluralism. London: Macmillan, 1985.

What to Expect

I am a recent graduate from Arizona State University who studied philosophy of religion and absolutely fell in love with the topic. I really enjoy what I study and I love to talk about it with people, hence why I decided to start this blog. My hopes are that people can respectfully discuss controversial topics with an open mind. I consider myself to be a respectable person and I dislike when people try to forcefully push their beliefs on me; henceforth, I don't do it to other people. But as I am working to become a professor, I feel it is, to an extent, my job to inform people of rational arguments. I have always been one to believe that if you have a belief you must be able to rationally back it up. I will admit that I was unable to do this at the beginning of my career, but philosophy is a strong passion of mine now, and I realize the importance of reason behind an argument. Throughout my college career I wrote a magnitude of papers and researched a vast variety of topics within philosophy of religion. The two papers I am most proud of were completed in my last year of being an undergrad. In these blogs I will attempt to break down the main concepts of these papers. To begin, I will discuss my thesis from my last semester, which is against religious pluralism (the belief that all the religions are their own form of the truth leading to a god), ultimately proving the existence of God without scripture. This is done by using General Revelation: knowledge about God that is known to all people at all times. As we move forward with these discussions I will begin to talk about the previous paper I wrote about finding a common ground, specifically between Christianity and Islam. Sometime in the near future I will then be working on the third part to these papers which will hopefully define which scripture is the correct to follow and how we are to know this. My goal is not to come across as arrogant, but I do believe that we, as rational beings, have the ability, and capability to find a commonality between the many diverse religions and that there must be a single path leading us all to the same end. I believe that there is, but the issues we run into, are that some people may be too caught up in their own worlds and their own beliefs that they don’t listen or care to listen to other rational arguments. I'm glad that you are here to read my blog and that you will take the appropriate steps to respectfully respond and take the opportunity to open your eyes to my arguments. These entries may tend to be a bit lengthy, and complicated, so take your time reading them to be sure you really understand them. Thanks for stopping by and I hope to be hearing from you soon!