I like to eat at Sonic drive-in. I absolutely love the Sunshine Smoothie, and am rather infatuated with the Steak, Egg, and Cheese Burrito. Moreover, when it is cold outside, the last thing that I want to do is get out of my car and race to the door of the warm restaurant. So, having someone bring my food to me is kind of nice.

I do, however, have one major contention with Sonic drive-in. While the Sunshine Smoothie that I love so much is made with ice-cream, orange juice, bananas, and strawberries, most smoothies do not contain any ice cream. The regular smoothies are supposedly made with yogurt.

The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God (TAG) asserts that whenever the non-believer employs the use of morality, logic, and science we do so from the presupposition that God exists, otherwise, how can we suppose that these sets of 'laws' would operate consistently? Without god as a foundation, they argue, everything falls into 'relativism' – where there are no absolute truths or valid foundations to justify any claims of knowledge. Christians themselves maintain that their own knowledge claims are validated through revelation that is received by them from God. In the absence of such revelation it is believed that the only alternative is chaos and a necessary ignorance of every issue.

Here is a review of how others have defined it:

Michael Martin writes:

Some Christian philosophers have made the incredible argument that logic, science and morality presuppose the truth of the Christian world view because logic, science and morality depend on the truth of this world view [1]. Advocates call this argument the Transcendental Argument for Existence of God and I will call it TAG for short.

http://www.reformed.org/apologetics/martin_TAG.html

Frank Walton AKA Atheismsucks has been roaming the internet in an attempt to discredit me and slander my name. Normally he is small peanuts, but this has gone on long enough. He states in his blog that I have plagiarized Dennis McKinsey and in doing so has committed a grave error. On top of this, he has spread this rumor around on Myspace and blogs of friends of the RRS for some time now. But this is about to end one way or another.

The fact is, Dennis McKinsey is a good friend of mine, who has supported me and I him over the past several years in our endeavors. When Dennis was looking to get on Internet Radio, I was more then willing to help him get on Freethoughtmedia.com. He even guest stared on the Rational Response Squad where he vocalized his friendship with me, and our history. This show is available for free download on my profile in the playlist box. It is show number 2. In the event that it has been bumped for newer content, here is a link to listen: http://www.rationalresponders.com/media/RRS-Show2-48k.mp3

I recently argued with a friend of mine about minority status in America. She said that Christians were the minority in America and Catholics were the majority.

The idea that I stated, that Catholics and Christians were the same, seemed totally offensive to her. She said that she, as a Christian, did not believe in the teachings of the Catholic Church. Because they held to different customs and beliefs from the Protestant church, they could not possibly be part of Christiandom.

Among the things that I find wrong with her position, two take absolute prominence.

Firstly, when traveling around any city in the US, there is a marked 3:1 ratio of protestant churches to Catholic churches. That might even be understated. Thus, the argument that protestant Christianity is a minority belief in comparison to catholic Christianity is simply erroneous.

A basic point in metaphysics (ontology) is that anything defined solely by means of negagtive traits, devoid of any universe of discourse, is incoherent.

What does that mean?

It means that if you define 'something' according to what it isn't, without leaving anything left over for it to 'be', then you can't refer to it as an existent.

When the theist defines his god as a set of omni traits, devoid of any universe of discourse (nature) he accidently defines his god into incoherence.

Negative theologians have come to terms with this reality, and have accepted that this necessarily leads to the theist having to take his god on non contingent faith.

Thanks to Ross Raffin for this essay!

An issue with metaphysics in general is the supposed necessity of an absolutist stance. When applied to the religious, this metaphysical problem reaches whole new levels. However, it is not completely solved when reduced to one of the freethought religions. A freethought religion refers to a belief system that adheres to reality in such a way that its truth value does not effect how one experiences the world.

The litmus test for a freethought religion is to imagine an atheistic universe and a universe of the belief in question. If the universe in question is experienced differently from the atheistic universe, it is not a freethought belief.

Thanks to Ross Raffin for this essay!

Perhaps the strangest line of reasoning I have heard to show the existence of God is the Anthropic, or fine-tuning, argument. Once I made the mistake of reading George Smith’s Atheism: A Case Against God in public and within minutes was approached by a born-again. Before I could tell her that I wasn’t at all interested in debating the issue, she launched into natural theology. I respect metaphysical faith in God, but these attempts at giving evidence for a metaphysical concept simply depress me.

In A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawkings accurately noted that if many variables, such as the charge of an electron, were slightly different after the big bang, we could not possibly exist. He goes on to say that this possibly is an act of God. It seems that apologetics stop reading at this point. He goes on to define why God is not necessary.

Thanks to Ross Raffin for this essay!

Other then the Argument from Cosmology, few phrases elicit more groans from atheists than the argument from complexity. The most common form originated two hundred years ago by William Paley. A watch is found in the desert, was it manufactured or did it appear out of thin air?

“The inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.”

In primitive tribal systems, the support of a persons life was justified by their ability for participation in the activities of the tribe. If a boy could not be trained to hunt, for instance, he had nothing to contribute and his life was not justified.

Thus began the need to prove oneself and validate a persons existence.

Throughout most of agrarian social systems, a woman who was incapable of producing offspring was condemned as unworthy. Even during most of the Christian era, where a child's birth was equated to the building of a prison, women who were "barren" were considered of no real value. Thus, there was a heavy burden placed upon them to justify their existence.