Look, this has been a cute trick, but it's just not working. It's perfectly reasonable to say that we don't know all that is possible to know about logic and reason, and it's hubristic to think that we do.
And I can see what you're trying to do here, as you've unintentionally tipped your hand by basically cutting and pasting Greg Bahnsen's criticisms of Bertrand Russell's use of logic and tried to apply them to my arguments for a non-theistic morality.
The reason you're doing it is pretty straightforward.
For decades, or centuries, the theistic show-stopping question to non-theists has been "Where does you morality come from?"
Non-theists always hemmed and hawed, and reasonably so because it is an extremely difficult issue. But the question itself, "Where does your morality come from?" is altogether meaningless.
It doesn't "come from" anywhere in the sense that there's no central authority figuring it out and writing it down for us all to follow. Non-theists like myself have gotten better at answering the question, especially when you couple it with some push back against the theist, who very obviously does not get their morality from the Bible, which is in some cases more concerned with whether women wear hats in church than condemning slavery (remember, it's an Iron Age book, written by Iron Age men, using Iron Age morality). So guys like you and Bahnsen went a step further and said "OK, you have a model for morality, but it's dependent on logic. Where does you logic come from?"
No doubt once we answer that, you'll then ask, "Well where does reason come from?" Then we'll get into the infinite regression until I'm asking you "Where does God "come from", and you say, "He's eternal and uncaused", or some other such nonsense.
Understand this very clearly; answering any question about origins by saying "It comes from God" is entirely, completely, and totally meaningless. It doesn't mean anything more than that saying "Morality, knowledge, and logic come from Odin."
Totally, utterly, meaningless.
So I can confidently discuss these things knowing what your agenda is.
Bahnsen's arguments were specifically geared towards Bertrand Russell, and trying to shift the argument to the roots of logic is a non sequitur. You can't argue against this non-theistic model for morality by saying that it must exist only where one can accept that logic is unchanging. The fact that logic might change a million years into the future does not keep one from understanding and accepting it, no matter how many times you cut and past Greg Bahnsen quotes.
Well I do have to admit that I like Greg Bahnsen's work and have adopted his methodology because his application of Cornelius Van TIl's Transcendental Argument does work, as you are demonstrating. Van Til was a philosopher as well as a theologian. So was Bahnsen. Bertrand Russell was a philosopher, too, in addition to being a logician and mathematician, not to mention and atheist. Russell at least understood that these are real problems in philosophy and that philosophers have grappled with with for centuries, if not millennia. The problems apply not just to logic, but to any abstract type or class of universals, including morality.
Non-theists always hemmed and hawed, and reasonably so because it is an extremely difficult issue. But the question itself, "Where does your morality come from?" is altogether meaningless.
Then perhaps you can explain why professional philosophers have been writing about these philosophical problems for so long, and why do they continue to do so if the issues are altogether meaningless? Can you cite one philosopher who writes that these issues are altogether meaningless?
t doesn't "come from" anywhere in the sense that there's no central authority figuring it out and writing it down for us all to follow.
There you go again. In paragraph one you tacitly admit that you don't know everything. Now here, by making a universal claim, you are tacitly assuming that you know everything, You are contradicting yourself. Have you searched everywhere throughout all time and eternity to discover that there's no central authority figuring it out and writing it down for us all to follow? There is no way you could know such a thing. So which is it - do you know everything or not? Where did you get your epistemology?
OK, you have a model for morality, but it's dependent on logic. Where does you logic come from?"
No, the argument is NOT that morality depends on logic, but that both logic and morality belong to the same class of a whole host of things; namely, abstract, invariant universals.
Understand this very clearly; answering any question about origins by saying "It comes from God" is entirely, completely, and totally meaningless. It doesn't mean anything more than that saying "Morality, knowledge, and logic come from Odin."
What is Odin? Does Odin have the same unchanging, eternal nature and attributes as the God of the Bible? Is Odin both infinite and personal? Is Odin the One and Only True God? I don't read much of philosophers and theologians arguing over Odin very much. Maybe I ought to get out more.
The fact that logic might change a million years into the future does not keep one from understanding and accepting it, no matter how many times you cut and past Greg Bahnsen quotes.
Why do you understand and accept things you haven't seen? I'll try a different quote. If logic can change then Chuck Norris can cut through a hot knife with butter. If logic can change why are you arguing with me? If logic can change why don't we just agree that all Christians are atheists, and all atheists are Christians, in the same manner at the same time?
Cordially,