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,
You haven't adopted his methodology as much as you're just regurgitating it word for word, without a true grasp of its incoherence. You even ripped off his use of the example of "sequential counting" being impossible without "universal laws" of logic. Maybe you've never heard Bahnsen answer his own question, but he's said that he trusts the laws of logic and relies on induction because "he believes in a sovereign god who controls the universe", which is a meaningless statement that provides no evidence or argument for his suppositions.
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?
The way the question is phrased by theists is meaningless, because the standard that they're looking for is for a response that quotes some universal, divine mediator. No earthly or empirical answer will ever, EVER satisfy the theist, who will continue the regression until they hear something that they recognize as God.
The roots, reasons, and justification for morality are legitimate and worthwhile questions, but asking where morality comes from as if there's a single universal source makes about as much sense as asking where health comes from. Contrary to the meaningless response of the theist (morality comes from "God"), the answers are complicated.
Now here, by making a universal claim, you are tacitly assuming that you know everything.
Not at all. People are free to dismiss things when there is no evidence to back up the assertions, and there's no evidence for a universal mediator who writes down the laws of the universe (including morality and logic) and reveals them to man. All of the evidence points to these supposed revelations being man made and geographically and sociologically specific, with the universal aspects of them being justifiable without any divine influence.
The holy books are products of their time, which is why for instance Jesus is much more concerned with whether women wear hats in church rather than condemning slavery.
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?
No, but I don't have to, just like I don't need to search everywhere throughout time and eternity to know that that stars are not made of cotton candy and that leprechauns do not exist. If you have evidence, then present it. But something asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
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.
I'll let the theists argue which one of their manmade gods is more powerful, eternal, and/or unchanging than the other. Reminds me of that scene from Conan the Barbarian where Conan and Subotai argue over which God is stronger, the Four Winds or Crom. The reason no one argues over Odin is that the Abrahamic religions became dominant in Eurasia and were spread by empire and invasion. The main reason you're a Christian is that Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. If you were born in medieval Japan, you wouldn't be a Christian. If you were born in modern India, you'd likely be a Hindu. If you were born in Saudi Arabia, you'd be a Muslim.
If the Nazis had won World War II however, it's likely that if not Odin, some sort of pagan Nordic blood myths would be a part of modern philosophy.
Why do you understand and accept things you haven't seen?
I sense a little projection going on here, since I've never claimed such a thing, nor made a claim that would cause any reasonable person to come to that conclusion. It's more relevant to ask you the same thing, considering that if you're ventriloquising Bahnsen to the same degree as you do on everything else, his entire basis for believing in logic is that he believes in God, a God for which there is no evidence.
To answer your question, it is precisely because I do not accept things I haven't seen and for which there is no evidence that I'm not a theist.