From an online discussion I had elsewhere, a young man by the name of Adam responded to me by asserting,
"The transcendental argument for the existence of God does in fact attempt to prove God's existence and, therefore, commits the fallacy of circularity."
No, it does not. It does not 'prove' his existence; it 'assumes' his existence and shows the inescapable necessity of doing so. It does not argue "Objective Morality, therefore God" but rather "God, therefore Objective Morality"; that is, the TAG argues at the level of our presuppositions, speaking on the stuff that comes prior to our 'proof' arguments, in order for us to even have them at all. As an illustrative example, there is a principle operating in all scientific investigations called 'inductive inference'. This principle comes prior to and is necessary for scientific enterprise to take place at all; it cannot be established scientifically, but it is absolutely impossible for science to operate without it. That's the presuppositional level. The TAG establishes the preconditions necessary for the intelligibility of human reasoning, experience, and dignity by taking some feature of each (e.g. logic, or objective morality, or the value of human life) and investigating what has to be true in order for that feature to be possible and intelligible. That's the key feature which rebuttals seem to persistently miss, that his existence is NOT the conclusion.
To help illustrate this point, consider as a loose analogy some argument for the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC). Now, no such argument for the LNC could ever 'prove' the law; it's impossible to prove in that sense, and there is a reason for that. What such an argument does is show that the LNC is true necessarily, not contingently, by assuming its truth and showing the inescapable necessity of doing so. In other words, it works to show that the truth of the LNC is intrinsic, self-evident, and necessary by virtue of "the impossibility of the contrary" (i.e. one uses the LNC in their denial of the LNC); its truth is not established contingently by its relation to some truth more basic than itself (extrinsic). The truth of the LNC is not proven; it's assumed and must be so. The TAG takes a similar form; it does not prove God's existence but, rather, assumes his existence and shows the necessity of doing so. Some feature of human reasoning, experience, or dignity is the conclusion; the existence of God is not the conclusion but, rather, that which is necessary for reaching the conclusion.
Adam also asserted,
"Atheism literally means not believing in god(s)."
False. The term 'atheism' is derived from the Greek root 'theos' prefixed by a negating article. Ergo, atheism/atheist/atheistic literally means "godless" or "ungodly," a sound etymology recognized by Anders Bjørn Drachman in his book Atheism In Pagan Antiquity: "
In Greek they said 'atheos' and 'atheotes'; to these the English words 'ungodly' and 'ungodliness' correspond rather closely.
That is the literal meaning, so a definition of 'atheism' consonant with Greek usage will not deliver up the popular meaning "absence of God-belief." Consider, for example, the curious fact that early Christians were called atheists, despite their God-belief, because they refused to acknowledge the pagan gods of Rome.
Consonant with contemporary thinking, if we accept that the prefix 'a-' is to be understood as "without" or "no" and that 'theos' is supposed to mean "God"—and this is surely the case—then an atheist is someone who is "ungodly" or "without God" or "godless." That is, he will view the world in the context of "no God" and live his life "without God." If something is amoral then it is 'without morality'. If something is asymmetric then it is 'without symmetry'. If something is atypical then it is 'without typicality'. Any appeal to the Greek will only prove that atheist ('a-' + 'theos') means "without God."
Michael Martin, who made an appeal to the original Greek in Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, tried to conclude that "from this standpoint an atheist would simply be someone without a belief in God." It is impossible, however, to miss how Martin fraudulently snuck in the word "belief" when his etymological presentation made zero reference to the Greek root 'pistos'. Too many definitions of atheism, when appealing to the original Greek, try to import the 'belief' feature into the presentation when it is simply not present in the Greek 'atheos'. Every attempt to import this term into an argument from Greek etymology is at once both fraudulent and irresponsible. Atheism as a philosophical creed does address the belief feature, but its etymology does not.
Like many atheists, Antony Flew preferred the 'weak' definition of atheism and expended a good deal of effort making his case, but he had the propriety and intellectual honesty to admit that it was a new interpretation. Atheism defined in this way essentially began with George H. Smith (Atheism: The Case Against God, 1979) and was further popularized by Antony Flew (The Presumption of Atheism, 1984) and others such as Gordon Stein (An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, 1980), Michael Martin (Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, 1990), and Douglas Krueger (What is Atheism? A Short Introduction, 1998) and so forth. The historically rich and more common definition of atheism, as explained in the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Etymological Dictionary of English Language, Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford Companion to Philosophy, etc. as being the conscious rejection of theism, is a view which considers "absence of theistic belief" to be an illegitimate form of atheism, as noted by such prominent atheists as Ernest Nagel, Paul Edwards and Kai Nielsen. Frederick E. Edwords, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association, also concurs that this is the correct definition and, indeed, the term 'atheist' is used this way by most people. Similarly, in Ernest Nagel's A Defence of Atheism he asserts that
atheism is not to be identified with sheer unbelief . . . Thus, a child who has received no religious instruction and has never heard about God, is not an atheist—for he is not denying any theistic claims.
Such a child would at best be a 'nontheist', a term popularized by atheist and skeptic Michael Shermer, who may likewise be placed within this camp, for he writes (How We Believe, 1999) concerning the term 'nontheist' (emphasis supplied):
If by fiat I had to bet on whether there is a God or not, I would bet that there is not. Indeed, I live my life as if there was not a God. And if the common usage of the term "atheism" was nothing more than "no belief in a God" I might be willing to adopt it. But this is not the common usage, as we saw in the OED . . . Atheism is typically used to mean "disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a God." But "denial of a God" is an untenable position. It is no more possible to prove God's nonexistence than it is to prove His existence. "There is no god" is no more defensible than "There is a God." The problem with the term agnostic, however, is that most people take it to mean that you are unsure or have yet to make up your mind, so the term nontheist might be more descriptive.
NOTE: Something should be said about the differentiation between 'atheism' and 'agnosticism'. It seems popular to believe that there are three positions with regard to the question of God's existence: that one is either (1) a theist, (2) an atheist, or (3) an agnostic. However, this is not the case; such a view results from either an inability or refusal to appreciate the distinction. Robert T. Carroll, in his The Skeptic's Dictionary, available online, affirms this distinction when he states that "an agnostic could also be a theist or an atheist." Often times 'agnosticism' is used as a synonym for 'weak atheism', but this is ultimately erroneous—'weak atheism', the Wikipedia article on Agnosticism explains, "is not equivalent to but is compatible with agnosticism" (emphasis mine).
Properly understood, agnosticism is a subset of both theism and atheism: one can be an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist because 'agnosticism' describes the condition of one's knowledge (Gk. 'gnosis'), whereas 'theism' and 'atheism' describe the condition of one's relationship with respect to God. For example, an agnostic atheist is someone who admits he doesn't know whether or not God exists but lives his life as though God doesn't (e.g. naturalism), while an agnostic theist is someone who also admits that he doesn't know whether or not God exists but lives his life as though God does (e.g. fideism). There is a significant difference between 'belief' propositions (doxastic) and 'knowledge' propositions (epistemic), illustrated by the fact that 'belief' is a necessary condition for 'knowledge', e.g. you can believe something you don't know (e.g. intelligent life exists on other planets) but you can't know something you don't believe (e.g. it is sheer nonsense to say "I know the milk is in the fridge but I don't believe it is"). Both atheism and theism speak to the beliefs we confess while agnosticism speaks to the knowledge we confess.
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