right here you demonstrate that you dont understand non-theist epistemologies. nobody asserts that "only that which can be proved to be true by logic or reason is true." that is a theist mischaracterization. all a non-theist epistemology requires is the honesty to not assert things that one does not have evidence for. theists simply do not have this honesty. atheists do not assert that they have knowledge of the lack of gods, atheists point out that no gods have shown themselves, and just as it would be foolish to believe in teapots orbiting mars, it would be foolish to believe in these alleged gods.
see, therein lies the rub. you have a problem in that all reasonable arguments are against the existence of god, and you blindly ASSERT that logic depends on god. then you claim that the flaw most likely lies in the arguments themselves, rather than your blind and patently dishonest assertion.
a singular, true interpretation of the world does not require a magic man in the sky. all it requires is a world based on one or more consistent and fixed laws. of course, there is no guarantee that our world is even in that position, but that is irrelevant. what matters is that it is *good enough* to make predictions that vastly outshine pure chance. materialist systems do this - theistic systems DO NOT.
1. First, my statement is evidently a misleading paraphrase, so I'll quote Dr. Gordon Stein, a professed atheist: "The use of logic or reason is the only valid way to examine the truth or falsity of any statement which claims to be factual." This statement is my example of a presupposition. Also, I didn't claim that "only that which can be proved to be true by logic or reason is true" is the only atheist position. That was just an example to make my point that all human reasoning is circular. Second, I think that God has indeed shown himself, in the Bible especially. Think about it: if God were to reveal Himself to His creation, whose authority or standard of proof would he appeal to? His own, or the creation's? God can appeal to no higher authority than Himself, so why are you expecting Him to reveal himself in a way conforming to your standards of proof?
2. Laws of logic are necessarily dependent on God for meaning because otherwise, the laws are interpreted by man, and thus they have no singular, stable interpretation. The atheist position states that the laws of logic are universal, am I right? The laws have to be universal, otherwise they could differ with social convention. Now, how is the positing of
any universal law of logic consistent with atheistic presuppositions? How do you justify claiming the existence of absolute truths like the law of contradiction if each person can only interpret reality for him/herself?
3. From my position, the question of the universe being based on consistent or fixed laws is very relevant. If you cannot prove this, you cannot prove anything else. All you have is guesses based on your own experience. Given atheistic presuppositions of the universe as arising due to chance, the epistemological elevation of the laws of logic as somehow universally applicable to the world makes no sense. The scientist and logician presuppose far more fundamental order to the universe than their atheistic worldview allows for.
The argument that you are justified in using these laws because they have worked in the past was attacked by a somewhat consistent anti-theistic philosopher, David Hume. The validity of scientific laws was undermined by Hume when he contended that we have no rational basis for expecting the future to be like the past - to be the types of events (so that when one event happened, it's a type of event so that when you see it happening somewhere else) you can expect the same consequence from similar causation. Hume suggested that there was no rational basis for expecting the future to be like the past, in which case science is based simply on convention or habits of thought. I disagree with Hume as a Christian theist, but I find his conclusion consistent (in this respect) with atheistic presuppositions, whereas you continue to cling to an inconsistent basis for universal laws.
About other religions: Every non-Christian religion, at least the ones that I know of, seems either internally inconsistent or destructive of human reason and experience. For instance, Hinduism assumes that God, or Brahman, is the impersonal universal soul of the unchanging One of which all things are part, for instance, and because of that particular outlook Hinduism says that everything in terms of my normal experience of the world and thinking is Maya, or illusion, because everything in experience and thinking presupposes distinctions. But that is contrary to the most fundamental metaphysical fact, and that is that there are no distinctions; all is one. So basically, Hinduism tells me that all of my thinking, all of my reasoning, is illusion, and in so doing undermines reason. You can take religions such as Shintoism, its view of Kami and the forces that permeate the universe; or Taoism, the ordering force in the universe, but they are impersonal forces and as such are even less than human beings because they don't have volition or intelligence.
I have one simple question for you: how, in a material, naturalistic outlook on life and man's place in the world, can you account for the laws of logic, science, and morality?
