• Cornelius Van Til,  Greg Bahnsen,  James Anderson,  Robert Stern,  Transcendental Arguments for the Existence of God

    Why We Can Argue Transcendentally

    Transcendental arguments usually seek to demonstrate that human experience (or a particular part of human experience) has, as a necessary condition, the existence of or the belief in something. The form of the argument is simply that “there must be something Y if there is something X of which Y is a necessary condition”2 Robert Stern maintains that, strictly speaking, transcendental arguments are for a metaphysical precondition. He suggests that there are four common features in the metaphysical kind of transcendental argument. First, the claim is for a metaphysical condition usually arrived at a priori and obtains in every possible world. For example, says Stern, “existence is a condition for…

  • Cornelius Van Til,  James Anderson,  Robert Stern,  Transcendental Arguments for the Existence of God

    Transcendental Arguments for the Existence of God

    Just what is a transcendental argument? Well let me attempt to explain. Transcendental arguments usually seek to demonstrate that human experience (or a particular part of human experience) has, as a necessary condition, the existence of or the belief in something. The form of the argument is simply that “there must be something Y if there is something X of which Y is a necessary condition”2 Robert Stern maintains that, strictly speaking, transcendental arguments are for a metaphysical precondition. He suggests that there are four common features in the metaphysical kind of transcendental argument. First, the claim is for a metaphysical condition usually arrived at a priori and obtains in every possible world.…