The Transcendental Argument

a.k.a. "TAG", The Ontological Argument; If you can't touch "love" how can it be real?, Descartes’s God‐claim, semantic psychobabble, new age

The Transcendental Argument is a bastardization of logic and reason. Theists employ this technique to claim God exists by abandoning any evidence or references, in favor of using logic itself to prove the potential for God's existence. Theists start by examining the idea of God and use this as a basis to prove that merely by recognizing the potential for God to exist, we have therefore proven he does exist.

Premise:

The Archbishop of Canterbury in the 11th century coined the argument as such:

1. God is, by definition, a being greater than which nothing can be conceived (imagined).
2. Existence in reality is better than existence in one's imagination.
3. God must exist in reality; if God did not, then God would not be that than which nothing greater can be conceived (imagined).

Critique:

The Transcendental Argument is faulty at its onset because it relies on various base assumptions that have not been proven. Items #1 and #2 in the premise are presuppositions which are arbitrary, unproven and therefore meaningless. The transcendental argument is dependent upon the false assumption that for us to conceptualize something, it must have some basis in reality. Here's another example:

What is love? Can you see love? Can you touch love? If it is not tangible how can it exist? But you know love is real. You can see what love does in your life and society, so it does exist. God is the same way.

The Transcendental Argument proves nothing. Just because you want to associate real-world impulses with this concept of "love" does not mean that love is something tangible that exists in the physical world. Love is an abstraction. The concept of love is subjective. As is the concept of God. It's merely a way of describing something, and not, in itself, something that exists. The Ontological Argument ignores this fact.

Another popular spin on this fallacy involves referencing the so-called laws of logic and suggesting that these "laws" have to be dictated by somebody or something, ergo God exists. In reality, there are no "laws of logic". Logic is a name given to describe the function of how your brain(or something resembling a brain such as a computer) processes information. Your stomach's function involves digestion. Is there a "law of digestion?" No. Another intellectually bankrupt semantical run-around.