Having recently refuted the design argument for God (not the conclusion, but the argument used in its favor [1]), I now turn my sights upon the transcendental argument for God. This argument tries to demonstrate that God exists as a mind responsible for the laws of logic. First, I will briefly describe the nature of logic, the set of laws that govern all of reality, before summarizing and addressing the argument itself.
If I grasp an object, like a book, I have merely grabbed a material object, not logic. Even if no matter existed, logic would still exist by pure necessity: "If no matter existed, non-matter would still be non-matter and not matter, it would be true that matter does not exist, the proposition 'Matter exists' would be false and not true, and so on" [2]. It would also still be true that if a set of propositions were true that all that follows from it would be true. For instance, it would still be necessarily true that if all humans are mortal and Cooper is a human, then he must be mortal. But no humans have to even exist for this to be true. It is objectively impossible for logic to not exist (but not for matter), and logic is not a tangible, physical thing; it is a set of immaterial laws that govern all of reality and are grasped by conscious minds. Reason--the laws of logic and what follows from propositions--is a strictly immaterial thing, but it by necessity has an inherent relationship with all material things that exist.
Now, let's look at the transcendental argument for God. This argument claims that if logic is not material, it is immaterial. This is a correct statement. As I have shown, and as the argument holds, logic is not material, so then it must be immaterial. So far the errors have not appeared. But what the argument next claims is that if logic is not material, it must exist in a mind. Humans are not immortal creatures and die, as do animals. So logic must exist in a mind that transcends human minds--the mind of God, posits the conclusion. At this point the argument, one ironically focused on the nature of logic, wildly misrepresents the nature of logic!
Of course logic is immaterial. Of course it would exist even if no human minds did--it's impossible for it not to exist! But whether or not a deity exists has nothing to do with whether or not logic exists. Were no deity in existence (there is an uncaused cause [3]), truth would still exist, and truth would be truth and not falsehood. Matter-less and mind-less reality would still be still matter-less and mind-less reality. The laws of logic and all that follows from them would still exist and be universally binding. Logic is not the product of any mind; it was not created, for it cannot not exist. Minds are required for beings to grasp logic, but they are entirely not required for its existence. Thus the transcendental argument begins by addressing actual facts before spiraling downward into irrationality.
As I mentioned in this post, there is an uncaused cause and this is logically inescapable. I am a theist because theism, where God is defined as an uncaused cause and nothing more, cannot be false, for reasons I have explained elsewhere. But the truth of theism and the fact that it can be proven to be true have never stopped people from erecting fallacious, unsound arguments for God that rational minds will recognize as laughable failures. The transcendental argument fails because logic does not depend on any mind and can never not exist. It stands among the other fallacious arguments for God that theists have used throughout history--useless to those seeking truth and frustrating to those who understand reason.
[1]. See here:
A. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/why-design-argument-fails.html
B. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-loving-designer-erroneous-natural.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-immateriality-of-logic.html
[3]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html
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