A Conversation with Darth Dawkins

Introduction to the Guest and the Show’s Apologetics Focus

Welcome back to another episode. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and this is Revealed Apologetics, an apologetics ministry that focuses on apologetics in general and presuppositional apologetics more specifically.

And of course we cover things like reform theology and all sorts of stuff. So as I have now always say in my introductions, I'm super excited. I have to be honest. I am super excited every time that I say it, and especially for today, that I'm happy to have our guest on today, Darth Dawkins.

Many of you might know who he is from Discord and other venues, but he is a friend and I thought it'd be a great opportunity to have a conversation with him about apologetic methodology. And I'm hoping that the nature of the conversation will be informative to folks.

And I encourage people to send in their questions so that we could address some questions towards the back end of the episode. And so that's all. So I'm going to introduce without further ado, Darth Dawkins.

Why don't you say hi to folks?

Okay.

Can you hear me?

I can hear you. Okay.

Can you hear me?

Yep, I can hear you. All right, I can hear you. Okay, you're good.

Okay. All righty. Hello Eli, hello internet. A wonderful day in the neighborhood.

All right. Yes, it is indeed a wonderful day in the neighborhood. I like the helmet you got going on there. That looks, I love Star Wars, so.

Well, I have to thank an atheist who was very disturbed with my interaction and debate with him.

Okay.

He got defeated so resoundingly that I was previously Duncan Dawkins. And he said, you're not Duncan Dawkins, you're evil, you're Darth Dawkins.

Oh, okay. All right.

Real quick, Darth. Someone's saying that they could understand you, but your volume is a little low. I don't know if you wanna.

Let me check my phone.

Yeah, why don't you check and I'll just make a couple of announcements here, okay? So while he's getting that sorted out.

Okay.

Online Courses and Show Announcements

All right, well, let me make this quick announcement. Actually, I forgot to say before. So if those of you guys have been following Revealed Apologetics, you know that I just recently released online courses, Precept You, an Introduction to Biblical Apologetics.

And so I'm very happy with the turnout with regards to the folks that signed up, especially for those who signed up for the premium course, where we'll be meeting once a week to go a little deeper into the course content.

But for those who are interested in signing up, you still can sign up because we will be re-releasing the courses along with the premium option where I can interact with you guys a bit. By February 20, let me double check that, 20.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Apologize. February 15. So you can sign up from now until February 15th if you're interested in taking the course that has just been released. Of course, with the option to have some interaction with me, your instructor.

And so far, I haven't heard anything bad so far. So hopefully folks are enjoying the content. And so if you wanna sign up, you can check that out at revealedapologetics .com. All right, welcome back. Let's get back to...

I'm getting confused here because I advertise this as Darth Dawkins, a conversation with Darth Dawkins, but your name there says Duncan Atheism. You have a couple of

Oh, I apologize.

No, no, no, no worries.

No worries. You have a whole...

You're known by many names.

Yeah, yeah.

But by the way, you hold a special elite position that because your camera's off, there's only one other guest, a very highly esteemed guest that I've had on this show that decided to keep his camera off too.

Do you know who that is? Oh, it was Dr. Scott Oliphant.

So that's it.

You and Dr. Oliphant are the only people who have come on the show with no camera, which is completely fine, but I thought it'd be cool to place you in that nice little category.

He's a good guy.

Yeah, well, people will be surprised one day when I come on camera. I'm just an average looking person.

Hey, nope, it's all good, man. So why don't you tell folks a little bit about what you do and a little bit about who you are, however, whatever you wanna say.

Well, I've been a Christian for 40 years. I became a Christian in my late teens. I was raised nominally Catholic. I've never seriously doubted the existence of God. I felt that there wasn't any reason to doubt the existence of God.

When I became a Christian, I began getting interested in apologetics and theology, started reading books like by George MacDowell, evidence that got into, excuse me, evidence that demands a verdict. But I didn't start really getting into debating apologetics until about 10 years ago when I began encountering certain online social networks.

And when I went from one social network to another, we found more and more opportunities to do apologetics and share the gospel at the same time. So it's been about a 10 year process. I started off more evidential and classical.

I wasn't really familiar with the presuppositional distinctive, although I've always held to it in a kernel basic form. I guess all Christians do, but we get intimidated by trying to capitulate to some of the world's false beliefs to try to quote, convince them.

And then after listening to Greg Bobson's lectures, readings material, Van Til's material, I became convinced that evidentialism in and of itself was not sufficient, that it had to be presented in a fully biblical context.

And then just holding their feet to the fire in terms of what God says, right? When they challenge what God says.

Now, I could hear you fine, but I am getting some comments here that you sound a little garbled. So I'm not sure, some folks are suggesting maybe you have the wrong output or something like that. I'm not sure if you're familiar.

Let me reload the page, okay, maybe I don't.

Okay, no problem. All right, while he is adjusting there, again, if you guys have any questions, now's the time to send them in. It would be very helpful to me if you send in the question while saying question so that I could differentiate between a question and comments, okay?

So I'm hoping folks will get some questions and we can get some interesting discussion going on. So if you have any questions or if you wanna wait a little bit, just be sure to label it question so we know to get to those specifically without getting lost in the mix there.

All right, let's see if it looks a little better or sounds a little better rather.

Okay, it should. I reloaded it, it should be working fine now.

Okay, all right.

Go ahead, can you say something again?

Okay, Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow.

Yeah, you sound a little like a, I mean, I can understand you, but you sound a little robotic, kind of like Darth, kind of like Darth Vader.

All right, let me quit the program and restart it.

Okay, all right. No worries, if you guys can be patient with the technical difficulties, that's fine. Well, you guys will be very familiar with technical difficulties. If you remember just a few shows back, I had Dr. Braxton Hunter and Dr. Tim Stratton, and I got kicked off my own show.

I was unable to get back on.

So please bear with me for a moment here. All right, if he's unable to get back on, maybe I'll do a little dance and a little song and we'll do apologetics some other way. I'll do a monologue.

So let's see here.

Just wait a few moments. Once again, if you guys are just tuning in, check out revealedapologetics .com under the category PresubU, and you can sign up for online courses to learn presuppositional apologetics.

All right, and let's see. Let's see if he's on now.

Let's see.

All right.

Should be working.

Much, okay, keep saying, keep talking.

It should, and now I quit the program.

Yeah, your voice still sounds like, it sounds like it's skipping a little. Are you using like a, what kind of device are you using? You like a laptop, an iPad?

No, it's my lap. I shouldn't have a problem. Hold on, let me just try something here.

All right.

Yeah, I hear static as well.

All right, is it better now?

Your voice sounds good, but there's static in the background.

Whoa, let's try this one more time. I apologize, Eli.

That's okay, no worries.

All right, that's the way the cookie crumbles, man.

All right.

Okay.

Let's see here.

Let's see, we got some questions already.

Very good. Let's see. Let's see.

Oh, here was a question. I'm curious if Darth Dawkins can speak on internalism versus externalism justification and its relation to Christian epistemology. That's an excellent question. So we'll definitely make sure we'll cover that one.

It's actually not the first time someone's asked that. It's come up quite often.

All right.

Let's see here.

All right, folks, just bear with me.

Also, I want to throw this out there. If those of you guys want to see me interview someone that you think would be a good guest on the show, I would love suggestions either in the comments or if you could email me at revealedapologeticsatgmail .com.

So definitely looking for new guests. Believe it or not, it's pretty hard to get some of the people. I know towards the beginning, folks were very excited that I was able to get a lot of guests on consecutively.

And ironically, the reason for that is, it's not because I have connections, but it's actually because of the whole quarantine issue. It was easy to get in touch with people because everyone was home.

But it's been a huge blessing and I've really enjoyed the conversations that I've had with all sorts of folks. So looking forward to some good interviews in the future.

Let's see here.

Star Wars question.

All right, fine, we'll take one. Eli question, while we wait on Darth, what are your thoughts of Lucasfilm retroing the last trilogy? Hmm, okay, so do you mean with like the sequel trilogy? I didn't like that.

I really was, I loved the Force Awakens, okay? When I saw the Force Awakens, I was like, yes, things are gonna be great. And then the last Jedi really did it for me, okay? I'm a huge Luke Skywalker fan, so I was not happy at all what they did with Luke Skywalker.

I was looking to see Luke's powers revealed in its full force, no pun intended,.

But that's not what we got.

We got an old grumpy man. So I wasn't very happy with that.

Okay, that's a good question though.

That was for the other show. I would have addressed that in my previous episode. Let's see, okay. Darth is back on. Let's see if it is fixed.

All right, I'm switching to my headset now. So there might be some feedback. I had to restart my system, I apologize.

No worries, no worries.

Now I'm getting an echo. Let me see, let me turn my mic off.

Can you hear me?

Yeah, I'm just trying to set up my headset so I can hear you, so I'm not through the speakers. For some reason, I'm having a Bluetooth glitch doing my headset, it should connect momentarily.

No worries.

Yeah, I hear you, I hear you.

Murphy's law. I don't know why my headset's not connecting up now. Everything's going wrong at once.

You can't talk? I hear you, I can't talk right now. I'll have to go, I'll have to go.

Here, can you see the room?

And then I'll try to leave and then come back.

Is that, can we do that?

Or not? I won't leave the room now, because he's left the room.

Okay.

All right, I guess we'll take a couple of other ones here.

All right.

Oh, that's an interesting question.

Divine Providence, Apologetics, and the Christian’s Task in a Troubled World

All right, Clown Dog asks, what is my biggest concern of 2021?

Oh man.

My biggest concern of 2021. I don't know, to be perfectly honest. I don't have any major concerns. I mean, I don't mean to be like churchy and like, you know, overly Christian, but I really do believe that God is in control.

Our job as the church is to remain faithful. It doesn't matter, you know, who's the president, you know, what policies are being passed. And we fight for the truth. We stand for the truth. We speak the truth in context that God has placed us in.

So I don't have any particular worries that come to mind, except for the fact that a lot of things that I think are unbiblical will be being put forth in ways that perhaps it wasn't done so in the past.

But for the most part, I mean, staying faithful and speaking the truth in whatever context. I mean, think in terms of the early Christians, you know, during the time of Emperor Nero. I mean, things were really bad, yet Christians had to live out the truth and show the love of God in the context that they were in.

So I don't have any worries in that sense. I think God is in control and Christians need to stand up and do what they're commanded to do in scripture. So that's what that, in the famous words of Forrest Gump,.

That's all I've got to say about that.

Okay, all right, Darth is back. Let's see if this works, all right? I'm so sorry, let's see.

It should work, I restarted everything.

Yay, okay, you sound perfect now, good.

All right, there we go, sorry about that.

No, no worries, it happens.

All the atheists are cheering.

It's all right, no worries.

All right.

How Presuppositionalism Emerged from Evidential and Classical Apologetics

Okay, so you were explaining, let me see if I remember what you were explaining. You were explaining what got you into apologetics or something to that effect. Well, let's just start from there. So how did you get into apologetics?

You said that you became a Christian, you started doing that more of the evidential approach. What was the specific?

Well, I wanted to learn more about the history of the Bible, why I should believe it, not just accept it ipso facto. And I started reading books by Josh McDowell, but I didn't do serious reading in apologetics as I didn't have that many apologetic encounters until I started interacting online about 10 years ago.

And so I approached it from a more classical and evidential type of debating approach. And then when I heard Greg Bonson, it just floored me because I'd never heard anything like that. And I went, wait a minute.

As I thought about it, it was solidly biblical. He's simply appealing to the truth of what God says in various parts of scripture and their implications and ramifications, which the atheists cannot escape from.

And I've been a biblical presuppositionalist ever since.

Okay, so for you it's been, and that's very similar for me as well. I mean, even atheists know this at this time, when we speak of presuppositionalism, most people come to it through the Bonson-Stein debate.

Now, admittedly, Dr. Stein was not the best opponent, but I still think even if he was a better opponent, the arguments were pretty rock solid and it was definitely the perfect exemplification of presuppositionalism applied.

And so I just wish that Dr. Bonson was able to do more debates. I mean, we only have that one. It's the one with Edward Tabash. And then there was one with George Smith, I believe,.

Which was a radio.

Yeah, I wouldn't sell Stein so short. He was probably the most well-studied and well-read atheist in the world.

Okay.

His PhD was in library scientists and he set up at least one profound atheist library. So he's probably one of the most well-read atheists on the planet at the time.

Okay, I did not know that.

He's a professional philosopher.

Yeah.

I guess I made my judgment based upon how bad his representation of the classical arguments were. Even his, I mean, if you listen to the debate, he, it is like Gordon Stein is debating a classicalist, which he wasn't.

And he's trying to refute arguments that weren't being made because I think the presuppositional approach kind of stymied him. He didn't expect it. But even

He was blindsided.

Oh yes, he was blindsided. But even his attempts to critique the more traditional arguments, I thought they were terrible. So I didn't really think he was as intellectually astute as perhaps he actually was.

Well, that's par for the course for atheism.

Okay, there you go. All right, so let's talk about presuppositionalism and let's get into some of the nitty gritty and perhaps clarify a lot of misunderstanding for folks. Cause I do think, and people have heard me say this before, that presuppositionalists can do a better job in explaining their position.

But I think the opponents can do a better job in listening. Because a lot of the times when the methodology is presented, I do think that it's presented rather clearly and forcefully and yet there is either a refusal to listen or there's just, you know, there's some disconnect that prevents them from really grasping the nature of what we're saying.

So let's go for just a bare definition. In a bare definition, if someone were to ask you, what is presuppositionalism? How would you respond to that? And how would you in a general sense lay out a presuppositional argument?

Presuppositionalism, Worldviews, and the Christian Basis of Intelligibility

Well, I would first explain to them that everybody comes to the table with a worldview, a model of reality, a metaphysic, even children do. None of us are exempt from that. Within that worldview are certain foundational beliefs or parameters that we all hold to, consciously or unconsciously, explicitly or implicitly.

Some of those most foundational positions or the final one, we would say that these are our presuppositions, right? And so, and because we have different worldviews, we have a conflict of worldview, not just an interpretation of the facts, because the facts cannot be the same because the worldviews are in conflict.

One of the worldviews has to be at least false. So in a presuppositional approach, we present the revelation of God as he has given it through natural and special revelation. We explain what our fundamental beliefs are, our presuppositions, how we arrived at them and why we hold to them.

And then the unbeliever has the opportunity to accept this, which the majority of time, they're well familiar with the Christian worldview. They then reject it. And then in a very simple way, we show that the denial of the Christian worldview and its fundamental presuppositions is an implicit counterclaim, which would entail their worldview.

And then upon looking into that, as we would call an internal critique, that that worldview cannot be sustained in any shape or form, no matter how they attempt at it, intellectually, educationally, emotionally, they will not be able to defend their worldview without an appeal to some aspect of God's revelatory actions.

So the denial of God's revelatory actions through natural revelation and special revelation of Christian scriptures results that whatever they assert will ultimately be absurd given their worldview or metaphysic.

There will be no background information for which them to place and defend facts. They think they have facts, but only because they're borrowing from the Christian worldview and they're not thoroughly examining their metaphysic, their worldview.

They can't ground anything they say.

So when you present the presuppositional argument, God has revealed himself in general and special revelation such that we could know what his revelation is, right? We know God innately. And so you present the Christian worldview and then you say the rejection thereof reduces one's position to absurdity.

How do you respond to people who say, well, that's a really nice claim. You're just making assertions. That doesn't mean your assertion is true. How would you engage someone who says something like that?

I would say the rejection of the referencing God's revelation of himself is itself a counterclaim, okay? If they feel that the revelation of God that we point to, God's natural and special revelation, when they say it's a claim, they've already made an evaluation.

They've judged that it is unworthy of belief, right? Their response is, well, you haven't proven it. And we point out that God's natural and special revelation, to the extent that we're familiar with it, is self-justifying, it's self-attesting and demonstrating, okay, not only because of its source, but because of its internal content, the properties and attributes of the God of the Bible, the parameters that the Bible says are from God's world are the necessary preconditions in order for there to be any kind of reason or intelligibility.

Now, when they reject that, either they're not understanding it, or they're just playing word games. Oh, you haven't demonstrated. Well, the fact that they say it hasn't been demonstrated doesn't mean it does.

So they're making a counterclaim, right? And so if they're going to evaluate that the Christian worldview is not objectively defensible, or that there's no reason to believe it, that itself is a claim.

To say that the Christian worldview is just a claim, right, is itself a counterclaim. And they're gonna have to defend that, okay? Because they're not neutral. They're gonna constantly wanna present themselves in a neutral position.

Oh, well, you haven't proved it. But to say you haven't proved it to the extent that they're acquainted with God's revelation is a counterclaim, right? Which they cannot sustain.

So why don't you unfold for us? So, because here's the thing, when people say you haven't asserted it, or where's your evidence, or this, that, or the other thing, it almost is the case that a lot of unbelievers are so wedded to these concepts of autonomy and neutrality that when they say you haven't proved it, what they really mean is you haven't proved it in an independent, unbiased fashion to their satisfaction.

So they're basically asking you to prove it in a way that we would say is impossible to prove anything, namely from a neutral and autonomous perspective. Would that be on point?

Yeah, their criterion of belief that they put forth, whether they state it or explicitly, it's just a smokescreen to, as you stated, to engage their autonomous reasoning. It's a smokescreen because the very criterion of belief that they apply to God's natural and special revelation, the Christian scriptures, they abandon when they advocate directly or indirectly for their worldview.

I'm constantly telling unbelievers on Discord, you're violating your own criterion of belief. I'll ask them, why don't you believe in God? Why don't you believe in Christianity? And they'll say, oh, well, you haven't proven it.

You haven't justified it. And then I say to them, oh, and so your not Christian worldview has been proven and justified? Do you follow your own criterion of belief? Because in order to not accept the Christian worldview, right, that means that you're gonna have to be adopting your worldview, your non-Christian worldview as actual, as true, as veridical.

But they haven't justified it. They haven't proven it. They simply adopt it. Now, they adopt it apparently arbitrarily, but in reality, we know from scripture that they don't adopt it arbitrarily because they have motivated reasoning.

They do not want God to exist. They do not want to acknowledge God. They do not wanna be thankful to him as creator. So as I say all the time on the interweb, as George Bush would say, they collect cliches, catchphrases, aphorisms to assuage their conscience.

And so when they say, well, you haven't proven it. Okay, well, fine, that's a counterclaim. Okay, so they're gonna have to establish that their worldview can evaluate things. See, the Christian worldview is not only proven because of its source, because of who God is, God's word is self-attesting, but the actual internal parameters and content itself reveal that these are the preconditions.

God's character, his nature, his revelation cannot be dispensed with. Van Til said that Christianity is indispensable for human intelligibility, meaning that the Christian worldview is ontologically true.

Now they think that they have intelligibility because they don't believe in God or the Christian worldview. But we're not simply talking about mere belief. We're saying that the Christian God and his attributes must exist ontologically.

Otherwise there will be no metaphysical background information, absolute or ultimate to appeal to.

Okay, so right there. So you say it has to be the case. So the unbeliever says, why? I don't see the connection as to why. You say, for example, it has to be the case.

Why?

Because if it isn't the case, we couldn't make sense out of anything. And then there, well, I don't see that that's, I don't see how that makes sense. How would you unpack that a little bit more?

Well, I would say in order for there to be truth and falsity, accessibility or apprehension of truth and falsity and reason, things like that, we're gonna have to be in a world where what is ultimate and fundamental and foundational is God, where God is a mind, he's eternal.

He then institutes his creation. And then he imposes all of the parameters, how things work, including ourselves, to permit us to be intelligible and to reason. The reason why we can be coherent, intelligible and reason, because it reflects the creator who created these things.

Now, when they don't believe in that, then they're going to be operating off of the metaphysical premise that is the negation of God as creator and sustainer. But you see, no such foundational premise can be attested to.

They have nothing identifiable or demonstrable. They say, well, you haven't proven you're God. You haven't proven the scriptures. Well, God's existence has been proven by God. The scriptures have been proven, but because of their motivated reasoning, they blind themselves to the objective proof that the Christian scriptures are true.

And the icing on the cake is that they're true due to the impossibility of their denial or negation, that the non-Christian worldview can never be established. So in the Christian worldview, God is, he reveals himself.

We could only know God exists, by virtue of the way he constructs this world, right? In the non-Christian worldview, there would be no way to identify or demonstrate what is fundamental, what is ultimate, what is absolute.

So whatever parameters of existence that they appeal to for their reason, for their acquisition of truth and falsity, the foundation could never be identified or attested to. So their worldview, everything that they assert, okay, including, well, I don't have a reason to believe in God, their so-called reason that they say to reason, I don't have a reason to believe in God, is shrouded in ultimate mystery, right?

So when we have the revelation from God, our model of reality is not shrouded in ultimate mystery. We know that what is eternal, ultimate and absolute is a mind and that he has revealed that he is God and that he is creator and sustainer and that he is unfolding a redemptive plan of human history.

But when they reject that, which Ventile says is a closed system, because some things cannot happen, some things are impossible, when they reject God's revelation and they say, oh, it's not God's revelation, then they're not gonna be in a position to discern truth or falsity because now they're in an open system, right?

Where anything goes and is impossible because nothing is impossible from their frame of reference then truth and falsity is inaccessible. And if truth and falsity are inaccessible, then so is reason and intelligibility and it's game over, lights out for them.

But they don't care.

So when you say, given their rejection, if their rejection, the worldview upon which they're standing that rejects the Christian God, if that were true, you would say that they could not in principle know the very things that they take for granted that they know.

And so suppose

Yeah.

Yeah, suppose

It's worse than that.

Okay.

You can expand that.

It's worse than that. It's not even that they could know, they couldn't predicate. They could not offer propositions that will be intelligible because there's no background context, there's no metaphysical system from which these propositions or facts can derive from.

So what if the person says, well, I don't need a foundation. I mean, I've heard some interactions that you've had and people said, like, I don't know why you're making a big deal about foundation.

Then what they're saying is, what they're saying is I'm arbitrary in whatever I say. And well, you're, you know, that's what we call crazy.

As I think, as I asked you the question on purpose, because I knew what your answer was gonna be, but I think it's a key point that I think would be good to emphasize. So if they don't need a foundation, how is the lack of a foundation, how does lacking a foundation result in arbitrariness with regards to asserting the truth or falsity of some fact?

Because nothing can be grounded. Nothing can be defended as being either true or false. It's not just that they're wrong. They don't have access to truth and falsity.

Why?

Because their metaphysic, their worldview cannot provide for it, right? So for example, if we have a fact, a putative fact, right? The fact is only what it is because it starts in the mind of God and God's creation and his sustaining of the creation, and that all of those particulars and facts are a part of God's unfolding plan of creation and redemption.

So God is the ultimate reference point that makes any fact a fact. When they say, oh, well, you haven't proven you're God, whatever their reason is for rejecting God's revelation, remember, it's not so much that they're rejecting what you and I are saying, they are rejecting God's revelation to the extent that they are in fact acquainted with it.

And once they reject God's revelation, right? Then there's no ultimate reference point for facts, okay? Because what you think is a fact today in relationship to some things could change tomorrow or next week, which is an open system.

Now I've confronted unbelievers about this, and I say a closed system is where we have an eternal, absolute, ultimate creator God, he institutes creation, he sustains it, and he operates it according to his plan, his redemptive plan of human history.

So any given fact is what it is within God's plan of human history. But when you reject that, then what is your reference for that fact? Just some other facts? Well, what's their reference point? What they wanna do is they wanna borrow from the Christian worldview that we have access to truth and falsity and the capacity to know some things that we cannot be wrong about, but they have no background information for it.

So they're violating, when they ask for proof of the Christian worldview, they're speaking a reasoning from a worldview for which they have no proof. So their position, according to their own stated criterion, is self-annihilating.

That's why Van Til said Christianity is true due to the impossibility of its denial. Or Bonson would say the impossibility to the contrary.

What I see as a common misunderstanding is when we make that claim, a lot of people think it's an empty assertion that can be replaced with any supposed deity, right? So if someone says, oh, well, Allah is the necessary precondition for intelligibility, how would we respond?

Why is our argument not simply a claim that can be replaced with any X? My transcendental argument for Mormonism, my transcendental argument for Islam. How would you address that specific objection?

Why the Christian God Alone Grounds Human Intelligibility

Well, in order to have human intelligibility, we have to have a creator who has certain attributes and properties. He has to be ultimate and absolute. There are no ultimate and absolute gods on the religious landscape either now or in human history.

Those gods that are pretenders, such as the derivational cults, reveal that they're simply ripping off the Christian God. They're poor imitators, like the God of Islam. The Quran says that Allah is the greatest of all deceivers.

If you have a God who is not always truth-revealing, then you can't have human intelligibility because human intelligibility is going to require that creation, which is God's revelation, where God always reveals the truth, which would entail the law of identity and non-contradiction.