Presup REFUTED? #presup #apologetics #theology #TAG

Revealed Apologetics

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All right, welcome back to another episode of revealed apologetics. I want to open up with some bad news

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Okay, bad news. I think it is time for us to pack things up because apparently

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Precept has been refuted. And so That's it. Okay.

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I was I was scrolling the comment section in some of my videos and I came across I mean this amazing refutation of Presuppositional argumentation and transcendental argument these sorts of things

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As you know when we do presuppositional apologetics and we argue Transcendentally right by the impossibility of the contrary along the lines of say, you know

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We'll say something like the triune God and his revelation are the necessary Preconditions for knowledge intelligible experience logic reason and all these sorts of things, you know, we'll often be told right the by the unbeliever they'll say

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I don't I don't need to believe in your God in order to know things in order to justify

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Various things that I believe okay Or they might say I could account for the things that you've mentioned like logic reason signs

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I could account for those things without your God. So, you know, they will often well, I wouldn't say often they don't typically try to do this, but I will be able to provide a

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Precondition of knowledge truth logic reason science or whatever without your God, so I don't need your

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God will be told to justify or account for science logic reason even existence itself right and all those other things because you know, there's this argument that Apparently, that's it.

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It is a nail in the coffin Presuppositionalism is done transcendental argument is done. And so, you know this episode basically sickly

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This episode is basically here to admit That There is no response to what

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I'm about to share with you. And so this will be my final episode I'm gonna be shutting the

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YouTube channel down because It's it

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There's nothing more to say so so what is this argument what is What what am

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I talking about? Okay, I'm just kidding. We're gonna be here for a while We're not we ain't going anywhere

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So now I often find a lot of responses to the transcendental argument and presuppositional reasoning and these sorts of things and to be perfectly honest if I was not a presuppositionalist

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If I was not a presuppositionalist But I understood the method I would rank on most critiques of it online at least as Just bad.

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They're not even almost like like oh snap. That was kind of a really good point. Now. Most of them are pretty terrible and so You know, but this one came along and and and I've heard it a lot.

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Okay, I've actually had it used on me and in past discussions, okay But but here we go here is an attempt by an unbeliever to Argue that God is not needed to account for or justify existence, okay much less

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Justify anything else God's not needed. So what is the Pardon, what is the line of reasoning here?

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Okay now I've cut and paste The specific points that they made so that I'm reading word -for -word what they have here and then we'll we'll try it we'll see if we could interact with this great

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Objection or counter counterpoint. All right All right, so I don't need

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God to account to account for or justify existence and so this person says point one existence exists

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All right, in other words there is something rather than nothing the second point he asserts a equals a

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Whatever exists is what is and not simultaneously what it is not

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Point three consciousness is consciousness of existence so consciousness he says is consciousness of something a

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Consciousness conscious of nothing is a contradiction in terms. Okay, so I'm going to read all three of those points

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Again slowly so you can follow along. Okay, so point one existence exists. There's something rather than nothing a

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Equals a whatever exists is what it is and not simultaneously what it is. Not Point three consciousness is consciousness of existence

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Consciousness is consciousness of something a Consciousness conscious of nothing is a contradiction in terms and so he goes on to say these axioms are not

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Presuppositions so much as they are statements of fundamental truths Their power lies in the fact that even attempts to deny them end up performatively affirming them.

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Hmm the axioms themselves Check this out. So the axioms themselves require no proof presupposition justification

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Grounding etc. This is in part because without them you couldn't form any of those particular concepts or any other concepts for that matter existence is he says metaphysically primary and conceptually irreducible all

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Concept formation is ultimately grounded in existence. And so there you go.

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No God needed Okay, I'm gonna say that again so you could follow along before we dive in to interact with this, right

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These are axioms not presupposed. These are these axioms. Sorry are not Presuppositions so much as they are statements of fundamental truths

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Their power lies in the fact that even attempts to deny them end up performatively affirming them the axioms themselves require no proof

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Presupposition justification grounding, etc This is in part because without them you couldn't form any of those particular concepts or any other concepts in the first place

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Existence is metaphysically primary and conceptually irreducible all concept formation is ultimately grounded in existence no

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God needed So why don't we need God to ground existence or ground anything else?

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well simple because existence exists or Reality is reality as we've heard

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Before okay. Now, of course as you'd imagine there are a whole host of Problems here.

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Of course. I am for people who are a little Slow, okay

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Of course, I don't find this line of reasoning convincing at all but the reason why I'm addressing it is because this is not the first time that I've heard it and so I'm trying to respond to things that Us presupposition list will often hear and perhaps you'd not you're not sure how to respond.

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So So let's let's take a look. Let's kind of offer Some interaction here.

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Okay, let's start with the statement Existence exists. There's something rather than nothing now.

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I want you to notice something. All right, I want you to notice how ambiguous and Abstract this statement is okay

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Existence is asserted but no content is given to the nature of existence.

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Isn't that right? What does it mean to say existence exists? There's something rather than nothing.

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What is the something? Okay. Now this of course is a metaphysical question.

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It is a worldview question. If you have listened to my past videos I have Provided a

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Foundation the three main foundations for every worldview doesn't matter which perspective you're coming from every worldview is comprised of at least

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Three categories and these are the three basic categories in philosophy Metaphysics or ontology which deals with the nature of being what is real?

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Epistemology which deals with one's theory of knowledge. How do we know? What we know and ethics how ought we live our lives?

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Okay, everyone has these these these things these make up a person's worldview Okay, but notice this person says existence exists.

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There is something rather than nothing and We're not told what this something is. Okay, and I want to I want you to notice here that this this person is

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Going to remain ambiguous on the nature of existence and then also this is important He's gonna make a bunch of metaphysical and epistemological claims

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Without first fleshing out how he knows these things given his worldview and the ambiguity of his metaphysical starting point existence exists

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You're gonna see this ambiguity ambiguity throughout Okay and this is important because when people make epistemological statements or statements of fact or whatever you have to understand that all of those statements presuppose a particular

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Metaphysical scheme, but what we'll have here which is often the case is that They will sneak in met.

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Well, they'll they'll assert something metaphysical, but it's but it's ambiguous and undefined Okay, and then from that ambiguity, they will build the rest of their case.

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And of course, we are not going to allow that as we are in apologetics dealing with a worldview clash

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Okay, we don't do this from from the Christian perspective when we say we have a worldview. We have a specific metaphysical

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We are making metaphysical claims we are saying something about God the nature of God and His ontology these sorts of things and we make claims about how we can know this and these sorts of things

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Okay but I want you to notice that this person is going to remain ambiguous on the nature of existence and then he's gonna make a

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Bunch of metaphysical and epistemological claims without fleshing out how we know these things How he knows these things in light of his ambiguous metaphysical starting point namely existence exists for instance

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He asserts that he asserts a logical truth. For example a equals a this is the law of identity

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So those who are unfamiliar with logic and you have the three basic laws law of identity Law of non -contradiction law of excluded middle.

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Okay law of identity Basically is a is a a is equal to a so something is what it is.

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It's not what it's not okay law of non -contradiction a statement cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same sense and the law of excluded middle says

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That a proposition or a statement is either true or false. So this person is dealing with the law of identity here

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He says a equals a okay. Now this is important. He can assert logical truths and Indeed, I don't think

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I agree him. You can't even formulate your argument here without doing this, right? But the question is what are

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Logical truths are they material? Are they abstract and immaterial? Okay, I bet he doesn't even want to touch that question with a 10 -foot pole, right?

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Because that will inevitably draw him out of his ambiguity, right? It will draw him out of his ambiguous and empty assertion that existence exists.

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You see he wants to put forth these logical Principles, but didn't tell us whether how he makes sense out of that within his own metaphysical scheme.

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Okay, he just wants to this is granted I'm just gonna start with logic and then I'm gonna start using logic and argue against you

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But I'm not going to talk about what logic is metaphysically We're just gonna agree that it's self -evident and then we're just gonna use it.

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See that's where you need to press. Okay, because There is a this smells and smacks of Arbitrariness.

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Okay. Now when we ask these questions, what is the nature of logic? He's gonna assert logical truth

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This is these are important questions because depending on one's metaphysical position This is going to impact the person's epistemological and ethical positions because metaphysics epistemology and ethics are intertwined with each other

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You cannot speak of one without presupposing the other. Okay, and you see that this person wants to make claims

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But he wants to do so without fleshing out his metaphysics now, he of course just wants us to grant him his ambiguous and ill -defined starting point, but of course we're not going to want to do that, okay, because There are no free passes here.

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If you think you can that you don't need God To provide justification then you're gonna have to flesh out the details of your worldview so that you can show us that without God You can have the things that you say you can have like accounting for existence intelligible experience logic reason these sorts of things, okay

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Existence exists just doesn't cut it realities reality doesn't cut it. That's too ambiguous There is no content to that and the fact that existence is a meaningful concept

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Already presupposes that the fact of existence does not require God to be intelligible.

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Okay, so that that assumes a whole host of metaphysical things that we're gonna be talking about in just a bit So, how does this person know the nature of the logical principle of identity?

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How does he know that this principle universally applies? Okay, he's using it He's asserting it a is a and somehow this has implications as to how he can build the rest of his case

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So as to point out that God is not needed. Okay, how does he know that this principle universally applies?

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You see on the one hand, he says that it's an axiom and therefore there's no need as he said

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I read it to you twice. There's no need for proof presupposition Justification or grounding but then again, he contradicts himself by then offering a justification for the principle

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Namely, this is a justification that you couldn't form any of those particular concepts or any concepts for that matter in the first place

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If you rejected them, okay, in other words, he asserts that these are axioms and so Pardon their axioms and so they're in no need of justification, but then he provides the justification

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Okay, in other words, how does he how does he tell us why these things are?

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They're just a given they're just they're just self -evident, right? What does he say? He says because if you don't use them, you can't make sense out of anything.

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Hmm So axioms don't need a justification, but then he provides justification and how does he provide that justification?

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Oh, yeah, wait, he implicitly provides wait for it a transcendental argument

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Right. Namely these principles or the law of identity specifically are true or it holds by the impossibility of the contrary

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If you don't hold to them, then we lose a foundation for even asserting anything, right? Now, of course,

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I'm not gonna fault him here because I agree that logical principles prove true by the impossibility of the contrary

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They're necessary. Wait for it Pre -conditions for the meaningfulness of statements and argumentation

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They must be the case in order for statements to be meaningful and arguments to be meaningful since statements propositions

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Meaningful statements arguments and so forth presuppose the laws of logic Okay, but but it's interesting to see you know, these are just they're not there.

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You don't have to presuppose them. They're just givens And the reason why they're givens right? I'm not gonna provide a provide a justification but If we reject them, then we can't make sense out of anything that that just is a transcendental argument, which by the way is completely completely, you know totally okay thing to do

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I think that We need to make a distinction for example between What we call localized transcendental arguments like my existence, right?

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My existence is a necessary precondition for Me uttering a sentence right in order for me to utter a sentence.

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I have to exist, right? These are localized transcendentals easy. But but when we're arguing from a presuppositional perspective within apologetics, we're arguing

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What are the necessary preconditions? What's the ultimate transcendental that provides the preconditions for localized transcendentals like logic?

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existence And those sorts of things. Okay, we're arguing at a more foundational level. This person is focusing on Logic saying

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I'm gonna start here. I don't need to justify it But I'm going to apply this and I'm going to press this principle that I don't need to justify

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I'm gonna press it towards the Christian presuppositional perspective. And there you go. I don't need

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God I start with Existence I start with the law of identity these sorts of things Okay And when he said these things is

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I was kind of confused because he asserted that these axioms for example the axiom of existence

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Consciousness the law of identity a equals a are not so much presuppositions as they are statements about fundamental truths

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Fundamental truths or elementary starting points well These just are presuppositions now if he makes a distinction between an axiom and a presupposition for example an axiom being understood as a statement or a proposition which is regarded as being established accepted or Self -evidently true then of course baked into that right is the unjustified

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Unargued philosophical position that there can be brute facts Right facts that are simply given and require no interpretation given their self -evident nature

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Okay. Now this of course is to go beyond His original ill -defined and ambiguous assertion that existence simply exists

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It's to go beyond the ambiguity right in order to tell us something quite profound about the nature of reality namely

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That there are facts that do not require God as the necessary precondition for their meaningfulness, right?

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Well, that's a huge philosophical assumption that According to him. This is a starting point doesn't need to be justified, right?

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But of course this is simply to assert right without justification or grounding that God doesn't exist or at least the

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God that we're arguing for Namely the God that exists from our perspective is the one that makes facts meaningful without God No fact can be meaningful.

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Okay, so he's presupposing without argumentation and justification and grounding that that kind of God Cannot exist from the beginning okay,

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I mean if if one can simply start with that axiom without justifying it as he says he doesn't have to and Asserting that it doesn't need justification then that position

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I think is is quite Laughable, right? I mean, I come on you. Mr.

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Christian cannot begin with God without justifying his existence That's what we'll be told right but then I could begin without God and I don't need to justify that position

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Oh, of course, you know double standard much right that that's clearly, you know, not going to work, right?

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And you shouldn't buy it either. All right. Now. I want you to notice also that this individual asserts

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Consciousness, right? He talks about consciousness Let me read his statement again.

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He says Consciousness is consciousness of existence Consciousness is consciousness of something a

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Consciousness conscious of nothing is a contradiction in terms Okay, so he is he kind of asserts con he tries to define for us for example consciousness

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And this is part of his is kind of point to show like, you know When you build upon these axioms or you know,

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I can draw conclusions. I don't need God, right? So he goes on to define consciousness as consciousness of existence.

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Okay? well But what is consciousness? So you want you to pay attention to this you can't define consciousness and use the term

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Consciousness in the definition itself, right? That's like Defining the term love as you know, love is this love is when you love another person, but you didn't define love you you just Used love in a sentence, right?

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And of course if you if you define love then you add content Right and if you define love or you define consciousness for example, and you add content to what you think consciousness is

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Now you're moving away from the ambiguity of existence exists once you define consciousness, you're now adding content to that ambiguity and Therefore you're going to have to justify that because we're not simply going to grant that consciousness is a meaningful

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Concept independent of God now you might think it's a meaningful concept independent of God But that's what we're asking about Can your world do at the fundamental level provide the context in which something like consciousness can be defined and understood?

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Okay. All right. So now I want you to notice that okay He asserts consciousness but avoids telling us what consciousness actually is

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He just you know He just repeats the word in a sentence right because to do to do so he's gonna it means to add more flesh to his

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Ambiguous starting point existence exists, right? So you see once they start making assertions what they're doing is

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Sneaking in metaphysical assumptions whether they are aware of this or not that they didn't want to lay out at the beginning

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You know clearly at the beginning unless they be challenged to justify those metaphysical assumptions and this person thinks well, they're just axioms

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I don't have to You know demonstrate them or justify them But again as the saying goes there ain't no free lunch, right?

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If you think you could have a meaningful world you without God then we're not going to allow you shortcuts without establishing your

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God denying Premises, okay. All right. I want to know what consciousness is. Okay. What is it?

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Well, no one could define consciousness Well, well if you're going to assert this as a brute given and then use it as the basis for drawing conclusions

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You know Relating to the falsity of the God position from the again This was a comment from a video that I did and it was on Transcendental argument presuppositional doesn't these sorts of things you're gonna have to justify those things.

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You don't get to just assert them, right? So this person basically concludes with his summary his summary words, he says that existence is

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Metaphysically primary and Conceptually irreducible and then he says all concept formation is ultimately grounded in existence

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And so he says this is a collusion. Therefore. No God is needed Okay So there you go, right priests up and transcendental argumentation

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All of it is refuted and that's it. We can pack our bags and go home But of course, we're going to want to point out not so fast, right?

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So so so existence is metaphysically primary All right, but I don't have to tell you what the nature of existence is

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But on the other hand you go ahead and tell you go ahead and tell me something about the nature of existence, right?

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I don't need to tell you the nature of existence, but then he tells us the nature of existence, right such that nature Or existence rather is such that something like the law of identity is a thing and that it holds

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But I don't have to ground or justify this but I do justify this basically by giving a transcendental argument Which of course you mr.

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Christian aren't allowed to do because that would be question begging you see you see the the problem there Oh, oh and there's this thing called consciousness and and I define consciousness while using the term consciousness and even though to speak of consciousness in any meaningful way requires

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Specific metaphysical assumptions. I don't have to justify or prove them because they're just axioms, right?

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there's self -evident and even though self -evident truths implicitly denies the existence of a

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God who is Necessary for the proper interpretation of facts It's okay because I'm allowed to simply assume my axiom which basically asserts the falsity of your

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God position Right. So again, this is this is the level of argumentation that That we're going to find unfortunately on in the comment section of Videos on the internet, right?

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Let's try ready. I'm gonna I'm gonna use the same thing. So so God exists the Bible's true

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It's self -evident and I don't need to prove or justify this and I don't need to ground it on to do anything So there you go.

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Unbelieve that from from my perspective. That's it. My view is true. I picked an axiom

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I could build a whole world view from that axiom as long as you don't tell me how I know the axioms true There you go.

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Okay. Now, this is very important because I want to make a distinction and this is typically done within the context of interactions between say

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Vantillian presupposition list and Clarkian presupposition list the presupposition list who fought who follow the line of thinking and methodology of Gordon Clark Who was a reformed?

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Philosopher, okay. Now Clark is known to Utilize the notion of axioms these starting points that you don't prove

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But that you choose and build the rest of your world view by logically deducing things from that starting point

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Okay now Vantillian presuppositional ism doesn't start with the axiom with axioms in that sense

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Axioms in that sense are by definition unprovable. Okay, and of course for Gordon Clark if you tried to prove your axiom

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Then it that's not your axiom the things that you appeal to To validate and justify your axioms are your genuine axioms and so axioms are the your your starting point

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Okay, Vantill did not hold to this position because anyone could could create any starting point doesn't matter if I pick a starting point

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It doesn't mean it's true Right, I would argue that that's a form of fideism. We we pick an axiom and hold to it fideistic

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Lee and I just don't think that that's That's not what we're doing as presupposition list

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Okay, we believe that we can have ultimate presuppositional starting points that are justified

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Not by appealing to something more fundamental than than that starting point But by appealing to the transcendental necessity of that starting point arguing by the impossibility of the contrary

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Okay, that is just to say that we believe that you can justify your starting points, but you justify your starting points through Transcendental argument or indirect argumentation.

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Okay. Now this is true independent of whether you think the transcendental argument is good or it works or whatever

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That's how you justify your ultimate presuppositions. Okay, we're not starting as Vantillians We're not starting with unprovable starting points.

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That's not the presuppositional position As a matter of fact, the transcendental argument is called an argument.

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It's meant to be argued. Okay So again anyone who says well, you're just asserting your position that you just don't understand what transcendental arguments are and quite frankly

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I've explained it in other videos and I think it's been explained multiple times, but I still hear the same criticisms

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And if I was not a Christian I would still and I knew what a transcendental I'm like, yeah, it's an argument

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I don't if I wasn't a Christian. Maybe I don't agree with the argument We have maybe have criticism the critiques but to call it not an argument and just a bare authority claim

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You just don't know what you're talking about. So So anyway, so basically this person who offered this

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Argument or line of reasoning this person wants basically to take transcendental categories like existence the laws of logic consciousness or self -awareness and Simply have us grant him those as axioms that he doesn't need to justify prove or account for but of course

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We as presuppositional list are We're basically asking how do these transcendental categories even make sense from within their own worldview?

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If you say you're a naturalist, for example Then you explain, you know then explain how these categories make sense from a world view of naturalism or from within whatever world

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Simply saying that I don't need to justify them I simply assert them is to be arbitrary and that would destroy of course

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Argumentation and meaningful interaction, right? But what happens when when they begin to justify when they begin to justify these things when they offer we quickly then see that the world views that they put forth basically reduce either to arbitrariness or Inconsistency or any number of fallacious lines of reasoning?

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Okay, so we want to be very careful when someone asserts This is my starting point and it's this starting point.

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I'm going to stand on to build my case against you. Mr Christian or more specifically against the presupposition list who is making a transcendental argument

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Okay, I'm going to start from this starting point, but I don't need to justify or prove it But it's that starting point that I'm gonna build everything else to refute your position again.

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Yeah, okay It reminds me of like the Wizard of Oz right like don't look behind the curtain, right?

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Look at how flashy I existence exist realities reality, but of course behind the curtain

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There's kind of a scrawny little dude in the back pushing the gears and all these sorts of things, right?

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You need to ask because presuppositional apologetics places a great emphasis on worldview conflict, right?

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We're gonna want to get to the foundation of the conflict. We're willing to show you what's behind the curtain, right?

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Our foundation is the triune God and his revelation, right? We believe that the triune

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God exists that he's revealed himself both in general and special revelation And if you reject the world you put forth in his revelation, then you have a position that reduces to absurdity

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You don't have to agree with that. You don't have to say hey, that's a good the point is we are showing you What the foundation is but this gentleman over here doesn't tell us the foundation or at least it doesn't recognize

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I'll give him a benefit of the doubt. He doesn't recognize that when asserting the things he asserts There's someone behind the curtain he's saying don't look right existence exists realities reality a equals a

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Consciousness is consciousness of something so he grabs something but it's a very ambiguous doesn't have to define it and then makes a bunch of Assertions and uses those assertions to argue against the idea that the

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God of Christianity is the necessary precondition for the intelligibility of any fact Even the fact of existence itself.

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Okay. So again, we want to be able to press For the foundation, all right, and we do that by saying excuse me, excuse me when you say existence exists

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What do you mean? Well, there's something rather than nothing Okay, there's something

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What is the something? Well, it's just a something It's an ambiguous something that I can't define because once I define it

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Then I have to flesh out my metaphysic and then I can then be challenged as to why think

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Reality is the way that I am assuming it is right or I am axiomatically asserting that it is.

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Okay, that doesn't work Okay, that is arbitrary. All right, so we want to be able to identify

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Okay, when our debate partner is being arbitrary, okay, and And there you go.

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So again this I didn't find this at all convincing But it was there and I was like, you know what?

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I've heard this a lot. Maybe I should do a quick response on it and so hopefully

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This is helpful. If anything what I've said will help you Identify when someone sneaks in Metaphysical claims.

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So when you have a metaphysical position, we're not just granting that to you, bro You know, you need to justify that.

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Okay, and so we want to point that out Okay, don't let you want to master the art of identifying when someone is sneaking certain things in that require

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Justification and when someone waves their hand and says, oh, well, that's an axiom. I don't need a justification

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So what you're gonna do then? Okay, when someone says that you're gonna wave your hand back and be like, okay

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God exists The Bible's true. I don't need a justification. There you go. That's right. So my axiom can beat up your axiom

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There you go, right? So again Arbitrariness and inconsistency to intellectual sins that you will see often is the case when people are putting forth their

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Positions and you need to be able to work hard to identify those things. All right.

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All right. Well That's it for this short episode. We're here on 32 minutes.

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Usually I go longer, but I was just addressing one point here If you like the content and you find it useful, please be sure to Click the like button share this content as well subscribe if you haven't subscribed what's super helpful is if you write a review

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On iTunes the podcast that's super helpful as well and get the word out. So that's it