Fine without the Bible!

All right. Well, hello everyone. My name is Eli Ayala and welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. Today, I'm going to be diving into an interesting topic that often comes up in discussions about the necessity of the biblical worldview.

And again, when we talk about presuppositional apologetics, for example, we often make the claim that the Bible or the biblical worldview provides the necessary preconditions for knowledge, intelligibility, science.

In other words, basically we often make the claim as presuppositionalist that the biblical worldview is really the only worldview that can make sense out of anything in human experience. And so that's kind of wrapped up in how we kind of argue for the truth of the Christian worldview.

Again, obviously, there's more details in that, right? For example, one common objection that often comes up is, you know, is baked into the observation that many people who do not have access to the Bible seem to get along just fine, right?

They live their lives, they make decisions, they navigate the world without ever reading a single verse. And then how, from that, how can we then claim that the biblical worldview is essential for making sense out of anything?

Like, you know, things like logic, knowledge, truth, and so forth. And so people seem to be just fine without the Bible. Then what are we talking about when we talk about the Bible's necessity and things like this?

So that's kind of what we're talking about today. But before we jump in, I want to give folks a heads-up. I just want to throw it out there, and I often throw this out there at the beginning of my shows.

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You don't want to waste your battery. You got commercials coming in, things like that. So I got to remember, there is a podcast audience as well. And so I'm going to try my best to update that, okay? Now, before I jump into the specific topic I'd like to address today, if you have any questions— so if we do happen to get some people listening in in the middle of the day, and there is a question you'd like me to address, I will try my best to address them.

And if you happen to stump me this morning, I have no problem just looking at your question, popping it up on the screen, and saying, hmm, good question. I have no idea. So I will try my best, if you should have questions.

And remember to preface your question with a question that helps me out a lot, okay? So let's jump right into the topic for today. The title of the video is, Fine Without the Bible. I am fine without the Bible, okay?

Chronological Discovery and Logical Primacy

As I mentioned before, people live their lives, they make decisions, they navigate the world without ever reading a single passage in Scripture. How, then, can we claim that the biblical worldview is essential for making sense of anything, okay?

That language we tend to use, that the Christian worldview provides the necessary, okay, precondition for intelligibility. What does that mean? This is all kind of fancy philosophical theological talk.

Let's see here. When we talk about something being the preconditions for something else, right, pre, before, conditions, what must be the case in order for anything else to make sense? What must be the case in order for something else over here to make sense?

That's all we're saying. And what we're saying is that the Christian worldview being true is the necessary precondition. It's what must be the case in order for things like science, logic, knowledge, and truth, and so forth to even make sense.

That's basically what we're arguing for, okay? And so the assertion is often brought up, well, I don't, you know, I've never read the Bible, but I get along just fine, okay? And so how do we, as Christians, as presuppositionals, how do we understand, how do we understand that?

That's true. It seems like unbelievers seem to get along just fine without having to, you know, go to church and hear the Bible and so forth. And so how do we make sense out of this? Now, in asking that question, I think it's important, okay, that we make a distinction between what is called chronological, chronological discovery and logical primacy, okay?

Chronological discovery and logical primacy, okay? Now, don't get thrown off by these terms. I'm going to explain what these terms are, and hopefully they will be understood, and you can kind of see the application I'm trying to make here, okay?

Now, chronological discovery refers to the order, okay, chronology, okay? Chronological discovery refers to the order in which we come to believe or know certain things, okay? So, for example, before we ever encounter the Bible, okay, we trust our senses, for example, okay?

I trust my senses before I actually held a Bible in my hand, I suppose, okay? I guess I don't count because I grew up in church, but you get what I'm saying, right? We rely on things like our eyesight to read or our hearing to listen to, you know, explanations and things like this, and our sense of touch, we trust our sense of touch to navigate the world around us.

And so this trust in our sensory organs comes early in our cognitive development, long before we pick up the scriptures, okay? And so there is a chronological aspect to that. We trust our senses, we trust, you know, these sorts of things before I pick up the Bible.

Now, we want to make a distinction between chronological discovery and logical primacy. And so, on the other hand, when I speak of logical primacy, logical primacy deals with the foundational basis upon which other beliefs are justified, okay?

It deals with the foundational basis upon which other beliefs are justified. So the presuppositional apologetic approach, you know, as reflected by someone like Greg Bonson or, you know, Jason Lyle or myself or whoever you might listen to, okay, we would point out that the truth of the Bible, okay, is logically more foundational than any other truth, including the reliability of our senses, okay?

So I would say that the truth of the Bible is logically more foundational than any other truth, including the reliability of our senses. So let me kind of illustrate this with, you know, an example, okay?

And so, you know, take for example, we believe our sensory organs are basically reliable, right? But notice that this belief is chronologically prior, okay? It comes first in our experience. We trust our senses before we learn anything from the Bible.

However, from a logical standpoint, our confidence as Christians, our confidence in the reliability of our senses, is justified by the biblical worldview. It's the biblical worldview that provides a justification for why we trust our senses, given the fact that we're made in the Imago Dei, God created our senses for a specific purpose, and all these sorts of things.

So the presuppositions of the Christian, okay, as rooted and grounded in God's revelation, provide that context out of which something like the reliability of our senses makes sense, okay? The Bible teaches that God created us and designed our senses to be reliable.

And so therefore, our belief in the reliability of our senses is grounded in the truth of Scripture. And so though we discover, it's true that we discover the reliability of our senses first chronologically, the truth of the Bible is logically primary, because it provides that necessary foundation for trusting our senses.

Throw out the God of the Bible, why ought we trust our senses? And how do you answer that question without fallaciously assuming the reliability of your senses? And of course, when you assume the reliability of your senses, while answering the question as to how we know the senses are reliable, is fallaciously circular, okay?

So a couple of these things kind of become issues when we explore these specific topics, okay? Now, why is this important? I think this is very important. Understanding the distinction between chronological discovery and logical primacy is crucial for addressing, from a presuppositional perspective, addressing objections to the necessity of the biblical worldview, okay?

So critics might argue that since people can live and function without the Bible, the Bible is therefore not necessary for things like knowledge or logic or whatever, okay? But the problem is that that objection fails to grasp the concept of what we just kind of explored here, this issue of logical primacy.

As a Christian, as a presuppositionalist, the argument is not that you can't use logic, you can't trust your senses, all these sorts of things, unless you read the Bible and believe the Bible. That's not what we're saying, okay?

I understand that people use their senses, they presuppose the reliability of their senses, all these sorts of things, and they get along in a general sense, fine, right? You don't have to pick up the Bible.

The question is, what grounds those things? What I'm arguing is that unless the biblical worldview is true, when pressed, you do not have a foundation for those things that you take for granted, like the reliability of sense experience, okay?

Now, again, the idea that you have no ground for these things is rooted in your rejection of a creator who created these things for those specific purposes. When you take, for example, an unbiblical worldview, in terms of which, you know, man is, for example, the byproduct of a, you know, purposeless chance process of evolutionary development, then yeah, these questions have been raised not just by Christians, but non-Christians ask the question, well, why ought we trust the reliability of our senses, given the truth of, you know, evolution and these sorts of things?

So this is not kind of a weird thing that me as a Christian, you know, I just happen to be bringing up by way of criticism, okay? Now, I want you to keep this in mind, okay? So even if someone, okay, has not read the Bible, okay, the reliability of their senses, their use of logic, and their pursuit of truth are all undergirded by the biblical worldview, regardless if they've read the Bible or not.

That's basically what I'm saying. And so without the God of the Bible, we have no basis for trusting our senses, no foundation for the laws of logic, and no ultimate standard for truth. Now, I want to make another important distinction.

There's a difference between me saying those things and actually demonstrating those throughout the course of an apologetic interaction, okay? That is very important. So when we say the unbeliever does not have a foundation for universal conceptual laws of logic, the argument isn't simply saying they have no foundation, it's having to demonstrate that they have no foundation, okay?

So we, A, show that the Christian world, you can provide those foundations, and then, B, challenge the unbeliever to posit and put forth their own worldview so as to withstand the criticisms that they in fact lack those foundations for things like the laws of logic and so forth, which are preconditions.

They must be true. That must be the case in order to make sense out of anything, okay? So let's kind of, you know, let's use some examples here, okay, to illustrate the point that I'm trying to get at, all right?

Imagine a person who's never read the Bible but uses the laws of logic in their daily life. This is obviously the case, right? This is what we see, you know, whether in making, you know, decisions, solving problems, engaging in debates and things like that, okay?

They might think, quote, I don't need the Bible to use logic, okay? However, the very existence of the laws of logic require a foundation that is both universal and unchanging. Deny the universality and unchanging nature of logic, then there are problems as we've expressed in other videos, okay?

Now, according to the biblical worldview, these laws reflect the consistent and rational nature of God. And so we argue that without such a foundation, the laws of logic would be arbitrary and could not be universally binding, okay?

So this is super, super important to keep in mind. Same thing with morality, okay? Consider someone who strongly believes in and, you know, practices ethical behavior, right? Being honest, treating others fairly and so forth, okay?

Without any reference to the Bible, okay? Now, while they may argue that they don't need the Bible to know what's right and wrong, the concept of objective moral values, we would argue, is grounded in the character of God as revealed in scripture.

And so the biblical worldview provides the basis for why certain actions are inherently right or wrong, rather than being based on subjective, you know, issues of subjectivity or societal opinions and so forth, okay?

So these are important. We're not saying that unbelievers can't do these things. They can't use, of course they can, okay? As a matter of fact, just at a surface level, there are many unbelievers who utilize the laws of logic in a much more skillful and, you know, useful way than many Christians, okay?

That's not the point. The point is, what are the grounds for these things? Can a person's worldview account for the things that they take for granted? That's the issue. You know, same thing for science as well, right?

Think of the scientist who conducts research and makes discoveries about the natural world without ever using the Bible, right? They trust the consistency, they trust the orderliness of the universe to make sense of their observations and experiments, but we would argue the biblical worldview asserts that this order and consistency are a reflection of God's orderly nature as the creator.

And without this foundation, the assumption of a reliable, orderly universe would have no basis, undermining the very possibility of scientific inquiry. Again, this is not an observation that I'm simply making.

I mean, we have David Hume who pointed out what we call the problem of induction, and how when we project the consistency of future instances based upon the regularities we observe in the past, you cannot tell us what the future will be like simply by appealing to past experience, because that presupposes the very thing under dispute, okay?

We presuppose the uniformity of nature without justifying why nature is uniform. Which worldview makes sense out of a uniformity of nature? One that is sound and fury signifying nothing, to quote Shakespeare, or one in which there is a creator God who creates an orderly universe such that we can make predictions and engage in scientific inquiry and these sorts of things, right?

These are the sorts of things we would talk about, okay, in discussions on these topics, okay? So the biblical worldview, as revealed in scripture, we would assert is the necessary precondition for intelligibility.

And so this means that for anything to make sense, the truth revealed in the Bible must be true. The truths, the Bible talks about many things that are the case given the creation of God and so forth, okay?

This includes the existence of a rational, orderly universe, the reliability of our cognitive faculties, the existence of absolute moral values, these sorts of things, okay? Now again, I want to re-emphasize, it's very important, there is a difference between asserting these things and actually demonstrating them.

For example, when I say that the Christian worldview provides the necessary preconditions for, say, the objectivity of moral values, there are other moral theories out there that purport to offer a foundation for the objectivity of moral values and duties.

And so you're going to have to interact with those, right? That's going to require you to hear someone out and have meaningful discussion and say, hey, that's a good point, let me go back and think about that, right?

I'm not just giving you kind of a shorthanded way of just a pat response to someone, you do have to get your hands dirty, so to speak, you know, to kind of hear what the other person is saying, but that would be our argument, okay?

And then we listen and we interact and we critique and so forth, okay? And so yeah, so these points kind of, and you read this in the writings of Bonson and others, right? Bonson, for example, often emphasized that unbelievers, while rejecting the biblical worldview, nonetheless rely on these preconditions for intelligibility in their daily lives, okay?

And this reliance, whether they acknowledge it or not, demonstrate the truth of the biblical worldview. It's one of the ways that we appeal to the fact that the unbelievers made in the image of God, for what they profess with their mouth, their disbelief, then their heart of hearts, they know the God of which we speak.

And the evidence that they know the God of which we speak is that they live in ways that are complete contradictions to what they assert with their mouth. And to kind of put it in a very blunt way, we assert unbelief in God, yet we live as though God exists, okay?

So yeah, so that's kind of an important way to understand this distinction between logical primacy and chronological discovery, okay? It's true that we assume, we learn that our senses can be reliably trusted upon, we know that chronologically prior to picking up the Bible, but the Bible is logically more fundamental as it provides a worldview context to justify the fact that we can trust the general reliability of our senses and the sorts of things, uniformity, all that sort of things that I've discussed already, okay?

All right, that's a lot, okay? I hope that makes sense. So when people say, I'm fine without the Bible, they don't really understand what we're saying. We're not saying that unless you read the Bible, you can't do these things, you can't use logic, you can't do science.

What we're saying is that the things that you do, and oftentimes you do them well, require a biblical worldview to make sense out of them, okay? All right, so let's see here. Let me, I have a bunch of questions.

I have questions over here on my screen here, and then there's questions in the comments here. So let me see. The first question here, let me see here. Let's see. Saints Rising says, just curious, what are your thoughts on Joel 3 .6?

Ever since it sunk in, I often think about it. Well, Joel 3 .6 says, you have sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks in order to remove them from their own border. To be perfectly honest, I can't answer that question because I'd have to read the context and look a little bit into it.

I don't even know the context of the question itself, so it's hard for me to make application there. So I do apologize. I can't answer that question. There you go. Okay, all right, sorry about that. My bad.

All right, let's see here. Yeah, so follower of Jesus that unironically likes sardines. Okay, very good. So asking this just to try to play the other side for the sake of seeing how you would answer, why wouldn't evolution be a sufficient ground for justifying those things?

Okay, so let's take a look for, when we say those things, I suppose you are assuming the things required for, for example, the preconditions for intelligibility. Let's take, for example, something like knowledge, okay?

The interesting thing about evolution, when you presuppose a worldview that is sound and fury signifying nothing, it's blind chance, purposeless universe, evolution is geared towards what? Is evolution geared toward truth or is evolution geared toward survival?

That's right. So evolution is geared towards survival, not necessarily truth, and this is why even Charles Darwin and others would say, well, why should we trust the conclusions of our mind, right? The things we think are determined by their evolutionary advantages, okay?

And truth is not necessarily an evolutionary advantage. You can, there are ideas that you could believe in that will help survival, but are not necessarily true. And so that's what, that's one thing. Evolution is not geared towards truth, it's geared towards survival.

But in a Christian worldview, our minds and our cognitive faculties are created in such a way as to equip us to ascertain certain truths about the created order, and it's part of being creating the image of God.

So that's how I would answer that, okay? Now, I do understand that there are people who are theistic evolutionists, so they would say, hey, well, evolution, yeah, it's geared towards survival in one sense, but we're also creating the image of God, and so we can account for this, that, and the other thing.

And so to the theistic evolutionist who affirms, say, the Bible, my dispute would not be the response I just offered there. My dispute would be over understanding the biblical text correctly, because I am not at all convinced that a strong biblical argument following the proper rules of hermeneutics and exegesis, when you confront the scriptures, you don't get theistic evolution.

And I know there are some people who would disagree with me there, but if I were disputing that with a theistic evolution, I would argue the text of scripture, since the text is supposed to be the authoritative text for which we are to settle these issues.

Okay? Hope that makes sense. Yeah. Dude says, you can drive a car without knowing how it works. Yeah, that's true, right? And there are people who know how cars work, and know that cars were created, and who created them, that don't drive as well as people who don't know where cars came from, but they just really know how to drive cars well.

So yeah, that's true. That's not my claim here, that unbelievers can't use logic, or they're not good at using logic or doing science. That's not the claim at all. Although that's repeatedly what I'm accused of when I make these sorts of statements, right?

I would just imagine, I bet anything, my next live stream, I'll see if I can find it in the comments of this video, I bet you anything, someone's going to be like,.

Are you trying to tell me, man, that because I don't believe in the Bible, I can't do science? Or because I don't believe in the Bible, I can't do good things? People will still say these things,.

Even after explaining it, but that's just the nature of the beast. All right. Let's see here. So Emmanuel Simon says, to my understanding, some Christians disagree about the canon. You misspelled canon.

Canon is C-A-N-O-N. It's a different canon. Like Catholics and Protestants, given that to be the case, does a biblical world you include only 66 books or at least 66 books? Yeah. So I believe in the 66 books canons.

I believe that the church recognized that, which was the Anastas. I would disagree with the canon of scripture that the Catholics hold to. I suppose someone could acknowledge a book erroneously, but still, quote unquote, be a Christian.

I think that's not impossible, I suppose. But I would even take issue with, I mean, it's not the topic of this live stream. I would even take issue with Roman Catholicism, as it is seen today. I think that they do not have a gospel that saves.

Okay. I don't mean to be disrespectful towards people who are Catholic. I think that a Catholic doctrine of salvation really kind of bumps up against the biblical doctrine, which I am convinced that the Bible teaches that salvation is by grace through faith alone.

I hold to the doctrine of justification by faith alone. I think it's an essential doctrine. I think Rome adds to the gospel. And so I'd be very careful in identifying, at least identifying that as quote unquote, Christian.

I think it's also a non-Christian conception of the gospel. Now, with respect to the books of the Bible, I suppose, I think there's good reason to believe the 66 books are the ones that we are to hold to.

I suppose though, that someone could acknowledge some other book. And while I disagree and think that they would lack a justification for including that extra book, whatever that book might be, that it is possible for someone to still quote unquote, be a Christian, but a biblical worldview would entail all of the essentials of the faith.

And I think the scriptures provide us a foundation for identifying essentials. I'll give an example, and I think people ask this all the time. I would say that the scriptures make a distinction between essential doctrine and non-essential doctrine.

And the way in which we discover essential doctrine is it is either explicitly stated in the text. For example, Jesus says that unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. And so unless you believe that I am, there's a condition, you will die in your sins.

And so that is an essential doctrine. So you need to believe that Jesus is the I am. Of course, quoting from Exodus 3 .14, in which God gives his name to Moses. So the deity of Christ is an essential doctrine.

In the book of Galatians, the apostle Paul says that if you believe you're justified by works, you are cut off from Christ. And so it is essential to Christian faith that you do not believe that you're justified by your works.

So that's an essential doctrine. The doctrine of the Trinity, I would say, is essential because it impinges upon other doctrines that are essential as well. The Bible says that unless you have the son, you don't have the father.

And so receiving the son, if you don't receive the son, you haven't received the father, these sorts of things. So understanding God as he's revealed himself as triune, I think is essential. Okay. But with respect to certain biblical books, yeah, I think I would have a little bit more leeway there.

But I mean, I'd have to have a specific example, counterexample to be more stringent on that. I hope that makes sense. There we go here. Yeah. So follower of Jesus that unironically likes sardines follows up on his question of evolution.

But if hypothetically evolution is true, then can someone just bite the bullet and say, yes, it's all chance. But if evolution is true, then it's true. Yeah. So I don't think you understood my previous answer.

If evolution is true, there's no reason to believe evolution is true. Okay. I'm going to say that again. If evolution were true, there's no reason to believe evolution is true because there's no reason to believe the thinking and rationalizing processes of the human brain.

Okay. And so if you don't have a reason to believe it's true, then you don't have a reason to believe anything that's true for that matter. Then such a worldview undermines what the necessary preconditions for intelligibility knowledge.

Okay. Or if material, if you come from a materialistic evolutionary perspective in terms of which all reality is matter in motion, then guess what else goes out the window? The laws of logic, which are universal conceptual laws of thought, which wouldn't exist if all reality is matter in motion.

So if someone wanted to hypothetically say, well, nope, I still hold to this position. Well, we could just point out that that position would be arbitrary and unable to offer anything by way of critique of anything that would disagree with it.

In which case such a person would not be able to engage in the debate game, so to speak, when they disagree and make assertions. Um, we can just assert, well, you know, evolution has caused you to, you know, uh, say what you're saying, you know, the, the, uh, external factors are impinging upon your rational process, your brain and making you say what you're saying.

And of course, as a Christian, uh, evolution is making me say Christian stuff. And so, uh, there's no way to kind of, move on from there. If that's the, if that's a person's worldview, I think it's going to be problematic.

It also, that mindset, by the way, also undermines the scientific endeavor. So anything that they assert in terms of interpreting the scientific data to draw the conclusion evolution, that doesn't help if the worldview in which you're doing that undermines knowledge claims altogether.

Because once again, as I said before, evolution is geared towards survival, not necessarily truth. Okay. So they can bite the bullet, but from a Christian apologetics perspective, I welcome them to bite the bullet to show that their own position would, you could actually perform a reductio ad absurdum.

You could reduce that position to absurdity. Okay. Thank you for that question. I appreciate it. Uh, all right. So let's see here. All right. So if there are any more questions, please send them in and preface your question with question.

If not, I have some more questions that I can go through here that often come up in light of the stuff that I've just mentioned. Uh, Oh, there was a quick question. So, all right. So Emilio Beltran says, what do you think when people say God told me, or God gave me a word today?

Uh, yeah. When someone says that my, uh, antennas go up right away. Okay. Uh, again, um, if someone says, God told me, right, we have to do what the Bible tells us to do, and that is to test all things by scripture.

Okay. Um, now I know I'm not going to get sucked into the debate between continuationists and cessationists. My personal position is that of a cautionary, a cautionary cessationist. I'm inclined to hold to the view that these sorts of things have ceased, uh, you know, the spiritual charismatic gifts and these sorts of things, but I am open to something that looks like it is consistent with what the Bible teaches and things like that.

Uh, but I always want to know what the person says God told them. And so, uh, you know, we want to test these things, but yeah, my antennas go up right away. Uh, because oftentimes when people say God told me, or God gave me a word today, what comes out of their mouth is often inconsistent with the word of God.

So those are the things that, that's what I do when, when someone says that I'm like, okay. And then I will ask questions, right. I will analyze and, and offer, you know, well, wait a minute, but where, where did you get this from?

And where'd you get this from scripture, these sorts of things. We want to test all things against the word of God. I think that's important. That's kind of the first thing that comes to mind. I don't automatically say it's impossible for God to tell you something, right?

We can't say, God, you can't say anything to people today, right? It is possible, I suppose. But then again, this person is going to be held to greater responsibility. Okay. Because they're claiming to speak the words of God.

So I'm going to pay close attention and I'm going to offer my comments. Okay. Depending on what's going down there. So Alquin Project, thank you so much for your $5 super chat. Always appreciate super chats.

Thank you so much. The question here is, is theistic evolution a form of syncretism since it attempts to blend biblical and secular worldviews? Yes. I want to be careful. A, a savvy theistic evolutionist will say, well, could say that if the Bible teaches evolution, then it's not syncretistic.

It's something that is consistent with the text or perhaps taught in the text, depending on the person's perspective. The person could also hold to, I think an inappropriate view of the relationship between science and the scriptures.

And so that they allow scientific discovery to kind of be, to govern their interpretation of the scriptures. It really depends on who you're talking to. There are people who are much more careful with the biblical texts and how they kind of meld that with scientific findings and things like that.

So it's all going to depend. But from my perspective, since I do not believe that the Bible in any way, shape or form teaches evolution, I would see that I would argue that it is a form of syncretism, that it is an attempt to make the Bible consistent with something that really isn't in the scriptures.

Okay. So yeah, I would say that that, that would be problematic. And I think this is often done, especially with respect to topics relating to the relationship between science and the Bible. And the temptation is to make the Bible fit what seems to be kind of the consensus on some scientific issue.

And I think we need to be very, very careful of that. It is true that discoveries in, in science may cause us to take a second look as to whether we're interpreting the biblical text correctly. I think that's fair.

Right. But I think people are too quick to reinterpret the biblical text so as to fit some scientific finding. And remember, science, I keep saying this, science doesn't tell us anything, right? Scientists do, specific scientists.

And so we need to be sensitive to the fact that these issues really are worldview dependent. What is your foundation? Is your foundation the word of God? Are you confronting the word of God with proper exegesis and hermeneutical principles?

Or are we molding and shaping the word of God to fit various theories and things like that? As Dr. Greg Bonson said, we want to be very careful in sticking too close with science as an authority that molds the Bible.

We want to be very careful of molding the scripture to match what certain scientific theories are putting forth. Because if you're in a dance with science, you have to remember, and this is evidence through the history of science, science is a fickle dance partner.

Science is a fickle dance partner. What is quote unquote, the scientific consensus can in principle, given the nature of science itself can be overturned later. And so what happens when we say, look, this is what the science says, look, I'm going to make it fit the Bible.