Presup Response to Competing Authority Claims

test these in the same way you could test claims in the Old Testament. That's why I say that, look, I could take a presuppositional approach.

So could they, but this is a tiebreaker for me because this is what kept me from Mormonism. All right.

Well, again, I don't want to get too off on the methodological issue, but those questions do come up.

And so I do appreciate your taking that. I'm going to show you why for me that those questions are going to be raised on both sides. And I think if all we did was look at this as the tiebreaker approach, that would separate two worldviews that rely highly on presuppositional approaches.

Yeah. And this is worth doing. I guess, I guess many of my listeners... Because in the end, let's, let's put it this way. If in the end I said to you as a

Mormon, look, I believe that the Bible, that the book of Mormon is true. And that's my starting point. Sure.

And I can't trust the scripture because everything that was true about what happened to Jesus was lost when the disciples died.

The plain and precious truths were lost only to be restored by Joseph. So I cannot trust anything from your scripture unless, of course,

Joseph tells me I can. So those things that are at least are affirmed by the book of Mormon, those are the parts of the, of the, and of course, that's another debate when you talk to Mormons.

But my point is, if that's what their statement is going to be, well, then at some point you're going to say, well, wait, yeah, but here's why

I don't trust the book of Mormon. And suddenly everyone becomes an evidentialist.

Well, I, I would... Okay. So how would you, how would you make a claim then against the book of Mormon from a non -evidential approach?

Yeah, well, first I'd like to make a distinction between the utilization of evidence and the utilization of evidentialism as a methodology.

I think those are, those are distinct. So contrary to popular opinion, presuppositionalists are not against using evidences.

We just use them within a presuppositional framework. Now, when we're dealing with someone who's making a similar authoritative claim, the common criticism of presuppositionalism is that, look, they have their ultimate authority, you have your ultimate authority.

And so now you're just kind of just asserting your ultimate authorities. Well, the way that we do that as presuppositionalists without being evidentialist is that we do a internal worldview critique in which we hypothetically grant the truthfulness of their position and show that on its own basis, it doesn't work.

And that's going to take a discussion of like what you just said. That's why I love what you do. And what Greg does,

Greg Kokel does so well is you ask those very important questions that bring out really, as Greg Bonson said, it gives you enough for the rope that you can use to hang them with on their own basis.

So I think there's an approach there that I think makes it distinct. But be that as it may, I see where you're coming from.

And I'm sure folks can appreciate both approaches there. And we don't have to get too much into there.

I want to make sure we focus so it benefits people who are asking the sorts of questions we're covering. But this is my favorite topic.