Debate Review: Joel Settecase vs Tom Jump

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala. And today

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I have another guest with me, a friend of mine, Joel Sedekes of the Think Institute.

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If you are unfamiliar with the Think Institute, I would highly recommend that you go over to the Think Institute YouTube channel and subscribe.

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Joel's got some great discussions, debates and just teachings coming from a presuppositional perspective.

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And so if folks are interested in, of course, presuppositional apologetics, that's just another channel that you can go and check out and benefit greatly from.

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So before I invite Joel on, I just wanna remind folks that, what's today's date?

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Today is the 18th. On the 20th, that is Wednesday at 9 p .m., I'm going to be having

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Anthony Rogers, who is a Christian apologist. You guys might be familiar with him. He is an excellent defender of the

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Trinity, especially within the context of engaging Muslims. I'm gonna be having him on to discuss the philosophical problem of the one and the many.

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And so if folks are familiar with presuppositional argumentation, transcendental arguments, when we say something to the effect that the

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Christian God provides the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience, because he answers the issue of the one and the manyness, how we unify both unity and diversity in the world, we're gonna unpack that in more detail.

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But Anthony Rogers is gonna be on to discuss that super interesting topic. It's definitely not for the faint of heart.

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We're gonna be diving into some deeper philosophical notions. But if you're interested in defending the

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Trinity and seeing why Christian Trinitarian theism provides the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience and why the philosophical problem of the one and the many is a problem and requires an answer, then you're gonna wanna check that out.

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That is on October 20th, 9 p .m. Eastern. Also on November 18th at 9 p .m.

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Eastern also. Notice that there are later times, because I have kids. I gotta wait till everyone goes to bed. That's how it works around here.

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But on November 18th, I'm gonna be having Dr. Jason Lyle on, who is a PhD astrophysicist and a noted presuppositional apologist.

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We're gonna be talking specifically about the topic of the historical Adam. Dr. Lyle is going to interact a little bit with Dr.

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William Lane Craig's work on the historical Adam. And so that's gonna be super interesting for folks.

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If you're gonna listen in, Dr. Lyle's an excellent, had him actually a couple of times. He's always an excellent guest.

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Also on October 27th, these aren't in order, of course. October 27th, I actually have Dr. Douglas Gruthius coming on to talk about the spiritual formation of the apologist.

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So we'll talk a little bit about the importance of maintaining a spiritually healthy relationship with the

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Lord when we're engaging in all of this heavy, philosophical and apologetic content. I will also be having

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Joshua Pillows on on October 25th to critique a video entitled Five Stupid Things About Presuppositional Apologetics.

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It's an older video, but I'm gonna have Joshua Pillows on and we're gonna pick apart some really bad objections to presuppositional apologetics.

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But hey, maybe you're not familiar with these objections. Maybe when you hear them, they'll sound kind of convincing and you're probably wondering, how could

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I respond to this? So we'll be addressing those. I also have Toby Sumter coming on on November 3rd at 8 p .m.

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Eastern. And then I have, and this is gonna be fun for folks. If folks are familiar with David Pullman, who is an

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Arminian and evidential apologist, he's actually gonna be coming on. And you guys know David is, if you're familiar with David, he's a very, he's not at all, how can

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I say this? He doesn't like presuppositional apologetics very much. And so he's often very vocal about that in his

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YouTube channel and as well in the comments and Facebook discussions and things like that. So I'm actually gonna have David on along with my friend

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Joshua Pillows to discuss within the context of a moderated conversation to discuss the issue of apologetic methodology.

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And so hopefully that'll be an opportunity for David to kind of express clearly his opposition to the presuppositional method.

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And I think this will be a great resource to see how David and the evidentialist perspective and Joshua and the presuppositional perspective interact with each other.

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And I think this will be a great resource for people to go back and listen and kind of really hear what both sides are saying so that there can be more clarity on these sorts of issues, all right?

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Well, that's it for all of my upcoming announcements. My last thing, I'm trying to push my apologetics online course as classes will be starting on November 1st.

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And so you can sign up for PresuppU and learn presuppositional apologetics within the context of a course with me.

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For five weeks, you can listen to me, give lectures on various aspects of presuppositional apologetics.

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We have done this in the past. It was excellent. We had folks sign up from all over the world and it was really an awesome experience being able to connect with people and really interact with folks who follow the channel and just go a little deeper into some of the issues regarding presuppositional apologetics in general and some of the intricacies of what that entails more specifically.

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So you can do that, revealedapologetics .com, PresuppU and register, classes start

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November 1st, all right? All right, with all that out of the way, I'd like to introduce my friend,

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Joel Sedekes of the Think Institute. How are you doing, Joel? You are muted, sir.

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It's all right. And there we go. You think I've done this before. There you go, you're good to go. I'm doing well, man.

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How are you? I'm doing well. I'm so happy that you could make it today. Oh, no, my pleasure. Believe me.

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It's always fun when we talk and I learn something every time. So you're talking about this class you have coming up.

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Man, I'd seriously want to recommend to anybody that they take that class. What night are you guys meeting or when do you guys meet your course?

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I believe it'll be on two. Ooh, that's a good question. It caught me off guard. Oh, I put you on the spot.

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I have to look at it. The information is actually on the website so folks can look there, but I don't have it in front of me now.

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That's good. See, now you're bringing people to the website. Yeah, go check out the website. That's right. Yeah, check out the website.

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And just for folks to let them know, it's introductory, but it's not introductory in the sense that it's kind of just the willy -nilly sort of stuff.

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We do get into issues of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, and we talk about what are the metaphysical groundings of derivational facts and understanding why the grounding of all reality must be a personal

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God. So we get into some of those deeper issues that I think folks will find very helpful. But yeah, check out the website.

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You can find out the details that I don't remember off the top of my head. Thanks a lot, Joel. Man, that's it. That's it, you're gone.

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See, I can't invite someone on the show and then they embarrass you like that. What's up with that? I'm just kidding. That's good. All right.

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You're coming on my show next, so we'll see what happens. That's right, that's right. So what have you been up to with respect to the

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Think Institute? And then we'll jump right into the primary reason I have you on today.

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Oh, thanks for asking, man. So our ministry is all about, as you know, helping dads to lead their families in defending the truth of the

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Christian message. And that's a focus that is, it's a really a renewed focus.

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It's a honed focus where we're, as of late, we're really trying to focus in on families and fatherhood.

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And, you know, as the father goes spiritually, so goes the family.

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And as the family goes, so goes the church. And as the church goes, so goes the culture. You know, culture, as they say, is downstream from cultus, from the worship.

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And so we're doing a lot of, we're pouring all of our efforts into that initiative of helping dads to lead their families to defend the truth of the

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Christian message. And one of the things that we're doing is, of course, we've got our podcast. So you can listen to the

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Think podcast. You've already mentioned the YouTube channel, which they can get all that stuff at thethink .institute.

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So if you're watching on YouTube right now, the address is right there, right underneath my ugly mug right there, thethink .institute.

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And I actually have, the reason why I asked you, Eli, what day of the week your class meets is because I've got a class coming up as well.

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It's a worldview class. And that's something that I am eagerly preparing for, where we're gonna be diving deeply into how the

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Bible answers life's biggest questions. And you know, you and I, as presuppositionalists and as apologists, we'd like to talk a lot about how the

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Bible is the only basis, the biblical worldview is the only basis, not just a good basis, but the only basis for things like logic, meaning, morality, mathematics, all of those wonderful intangible realities that we take for granted.

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But I wonder how many of our viewers could open up the Bible and give chapter and verse where the

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Bible actually supports that. And so that's one of the things that I'm really excited about is providing not only that basis, not only that wonderful biblical worldview, but really making it explicit where the

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Bible teaches these things. And it's an introductory course, but it's something that I think a lot of people,

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I think whatever your level is, I think it'll be really beneficial. And then there's another project that I haven't even talked to you about yet.

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It's way too early to talk about it, but - We're getting nitty gritty early here. I know,

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I know, I know, I know, man. But let's just say, Lord willing, I'm in talks to join the ranks of R .C.

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Sproul, Francis Schaeffer, and others who have put some physical heft to their ministries, some place to their ministries.

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That's all I can give right now, but the Lord is doing some amazing things and I kind of feel like I'm along for the ride sometimes.

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All right, well, that sounds really interesting. And it just came to me. So my classes will be meeting

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Monday nights, Monday nights. Of course, the same night as mine. Great. Yeah, that's it.

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November, I just looked November 1st. All right, well, I take it back. Nobody join my class. Everybody go join you guys.

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Go ahead. Well, here's the thing. Whether they take my class or your class, I hope that people don't listen to this and say, well,

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I already know presuppositional apologetics. It's actually very helpful to do apologetic study within a more formal and structured context so that you can be better at sharing it with others like someone teaches it to you and you're able to teach it to someone else because we really wanna multiply apologists.

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It's not just being YouTube consumers, you're listening to podcasts and things like that. We can talk a lot about the practice of apologetics, but it really doesn't make any difference if we're not actually practicing apologetics in a real life context.

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And so that means equipping people and then sending people out. So I do highly recommend, whether it's Joel's class or my class, get educated, get a formal instruction somewhere.

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If you're too broke, busted and disgusted to do seminary, doing independent courses like these might actually be a good option for you.

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And it's a good way to support ministries that you are benefiting from. So, all right, well, without further ado, the reason why

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I have Joel on here is to talk a little bit about his debate slash discussion with the atheist YouTuber, Tom Jump.

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Joel and I have, well, we have a few things in common, but one thing we have in common is we both interacted with Tom Jump and I like how my discussion,

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I was happy with how my discussion went with him, but when I watched your discussion, I thought you did an excellent job.

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There were a couple of moments where I thought there was some talking past each other, but for the most part,

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I think you nailed down some very important points that I think, and I'm sure you would recognize, that he kind of seems to just kind of assert and it seemed as though he didn't have to give an account for some of the things that he was saying.

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How do you think you did? And why don't you share with us kind of the basis of your argument, and then we'll kind of interact with some of the things that Tom mentioned in the debate or discussion.

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All right, so how did I do? I hate answering that question because I never know how I did.

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I mean, you probably know this about me. I used to be a pastor and I would get up there on Sundays and I would preach.

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And Eli, I will tell you this, on the days when I thought that I did the best, knocked it out of the park,

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I get back down to talk to my wife. How was it? Expecting the, let's go, here, let me have it.

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Okay, oh, okay. No, no, my wife's very encouraging. Don't get me wrong. But overall, the general consensus was fine.

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No great shakes. But then on those times when I felt like I really blew it, people would come up to me afterwards and they'd go,

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Joel, that was inspired by God. The heavens parted and the Lord spoke. And I'm like, well,

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I tell you what, brother, I'll tell you what, sister, it wasn't me. It was all the Lord. Because I was up there hemming and hawing and stammering like a jackass.

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I wouldn't say that I'd put it, I'd use a little more decorum than that. But as for how

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I did in this discussion, if you want my opinion, which you must because you asked for it,

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I think that I represented the biblical worldview faithfully. I believe that I did.

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And one of the things that I was trying to do, and maybe you caught this and maybe you think I did it enough or not enough, or maybe too much,

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I wanted to put Tom on the defensive. So I wanted to provide a context in which he felt as though he needed to justify some of his claims.

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He makes a lot of claims, he makes a lot of assertions. And I wanted him, I wanted the audience to see at the very least, even if he didn't, that he was making assertions, he was presupposing certain things about reality in his own mind and the rules governing reality, about truth and about meaning and about logic, that he was trying to get away with presupposing them, even though they comport with my worldview and not with his, he was trying to get away with presupposing them while denying that he was presupposing them and attributing them just to the way that things are or some sort of irrefutable reality, the big

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R reality. He talks quick, and so if you don't pick that up, he gets away with murder in terms of the assertions he makes, yeah.

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That's right. So that brings me to two things that I think I could have done better. And I don't know if you'd agree with this or not. Two things that I think

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I could have done better. One, there was a point probably halfway through where he wanted to shift the conversation and ask me a bunch of questions, put me on the defensive a little bit.

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I think I was so much in offensive mode that I kind of just bowled right over him and just kept him on the defensive.

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And I did get that feedback back from others. And even if you read some of the comments that people were making during the show, some of the people, and some of those comments were pretty vile, but some of them -

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Well, you know what your problem is, Joel? I'm ugly for one, apparently. If you're mean, you will be called a dirtbag and a mean hypocritical

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Christian. If you are nice, your niceness will be suspect and that you have a disingenuous motive.

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So there's literally nothing. I had a discussion with someone and as I was reading through the comments,

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I don't usually read through the comments, but in this particular instance, I read through the comments and someone said, that was the nicest presuppositionalist

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I've ever seen. And then I read a couple of the things down. It was like, this guy was so obnoxious.

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I'm like, how can people look at the same conversation and come to completely diametric conclusions?

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So it's a lose -lose situation on that end. That's why we really shouldn't care what people think about us. We just want to be faithful to the

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Lord and do what we need to do. But go ahead, I'm sorry. Exactly, exactly right. And the other thing that I will say is, and I realized this afterwards, and this was something that one of the atheist viewers had pointed out, at least

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I assume an atheist, is that I did not share the gospel with him. And that was a major miss on my part.

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And I understand the value of what we might call pre -evangelism. I understand the value of breaking down the unbiblical worldview.

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I get that totally. I understand the value of that. But I need to be about preaching the gospel.

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So what I've tried to do is I've had atheists follow me over to my channel from that debate.

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And the way I kind of view it, Eli, is like, if you were to, imagine you were to go out in your backyard, and you take a stick and you poke the hornet's nest, and then you run inside.

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At least a few of those hornets are gonna follow you up to your sliding glass door, and they're gonna start banging on the glass. That's kind of what happened,

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I think. I got some of Tom's viewers over to my channel commenting on random videos. Just trying to, this guy's an idiot.

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So what I've tried to really do is I've tried to really give those people the gospel. Because I'm thinking, look, if you're that engaged, you're following me home, so to speak.

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If you're in my house now, you're gonna hear the gospel. And so, Lord knows if any of that's gonna bear fruit.

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But that would be the one other criticism that I would have of myself. And you do need to understand, too, folks need to understand that it's very easy to see someone like Tom and the people who follow him as kind of, well, they're just a lost cause.

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Like, it's pointless talking to people like that. When we do apologetics, there is something going on that is unseen, and that is the work of the

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Holy Spirit. And so you have no idea how God is using the words that you speak in the background, so to speak, and such to bring about his own purposes.

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So let us never look at someone like Tom and kind of the people who tend to follow his stuff as kind of a lost cause.

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When the gospel is proclaimed, God, if I can use the language, God works his magic, and you'll be surprised at the fruit that comes out of that.

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All right, so, well, actually, Richie, I haven't got a super chat in like 1 ,000 years, it feels like.

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Thank you so much, Richie, $4 .99. Richie says, in the short time

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I've interacted with Joel, this dude is legit as they come. Super nice, but a firm dude who stands on the truth of God's word.

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Well, that's a nice compliment. Excellent, well, thank you so much, Richie. I appreciate that.

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Thanks, Richie, praise God. Let me move on here. I kind of lost track of what I was saying.

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See, come on, Richie, your nice super chat threw me off. You know what, though, be careful, because Richie's a beast.

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He's like a jiu -jitsu teacher, and I don't know what belt he is. Look at his name. It's Richie Torres MMA.

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That's right, that's right. This is a guy, you just don't mess with Richie. It's like, you know,

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Richie, yeah. Is he Hispanic? Torres, you tell me. Torres, yeah,

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Torres, Torres. Maybe he's Puerto Rican, I'm Puerto Rican. People, one guy thought I was from Jordan. Random place.

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Really? Yeah, you've got. Do I look Jordanian? You've got a very ethnically ambiguous look.

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You could be, is that what Jordanian people look like? You're gonna get us canceled. Ethnically ambiguous.

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Yeah, yeah, you've got, but I've been told I've got the same thing. Like, people are like, what are you? Yeah, it's like, I don't know what you are.

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What are you, set a case? What is that even, where's that even from? No, it's set a case here, but across the ocean.

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It's set the case. Oh, so you're Italian. Well, and here's the funny thing.

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I am one quarter Italian, but that's not how I got the name. My dad was adopted. So my dad happens to be half

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Italian, half Hispanic. We don't know what kind, we don't know. He's Puerto Rican, look at the, look at the, he's Puerto Rican.

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Oh yeah, yeah, look at that. Well, I, so I've got a Puerto Rican friend and he believes that I am

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Puerto Rican. He says my voice sounds Puerto Rican. But, you know,

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Puerto Rico is not just, it's not just one barrio, you know. There's, there's lots of, He's rolled the tongue too.

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You like that? That's called, Barrio. That's, that's called accommodation.

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Okay, all right. No, listen, he sounds like me and he's from Puerto Rico and he's got the blue eyes like me too.

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Okay. So he thinks, Do you understand Italian? No. Okay.

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He was French for no. No, not very well. That's it, that's all I know. I spoke French, but it was a long time.

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We have to be careful. People are going to think we're Pentecostals speaking in tongues. So let's, let's get back on, let's get back on topic.

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Okay. So, okay. So there were a couple of things that Tom said, but before we get to Tom, why don't you lay out your argument?

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What, what is the presupp, how do you present the presuppositional argument? And then we'll interact with Tom's position and kind of see if we can identify some things that would be useful for folks to, to keep in mind.

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Okay. So in general, when I lay out the presuppositional argument, what I try to do is

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I view it in terms of a, a three -step argument. I'm thinking of just like big picture. This is how I, I approach presuppositionalism.

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And Eli, none of this is going to be new to you, of course, but you know, for our viewers. You'd be surprised. Hey, there are things that we can be familiar with, but when someone says it in their own way, it can actually shed light in areas that you never really thought of.

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So I've heard presuppositional arguments presented in a way I've never heard them before and actually learned something.

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So don't sell yourself short. Yeah, that's fair. That's very fair. So when

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I presented, it's step one. So three steps. Step one is you reduce the unbelieving position to absurdity by going, by being, and I describe it like being a home inspector.

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My wife and I, we've moved, I don't know, seven or eight times in the 11 years we've been married. It's, it's, it's crazy.

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I know you just had to move recently. We've, we had to move recently about a year ago, but we've, we've bought, now we've bought three houses.

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We've actually purchased three houses and, and - You want to give me one? Yeah. I didn't say simultaneous.

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I'll take one, man. You know, it's hard to buy a house. We're struggling over here. Yeah. Now we're raking it in at the

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Think Institute. No, no, no. No, please send money. So a, a home inspector, we've worked with home inspectors, you know, and they, what they'll do is they'll go down to the basement and they'll inspect the, the basement floor, which oftentimes if it's unfinished is made of concrete and they'll look and they'll, what they're doing is they're, they're trying to see if the foundation is sound.

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And I'll never forget, we were looking for a home in the city of Chicago when we lived there. And we went into this house and it was beautiful.

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It was really nice within our price range in a good neighborhood, Jefferson Park. We thought, you know, this is, this is where we want to go.

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This is where we want to be. We go down to the basement and our home inspector, he gets down to the basement, 10 seconds, he knew this was not the house for us.

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He told us that. He said, you must not buy this house. We said, why? And he goes, this foundation is not sound. And he pointed down and he showed us a crack down the middle of the foundation, going from the front of the house to the back of the house.

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And he said, this house is not sound. It is only a matter of time until this house literally splits in two.

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We said, okay, that's a bummer. Are you sure? And he goes, absolutely.

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This is what I do. He said, okay. So we left. Step one of the presuppositional method is that it's being a good home inspector and going down into the basement of your friend or your roommate or your family member, your coworker's worldview, going down to the basement and inspecting the foundation and saying, this foundation is not sound.

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This foundation cannot support the house. What is that foundation? That foundation is the presuppositions, the assumptions.

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If you want to say axioms, that's fine. As long as you don't get too specific on what an axiom is, that's fine.

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But it's those beliefs that you start with before you go out and make any kind of inquiry about the world.

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It's the assumptions that you bring to the table. Your unquestioned beliefs. And if someone is an atheist, but not just an atheist, if they're some form of a theist or they have a religious worldview that's not the biblical worldview, then there's some assumption that they have about reality, about metaphysics, what is ultimately real or ontology, being, morality, anthropology, what does it mean to be man and to be human?

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And there's some foundational belief that they have that can't support their conclusions.

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They can't support the conclusions that they want to reach. So step one is we go down there and we show them, look, this foundation can't hold.

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Then we show them the conflict between their fundamental beliefs, their presuppositions, and the conclusions that they are reaching.

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Oftentimes that takes the form of something like, God is immoral, Christians are hypocrites, love is love, whatever it may be, their foundation can't support that, that's step one.

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And when I say we're reducing it to absurdity, we're saying, look, your beliefs don't match up.

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Something's got to give here. You got to give up, you either got to give up your foundation, you got to give up the roof.

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These walls aren't going to support it. Step two then is we invite them into our house, the biblical house.

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And we say, now let's do an internal critique. What I never say is we're going to reduce the biblical worldview to absurdity because it can't be done.

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Instead I say, we're going to do an internal critique. And I bring them down to the basement. I go, look at this foundation, look how well poured it is.

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Look, it's level, it's smooth, it's just beautiful. It's got the epoxy finish down here.

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I mean, it's just, it's gorgeous. Now look at the walls, how the walls support. They stand firmly on the foundation and then they support the rest of the house.

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And you've got the main floor and the second floor. We could build another hundred floors on this thing and this house is going nowhere.

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And what I'm doing is I'm showing them the biblical presuppositions, the biblical foundation. We're starting with the biblical worldview and it's supporting all the conclusions that we want to come to.

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And we're saying there's no inconsistency, there's no illogicality, there's no contradiction here. You see, and we're doing an internal critique.

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Now step, so we've revealed that dichotomy. We've done what

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Cornelius Van Til, the godfather of presuppositionalism called pushing the antithesis or talking about the antithesis.

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And then we go to step three. Step three is vital. And this is why I'm kicking myself for not getting there with Tom. And I'm glad you and I are having this conversation.

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Step three is when you make your gospel appeal or at the very least, at the very least, your call to repentance.

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This is where you say, the same Bible that presents this beautiful, consistent, non -contradictory worldview is the same

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Bible that says that denying God, who is so obvious now, I've shown you how obvious the biblical worldview is.

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That same God says at the heart of that worldview that the reason why you deny him, even though you clearly know him, you know that he's true, is because of the sin that's in your heart, the sin that's in your life that you don't wanna give up.

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And that sin is gonna keep you from God for all eternity. And it's worse than that. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death.

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You've heard of hell. That's what hell is. Hell is the everlasting punishment of God. And I want you to avoid that.

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So thankfully, God tells us how to avoid it. He doesn't let us figure it out on our own. The very same Bible verse that says the wages of sin is death also says that the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our

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Lord. So if you're wondering how you can be free from your sin, free from your denial of God, and to have everlasting life, it's in Jesus.

28:21

Does that make sense? Yes, it does. No, it doesn't. If it makes sense, does that sound like something you'd like to do right now? Okay, then we talk about, hey, would you like me to teach you right now how you can receive

28:31

Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? We talk about the gospel. We go to 1 Corinthians 15, and however far they're willing to go.

28:37

If they're not willing to go, that's okay. But I wanna at least lead them to the foot of the cross as much as I can.

28:43

But that's my three -step process. Step one, step two, and then step three. And really quickly, before we move on, this is the process that the

28:50

Lord Jesus uses in the gospels. And I've got another course that I teach called The Apologetics of Jesus and Paul, where I dig into four examples of Jesus, one example of Paul, where they use this exact method.

29:07

It's not always in the same order, but they reduce the other argument to absurdity. They reveal the consistency and the beauty and the solidity of the truth, biblical truth.

29:18

And then they either call to repentance and faith, or they simply rebuke for unbelief. And the implication is repent.

29:25

Sure. All right, well, okay, so I see a problem in what you're saying already, not with the gospel presentation, but with your presuppositional argument.

29:34

Now, of course, I don't see a problem with it. I'm role -playing here, okay? The problem is, and this is what

29:41

Tom says, I'm actually going to, well, first, let's define Tom's position. He defines his position.

29:46

He says, I'm an atheist, by which I mean that I believe that all of the arguments and evidence that is typically used by God, right?

29:57

He said, reality is better explained by naturalism. So he's a naturalist, okay?

30:02

And of course, we need to pull that apart. There are different aspects to naturalism, and naturalism is a presupposition, whether he states it in his argument or not, okay?

30:14

When he goes later on to state what is possible or impossible, he can only state those because to state possibility or impossibility would be inconsistent from a

30:25

Christian perspective, right? Without grounding that in God who defines for us what's possible or impossible.

30:30

So he already presupposes a worldview in which he allows himself to actually tell us what is possible or impossible, okay?

30:37

But besides the point, he calls himself a naturalist, as he says here in his statement here. And then he says this, and this is where I think you fall apart,

30:45

Joel, okay? You fall apart, your whole argument falls apart. Well, let me tell you, Joel, I don't have any presuppositions.

30:52

So here, let's quote him directly. He says this in timestamp here in three minutes and 35 seconds,

31:02

I guess, when I started recording. So it may be not be, it's not directly on YouTube video. All my best arguments were before that.

31:09

Yeah, yeah. So he says, so starting with the preconditions of intelligibility, he says, I don't have any presuppositions whatsoever.

31:17

My worldview starts with my experience, an experience that doesn't presuppose anything. It's just a direct experience.

31:23

And then I can create logic and math and all the other languages, formal languages to describe that experience.

31:30

And so you don't need to presuppose anything because no matter what reality is like with or without a God, it's not possible for those things to be false.

31:38

So if there wasn't a God, that would still be true that one plus one equals two and that A equals

31:44

A. And so to say that you need to presuppose God would mean that somehow those could be false if God didn't exist, which would be impossible.

31:52

Now there are a whole host of presuppositions and folks have to be careful when they're speaking with someone like Tom who will very quickly assert these things with a confidence and then say, all the philosophers agree with me.

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This is not, when someone says, this is not debated, this is just accepted, you always have to remember everything is debated.

32:19

Everything is debatable, okay? And so his statement there, you do need to kind of stop him in his tracks or if you're talking to someone like Tom, stop them in their tracks and examine, all right?

32:30

When you're engaged in philosophical intercourse, right? In philosophical engagement, everything is worthy of being questioned and so I don't care if you can find a million philosophers.

32:42

I don't know if there are a million philosophers in the world, but if you can find a million. Well, John Frame says everyone's a philosopher.

32:47

So there's seven billion of them. At least say a six, seven billion. If you find a four billion out of the six billion who say,

32:54

I don't have any presuppositions, I don't care if they're experts, they're wrong and that's demonstrably the case. So that being said, why don't we identify some presuppositions in the position that says he has no presuppositions?

33:09

What were some presuppositions that you identified that were hidden away, tucked away in Tom's assertions there?

33:15

Yeah, there was one point where I called him out of that and I said, Tom, you had previously said that you don't have any presuppositions.

33:21

I said, would you like to now walk that back? And no, no, of course not.

33:29

But, and I don't remember exactly, you've got the transcript so you can tell me where exactly I said that maybe, but right in that opening statement, he's talked, as you said,

33:37

Eli, he's presupposing possibility and what's possible or not, or not possible.

33:44

You know, something, I don't even know if you were thinking of this, Eli, but, or if you had this in mind, but, well, okay, okay, real quick, before I get to that, because that's a little longer, but he said,

33:55

A would still be A, one plus one would still be two. He's making these conditional statements, would, it would be, he's imagining a possible world that tells us something about his presuppositions about our ability to imagine coherent states of affairs, you know, and to sort of work out the logic of them, you know, if this, then that, if, you know, other possible world, if other state of affairs, then that, you know, that is presupposing logic.

34:26

When he said A would still equal A, reality would still be reality, which is, you know, the way he defines reality is just everything.

34:33

So it's kind of like saying, if it's everything that it's, you know, it's nothing. Well, he doesn't really define reality.

34:39

He just - He refuses to. He just says reality is reality, and that just, that's equivalent to saying a blark is a blark.

34:44

I don't know what that means. I don't know what you mean by that. Right, correct. And so, but then he also, so he's presupposing,

34:52

I mean, A equals A, that's literally the law of identity. So there's logic.

34:57

He says one plus one would still equal two. I don't know if he's aware of the ridiculousness that happened last year all over Twitter where people were saying two plus two does not equal four, or two plus two equals four is a racist construct.

35:10

So he, Tom and we would stand on the side of, you know, mathematical realism, and we would say, no, two plus two equals four always.

35:21

But as soon as someone said, well, why? Of course our paths would diverge. We'd reveal that you and I are standing on solid ground, he's standing on sand, to paraphrase using

35:31

Jesus' analogy. But one of the major presuppositions that he brought to the table was, he said, if God didn't exist, this would still be true.

35:41

Now, I will tell you, that stuck out to me like a sore thumb. And I realized how conditioned

35:48

I've, like how much I've been in this presuppositional world, or maybe it's just when I studied the ontological argument back in the old days.

35:55

But this idea, if God didn't exist, my first thought is, that's meaningless.

36:01

There is no state of affairs. Well, it is literally a presupposition, an implicit presupposition of the falsehood of Christianity.

36:11

Yes, correct. It's literally, and this is where Van Til points out the antithesis, right? It's an implicit, and he hasn't argued the fact, he's asserted, it's just my experience, and these things could be true.

36:23

No, no, no, that assumes the falsity of Christianity. And so you need to justify that. It's not, you know, it's not an issue that we just all accept and move along from there.

36:31

And to make that very explicit, the reason why that presupposes the falsity of Christianity is because our

36:38

God exists necessarily, ultimately, in every possible world.

36:47

We are contingent. God is necessary. There is no possible world.

36:53

There is no possible state of affairs that was not brought about by God. And even if you wanna say, you know,

36:59

God never created anything, well, that's still a state of affairs in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are still there.

37:06

And so you're right. He is arbitrarily presupposing the falsity of the

37:11

Christian worldview. And not only that, but when he says, if God didn't exist, he's also, maybe we can hash out what exactly he's doing here, but he's also misdefining our

37:23

God because we don't believe in a God that doesn't exist in the world that he's describing for us.

37:31

And we get to this way later, maybe you and I can talk about that later, but he says, you know, if God didn't exist, or he said, in a world of philosophical nothingness,

37:43

I think was the phrase that he used. And I said, well, in a world of philosophical nothingness, God still exists in that world.

37:52

I'm not playing that game. I can't mentally construct a state of affairs in which

37:58

God is not there. You know, like Francis Schaeffer wrote the book, The God Who Is There.

38:04

God is always there. Look in any possible world, by definition, God is there.

38:10

So you're right, not only is he presupposing the falsity of the Christian worldview, he's also, in order to refute or rebut

38:19

God, because he can't refute God, in order to rebut the idea of God, he has to misdefine

38:25

God, which I think is very telling. In my discussion with him, he posited the possibility, well, maybe there's a greater

38:30

God than your God who's deceiving. Yeah, that's right. It's like, no, no, no, no. On the Christian worldview, right?

38:36

If you're gonna do a proper internal critique, you need to hypothetically grant the truth of the Christian worldview. And if you hypothetically grant the truth of the

38:41

Christian worldview, it is an incoherent concept to posit a greater God than Yahweh. I mean, it's just the nature of the case.

38:47

He's also presupposing autonomy. He's presupposing that it is even intelligible to talk about the self and experience independent of God.

38:56

That's a presupposition. And in essence, not only is he presupposing the falsity of the

39:02

Christian worldview, he's also presupposing the truth of his own. So Tom is actually a presuppositionalist also, just from a different perspective.

39:12

Here's a question for you though. So step one, as I teach it, step one of the presuppositional method is we assume the truth of our interlocutors position, of our discussion partners position for the sake of argument.

39:27

Now, help me with this, Eli, because that would mean that we need to grant for the sake of argument the truth of a worldview in which

39:40

God does not exist in all possible worlds. But that smacks to me of assuming for the sake of argument that a bachelor could be married, that a square could be round.

39:53

So help me with this. Well, at that point, while that's true, you need to demonstrate that that's true.

40:02

So if you think that a worldview in which doesn't posit God as the necessary preconditions, we can't just simply state that such a notion is incoherent.

40:12

We actually have to demonstrate that it is. And you can do that a number of ways. You can show an inconsistency between one's presupposed metaphysic and epistemology, which, by the way,

40:21

Tom is presupposing a metaphysic regardless if he says he doesn't or he has no presuppositions.

40:27

And if his metaphysic is inconsistent with his epistemology, then on its own basis, the foundations, if you will, fall apart, right?

40:36

Every foundation of a worldview is comprised of at least those three foundations of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. And if any of those foundations are in conflict with one another, then everything else that's built upon that edifice falls down as well.

40:51

So you'd have to demonstrate that in Tom's worldview, certain absurdities would result.

40:57

Then you can bring out, draw out what those absurdities would be. For example, also, he comes to, he has a position in which all we could know is appearance.

41:07

Because he posits his own experience, he'll say, well, maybe everything's an illusion. But what's not an illusion is that I'm having experience.

41:13

When you say I'm having an experience, you're presupposing the intelligibility of personal identity. So how do you have on naturalism, personal identity?

41:22

What is personal identity? When you say, well, it doesn't matter what metaphysic I have. If I believe

41:29

I exist, I can't be wrong about that. Well, wait a minute. When you say I believe, you're presupposing a metaphysical reality in which you could be differentiated from other things.

41:37

Or maybe you're all that exists. Okay, let's run with that. If you're all that exists, the solipsism's true, then how do you have a unifying worldview perspective in which you can ground intelligible experience, right?

41:47

Well, yeah. And as Christians, we say, of course you're having a first -person experience. Sure, yeah.

41:52

Obviously. So our point is not to debunk his first -person experience.

41:58

Well, here's the thing. What we're doing as presuppositionalists, we are providing an all -encompassing transcendental argument for the truth of the

42:07

Christian worldview. What Tom is doing is he's providing what we would call in philosophy localized transcendental arguments.

42:15

In other words, I agree that in order for me to deny my own existence, I have to exist.

42:20

My existence provides the necessary preconditions for the denial of my existence. But we're asking a more fundamental question about reality, not just these localized transcendental arguments asking in this particular instance, what must be the case for something else to be the case?

42:36

We're providing an all -encompassing worldview that must be the case in order for anything else to be the case. So he's engaged in localized transcendental arguments.

42:44

The presuppositional transcendental argument is more all -encompassing. Yeah, that's good. And just to circle back, as it feels like we're moving on from it a little bit, but the point about assuming for the sake of argument, the unbelieving worldview, you can actually get to incoherence pretty quickly, meaning you can reveal the incoherence pretty quickly.

43:08

Because what's necessary is that we assume, for the sake of argument, a possible world in which the

43:14

God who exists in all possible worlds does not exist. So that right away, that is literally, that's, now you're gonna have to unpack that.

43:22

That's not gonna make them drop for their knees and repent and trust in Christ. Maybe if Charles Spurgeon said it, he had that effect on people, but you and I, well, me anyway,

43:32

I don't have that effect. And so, and of course it's the Holy Spirit either way, but we're gonna have to unpack that.

43:39

But for the Christians watching this right now, you can rest easy.

43:46

The idea of God not existing, even for the sake of argument, is an incoherent concept. It's literally philosophical nonsense.

43:54

It's logical nonsense. And I think the beauty of the presuppositional approach is that it does not shift the burden of proof off the

44:00

Christian. The Christian welcomes the burden of proof, but it highlights the reality that both sides have a burden of proof and you don't get to just assert,

44:06

I have no presuppositions so that I don't have to justify anything. My starting point is it's the default position.

44:13

I don't have presuppositions. And the proof of that is I have my direct experience and all the while presupposing the coherency of direct experience and a whole bunch of other metaphysical presuppositions and epistemological positions.

44:25

Well, here's another thing too. And I think this was an aspect of the debate that I think there was a little bit of talking past each other.

44:30

And that was the discussion of math. I think I would agree with Tom that mathematics is a formal language that is linguistic in character.

44:41

We can talk about it. We can make instantiations of numbers on like a chalkboard or something like that. But I think, and I think you brought this up once you kind of realized maybe we're talking past each other.

44:51

I think you asked him something along the lines, well, what is the on -toss of mathematics? So if mathematics is a formal language that people make up then, okay.

45:00

So then what does mathematics refer to? Now, of course, he waffles and says, well, it refers to reality.

45:06

Well, what's reality? Well, reality is reality. And there it is. It doesn't matter. Reality is reality. And so you get to that kind of nonsensical issue there.

45:14

So why don't you unpack for us what you were getting at when you were trying to get behind the formal language of mathematics and logic?

45:23

Yeah, so I was trying to figure out if he viewed mathematics as merely a convention.

45:29

You know, like the way people talk about logic as being purely a human convention. I've got this article on my website, the

45:35

Think That Institute. Six reasons why logic must not be a convention or is not purely conventional.

45:42

And so I was trying to see if he was saying, yeah, math is just a convention, but it doesn't really have any correspondence to reality as such.

45:50

It's just - I don't think he believes that. No, he doesn't. He doesn't. But he believes there - Correct, but I didn't know. I didn't know if that's what he believes.

45:55

So I was trying to uncover that. The other, once I realized that was the case, you know,

46:01

I've got this other article called the, I think it's something like the very concept of truth is impossible without God or is meaningless without God.

46:11

And I refer atheists to it all the time. One of my three legs of that stool, if that argument is a stool, is that truth is a property that a proposition has, and it must be logical, it's linguistic, and then it corresponds to an external world.

46:33

And so, you know, it being linguistic, what we're doing is when we speak, and I expect you to say true things to me and you expect me to say true things to you, we're assuming just in the background, without ever addressing this, without ever thinking about it, the integrity of the meaning of language over time.

46:53

But that doesn't mean, look, maybe earlier you were speaking Italian to me and I didn't fully understand that, right? And I was speaking a little

46:59

French and, you know, we're talking past each other, but when we're both speaking English, and I know

47:04

English is, it's fluid, it changes over time. It's changed since we were kids.

47:09

It's gonna change by the time we're, Lord willing, you know, old geezers and we die. Like, language changes over time.

47:16

But the assumption is that the words are going to remain, they're going to keep their integrity over time such that we can express ideas in a meaningful way.

47:28

So like the word not is not gonna suddenly mean, you know, an affirmation of something. And, you know, the word the is not gonna, which is an article, is not gonna suddenly turn into an adjective or something.

47:39

You know, we assume, so where I was, what I was trying to figure out, when he says math is a language, is he presupposing that this is a language, not only that, well, just stick with this, is he assuming that there's an integrity to the language over time?

47:57

And what gives him the epistemic right to assume that the words, the symbols of math, you know, if you wanna call them the operators of math, you know, numbers and plus signs, minus signs, whatever, whatever we use, but what makes him assume that those operators and those concepts will be, will remain there, will retain their integrity over time, that math will still be the same math five seconds from now, 10 years from now?

48:30

If reality is reality, what if reality is just incoherent? Correct, correct.

48:36

It's just like, what if it's incoherent? I mean, you don't know what, he couldn't know that. From his worldview, contingency and possibility is ultimate.

48:45

Right. Right, if naturalism is true, everything issues out of the womb of chance. And if everything issues out of the womb of chance, as Van Til would say,

48:52

I mean, anything's possible. So when you say things must be a certain way, I mean, how can you, a finite individual, define for us the limits of possibility?

49:03

You can't even tell me what reality is. All you can tell me is that reality is reality. Right, and this idea that, so, you know, there's two different levels to this, as I can see it.

49:14

On the one hand, there's the Antahs, as you put it, you know, there's, when we say one plus one equals two, we are describing something about both the external world and the internal world too.

49:23

And I was trying to push him on that too. What's the correspondence between the math in your head and the math that's going on out there.

49:30

And, you know, he doesn't really believe in an out there necessarily, because he thinks solipsism could be true anyway.

49:36

And I know that's just a rhetorical game that he plays, but I don't think he's really a solipsist. But when we say, you know, one plus one equals two, we are describing a law about reality.

49:48

One object plus another object will always equal two objects. So we're assuming integrity in reality.

49:57

But again, but there's that secondary layer to it. There's the layer of the language, which we use to describe the

50:05

Antahs. And that is, we assume that those linguistic, I don't know,

50:11

I'm not a linguist. I don't know what you'd call the linguistic operators or the linguistic elements or something.

50:16

You know, that those will remain their integrity and their meaning over time as well. And so that's a lot to assume for a guy who has no presuppositions.

50:25

Right. Well, because he has presuppositions. I think it's clear that he does.

50:31

It's not even a point. I probably would have hammered on that a little bit more, but I think it's obvious for people.

50:37

It's like, you have no presuppositions. Yeah, that's not a thing. I think that's, and if you could say all philosophers, we know this to be true.

50:45

Okay, then all the philosophers you're referring to are wrong. I would have no problem. I don't care if they have a PhD or anything.

50:51

A foolishness uttered by a PhD is still foolishness, right? I mean, if you're going to say I'm completely neutral,

50:56

I have no presupposition. By the way, to say you have no presuppositions means that you can be neutral. Right.

51:03

It's just, so how can you just assert, well, I could just be neutral with respect to various facts of human experience.

51:11

You know, it's funny you bring that up. I literally, so I teach apologetics at a homeschool co -op here in the area to eighth through 12th graders.

51:20

It's actually a curriculum that I'm working on, Lord willing, we're going to bring it to market next year. But I was just talking with them today.

51:26

Today's lesson was called, there is no neutrality. And you know, what I talked about was I drew two circles on the board and I said, you know, over here, this is the, you know, the

51:37

God circle. This is the not God circle. This is the God worldview, the biblical worldview. This is the all other worldviews.

51:43

And what the assumption of neutrality does is it says I can stand out here in the middle, floating in outer space.

51:52

And I compared it to an astronaut floating out in space in her spaceship. And she's judging whether or not she wants to live on earth or Venus.

51:59

And she starts out by going, well, you know, the gravity on Venus is only 90 % of the gravity on earth. And that might be nice because I could jump a little higher, dunk a basketball.

52:08

But then she starts looking at the stats a little bit more and she goes, well, yeah, but the air is so thick that it's like moving through water.

52:15

So that would get exhausting, you know, on Venus. And she goes, oh, and the atmospheric pressure is over 90 times what it is on earth.

52:22

Well, that would crush me, you know? And if the atmosphere didn't give me the heat, well, because it's literally as hot as hell.

52:28

I don't say that as a profanity. It's, you know, you'd burst into flames. Well, how do you know how hot hell is?

52:34

Okay, okay, fine. It's as close as we can imagine to what it would be like to live in hell.

52:41

Sure. And God willing, none of your viewers will ever go to hell because they will repent and trust in Jesus Christ for their salvation.

52:50

But - Hey, be careful, we're gonna be collecting offering at the end, so we don't have a set up for here. I didn't get the gospel in with Tom, so I'm trying to cram it in there.

52:59

Here, put your super chats in here. Please, please. So, you know, but here's the thing.

53:06

The whole time that our astronaut friend is standing out there judging between the two worlds, where is she living?

53:12

She's inside of a spaceship with air that she took from Earth, that, you know, the spaceship is made out of materials mined from the

53:18

Earth. It was designed by engineers, mathematicians, and scientists living on Earth in Earth -like conditions.

53:26

So she's taken a little bit of Earth with her up into space and trying to be impartial and neutral between these two planets.

53:32

Excellent example. She's not impartial and neutral between the two planets. She's still living on Earth or at least Earth -like conditions.

53:38

And in fact, the conclusion she reaches is the only way I could possibly make Venus habitable is if I made it more like Earth.

53:47

And that is exactly what the unbeliever does is they come out and they go, I don't have to live in God's worldview and the biblical worldview.

53:53

I can live over here in, you know, my own autonomous atheistic worldview. I just need to make it a little bit more like the biblical worldview.

54:00

And they start importing all these presuppositions. And of course, you end up with this amalgam, this Frankenstein monster of a worldview.

54:07

And that's our job as presuppositionalists to go in and to show the monstrosity of the worldview and the clarity, simplicity, and non -contradiction of the

54:17

Christian worldview. Right, and we're not necessarily doing that to convince Tom by any means.

54:22

There are a number of people who listen and the beauty of YouTube is that, you know, these videos have legs, they get out there and you never know who watches these things and are affected by what's said.

54:33

You can demonstrate the absurdity of something without the person admitting that you've demonstrated their position is absurd.

54:40

So I think that's an important point to keep in mind. Also this issue of presuppositions and appealing to all philosophers and all historians.

54:47

There was a comment with respect to math. Tom said something to the effect. He says, the history of math and the history of cars.

54:54

You guys spoke about, you know, cars. He says, the history of math and the history of cars is exactly the same in human history.

55:00

Like literally, it's a language invented by humans. A different point, kind of a mistype here.

55:07

He says, I don't need to justify this all known history. If you wanna disagree with it, you can disagree with all philosophers, you know, of every orientation, that's up to you.

55:19

It's interesting that when you think of philosophers, there are philosophers who debate the nature of mathematics and not all of them agree that it's simply a formal language.

55:29

You could admit that it's a formal language that has its roots in God's revelation. And so there are literally arguments that people make for better or for worse, if you agree with them or not, literally arguments based upon math, how mathematics reveals the mind of God.

55:43

Now Tom could disagree with that, but you said you're appealing to all these philosophers.

55:48

Which philosophers are you appealing to? The ones that only agree with your position? I think that was a very fascinating statement he made.

55:54

Yeah, it is. And you know, if I were to go back and do it again, I might push him a little bit more on the idea that math is not invented, math is discovered.

56:06

Yeah, that was the other thing I was thinking about. Yeah, good point. Yeah, you know, math is like logic in that sense. Math is what

56:15

I believe it fits into Kant's category of it's a synthetic a priori,

56:20

I believe. I might be wrong on that. But in other words, it's knowledge that we must arrive at but all the reasoning can be done in here.

56:31

None of it has to come from the world. I don't have to take two apples. Well, this is debatable,

56:37

I guess. My brother Parker might debate this, I don't know. But, you know, I can - And he'd win because -

56:43

He thinks he would. I, my brother

56:49

Parker, okay, shout out to my brother Parker, Parker's Pensies. If you haven't seen his channel - Another good YouTube channel. Yes, go check him out.

56:55

He's very, very smart. He's very good. But in other words, I can work math out in my mind.

57:01

Maybe I work it out on a chalkboard using symbols, right? But I don't have to have physical things in front of me. The chalkboard, that's just a way of expressing my knowledge and, you know, keeping track of all my thoughts.

57:12

But what's going on there, you know, we might say so -and -so invented calculus or geometry. It's not invented as much as it is discovered.

57:21

We're realizing the relationship between different concepts and different numbers. And we create language to categorize and talk about the thing we've discovered.

57:31

Yes, but in a lot of ways, that language is inevitable. Because, you know, the words, I'm not saying the sounds that we use or the markings that we use on the chalkboard are inevitable, but you're gonna need a symbol, a phoneme.

57:47

Maybe that's what I was trying to get at before, phoneme. I think that's the word, an element of language. You know, you're gonna need a symbol for plus, bringing two things together.

57:59

Well, you can call it schmorg if you wanted to, but you're gonna need something for plus, it's inevitable. And so math is discovered, math is not invented.

58:08

An automobile is invented. It's very different than mathematics.

58:14

That's not a good analogy. An automobile, now an automobile uses math to be sure.

58:19

It uses engineering principles. But, and chemistry, but math itself is discovered.

58:27

An automobile is not synthetic a priori, you know? Like, you're not, there's no car somewhere in the ether that I, I don't know.

58:38

I mean, I don't wanna push this too far, but it wasn't, I didn't feel like, I didn't believe it was a very good analogy. And I would have pushed him on that more.

58:44

What was interesting is he says that, he said, I don't have any presuppositions whatsoever.

58:50

My worldview starts with my experience, okay? Experience that doesn't presuppose anything.

58:56

It's just direct experience. And then I can create logic and math. Well, wait a minute.

59:02

If you're creating it, how can you create it without already using it? I mean, the very enterprise of creating and coming up with language already presupposes these categories.

59:15

And when you create logic, and for Tom, logic is simply a formal language. Then if you're simply creating a formal language, then what does that language refer to?

59:27

If it's not referring to anything in particular or something you could know nothing about because reality is just reality, you have to be presupposing certain things within that to make sense of the -

59:36

Right, well, and you know, okay, I'm gonna, I really was struggling to understand that.

59:43

I mean, like, what did he mean by that? I'm gonna, I wanna give him the benefit of the doubt.

59:48

I wanna, you know, when you're talking fast, you might say create logic.

59:53

And what you might mean is I can discover logic or I can, you know, create - Well, he said it's a formal language.

01:00:02

Yeah. You invent. Yeah, okay. So I guess, but for him, it comes back to reality is reality.

01:00:12

Right, it's just that way. Right, and it's like he doesn't understand what he thinks he's doing is, he thinks he's looking at reality, whatever reality is, this nebulous concept, all that is.

01:00:24

As if you could, first of all, as if you can look at all, he thinks reality is all that is. And he thinks he can look at that.

01:00:32

I don't know about you, Eli, I've never looked at all there is. So I just wanna throw that out there.

01:00:38

Well, I think he's saying reality is all that is. I don't think he's claiming to be able to look at all that is.

01:00:43

He just, if there is something, then that encompasses the category of reality. Right, but his, you know,

01:00:51

Van Til talks about this, or maybe it's Frame who talks about it more, but I think he's drawing on Van Til or someone else.

01:00:57

This idea of a finite mind making - Yes. A very limited mind making these sort of categorical statements about all that is, about all reality.

01:01:07

You put yourself in the place of God. So in the Christian worldview, it's impossible for God not to exist because possibility and contingency does not stand over God.

01:01:17

God defines what is possible and impossible. But for the unbeliever, the finite autonomous man, as limited as he is, he places himself in the position of God and defines possibility and impossibility.

01:01:28

Right. He does so by various appeals to maybe logical absolutes and things like that, which he cannot justify or make coherent within his own worldview perspective.

01:01:36

Yeah, and so when Tom says, I look at reality, which again, there's a whole lot loaded into that statement, but he goes,

01:01:44

I look at reality. And then from that, I get, this is how I understood his reasoning. From that,

01:01:49

I get, let's say, the law of identity. A is A. And well,

01:01:55

Tom, how do you know that A is A? Because reality is reality. What he doesn't understand is he's literally just repeating the law of identity.

01:02:04

He's just saying the word reality instead of A. So how do you know A is

01:02:09

A? Because A is A. Well, but how do you justify that? Because A is

01:02:14

A. Well, anyone can repeat the same sounds without knowing what they mean.

01:02:20

And I really wanted to give him more benefit of the doubt on that, but - I experienced it.

01:02:26

That's my experience. You did. Now here's the problem. Oh yeah, that's what he said, right, right. God exists because I just experienced

01:02:32

God. It's immediate to me just as my own existence. I experienced my own existence and the existence of God simultaneously.

01:02:39

It's just true because I, now how do we differentiate between whose perspective is correct? It's arbitrary. Unless he has a transcendental argument to justify his presupposition, which he said doesn't exist.

01:02:50

Right. And he's, again, he's making these categorical, all -encompassing universal statements about reality based on his very limited and very uncertain, he, the bedrock he thinks he's standing on, his own experience, actually just reveals how infinitesimally small, compared to the realm of possibility or whatever you consider, you know, whatever could exist, his experience is so infinitesimally small.

01:03:21

It's a vanishing point in the universe and the realm of all possible worlds because he doesn't believe in possible worlds.

01:03:28

So his experience is vanishingly small. And he's, from that standpoint, he thinks that he can have a solid footing from which to tilt, you know, he's gonna do like the

01:03:40

Archimedes thing and get a long lever and raise up the world. He thinks he's got a fulcrum point upon which to raise the entire world then to examine it.

01:03:49

And he doesn't. His fulcrum point is reality is reality. Reality is reality. That's just what it is.

01:03:54

And Bonson points this out in When Unbelievers Say, it's just that way. And then in his debate with Gordon Steins, he says, well, well, friends, let's argue along those lines.

01:04:04

If it's just that way, then God exists and it's just that way. If that's a valid, if his arbitrariness is valid, then my arbitrariness is valid.

01:04:11

And that destroys the possibility of getting anywhere in argumentation. Yeah, that's right. And this is something that was, when

01:04:18

I had my discussion with Tom, he didn't seem to understand the issue of a presupposition. He believed the presupposition was something along the lines of an axiom that by definition can't be proven, which is if you were to say that presuppositions can't be proven, all you're doing is denying the possibility of transcendental argumentation, which would vitiate against his own view because he tries to use a localized transcendental argument to demonstrate the truth of his own existence and his own experience.

01:04:46

It's literally contradictory, but. Yeah, that's good, that's good. Well, and it's just an arbitrary starting point.

01:04:53

No transcendental argument. The universe is such that no transcendental argumentation is possible.

01:04:59

Right, if you can't justify presupposition, that's equivalent to saying that their transcendental arguments aren't a thing because transcendental arguments do just that.

01:05:08

They seek to demonstrate the truth of presuppositions. Yeah, yeah, no,

01:05:14

I think that's spot on. So, all right, well, excellent. I mean, there's so much more to cover.

01:05:21

I mean, we can't cover the entire thing, but I hope folks get the gist of this discussion. Debates and discussions can be difficult to follow sometimes but when we're able to go back and kind of talk about these things and kind of unhash some of these ideas, they create a wonderful opportunity to learn.

01:05:40

And so that we can hopefully be in a better position to present our position as Christians with clarity and with a logical consistency, right?

01:05:50

Oftentimes we'll look back at what we do and we'll say, oh man, I shouldn't have said that or maybe I'll say this. I'm sure you've experienced that before but that's why these things are helpful.

01:05:59

So I hope that folks listen to the discussion that Joel had with Tom and come back and listen to kind of the, us explain some of the things we thought were issues that were worth mentioning.

01:06:12

And hopefully this is a learning experience for folks who are interested in apologetics and trying to understand these things for themselves.

01:06:20

Well, I'm going to wrap things up and I'm actually gonna open it up just in case. There doesn't look like there are any questions.

01:06:27

People are kind of listening in and that's fine. But if there are any questions and you wanna ask a question before I kind of sign off here, feel free to do that.

01:06:35

I do have a couple of, okay, there we go.

01:06:41

So I thought that was, okay, that was you private messaging me. Okay, so if there are no questions, then we'll wrap things up.

01:06:48

But what's one takeaway you would like for folks to get both from the debate and this discussion here?

01:06:56

Okay, so the one takeaway from the debate. I won't call it debate. It's a debate, but it was a debate slash discussion.

01:07:03

It wasn't a kind of a formal interaction there. Correct, that's right. And I've done formal debates, moderated debates before this was not that, which accounted for some of the talking past each other and probably not all the talking past each other.

01:07:16

But so one takeaway that I would, I'm getting an echo.

01:07:21

Are you getting an echo right now? Nope, you sound fine. Okay. One takeaway would be this.

01:07:31

So I have a relative who watched the discussion and what this person told me was that the feedback was very negative.

01:07:44

You know, she basically felt as though I didn't do a very good job.

01:07:50

It wasn't maybe winsome enough, didn't do enough convincing. Either, you know, wasn't listening enough or wasn't, but then

01:08:00

I also asked too many questions. So, you know, I don't know exactly how that works. And I asked him like, well, which one was it?

01:08:07

But the, I'm not throwing this person under the bus. Because the feedback,

01:08:13

I appreciated the feedback. But part of the reason why she gave this feedback and was not my wife, just to be clear.

01:08:21

Part of the reason she gave this feedback is that she was reading the comments on the screen.

01:08:27

And the comments were very negative for the most part. There's one person who was,

01:08:34

I think not on my team, so to speak, but was, you know, pretty respectful and like pretty engaging. I like that person.

01:08:41

But a lot of the people, they were just insulting, rude. Some of them were just very vile. And the assumption,

01:08:49

I think, underlying this feedback is if you were doing a better job, they would be more convinced.

01:08:55

They wouldn't be so antagonistic. And so a takeaway that I just want to encourage people with is this, and I've had enough conversations with atheists and non -believers to know that you sometimes get great, great discussions and people are really reasonable.

01:09:11

And I'm not throwing all atheists under the bus here. But you, more often than not, in my experience, the people, even if it's not the person you're directly talking to, the people who are watching, who are vocal, they are, they're gonna be rude.

01:09:25

They're going to be insulting. Look, you're challenging their worldview. You're challenging the edifice that they've built up to keep themselves, look, we believe the

01:09:32

Bible. So we believe God is there and he's made himself known to them. And you're challenging that edifice and you're shaking the scaffolding of their worldview and they're concerned they're gonna fall off.

01:09:43

So what are they doing? They're hurling insults at you to get you to stop so that they don't have to think about what you're saying.

01:09:50

And I'm not trying to toot my own horn that I'm some kind of great debater. All I wanna do is get people the biblical worldview.

01:09:56

What does the Bible actually say? And that is scary to people because God's word does not return to him void. So a takeaway that I wanna just encourage your viewers with is this, do not judge how you did based on the response of your interlocutor, your discussion partner, or onlookers who are vocal.

01:10:15

Instead, pray beforehand, pray during, which is difficult, but pray during, pray after and just leave the results to God.

01:10:24

It doesn't mean you don't go back and do what we're doing now and analyze and say, what could I have done differently? You're not

01:10:29

God, you're not Jesus. You're gonna make mistakes. It's important to learn from your mistakes. Study the tape after the game, if you will.

01:10:35

But don't, but let scripture be your guide in your analysis of how you did of your own performance, just as scripture is your guide in the discussion itself.

01:10:45

Sure. And let God do the work. And then a takeaway from our conversation right here, right now is, again,

01:10:51

I would just say, it's important to, it's important to prayerfully consider to test what you're doing.

01:11:03

Let me think about this. To guard your walk. You always wanna be examining your walk.

01:11:10

You always wanna be looking at your ways. You want God to be examining your heart. You wanna analyze your ways to see if you are walking with the

01:11:18

Lord faithfully. And so conversations like this, I think could be very helpful. Not because I'm concerned we're gonna lose our salvation, but Eli, you or I could both very easily go astray and we don't want to do that.

01:11:31

So I'm grateful to you for having me on so that I can examine my walk, so that I can see if I'm being faithful in the conversations

01:11:41

I'm having with outsiders. And for the same reason, I'm grateful to my family member who gave me that feedback. I'm very grateful.

01:11:48

All the feedback doesn't need to be good. It doesn't need to be bright, cheery, and puppy dogs in sunshine. I need to know how an apologetics novice is hearing how

01:11:58

I'm coming off. I need to know that. And so test yourselves to see if you'd be in the faith, but also keep a close walk on your life.

01:12:07

There it is. There's a scriptural verse in there. I'm approaching it. I'm circling the drain. You know, keep a close look at your life.

01:12:17

I'm gonna have to go look that up. But examine yourself. That's the Durag translation. He just did like a street level paraphrase.

01:12:22

That's good. That's good. All right, well, thank you for that, Joel. We have a couple of questions here.

01:12:29

Let's get to, can you pronounce that name? Augerer, Augerer. I'm so sorry.

01:12:35

Augerer. Augerer, okay, we'll go with that. Augerer says, ah, I love you brothers, but my question is never answered.

01:12:41

Okay, it is difficult to follow the questions on some of the videos, because there's a lot more questions than there are in this video.

01:12:46

And I think this person typically asks a lot of questions relating to determinism. So let's do them a solid and see if we can get -

01:12:54

I found that verse. Okay. I found that verse really quick, Eli. Go for it, go for it. 1 Timothy 4, 16.

01:13:00

Okay, what does it say? Here's what it says. Pay close attention. Oh, you know what? I probably know it in the ESV.

01:13:06

I'm gonna read the one that sounds closer to - You're so reformed. Technically, I'm not reformed.

01:13:12

I have to say that, because I've got all these reformed friends. Because I'm New Covenant theology, Eli. I believe in New Covenant theology.

01:13:19

Yeah, I'm not familiar with that. So would you identify yourself as a Calvinist? Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, just like Jesus, but I'm, you know, but I'm not reformed.

01:13:27

I'm not confessional, unless you count the 1646 First London Baptist Confession of Faith, which most confessional people don't.

01:13:38

But 1 Timothy 4, 16 says, keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.

01:13:43

Persist in this, for by doing so, you will save both yourself and your hearers. So there it is. Keep a close watch on the things that you're saying, the things that you're teaching.

01:13:51

That's what I'm trying to do. That's why I wanted to have this conversation. Okay, excellent. Well, at least now that's why

01:13:57

I'm glad we did it. Well, thank you so much. All right, well, let's do, we're gonna get to Augur's question and maybe a couple of other questions we'll see.

01:14:05

And there's some comments here that I think are interesting. Chess Army Commander says, Tom's statement, reality is reality, seems to be presupposing that there is no creator -creature distinction.

01:14:13

Yep, absolutely. Oh, I don't think so. I don't see that. I do. Well, I agree with the statement that reality is reality.

01:14:21

I agree with that. Yes, but when you take everything of what he's saying, he's presupposing autonomy.

01:14:28

He's presupposing his ability to define possibility and impossibility. So I think taken together, he's implicitly denying the creator -creature distinction,

01:14:37

I think. So, okay, so if that's your fundamental starting point upon which you're trying to base your epistemology.

01:14:44

If I could break in, I suppose taken as just that statement, I suppose not necessarily.

01:14:50

But I guess I'm thinking more holistically in terms of everything he says, just to clarify that.

01:14:56

How do you see that breaking the creator -creation distinction? That's what I said. So now that I've kind of, if we take this statement in isolation, reality is reality, then it doesn't necessarily, as a

01:15:07

Christian, I could say reality is reality. I guess I was looking at it more holistically. So taking into perspective

01:15:13

Tom's entire view, which denies that he has presuppositions, that he implicitly assumes that he can define what reality is and what possibility is.

01:15:23

He's placing himself in a position that violates what the creature is able to do. Yeah.

01:15:28

Putting himself in the position of creator. Yes. And imposing these categories upon reality as he experienced it.

01:15:34

Yes. So that's kind of where I was looking more holistically. But if you take that statement by itself, I suppose, I presuppose,

01:15:40

I suppose that, yeah, it's a good point there. Okay, so Augur asks a question here.

01:15:47

I don't know if it's a man or a woman. But he says, I have the same question as always.

01:15:53

This person seems to be very interested in the topic of determinism. They're asking, is determinism necessary or is it your position based on the

01:16:00

Bible? That's not a clear question, but necessary for what?

01:16:08

Necessary to do presuppositional apologetics? Is he saying that determinism is, is it necessary to hold to a

01:16:14

Calvinistic view of sovereignty and do presuppositional apologetics? Or is it, I'm not sure what they're asking.

01:16:20

Maybe you could formulate the question again. Yeah, I'm not sure if that means, is determinism, yeah, is it necessarily true in all possible worlds?

01:16:32

Or is it at least your position? Or is it saying, on the one hand, is it necessary? Or on the other hand, is it just your position?

01:16:41

I'm not sure what they're saying. Yeah, well, if he's just asking the bit like, just the issue of determinism, again,

01:16:48

I would say I hold to a compatibilistic form of determinism, a soft deterministic position.

01:16:55

So determinism is a philosophical category that has a bunch of nuances and it's a very complicated discussion, an important one.

01:17:02

I believe determinism is true because the idea is philosophically cogent. I think the idea can be defended better than libertarianism.

01:17:10

And I think the idea, the assertion by many libertarians, well, you were determined to say that is a terrible, is a terrible objection to determinism.

01:17:18

So if I affirm determinism and you say, well, you were just determined to believe in determinism, all you're saying is that I was determined.

01:17:26

And I would say, yeah, if determinism is true, then I was determined. The implicit assumption is that there, the implicit assumption is that, in that, is that the person who's lodging that assertion at the determinist seems to think that there is a logical incoherency between the idea of making free choices while at the same time also being in a sense determined.

01:17:48

And that's just to presuppose the truth of incompatibilism, which needs to be argued, argued in favor of.

01:17:53

I couldn't have said that better myself. That's my position too, yeah. Now, if you're asking the question within the presuppositional context, do you need to be a determinist along Calvinistic lines to do presuppositionalism?

01:18:04

This is a question that is debated. I happen to think that determinism of a

01:18:09

Calvinistic sort, compatibilistic, I think is a necessary element to presuppositionalism because it is wrapped up in God's all -encompassing decree.

01:18:18

So every item, every fact of human experience is what it is because it is following along the lines of God's eternal decree.

01:18:26

And so I would argue that there is a sense of determinism inherent within the presuppositional metaphysic and epistemology because facts are what they are because they fit in a particular relation to God's decree and God's system of thought.

01:18:40

Yeah, no, that's good. And even on the ground as we're doing apologetics and I am a firm believer that apologetics should serve our evangelism.

01:18:49

One of the things that allows us to lay our heads on our pillow, Charles Spurgeon said something like God's decree is the pillow upon which

01:18:55

I lay my head at night. As we're going out and doing - He's so good, man. I love Spurgeon. So, so good.

01:19:01

He's like a walking fortune cookie. He's got like little nuggets. Yeah, have you ever read his plain talk for plain people or something like that?

01:19:07

He's got this whole book. John, oh, it's so good. But so when we're engaging in apologetics, there's a reason why

01:19:16

I can walk away from a conversation like the one I had with Tom Jump and not be up all night wringing my hands hoping that he gets it.

01:19:23

It's because I believe that while man is morally responsible and does have the ability to make free choices based on his nature,

01:19:31

I also believe in the goodness of God and in the sovereign decree of God and that it will come to pass. You know,

01:19:36

Jesus said, you do not believe because you are not my sheep. And he also said that, you know, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day.

01:19:47

I was just reading in John six earlier today, funnily enough. And so we trust

01:19:52

God so implicitly like a child, like a toddler with his father.

01:19:59

We trust God so implicitly, so deeply. And with such a childlike, not childish faith, that, you know, that's where the determinism and compatibilism really meets the road.

01:20:13

The rubber meets the road. Is that's what allows us to be evangelistic and to not feel like we have to coerce or convince.

01:20:21

We, at the end of the day, we present God's truth to the best of our abilities and we walk away and we say,

01:20:29

Lord, your will be done. And because we believe in biblical compatibilism, we can do that.

01:20:36

Yeah. I know he's a pastor. Maybe, I don't know if you're familiar with Pastor Will Shishko.

01:20:43

Pastor Will Shishko debated James White on the topic of baptism.

01:20:49

Bill Shishko is part of the OPC. So he holds infant baptism. And of course, everyone who knows Dr. White, you know, very strongly holds to a believer's baptism position.

01:20:58

What are you? I'm sorry? What are you? That's a personal question. I know. I'm more along Baptist lines.

01:21:05

Okay. Yeah. But I have to say that that debate between Pastor Shishko and James White, I actually think

01:21:11

Pastor Shishko got the upper hand in that discussion. I mean that with great respect as I think Dr. White is an excellent debater.

01:21:17

At any rate, Pastor Shishko is a friend of mine and he was also a friend of Van Til and a friend of Dr.

01:21:24

Bonson. And so it was really cool. First time I met with him for some mentoring, he told me a bunch of cool little stories between him and, you know, walking on the campus of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia with Van Til.

01:21:36

You know, Van Til gave him a book, The Defense of the Faith, signed it. I actually have the signed copy myself somewhere in my books there.

01:21:45

And I asked Pastor Shishko, I said, if you can describe Van Til in just a phrase, you know, what is it about Van Til that stood out to you?

01:21:57

I mean, this guy's a towering intellect. He was a brilliant apologist. And he said something that was very along the lines of what you just said with respect to just trusting

01:22:05

God. He says, if I can describe Van Til in one phrase, I would describe Van Til as a child living in his father's world.

01:22:13

And I thought that was an interesting way to describe such a high profile philosophical mind that when really would push came to shove with all that philosophical, you know, sophistication that he had, when it really got down to it, an observer who was a friend which could honestly say based on their observation of the person, this person just really trusted what

01:22:35

God said. He would be walking his neighbor's children. You know, they were friends,

01:22:41

I guess. And he'd be singing gospel hymns while he was walking these little kids down the street. Kenneth Samples of Reasons to Believe told an interesting story that when he first met

01:22:51

Dr. Bonson and he wanted to ask, you know, what advice can you give me?

01:22:59

And, you know, in my ministry and apologetics, he said he was thinking he was waiting for some grand, you know, response by Dr.

01:23:07

Craig, something philosophical. And he explains that Dr. Bonson actually said, well, the number one thing you wanna keep in mind is that you don't wanna put ministry over your family.

01:23:17

And now Bonson and Van Til were both very busy individuals, yet they took very seriously the call to ministry and how we should honor

01:23:26

God and honor our families in how we do that. Now that is an immensely difficult task. And it's definitely something

01:23:32

I struggle with. I know other people struggle with it as well, but it is really encouraging to see these heroes of the faith that when you really get them in a personal moment, just you could really see where their heart was.

01:23:43

And it was really centered on doing this task of apologetics in a way that's honoring to God.

01:23:49

I just thought that was really fascinating. That's awesome. But Augur clarifies his question.

01:23:56

He says, is determinism true in all possible worlds? You wanna take a stab at that?

01:24:02

And maybe I'll share my two bits, cause I talk a lot. Oh, well, and he further clarified it in the comments below.

01:24:12

If determinism isn't true in all possible worlds, it isn't able to be proven transcendentally.

01:24:17

It could be true, but believing that would be based on the Bible or some other non -transcendental argument.

01:24:24

Man, that is a great question. I'm gonna have to defer to you, Eli, because I've never even attempted to answer that question.

01:24:31

And so I have no idea. I don't know. I'd have to think about it. For me though, if the

01:24:38

Bible, I'm tempted to say something like if the Bible teaches determinism, or at least

01:24:43

I'm hesitant to use the word determinism because determinism, it's like, I wanna get Augur, sit down and let's have a cup of coffee.

01:24:50

Let's define our terms here. Because if we're talking about a biblical compatibilism,

01:24:56

I'm tipping my hand already because I'm calling it biblical compatibilism. I do believe the

01:25:01

Bible does teach compatibilism. Man is authentically responsible for his actual choices, which are free with respect to his nature.

01:25:10

But at the same time, God's decree is absolute and will come to pass.

01:25:16

He declares the end from the beginning and everything, God does whatever he pleases.

01:25:21

And so we are morally responsible for our choices, which are authentic.

01:25:28

I believe the scripture teaches this. That being said, do I need to prove it transcendentally?

01:25:36

I don't know. I think, I don't know. You tell me. Well, let's pick something apart real quick.

01:25:45

I think it's important that when we say compatibilism is true that does not necessarily entail that we can give a metaphysical account of how that whole interaction takes place.

01:25:56

So for example, you could affirm that God is meticulously in control of all things and man is sufficiently free and just not know how metaphysically that works out.

01:26:05

As a matter of fact, I think that's the position of many of the reformed creeds. They'll affirm the meticulous sovereignty of God and the sufficient freedom of man.

01:26:14

And because the Bible doesn't talk about the metaphysics behind that, then you're free to kind of adopt a number of models that you might use to understand how that interaction plays out.

01:26:26

And so I wanna keep that in mind. Now, if determinism is true biblically, okay, then it's, if I'm of the position that determinism is an extension of God's divine decree.

01:26:38

Now, I believe that the Bible teaches that God decrees everything that comes to pass. I believe that that's a biblical concept.

01:26:44

And so I don't think it is a coherent notion that there is a possible world in which

01:26:49

God creates independent of a decree. So if there is a world in which

01:26:56

God creates, it's going to be because of his decreeing to create that particular world.

01:27:01

Now, I suppose there is a world in which God doesn't create in which he doesn't have a divine decree. So if that world is possible, then

01:27:06

I suppose determinism for creatures being determined and things like that wouldn't necessarily be the case.

01:27:13

But in any world in which God creates as a result of a decree, which is a part of an extension of his eternal plan from before the foundations of the world, you're going to have an element of determinism in there.

01:27:24

What sort of determinism? I think there's some room to navigate that. I'm not convinced of Molinism or other models that posit a libertarian form of freedom, but there might be any number of models that one could adopt to understand that very difficult philosophical puzzle.

01:27:39

Okay, hope that's helpful, Augur. Those are great questions. Thank you. Joel had to step away and that's okay.

01:27:46

I'll kind of see if I can go through some of the other questions here. Let's see here.

01:27:56

Determinism, there was a baptism question somewhere. Let me see here if I can find it. Okay, here we go.

01:28:03

So baptized by Jesus asks, why didn't Jesus ever baptize anyone in water, but yet commands it?

01:28:09

That's a great question. I don't know. When I read that question,

01:28:14

I kind of, it makes me think of the situation where, it makes me think of the situation in which the disciples and Jesus, they're talking about the issue of fasting.

01:28:25

And when the religious leaders ask Jesus, why don't your disciples fast? And he makes a mention of, the groom being with the groomsmen.

01:28:33

And when they're together, they don't need to fast, but when he leaves, then they'll fast. For some reason,

01:28:39

I draw a connection with that question and that. I mean, I suppose Jesus didn't have to baptize or maybe he could have, which does not record it.

01:28:48

There's just no, I don't know. That's a good question. Do you have any words you can say?

01:28:53

I don't even know if my answer was coherent. It is 1030 PM Eastern. And so I cannot guarantee the anything orthodox coming out of my mouth at this point.

01:29:04

Right, right. This is why we always encourage, test everything that you hear with scripture. Do not take our word for it.

01:29:11

That's right, that's right. John four two says, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples.

01:29:17

I mean, scripture does seem to be pretty clear. Jesus did not baptize, but Jesus was baptized in order to fulfill all righteousness.

01:29:25

And in his good sovereign will, he has determined together with the father and the

01:29:32

Holy Spirit, I believe, that this would be something that he would delegate to us.

01:29:38

We baptize and it's important to note too, that we are doing it in the name of the father and of the son and of the

01:29:45

Holy Spirit. It's not as, of course, name connotes nature and authority. So when we baptize, which very timely, because I just baptized two of my kids yesterday, my boys and my wife actually baptized our daughter in the church, our church allows for it.

01:30:04

And just in case there's some kind of like, hyper patriarchalist who's like, your wife baptized?

01:30:11

Yeah, show me chapter and verse where she can't. She's a believer, our church allows for it.

01:30:16

And yes, we're not egalitarian. So, and it was beautiful. Isn't it crazy that when you say these things, we live in the sort of world that you have to make a thousand qualifications.

01:30:28

You have to, you have to. Do you do that too? It's like, okay, I'm gonna get like three complaints from the left and like four from the right.

01:30:36

Which one do I tackle first? So yes, when we baptize, we're not doing it on our own authority.

01:30:44

We didn't come up with baptism. It was commanded by Jesus and we do it in the name, under the authority of the

01:30:50

Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This is why as a Baptist, I do believe it's so important that we only baptize professing believers who give a credible profession of faith and whose life and practice comport with what a believer's life and practice ought to look like as defined by scripture.

01:31:08

So there's not a hard and fast rule anywhere in scripture that says you may only do the things that Jesus did.

01:31:15

And if he commanded you to do something, but he didn't do it himself, you must not do that or something.

01:31:24

Look, Jesus commands us to repent. Jesus never repented. In fact, his

01:31:30

Jesus' very first sermon in Mark chapter one, I believe, was repent and believe the gospel. Jesus never repented, but yet he commands us to do it.

01:31:37

Well, why is that? Repenting is not the kind of thing Jesus has to do. And yet if he commands us to do it, we do it.

01:31:43

Jesus says, go stand on your head in the corner for five minutes. You go stand on the head. Thank God he doesn't say that kind of thing.

01:31:49

He's not absurd, but you do what your master tells you to do. But even if Jesus commanded that, because God is not arbitrary, if God says, go stand in a corner, there's nothing that God does that is arbitrary.

01:32:02

There's no - Thank you. And guess what? He told Ezekiel to do some really outlandish things that we would say would be outlandish, but they weren't outlandish because they were exactly what

01:32:11

God wanted to communicate to Israel at that time. That's right. So since God doesn't do anything arbitrary, if God told you to do something weird, that sounded weird, just know that childlike trust, just know that whatever reason he has for asking you to do that, it is a good reason, even though the reason may not be evident to you, right?

01:32:29

So that's that father, that's that childlike trust, that God knows what he's doing, even though we don't have a clue sometimes.

01:32:37

Amen. So, all right. Well, let's see here. I think that was the last question, was

01:32:43

Jesus' baptism for John the Baptist to complete his testimony? I'm not sure.

01:32:51

All right. Well, we're gonna wrap it up here as it's getting a little late on my end. What time? Well, it's the same time for you, right?

01:32:56

No, 9 .30 here. Oh, 9 .34. Oh, it's 10 .34 for me. I gotta prepare for a talk that I'm giving on Wednesday on the problem of evil.

01:33:04

So I need probably another cup of coffee and - And the grace of God.

01:33:10

Are you a night owl? Yes, I am a night owl.

01:33:18

Although every now and then, I did have a practice of waking up at four in the morning for a while.

01:33:24

And as difficult as it was to roll out of bed, it is probably the time that I was most productive.

01:33:30

So I love when I have two hours before I have to do anything important where it's complete and utter quiet, the entire world is asleep.

01:33:38

I find that what I do is much more efficient and I get more done.

01:33:45

So you just gotta do what you gotta do, right? With kids, you can't do it in the middle of the day. So at any rate, well,

01:33:52

I'm disappointed right now. I have, it says five likes on this video.

01:34:00

Oh, that's criminal. It's criminal. If you like this channel, click that like button, share the video, do me a solid.

01:34:08

Don't just be a silent observer. I do appreciate you guys listening in, but click those likes, man.

01:34:13

I get some really good positive feedback from people and I know people are enjoying the content. So show me some love,

01:34:19

I'd appreciate it. And show Joel some love by going over to his channel, The Think Institute and subscribe if you haven't subscribed already.

01:34:26

Are there any last things you'd like to say before we close this live stream, Joel? Yeah, I just wanna say at the heart of everything that we're talking about,

01:34:32

Eli, is the gospel of Jesus Christ. If anyone is watching and you're at all, and I'm talking either right now live or if you're watching this later on and you'd stumbled across this channel and you went down some kind of weird rabbit trail that landed you on Christian Apologetics, I just wanna say, look, you need to know that the wages of sin is death, but Jesus Christ died for sinners like you and sinners like me.

01:34:56

And that the gift of God is eternal life in him, in Jesus Christ. So you need to repent of your sins.

01:35:02

That means turn from your sin and trust in Jesus Christ. Receive him as Savior and Lord. He will not let you down.

01:35:07

He will save you and wash away your sins. And I know I can speak for Eli when

01:35:12

I say, if you have any questions about that, you wanna learn more, I know he'd be happy to hear your questions.

01:35:20

Of course, you can reach out to me as well. Go to thethink .institute .com. And I wanna give a quick shout out to my podcast,

01:35:27

The Think Podcast. I know a lot of your viewers are podcast listeners. Yes, we do have a YouTube channel. All the episodes, most of the episodes end up on the

01:35:35

YouTube channel where we have clips and apologetics, AMA clips where people ask questions. I do this biweekly

01:35:41

AMA on Discord and we have a lot of fun with that. And then I'll take those snippets and put them up on YouTube.

01:35:48

But no, listen, there's a lot of great channels out there to learn and grow. And may your apologetics serve your evangelism.

01:35:58

Amen. Well, thank you so much, Joel. And thank you everyone else for listening and sending in your questions and being respectful in the comments.

01:36:04

I really do appreciate that. I have to say for the most part, our comment section is pretty nice.

01:36:10

For the most part. For the most part, yeah. And I really appreciate that. So, oh, okay.

01:36:16

I think there's one more question. Since we didn't get a lot of questions, I will allow this one.

01:36:22

I don't know if I understand it though. Is it when I don't get to a question, there's always that person, you skipped my question.

01:36:28

Yeah. One guy just messaged me on one of my videos. He says, you're avoiding my question.

01:36:33

Dude, number one, I don't read every single comment. And when someone asks a question in kind of a disrespectful way,

01:36:42

I don't really pay attention to it. So that's not this question here. But as Mr. C asks, are mind and body worthy of trust?

01:36:49

I'm not really sure what that means, but I wanted to put it up on the screen there so that Mr. C doesn't think we're avoiding his question.

01:36:58

Are mind and body worthy of trust? Well, mind and body comprises a human being.

01:37:07

And if human beings are comprised of mind and body, then I think there's a certain degree of trust.

01:37:13

It just really depends on what you mean. That question needs a little bit more fleshing out. Do you have any thoughts on that,

01:37:18

Joel? When I think mind and body worthy of trust, I think mind, that's your reasoning.

01:37:25

Body, that's your five senses. So I'm thinking in terms of, if we're talking epistemology, maybe we're talking about rationalism and empiricism.

01:37:32

Maybe I'm reading way too much into this. You know, maybe we're talking about the mind -body distinction. Here's what

01:37:40

I'll say to - You're such a philosopher, Joel. I didn't think that at all, but now that you - Well, here's what

01:37:47

I'd say. If you want the answers to either of those interpretations or Eli's interpretation, or whether there's some fourth interpretation, we're just not getting -

01:37:56

It's the allegorical interpretation. This is a question that issues from the Alexandrian school interpretation.

01:38:04

It's, someone was saying earlier about like analytical versus continental or whatever.

01:38:10

But the answer to your question has to be, go to scripture first.

01:38:17

What does the Bible say about the mind? What does it say about the body? What does it say about our five senses? The Bible is clear that we do have reason and reason is, in a perfect world, in an unfallen world, highly reliable.

01:38:30

The Bible also says that we suppress the truth in unrighteousness. And apart from a reconciled relationship and a reconciled mind, keep in mind in scripture, the mind is often called the heart.

01:38:42

And Jesus said, I will take out your heart of stone. Can't do much thinking with a heart of stone. And I will give you a heart of flesh.

01:38:48

So apart from that process, mind is reliable, but it's reliably devious, according to Jeremiah.

01:38:58

So, ooh, a little twist there. I like what you did there. It is reliable, reliably evil. Yeah. Which is not to say that it will only ever produce false statements.

01:39:09

Not even Satan lies 100 % all the time. He mixes in truth with his falsehood.

01:39:15

And if we are unregenerate, that is exactly the kind of statement that our heart is going to be coming up with.

01:39:22

And so, and the same with our five senses, because our five senses have to be interpreted through our reasoning.

01:39:27

And I just, my kids were watching a video yesterday where it was a National Geographic video, and you're supposed to count how many times these jump ropers jumped rope.

01:39:37

And then afterwards, the host comes out and goes, while you were watching those people jumping rope,

01:39:44

I bet you didn't notice the man in a chicken suit walking through the background. And then they replay it, and sure enough, there's this guy traipsing through in a chicken suit.

01:39:53

And the idea was this, you can only focus on so much at any given time. And if your mind is focused on a jump roper, you miss crazy things like chicken suit people.

01:40:04

Here's my point in saying that, is that your senses aren't always reliable to take in all the relevant information in any given scene.

01:40:12

And even if they do take it in, your reasoning might not catch it and interpret it rightly, which is why we need to go to scripture, not only for our answer as to whether or not mind and body are reliable, but also as an undefeatable, infallible, inerrant standard by which we judge the deliverances of our reasoning and our five senses.

01:40:36

And by the way, our intuition as well. Any other epistemological intake that we might want to turn to has to be interpreted by scripture.

01:40:44

Scripture makes our intuition, our reason, and our empirical senses fit together.

01:40:51

Man, I probably went way off. I mean, I don't know. I maybe, I feel like - I feel like I -

01:40:56

If that's what he meant, you answered it. I feel like I walked up to the T -ball with a, like Babe Ruth walking up to a

01:41:05

T -ball game and just took the T and chucked it out to the outfield and started throwing the water cooler around.

01:41:13

It's too late for me to be having these conversations. It's all right. And you know what? It's not your fault. If you have a question, make sure you clearly ask your questions so that it's not ambiguous.

01:41:24

Otherwise we'd have to give multiple answers to the question, lest we'd be - Clearly that doesn't turn out well.

01:41:30

That's right, that's right. Well, thank you so much, Joel. And thank you so much to everyone else for listening. I really do appreciate all of the support and the subscribers and the super chats and the clicks, the likes, all those ways that you support.

01:41:44

I really do appreciate that. And until this Wednesday, we're going to have Anthony Rogers talk about the philosophical problem of the one in the many.

01:41:51

Bring your thinking cap and bring your questions. Thank you so much. God bless. And that's all for this episode of Revealed Apologetics.