Classical vs Presuppositional Apologetics: Bahnsen vs. Sproul - Round #1

Well, I am Eli, as Anthony said, and I'm happy to be here. I'm always excited to be able to share, like, anything relating to apologetics to people, because where I am, like at my church or just my experience, apologetics is like this weird thing you do out there that's not really a big deal.

Until you encounter a Jehovah's Witness or an atheist and you don't know how to answer them, you'll be like, man, I wish there were resources that I could have. So I'm just like, ooh, ooh, ooh. So as you guys know, it is very important to be able to defend your faith, and so that's something that's very important to me.

So I'm primarily a teacher. I love to teach. I work with middle school students, that rare breed of human beings that they just never run out of energy, and they're very, very emotional and, you know, crazy.

But I love that age group. There is a vibrancy and a passion about that age group that I find very addicting to be around. I like that energy. And I teach Bible, and I teach logic, and I kind of throw in some apologetics in there as well.

So I was very convinced very early on that apologetics, even technical language that we often use, can be taught to anyone. I remember working child care. We had this program called Morning Care and After Care, and I would come before school started.

For two hours and a half, we would watch these kids from kindergarten to fifth grade, and we'd help them with their homework. We'd play games with them, all these sorts of things, and I learned a lot from observing little kids.

There was this one kid. His name was Sam. He was a little, small, little pipsqueak, and he was actually smaller than the rest of the kids in his grade. I don't know if it was like some condition that he had.

He was very small, but he would always walk around with this giant encyclopedia, and I'm just this little kid carrying this book around, and I learned what the book was. It was a Pokémon encyclopedia, and if you know anything about Pokémon, you're a nerd, and that's okay.

Pokémon is a cartoon. It's a Japanese anime cartoon. It has these little creatures that they fight each other, and they evolve, and they get different abilities and stuff, but the names of some of the creatures are actually pretty hard to pronounce because they come kind of like a Japanese culture, and this kid knew this encyclopedia inside and out.

He knew what a Pikachu was. He knew that a Pikachu evolves into a Raichu, and then their powers evolve, and I was like, wow, this kid knows these weird names and the definitions of these things, and I remember standing there once listening to this kid talk about all this stuff with another kid.

I'm like, why is it that in churches we hide our theology and our apologetics because we think the terms are too fancy or the concepts are too difficult, and here's this kid pontificating from a Pokémon encyclopedia, perfectly pronouncing the words and getting his point across, and so that convinced me that it doesn't matter how, and this kid was in third grade, it doesn't matter how young you are or how old you are or whatever.

We are able to learn concepts, be familiar with the vocabulary. We all learn vocabulary, right? Everyone at one point, you weren't fluent in Christianese, and now when you come to church on Sunday, God bless you, brother, by God's grace, and you can talk about justification and sanctification.

We learn, right? And so that's something that needs to be a part of the culture of the people of God. We need to be able to learn, to adapt, and to apply the things that we learn, and it doesn't matter how young you are.

So that was very influential for me. This little kid impacted me to teach theology and apologetics to any young person that would listen to me, and so I tried my best to, and I continue to try my best to define my terms and define concepts and try to make practical applications.

So that's one of the reasons why I do what I do, and so more specifically, though, I do a particular flavor of apologetics known as presuppositional apologetics, okay? And just to not get overly complicated, people ask me all the time, what is the difference between, say, a presuppositional method of defending the faith and, say, some of the more traditional ways of defending the faith?

And the easiest and best way to define the difference for me is that other approaches that typically don't come from a Reformed context, although sometimes it does, you have classical apologetics, evidential apologetics, and these methods of defense tend to be bottom-up approaches.

In other words, you start at the bottom and you work your way up to the conclusion, therefore God exists. Whereas presuppositional apologetics, or I would argue a biblical apologetics, or as I've named my ministry, revealed apologetics, an apologetic that is given to us in Scripture, I define presuppositional apologetics as a top-down approach.

It's not a bottom-up approach. We're not working our way up to a conclusion, God exists. Rather, we're starting from the top, that unless you start with God and His revelation, you couldn't make sense out of anything.

In other words, God is the light that enlightens and gives meaning to everything else. You cannot find God with your limited finite flashlight and say, look, I found Him. God is the light that gives meaning to everything else.

As the psalm says, in His light we see light. Without the light of God, you do not see anything clearly as it is, independent of a revelation of God. The presuppositional approach is just an overly technical way of explaining what I would call a biblical approach, where we start with the authority of God and we see the world through God's revelation.

Revelation is the lens through which we look and interpret the world around us. That's very important. Now, there are debates. Christians debate each other over what's the proper way of doing apologetics, and it can get complicated in these debates, but I want to encourage you, I like the way people do apologetics better than how they don't do apologetics.

In other words, if you're not a presuppositionalist or you don't care about these discussions in method, I think they're very important and we should care about them. But suppose your context is people are just coming to you and you're trying to share your faith.

I would rather you just speak and share and engage than not do it at all, because I think people can debate how we are to do it for so long that they don't actually get out and do it. I went to seminary.

I got two master's degrees in seminary, so I'm in loads of debt. My wife married me and my debt. And I learned something very important from seminary. And I'm not down on seminaries. If I could go back, I would go back.

But what I learned in seminary is that I didn't have to go to seminary to actually learn a lot of what I do now. You don't need to have a fancy education to defend the faith, because the command to defend the faith, which we're given in 1 Peter 3 .15 and Jude 1, where to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered, the authors of Scripture are commanding those things to the average person who didn't have a formal education.

The reason why formal education is important these days, especially as we're trying to engage the world intellectually, is that I think it's important to interact with the intellectual elite on their level.

In other words, just as I must learn the language of the man on the street to engage the man on the street, in like fashion, we sometimes need to learn the language of the intellectuals to engage the intellectuals.

And so you might have to, depending on your sphere of influence, you might have to learn a little bit of philosophy, a little bit of science and biology, and interact with evolutionary ideas and things like that.

So the point is that we want to flourish and grow where God has planted us. And so a very important word that I like to talk about when I talk about apologetics is the word contextualization. Put whatever you're about to learn in the context of where God has placed you and learn how to make application.

And it's going to be different for a lot of people depending on your context. So with that said, there was a very interesting debate years ago between two juggernauts of the Christian faith. They were brothers.

They were fellow Reformed brothers. One, a Presbyterian baby dipper. Well, actually, both Presbyterian baby dippers in this case. Two Presbyterians. I'm Baptist in my theological perspective. I was thinking of someone else when I said that.

But Greg Bonson and R .C. Sproul were two Presbyterians, noted Reformed theologians and apologists, who, interestingly enough, differed on their apologetic method. And they had a very interesting discussion some years back, a long, long time ago.

And this particular interaction that they had was very useful to me as I was studying the various criticisms that people often give against the presuppositional approach. You have the criticism that comes from unbelievers, and then you have criticisms of the presuppositional approach that come from other believers.

This is very important because our apologetic, what we do in apologetics, is going to grow out of our theological convictions. Your apologetic is connected to your theology. And both of these individuals, R .C. Sproul and Greg Bonson, believed that was the case, but they disagreed as to who was understanding the soil out of which their apologetic grew.

And so out of that, they had some disagreements. And so I kind of prepared these slides to help myself understand what those disagreements were between the two of these and then, of course, use this as a foundation to kind of explain to others what are some of these important differences in apologetic methodology within the Reformed tradition, and why are they helpful to the average person as we are seeking to be consistent in our method of defending the faith.

Does that make sense? Am I moving too quickly? Okay, good, good.

You're fine!

The other person's like,.

Can you slow down, please? What was your name?

My name's Eli, if you didn't follow that part. So I want to explore a little bit of this discussion between Greg Bonson and R .C. Sproul. Everyone know who R .C. Sproul is? That's like a blasphemy, if you don't, of being Reformed, right?

That's like the two unforgivable sins, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit and not knowing who R .C. Sproul is. That's in the Second Hesitations, Chapter 4. Okay, so R .C. Sproul, Reformed, but he is a very, very well-known classical apologist.

Now, I use language, classical. What does this mean? The classical method of apologetics uses what I like to call a one-two punch to the unbeliever. In classical apologetics, you think apologetics like martial arts, right?

I love martial arts. I grew up watching karate movies and things like that. I don't even know how I could speak well because I grew up with a Hispanic father who doesn't speak very good English, and I grew up watching dubbed Asian movies.

It's a miracle. Give me evidence for God's existence. Check this out, you know? But apologetics can be seen as kind of like a style of fighting. I can use judo and throw you to the ground. I could master the art of grappling.

I could master the art of, you know, whatever the case may be. Apologetics is kind of like that because it is an approach of defense and attack in terms of intellectual ideas, right? But there are different approaches and philosophies we can use, okay?

The classical approach does a one-two punch. The first punch is to demonstrate the existence of a god. So it's arguments for theism, okay? And they typically come traditionally throughout the history of philosophy and theology.

They typically come in the form of these various arguments which are known as the traditional proofs for God's existence. And they're called classical because classically people have used these arguments to demonstrate the existence of God.

And they come in the form of the cosmological argument, okay? There are many forms of cosmological arguments. A famous one is known as the Kalam cosmological argument. It goes like this. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause. Thank you very much, okay? And so you try to demonstrate through this argument. It's put in what we call deductive form. So you have a premise, a premise, and a conclusion that follows logically.

Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause. And then there's some more analysis being done as to why the cause is a transcendent being who brings the universe into existence, okay?

So you have the cosmological argument. You have the teleological argument, argument from design and purpose showing that there is a God or there most likely is a God or there is a high probability that there is a God that has designed the universe or the complexity of the human body or anything like along those lines, okay?

Big fancy words, but they actually mean something very simple. God is the cause of all things, cosmological. God is the designer of all things, teleological. Then you have the moral argument. God is the grounding and foundation for objective moral values and duties.

What is it for something to be good objectively without the existence of a God who holds us accountable for what we do, right? If God does not exist, then who's to say what's right and wrong? It can be your opinion versus his opinion, okay?

So you have the moral argument. You have all sorts of arguments, and these arguments are used to prove what we call a general theism, that a God exists. And the God that's proved by these arguments is not filled with enough content to conclude it's the Christian God.

That comes in the classical method, the second punch. So you prove the existence of God, most likely with high probability, okay? And then the second punch is appealing to the historical facts surrounding the resurrection of Jesus to show that if Jesus most likely existed based upon the historical data we have, you link that together with the strength of the rational arguments for the existence of God, and you have a pretty good case that there is a God, and this God most likely is the one that raised Jesus from the dead, therefore Christianity's true.

That is the classical approach, okay? That's the bottom-up approach, right? And this is the approach that Sproul would typically be more sympathetic to. Now, R .C. Sproul, as a classical apologist, shared his concerns about presuppositional apologetics, and his concerns are wrapped up in very common misunderstandings of the method, and so we'll talk a little bit about that.

So in his debate with Greg Bonson, here are the concerns that he voiced in that discussion. I'm not going to go through all of them, but I'm going to go through a few of them that I think are important.

First, he says he's concerned about what he calls the loss of natural law as a cohesive force in society. He's concerned about the intellectual credibility of Christianity. In other words, he thinks that the presuppositional approach, which is grounded on the authority of God's Word, will underestimate the capability of the mind.

In other words, if we're asserting on God's authority that you need God in order to do all these other things, right, then that seems to think that we're undermining the ability of man's mind to come and draw conclusions about God, and so that was one of his concerns.

He also had a concern of the loss of the purity of Calvinism, which he saw involved an intrusion, and I'll explain this, of neo-orthodoxy and Calvinist methodology. Now, that sounds, you know, like I'm talking another language, but it's actually very important to highlight this point here.

Greg Bonson and R .C. Sproul were ardent Calvinists, okay? You have to understand that the Calvinism of Bonson and R .C. Sproul were central to their understanding of their apologetics, okay? This is super important, and it's not just for apologetics.

If I wasn't talking about apologetics, I would still say this is important, especially as Calvinist Reformed Christians who are conscious of the fact that theology is important. You must understand that your Calvinism, your Reformed theology, how you define it within the theological tradition that you stand, everything else grows out of that, as your theology should be rooted in the Word of God, right?

Everything that grows out of that is connected to that foundation. You cannot separate them. Why am I a presuppositionalist? Because I'm a Calvinist. I think that presuppologetic is a consistent application of my Reformed theology that is rooted in Scripture.

It's consistent, okay? I do not cut those links. They are so connected. It's so important. And this is the beauty of biblical truth, A, and this is why it's important that Calvinism is important as a system.

We see our beliefs as a system. We do not cut things apart, okay? Very important. So Sproul was concerned that to adopt a presuppositional approach was to allow what he calls a neo-Orthodox intrusion into the Reformed faith.

Now, I don't want to give a history on neo-Orthodoxy, but if you look at my slides here, a feature of what was called neo-Orthodox theology and philosophy was a perspective known as fideism or faithism.

Fideism refers to belief, but it is the basis upon why you believe anything. Why do I believe the Bible's true? I just have faith. How many people have heard that? I just believe, right? That's fideism.

Fideism does not seek to give a justification or reason for belief. It embraces the thing being believed almost just without grounds. And so because the presuppositional approach argues from the authority of God, Dr. Sproul was concerned that that comes across as fideistic.

We're not giving reasons for our faith. We're just asserting that our faith is true on the authority of God. How do we know that God exists? Are we just going to take the presuppositionalist word, God exists and you can't make sense out of anything?

Okay, well, I don't believe that. And then Dr. Sproul would say, well, where do you go from there? You can't defend the faith by simply asserting the authority of Scripture and saying no one can make sense out of anything without God and not be able to demonstrate that that's actually true.

Dr. Sproul thought that reduced to fideism. You're just believing it and that's it, and you're demanding that everyone believe your assertions that you're making about God. And so this is one of the many reasons why Sproul had concerns about the presuppositional approach.

And he also shared concerns of the intimidation of Christians, Christians under intellectual assault in the culture. In other words, if we want to equip believers, we need to give them arguments and justifications for what they believe, not just bare authority assertions that it looks like presuppositionalism is teaching, that you need God and that's it, you believe it, and that's all there is to it.

These were some of the concerns that Dr. Sproul had. He was also concerned that presuppositional methodology will lead us into what he called a Christian ghetto. If we speak authoritatively about God and we say you can't make sense out of anything without God, then people will stop listening to you.

And we will sound really cool and sanctimonious as we talk amongst ourselves while we're not making an impact in the culture. Because if you disagree with us, well, that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says yada, yada, yada, yada, and that's it.

You need to accept it. Fideism, right? This was a concern. By the way, these are all valid concerns. The problem is I think they come from a position of misunderstanding of the presuppositional approach.

Are you guys following so far? If you're lost, please just make a sign with your hand or a face of confusion so I'll slow down and repeat something. Now, what about Bonson? Dr. Bonson, in his discussion with R .C. Sproul, explained what apologetics was from his perspective.

We're going to go through each of these. Number one, Dr. Bonson, from the presuppositional perspective, said that apologetics is not mere persuasion. Now, this is important. When I want to persuade someone of something, I think that it is valid to try to convince them.

I want to give reasons. Now, this is important because if the presuppositional perspective cares about persuasion, then it's going to care about argumentation. And if we're going to give argumentation for our view, then that is an attempt to justify our view, correct?

But if we're seeking to justify our view, then our view isn't fideism. It's not the, well, you're just believing it based upon the authority of Scripture. No, we want to argue for the truth of Scripture, for the truth of the Christian worldview.

But it's not mere persuasion, all right? As Christians, we want to avoid the temptation of using bad arguments. How many people know that you can give a bad argument but still be very persuasive? Many of us can be persuaded by bad arguments.

And just because a bad argument pragmatically is useful, if I say this, I know because I know my friend, you know, his reasons that he gives. If I use this bad argument, he still might find it convincing.

Maybe he will be convinced. Maybe the Lord will strike a blow with a crooked stick with your bad argument. Glory to God, right? But should we do that ethically as Christians? If we know the things we're saying to the unbeliever, whether it's a friend or a family member, if we know it's not a good argument, and we should honor Christ in the way that we interact with our unbelieving friends, is it right for us to continue to use bad arguments simply because they might be rhetorically persuasive, right?

We shouldn't, okay? So we want to avoid the temptation of using bad arguments. Apologetics is not merely dealing with probabilities. This is a very important distinction between, say, a classical method which tries to prove the high probability of God's existence or to argue that the Christian worldview is the most rational position.

Notice that's not the same as saying it's true or it's necessarily true. Out of all the options, Christianity is the best, right? Does that mean it's true? Not necessarily, right? So we're not dealing with mere probabilities.

As a matter of fact, if our fire apologetic is flowing from the foundations of Scripture, when you read the Bible, do you get any impression that the God of which the Bible is speaking is a God who probably exists?

Or a God who may or may not be revealing himself or has revealed himself? I don't know about you, but when I read the story of Elijah calling fire down from heaven, I'm like, yeah, that God exists. Elijah's not, hmm, what rational arguments can I use to assess why the fire doesn't?

No, the Bible assumes God's existence and says you're foolish if you deny what is obvious. Not just what is obvious in the created order, the heavens declare the glory of God, but what is obvious within your own self.

The Bible says that we all have a knowledge of God, okay? One person said it this way when he read Romans chapter 1. I don't know it off the top of my head, but the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

For what can be known about God, check this out, has been made known to them, check this out, not because they observed and came to a conclusion, but because God has made it known to them. It is God who assures that we have a knowledge of who he is, such that we are literally unapologetus, without an apologetic.

So there is an inescapable evidence of God round about us, there's inescapable evidence of God within us, and we have a knowledge of God that is being suppressed according to scripture. And so one person put it this way, if this verse is true, we're reading Romans chapter 1 verses 18 through 21, if that's true and it says all men know that God exists, then what sort of evidence would we need to prove to someone of the God they know exists?

You see the issue here? Well, I don't know if God exists. Now, from a Christian, we're in the horns of a dilemma. Do I believe what the unbeliever says about himself? I don't know this God. Or do I believe what God says about everyone?

Everyone has a knowledge of who I am. That knowledge might be suppressed. The person might be self-deceived. You might not want to believe your friend being, I mean, it's like, oh, that's so obnoxious.

You're saying I'm self-deceiving. What if you're self-deceiving?

If the Bible is true and I'm a Christian, then the Bible gives me a divine commentary on the nature of the heart of the unbeliever, whether he affirms it or not. And so this is an issue of consistency.

When I engage the unbeliever, am I giving evidence to an otherwise ignorant person or am I seeking to remove the mask of self-deception and showing this person knows the God of whom I'm speaking? That's important because the way you answer that question, what should I do, is going to show whether you are consistent with your biblical convictions.

It's interesting. The Bible says all men know that God exists, but then we talk to the unbelievers as though they don't know. And all they need is more information. Read this book. Check this out. Once you see this evidence, you're going to believe it.

It's not about that. Very interesting because evidence is interpreted in light of our worldview. And if the person's worldview is not changing, then they're not going to interpret the evidence correctly.

So the Bible speaks also of a certainty. When we speak of, you know, is it reasonable to believe in God? These are names of debates, you know, debate propositions. Is it reasonable to believe in God? You know, almost like it's reasonable.

It's not certain, but it's reasonable. We're more reasonable, right? It's highly likely that Jesus was raised from the dead. When you read the Scriptures, is that the language we have in Scripture? Dr. Bonson pointed out, he says that we could know without a doubt whatsoever that the Lord Jesus is the Christ.

The Gospel comes so that we may know with certainty.

Okay?

The Bible speaks of a perfect faith, not marred by any doubt. And he speaks about Abraham's certain faith and gives a list of examples of the certainty of faith that we have. In Ephesians 3, Paul says that we could have confidence.

The Bible uses certain language, whereas philosophy uses language of rationality. It's more plausible. It's highly probable.

Okay?

And this is kind of the distinction between Bonson and Sproul specifically and the presuppositional approach and the classical approach more broadly. It's interesting that Dr. Sproul accused Dr. Bonson of fideism.

We just believe. Yet, it is Dr. Bonson's argument that seeks to give us 100 certainty that God exists, and it's R .C. Sproul's arguments that try to give us high probability. It's very interesting. That's why Dr. Bonson in the discussion with Dr. Sproul says, you accuse us of fideism.

The word fideism shouldn't even be mentioned in this room because my argument is seeking full certainty, whereas the very nature of your arguments can never get you that. So I'm actually making the stronger claim that we could know, where you're giving the claim we can be highly probably certain.

See the difference?

Okay?

Very important to understand that distinction. So for Bonson, he says it's wrong to think that certainty in relation to epistemological matters, epistemology deals with one's theory of knowledge. So, like, how do we know what we know?

And he says that it's wrong for us to think that certainty in relation to epistemological matters is limited to logic and formal mathematics. Full certainty, full confidence pertains to matters of the Christian faith.

In other words, you'll often hear philosophers say, you want certainty? Well, you don't get certainty. Certainty only comes in logic and mathematics.

Okay?

Bonson says it is wrong for us to think that those are the only two areas where we can get certainty. That's why he says full certainty, full confidence pertains to matters of the Christian faith. You want confidence?

You want certainty? That is not unrelated to Christianity, because it is only Christianity that can give you the sort of certainty that many philosophers are looking for, if they only submit to the sort of authority that Christianity teaches, right?

Only by submitting to God's authority will we be on a firm enough foundation to have certainty about anything whatsoever.

Okay?

Very important. So, Bonson is often accused of circular reasoning, and presuppositionalists are often accused of circular reasoning.

Why?

What's circular reasoning? Circular reasoning deals with assuming the truth of the very thing you're trying to prove.

Right?

God exists.

Why?

Because he exists.

Well, why?

Because he exists. Like, well, you can't do that in logic.

Okay?

You can't assume the thing you're trying to prove. And that is true in most cases, except when you are dealing with one's ultimate foundation.

Okay?

This is the claim. Presuppositional apologetics is bad because it is based upon circular reasoning. You have to assume God to prove God?

Why?

You can't do that. You have to prove it to me. And Bonson points out, this is very important, that all chains of argumentation, and I'll explain this, will trace back to starting points which are taken as self-evident.

Circularity at this foundational point will be unavoidable. If I were to say, well, why do you believe A over here? Well, I believe A because of reason B over here. Well, then, how do you know reason B is true?

Well, reason B is true because reason C. Well, how do you know reason C is true? Oh, it's easy, because reason D. Now, you either have a stopping point that is a foundation for all the other things you've asserted that you believe are true, or you go back to infinity.

Right? And if you go back to infinity, have you justified or proven the truth of the thing you started with?

No.

Right? You have to have some starting point. For the Christian, and I don't know why Dr. Sproul didn't understand this, for the Christian, who can be the only starting point?

Who?

I mean, when I used to talk like this, I swear to God I'm not lying, or I swear to God I'll pay you back, and we swear to God to ensure the truth of the promise we're trying to make. When God swears, he swears by himself.

So when I swear, I swear on my mother's grave, I swear. We often have to swear by things higher than ourselves. But when God swears, he swears by myself. Because there's literally no one and nothing higher than him.

Which is just a roundabout way of saying God is ultimate. He's the ultimate. But if he's ultimate, then can I appeal to something above and more authoritative than God to demonstrate the truth of God?

No.

Well, how do you know God exists? Well, because of this thing over here. Now the thing you've appealed to over here is Lord over God and determines whether we should believe him or not. But if God is the ultimate, the Christian answer should be, why do you believe God exists?

Because he's revealed himself. Well, that doesn't cut it. I don't believe it. It's like, you don't have to believe it. But here's the presuppositional approach, ready? I don't just stop there. You have to, it doesn't matter if you don't believe it.

If you do not have confidence in the God who says you know exists, you can't prove anything.

Oh, that's ridiculous.

I prove things all the time.

Ooh.

So let's play a game. Prove to me and then fill in the blank.

Okay?

Prove to me anything. Well, I can prove to you that there's a chair over there. Ah, so show me there's a chair over there. Well, I could observe it. Ah, observation. So observation's reliable.

Hmm?

Well, of course.

I see the chair in front of me. How do we know our observation is reliable? By the way, you don't like when I assume the thing I'm trying to prove, so prove to me that observation is reliable without using observation.

Right?

Here's the blindfold. Here, we'll play a game. Oh, this is ridiculous. Ah, so you could assume the truth of the reliability of your observation, and that's fine. But you're telling me that I can't assume the reliability of a God who's revealed himself.

You see the double standard there? Right? And this is the reason why we need to understand the nature of ultimate foundations. If you don't want God as your ultimate foundation, guess what? You have something else as your ultimate foundation that is self-evident to you.

For many atheists, it's my senses. Well, it's just obvious that there's a chair in there. By the way, throughout the history of philosophy, no, it's not obvious that there's a chair. There are people who say we can't even prove that there's an external world outside myself.

Okay?

There are people who argue that it's impossible to know that there are other minds that exist other than myself. Maybe I'm the only one that exists, and all of you are figments of my imagination. You might laugh, but that's called solipsism.

It's a literal philosophical position.

Okay?

How do you know that that's not the case? Well, that's just ridiculous.

Okay.

So then how do you know? It's so silly. Waving your hand and saying something silly because you can't answer it doesn't magically make the problem go away.

Right?

And same thing for the Christian. If we say unbelief is silly, you can't just wave your hand and say, I'm a presuppositionalist. I'm a fool. The fool says it. You need to actually engage the discussion.