Presuppositional Apologetics Crash Course Part 3

Tonight's going to be the fun part. The last two weeks going into some philosophy and theology rather deep and Understanding why we do things the way we do it.

Why do we well why we do presuppositional apologetics? How come that works?

How come the other? Systems are not right and now we get to apply some of that So we did a little bit of that last week, but we're gonna get into it more

So the transcendental argument we've been talking about I've been mentioning this at least for the last

Two weeks and it's just goes like this the proof for God's existence. Is that without him you couldn't prove anything

So let that soak in a little bit If you haven't heard that before if you weren't here the proof for God's existence

Is that without him you couldn't prove anything the definition?

Here's a more involved definition tag or the the transcendental argument for God's existence goes like this

The proof for God's existence is that without him you couldn't prove anything What this argument is trying to convey is actually rather simple though The implications of this truth can get deep to understand any fact facet point of view evidence truth claim piece of knowledge, etc

One must presuppose the God of the Bible without him life is meaningless either There is no foundation for intelligibility or that foundation is a faulty one

In order to utilize this argument in an effective way, we must learn that don't answer answer methods.

I'm gonna stop right there Are there any questions from everything?

I don't know if during the week you you might have thought of something we talked about last week or the week before because everything converges right here and If there's still any any questions,

I want to be able to try to answer them before we go forward and start applying it Good just to clarify that evidence is okay, but it's for believers, right?

It's not to make an argument for the unbeliever. Yeah, we yeah, we talked a little bit about that the first week so two weeks ago and What we said was that?

Evidence is is valid. It's right. God gives it to us, right? Miracles are

Attestations to God's truth and he always uses them as signs to point to him So evidence is something clearly from God.

Every truth is God's truth The thing is though people will interpret the evidence based on their worldview

So if I have a piece of evidence to give you an example We talked about evolution last time if I looked at a rock, it's not gonna tell me how old it is

Right. It doesn't have a sign on it saying that well, it's a piece of evidence You know and it can certainly tell us things we can get gather information from that rock

But it's not going to tell us exactly how old it is When we bring our presuppositions to analyzing that rock for instance

Let's say we believe that carbon -14 dating is a valid method and we believe the rates of carbon -14 are constant

Well, that's going to give us perhaps an old age for the rock But in a creation worldview, we don't believe those rates should be constant because there was this thing called a flood

So the evolutionist can come to a conclusion on it and the creationist can come to a conclusion on it and there are two different Conclusions and it's not because the evidence change is because the worldview examining that evidence was different we talked about the resurrection of Jesus Christ a

Christian is going to look at all the evidence and say this Supports the idea that there was a man named

Jesus who died and then rose from the dead There's 500 witnesses reported in the four Gospels and all these men went, you know

Disciples went to their death with this belief and it just seems improbable That someone would go to to die for something that they believed to be a lie, right?

It doesn't make sense. Now. These are these are good arguments in a sense But what happens is someone who is a secularist or someone perhaps who believes that only the material world is what?

Exists there are naturalists. They're gonna interpret that data differently. They're gonna say well Strange things happen.

Maybe maybe he never really did die maybe now that could be improbable, but they're gonna create some kind of a rescuing device to say that naturalism still can interpret this fact and You know these people could have been deceived

Jesus was a great mastermind at doing really cool -looking tricks and he faked his death or they'll come up with something

And they're not gonna accept the Christian worldview necessarily just because you bring a piece of evidence So that's why evidence is good and and we can certainly talk about it within Christianity within People that have the same worldview they can enter because they're gonna interpret it the same way

But when we go to unbelievers, we at least have to recognize that they're gonna have a different lens on so the way that we can use evidence with unbelievers is

By pointing out that their worldview cannot account for it So if to take the example of the resurrection of Jesus Christ I think there is a way that we can talk about that with an unbeliever

We can we can point to all the things that I just mentioned we can say 12 men went to their death one got exiled and They they didn't have to it was unnecessary if they believe this to be a lie

Now the secularists can then come and say well I don't I believe that they could have been deceived and there's this thing called

You know group deception where you're you're in a group and you all get hyped up on something and they think they saw something But they really didn't now what you can point out at that point is that well

You know, you're having to make a lot of excuses you're having to kind of do some gymnastics to get around this

But we're not really gonna go any farther than that. It doesn't prove Christianity in a sense It's not gonna make a huge case that is gonna dismantle their worldview

But what it will do is give them food for thought there because they're gonna go home and they're gonna think You know what?

Maybe my worldview has some holes in it It can't really interpret the data in it in the the best way

The Christian seems to be able to interpret it in a much simpler way, which makes more sense But it's not going to crash their worldview

What does crash their worldview is when we go to the unbeliever and we talk about the preconditions of intelligibility, right?

morality and truth and the laws of logic and all the things that he relies on on a daily basis by which to interpret those

Facts so to take the resurrection argument again, we have to believe a couple of things about history and analysis and sense perception and the uniformity of nature

And even morality because you don't want people fudging data We have to believe a number of things to even arrive at This conversation in the first place for you to converse with an unbeliever about the resurrection of Christ You both have to accept that there is such a thing as history that it that you can

Go back and look at records and your senses can give you truth from those records that you can rely on those senses

And and yada yada yada and go on about the preconditions of intelligibility and everything that's involved in that now these things that unbeliever

Cannot account for there's no reason he should trust his senses. There's no reason that he should

Trust that the the past and and is going to be like the present. He doesn't have Induction he doesn't have a justification for induction

He doesn't really even have a justification for truth of any kind and we're going to talk about that more today but because of those things we can make the

The perfect or the ultimate proof for the God of Christianity, right?

So that's why this is much This is the powerful argument. This is the argument that Paul used I think in Acts 17 and And in a sense, we're gonna find out tonight that that's also in a sense

What Jesus does with the with the rich young ruler and the woman at the well? so I I took the the opportunity in that question to really kind of Give give the the sense of what we've been talking about for the last two weeks just for those who maybe haven't been here or You're still waiting for it to click a little bit.

Are there any other questions? Maybe about what I just said or something that came to your mind about the last two weeks All right, so the don't answer answer method

Proverbs 26 4 through 5 says do not answer a fool according to his folly or you will also be like him

Answer a fool as his folly deserves that he not be wise in his own eyes In the

King James, it says do not answer a fool according to his folly And then the next sentence is answer a fool according to his folly and sometimes

Skeptics have brought this verse up to say the Bible has a contradiction. I have it quoted here in the NASB and It's not a contradiction.

The point that it's trying to make is that Well, let's actually back up for a minute. Who is a fool?

anyone Okay He said that there's no

God no one's gonna judge him who else any any other ideas on that That's a right answer. By the way, any other ideas on who the fool is?

Yeah, someone who doesn't listen to counsel right wise counsel so he makes stupid decisions he thinks that he knows everything

Someone who doesn't fear God, right? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. So Someone who is a fool is going to have a lot of follies, right?

They're gonna make mistakes all over the place They're gonna They can't really live in this world by their own standard.

In other words if they think that they're the smartest one and they worship themselves and They they idolize them.

They're gonna interpret everything according to their sense perception according to the logic in their mind according to what they think things ought to be like from a moral standpoint and it's gonna be a problem because the world doesn't actually

Act the way that they want it to they have a false worldview a false religious system

They don't fear the true God. And so the problem is they live in the true God's world, right? So he sets the rules up not them, but they want to set the rules up So when we're interacting with a fool, here's what we could do.

We could say to the fool Hey, I see you drove your car off into a ditch and we could say we could we could enter at that point and say well

You know, here's the problem. Here's where you went out off the road and went into the ditch or Instead what we could do is the second part of the verse does answer a fool as his folly deserves

That he be not wise in his own eyes we could back up and we could say hey from the moment you left the house you were swerving tonight and There was a problem from the get -go.

It's not just the fact that you drove your car off into a ditch here It's the fact that you couldn't drive in the first place

You don't even know how to drive a car, you know and and focus on that not not the symptom But the disease right and so to give an apologetic

Analogy here to making it more understandable When a fool let's take something that a fool might say, let's say that the fool says

That he has take a modern example He has the ability to determine for himself what gender that he is, right?

It's not up to God He hasn't been created by a designer that gave him a gender

He he gets to determine gender because he's got basically in his worldview

Now, how would we discuss this if we had to or if we felt that God wanted us to?

How do we discuss this with someone who's foolish in that way? Would we start with?

Saying now listen here Science has told us that X and Y chromosomes are this way and that's not wrong to say that but Would we want to start there and get into a dispute over The science of it or would we instead want to back up a little bit and say?

Do you have the right to define yourself or does God have the right to define you? That would be answering him according to his folly who the problem he has isn't that he is an idiot, right?

Necessarily. I mean, I don't know I'm just thinking of a generic person who could be very smart and believe this because there are some very intelligent people who believe things

Like that, right? The problem for them is not that they're they lack intelligence and they can't look at the facts and and see that You know male and female are very different and there really seems to be only male and female and there's only an

XX and an XY Or XXY as the case may be I guess with some but that that's still a male

So we could we could bring up those things or we could start off with the problem. They actually have they understand that stuff, right?

That they're not idiots. What their problem is is they've said from the get -go They've assumed that they get to define themselves that God does not have the right to define them and that's what lands them in the ditch

That's why they start their worldview has these implications which basically in some cases makes them butcher their own bodies right, they're doing this because of a bad worldview not because of you know, bad science or they just can't look at the facts and Understand them so answering a fool according to his folly is going for the presuppositions

It's it's not looking at the symptoms. It's looking at the disease. So we're gonna understand this more.

I think as we give more examples Don't reason with a fool someone who doesn't fear

God by starting with his presuppositions instead point out where his worldview has a problem That is what Paul did in Acts 17

He starts out by doing an internal critique of their worldview the men in Athens In order to show why it was wrong all the while offering the truth of Christianity as the alternative now

We read this last week. You guys remember the story Paul says I see that you have a statue to an unknown

God What you worship in ignorance this I proclaim to you the God who made all the world and all that is in it in Him even your poets have said in him we move and we exist and we have our being he is the

God the true God That I proclaim to you So he immediately starts off with you have this common ground with me because God has put

Everyone knows God in a sense, but they suppress that truth because of their unrighteousness So he says you have this belief, but you're worshiping him in ignorance

You you don't really actually have a problem with supernatural things now when we talked about last week

There was two groups of people Stoics and Epicureans remember and the Stoics were well

They they looked at life And they said we're gonna live by the ideals by the principles

If you know if you know any philosophy think of Plato's world of forms They said we we're not going to be influenced by our emotions, and then you had the

Epicureans were basically materialists They said this is it live be happy eat drink be merry tomorrow

We die and and those philosophies are still around today But Paul says in your culture you have all these

Statues to gods so let me ask you a question did they really deep down have a problem with the supernatural

No, because they have gods there They have an unknown God that a plague broke out about broke out in the city And they thought which

God did we offend oh no? We don't know let's just make a statue to the unknown God and cover our bases They don't have a problem with the idea of a supernatural being in fact their poets even say there's there's a supernatural being out

There in whom we get our life They don't have a problem with that and so Paul proclaims the message of Christianity Specifically the resurrection the resurrection is what they had a problem with so if you can't have a resurrection

That's ridiculous the problem in their worldview was there's no reason that they had to object to a resurrection

Because they had already accepted the idea that there are supernatural things out there if there are supernatural things if God's Powerful enough to give us life.

Why would it be a problem for him to raise a man from the dead? How is that a problem for your worldview at Paul that's what the argument

Paul is making so what he's doing is he's Answering a fool according to his folly

He's doing an internal critique, and we're gonna learn that word more in a second But he looks inside their worldview sees where the contradiction lies and then capitalizes on it

Which is what I say next he says Paul He tells the Corinthians. Here's another verse 2nd Corinthians 10 5

We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God And you're taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ So notice speculations must be destroyed so that the thoughts are taking captive to Christ So sometimes if someone has a false worldview we have to go find out what what their problem is in their worldview

Destroy it that's what the word Paul uses right show them that it can't account for the world that they live in and Then show that Christ can

Christ is the answer because he can account for the preconditions of intelligibility All right answering a fool according to his folly means locating the folly where he went wrong and shining a light on it

This is nothing short of exposing an individual sin Christians are the light of the world and it is our duty to expose a non -believers error for both his sake and the sake of Our testimony rather than joining with him in his foolishness

This means that we when confronting non -believers we engage their worldview at the point at which it starts going off the rails

We attack their faulty presuppositions 1 Corinthians 1 23 says but we preach

Christ crucified to Jews a stumbling block into Gentiles foolishness Why do you think the crucifixion of Christ was a stumbling block to the

Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles? anyone Why were there different reactions to it?

Exactly right I think that's the right answer.

What about Gentiles? Why is it foolishness to the Gentiles? That God came and died in order to pay for the sins of man that God could become a man

That was foolishness Spiritually, they had this dualistic idea spiritual is here physical is here

Spiritual being would never stoop to be in a body a physical body. So it was foolishness to them

Now, what do we see when we look at Scripture and see how the Apostles went to Jews and to Gentiles?

What was the difference when an apostle went to the Jews? Where do you usually go? And what did he say? Went to the temple and That's what

Peter said. What did Stephen say when they were gonna stone him? Didn't he go through the whole Old Testament Explaining everything how this fit in.

What did Paul do? When he went to Jewish audiences, he went through the Scriptures did the same thing

Jesus did the same thing. If you knew Moses, you'd know about me. He wrote about me What about when it was a

Gentile audience Acts 17? They didn't do that. Did they they didn't go to prophecies and say look at all these fulfilled prophecies

What Paul did was he he had to start in a different place?

Because the Jews accepted they had a basic Christian worldview And I would like to suggest our country used to be that way as well

We had a basic sense of right and wrong, right? That's why there's a generally rational divide That's why baby boomers and those older they don't get sometimes the transgender thing because they're like It's just obvious right you're a guy or a girl

They don't even see how that could be an argument because they have a basic Christian worldview that they were raised with even if they weren't Christians The younger generation doesn't have that.

We're becoming less Jewish and more Greek We we don't have that So so we don't have that common or that that ground that we can we can say

All right, you you and I both agree on this. Let's let's take the next step. We don't even agree on that anymore

So we have to go even farther back in priesthood in the presuppositions of the worldview that we exist in now

And that's what Paul did with the Gentiles. He had to go farther back. He said let's start with the Creator God Okay, you guys believe in a

Creator God even your poets talk about it, and then he progressed the conversation from there so different worldviews are gonna require us to Address different errors in the

Jewish worldview their error was they didn't see the Messiah coming, right? Suppress the truth and unrighteousness, so that's what they talked about.

You guys didn't see the Messiah Here's the Messiah in the Gentile worldview. They that wasn't their issue.

So that's not what they talked about They talked about the idea that you say that you know,

God can't become a man But yet you believe in the supernatural you see a problem here. So that's why this this method that we're learning is

Going to be tailored to different audiences We're gonna learn a way that we can a two -step method that we can use in any situation

But you're gonna have to be aware a little bit or try to be aware of the worldview that you're engaging with That's why you're gonna ask questions of them.

You're gonna want to find out where they're coming from here's an example of Doing just this this is from a couple years ago.

This was a debate about Whether I think demons exist. I remember watching it and there was a

Q &A time and the Gentleman that's going to be questioned a minute his name Deepak Chopra. He's kind of an

Eastern mysticism He's a more of a hinduistic kind of guy. That's what he believes and during the debate.

He made the statement he said that beliefs are Basically cover -ups for insecurity that people are insecure so that they conjure up these beliefs about demons and angels and things

So watch what someone from the audience does during the Q &A time You believe that yes

He didn't know quite what to do with that I remember him trying to get out of it and I was like What do you do? So so let's analyze this real quick, right?

What was the problem in Deepak Chopra's worldview? He said beliefs are

They're not really don't have a truth value they're just they're psychological they're just for covering up insecurities and He while saying this has beliefs so as a world worldview explodes at that point it just self -destructs, right and This guy was shrewd enough to notice it in the audience.

And I mean the debate had been going on for a while I think you would think one of the other debaters would have noticed that and capital and they didn't they just kept going

Here's here's a recent one. This is from this week and this is

Barack Obama, he's at a It's called the JFK award and they gave him this award and I was actually

I was listening to a Comment conservative commentator who was talking about this and the commentator didn't even pick it up.

Well, I don't know if he missed it, but he It would have been cool if he picked up on it because Obama makes this whole speech where he's being very very vague

But he's saying how he's talking about Trump voters basically and he doesn't say that he's talking about Trump voters

But you know, he's talking about Trump voters and he's saying Now this is a time in our history where there's a lot of anger and we have to be bold we have to be create courageous and stand up against those who would be suspicious of people who look different or pray different or Basically saying that there's a lot of bigots and they're the ones that voted for Trump and you know

You need to be courageous and stand against them. Well, here's the statement made Don't look like us or have the same surnames or pray the way we do

And at such moments courage is necessary At such moments we need courage to stand up to hate

Not just in others but in ourselves At such moments we need the courage to Stand up to dogma

Not just in others but in ourselves, okay, did anyone catch it

Yeah, we We need to have the courage to stand up to dogma not just in others but in ourselves

Did anyone catch it? I think Amanda did You got it, yeah

And he kind of like left himself wide open because he just said we had to stand up for it in ourselves

Stand up to it. Even if it's in us So he just said we have to stand up to dogma so what would what would be a good question if let's say it was like the previous video and there was audience participation if you

Had to go up to the mic. What would you ask? Is that your dogma? That you have to stand up to dogma and then if he had a problem with you

You say I'm just trying to stand up to the dogma that's in you. You just said you told me to do that So the commentator that I was listening to went off about how arrogant this was and how he doesn't

But he never mentioned the fact that like the whole worldview explodes at that point So and what

Obama's worldview is is a secularism of sorts, right? So If you start noticing these things you start thinking in this way, you just see it everywhere.

So self -refuting statements I'm gonna go through a couple of these we're gonna this will be fun Every statement is going to be reflective of a certain type of worldview

So we're gonna do is see if we can recognize what worldview it's coming from And then what we're gonna do is we're going to try to come up with a question that we can ask in Response now you have a bunch of them in your in the sheet

I passed out so don't I'd ask you to withhold from looking at the answers to that I'm not gonna go through all of them, but I'm gonna go through a couple of them

You probably already looked at the answer. So all right First statement it is it's impossible to know anything for sure

What worldview? Probably some kind of what? Yeah, thank you, it's some kind of relativism post -modernism

Skepticism right? You can't know anything. So what would be a good question? Yeah, so are you sure you know that how about this one there is no right or wrong

Yeah, what worldview would that be probably the same right some kind of a lot of these are are from because that's the society we live in My opinion is that your opinion is in.

Oh, sorry. How did the answer go before this? All right, something wrong happened here.

I'm just gonna give you everything I guess All right, all opinions are equally valid my opinion is that your opinion is invalid

I Only believe in science now, what worldview is that? It is well secular

I guess but what more specifically it's not postmodern. It's not Maybe naturalism

It's saying that if you only believe in science, then you're saying if I can't see it tussed it touched it

Touch it. Yeah trust and touch Taste it smell it then I don't believe it, you know only empirical evidence.

So someone it'll be a modernist, you know I only believe in science. So what experiment did you use to arrive at this statement?

That's not a scientific statement. That's the problem That's a philosophical statement there was a book

I read a couple years ago by Stephen Hawking called the grand design and He starts out in the intro to his book.

I'm like, I think it's the first or second page The whole thing just self -destructs Because he says in the intro to his book that the time for philosophy is over and the time for science

Science can answer these questions and philosophy It's basically leaving philosophy in the dust and I put down the book and I'm like what experiment did he use?

To test science verse philosophy to find out science was right. There's no experiment you can set up for that It's a philosophical statement.

So he's relying on philosophy to disprove philosophy. It's just interesting anyway So here's one all knowledge is confined to the realm of experience same kind of world view.

What would you ask? Have you experienced Kenny?

even reading Everything is an illusion. This is what what world view

Yeah, maybe like a

Hinduism of Buddhism a Star Wars ism Everything is an illusion, you know, you got to get down with the force

Well, what's the answer that you're gonna or what's the question that you would ask a person is is this statement illusion or?

Are you that's a good one. Yeah Anyone here's ever seen the matrix yeah, so The idea behind the matrix right is that everyone's in an illusion basically the robots control it.

I don't even remember the plot I just remember everyone's in an illusion and then neo right he wakes up from it.

He realizes. Oh my goodness this is the real world and that's the illusory world and We're all brains and vats essentially, which is a philosophical problem.

A lot of people they try to Figure out how can I know that? I'm not dreaming. It's a problem. It's in the secular world

So well, what's the interesting thing about the matrix though? Is that how does neo know he's in the real world once he wakes up.

Did you ever ask that question? How does he know that's not an illusion? You never asked that. Okay, it just assumes that but So is that statement an illusion so you can't make that statement if that statements an illusion that you don't have to trust it, right?

There is no such thing as truth Is that true relativism? Yeah, I doubt everything skepticism

What do you think? Yeah, do you doubt that you doubt everything All right.

So these are fun, right? these are self -refuting statements and they can clearly show that a worldview completely self -destructs and This is what you know something that Paul was talking about something we can do destroying

Speculations raised up against God and taking every thought captive to Christ. So after you share that You share this question or show them that their worldview can't account for the preconditions of intelligibility

That's when you can start preaching Christ. Like look I I can have truth. I can

I don't have to doubt everything I can know some things because I have a God who knows things and he relays his knowledge to me.

It's called revelation So you you can if you start out with the God of Scripture, you can have all those things.

He's invariant. He's absolute He's unchanging all the things you need for truth and for morality and for all the rest of the preconditions

All right, so how do we perform an internal critique we were just doing it an internal critique how do you perform it though?

What did we just do an internal critique is an inside look into another person's worldview when the

Christian puts on the non -believers glasses he's in effect test -driving their worldview a Helpful transportation analogy may help explain the

Christian is hypothetically grabbing the keys to the non -believers car Taking it for a spin and crashing it into a ditch.

He is taking the non -believers worldview to its logical conclusion Showing that it cannot account for the preconditions of intelligibility

To be more accurate. He's actually proving that the non -believers vehicle can't even start because it doesn't have any fuel

This is my cool graphic That's that's the car see yeah, it's in a ditch

So that's that's the non -believers worldview and we're just kind of looking at it like that's sad Okay, performing an internal critique of another person's worldview is exactly what

Paul did in Acts 17 and we just talked about this So I'm not gonna go over this slide Paul capitalizes though on their contradiction that they're saying, you know, we don't believe in the resurrection yet He's saying yeah, what are all these gods here?

It seems like you believe in some supernatural things Why do you have a problem with with that thing? Now this is something we haven't talked about in a way

This is also what Christ did numerous times the woman at the well and the rich young rulers are good examples of this

Christ uses their conscience what they know to be wrong in order to convict them of their sin He's pointing out a logical inconsistency in their lifestyle

The rich young ruler valued material wealth over God while the woman at the well was caught in a net of adultery

Both however wanted to be spiritually satisfied The woman at the well through living water and the rich young ruler through keeping the greatest commandments

Christ pressed them to show that their whole outlook on life was in direct violation to their stated goals and offered the remedy of repentance

Christ is is doing what we're talking about. We don't maybe see it. We don't have the philosophical terminology

When we've read those stories to maybe see that that's what's going on But now that we understand some of this stuff

You can see that that's exactly what Christ was doing when anyone suppresses the truth and unrighteousness. It's sin, right?

So a false worldview is gonna end up being sinful It's not just that they're thinking illogically and we just need to come and show them where they went wrong

It's that they're actually sinning. They're not believing what they know to be right there they're choosing to reject it and then they're adopting a frame of thought that is

Justifying what they want to do with their life, which is sin So Jesus when he goes to the woman at the well, he's talking to the woman at the well if you know the story, he's not really supposed to be doing that culturally speaking and they get into this conversation and What's the the question she asked him?

Do you guys remember anyone? Where should what okay, where should we worship on Jerusalem or here?

The Jews say we should do it in Jerusalem. What do you say? Where do you think we should worship? She's bringing up something that's going to be a difference between them

It could potentially start a big argument, right? And what was Jesus response? God is looking for worshippers who are gonna worship him in spirit and in truth

And by the way woman at the well, you're not doing that. How do I know? Well, the one you're living with is not your husband.

In fact, you've had five of them. He knew about all her sin So what is he doing? He is she is bringing up this this big disagreement between the

Jewish Jewish people in the Samaritans and she's ready to get into an argument with him essentially about where to worship and What Jesus does is he shows you don't really have ground for making that argument.

You're you're disobeying some pretty basic things here and Because of that disobedience your your worldview goes explode, right?

What God is looking for is is the heart of the matter. It's spiritual things. And so so we get

Good teaching from this about who is a true worshipper of God and we go there a lot

But maybe what we miss sometimes is that Jesus completely Annihilated her whole worldview by showing her that she really wasn't spiritual and it wasn't the issue wasn't where you worship

So so that is presuppositional in a way and he's using her conscience He's using the very faculty

God gave her which shows that she knows God exists, but she's suppressing it Paul did the same thing in Acts 17.

We just did the same thing when we were looking at those self -refuting statements Yeah, it's a good point that's a very good point

All right, so here's some tactics in performing internal critiques So again an internal critique we're going into their worldview

So we're like a think of yourself as the secret agent in a way, right? You infiltrated the worldview and now you're looking around and you're like, hey, that's a contradiction over there

So is that and and you're seeing the problems that their worldview is gonna have and then you're pointing it out to them

You're saying look the belief that you're trying to base your life on doesn't actually work and What you actually know deep down to be true the

God that you you know, but you're suppressing this is what he looks like So, how do we get there?

Well, number one is ask questions asking questions is Greg Bonson said

I mentioned this last week You give the non -believer enough rope to hang themselves when you just start asking questions because you'll find essentially with most people

They haven't really thought through their belief system You start you can get maybe one or two questions in and they're already

Floundering because they're just like I never thought of this. What is truth? I don't you know, so ask questions try to know where they're coming from And this is one of the the cool things too about this

Apologetic is it is good to know the worldview of the person that you're talking to But an easy way to do it is just to ask

You don't have to go home and be an expert at it. You don't have to read all the books on that worldview I'm not saying not to but it you know, it's not necessary.

You don't have to be, you know an expert to do this apologetic Look for you know, remember you're a secret agent in there.

You're looking for inconsistency You're looking for contradictions Arbitrariness and the inability to provide the preconditions for intelligibility.

I'm gonna give you some examples of that And if anyone doesn't know what arbitrariness arbitrariness just means

I because I said so that's arbitrariness You know, I'm really giving any kind of argument.

You're just you're it's all based on on you and you're not God So you really can't do that So Yeah, here we go bring worldviews to their ultimate conclusions, that's another strategy here

So you're you're asking questions once you know enough about the worldview You can go look for these things and then you can bring their worldviews to the ultimate conclusion

So you would say something like well if you believe this isn't that inconsistent over here if you believe this

Isn't that a contradiction to what is over here if you believe this isn't that arbitrary?

Couldn't I just say that? I believe it this way. So therefore I'm right if you can't provide the a

If you don't have the ability to provide the preconditions for intelligibility, then how do you do science? How do you have morality?

Right, that's that's what you're doing And once they see that the worldview has been brought to its ultimate conclusion and that conclusion is car in a ditch

Then God can use that to hopefully save them or at least show them the error get them thinking

Greg Monson would say that this apologetic is about stopping people's mouths. It's not if they get saved.

That's great That's up to God though, right? But what this will do is stop their mouths They can't really progress anymore because they've been they've been shut up.

They don't have anything more to say There's some examples So here's here's two of them.

Here's arbitrariness and inconsistency Being displayed here. This is a debate a couple years ago.

I did at New Paltz I Stop it right there.

So if you didn't is it hard to hear Now you can hear it. Okay, so that was arbitrariness being displayed right there, right?

So he's he's trying to say that I just know some things are bad because I just know

So so what I said to him was how come I can't do the same thing that you're doing if you're saying I just know

It's wrong because well, I just know we all just know how come I can't say we just know God exists You just know now you have to believe in God He wouldn't accept that so he was kind of stopped in his tracks.

He didn't know where to go from there So this is where where you ended up going I'm gonna

I'm gonna start stop there again. So his next argument he tries to use he said well He was arbitrary at first and that was based in himself.

He's saying I just know it now he's saying well, everyone knows it So he's trying to appeal to the audience, which is a logical fallacy.

He's saying well because everyone knows it then there We there's no reason for you to invoke a

God because everyone already knows it But that wasn't the argument that was being made right? So I was asking him the question before this was

Is it okay to torture babies for fun? Give me an argument against it from your worldview and he's like, well

Doesn't work. Okay. Well, everyone knows it's wrong. So I asked him is he certain is it wrong?

I Should be posing questions to you actually so continue. Yeah What I'm trying to basically the line

I'm trying to go on here is you seem to just say it is because it is It's just we all just know it's self -evident.

We all know I'm sorry, we report to answer exactly. Yeah Wait, so I forget before they answer the question.

Yeah. Yeah It's it's something To do believe and I don't have time to explain why

Richard Dawkins an evolutionary biologist That's in one of his books that first there's three cases for morality in nature

First that there's a case of genetic kinship that we're all human being second that there's the idea of reciprocation

But we in Darwinian in nature. We the bottom line

If it is in nature, but it's been in other species things in all

They didn't have anything they're young why should we do that I think it's lions

Okay Okay, so there there's arbitrariness

I already pointed out the inconsistency though was seen when he tried to say that Lions, they they have their standard of morality and that's okay for them

But humans have to operate on this this different standard of morality because what he was he was actually committed to Fallacy which is called the genetic fallacy

He's conflating is and ought he's saying because things are this way because Evolution has developed a sense of morality and that's the way things are then that is the way things ought to be

But what I'm asking is how do you know, that's the way things ought to be, right?

You can say all day that evolution develops something. Okay, that's great. How do we know that? That's right evolution develops a

Some people like to go hurt others evolution develop that right in his worldview So you see

I'm not accepting evolution I'm doing an internal critique I'm going inside his worldview So I'm saying according to you evolution developed these ways to hurt one another lions seem to do that right there

They're eating their young evolution also developed this idea that we should be good to one another. Why are you arbitrarily picking one?

so so the question still remains why this one and not this one and The the inconsistency is is actually right there.

He he really can't have that both ways So do you see that? Is that made clear?

Okay so this is Myself doing an internal critique on Jason who is an atheist

Here's another part of the debate and Here we find the contradiction and the inability to provide the preconditions for intelligibility

There really is just about no I can't make all kinds of any no limitation for improvement

Not with our technology not with our economy not with our societies and especially not with ourselves as individuals

Are you absolutely sure about that? Well, I'm pretty damn sure about that I'm sure

I'm sure enough to assert that as As much of a fact as it is. I don't see any

Conclusive evidence any evidence at all really to go against that idea. Okay, so you think that It's wrong to have absolute

But yeah, you're not absolutely sure about that. Are you absolutely sure that you think that there shouldn't be absolute?

There's chemistry in the world play here. We're not absolutely sure of something. It's not that I'm if someone would have put evidence

It was it's not that if someone would have put evidence in front of me. I'm saying when

Some students of the way when I say I'm absolutely sure or I don't that I'm absolutely sure Very different than saying there's an absolute standard because when

I say Just give it a more Are you sure if you wouldn't put it in front of my face, but there's a reason the sentence has to finish

If you were to put it in front of my face, there's a reason for me to think differently I would if there was evidence for this totalitarian

God, but I don't find that I would believe in him But so far, he's just been talking through the apparently secondary counts of stupefied

Desert I have rearranging the end might be on the question Let me ask you this question.

Can you be wrong about everything that you claim to know? Could I be yeah. Yes, so I'm going to explain this a little bit, but then how can you be certain of anything?

Because if you stated that you thought the mail came today, let's say but you could not Be but you could be wrong

You don't know if the mail came if you could be wrong And the fact is you really don't know whether the mail came or not And I'd like to know if you could be wrong about everything you claim to know.

How can you be certain of anything? Well, I don't need to be certain of anything I need to be confident enough by the evidence that I can find that's a performer that I can go and look for The evidence that I can gather for anything.

I need to be certain enough to make decisions in my life Are you certain that you don't have to be certain? Would you upgrade that for me, please?

Would you would you go into that just a bit further sketch that out for me? Because this really just sounds like cast a straightaway play to me so far certain that I don't need to be certain

Well, you keep making these basically these absolute statements and then you keep saying that no, there's no absolutes

You say that no, there's no certainty But you keep acting as if you're very certain of it You're very certain that this God of the Bible who you define as with all these negative things is a really horrible guy

No one should worship him, but then you'll say that no, I'm not certain of anything So I just I'm really curious then why do you keep making absolute claims?

If you don't believe in absolutes because I'm an open -minded enough to not say that no matter what you were to put in front of my face

I Would be so close mom. It is to say no Question the question is

I want to know how you're certain that you're open -minded. How do you even know that? In other words, how do you know anything?

How do you how do you start? How do you even start? I'm going to appeal to the audience to this one.

This is like take this question How do I appeal to anything it's not from a

God Yeah, I'd like to know if I were to say you the same actually, you know what once again?

I'm not going to ask you questions. I'm actually okay with it. If you you know, but back and forth, that's fine All right. Well, if you were to ask

No, it has to be the same. I know that you would say that I'm assuming he'd say God probably you were created with this in the image of God and The way that I actually question

I Would say actually I'll ask you the question since I'm not asking questions So if the

God of the Bible is this all -powerful being that he claims to be do you think it was possible?

I'm not saying that he does but is it possible that he could communicate with human beings in such a way that they can know for certain if he exists

If he exists, then is it possible that he could communicate with human beings in such a way that they can know for certain?

Okay, and that's how I know for certain. That's how I can have absolute certainties in my worldview. Whereas you can't

Okay, well I'll stay open -minded enough to keep other perspectives in mind.

I'm glad you're certain of that. I think we're done all right, so Yeah So what you go ahead

Yeah, he I love the my one of my favorite parts in that is when he says well

I'm just gonna appeal to the audience which for those who've ever studied rhetoric or logic. That's a literally a

Logical fallacy like appeal the audience is actually the title of it and everyone knows it by that term.

You can't appeal to the audience So in that we saw demonstrated a contradiction in his worldview, right?

He's saying that he's not certain but he seems pretty certain Also, we see an inability to provide the preconditions for intelligibility

And why is that because he can't have any knowledge, right? If you can't have you to get around long in this world, we all assume that we can have knowledge

Right, we can't even get off the ground if we don't believe that so so what he's doing is he's advocating a worldview

That doesn't give you knowledge at all. You can't have knowledge about anything in that worldview

And actually I want to explain that real quick I was gonna do this a little later, but I'll do it now since we're fresh from from that Q &A in order to have any knowledge about anything you have to actually have knowledge about everything and I gave that analogy to kind of explain that but I gave the mail mailman comes and someone says the mail come today and You say well,

I don't know I think so But I don't know if you don't know then you really you don't know there's you there's no knowledge there that the mail came today right so if You don't have a

God that is invariable absolute and unchanging that knows everything Then you can't really know anything

So that's why I asked him the question I did when I said to him are you how can you

Yeah, I said could you be wrong about everything you claim to know that was a question I asked the reason I asked that is because if he says yes

I could be wrong then you see what the result of that is gonna be right He just gave up you can't have knowledge about anything as a worldview explodes now.

Let's say he said something different Let's say he said yes, I can be certain about some things then

I'd want to know how can you be certain about some things? Tell me how you have certainty There's all dead ends without the

God of the Bible because you're gonna go down a route where you're gonna say, okay I can have certainty because of my sense perception.

Okay. Why do you how do you trust your sense perception? Why do you trust that? Because I know in my mind, okay.

Well, why do you trust your mind? How can you know that what your mind is telling you is accurate? How do you know you're not a brain in a vat somewhere just being fed impulses?

Well, okay that I don't I can't really know it based on that. So Anywhere he goes there's gonna be a dead end unless he starts with someone who is a creator who is transcendent

Who has the basically the qualities of the God of the Bible gives us, right? And it's not just Invariable absolute and unchanging it's actually past that you have to have a

God who is honest. He's invariable in his honesty He's moral. He's not giving us deceptions, right?

Because the God of the Bible is pure and doesn't deceive us He he gives us the truth.

That's what Jesus said. I am the truth We can actually have certainty in our worldview We can know that our senses aren't deceiving us that God created them for a purpose, right?

Does that make sense? Yeah, okay Normally, we'd be taking a break right about here

Do you guys want to take a little break and then we'll come back and do nothing but just apply this does that sound good?

Okay, then why don't we take a break a couple minutes and then come back? The Preconditions for intelligibility are all the things that must be assumed in order to make sense of the world

All right, so you have to assume there's a moral law to give you an example They get along in this life.

You can't go through life without having a sense of morality and operating that way So you got to assume that there's a standard right, but there's a standard for logic and everything else and knowledge, so here's

Seitenberg and Kate. This is the two -step method. All right, so here's why we're watching this this is

Probably the simplest way you can approach presuppositional apologetics, right is the two -step method some people can get

You know, do I have to memorize all the bad arguments and understand? Well, it's good to know logic

It's good to understand some of these things how to think how to analyze so you can pick up on things

But if you really want to boil everything down you just want give me the simplest method out there So any objection

I can say something in opposition and show that they're wrong. Here it is No matter what the objection is, that's why this apology drives me back

No matter what they say Think of any objection that you hear out on the street. You believe in Noah's ark.

Are you kidding me? All those animals on that boat what you believe in a talking donkey. You don't need the flood.

No, you don't believe the Bible's truth What the most Christians do are the ark was so many cubits. It was so many floors.

There's probably baby animals There's plenty of room because there are only so many kinds of animals at the time plenty of room to put them all in there

Evidence evidence evidence you're making them the judge That evidence is wonderful scriptures for Christians, but I don't do that.

Someone says to me you believe in Noah's ark. Yeah So you don't?

No, you don't believe it's true Where do you get truth about that and then you see the absurdity where do you get truth about that?

That's not what the Bible says where do you get truth about that and it's over and that works for any of Okay What's the two -step method

That's not what the Bible says. How do you get truth about God? That's the two -step method. We're gonna apply that method

Now I was gonna make this a kind of a small group discussion, but we have kind of a smaller group

So why don't we just make this a group discussion? Here's five different scenarios You're sitting in your first year philosophy class when the professor says

Anyone who believes in God is welcome to leave we don't have time for superstitious nonsense in this class

All right. So you're already in this you locked in you have to say something now, how are you gonna use the two -step method?

What's the first thing? That's not what the Bible says. Okay now he might think that's the most ridiculous thing and get angry, right?

It's possible, which is I mean, that's not a rational approach and but you say hey, you know

And how could we phrase that maybe to Accommodate it to this if we were in this situation Any anyone who believes in God is welcome to leave.

We don't have time for superstitious nonsense in this class. So you could say I believe the

Bible You know you think that's superstitious nonsense. I mean, it's the same basic question you're asking, right?

The Bible doesn't think of itself as superstitious nonsense. He knows that so you're just saying you you know

You're actually combining both questions into one you're saying that's not what the Bible says Why do you think the

Bible is superstitious and you can get on a conversation about truth? But if you're gonna be strictly two -step method here, that's not what the

Bible says, right? What's he gonna say someone be the professor? You're that guy right now.

Oh, what what guy what guy am I? Yeah Did someone just say something

Said something bad. All right, so the professor swears at you Okay The professor

I don't he said this superstitious nonsense, I don't believe the Bible you're an idiot for believing the

Bible You know you that's not true. Okay next question Where let's all say it together one, two, three, where do you get truth without God?

That was a train, right? One two three where it's where do you get truth without God ready? One, two, three, where do you get truth without God?

Okay, memorize it commit it to memory All right now what's there the philosophy professor gonna say you just make up some

Philosophy gives me truth, you know, okay explain how does philosophy give me truth? You're the professor right now

Who wants to be the professor? Do you want to be Kenny? You look like you're confident in being the philosophy professor. All right, where do you get truth without God?

How can you trust your reason how do you know your reason is giving you accurate accurate information How do you know you can trust what you think

So what if I just said Yeah, so what if I just said yeah You mean arbitrary?

So if I just said well the Bible says this so now you have to believe what the Bible says because that's what the Bible Says right you landed in a a dead end right away, right and the philosophy professor will too now he may wax eloquent for a while or try to Use big words that you don't understand, but you can just ask him.

What does that big word mean? You know, it's not It shouldn't intimidate us that someone has a bunch of degrees behind their name.

Just ask him to explain themselves if they're condescending Okay, they're condescending right? That's not a problem

Ask them to define themselves and then just keep asking the same question. All right, let's try a different one You're out of town for a work conference at the continental breakfast.

The hotel provides another co -worker notices you pray He tells you from another table that he respects what you just did

He then adds I used to be religious before my wife left me. I wish God still cared about me Maybe then

I'd pray too. Okay, completely different situation, right? One was antagonistic this one.

He's not really a challenging you necessarily. It's a sort of subtle challenge He's not necessarily looking for a fight from you

But he does say something here. That's not true. He's saying what's the thing that he's saying? That's not true

He's God doesn't care about him. Maybe I'd maybe I'd be religious too if God actually cared about me

All right, one, two, three. That's not what the Bible says. Okay Maybe you don't have to even go any further than that Maybe then you can just share from the truth from the

Word of God, right? And and what if he just says what if he doesn't trust the Bible or like I you know

You don't know what I've been through though I know the Bible may say that but you don't know what I've been through. How do you get truth without God?

You just keep asking those questions. Now, what's he gonna do? He's gonna try to come up with some way that he can know things for certain, but it's not gonna work

We'll do some role play on the next one at your child soccer game another parent who happens to be Muslim Starts a conversation with you in the course of conversation

She says Islam works for me, but every religion is valid if you truly believe it in your heart That's not what the

Bible says. I'm waiting for someone to shut up Okay, that's not what the Bible says and she says to you. I'll be the Muslim woman.

So someone who wants to Yeah, hey I can self -identify right? So I'm a

Muslim woman now But you know, I understand that that's not what the Bible says for you

But the Quran says that Islam is true for me. What would you say in response to that?

What's the second? What's the second question? Now here's here's the interesting thing about this one

She is a Muslim woman, but the argument that she used here. Is it is it Islamic? Islam doesn't really believe that and that's one of the things that is interesting about living in a multicultural society

Actually, it was the same way in Istanbul when we talked to some Muslims. It really intrigued me. I was like, they're not actually

Muslim They're secularists Now this was in a city. So in a country,

I'm sure there are more fundamentalist Muslims, but in the city It's just it was like Catholics here. It's like a

Muslim, but their worldview is not really Islamic. She's a secularist, right? She's a relativist.

She thinks that truth is subjective So she's gonna say that her truth is from the

Quran now You're gonna say how do you have truth without the God of the Bible?

That's the God we're talking about, right? How do you have truth without God and she's gonna say well No, I have truth and then what you can say in response is yeah

But you just said my God can also have truth Didn't she just say that your God can have truth this God anyone's God can have truth, right?

So so every every you're making a statement that every God has truth and if she's gonna be honest with you

She's gonna say well, yeah, every God does have truth. So you're gonna say, okay So so where do you where do you get truth in your worldview?

How come how does Allah give you truth if every God has truth? Right, you see the problem there.

What if my truth contradicts your truth? Does Allah really give you truth then? Now somewhere she's gonna have to find out whether she really believes

Allah gives her truth or truth is relative She's a relativist in this case. Let's pretend for a minute.

She was not a relativist Let's say she's actually a Muslim and she comes up to you and she says to you

Islam's work works for me and it would work for you if you tried it Okay, that's not what the Bible says, right?

Okay, so you don't you believe the Bible that's not true Because the Quran contradicts it right second question.

Where do you get truth without God right in this case? Where do you get you're talking about the God of the Bible so you could say where do you get truth without?

the God of the Bible now what she's gonna do is She's gonna try to say that the Bible is because I've had these conversations

The Bible gets corrupted over time that you can't trust the Bible because men have come in and they've changed things to fit their notions

Of what it should be ask for specifics. Okay, where do you think it's been corrupted? Never gotten straight answers at any of those things.

They never know And now and the and the the Jesus of Islam is completely different than the

Jesus of Christianity. It's not just hey There's this one part where Jesus does this and that's not someone someone

Edited it or put in a story that wasn't there. It's they have a different person His mother is

Miriam. It's the it they conflate Bible stories like really badly Jesus doesn't die on a cross right in the

Quran Jesus is not the Son of God in the crown. There's some major doctrinal differences Now one of the things about Islam now this helps if you know a little bit they say that that the

Bible is scripture But what they say is that it's been corrupted the same thing the Mormons say the same thing Jehovah's Witnesses Well, the

Jehovah's Witnesses say that their translation is the true scripture, but most of the cults say this it's been corrupted It's been corrupted.

Our little group is what you have to go to to interpret it. So the question Where do you get truth without God applies here?

You know, how do you know that the Bible's been corrupted? Where do you get that truth statement? They're not going to be able to answer you there

If they try to give you a specific then what do you do open up your Bible have a Bible study with them, right? Isn't that what we want to do anyway?

So that's how you deal with false religions have a Bible study with them There's nothing wrong with comparing and saying okay.

This is what the Bible says. They're the one that that's attacking it Show me show me.

Let's go to the next one. You're with a friend at the mall as You pass by a store you notice behind the glass of television with a headline that reads science helps first man to have a baby

In shock you exclaimed your friend, that's just awful a passerby who happens to be gender confused over Here's your comment and stops to confront you

She starts off by saying you ought to be ashamed of yourself men can have babies if they want to All right

Not what the Bible says right I was gonna say who wants to be the gender confused person, but maybe the no takers

No, Kenny you want to be the gender That's not what the Bible says. Okay. I don't believe the Bible.

Oh, you don't think the Bible is true Where do you get truth without God? All right What are they gonna say does anyone have any shrewd?

Arguments that you can think of in your mind on which to base truth without a transcendent God Because I I'm willing to discuss anything that you think of I'm just telling you there's nothing that's not a dead end

Yes That in so they get their truth from nature Okay, so let's let's take that let's say that this hopefully this person doesn't that's gonna be a hard argument for her to make from Nature right because she's going completely against nature

Okay, go for it We've evolved to the point that what men can have babies Okay, all right,

I'm willing to go there Even though it's a it's science that's done this it's not evolution

We've okay, let's do it let's say okay, so we've evolved to the point we're able to this okay That's not what the Bible says So you don't believe the

Bible is true. Where do you get truth without God? Okay, so And you're 100 % certain of that no, but neither are you how if you're not certain of anything how can you know what

I'm certain of How can you be so certain that I'm not certain because I use my senses

To perceive reality and you're doing the same thing. So how do you know what I'm doing? How do you know that?

How do you know that though? How are you certain of that? How do you know that?

Yeah, I'm using my sense perception and I can perceive you as a human and we share but you can't trust yourself sense perception, right?

Okay, so are you a hundred percent certain that you can make educated guesses no Okay, so how do you have truth how do you have truth without God that's the original question

I can't have absolute truth And you're absolutely sure about that So, you know, that was good that was

I mean you did better than Jason I think in that so it was But what?

Jason was trying to say that's wordplay. You're using a trick on me Explain that to me

Yeah, okay and anyone else can think can you think of a better way go ahead So, I think you actually asked me what

I where I get truth from or something I said the Bible and he said we'll prove It uh -huh. He said prove the

Bible. What would you say to that? Oh Okay, well What maybe we can come can we come back to that in a minute because I I don't know if your question was adequately answered

Because David had an idea to go that direction then I don't think we ended up going that direction You said at first well, you can just through nature was your idea that we can ascertain the truth in nature through sense perception

Is that why we went that way? Okay, so that's answer your question. Okay, so so here Why does the Bible say that we know certain things through nature

Psalm 119? How can that work we talked about in the second session, what do what do all men assume what all men know

God exists, right? That's the whole point of this apologetic Every single example here is an example of someone who knows

God exists. They just suppress the truth So, how can we look at nature and understand that there's design and complexity and all these things?

because we start out with the idea that God exists and then we can make sense of Our sense perception and what we're what we're seeing around us if we don't start off with that idea then we're lost right, so so Natural theologians people that say that we should just start off with looking at nature

They are assuming from the beginning that humans are basically God. They're autonomous They get to make their own rules and they get to look at things objectively and that's what we reject in Christianity, right?

We say that humans are not autonomous. We're not God. We don't get to do that Does that make sense?

All right. So your example, how do you prove the Bible? Okay. So so where are we at in this? No, no, it's not no,

I don't think so so run me through the conversation again, you know But he said he believed

God existed, okay, but he just wanted the Bible to be proven true Okay, and I knew even if I gave him every single fact to prove it it wouldn't do anything for him

So I was trying to think of what to say to kind of get through the presuppositions

Yeah, okay. I got you now. So a couple things that we know from what we've already started in the last two sessions

Number one, it's the character and attributes of God that support the preconditions for intelligibility, right?

It's not blank theism Remember because he believes in God But he doesn't believe in the God of the Bible the God of the

Bible is a God who is What I keep saying these things but he's does anyone remember get throw out an attribute of God that is specific to the

God of the Bible Okay, he knows everything. That's a good one on the present

Mutable how about the three of them that I've been talking about invariable absolute unchanging, right? Well, yeah, you're okay.

Did you say that and I missed it or? Yeah, that's on unchanging right yeah, how about Completely moral holy, right?

That's what I think every other attribute is ultimately based on is his holiness, right? So that this is a we're fleshing out this idea of God now when we look at love laws of logic

We also find that they are we all believe that they're invariable. They're absolute. They're unchanging. They're transcended over everyone, right?

The God of the Bible can support that the God of the Bible is one who created that you need a God that has That you need a God that's a Trinity because you have to have unity and diversity somehow, right?

So we can get into all these these these Attributes the problem is any God that someone posits

That's not the God of the Bible isn't going to have those attributes and because that God doesn't have those attributes

They're not going to be able to sustain the preconditions for intelligibility The God of even let's say let's take a close religion

Catholicism, right? The God of Catholicism cannot do it now. Why is that because the

God of Catholicism has Contradictions within the tradition versus what the Bible says

God is not a liar, right? That's that's a basic one There's also issues of you ever wonder why the

Saints are so High above us and so I mean God is so far away Sometimes it just seems like man

I got to go through his mother to get to him I got to go through a saint to get to him because the religion is struggling with the idea of God being a transcendent

Entity they they have a trouble with one of his attributes and and you're gonna see this in a lot of other

Religions that are the ape Christianity in some way God's either gonna be your buddy. You're chilling out with or he's gonna be this, you know in Islam.

He's so far away There's no way you could ever approach God and in Christianity. We have a

God who came down in the human flesh, right? So so go back to the hospital analogy this guy

Believes in God is he Catholic? Do you know anything about that or you just got? He's not religious, okay so so we already know that he's got to believe in the

God of Christianity the second thing that we studied in the last two sessions And I know we're gonna end pretty soon. But is that he has his own

Bible He has his own final authority, right? Just like you have yours So he probably is thinking that he can be neutral in this

Like you're the one with a final authority and you have to defend it. The problem is he also has a final authority

Okay, so what's so how did the conversation go how did you get to the point where he said prove the

Bible Okay, all right, so you remember saying that I was a

Christian I said something I think I said like I'm a crazy Bible believer That's right. I'm a

Christian. I'm a crazy Bible believer. He said prove it. Okay, that was true transcendental argument What we studied what is the transcendental argument

At the beginning you weren't here at the beginning of this the proof for God's existence is that without him you can't prove anything

Yeah, okay. So without the God of the Bible, I wouldn't know anything Yeah, but he doesn't believe in the

God of the Bible right so you could say prove the Bible, okay Well without the Bible, I couldn't even make sense of proof without the

God that's demonstrated in the pages of Scripture I couldn't even make sense of your question. All right. How do you get truth?

That's the second question in our two -part Checkmate or whatever. Yeah So so you can very very simply or you can ask him what

I asked Jason well, you answer a question with a question if the God of the

Bible were What who he says he is could he communicate to me in such a way that I can know for certain?

Is that what you used? Yeah Maybe Okay, so you went off into other territory

But if the conversation had continued you can make sense of it and again, it's based on the character and attributes of God But you would want to then say

I can make sense of the Bible being true Because I have a God whose foundation is he is a

God of truth And he's transcendent. He's all the other things that we talked about. How do you have truth in your worldview?

Where do you get truth without the God of Scripture? And then he's gonna have to give you his idea of where truth comes from and you're gonna find out

It's probably not based on a holy book or his sense perception. His mind is rationalism.

Yeah Yeah, that's it. That's how I would try to deal with it At a neighborhood block party you and another neighbor are offered a beer you turn it down and so does the neighbor

She seems delighted that you seem to agree with her moral stand. She says as a Mormon I'm not supposed to have alcohol or coffee because it's sinful.

Are you LDS? Which means? Latter -day Saint All right. That's not what the

Bible says, right? That's so the reason that you didn't take the beer the beer is not sinful, right according to the scripture now

I'm not saying be a jerk like you just met this neighbor and you're like, that's not what the Bible says It's like whoa, look at my neighbor

You would you would you would certainly phrase it differently. You could say to her something like this No, you know you see the reason

I didn't take the beer it's not because it's sinful It's just that you know I want to be careful about my testimony or I just don't like beer or I'm not right now

I'll have one later or her, you know, I don't know. I Mean you just be honest with her and say, you know because I'm a

Christian and you know The Bible doesn't say anything against, you know beer or alcohol in my understanding.

That's a very nice way to put it Right, not just that's not what the Bible says. Let's say she responds to you and says oh really, you know,

I was I Was taught that my whole life, but you know, I I believe in the

Book of Mormon and you know I know the Bible has many problems with it now. We're back to the professor, you know, okay where do you get truth without the

God of the Bible and It's funny that she's a Mormon and he's a probably I don't know what he is

He's a theist of some kind but they're probably different worldviews But you're going to the same points all these false worldviews end up converging which is interesting to me

They all end up coming down to and this is what Cornelius Fantil said It's either theonomy or autonomy.

In other words, either God is law Theonomy God is law or man is law So it's going to be some worldview where they are the final authority every time

Versus a worldview where God's the final authority, which is Christianity All right, so here's some resources that you can check out so on the paper

I gave you if you want to know more I also also added in a couple other things on the notes that I didn't put on the slideshow.

I just added some some logical contradictions or how to know logical contradictions and fallacies and then

I added in Something on the problem of evil because one of the things we didn't talk about is we're doing internal critiques on other worldviews but they can also do internal critiques on us and the most common one is they try to Put on our glasses and say well you can't really believe in that God because if he were really good

He wouldn't allow evil things to happen. So there's a whole explanation for that there I think the for presupposition only the first thing you'd want to point out if someone tried to do that is

Where do you you know, that's not what the Bible says. Where do you get through to that? So, where do you where do you get the standard of right and wrong without God, right?

Because they're assuming that there's a standard of right and wrong and they're saying God doesn't meet it Where do they get right and wrong though? They have to assume

God to even ask the question So there's a whole thing on that there and and that was it. So we're done.

It's nine o 'clock and Yes, I'll pray and if anyone has any questions, then We'll talk about it.

So Lord. Thank you so much for this time or thank you that you are You are the

God of creation that you were the Creator God Lord, thank you that you've given us such powerful tool to be able to defend what we believe what you've given us to believe

Lord we seek to use it in humility. We don't want to be jerks About this we want to go out into all the world and preach the gospel and if people have a problem with it

Lord We want to be gentle in the way that we approach them just like your word says to so I pray

Lord that We would take this knowledge that we would understand it that we would apply it in the right way and that You would just be glorified in it in Jesus name.

Amen Yeah, you're welcome Any any questions about any of that Why do

I have to know everything Okay, so like it's into the theory of truth and The simple explanation is that in order to To you have an infinite regress essentially in order to be certain about your uncertainty

Then you have to have certainty somewhere and that sounds like a tongue twister. But essentially if you're saying that You you you don't have to have certainty you have to be certain about that statement on some level, right?

You have to know that you don't have to have certainty Well, how do you know that you don't have to have certainty? It has to be some kind of bedrock some kind of certainty somewhere

Does that make sense? That's this most simple explanation. I have a more complicated explanation, but that's the simple explanation

Rephrase it differently. I'm not understanding what you're saying. Exactly Or know someone who does know everything who can reveal things to you

Right Yeah Yeah Yeah, but if I if I if I'm a naturalist

I believe in a naturalistic worldview which is typical Then I believe that Here I am.

I can only the only thing that is real is whatever I can perceive with my senses I really can't

I really can't know anything beyond my sense perception. Okay, if I've never had any spiritual experience

Then then you know, that's it, right? So you're not gonna be able to prove to me necessarily anything spiritual

Except through my senses, but What why can I not be uncertain even about being uncertain

Well for the reason I just So here's what you're saying truth is whatever works kind of like it's pragmatic truth is just Truth or as close as I can get to truth is what

I perceive From the world around me, which is just my senses. Nothing extends beyond my senses, right, you know so but that's a that's the assumption you're making though is

You don't actually believe that's the problem. You're saying that I don't know anything outside of my senses, but that's a knowledge claim

You didn't sense that claim You see what I'm saying? You didn't go somewhere and pick on a tree the philosophical idea that you can only know true through your senses

That idea is Philosophical it's in your mind. It's a rational. It's on it's not something that's tangible

All right, so you don't actually you might think that that's what you believe That's your idea about yourself is that you have to have sense perception to know anything

But you don't actually believe that because in order for you to make that statement you have to go outside of your senses

Right. Does that make sense? No Even if you're saying the ideas are your ideas are not

Material right your ideas transcends the physical world. So they transcend your senses. Yes, you're saying right they do.

Okay a naturalist I don't think would agree with that because they would say no even that is natural.

We can see it. It's the neurons Let me give you an example To maybe make this easier

Is that your name? That's your name what I wrote right there You Don't have a name anymore, it's gone.

You're not you're you're not David But do you know why

The reason is because you your identity Your ghost

Your identity is not something that you can see touch taste or smell Okay, you your identity is your

David? I can't get rid of it. This is a represent. This is actually not your name This is a representation of your name.

This is someone you know We've created conventions by which to communicate concepts to each other.

Those conventions are not the concepts themselves Right language conveys ideas, but the language itself is not the ideas

So what you're trying to say is that naturalists who believe that we can only know things through senses they would have a problem because they in order to Argue for naturalism.

They have to start using things that aren't from the natural world Even the laws of logic are not from the natural national natural world

Morality not from the natural world. These aren't things that you can you can see the effects of them Just like you can see your name

Represented I can see wars happening. I can see there's bad morality taking place, but I can't see a lot of morality

All right, I can see people murder other people But I can't come up with the idea that thou shalt not murder from that I can see the effects it has and that they're negative effects, right?

Is that I am addressing kind of Okay, where am

I? Where is it? Not? making sense Claim would be that all ideas

So including including including your identity or identity the only reason you have your identity is because your parents happen

Procreate and here you are right signs you an identity. Okay, but it's all it's still all just neurons firing in your brain

So even that would be considered now, but again here Here's the problem if neurons are firing in my brain and inside there's chemical processes going on that say my name is

David That may be true, but it's just like me writing this on the board

They're they're coming to a truth claim, but that itself is not the claim I'll put it to you this way

Before humans existed on the earth where their laws of logic Were there any brains by which we could actually?

Come up with the law of logic or have a convention where we decided what the laws of logic were No, there's okay you're that's a

Christian worldview, right the Christian worldview says it's all contingent on a mind It's the mind of God, but but in a naturalist framework.

We're doing an internal journal critique We're taking a tour through their mind and we're like, hey There's a problem here because if you believe that the laws of physics the laws of logic all these things that are actually laws

Existed before minds were around to even ascertain them then it's not neurons firing in your brain

It was wrong to murder before you existed, right? It's not neurons firing firing in your brain that tell you that murder is wrong.

That's a law that predated you Right, does that make sense? No, not just morality logic the idea that there cannot be any contradictions

So let's say this in a naturalist framework humans evolved. What how many millions of years ago? Does anyone know?

I don't remember for the sake of argument, you know hundred million years ago humans showed up Well before humans showed up there was a lot of things that happened.

Actually, it's not quite that old, but there's Yeah, it's like when I really gross exaggerated it but before humans came along there's a lot of things that happened right and there's a lot of really

Absolute statement scientists will make about well from this layer We see the trilobites and we see the Jurassic period and we see this and before that there was

You know, it was the earth was a fireball Well before humans showed up, is it possible that there could have been contradictions?

Because there's no humans to come up with the laws of logic. So could there have been let's say Maybe creationism is true.

There were no humans around to even see it. So, how do we know there couldn't maybe they're both true Maybe it evolved anchoring you see what they're where the problem is.

You destroy the whole naturalists Concept of history. He can't go back any anywhere

You know that humans weren't there's places in the world where there are no humans Do the laws of logic get suspended in those areas are things just you know floating around gravity is not working, you know

No If what so so we try to say like yeah, so the law

But they're not natural show me where I can pick a law of non -contradiction Show me where they're growing, you know, show me where I can find one in the natural world.

It doesn't Well there those are based on those are based on The logical laws by which logic, you know is what science is based on mathematics even those are concepts

Right two plus two being four is conceptual. I can see examples of it I can see I have to have to but I it's a concept in my mind when

I'm doing it and you get into higher Math, it's all conceptual Alright, so if you want to say that it's the natural world

That that just comes up with these things and I would want to say, okay, give me some evidence for that You know you naturalist you're all about evidence, right?

Show me where these laws are growing. You think it's wrong Okay, so if they so if they've always existed show me show me where they exist then you still got to show me

So if you try to jump to where you were before to say well, okay No, they're conceptual then I want to say okay where there are no minds.

Do they still exist? Then there's a problem there So, what are you gonna hang it on?

Where are you gonna hang laws of morality laws of logic laws of science? Well, I mean, I feel like typically probably wouldn't hang.

I mean like a like an honest atheist doesn't hang laws of morality They just say well, I want to live in a place which is a moral statement, right?

Well sort of yeah, they would say it's Yeah, yeah, it's like reduce whatever reduces harm is good

But the marriage that's happening right now is between like Eastern philosophy and naturalist philosophy, right?

That's like where we're headed. God is all nature is God. Yeah You're hurting the world through global warming

Theoretical physics But that doesn't change any of the so that doesn't change anything that that just happened here

So if you want to try to say that God is in nature and that that's where we get it that there is a

God Then we're gonna start to oh, so you do believe in God Okay, so how then do you and then we can we can go off into other areas where but if you're talking about a strictly naturalist worldview, then

I don't where else are you gonna go if it's it's not based on Convention of society not everyone coming together and agreeing.

It's not based on on physical minds. It can't be from the natural world Where do these laws come from then?

They can say that but that's not

What they're trying to do there is is just assume with me Hey, we both we both know it's observation that we can observe these laws.

Yeah, we can observe these laws I you know, I can I can observe murder happening, but it's not giving me a moral law that says more murders bad

Right, so that's what you want to say to them. That's what you want to try to press upon them They don't actually and here's the bottom line

They're assuming that God exists because they're assuming the moral laws. These logical laws are invariable.

They're absolute they're unchanging No matter where you are, you can't have contradictions That's what they're saying over don't no matter where at what place in time you're at no matter who you are

You're not allowed to engage in contradiction now Let's say they you know, what all the all the roads have been completely blocked.

They can't go anywhere. What's their last hope? Well, I guess contradictions are okay. Maybe they'll say that right and then what do you say?

Well, who could you say it? Well, because everything they run out of options essentially there's nowhere for them to go

So if there's nowhere for them to go The only other option they have at this point is to say that contradictions are acceptable

That there are there is a place in the universe where you can't have a contradiction And then you can just keep contradicting them and they shouldn't have a problem with it.

That's the response You could just say nonsense to them if you want. Oh contradictions are okay. All right. Well, I contradict you

You know

That's where you get post -modernism But you're jumping worldviews But if that's the response you're just jumping from ship to ship trying to find one that doesn't sink and Then we just torpedo that one.

I say, okay new ship. Let's talk about this ship and then you're gonna find okay post -modernism Contradictions are okay, right?

Okay contradictions are fine. So God so Christianity is true, right? No, no Christianity is not true.

No. No it is right. He's just Contradiction it's fine So then that ship goes down so then they might jump to another ship, but we haven't we have an unlimited supply of missiles

So that's okay But here's the thing about Apologetics apologetics is giving a reason defense for the faith if someone doesn't want to reason with you.

You don't have to do apologetics You put your arm around them and try to be a friend or something You know, it's a we can only do apologetics if someone's willing to try to be reasonable with us

Right, at least they they have to try to make an attempt If they're not going to be willing to make an attempt then you're not doing apologetics anymore

That's that's all there is to it. It's not contingent on us to be able to convince the unbeliever Most of the time you're not going to convince them

They they're gonna be set in their worldview But what you what you do is you give them something to think about and you shut their mouth

They realize that their worldview is sinking They may not care, you know You may be on the deck saying or you're shouting from the ship next to them get off the boat

It's going down and then you might even get them to realize, you know, they say oh wow It is going down But I still like my boat that's going down better than your boat that's sinking because we have the party boat over here and you

Know you're on a rescue boat and it just doesn't look as fun Okay, you're gonna keep sailing, right? It's not up to you to like To get them to grab them and forcibly say you have to believe us now

Otherwise, you're not in apologetics because you're not reasoning anymore. You're forcing right? So No Okay, whatever

I talk to somebody who's not naturalistic I go usually just go as far as like, okay you believe everything's evolved

All right, so ideas also evolve with religious systems evolve. Those are ideas. So those also evolve

So yeah, we're evolutionary theory must have also evolved. So therefore econ, you know, you have a contradiction because You know the first idea of the idea of evolving is evolved

You know the first question I always ask evolutionists and this goes without saying pretty much

No No, usually usually they already know usually they already know where I'm coming from.

They know that I believe the Bible Well, yeah, how do you how do you get truth in your worldview? I evolved truth right but but my response is going to be how can you trust your mind?

This is where we take this is one of the tactics taking the ideas to their ultimate conclusions

If you really believe everything evolved then your mind also evolved, right if your mind evolved

How can you trust it to give you something that's true? Right. There's all sorts of natural processes that evolved rocks evolve waterfalls evolved animals of all

But the roar of a lion doesn't give you a truth value just like a Pepsi fizzing

You know chemical reaction happening doesn't give you a truth value if I were to this is an example some preset suppositional sees

But if I were to get a can of coke in a can of Pepsi and have them fizz Tonight on the lectern and then say which one of them is true you would laugh.

That's ridiculous Well, it's just chemical processes going on. It's no truth value. Well, if that's what your mind is just chemical processes

Where do you get truth from that? So I'd like to ask the question if you if your mind is evolved then where do you get truth without the

God of Bible and And there's really nowhere to go from there. I mean

They all the dead ends that we already talked about. I Can tell some we're done by the way if you want to get up and this is just if you if you enjoy it

But this is just my brother and I going back and forth. You're watching a family with my mom interjecting every now

So you're watching right now If you're getting tired, you don't have to watch our family conversation

There any other questions or are there people here that are very confused right now by that conversation

I Can understand a little bit that whole like Why can't we just have logic or why can't we just I mean because the reason

I think we have that is because we use It all day Everyone does assume it but that's the point

God exists Everyone has a concept of God So we live in this world is really hard for us sometimes to go outside of the world

We live in and try to conceive of okay If this worldview were true, how would the world look because we know a world of logical contradictions can't exist

We can't even conceive of it. It's very hard for us. So sometimes I think that's why it's hard when dealing It's not priest up as a positional apologetics.

That's hard It's other worldviews that are hard because they're so contorted and they make

Met you know, there's they make a mess out of reality that it wrapping our minds around a world where You know, they they are true.

It's just impossible Because they have to allow for a certainty because they're getting wrong a lot of turns

It's kind of had to accept that it'd be wrong here, but not really worried about it. He's gonna cover it up and move on Right.

Yeah. Yeah, they all they all have that certainty every world Everyone has some level of certainty in something

One guy like would think about this stuff But then he would get so caught up in it and get so confused.

He would have to go play like racquetball Oh, yeah, the philosopher forget who that was. Yeah, and that's what David Hume I think right?

Yeah He was being consistent in a worldview outside of Christianity and it led to like craziness