Presuppositional Apologetics Crash Course Part 3

The Transcendental Argument for God's Existence

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. So 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.

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 going to 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 the 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 they're a naturalist.

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 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 who got exiled and They they didn't have to it was unnecessary if they believe this to be that 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 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 the Christian seems to be able to interpret it in a much simpler way, which makes more sense.

But it's not gonna 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 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 and ruler and the woman at the well, so I took the the opportunity in that question to really kind of 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 make 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 God 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?

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 were Stoic 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.

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 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're 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 the 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 an unbeliever's 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. First 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?

Crucified. Exactly right and they didn't like Jesus himself. So I.

Think that's the right answer. What about Gentiles? Why is it foolishness to the Gentiles?

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 did he usually go? And what did he say? I went to the temple and. So so 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 faithful 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 racial 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? I mean 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?

They 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. 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 is named Deepak Chopra.

He's kind of an Eastern mysticism. He's 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. 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 That 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 he made.

I've.

Anger at those who don't look like us or Have the same surnames or 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? 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. So 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 gonna 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 is 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 worldview.

What would you ask? Have you experienced?

Even reading.

Everything is an illusion. This is what what worldview. Yeah, maybe like a Hinduism a Buddhism 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 would you. 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. Alright, so how do we perform an internal critique? We were just doing 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. 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 commandment.

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 as it could potentially start a big argument, right?