Crash Course in Presuppositional Apologetics: Transcendental Argument

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Hey, it's John here from AuroraNoMore .com, and welcome back to a crash course in presuppositional apologetics.

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We're going to be talking about the transcendental argument right now, which is pretty much the crux of presuppositional apologetics.

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And that is the argument that says, the proof for God's existence is that without Him, you can't prove anything.

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Now, this is a very powerful argument, which means you've got to use it in gentleness when you do use it.

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But one of the first things we need to talk about is the don't answer answer method. Proverbs 26, 4 through 5 says,

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Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will also be like him. And that says, answer a fool as his folly deserves, that he will not be wise in his own eyes.

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You might say, isn't that a contradiction? Well, no, it's actually not. What is being said here is very simple.

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Don't follow a fool into his own folly. When he makes a mistake in his reasoning, don't just follow him into it and say,

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Well, I'll defeat him anyways, based on the mistake he made, which is not honoring God. I mean, you know, fools said in his heart there's no

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God. Instead, answer him according to his folly, or as his folly deserves.

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Point out the problem in his reasoning, the fundamental, the first problem he had.

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Don't point out that he's dating rocks incorrectly, or evolution's wrong.

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Point out his first flaw. His first flaw was departing from what? The fear of the Lord. And so we've got to go back to what his fundamental problem is.

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He excludes God from his reasoning. And so doing makes himself out to be a fool. So when we're using the don't answer method, what we're essentially doing is pointing out that first problem they have.

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And the way that we do that is by pointing out things like self -refuting statements, which we went over in a previous video.

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We use tactics by which we make an internal critique of the opposing worldview.

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That's what Paul does essentially in Acts 17. He points out a contradiction. The Greek poets said that basically in God we have our life, our movement, our being.

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And yet the Greek philosophers themselves, though they believe that, they didn't treat God that way. They had a statue to Him, an idol to an unknown

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God. Yet their own philosophy says that He wasn't confined to temples made with human hands, but He was the

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God of the universe. And they have a problem with a man being raised from the dead as well, because they believe the physical was evil.

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And so Paul capitalizes on that. And he basically says if God is a

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God that created the physical world, if we as physical beings have our life and movement in Him, and that if He's all -powerful, anything's possible for Him.

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And yet they scoffed at that because they weren't being consistent with their own worldview. Their own worldview said that God was capable of doing these things, and yet they rejected the resurrection.

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And so Paul essentially does an internal critique in Acts 17. How do you do an internal critique?

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Well, that is the model. And Jesus points out the logical inconsistencies with the woman at the well and the rich young ruler and how they were living their lives.

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And so he's essentially doing an internal critique as well. Now, here are the tactics to performing an internal critique.

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Ask lots of questions. You know, good questions. If an atheist says there is no

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God, say, well, where did the universe come from? And follow that line of reasoning. Or how do you justify universal immaterial and unchanging laws if in the universe of the atheist there is nothing non -material?

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You see, that's what you need to do is ask good questions. Point out contradictions and fallacies as they arise, and then bring worldviews to their ultimate conclusions.

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If you bring worldviews to their ultimate conclusions, you'll find that they're unlivable. You know, someone who says that abortion is okay because, well, the fetus isn't really a baby because it's not developed.

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Well, bring it to ultimate conclusion. So something's not developed, it's not human, so it means the retarded person's not a human. Bring it to its ultimate conclusion.

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That's just one example. There's much more information in the links below on how to do this, but that is a transcendental argument in a nutshell.

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So essentially what we're trying to do is get someone to talk so that they will essentially behave themselves with their own rope and then hopefully see the light and find that the

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Christian worldview is the only one that can account for the preconditions of intelligibility, and they will buy into the transcendental argument.

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Now, it does require lordship. It does require Christ to be made Lord, and that's why people have a moral problem with it.

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It's not a logical one. It's a moral problem that people have with it. But anyways, that is the transcendental argument in a nutshell.

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The proof for God's existence is that without Him you can't prove anything. And that is a very important element to presuppositional apologetics.