Does GOD EXIST? @faithbecauseofreason8381
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Ultimate Proof of Creation by Dr. Jason Lisle
https://amzn.to/4be9m2L
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Full Episode:
The Ulimate Proof of Creation! w/ Dr. Jason Lisle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxMC9x0SOK4
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An Evidentialist Review of Jason Lisle’s The Ultimate Proof of Creation by David Pallman
https://freethinkingministries.com/an-evidentialist-review-of-jason-lisles-the-ultimate-proof-of-creation/
#apologetics #presuppositionalism #evidentualism
- 00:04
- I noticed an equivocation fallacy, and David himself may not have realized this, but he equivocated, he switched words, thinking perhaps that they're the same.
- 00:12
- Neutrality, and then he says therefore we're denying objectivity. Now in my worldview those are two very different things.
- 00:18
- I believe in objectivity. I don't believe in neutrality. So be careful not to confuse neutrality with objectivity.
- 00:25
- There is no neutral ground, but there is common ground between the believer and the unbeliever. And that really is an essential attribute of presuppositional apologetics.
- 00:34
- So that in reading that, that tells me this this young man has a he's not really familiar with presuppositional apologetics.
- 00:43
- I want to recommend your book.
- 01:01
- I want to recommend your your website. And so something I was intrigued about was watching how other people just felt like they had to send you emails telling you how you're wrong.
- 01:12
- And so I was doing a little digging myself, and I found an article online, and I thought you know I'd love to have
- 01:17
- Dr. Lyle on and engage with a refutation. Maybe something here is something brand new you've never considered before.
- 01:27
- And so an evidentialist wrote a review, Dr. Lyle, of your book, The Ultimate Proof of Creation. So to give you a little backdrop with this gentleman who
- 01:35
- I've actually corresponded with a little bit over social media, his name is David Palmer. He's an evidentialist, so we approach the the issue of truth more from a presuppositional mindset, transcendentally arguing for necessity, right?
- 01:51
- And so tell us real quick, what's the difference between more of a presuppositional apologetics and a
- 01:57
- Christian that identifies more as an evidentialist? Yeah, the bottom line is what is the standard of truth?
- 02:04
- And for the presuppositionalist, God is the standard of truth. God as revealed in His Word. And so the
- 02:09
- Bible is the ultimate standard for all truth claims, including its own defense. And that's where the evidentialist would say, well, no, you can't do that.
- 02:19
- The evidentialist might say, yeah, God is the ultimate, depending on which one you ask. There's different camps out there.
- 02:24
- But a lot of them might say, well, yeah, God is the ultimate source of truth, except for when you're defending the Bible. You can't appeal to the
- 02:30
- Bible when you're defending the Bible, because that would be circular, and that's not allowed. So you have to appeal to something else.
- 02:36
- But once you appeal to something else, you implicitly make that a greater standard than the Bible. And so the key is the evidentialist either openly or tacitly has to appeal to some allegedly greater standard than Scripture, by which the
- 02:52
- Scriptures are proved, or at least shown to be very likely to be true. And a lot of them argue on the basis of probability.
- 02:57
- It's very likely the Bible's true. It's very likely Jesus rose from the dead. When you hear people making probability arguments like that, they tend to be evidentialists.
- 03:05
- So that really is the heart of the issue. What is the ultimate criterion for truth?
- 03:10
- Is it the mind of man, ultimately, or is it God's Word? If it's God's Word, then it must be the ultimate standard, even when defending the idea that it's the ultimate standard.
- 03:19
- That's the inescapable reality. Now with this individual, like I said, I appreciate the article, because we welcome iron sharpening iron, isn't that right,
- 03:28
- Dr. Lyle? Now this gentleman, he identifies as a classical Armenian, and so I do think there is some clashes theologically, even how we perceive the
- 03:39
- Imago Dei, and God's, and His sovereignty. And so the name of his YouTube apologetics is faith because of reason.
- 03:48
- So what do you think about that? Does reason precede faith? Faith precede reason? Are they equally ultimate?
- 03:53
- How do we understand that relationship? I appreciate his honesty in naming that organization, or I don't know if it's the website or whatever, but in any case that that is the evidentialist view, is that we have faith in God because of the logically, at least logically superior basis of reason.
- 04:12
- So man's reasoning is the ultimate standard by which all truth claims are judged, and therefore we eventually come to faith in Christ that way.
- 04:20
- Whereas I would take the opposite, I would say that no, it's by faith that we understand.
- 04:25
- By faith we understand. We start with faith in God and in His Word, and then based on that we can reason properly.
- 04:35
- In terms, and I'm talking about logical priority, not necessarily chronological priority, and that's,
- 04:42
- I think that's an important distinction because babies can think and reason a little bit. They're not very good at it when they're young, but they get better at it.
- 04:49
- And later they read the Bible and find out the basis, the logical basis, for why they can think and reason.
- 04:55
- But the Bible would have to already be true for babies to be able to think and reason is my point.
- 05:01
- And so it's by faith we understand. And by the way, that's what the Bible teaches in Hebrews 11.
- 05:07
- By faith we understand. Hebrews 11 3. Bam! I was tracking with you.
- 05:14
- Well I had it ready because I was gonna quote it if you didn't, but I've read your book so I know where you're thinking.
- 05:19
- But like you said, by faith we understand that the universe was created by the
- 05:25
- Word of God. That's a necessary foundation. And you can't, even the person that says they are, you know, anti -God, anti -faith, you have your faith in something.
- 05:36
- And you're at least trusting in your own sense perception. You're trusting in your own reasoning ability. And so they can't escape putting their trust in something.
- 05:44
- So that's why I tell them, like, you're trusting in something whether you're going to be open about it or not.
- 05:50
- And like you said, we have something to appeal to. So we would say faith is kind of foundational.
- 05:56
- But I liked what you said too, that it's logically prior, not necessarily in a temporal sense.
- 06:04
- So going back to this article, I also liked what you said.
- 06:09
- At least we see kind of where, you know, the foundation that, you know, a classical Arminian Mr.
- 06:15
- David is standing from. So I read through his article and I wanted to run a few things by you. So he kind of took issue when you brought up the term worldviews.
- 06:24
- And so in the second paragraph he says, near the end of your first chapter, Lyle brings up the issue of worldviews. Unfortunately, pay careful attention,
- 06:32
- Dr. Lyle, he appears to be operating on an unusual definition of the word.
- 06:37
- By worldview he appears to mean any belief that a person holds too strongly, on page 68.
- 06:44
- But this is a problematic definition because no two people hold the exact same set of beliefs.
- 06:49
- Indeed, the history of Christian theology is littered with examples of strong disagreements. Thus, it makes no sense to speak of the
- 06:58
- Christian worldview using Lyle's definition. So what do you think about that? Well, he's misrepresented me.
- 07:05
- That's not my definition. I'm not sure where he got that. It's not in the book. I do define the word in the book.
- 07:12
- You know, a lot of times you define something in a brief way, and then as you get more familiarity with it, you define it in a more specific way.
- 07:19
- And I tried to do that in the book. But my definition of a worldview is it's a network of presuppositions untested by the natural sciences and in light of which all evidence is interpreted.
- 07:28
- That would be my definition of the worldview. And that's very consistent with the way the word is used among other apologists.
- 07:35
- In fact, I'm stealing Bonson's definition when I quote it that way. So it's not just a foundational belief, it's a network of foundational beliefs.
- 07:44
- A network of them that go together and they form a network through which evidence is interpreted.
- 07:50
- And I take his point about different Christians having different beliefs, but I would think that on the most foundational level our beliefs are the same.
- 07:56
- And I guess it depends on how foundational you want it to be. But if we limit it to the essential definitions of what it means to be a
- 08:05
- Christian—faith in Christ, belief that Jesus is God, he's the God -man, that he died and rose again— all
- 08:12
- Christians would share those beliefs. Otherwise, by definition, they're not a Christian, because those are essential to the Christian worldview. And so that's all
- 08:17
- I mean by the Christian worldview, those that are essential. Now, if you want to say, I'm going to include some of these other beliefs that are part of Christianity, but they're less foundational, then okay, we're going to have some minor differences.
- 08:29
- But we can still largely agree. The pastors at my church and I, we have basically the same worldview that we do.
- 08:38
- We can have some minor differences, but depending on how foundational you want to keep those beliefs. So I don't think his objection here really—it's a little bit of a straw man argument,
- 08:47
- I'm sure it was unintentional, but it doesn't really represent what I wrote in the book. Well, he did pick up a little bit, because this next paragraph, he kind of talks about how presuppositions really do color how you see everything.
- 08:59
- He goes on to say, he then proceeds to argue that everyone has a worldview, and that that is unavoidable, essentially.
- 09:06
- One's worldview, according to Lyle, determines how one interprets evidence. He compares a worldview to colored glasses, which can change how a person sees the world.
- 09:16
- For Lyle, there is no way to be neutral. His denial of the possibility of objectivity is extremely problematic and leads to problems later on, as we shall see.
- 09:28
- What do you say about that? Yeah, two real significant problems with what he said there. One is Lyle's idea of neutrality, or they're not being neutral.
- 09:36
- Actually, that's Jesus. Jesus is the one who said, He who is not with me is against me. He didn't say, He who is not with me is neutral.
- 09:42
- He said, He who is not with me is against me. The Bible is very clear that when it comes to faith in Christ, there's no neutral.
- 09:48
- You're God's friend or you're His enemy. You're under His blessings or you're under His wrath. There's no neutral when it comes to God.
- 09:54
- And of course, that's the topic of this book. We're talking about a worldview that either affirms God or one that denies
- 09:59
- God. There can't be a neutral in that, according to Jesus. Now, you could say, but Jesus is wrong.
- 10:06
- There is a neutral. But if you say that, you're not being neutral. You've made a truth claim that the
- 10:11
- Bible's wrong, at least about neutrality. So you're not being neutral. It's interesting, the nature of the claim demonstrates itself.
- 10:18
- Because since the Bible says there's no neutral with respect to belief in the Bible, if you say, yes, there is, you're necessarily not being neutral.
- 10:26
- So neutrality is a non -neutral claim, interestingly. It's a secular claim. And then the other thing is
- 10:32
- I noticed an equivocation fallacy, and David himself may not have realized this, but he equivocated.
- 10:37
- He switched words, thinking perhaps that they're the same. Neutrality, and then he says, therefore we're denying objectivity.
- 10:46
- Now, in my worldview, those are two very different things. I believe in objectivity. I don't believe in neutrality.
- 10:52
- Something is objectively true if it's true for all people. And so truth is objective, because truth is that which stems from the mind of God.
- 10:59
- Something's true if it's something God would say, and that is objectively true. Something an individual, human being might say is not necessarily objectively true, like a person's preference of color, whatever.
- 11:10
- But my claim is that the Bible is objectively true and objectively provable, but it's not neutral.
- 11:15
- It's not neutrally provable. We don't start from neutral ground, because according to Christ, there's no such thing. So be careful not to confuse neutrality with objectivity.
- 11:24
- There is no neutral ground, but there is common ground between the believer and the unbeliever. And that really is an essential attribute of presuppositional apologetics.
- 11:33
- In reading that, that tells me this young man, he's not really familiar with presuppositional apologetics.
- 11:39
- Sure, and he's produced content since then, so I think you're right, at least from writing this article. I think he's beefed up his understanding of presupp.
- 11:46
- And now you mentioned a distinction between there's no neutrality, but there is common ground.
- 11:52
- And so in my research and understanding, that common ground is that even the unbeliever is made in God's image.
- 12:00
- So we appeal to those things that are written on their heart, namely that we have respect, value, we want, we desire, we ought to have reasonable discourse, reasonable dialogue.
- 12:14
- So we're going to press into that Imago Dei. Now we know Romans 1, they're trying to suppress certain truths, but because they're creating
- 12:22
- God's image, they can't help but to illuminate that when we interact with them. Is that a good way of looking at it?
- 12:28
- Yeah, that's right. And so my job as an apologist, and this is another difference between someone like myself who's a presuppositionalist and then someone who's an evidentialist,
- 12:36
- I believe Romans 1. I believe that unbelievers are made in God's image. I believe that they know
- 12:41
- God. I believe that they suppress the truth and unrighteousness. And that's such a—man, I could do a whole sermon on suppressing the truth and unrighteousness, because that's such a weird phrase.
- 12:50
- Think about it. To suppress the truth, you have to know the truth, and then you have to hold it down and claim that you don't know the truth.
- 12:58
- I mean, it's interesting. It's a form of self -deception. And so I, as a presuppositionalist,
- 13:03
- I embrace what the Bible says about the condition of the unbeliever. He does know God in his heart of hearts, but he hates
- 13:09
- God. He doesn't want to know God. So he suppresses that truth and unrighteousness. And so my task as an apologist is to reveal the suppressed knowledge of God that already lies in the unbeliever, whereas evidentialists would tend to accept what the unbeliever says about himself.
- 13:24
- An evidentialist comes to an atheist. The atheist says, I don't believe in God. The evidentialist tends to say, oh, okay,
- 13:29
- I'll present evidence and show you that God, I'll try to change your mind, whereas I, as a presuppositionalist, say, no, you're lying, perhaps to yourself, but you do know
- 13:38
- God in your heart of hearts, and it's obvious by the way you behave. And I can show you that you know God based on your behavior and the things that you say.
- 13:45
- It's obvious that you do know God, but are suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. So we have very different beliefs about the condition of the unbeliever.
- 13:52
- I accept what the Bible says about the unbeliever. All right, I want to pick back up. We got just a couple more excerpts from this article that was critiquing your book, so you got some explaining to do.
- 14:06
- David says, Lyle's solution to the origins debate is to compare worldviews and see which one can satisfy two criteria.
- 14:16
- Number one, maintaining a logical consistency. Sounds important. Number two, accounting for the preconditions of intelligibility.
- 14:24
- The former criteria means that a worldview must not be internally contradictory, and I do not find this criteria objectable.
- 14:31
- Internal consistency is necessary, but not sufficient. Condition for justification.
- 14:37
- The second criteria appears to refer to giving an explanation for things such as memory, morality, logic, and the uniformity of nature.
- 14:45
- It is not at all clear to me, David says, why a worldview needs an explanation for these things.
- 14:54
- We may simply not know the answer to why logical laws, for example, are always true.
- 15:00
- We may simply have to conclude we do not know why everything conforms to the logical laws, but whatever we do, surely it is inadvisable to conduct an explanation just for the sake of having one.
- 15:14
- Apparently withholding judgment just is not an option for Lyle. So what do you think about that?
- 15:20
- We maybe just don't know. Yeah, a couple problems here, and the first one
- 15:25
- I think connects to the second one. There were three criteria I gave, and they're very clear in the book.
- 15:30
- I call it the AIP test, and he only mentioned the I and the P, and I think that's interesting. It's arbitrariness, inconsistency, and preconditions of intelligibility.
- 15:40
- He mentions only two of those, and I don't know, I mean, maybe he didn't read it very carefully, but it could be, you know, sometimes when you come at something, and he's admitted he's an evidentialist, so he's coming at it from a very different perspective.
- 15:52
- Sometimes when you're thinking in a particular way, and somebody challenges that, it's hard for you to even see it. Maybe a scripture that contradicts your way of thinking, and you tend to skip over the part that contradicts your thinking, so that could be it, and that relates then to what comes later, because he's confusing explanation with justification, and this is very important because these are two very different things.
- 16:13
- I'm not claiming that we need to be able to explain everything that we believe to be true, but I do think we need to justify everything that we believe to be true, and that is an essential component of rationality.
- 16:25
- In fact, that's what rationality means. To be rational is to have good reasons for your beliefs, and that's called justification.
- 16:32
- Justification is when you have a good reason for something you believe, and rational people do have good reasons for what they believe, not explanations, justification, and so he's suggesting, well, maybe we don't need what he thinks is explanation, but it's really justification for our beliefs.
- 16:50
- You know, why can't we just withhold judgment? Well, think about that. Suppose I say to David, Christianity is true, and he says, how do you know that?
- 16:58
- I say, I don't know. I just do. It's just true. Maybe, you know,
- 17:03
- I'm withholding judgment on the reason for why it's true. Nobody would be satisfied with that, right? Or if I said, there's a monster in my closet.
- 17:10
- Don't go near my closet, because there's a monster in there. How do you know there's a monster in there? Oh, I don't.
- 17:16
- I don't have a reason for it. I can't explain how I know that. I just do. There's just a monster in there. Just trust me.
- 17:22
- But how do you know? I'm withholding judgment. Apparently, that's an option. I can withhold judgment. Not on things that you believe.
- 17:29
- On things that you believe to be true, you should have a good reason for them, and the more adamant you are about your beliefs, the better the reason better be.
- 17:37
- Children don't have good reasons for what they believe. Children do believe there's a monster in the closet, and you ask them to justify that, and they can't give you one because they're children, and they're not thinking rationally.
- 17:47
- Adults should have good reasons for what they believe. And so, a worldview that accepts that there are laws of logic that we must use when we're reasoning, or that there's orderliness in nature, which we presuppose when we do science, or that there are moral truths, a worldview that holds to those things better be able to justify them.
- 18:04
- If not, by definition, you are irrational. And so, I don't think they would want to admit this, but what he's basically defending is, apparently, it's okay to be irrational.
- 18:14
- You don't have to have good reasons for what you believe. But I would say, no, we do need to have good reasons for what we believe, and that's a
- 18:20
- Christian principle. When someone asks us of reason of the hope that's in us, we're supposed to be able to give them an answer, a logical defense, and that means we better have one.
- 18:29
- We better have a good reason for our beliefs, and I believe the presuppositionalist Christian does, and I believe any alternative doesn't.
- 18:37
- So, one of your articles, I remember, I've read multiple times, but you're kind of talking about, historically, how do we understand what knowledge is?
- 18:47
- A justified, true belief. And so, it's that kind of first—I mean, was it a three -legged stool that you had?
- 18:54
- A three -legged stool for knowledge? And asking that question, what satisfies for justification?
- 19:01
- I remember I talked to a gentleman, B .A. Bostroman, he wrote a book on the Trinity, and I remember asking,
- 19:07
- I was like, so in the most concise way, how would you explain what the justification is?
- 19:12
- We talk about a self -attesting worldview, all these things. You know what he said? Jesus Christ. He said, that's the justification.
- 19:18
- And I was like, I love it. I love it. But I just want to recommend people check out that article, where you kind of talk about knowledge being justified, true belief.
- 19:29
- And there's the correspondence theory of truth, it must be grounded in God, and then having that robust understanding of knowledge, justified, true belief.
- 19:38
- Man, like, that's where Christians, we ought to hang out, because we can pay the bills. I've heard
- 19:43
- Eli Yalla say on his show. So, going on in the article, I just want to kind of look at two more slides here.
- 19:51
- So, this was kind of some of the takeaway, in chapter 3 at least. He says, leaving this issue aside for the moment, can
- 19:58
- Lao even justify his own claim that only Christianity makes sense of absolute morality?
- 20:05
- It seems that he cannot. He spends several pages arguing that if morality is simply a matter of preferences, of majority opinion, then it is not absolute.
- 20:16
- But after this, he makes a puzzling claim that Christianity accounts for absolute morality, because since God created human beings, he determines what is good to be considered right and wrong, on page 51.
- 20:29
- But, hang on, doesn't Lao's account make morality simply a matter of God's opinion?
- 20:35
- If morality is nothing more than because God said so, then we are still lacking an account of an opinion -free absolute morality.
- 20:43
- This is well known as the problem called the Euthyphro's dilemma. Euthyphro's dilemma. His own worldview cannot give an account of absolute morality.
- 20:51
- Thus, by his own criterion, his own worldview cannot satisfy one of the preconditions for intelligibility.
- 20:59
- What do you think about that? You can see some of the Arminianism coming out there, where God is reduced to kind of a human...
- 21:05
- Sprinkled in there a little bit, huh? Yeah. Yeah, where it's, you know, where God just has opinions on things.
- 21:11
- God doesn't have opinions on anything. What God says is true, and that's why Jesus can say, when he's praying to the
- 21:16
- Father, Thy word is truth. Truth is whatever comes out of God's mouth. Whatever God says, that defines things.
- 21:22
- And so, when God says this is the right way to behave, that's the right way to behave. And that's due to the nature of God, him being different from us.
- 21:30
- So, David has ignored the creature -creator distinction. He's treating God as if what God says is just another opinion.
- 21:36
- It isn't. And, frankly, it's to God's standard and his standard alone that I will answer on Judgment Day.
- 21:43
- And, granted, we all fall short and we need a Savior. But my point is, I have a very good reason to obey God's laws because, ultimately, and everybody else does too, everybody will answer to God's laws on Judgment Day.
- 21:54
- The books will be opened and they'll be judged by what they've done in the books. And, of course, we fall short. We need our name written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
- 22:00
- But that's why God's standard is the one that, ultimately, cosmically, is the only one that matters.
- 22:07
- Now, if you have a boss, his opinion might matter a little bit because, if you don't, you might get fired.
- 22:12
- But you're just getting fired. You ignore God's instructions, you spend all eternity in the lake of fire.
- 22:18
- So, you see, I have a good reason to believe that God's morality—I have a good basis for saying that's the standard.
- 22:24
- I would define morality in terms of God's character because all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are deposited in Christ.
- 22:31
- So I would define right as that which God approves of, that which incurses blessings, and I would define wrong as that which
- 22:39
- God disapproves of, that which incurses wrath. And I can justify that. That makes sense biblically because God's mind isn't just an opinion, right?
- 22:48
- It's what God says. It's not an opinion. It's truth, and it's to that standard that I will answer on Judgment Day.
- 22:55
- Yeah, so he brings out Euthyphro's dilemma. It sounds like his interpretation of what you're saying is morality—that just God can make on a whim, right?
- 23:06
- Maybe because Euthyphro's dilemma is accusing the Christian where it seems like, well, God is the one that can change and form the laws of logic or morality, and so you have a problem that God can arbitrarily do these things on a whim.
- 23:23
- And like you said, we ground morality in God's nature. We ground the laws of logic in God's thinking, and so it's not something that he is subservient to, like it's floating out there or something.
- 23:36
- It's a reflection of who he is. Am I kind of in the ballpark there? Yeah, Euthyphro's dilemma was proposed in the context of the
- 23:43
- Greek polytheistic belief system, where they asked the question, is that which is right right because it's dear to the gods, or do the gods proclaim something because it's right?
- 23:53
- In other words, do the gods determine morality, or do the gods simply proclaim a morality that's above them and beyond them?
- 24:00
- And in their system it's unanswerable, because if there's some morality beyond them, how do you account for that? If, on the other hand, the gods are accounting for morality, well, their gods are changeable.
- 24:10
- Their gods change and bicker about whose morality we follow, Zeus or Aphrodite or Apollo, because they disagree with each other, and they're within time.
- 24:18
- They can change, and so their gods can change their opinions on things. But you see that the Euthyphro's dilemma does not occur in the
- 24:25
- Christian worldview, because God is the one that determines what's right. God is the determiner of morality, and morality doesn't change because it's rooted in God's nature, and God's nature is unchanging, because he's beyond time.
- 24:38
- And so God cannot, on a whim, make morality anything other than what it is, because it's rooted in his nature.
- 24:44
- And it makes sense logically. If God could change what's right and wrong, if God could change his commandments, then
- 24:52
- Christ was unnecessary. The crucifixion would be unnecessary, because God could just lower his moral standards to something we could actually do.
- 25:01
- He could say, you know what? Just breathe. That's all you have to do, and you're in good standing.
- 25:06
- And then Christ would have been unnecessary. It's because God can't change, and his moral standard can't change, that we needed a substitute, somebody who made
- 25:15
- God's laws perfectly, to die in our place on the cross. And so the Euthyphro dilemma, if David thinks that applies to the
- 25:22
- Christian worldview, that undermines the cross. It's in the Christian worldview that we have morality that is based and rooted in God's unchanging nature.
- 25:30
- All right, this is the last kind of paragraph I'd like for you to address, because you are just begging the question,
- 25:38
- Dr. Lyle. I'm sure you've never heard of that one before. David says, first, Dr. Lyle claims that logic describes chains of reasoning rather than aspects of the universe.
- 25:50
- This statement is baffling. In the first place, it is question -begging against the account of logic that I have suggested.
- 25:58
- Lyle cannot merely claim logic is not descriptive, for this is what we are disputing. He must demonstrate his claim.
- 26:05
- So what do you think about that? Are you just begging the question? Yeah, I think
- 26:11
- I did demonstrate that claim in the book. One of the things I pointed out is that the universe is constantly changing, and so if laws of logic were describing a changing universe, you'd expect them to change.
- 26:20
- But frankly, he says his statement's baffling, not to anyone who studied logic. I feel like he hasn't had a class in logic, because that's what logic is.
- 26:31
- Logic is the study of the principles of correct reasoning. It's not about fossils and stars and magma and chemistry.
- 26:39
- It's about the rules of reasoning. So I might ask David, what aspect of the universe does modus ponens demonstrate?
- 26:48
- Modus ponens. If P, then Q. P, therefore Q. What does that tell me about distant stars or quasars or magma or whatever?
- 26:56
- Now, I can take facts about nature and put them into modus ponens and draw conclusions about that, but logic itself is the study of the principles of correct reasoning.
- 27:06
- It's about the chain of reasoning. It's not about the specific propositions that are placed into that chain of reasoning.
- 27:13
- Now, we use logic to draw conclusions about the universe, but it's not describing the universe. It's describing correct reasoning.
- 27:19
- So I think any textbook on logic would pretty well cover that. What if there's some dimension out there where it's just a different kind of logic, right?
- 27:28
- Can we not come up with interesting, bizarre hypotheticals that just basically make that conclusion for us?
- 27:37
- It's fun to think about that, but I would say from a Christian worldview, no. The universe, no matter what universe
- 27:43
- God created, it would have to obey laws of logic. But you see, in my worldview, laws of logic stem from the unchanging nature of God, and so no matter what universe
- 27:50
- God creates, it will obey logic. So I can answer that. A secularist might propose that.
- 27:55
- He says, what if laws of logic are different and so on? But there's no universe in which that's possible, and obviously you can't demonstrate that, because laws of logic do have a persistent, unchanging, universal nature to them, because they do stem from the mind of God.
- 28:08
- It's just that only the Christian can make sense of that. So let's let's wind up with this this last statement from Mr.
- 28:17
- Paulman. He says, Dr. Lyle, you commit a blatant either -or fallacy.
- 28:24
- Why can logic not describe chains of reasoning and aspects of the universe? Just a few pages earlier,
- 28:29
- Lyle illustrated the law of non -contradiction by using the example of his car being unable to be both in the garage and not in the garage at the same time in the same way, but this is not an example of logic describing an aspect of the universe.
- 28:47
- Thus Lyle's response not only commits two fallacies, but it also contradicts his own example.
- 28:54
- So when I say, you know, my car is in the parking lot and it's not in the parking lot at the same time,
- 29:00
- I'm illustrating a violation of the law of non -contradiction by putting propositional statements about the universe into the logical category of a contradiction.
- 29:12
- But the logical category of non -contradiction stands on its own. You don't need any particular illustration to say
- 29:18
- A and not A cannot be true at the same time in the same sense, because what does
- 29:23
- A and not A tell me about the universe? Nothing. So laws of logic are rules of correct reasoning.
- 29:30
- And by the way, I'm not claiming that they can't include other things too. I think they reflect
- 29:36
- God's reasoning, so I'm not saying that that's the only way to describe them, but it would be a fallacy to say that laws of logic describe nature.
- 29:45
- They really don't. Can we learn something about nature using logic? Definitely. But that's because we have to take the propositions about nature and put them into the logical chain of reasoning, which is abstract and not about nature, and that tells us what conclusions we can draw.
- 29:59
- So there is a correlation between nature and laws of logic, and that too exists in the mind of God. It's the mind of God that upholds the physical universe, which is why the physical universe will never violate a law of logic.
- 30:11
- But laws of logic themselves are conceptual entities that describe the correct chain of reasoning.
- 30:18
- Dr. Lyle, thanks so much for all that you do, contending for the faith, the kingdom, and it's wonderful that you observe outer space and are able to kind of break that down.
- 30:32
- I've watched a lot of y 'all's, your interactions with Dr. White. You've really got him roped into observing as far as we can observe in the universe.
- 30:41
- So do you have any kind of parting words that you would like to encourage our people with?
- 30:46
- Once again, thanks so much for kind of just addressing some of the... I didn't want to get into the the nitty -gritty of your book from what we already did because I want people to buy it and check it out.
- 30:58
- Yeah, I hope they will. And you can get the book on our website. So here's the book, Ultimate Proof of Creation.
- 31:04
- You get on our website, biblicalscienceinstitute .com. And frankly, when you do read the book,
- 31:10
- I have had people respond to it, and a lot of those responses I put up on the website along with my response to their response and so on.
- 31:16
- So if you know people, if you're saying, well what about circular reasoning and things like that, we've answered that on the website.
- 31:24
- You're begging the question. Yeah, yeah. I've got whole articles on begging the question and circular reasoning and vicious versus virtuous and people saying
- 31:33
- I misrepresent Monson on that. I've got two articles on that where I quote Monson and say, no, here's what he said about that.
- 31:39
- So anyway, check out the... read the book. You can get the book on our website and then read the follow -ups on the website where I've defended that.
- 31:46
- Because I can't answer every possible objection to one book. I've tried to hit the main objections, and you know,
- 31:52
- David said, well he didn't hit this or that or the other. I can't hit everything, because you can come up with an infinite number of potential objections, but I try to hit the main ones.
- 32:00
- And then for those that come up later, I've tried to answer those on the website. So check us out, biblicalscienceinstitute .com.
- 32:06
- Now I think in a previous live stream you did, maybe it was yesterday or so, someone asked you if you're gonna do a follow -up to the ultimate proof of creation, and your answer was something like, it's the ultimate proof.
- 32:18
- You can't, you know, improve upon that. I have thought about writing a follow -up conversations involving the ultimate proof, where I basically apply the method of the book to many conversations that I've had.
- 32:32
- That might be fun, but I think the book itself, I think it delivers on what it promises. I think it gives you an ultimate proof of creation, and therefore that a sequel is not necessary.
- 32:42
- Right. Well hey, you've given me a task to go work on finding you a debate opponent. So we got venues here in Jonesboro, Arkansas, Northeast Arkansas.
- 32:52
- So hey, I'm gonna be in touch with Miss Denise, finding you a debate opponent, and then we got to get you down here to Arkansas land.
- 33:02
- I'm sure we can do that. All right, Dr. Lyle, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for contending for the
- 33:09
- Gospel of Grace and the Christian worldview. I'm gonna continue to share your content with other people, and thank you so much for your time tonight.