Crash Course In Presuppositional Apologetics: Circular Arguments

The Problem of Circular Arguments in Presuppositional Apologetics

Hi everyone, John here from ronaldmoore .com, and welcome back once again to a crash course in presuppositional apologetics. Right now we're going to be talking about perhaps the hardest concept to grasp in presuppositional apologetics, and that is the distinction between a circular argument that's valid and a vicious circular argument.

Let me illustrate. Here we have a scientist, an evolutionary scientist for that matter, a geologist, and he's looking at rock layers. So we have all the different rock layers, and each one represents different periods of time in the evolutionary framework.

You have the Cambrian and Jurassic and so forth, and what they'll do is they'll look at a fossil that's buried in one of the layers, and they'll look at that fossil and they'll say, well that fossil happens to be in a certain layer, and therefore that fossil is as old as that layer.

If that layer is 30 million years old, according to them, then the fossil is 30 million years old. And so the evolutionary geologist sees that and he says, my goodness, this is an old bone. Now if you ask the geologist, well how do you know it's an old bone?

He'll say, well because I found it in this old layer. If you ask him, well how do you know the layer is that old? He'll say, well because the bone I found in there is from an animal that lived 30 million years ago.

So the problem is, the biologist is doing a circular argument. He's taking a date, the date being 30 million, and he's saying that because the bone matches that date in his mind, and because the layer matches that date, therefore the bone and layer are the same age.

And this is what's called a typical circular argument. So we have a layer, we have a bone, and it just goes in a circle. How do you know the bone's that old? Well, because of the layer. How do you know the layer's that old?

Because of the bone. And that's how you know the date. Now, this doesn't work. And the reason should be obvious to all of us. It doesn't actually go anywhere. It doesn't give us any information. Now it's not necessarily invalid.

Maybe the layer is that old, hypothetically. I mean, I don't believe it is, but hypothetically it could be that old. But the thing is, he's not giving us an appropriate reason by which to think it's that old.

A Valid Circular Argument and the Transcendental Argument

Now let me give you another example of a circular argument. Let's look at reason. Someone says to me, I believe in reason. And I say, well, give me a reason to believe in reason. And they say, I'll give you a reason to believe in reason.

What have they just done? Circular argument. They're using reason to prove reason. And that is actually a valid argument, even though it's circular. And you might ask, well, why is that a valid one as opposed to the vicious circle?

Well, the reason is because this is a transcendental argument. This is an argument that you cannot deny. If you denied the use of reason, you'd have to do what? You'd have to deny reality. Because we can only view reality through the lens of reason.

Now, the transcendental argument, the argument we Christians use in order to prove the existence of the God of the Bible, is that his word lets us know that he is real. Now, pay very close attention to this.

God's word. How do we know God's word is valid? Well, we know God's word is valid because of what? He says so. That's a circular argument, right? Now, what makes this different than the vicious argument?

Well, there's an added component. If you deny his word, you cannot prove anything. In other words, you are lost in absurdity, kind of like denying rationality or reason. Now, why must this be the case?

Preconditions of Intelligibility and the Christian Worldview

Well, let me give you a quick example. A scientist who looks at nature must determine whether his readings are accurate. Now, if you're doing any kind of experiment, you first calibrate your instruments.

In the same way, human beings must be calibrated in order to understand that the uniformity of nature is true and that science of experimentation is possible and that what we see in the real world is actually real and that reason is a valid way of looking at things and so forth and so on.

The preconditions of intelligibility. We must assume that there is a calibrator. There is something that is making that true for us and that calibrator is God. That is the essence of the transcendental argument.

That is a parallel example, an analogy. Now, what if someone said, Look, I can do the same thing with reason. Remember, I showed you this before. Reason. We can't deny reason. Therefore, reason is the foundation of my worldview.

That's my circle. Now, every worldview breaks down into a circle, whether you're putting the Koran in here or human rationality in this case or some other religious system, you're going to have a final authority.

Now, if we use reason as our final authority, what's the problem we run into? How does reason make us able to assert that our senses are reliable? How does reason get us to determine whether the laws of nature are actually consistent and uniform and that the future is like the past and that the present is like the past and that morality is something objective?

Because all we have is our reason, correct? If all we have is our reason, there may be different competing systems of reason. There may be an Eastern and a Western reason, a reason in which absolutes exist, a reason in which absolutes do not exist.

So, this doesn't actually get us that far. Now, again, we can't deny reason or else we're in an absurd land. But reason itself cannot be a final authority. Now, what does reason rely on? It relies on our final authority.

Concepts, conceptual things such as reason, which are not material, rely on a conceptual being that has a mind. They rely on minds. And so an invariable absolute mind would be the mind of God, an objective standard.

So, what we need to get out of this is that reason, sense perception, morality, the uniformity of nature, all the things that we require in order to intelligently look at the universe, must rely on God.

Remember, every worldview is a circle. So, what we're trying to look for is a circle that can account for all these things. And this is the only worldview, Christianity, that can account for that. For more information on this, I suggest you watch the Preconditions of Intelligibility video.