The Ulimate Proof of Creation! w/ Jason Lisle

Hello and welcome to The Apologetic Dog, where it's our heart's desire to contend for the gospel of

grace.

Thank you so much for tuning in.

If you're new to The Apologetic Dog, you may be thinking, why a beard?

Well, we gotta have a memorable logo, but it's a reformed beard and also embedded in the

logo of The Apologetic Dog.

I want you to understand my heart is coming from the scripture.

Thy word is truth.

That's what I wanna ultimately point people back to is the only way for us to know truth

is to know the God of truth and how he's revealed himself to us.

And so embedded in the logo, you should see 1 Timothy 6, verse 20, where Paul says, oh, Timothy,

guard the deposit entrusted to you.

Do this, Timothy, by avoiding irreverent babble.

And so what that's talking about is pagan philosophy that rivals the truth of God's word.

So we avoid that.

How do we do it?

Well, we avoid this pagan philosophy by contradictions of what is falsely

called knowledge.

And so we do that internal critique.

We show that the unbelieving worldview is actually borrowing from the Christian worldview at

every point and turn because they cannot escape living in God's creation.

Also, I serve as a pastor and elder at 12 Five Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

I just wanna tell you so much how much it means to me the love and support that I have from my church

family.

At 12 Five Church, that name is a reference to Romans 12 five that says all the saints, we are one together

in the body of Christ.

And so just a couple announcements that I wanna make you aware of is coming up on August 23rd, I believe,

at the Gospel Truth hosted by Marlon Wilson.

I will be engaging in a debate on is water baptism necessary?

You're gonna have to tune in for that one.

So please be on the lookout for that.

And also coming up, I believe, it's not really close, but it's in February.

So I gotta get everybody ready for this, but I'll be actually debating at a

conference in Tullahoma, Tennessee.

So stay tuned for that.

I'm really excited today because I have a guest, Dr. Jason Lau.

How are you, sir?

I'm good.

How are you doing?

Man, we finally got you on.

Your computer could not decide which camera to use.

Your program couldn't decide which camera to use.

My computer's awesome.

Ecamm Live.

Well, maybe we got some kinks to work out, but thank you so much for coming on.

Dr. Lau, if you don't mind, tell us a little bit about yourself and where maybe people can find you.

Okay, the most important thing, I'm a Christian and I have been for many, many years.

The Lord saved me from my sins.

I'm grateful for that.

Secondarily, I'm an astrophysicist.

I got my PhD from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and I now try to serve God by showing people how science

confirms what the Bible teaches.

And I really specialize in Genesis, but any matters pertaining to science and the Bible, I love talking about

those issues because they go together.

It's the biblical God that makes science possible.

And I am the founder and president of the Biblical Science Institute.

And you can find us on the web.

That's just the name, biblicalscienceinstitute .com.

A lot of great articles on that website.

So that's me.

Well, somebody is already dying to know.

So Dr. Lyle, do you still do any more debates?

Do you have anything coming up?

What's the criteria that someone has to meet in order to debate with you?

Yeah, I do debates.

I've done many.

I haven't done a lot of, I haven't done formal debates where there's a cross -examination and it's all timed.

Oh, that's the best part.

It is, it is.

It's just, I can't get people to debate me for the most part, except people who really, there are folks who want to debate me that

really aren't qualified.

It's like, I'm 12 and I think I can disprove you.

And I'm like, well, get some education first and then we'll talk.

But I prefer to have somebody who has a PhD in science preferably.

And I'd be happy to do that.

I'm not a great debater, but I do, I have done them.

I've debated Hugh Ross many times, for example, and others as well.

So yeah, I do that.

But I try to have somebody who's qualified and preferably somebody who's already fairly well -known.

I would be very happy to debate Neil deGrasse Tyson.

So if you're watching this, Neil, let's do it.

Oh my goodness.

Hey, I may have to host that one if you do an online debate.

I'd love to, I'm gonna get on that actually.

So I love how, you know, some people may say a PhD, really?

Well, you want someone that's done their homework, like you said, and y 'all can really get down to the core fundamental

issues.

So I've benefited from watching your debates in the past.

So good.

And so you've teamed up with Ken Ham in the past too,.

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah, it's Ken Ham and I, we debated against Walt Kaiser and Hugh Ross and John Ankerberg.

He was supposed to be the moderator, but he gave them twice as much time as he gave us.

So it wasn't all that great, but that, you can see that's the problem.

He's trying to help them out a little bit.

Yeah, yeah.

And they needed it.

They needed it.

Ha ha ha ha.

Well, I have you on today because we need to talk about something.

So apparently you have this ultimate proof of creation that people

probably pick up this book and said, what isolated evidence totally disproves atheism, right?

And I'm sure they open up your book and thinking, wait, this is not what I expected.

So tell us a little bit about what went into the mindset of you writing this book.

It delivers on what it promises.

It does give an ultimate proof of biblical creation and really the Christian worldview.

It's hard to do all that together, but I focused in on creation in particular.

And what it really is doing is it's giving people an introduction into what's sometimes called the transcendental argument.

And the transcendental argument demonstrates that God exists by the impossibility of the contrary, showing that if

any alternative to biblical Christianity would make knowledge impossible.

And I know that sounds kind of abstract, but when you read the book, it's fleshed out and it shows you that those things that

need to exist for us to know anything about anything, those things are the things that the Bible says is the

way the universe is.

So we have reliable senses and we're capable of rational thought and there are laws of logic by which we

reason and so on.

And those are the things that the Bible makes sense of.

It can justify our expectation in those things.

And so that's really what the book is about.

It's not about giving all kinds of details and nuances of science.

I think that stuff's interesting.

I'm a PhD scientist.

I love talking about scientific details.

That's not for everybody though, but you can give an ultimate proof by showing that God is logically

necessary, that any alternative to the Christian worldview ultimately reduces to nonsense.

That's what the book's about.

Well, and there are many principles in scripture that say that the beginning of knowledge, if you

will, starts with the fear of the Lord, how he's revealed himself.

And if you don't start with that necessary foundation, then it reduces to foolishness.

Not to be mean, but intellectually, we're a fool, you're bankrupt, right?

And tell me what you think about this.

It all goes back to we're made in the triune God's image.

Our very existence, the way that we think, is permeated with reflecting that particular God's

image.

Yeah, that's why we can reason rationally.

That's why we have reliable senses.

God is honest, and so we can have some degree of trust in our senses that God made.

Maybe they're not perfect because there's the fall.

We have the curse now, so the world's not perfect as it was originally.

But nonetheless, God hasn't left us completely to our sin.

He's given us access to some of his knowledge.

In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge according to Colossians 2 .3.

And so if we're to know anything, it's ultimately by revelation from God.

And there's different types of revelation, but the one that's most precious is God's propositional revelation in his word, because that

gives us specific revelation from God written in human language and sentences that we can understand

and process.

And that helps us to interpret the general revelation that God's given around us.

Thank you for referencing that.

You mentioned Colossians 2 .3.

Tell me if you can see this on your end.

Oh, it went away.

Let's see if I can bring it back.

Can you see the scripture on your end?

Yep, yep.

So being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance,

Dr. Lyle, when I think of full assurance of understanding, I'm thinking about certainty.

We can have certainty in the promises of God and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ

in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge like you said.

And then I've always thought this part's really important too.

I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.

And that's kind of what we're getting at is God in his revelation is giving us certainty,

right?

Now that's beautiful.

And not only do we live trusting certain things to hold like the laws of logic, that

reason will hold as we deal with other image bearers and we ought to treat them with love and

grace and be respectful.

But tell me this, outside the Christian worldview, what hope does an unbeliever have?

Outside the Christian worldview is none.

All the treasure of wisdom and knowledge are deposited into Christ, not some.

And so in order to have knowledge of anything, the Christian worldview would have to be true.

And the objection to that is, but wait a minute, I know some non -Christians and they know some things.

Yes, that's because the Christian worldview is true.

My point is not that somebody has to profess a belief in Christianity to have knowledge.

My point is that Christianity would have to be true for people to have knowledge.

That is the biblical worldview, the way the Bible describes the universe, that would have to be true in order for us to know

anything about anything.

Because apart from that, we couldn't justify the things that we need to have knowledge, like a certain degree of uniformity or

orderliness in nature or that there are laws of logic by which we reason or that there's this absolute

moral code by which we have knowledge of ethics and things like that.

The things that we rely upon to have knowledge are things that are true in the universe.

And there are things that the Bible says are true in the universe.

But apart from the biblical God, we couldn't really know any of those things.

You could believe that they might be true, but you'd never be able to justify them.

You'd never be able to demonstrate it.

I'd like for us to continue into that.

I wanna give people just a taste of your book.

If they haven't read it, please check out The Ultimate Proof of Creation by Dr. Jason Lyle.

I've included that link in the show notes in the video below, so please check that out.

I really did wanna spend a little bit more time talking about the laws of logic and

reason, why that's so important.

And then in your book, you get into the necessary preconditions for intelligibility.

So maybe we'll touch on what that means and why that's so important.

In this passage in your book, Dr. Lyle, you say the Christian can answer the hard questions about logic

and reason and demonstrating that.

For the Christian, there is an absolute standard for reasoning.

We are to pattern our thoughts after God's.

And we know in an infinite and limited way how God thinks because he has revealed some of his thoughts through his word.

According to Genesis, he has made us in his image and therefore we are to follow his example.

The laws of logic are a reflection of the way God thinks and thus the way he expects us

to think.

The law of non -contradiction, for example, is not simply one person's opinion about how we ought

to think.

Rather, it stems from God's self -consistent nature.

God cannot deny himself and all truth is in God.

Therefore, truth will not contradict itself.

Since God is constantly upholding the universe by his power, the consistent Christian

expects that no contradiction will ever occur in the universe.

So when I read that, to me, truth is everything, right?

We are on this earth for a reason.

When we look at the world around us, it hits us like, wow, we're here, you know what I mean?

And when we start talking about truth, well, who gets to determine that?

Secular definitions of truth, Dr. Lyle, is that which corresponds to reality.

I've read many of your articles in your book essentially addresses as defined or perceived by who, right?

That's why we really are trying to narrow in is saying truth is that which is perceived by the

unchanging, infallible perception of God, of what he thinks, right?

And logic isn't just floating outside of God, but it's a, help me out, a reflection of how he

thinks and who he is.

Right, and truth, it's something that, one of the pilot that asked Jesus, what is truth?

And that's something that the secularists really can't answer.

I mean, they can, you mentioned what really is the correspondence theory of truth.

The truth is that which corresponds to reality.

That's about, that's like one of about seven main definitions of truth that secular philosophers use because they

can't, and there's seven different definitions because they can't, none of them are sufficient.

It's not that that's wrong.

Truth does correspond to reality, but it's insufficient as a definition because then I'm gonna ask, but how do you know what reality is?

Okay, and so, you know, and so you have this problem.

Well, my senses tell me what reality is.

Really, but your senses can be fooled, right?

I mean, you've seen an optical illusion, so that's not quite sufficient.

In the Christian worldview, truth is that which corresponds to the mind of God.

Something is true if it's something God would say.

It's something that God has a positive mental attitude toward.

And our minds are different from God's in some fundamental ways.

We're made in God's image, and that's a tremendous privilege but God's mind determines truth, whereas

our minds discover truth and not always correctly.

We can be mistaken about things.

God can't be mistaken about anything because what he thinks determines what is true because truth

is what corresponds to his mind.

That's why Jesus can say when he's praying to the Father, "'Thy word is truth.'".

Whatever comes out of God's mouth, that's true.

Had a question I wanted you to maybe share your thoughts.

I think I understand this.

Question for Dr. Lyle from one of our theologians in the side chat.

He says, people have a high value on the book of nature.

Can you give thoughts on this book being unreliable since the curse?

So do you kind of understand maybe the angle that he's coming from there?

Of course, nature isn't literally a book at all in the sense that it's not comprised of statements, although nature contains books,

which are propositional, but those aren't part of what we might call general revelation.

Yeah, we can learn something about God by the universe, and there's no doubt about that, and the Bible tells us that Psalm 19

one, we can learn something about God's nature.

In fact, Psalm 19 is interesting because it compares and contrasts the general revelation that God's given to

us, and then in verse seven, it switches and talks about the propositional, special revelation that God's given to us

in the Bible, in his book, which is not cursed.

Nature is cursed, and we're part of that nature, and so we sometimes don't draw correct

conclusions.

We don't always use our mind properly, and the Bible is giving us an infallible filter by

which we can process the information we see in the universe correctly in so much as we stand on scripture.

So there are two revelations that God's given to us, general revelation, which has the advantage of being universal.

Everybody's seen it, and that's what Psalm 19, the first six verses are about.

No one escapes God's general revelation, but it doesn't save you.

It's God's special revelation that restores the soul, that brings you into a right relationship with him if you respond to the gospel, if

you repent and trust in his word.

So the main thing for me is not so much that nature is cursed, although it is, there's no doubt.

The nature's cursed, the Bible's clear about that, but the problem is nature is not made up of propositional statements,

and so when we talk about interpreting nature, we're using the word interpret differently than when we talk

about interpreting scripture.

Interpreting scripture is understanding the meaning of the propositions as intended by the author, but when

we talk about interpreting nature, we're talking about creating propositions about nature that may or

may not be correct.

They're not infallible.

With the Bible, we start with infallible propositions, and then we interpret them hopefully properly, and

there are rules for interpretation that the Bible itself gives, but with nature, you can't do that.

Nature is not made up of propositions, and so that's the real difference between the two.

God's special revelation has a clarity that the general revelation lacks.

General revelation is sufficient to tell us God exists and that we fall short of His moral standard.

Even the Gentiles have God's law written on their heart, according to Romans 2, but it doesn't tell us how to be saved, and

there's a lot you can mess up in terms of interpreting nature if you don't start with the special revelation that God has

given us in His word.

Now, you've spoken to this issue as well, because when we get into

interpretation, you said there's rules of interpretation, because one critique to this transcendental

method is, okay, if we can't rely on our sense perception.

As we're observing the world and making inductions or trying to figure out

how to live in this world, what about the subjective predicament of

interpreting Scripture?

Scripture may be infallible, but us being fallible, what would you encourage somebody of saying, how does that

bridge get crossed and worked out?

Okay, I believe in what's called the hermeneutical spiral.

The Bible is sufficiently clear, and God has given us enough insight that when you read it,

there's certain things you can't miss.

There's certain things you can't misinterpret if you're a remotely rational person.

I mean, unbelievers can decide not to interpret the Bible properly.

There's no doubt about that.

But if you put your heart and mind to it, and you say, I wanna understand the author's intention, there are certain things you can't miss in Scripture, that

God is the creator, that we're sinners, that we've fallen short, that Jesus is the only way back to God, and so on.

These main and plain themes.

And then there are some difficult sections in Scripture, and the Bible itself tells us that.

There are some things that are hard to understand.

But as your worldview becomes more biblical as you read the Bible, and it

corrects some of your misunderstandings, on the next pass, you're gonna do better.

You're gonna better interpret the Scripture.

So the Bible provides in itself its own keys for interpretation.

And so I would argue that interpretation of Scripture is, maybe I should say it this way.

Interpretation may be subjective, but meaning isn't.

There's only one meaning.

There's an infinite number of interpretations of any passage, because those are subjective, but there's only one meaning.

And I wanna interpret the Bible as to get to its meaning.

And there are rules on how to do that.

And some of them are obvious.

And even the ones that we miss when you read the Bible on the second pass, you're gonna get more out of it.

And I actually wrote a book on that topic called Understanding Genesis.

It's more than understanding Genesis.

It's really how to read the Bible.

What are the rules of interpretation that the Bible itself tells us that are sufficiently clear that

even if you come at the Bible with some mistaken principles of hermeneutics, it will correct those as you read

it on multiple passes.

And so it's not a vicious circle.

It spirals out and you gain better understanding of the Bible on each reading.

Well, I like how you call that kind of a necessary spiral, because when we're talking about the grammatical,

historical method of interpretation, we're really saying language must be understood in a particular

context.

Our conversation right now presupposes that, that words have meaning the way that they were intended.

And when you're going back to Psalm 19, it mentions how God's revelation

illumines the eyes.

God's word is sure, it is true.

And I really think, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

I think this is a special principle within Protestantism, meaning that God's word is perspicuous

to the Imago Dei.

And if it's not, then you can always wind up in these absurdities, never having certainty of

what's being understood.

So like you said, God's word has to be able to get through.

You know what I mean?

So do you wanna add anything to that?

Yeah, I mean, if God's word is not clear, what is?

Because, I mean, God created language.

He created Adam and Eve already able to speak, which I think is a little unfair because I had to go to school to

learn principles of grammar and things like that, but it's pre -programmed into Adam.

So do you think the God that made language can't communicate?

That makes no sense.

Of course, God can communicate.

He made language.

God can communicate with those creatures that he made in his own image and gave them the gift of language.

Because of the curse, there's a problem now, there's the Tower of Babel and languages split and so on.

So we have interpretational issues and such.

But nonetheless, God does know how to communicate clearly.

If he doesn't, who are we to think that we can communicate clearly?

You think that human beings are superior to God in that capacity?

I mean, it's interesting to me because people will write these wonderful books on how the Bible doesn't mean what it says,

but they expect us when we read their book to take them at their word, to believe that what they say is what they mean.

And so there's some hypocrisy there, really.

I mean, they're expecting us to read their words and try to get to their meaning, but they're not doing that with God's word.

And so that's a bit of a problem.

God does know how to communicate.

The problem is people don't like what he has to say.

So you mean I don't need an infallible magisterium to interpret the word of God for me?

That's right.

That's right.

And of course, that, by the way, that Roman Catholic principle is getting very hard

to defend with the current Pope.

So I mean, when Popes contradict previous Popes,.

What do you do?

Are they both infallible?

I mean, it's a problem.

It's a problem.

The Pope is not superior to God in his ability to clearly articulate truth.

And in fact, the Pope is inferior to God in that way.

Yeah, and like you said, there are bad interpretations.

So, you know, those of us that hold to a soul of scripture and God's word is sufficient, we need to

show ourself approved before God.

We need to rightly handle the word, and that takes study, that takes time, and we're gonna get it wrong.

But the core things of what God wants from us, namely to have relationship with him, his word is

sufficient to accomplish that, right?

And so I wanna be charitable, tell people not all interpretations are equally valid.

Just because there's a lot of interpretations, about the most you can conclude from that is there's a lot of bad ones out

there, right?

And so we do wanna study context.

We do wanna understand God's truth holistically, right?

And so I do wanna continue this with you, talking about why logic, logic

is so important to having reasonable discourse, intelligible experiences, making

deductions about what's going on in the world.

And so in your book, you continue to talk about the laws of logic.

They are God's standard for thinking.

Since God is an unchanging, sovereign, immaterial being, his thoughts would necessarily be abstract,

universal, invariant entities, in other words, they are not made of matter.

They apply everywhere and at all times, laws of logic are cogent upon God's

unchanging nature.

They are a prerequisite for logical reasoning, thus rational reasoning would be

impossible without the biblical God.

So do you care to kind of elaborate a little bit on that paragraph?

Yes, the consistent Christian can make sense of why we have laws of reasoning, why they're the same

for everybody, because God's the creator.

God's mind determines truth.

And so there's one standard for correct reasoning, and that's God.

And we're made in God's image, and so we have at least a limited capacity to think in a way that's consistent with his character.

We can't think infinitely like God, his mind's infinitely superior to ours, but we can think in a way that's self -consistent and is

consistent with his nature in that sense.

Furthermore, it's not just that we can make sense of the existence of laws of logic, we can make

sense of why it is that they don't change with time and why they apply everywhere.

Well, it's because God is everywhere.

He's omnipresent.

He's sovereign over the universe.

His thinking controls all of creation.

And so obviously creation will never violate a law of logic because God's controlling it all.

It's his mind that does that.

Furthermore, we would expect laws of logic will not change because they're reflecting God, and God doesn't change.

God says, I the Lord do not change, therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed.

And so because God is beyond time and because God's revealed himself, we're in a position to know all these things.

See, if God hid himself, if we had a God who was like the Christian God in every way, but didn't give us the Bible,

then we couldn't have confidence in laws of logic because we could say, well, I think there's a God who's

sovereign and beyond time, but he hasn't communicated, so how could we know?

It's only because God has revealed himself that we can have this knowledge.

And that's why it's unique to the biblical Christian worldview that we can justify our

belief in laws of logic and their properties, the fact that they're immaterial, they're abstract.

I can have things like laws of logic, which are mental concepts that don't depend on

my mind because there's a mind that's beyond my mind and that's the mind of God.

And so all the properties of laws of logic can be made sense of in the Christian worldview.

And so I have a good reason for believing that laws of logic exist and that they'll be the same tomorrow as they were yesterday

and that they work everywhere in the universe.

The secularist cannot, on his own worldview, justify those things, yet he believes those things.

And that's irrational.

A rational person has a good reason for what he believes.

Secularists don't on their own worldview.

Now, I might have misread something.

I wanna touch back on this again.

You wrote, laws of logic are contingent upon God's unchanging nature.

So does that mean that God can just kind of reshape the laws of logic if he ever

wants to?

Like, what does that mean?

There are some things that God can do that with.

Nature and the way he holds his physical universe, God can do that.

But I would say that laws of logic, when I use the word contingent, that word can, in logic, that can mean

changeable, but it also can mean that something rests on something else.

And if something rests on something else in a way that is necessary and unchanging, then it can't

change.

So laws of logic, they're both a transcendental necessity, and they're contingent in the sense that they

depend on something else.

They owe their existence to something else.

But because they do so necessarily, because laws of logic are the way God thinks, not the way that he,

you know, God had freedom in what he created.

God could have not created Neptune if he'd wanted to.

But laws of logic necessarily flow from the nature of God.

So they can't change because God doesn't change.

And he can't change because he's beyond time.

Yeah, so I remember -.

He can enter into time and do stuff,.

But he can't change fundamentally.

I think maybe Greg Bonson brought this up in one of his debates or in some of his writings, but he

expressed, and help me out here, laws of logic reflect who God is.

So is that a proper way?

I know we as the Imago Dei reflect God, so is it proper to say the laws of logic similarly?

Because we would say, even though they maybe reflected God, that's still an eternal truth.

And I'm thinking about Proverbs 8, the excellence of wisdom kind of depicts wisdom in that way.

Yeah, yeah, so laws of logic, they reflect God's thinking.

They reflect his chain of reasoning, as it were.

And we reflect God, but in a different way.

Well, one of the ways we reflect God is we have the capacity to be logical.

But we reflect God in other ways too.

We have a sense of morality.

And I mean, there are many ways in which we reflect God's character.

Laws of logic reflect God in one specific way.

They reflect the way that he thinks about things, and therefore the way we must think about things if we're gonna

think correctly.

So they reflect his thinking in that way.

They don't bear his image like we do.

That's a unique privilege of human beings, but they do reflect the way that he thinks about things.

Thank you for that.

I want you to see this.

This is a second cup of coffee.

Sorry, are you ready?

I want to touch on this next paragraph because you mentioned the word worldview.

And this is so important when you're getting down to the question of truth.

This is something reading your books, talking with our mutual friend Eli Yala, and reading

Bonson and Ventile, is when you're discussing the nature of truth, no one is neutral, and for the

longest time, did not understand that.

Now, I believed in things like we were born at enmity with God, right?

You cannot please God unless he regenerates your heart.

I'm thinking, okay, you're either against God.

Jesus said, you're either for me or against me.

So I was like, okay, I'm kind of understanding this theologically.

And as Dr. James Watt has said, we can't have a separated apologetics over here.

And then, oh, we got our theology over here.

We got to let the scriptures inform how we give an apologetics to the world, right?

And so, to me, you touch on this in this next paragraph.

You talk about the laws of logic make sense in a Christian worldview, but other worldviews

cannot account for them.

Dr. Lyle, that is a bold claim.

Do you mean all those other worldviews can't account for truth?

What do you mean by that?

Yes, only the Christian worldview can make sense of truth.

No other worldview can do it.

And then there's different ways, and people will try to come back from that.

Have you examined every other possible worldview?

Well, actually, technically, yes, because there's only so many, I mean, there's an infinite number of possible worldviews, but there's

only so many categories, right?

A worldview is either theistic or atheistic.

There's either a God or there's not.

If it's theistic, it's either polytheistic or monotheistic and so on.

There's only so many categories of worldviews, and I've examined all the ones that are non -Christian.

And -.

Can't we just put one leaky bucket into another leaky bucket, and that kind of fix things, or -.

That's what Sproul would say, right?

That's what R .C. Sproul said in the Boston Sproul debate.

But no, we can't live in a leaky bucket, because the bucket indicates knowledge.

And so if your bucket's leaky, you don't have knowledge eventually.

It all peters out.

So no, we need to have knowledge.

And that doesn't mean we have to have certainty on everything.

I know that we can't have certainty on everything.

I understand that.

We can have certainty on some things.

And then a lot of what we do is probabilistic.

And so, you know, I bring an umbrella if there's a 90 % chance of rain or something like that.

But nonetheless, we do need to have justification for our beliefs, and that includes beliefs and laws of logic and so on.

And the Christian worldview can do that.

No other worldview can.

And to those who say, well, yeah, I think there's some other possible worldview, bring it on, name it.

Tell me what worldview you think can make sense of the existence and properties of laws of logic and how we can know about them.

Because I haven't seen any other worldview that can do that.

Yeah, in your book, you kind of bring up, I believe it's Proverbs 26.

With the opening verses, or so let's see here.

I'm gonna try to pull it up on my end.

Where you kind of say, look, there is a kind of two -step approach in how we do.

I'm trying to think how Bonson or Van Til would say, we kind of take the gun out of the opposition's hand.

But the Proverbs tell us, answer not a full according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.

Okay, we're not gonna grant things that the unbeliever can't give a

justification for, namely his worldview and his presuppositions.

But then that proverb goes on to say, answer a full according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own

eyes.

So what's the apologetic value, would you say, of that scripture?

It is, I think it's really the key to refuting just about anything that dares to challenge the biblical

God.

It's at the heart of what's sometimes called the presuppositional apologetic method, which is what I use and what I endorse.

And I believe that all other apologetic methods violate those verses.

They don't actually do that consistently.

Yeah, Proverbs 26, four and five.

Proverbs 26, four, do not answer full according to folly, lest you be like him.

So that's telling us that when the fool comes along, the Bible's not just, well, you're just a moron.

It's not name calling.

It's using that term to describe someone who perhaps is very intelligent, but who is not using his mind

properly.

And so his worldview is silly.

It's been reduced to foolishness.

When somebody like that comes along and he has these false presuppositions, these false basic beliefs about reality,

we're not supposed to embrace those.

If we do, we'll be just like him.

We'll be reduced to foolishness as well.

So somebody comes along and says, I don't believe the Bible, it's false.

We can talk about origins, but you gotta leave the Bible out of it because the Bible is just a collection of myths.

Some Christians would agree to that and say, we can talk about origins and we'll just use science and things like that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for using science.

But when you agree to that presupposition, you've become foolish too because you've agreed to a false standard.

When you say, well, yeah, the Bible, it's not relevant to origin.

No, it's very relevant to origins.

It's the account of origins.

On the other hand, we have verse five, answer a fool according to his folly, which may sound like a contradiction until you look and

see that the sense is different, lest he be wise in his own eyes.

So on the one hand, you shouldn't embrace the presuppositions of the unbeliever, but you should

show where they go.

You should answer them according to those presuppositions to show that they lead to foolishness, to show that they

reduce to absurdity.

And so that's called a reductio ad absurdum.

That's where you temporarily accept the hypothesis, the presupposition

of your opponent.

And then it showed that it leads to an inconsistency.

It leads to something logically that he would not accept.

This is a very powerful method of defending the Christian faith.

Never embrace, never embrace the presuppositions of the non -Christian.

Do show where they would go if they were true, because they will always lead to absurdity.

And by the way, one person who was masterful at this approach was Jesus Christ in his earthly ministry.

The way he would answer his critics, it was always according to Proverbs 26, four and five.

And that's why he was, of course, it was his Holy Spirit that inspired those verses.

So he does know how to do it.

Yeah, yeah, so you touch on this a lot in your book.

And I love the appendix in the back.

There's maybe a few where you kind of show how to interact with people saying, hey, Dr. Lyle,

you're wrong.

And so you kind of show how, okay, tell me, tell me where I'm wrong.

Put forth your worldview, put forth your presuppositions to be examined, because we are open about it.

We only get truth from the word of God.

So when people have issues with certain verses that apparently seem to be

kind of in conflict with each other, well, a lot of times, you just gotta keep reading in the context and realize that they are talking

about different things.

And then we can kind of see it holistically.

And Christ has been building his church for 2 ,000 years.

And that's why I encourage people, examine church history.

So many wonderful saints that have come before us, a great witness, a multitude that we

can glean and build on the shoulders of giants.

And so even though God's word is perspicuous, the bride of Christ,

we would benefit from sharpening one another and examining what's came forth in church history.

So yeah, your work and the ultimate proof of God's creation

is really trying to say there's not one isolated proof that's just a major defeater for

the unbelieving atheistic worldview, but it's the entirety of God's revelation given

to us.

Is that right?

Well, yeah, that would be the ultimate proof that unless God's revelation to

us is true, you can't prove that anything is true.

And I can use specific examples.

And the cool thing about the presuppositional approach is I can use any example.

I can use any example.

So when somebody asked me, what evidence do you have of the Christian worldview?

I would say all of them.

And as one example of this, Greg Bonson one time, Greg Bonson one time in a debate used toothpaste to

prove the existence of God.

He used toothpaste, the famous toothpaste argument.

Yes, you've heard this one.

And he pointed out that when you squeeze the tube of toothpaste, you expect that it will come out the end like it has in

the past.

What you're doing is you're relying upon a principle called induction, which relies upon uniformity in nature.

That's a biblical principle.

The idea that there are patterns in nature that God has promised will be in the future as they have been in the past.

And that goes back to promises like we have in Genesis 8 .22, where God promises the seasons, the day and night cycle

will continue as long as the earth remains.

And only God's in a position to make that kind of promise on his own authority, because he's beyond time.

He declares the end from the beginning, according to Isaiah chapter 46.

So God knows the future, and he's the one that's controlling the future anyway.

And so when he tells us the day and night cycle will continue as long as the earth remains, you can take that to the bank.

The sun will rise tomorrow, right?

Unless tomorrow's judgment day, the sun will rise tomorrow.

And there's no doubt about that.

But from a secular worldview, you can't explain that.

The secular philosopher David Hume was reduced to utter skepticism on this issue.

How do you know the sun will rise tomorrow?

He kind of knew that it would, but he couldn't explain how on his worldview that he knew the sun would rise tomorrow, or that it was even

probable that the sun would rise tomorrow because whenever you use past experience for predicting what's

likely to happen in the future, you're assuming induction.

And the Bible gives us a basis for that, but there's no other basis for that.

Read David Hume's work, if you don't believe me.

And so your expectation that the toothpaste will come out the end of the tube, as it has in the past,

that assumes the Christian worldview.

Apart from the Christian worldview, you couldn't predict that, or even predict that it's likely because laws of

probability presuppose induction.

They're all based on that.

So you can use toothpaste to prove the existence of God.

Those inductive principles presuppose something that is certain, and that's what we're getting at.

Induction in and of itself cannot lead you to certainty.

And so as much as I love R .C. Sproul, and I got his books over here,

man, he really had a problem with wanting certainty, right?

And I loved how Bonson kept saying, like, hey, God's revelation is able to give us that certainty.

That's why we start there.

That's why we're able to reflect on these inductive principles, especially uniformity of nature and so forth.

Someone has a question, Dr. Lyle, that says, do you have any books or anything that you are currently working

on right now?

Yeah, I'm always working on something.

Right now I'm working on a book on the law of God, which is something that is overlooked by many Christians today.

We tend to say, well, you know, that's an Old Testament thing.

Well, no, we're still supposed to obey God's commandments.

Right, Jesus, if you love me, obey my commandments.

And so I'm gonna talk a bit about law, the relationship between Old Testament, New Testament laws.

It's something that's a little bit outside my wheelhouse, but it's something that I've been studying for over a decade.

And it's just fascinating to me.

And I kind of want to share that with others.

And I've read other authors on that topic.

So the law of God is something I'm working on now.

Does this mean that you were hashtagged at Post Mill since you're writing a book on the law of God?

Well, that's more eschatology.

This would be more along the lines of a theonomy.

And I am a concurring theonomist.

You know what?

We're all theonomists to a degree, right?

Even those of us that affirm general equity, like God's law is the standard.

Now, like you said, in certain eschatological camps, what you do with that law and how it cashes out in real time, we

continue on with that conversation.

So can't wait for that book.

Thank you for telling us that.

And your website, you're always, I say you're always, you are pumping out articles that have been super helpful.

I'll tell you one article, probably my favorite one, is do you remember writing on Menchausen's trilemma?

Kind of this idea of bootstrapping yourself.

Would you say that that is the unbelievers trilemma, right?

How they're trying to justify knowledge and concluding, oh, wait, we can't.

Yeah, yeah, it has to do with the chain of reasoning and how do you deal with, you know, because a belief is

justified if it follows logically, either certainty or likely, from another more foundational belief.

But then, of course, you gotta ask, how do you know that more foundational belief is true?

Well, it follows from something else and so on, all the way back to, it has to stop somewhere, right?

I mean, the chain of reasoning has to end somewhere because we are finite beings.

We can't reason in an infinite argument.

So there's an ultimate claim.

And then the question is, how do you know it's true?

And you can't appeal to something more basic or it wouldn't be ultimate.

You can't have an infinite chain of reasoning because it would never terminate.

And a chain that doesn't terminate doesn't prove anything.

And the only alternative is the claim, this ultimate standard must prove itself, which I think is correct.

But unbelievers say, well, you know, we don't allow any form of circular reasoning, so the claim

can't prove itself.

Well, then you got a trilemma.

You got a problem, you can't have knowledge because one of those three has to be the option, either an infinite chain

or a presupposition that is itself unjustified, in which case you don't know anything, or it has to somehow prove

itself.

And if you reject all three options, you can't have knowledge.

Well, that was such a good article, your article talking about what is truth, essentially like we've

already reflected on.

So wanna recommend your book, wanna recommend 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.

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 Dr. Lyle on and engage with a refutation.

Maybe something here is something brand new you've never considered before.

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 I've actually corresponded with a little bit over social media, his name

is David Palmer.

He's an evidentialist.

So we approach the issue of truth more from a presuppositional mindset,

transcendentally arguing for necessity, right?

And so tell us real quick, what's the difference between more of a presuppositional apologetics and

a Christian that identifies more as an evidentialist?

Yeah, the bottom line is what is the standard of truth?

And for the presuppositionalist, God is the standard of truth, God as revealed in his word.

And so the Bible is the ultimate standard for all truth claims, including its own defense.

And that's where the evidentialists would say, well, no, you can't do that.

The evidentialist might say, yeah, God is the, depending on which one you ask, there's different camps out there.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

So that really is the heart of the issue.

What is the ultimate criterion for truth?

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.

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, Dr. Lyle?

Sure.

Now this gentleman, he identifies as a classical Armenian.

And so I do think there is some clashes theologically, even how we perceive the Imago Dei

and God's sovereignty.

And so the name of his YouTube apologetics is faith because of reason.

So what do you think about that?

Does reason precede faith?

Faith precede reason?

Are they equally ultimate?

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 is the evidentialist view, is that we have faith in God because

of the logically, at least logically superior basis of reason.

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.

Whereas I would take the opposite.

I would say that, no, it's by faith that we understand.

By faith we understand.

We start with faith in God and in his word.

And then based on that, we can reason properly.

In terms of, and I'm talking about logical priority, not necessarily chronological

priority.

And 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.

And later they read the Bible and find out the basis, the logical basis for why they can think and reason.

But the Bible would have to already be true for babies to be able to think and reason is my point.

And so it's by faith we understand.

And by the way, that's what the Bible teaches.

In Hebrews 11, by faith we understand.

Hebrews 11, three.

Bam.

I was tracking with you.

Well, I had it ready because I was gonna quote it if you didn't, but I've read your books.

So I know where you're thinking.

But like you said, by faith, we understand that the universe was created by the word

of God.

That's a necessary foundation.

And you can't, even the secular person that says they are anti -God, anti -faith, you

have your faith in something.

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.

So that's why I tell them, you're trusting in something, whether you're going to be open about it or not.

And like you said, we have something to appeal to.

So we would say faith is kind of foundational but I liked what you said too, that it's

logically prior, not necessarily in a temporal sense.

So going back to this article, I also liked what you said.

At least we see kind of the foundation that a classical Arminian, Mr. 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.

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, Dr. Lyle, he appears to be operating on an

unusual definition of the word.

By worldview, he appears to mean any belief that a person holds too strongly on page

68.

But this is a problematic definition because no two people hold the exact same set of beliefs.

Indeed, the history of Christian theology is littered with examples of strong disagreements.

Thus, it makes no sense to speak of the Christian worldview using

Lyle's definition.

So what do you think about that?

Well, he's misrepresented me.

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.

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.

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.

That would be my definition of the worldview.

And that's very consistent with the way the word is used among other apologists.

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, a network of them that go together and they form

a network through which evidence is interpreted.

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.

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 Christian, faith in

Christ, belief that Jesus is God, he's the God man, that he died and rose again, all 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 I mean by the Christian worldview, those that are essential.

Now, if you wanna say, I'm gonna include some of these other beliefs that are part of Christianity, but they're less

foundational, then okay, we're gonna have some minor differences, but we can still largely agree.

The pastors at my church and I, we have basically the same worldview that we do.

We can have some minor differences, but depending on how foundational you wanna keep those beliefs.

So I don't think his objection here really, it's a little bit of a straw man argument.

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.

He goes on to say, he then proceeds to argue that everyone has a worldview and that that is

unavoidable, essentially.

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.

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.

What do you say about that?

Yeah, two real significant problems with what he said there.

One is Lyle's idea of neutrality, of there not being neutral.

Actually, that's Jesus.

Jesus is the one who said, he who is not with me is against me.

He didn't say he was not with me is neutral.

He said, he who's not with me is against me.

The Bible is very clear then that when it comes to faith in Christ, there's no neutral.

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.

And of course, that's the topic of this book.

We're talking about a worldview that either affirms God or one that denies God.

There can't be a neutral in that, according to Jesus.

Now you could say, but Jesus is wrong.

There is a neutral.

But if you say that, you're not being neutral.

You've made a truth claim that the Bible's wrong, at least about neutrality.

So you're not being neutral.

It's interesting.

The nature of the claim demonstrates itself 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.

So neutrality is a non -neutral claim.

Interestingly, it's a secular claim.

And then the other thing is 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.

Neutrality, and then he says, therefore we're denying objectivity.

Now, in my worldview, those are two very different things.

I believe in objectivity.

I don't believe in neutrality.

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.

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 or

whatever.

But my claim is that the Bible's objectively true and objectively provable, but it's not neutral.

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.

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.

So that in reading that, that tells me this young man he's not really familiar with presuppositional apologetics.

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.

And now you mentioned a distinction between there's no neutrality, but there is common ground.

And so in my research and understanding, that common ground is that even the unbeliever

is made in God's image.

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 right,

reasonable dialogue.

So we're going to press into that Imago Dei, right?

Now we know Romans one, they're trying to suppress certain truths, but because they're creating 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?

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.

I believe Romans one.

I believe that unbelievers are made in God's image.

I believe that they know 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.

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.

I mean, it's interesting.

It's a form of self -deception.

And so I, as a presuppositionalist, I embrace what the Bible says about the condition of the unbeliever.

He does know God in his heart of hearts, but he hates 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.

An evidentialist comes to an atheist, the atheist says, I don't believe in God.

The evidentialist tends to say, oh, okay, 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 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.

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.

I accept what the Bible says about the unbeliever.

Yeah, so we had a question.

I'd like for you to speak to this just briefly, but he asked, Lau, is paganism irrational?

Does Occam's razor surmise pantheism is more logical because the neutral mind has

also supposed all is one?

Is this the trap of first Corinthians one?

What do you think?

Does Occam's razor surmise pantheism is more logical because the natural mind

has also suppressed all is one?

Is this the trap of first Corinthians one?

Well, first of all, yes, it's irrational.

Occam's razor really applies more to it.

Occam's razor is designed to apply to competing scientific models.

I tend to use it primarily in that format.

And the supposition is that the model that's simpler, that explains all the data equally well.

You have two models in science that explain the data equally well.

The one that's simpler is more likely to be true.

And that's, or is a better approximation of truth.

Or in some versions of it, it's just preferred whether or not it's more likely to be true.

We go with the simpler model.

I think Occam's razor is a good idea because there's a simplicity that's in Christ that Paul speaks of in first

Corinthians.

So I do believe in Occam's razor, but that's mainly scientific models.

The reason that pantheism and I mean, pantheism, everything's part of God.

Yeah, that's a problem.

There's so many problems with that.

You don't have a transcendent God, a God who's beyond nature and controlling it.

So that's a problem.

It's a problem because it's contrary to scripture.

That's a big problem.

God has revealed himself and he indicates that he is separate from his creation.

God does not depend on his creation.

He made it at a point in time.

And so it depends on him.

He's not part of it.

So, and all is not one.

There's two errors that people tend to fall into.

The idea that all is one.

So you have sort of this monism, everything's one, or everything is atomistic, everything's separate.

And neither of those quite explains the universe because the universe is one in one sense, and it's many in another

sense.

And I would argue it's the Christian worldview that makes sense of that, partly because God himself is one in three.

He's one in one sense and more than one in a different sense.

That's not contradictory because the sense is different, but God is one and more than one.

And the universe that he made has consistency in it because of the way God upholds things, but it also has differences that God

allows.

And that, again, I think reflects partly the triune nature of the biblical God.

Not exactly, there's no exact parallel to the Trinity, but it partly reflects that aspect of his being.

So that's one reason why paganism or any sort of pantheism is illogical.

I hope that's helpful.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

There's so much content on that and wanted to get a recommendation.

Any recommendation for content for kids, shows, movies?

This person's saying it's hard to find good content that's easy to digest.

And obviously your book, The Ultimate Proof of Creation, it's funny, I remember you were talking about the laws of

logic in a couple chapters and you're like, hey, skip these chapters and come back to it, check it out some other time.

But the book is structured in such a way where I feel like it's digestible, right?

And I know Bonson wrote a book called The Defense of the Faith too, which I always recommend to people.

So you got any recommendations out there?

Yeah, for kids specifically, it's a little tricky.

I don't have kids of my own and I don't write to that level normally.

If you're talking about older kids, like middle school, yeah, I think middle school kids could read The Ultimate Proof of Creation.

It might take a couple.

I've had some people say, I've had adults say, I had to read it twice.

I'm like, only twice, that's good.

That's good.

Because when I first started reading Bonson, it took me a while to get it, it did.

And it's not because it's that hard.

It's because I had been trained to think incorrectly.

Most of us are.

Most of us have gone through a public school system where we're trained to think as secularists, which is not right.

We're trained to think in terms of neutrality.

We're not trained to think biblically.

And so that's the problem.

But I think a lot of my resources, if middle schoolers could read, certainly.

Now youngsters, I have one resource that I've done that youngsters would like, and it's my DVD on dinosaurs in

the Bible.

I don't care how young they are, they will like it.

Because it's dinosaurs, and kids like dinosaurs.

Other resources we have coming, we have another on our staff,

Dan Letha.

He's our illustrator.

He's working on some children's resources.

Now see, he's had kids, and so he knows how to write that stuff better than I do.

And then check out our sister ministry, Answers in Genesis.

They have some really good resources for children there.

And a lot more than, we have a few on our website.

We have Answers for Kids, Answers for Teens.

I didn't write these, but they're very well done.

In fact, our sister ministry did.

But yeah, check out our sister ministry for young kids.

Awesome, thank you for that, Dr. Lyle.

All right, I wanna 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.

David says, Lyle's solution to the origins debate is to compare worldviews and

see which one can satisfy two criteria.

Number one, maintaining a logical consistency.

Sounds important.

Number two, accounting for the preconditions of intelligibility.

The former criteria means that a worldview must not be internally contradictory, and I do not find

this criteria objectable.

Internal consistency is necessary, but not sufficient.

Condition for justification.

The second criteria appears to refer to giving an explanation for things such as memory,

morality, logic, and the uniformity of nature.

It is not at all clear to me, David says, why a worldview needs an

explanation for these things.

We may simply not know the answer to why logical laws, for example, are always

true.

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.

Apparently, withholding judgment just is not an option for Lyle.

So what do you think about that?

We maybe just don't know.

Yeah, a couple problems here, and the first one I think connects to the second one.

There were three criteria I gave, and they're very clear in the book.

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.

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.

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 those are two very different things.

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.

In fact, that's what rationality means.

To be rational is to have good reasons for your beliefs, and that's called justification.

Justification is when you have a good reason for something you believe, okay?

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.

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?

And I say, I don't know.

I just do, it's just true.

Maybe, you know, 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, 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, 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.

But how do you know?

I'm withholding judgment.

Apparently that's an option.

I can withhold judgment, not on things that you believe.

On things that you believe to be true, you should have a good reason for them.

And the more adamant you are about your belief, the better the reason better be.

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.

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.

If not, by definition, you are irrational.

And so I don't think David would want to admit this, but what he's basically defending is, apparently it's okay to be irrational.

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 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.

We better have a good reason for our beliefs.

And I believe the presuppositionalist Christian does, and I believe any alternative doesn't.

So one of your articles, I remember, I've read multiple times, but you were kind of talking about,

historically, how do we understand what knowledge is?

A justified, true belief.

And so it's that kind of first, was it a three -legged stool that you had, a three -legged stool for knowledge?

And asking that question, what satisfies for justification?

I remember I talked to a gentleman, B .A. Bosterman.

He wrote a book on the Trinity.

And I remember asking, I was like, so in the most concise way, how would you explain what the justification is?

We talk about a self -attesting worldview, all these things.

You know what he said?

Jesus Christ.

He said, that's the justification.

And I was like, I love it, I love it.

But I just wanna recommend people check out that article where you kind of talk about knowledge being

justified, true belief.

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.

Man, that's where Christians, we ought to hang out because we can pay the bills.

I've heard Eli Yala say on his show.

So going on in the article, I just wanna kind of look at two more slides here.

So this was kind of some of the takeaway in chapter three, at least.

He says, leaving this issue aside for the moment, can Lao even justify his own claim

that only Christianity makes sense of absolute morality?

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.

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.

But hang on, doesn't Lao's account make morality simply a matter of God's opinion?

If morality is nothing more than because God said so, then we are still lacking an account

of an opinion -free absolute morality.

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.

Thus, by his own criterion, his own worldview cannot satisfy one of the

preconditions for intelligibility.

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.

Sprinkled in there a little bit, huh?

Yeah, yeah, where God just has opinions on things.

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 father, thy word is truth.

Truth is whatever comes out of God's mouth.

Whatever God says, that defines things.

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.

So David has ignored the creature -creator distinction.

He's treating God as if what God says is just another opinion, it isn't.

And frankly, it's to God's standard and his standard alone that I will answer on judgment day.

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.

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.

But that's why God's standard is the one that ultimately, cosmically, is the only one that matters.

Now, if you have a boss, his opinion might matter a little bit because if you don't, you might get fired.

But you're just getting fired.

You ignore God's instructions, you spend all eternity in the lake of fire.

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.

I would define morality in terms of God's character because all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are

deposited in Christ.

So I would define right as that which God approves of, that which incurses blessings.

And I would define wrong as that which 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?

What God says is not an opinion, it's truth.

And it's to that standard that I will answer on judgment day.

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?

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.

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.

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 Greek polytheistic belief system

where they've 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?

In other words, do the gods determine morality or do the gods simply proclaim a morality that's above them and beyond them?

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.

Their gods change and bicker about whose morality do we follow, Zeus or Aphrodite or Apollo because they

disagree with each other and they're within time, 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 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.

And so, because he's beyond time.

And so God cannot on a whim make morality anything other than what it is because it's rooted in his nature.

And it makes sense logically.

If God could change what's right and wrong, if God could change his commandments,

then Christ was unnecessary.

The crucifixion would be unnecessary because God could just lower his moral standards to something we could actually do,

right?

He could say, you know what? Just breathe, that's all you have to do.

And you're in good standing.

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 God's laws perfectly to die in our place on the cross.

And so the Euthyphro dilemma, if David thinks that applies to the 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.

Yeah, I wanted to sneak in a question here from someone that asked, I have a question for Dr. Lyle.

Is there historical precedence for old earth creationists?

I don't think you can make that argument for the theistic evolution position.

I know it's kind of off what we were saying, but I thought this perhaps was a good question you could address real quick.

Yes, the Greeks believed in a very ancient earth.

And I have to tell you, the early church was very influenced by Greek thinking, not for the better.

I mean, there are some things that, I mean, I think the Greeks make some good contributions too.

I think Aristotle in his categorical syllogisms, I mean, that's kind of neat and that's useful, but

the Greeks believed in an old earth and some of that thinking had infiltrated the early church.

It wasn't common, but there are a few folks that like even origin, I think might've believed in

old earth.

Augustine did not, Augustine allegorized sections of Genesis, but he was still a young earth creationist because he talked about the

time span between creation and now being less than 6 ,000 years and so on.

So yeah, there were a few, but they were very few and far between.

For most of the early church history, all the way up until about the 1700s, the church

almost universally embraced what you might call young earth creation.

They believed that the world was thousands of years old.

And then the real resurgence of old earth creationism happened really in the 17, some of the

1600s, but really in the 1700s with those folks who wanted to, James Hutton and Charles Lyell,

who wanted to argue that the geology proved millions of years.

And a lot of the pastors, not all of them, but a lot of them compromised and started allowing for the millions of years,

either by day age or Thomas Chalmers invented the gap theory in 1804, if memory serves.

And so that allowed for the millions of years.

But no, young earth creation has always been the mainstay of the Christian church with a very few exceptions.

Thanks for that.

All right, this is the last kind of paragraph I'd like for you to address because you are just

begging the question, Dr. Lyell.

I'm sure you've never heard of that one before.

David says, first, Dr. Lyell claims that logic describes chains of reasoning

rather than aspects of the universe.

This statement is baffling.

In the first place, it is question begging against the account of logic that I have suggested.

Lyell cannot merely claim logic is not descriptive for this is what we are disputing.

He must demonstrate his claim.

So what do you think about that?

Are you just begging the question when we -.

Yeah, I think I did demonstrate.

Yeah, I think 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.

But frankly, he says, the statement's baffling, not to anyone who studied logic.

I take it David hasn't had, I feel like he hasn't had a class in logic because that's what logic is.

Logic is the study of the principles of correct reasoning.

It's not about fossils and stars and magma and chemistry.

It's about the rules of reasoning.

So I might ask David, what aspect of the universe does Modus ponens demonstrate?

Modus ponens, if P then Q, P therefore Q.

What does that tell me about distant stars or quasars or magma or whatever?

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.

It's about the chain of reasoning.

It's not about the specific propositions that are placed into that chain of reasoning.

Now we use logic to draw conclusions about the universe, but it's not describing the universe.

It's describing correct reasoning.

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?

Can we not come up with interesting, bizarre hypotheticals that just basically

make that conclusion for us?

It's fun to think about that, but I would say from a Christian worldview, no.

The universe, no matter what universe 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 God creates, it will obey logic.

So I can answer that.

A secularist might propose that.

He said, 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.

It's just that only the Christian can make sense of that.

Jamie AG out there, she may or may not be a member of 12 Five Church, but she says, Dr. Lyle,

would you be willing to come to Jonesboro, Arkansas and debate if given the opportunity?

What if we got Neil deGrasse to come down?

We could set it up.

What do you say?

Yeah, if Neil deGrasse Tyson would be willing to debate me, I'd go anywhere in the country to do that.

That's not a problem.

Or I'd debate William Lane Craig.

I would debate -.

That woman might be hard to get going.

Yeah, but James White pulled it off pretty nicely.

I thought he went pretty well.

So that was pretty nice.

Or Richard Dawkins.

I would love to debate Richard Dawkins.

And although I normally have the standard that I require a PhD, I would make an exception for Bill Nye.

If Bill Nye would want to debate me on creation, even though he's an engineer and he's not a PhD, I would still be happy

to debate him on that topic.

So yeah, I'd be willing to do that.

I don't want to debate somebody who's just Joe Shmoe, you know, who's 12 years old.

I want to debate Dr. Lyle.

It has to be somebody who has some credentials so that it's not just me explaining to

someone who hasn't studied the topic what it's really about.

You need to have somebody who's knowledgeable to have a good debate.

That's good.

So it's good to hear a few people that you would strongly say, yeah, that would be a good, meaningful

interaction where a lot of people can kind of learn some of the nuances there.

So another question as we're winding down, and you just let me know if, are we good for

maybe another 10 minutes or so?

Sure, yeah.

You got your coffee?

Are you a coffee drinker?

I'm not a coffee drinker.

I just have water here to lubricate my vocal cords.

There you go.

Well, this question is, how do secular astrophysicists explain how stars are formed?

I hope you don't mind that kind of question, but that's in your wheelhouse, I think.

It is, yeah.

So secular astronomers believe that stars form from nebulae.

So the universe contains stars.

It also contains nebulae.

A nebula is a cloud of hydrogen and helium gas.

It's made of the same stuff as stars.

And so you can see the connection there.

So the secular astrophysicist believes that nebulae, some of them, their gravity causes

them to collapse in on themselves and form a star because they're made of the same stuff.

So you might think, well, that sounds pretty reasonable, but there are some problems with that.

There are three in particular that stand out.

One of them is that the force of gas pressure in a nebula, which is outward, gas presses outward,

is typically orders of magnitude greater than the force of gravity in a nebula.

Because the force of gravity diminishes with the square of the distance.

And so you have something like a nebula that's huge.

It might be a light year across.

The force of gravity in that nebula is very, very meager.

And so getting the process started, nebulas expand.

They don't contract on themselves.

Now, once you get a star, because the space is very small, the gravity is much stronger, it'll hold itself together.

It'll counteract the gas pressure and it'll stay a star.

But getting a nebula to compress into a star is very tricky.

And gas pressure is one reason.

Another is angular momentum.

So as that nebula collapses, if that nebula has just a little bit of spin to it, which they all would just statistically,

then as it collapses, it'll speed up just like a skater when she pulls her arms in and she's spinning it, she speeds up

like that.

That's a principle called conservation of angular momentum.

And that would tend to prevent any further collapse because if you've ever been spinning in a chair and you have like weights and you pull

them in, it's hard to pull them in, right?

It requires more pressure due to the, in your reference frame, what would be the centrifugal force, which seems to be pulling them outward.

So that's a problem.

And then also the magnetic field pressure.

Nebulae have magnetic fields threading them.

And as you push them together, it's like pushing the north end to another north end of a magnet.

They would want to resist.

So there are three forces in nature that would tend to prevent a star from collapsing in on itself.

But that is the secular belief is that they form from a collapsing nebula.

And I've given you three reasons to think that that probably doesn't happen, but I'm not dogmatic about it.

Another question, really interesting.

Lao, is pure logic mathematical?

Do those laws correspond to the logic of good and evil in any logical way?

It's pure logic mathematical.

It has a mathematical quality to it.

If you've ever studied formal logic, it looks a lot like algebra because they're similar.

I would kind of flip it and say mathematics is a subset of logic.

Mathematics is the logic of numbers.

It's the correct way to reason about numbers.

So you have the larger category logic and then mathematics is one aspect of it.

And do these laws correspond to knowledge of good and evil in a logical way?

That's almost a different category because mathematics is about what is and

it's in the realm of the abstract.

What is conceptually true, whereas good and evil are about what should

be.

And so they're kind of in a different category.

The connection between the two is of course God.

God is the one that determines laws of mathematics and God is the one that determines what is right and what is wrong.

So that's the connection between the two.

Excellent, someone says out there.

So let's wind up with this last statement from Mr. Paulman.

He says, Dr. Lyle, you commit a blatant either or fallacy.

Why can logic not describe chains of reasoning and aspects of the universe?

Just a few pages earlier, 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.

Thus Lyle's response not only commits two fallacies, but it also contradicts his own example.

So when I say my car is in the parking lot and it's not in the parking lot at the same time, 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.

But the logical category of non -contradiction stands on its own.

You don't need any particular illustration to say A and not A cannot be true at the same time and in the same sense.

Because what does A and not A tell me about the universe?

Nothing, okay?

So laws of logic are rules of correct reasoning.

And by the way, I'm not claiming that they can't include other things too.

I think they reflect God's reasoning.

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.

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.

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.

But laws of logic themselves are conceptual entities that describe the correct chain of reasoning.

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.

And 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.

So do you have any kind of parting words that you would like to encourage our people with?

Once again, thanks so much for kind of just addressing some of the...

I didn't wanna get into the nitty gritty of your book from what we already did, because I want people to buy it

and check it out.

Yeah, I hope they will.

And you can get the book on our website.

So here's the book, Ultimate Proof of Creation.

You can get on our website, biblicalscienceinstitute .com.

And frankly, when you do read the book, 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.

So if people, if you're saying, well, what about circular reasoning and things like that?

We've answered that on the website.

So check that out, check out the book.

Yeah, yeah.

I've got whole articles on begging the question and circular reasoning and vicious versus virtuous and people saying 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.

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.

Because I can't answer every possible objection to one book.

I've tried to hit the main objections.

And 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 tried to hit the main ones.

And then for those that come up later, I've tried to answer those on the website.

So check us out, biblicalscienceinstitute .com.

Now, I think in a previous live stream you did, maybe it was yesterday or so, someone asked you if you were gonna do a

follow -up to the ultimate proof of creation.

And your answer was something like, it's the ultimate proof.

You can't improve on that.

Now, did you say...

Yeah, go ahead.

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.

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 a sequel is not necessary.

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.

So, hey, I'm gonna be in touch with Miss Denise, finding you a debate

opponent, and then we gotta get you down here to Arkansas land.

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 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.

Thanks, my pleasure.

All right, have a good one.

Thanks again.

Yep.

Thank you so much for tuning in, everybody, to the apologetic dog.

If you have benefited from this ministry, if you liked this interview with Dr. Lyle,

please like, share, subscribe.

Hit that notification bell.

That way you can be reminded of when I'm able to do these kinds of interviews.

And wouldn't it be awesome if I got to host a debate with Dr. Lyle and

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Hey, I'm gonna try.

But thank you so much for all your support.

Thank you so much, 12 Five Church.

Many of you are watching live.

Thank you so much for your support with me pursuing apologetics.

I love y 'all.

And everybody else that's really supported the apologetics ministry through prayer, through

finances, appreciate that so much.

Got a number of things kinda in the pipeline from debates, teaching series, more live streams,

interacting with other Christians, contending for the faith once delivered to the saints.

Thank you so much for tuning in to the Apologetic Dog tonight.

Look forward to seeing you next time.

God bless, bye -bye.