(Meta-Critique) A Presupper Critiques a Guy Critiquing a Presupper (Jeff Durbin)

Meta-Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today we have an interesting episode, a sort of meta-apologetic analysis. In this episode, there's going to be a guy who's going to critique another guy who's critiquing a guy.

Does that make sense? So there's a guy, me, critiquing another guy who's critiquing another guy, all right? And hopefully, you know, we can make some good use of our time here and make some good, helpful apologetics applications, okay?

And so we're going to be looking at a video. I think the creator of the video is an atheist, a skeptic. I don't know much about him, and so I can't really speak to him as an individual. But he is critiquing presuppositional apologetics, as it is presented by Jeff Durbin, who is a fellow presuppositionalist.

I'm sure folks who listen to, well, if you know anything about presuppositional apologetics, you're most likely going to know about Jeff Durbin. So Jeff Durbin is over there at Apologia Studios and Apologia Church?

Apologia Church? Apologia Church? I don't know how he pronounces it. I've heard it pronounced different ways. So that's what's going to be happening. We're going to be looking at a video in which an unbeliever is critiquing Jeff Durbin's presentation or doing a Q &A that is, I guess the topic was something relating to presuppositional apologetics.

And I want to try to do more of these sorts of videos where we are taking what others have said and kind of picking it apart with the hopes that we can or I can do my best to teach folks how to think logically and rationally and to apply a presuppositional mindset to various contexts.

And so I'll try my best to do that. I am a teacher at heart. And so I do apologize if when I move from the introductions where I kind of sound very casual and then when I start teaching, I sound very teacher-ish because I am a teacher.

That's what I do. And so sometimes I get into that teacher mode. So I do apologize if that comes across a certain way. But basically, guys, if there are folks just joining in, we're going to be doing some meta apologetics.

We're going to critique a critique. All right. So it's a critique of a critique. A dude critiquing another dude who's critiquing another dude. That's basically what we're going to do today. All right.

Now, before we jump into that, if you have found the content helpful on Revealed Apologetics, you can do me a solid and hit the notification bell to get kind of the announcements, maybe through an email or I don't know how the technology works.

But when you get a notification where new videos are coming out. OK. And so if you could do that, if you haven't subscribed, I don't know what's wrong with you. You should really take the time to press the subscribe button and share the videos if you think this content is useful.

I very much appreciated that folks have enjoyed kind of the respectful manner that that I try my best to to get across in my interactions and explanations. That's something that I think is is something that we should promote.

OK. And I encourage you to function in the apologetical realm with gentleness and respect. So I appreciate it when people recognize it and what I'm doing. And I that is on purpose. OK. Because I always try to highlight the importance of allowing our the way that we present ourselves being consistent with how Scripture says we should be presenting ourselves.

Now, do I do it perfectly? No. Definitely when you're engaged in this sort of, you know, context, some snarkiness can come across and some pride can come across. And so anytime that I reflect that in the way that I present things, I do apologize.

But share the content and hopefully this can start some conversation or even be content that you guys can use in your own Bible studies or apologetics, small groups or whatever you guys do. And you can use this as kind of a platform to talk about some interesting stuff.

All right. So if you haven't subscribed yet, make sure to subscribe on YouTube. YouTunes. YouTunes. I just made something up on iTunes. All of the episodes here will be. Well, they are turned into podcast episodes.

OK. So you can listen to it on podcast. Some people like to watch and look at my face. Not much to look at. Or you could hear the deep, smooth voice of a Puerto Rican apologist presupposition list. Look at that.

I just created a new label. Get the audio better. You know, iTunes is there. You like YouTube here. You can watch here. Both are are great resources. All right. So with that said, I was debating in my mind whether I should play the video and interact or play the whole video, then play it back and interact.

So we're going to do it the simple way by just playing the video. And I'm going to stop at various points. OK, now let's see here. Let's get this up on the screen of technology is not acting up on me.

And it looks like it is. There we go. Get behind me, Satan. There we go. There we go. Very good. All right. So before we start the video. OK, the the skeptic, the atheist, I'm going to call him. I mean, we can call him a generic unbeliever.

I suppose he's an atheist or a skeptical sort. But let's assume he's an atheist slash skeptic, whatever fits in that category. He's going to start off with a definition that he offers a presuppositional apologetics.

And I think this is very important. Definitions are critical when you are doing apologetics and when you're just doing communication in general. So you want to always make sure you define your terms, OK, especially when we're speaking of presuppositional apologetics.

That word itself can be very intimidating for folks. And so it's important to properly define the methodology, properly define what we mean by presuppositions, transcendentals, things like that. As I as you guys know, I'm actually writing a book entitled The Presupp answer book.

And part of the questions that I'm addressing are just basic terms so that you can learn the language of the presuppositional form of argumentation. And then when you master the definitions, you can take that information and you can cater it to your particular context.

And I think this is very important. We don't want to get bogged down with language, technical language, such that when we're sharing our faith using a presuppositional method within our everyday lives, you know, we're not talking a completely foreign language.

You need to be able to take ownership of the information and then convey it within the context that you are in. OK, so if you are working with young people, you need to be able to convey this sometimes complicated information to younger people.

And this is, you know, I think this is very, very important. Otherwise, we're just pontificating and using big old fancy words. All right. So with that said, let us play the video. And I'm going to stop and explain and respond and blah, blah, blah, those sorts of things.

All right. So let's get started.

All right. There we go.

What Presuppositional Apologetics Is Not

Presuppositional apologetics is an approach that tries to establish that a God exists a priori, that is, in a way that does not appeal to evidence. Presuppositional apologists insist that the existence of a God must be assumed before any argument can be made, because in order for any argument to be completely reliable, there must be an infallible source of knowledge.

Let's stop right there. OK, there is already a problem with definitions. OK, I don't know of any presuppositional apologist, you know, any adherent to a presuppositional school of thought that would actually agree with that definition.

OK, so this specific person who's making this video, he defines presuppositional apologetics thusly. Presuppositional apologetics is an approach that tries to establish that a God exists a priori, i .e., in a way that does not appeal to evidence.

OK, again, if you if you watched my previous episode, we talked about the presuppositional use of evidence. So we know that there are issues there. But presuppositional apologists, he says, insist that the existence of a God must be assumed before any argument can be made, because in order for any argument to be completely reliable, there must be an infallible source of knowledge.

OK, so how might we respond to this? And you want to think, think of that definition, look at the phraseology, how he's wording, what you know, how he's explaining what he understands as presuppositional apologetics.

And we want to understand where does he go wrong there and basing your understanding of what presuppositional apologetics is and what it isn't. How might you respond to something like this? OK, well, first, we need to point out a couple of things.

First, presuppositional apologists don't try to establish the existence of a God. OK, I don't know if that popped out at you. If you are a presuppositionalist, you would know that we do not try to argue for the existence of a a God.

All right. So in a generic sense, now, the gentleman who made this video kind of understand he's kind of treating the presuppositional form of argumentation as a sort of generic theistic argument. OK, so kind of like what the classical apologists use.

If you understand classical methodology, they usually follow a two step approach in which you would try to prove a general theism through the utilization of the classical arguments for God's existence.

Cosmological argument, teleological argument, the moral argument, things like this. And when you establish the existence of of a generic deity, you narrow down which God this is by appealing to historical evidence for the resurrection.

And so you show that there's a connection here that, you know, based on the evidence of the existence of God, the arguments for the resurrection, you have Christian theism, which is established a very high probability.

OK, and this gentleman here seems to be understanding the presuppositional approach as something like a a classical sort of argument. OK, so we prove a general theism. That's that's obviously not the case with the presuppositionalist.

Now, the presuppositional apologist is arguing specifically for Christian theism. That's very important. We don't argue for a generic God, as Doug Wilson once said in a debate of a fuzzy benevolence in the sky.

Right. Kind of this ambiguous concept of deity. Rather, we're arguing specifically for the Christian God, the God who's revealed himself both in general and special revelation. We're arguing for the Christian worldview as a unit, as a worldview system.

As Greg Bonson once said, we're arguing for the whole enchilada of the Christian worldview. Right. It's the whole system, not just generic theism and then working our way up to narrowing it down to Christian theism.

And the presupper is is not seeking first to prove generic theism as the necessary precondition for intelligible experience. Right. We are arguing specifically for the Christian God, as I said before, as revealed in general and special revelation.

And we are arguing unashamedly for Christian theism as a unit. OK, I think another important thing to keep in mind also is that we're not trying to establish the existence of God as as the end of like an argumentative syllogism.

Right. We're not arguing for God as a conclusion. OK, we're arguing that unless one begins with God and his revelation at the start, intelligibility, knowledge or whatever would be impossible. OK, you have to understand that.

Remember, what is the presuppositional claim? What's the claim of Scripture? We're arguing that all men know that God exists and are then without excuse. So in the final analysis, we're not seeking to add another marble to the bowl of human knowledge.

Right. And to an otherwise ignorant person, rather, the presuppositional argumentation is it's geared towards unmasking the natural man's pretensions and exposing the fact that he has a knowledge of the God whom we're presenting, a knowledge that the Bible says he is suppressing.

OK, so that's a very important a very important point. OK, now throughout the video, we're going to we're going to move into this accusation that, well, why can't people why can't proponents from other religious perspectives do this this very same thing?

And we'll we'll address that. But I want to address this this definition again, OK, trying to prove the existence of a God. OK, now this is very important. If this gentleman knew a little bit more about presuppositional methodology and he knew that we were arguing specifically for Christian theism, then he wouldn't make these statements because they're obviously inaccurate representations.

OK, if you take a look at, for example, the debate, a famous debate between Greg Bonson and the atheist Gordon Stein in Greg Bonson's very opening statement, he gave three reasons why he does not argue for general theism.

If this is an important point when you're critiquing the presuppositional perspective, OK, most people's access to the presuppositional methodology has been through the debate between Greg Bonson and Gordon Stein.

So I'm not sure if this guy saw that debate or whatever, but I don't know. I can't really explain why he's misunderstanding the position because his definition alone definitely doesn't reflect what a presuppositionalist would argue.

Greg Bonson says this. He gives three reasons why he is not and does not argue for theism in general. OK, number one, Bonson says, quote, The various conceptions of deity found in the world's religions are in most cases logically incompatible, leaving no unambiguous sense to general theism, whatever it might be.

Two, secondly, I've not found the non-Christian religions to be philosophically defensible, each of them being internally incoherent or undermining human reason and experience. Thirdly, since I am, by the grace of God, a Christian, I cannot from the heart adequately defend those religious faiths with which I disagree.

My commitment is to the triune God and the Christian worldview based on God's revelation in the Old and the New Testaments. And so first I am arguing for Christian theism. OK, Bonson lays it out. He's arguing for Christian theism.

Now, granted, this gentleman is critiquing before he's kind of giving he's giving a definition here, which he's kind of falling flat here. But he's critiquing a question and answer session of Jeff Durbin.

But if you know Jeff Durbin, he is trying to follow closely with presuppositionalist like Greg Bonson. And so I would argue that Jeff would agree with me that the Christian is to defend specifically Christian theism and it is to be defended as a unit.

So I think that's a very important thing to keep in mind right off the bat is getting the definitions wrong here. All right. Let us continue. Let's see here. Let me just go back just a little bit.

In order for any argument to be completely reliable, there must be an infallible source of knowledge. One of the many problems with this approach is that even if it is the case that we need an infallible source of knowledge, which it isn't, this only establishes theism to be necessary.

It doesn't show that we must subscribe to any particular religion.

My question is, when you debate belief systems.

All right, let's stop there. OK, my mouse, my mouse seems to be possessed by the devil. OK, so it's not working here. All right. Let me get that here. Boop, boop, boop, boop. I have to do it the old fashioned way and use my fingers.

What's up with that? OK, so so here's what he says. He says once he understands once he lays out his what I think fallacious definition of presuppositional apologetics is once he lays that down, he says that one of his problems is, quote, One of the many problems with this approach, the presuppositional approach, is that even if it is the case that we need an infallible source of knowledge, which it isn't, this only establishes a theism to be a theism to be necessary.

It doesn't show that we must subscribe to any particular religion. Now, again, this is wrongheaded for the same reasons I said before. So his his response here fallaciously assumes that the presuppositional argument is for the existence of a generic, non-defined theism.

Right. Which it's not. The argument is for the Christian system as a unit, as we said before. Now, with regards to his comments about having infallible source, having having an infallible source of knowledge.

First, we need to recognize that one's conception of knowledge. I mean, this is going to come up later. One's conception of knowledge is going to be worldview dependent. Right. So knowledge itself is not worldview independently defined.

And as you'll see later, this particular skeptic, his epistemology is going to rear its ugly head later on in the form of pragmatism, which we'll talk about once it comes up. But again, when we speak of knowledge, when we speak about, you know, we don't need an infallible source of knowledge.

We need to also define what we mean by knowledge. OK, and that's going to be dependent, worldview dependent, a sort of worldview dependent definition. OK, so I think that's going to be important to keep in mind.

So let's let's continue. Now it's transferring over to Jeff Durbin's talk here and then he'll make some further comments here. Let me just clickety click. There we go.

Evidence, Authority, and the Christian Worldview

Affirms absolute truth from another source like the Koran or or the Book of Mormon by showing its internal inconsistencies. Isn't that actually evidential apologetics and not presuppositional?

No, because it comes it comes down to. So there's a confusion about what presuppositional or evidential apologetics is like presuppositionalists believe in the use of evidence, but it's a coherent appeal to those evidences.

What we would say is you don't appeal to those evidences apart from the authority of Jesus Christ, the authority of Scripture. You don't appeal to those evidences apart from something that grounds those appeals to evidence, right?

How would that be different from how a Muslim presuppositionalist would argue? Even if you believe that to argue at all is to presuppose some ultimate source of truth or ultimate ground of evidence, how could you presuppose it to be the Bible rather than the Koran?

Alright, well, let's let's address that here. OK, give me a moment there. OK, yeah, that's a good question. It's not a good criticism, but it's a good question. OK, well, I think that's important to keep in mind.

So it's true. A Muslim can argue presuppositionally, but that wouldn't bother the Christian presuppositionalist one bit. As a matter of fact, that's precisely how we want the Muslim to argue or the atheist to argue or the Mormon to argue.

We want them to argue presuppositionally, right? And admitting this is not really a big thing for us. I mean, basically what we're saying is when we when when I say we want the Muslim or the Mormon or the atheist to argue presuppositionally, basically what I'm saying is nothing different than what Cornelius Mantill typically said when he spoke of being epistemologically self-conscious, conscious.

We want to we want to argue in a way that is conscious of the fact of our epistemological and metaphysical and ethical foundations. And in like fashion, we want the unbeliever to be conscious of his professed metaphysics, epistemology and ethic, metaphysics being his view of reality, epistemology being his theory of knowledge and his ethic dealing with how he thinks one should live their lives in light of those other assumptions.

OK, so I want the unbeliever to argue presuppositionally. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons why it's so hard to argue sometimes with unbelievers, especially when you're engaged in the sort of debate where you're laying out the presuppositional method, we lay out the presuppositional method and talk about worldviews and the myth of neutrality and the fact that everyone has presuppositions and that we interpret the facts in light of those presuppositions.

The reason why we lay that out in, say, for example, an opening statement or something like that, is because we want to lay down that important groundwork so that the unbeliever, too, can argue his position in a way that is consistent with his professed foundations.

Because we as Christians want to expose that foundation because we think the foundation crumbles. That's super, super important. We're not running away. This isn't a word salad methodological trick that we use to get unbelievers to mess up in their words.

You know, well, how do you know that? We're not asking these questions just for the heck of it. We want the unbeliever to be epistemologically aware of his own foundations. And a lot of unbelievers don't think in these categories.

They don't think of, you know, they don't question their worldview many times. And they don't often understand the Christian worldview. And that's why we lay out the worldview systems. Very, very important.

All right. So I don't mind at all when, you know, we want both sides to lay out their perspective. And it's at this point that the apologetic encounter occurs. Right. And we argue on its own terms, on the terms given the truth of Islam, on the terms given the truth of Mormonism, on the terms given the truth of a particular flavor of atheism, knowledge would be impossible.

Science would be impossible. Intelligibility would not be possible. Given the truth of that worldview on its own terms, it crumbles. And then, of course, the unbeliever is going to say, but what about the Christian perspective?

It's easy to point fingers and poke holes in these perspectives. What about the Christian perspective? That is what we want the unbeliever to say, because the point is we were following, you know, this approach that Van Til taught us, that we want to lay out our worldview and ask the unbeliever, hypothetically grant, hypothetically grant the truth of the Christian worldview and see how it fits, how it grounds these things, how it answers those difficult philosophical questions.

I want him to do that. I want him to consider Christianity on its own terms. And in like fashion, I want to understand his view and consider it on its own terms to show that on its own terms, it falls apart.

OK, so this is not like a, you know, a trick, you know, where we're trying to avoid getting into specifics. I mean, some people might argue that way, but that's not a deficiency of presuppositionalism.

That's a deficiency in the presuppositionalist. And perhaps that person needs to reflect upon why are they using this methodology? If they don't understand the Christian worldview enough to lay out the argument in a way where someone can meaningfully interact, then perhaps they should kind of go back to the drawing board, look at their motives, study the arguments, you know, make sure their mind and heart is grounded in what Scripture teaches with regards to how we would approach these things.

And then you get back into the into the struggle, so to speak. OK, so those are a couple of things, a couple of important things to keep in mind. OK, let's continue here. Let me do that. Minimize that.

Click here and let's continue here. Example, let's take it. I'll get back to the Koran and Mormon question in a second. So let's say that I'm talking about the issue of, say, dinosaurs. Right. Dinosaurs in Scripture.

Someone said, do you believe in dinosaurs? Of course I believe in dinosaurs. What do you think, I'm a dummy? Right. Of course. Well, like, how do you make that work? Because, you know, we dig up these bones.

They seem so old and all those different things. What I like to do in moments like that is actually show, well, in order to have any examination of history and archaeology and evidence at all, you have to have the Christian worldview and the word of God.

Otherwise, it's meaningless. It's purposeless.

First of all, if an idea can be put to human use, it isn't meaningless or purposeless. The idea that dinosaurs existed can effectively be used to explain why fossils are there and to some degree what future fossil discoveries will look like and where they will be found.

That is the idea's meaning and purpose.

All right. Let's let's stop there. Let's take a look at that. OK, I don't think this this gentleman who's offering the critique really understands what Jeff means by meaninglessness and without purpose.

So he's not he's not speaking of meaninglessness and purposelessness in like an existential, an existential way. Right. You know, he's saying, well, of course, these things could have purpose. We just assign purpose.

That's not what he's saying. He's saying Jeff is saying that without the Christian context, OK, things like paleontology, right, things like archaeology, things like biology and all the other ologies you can put in there wouldn't be intelligible.

You can't look at these specific disciplines in a vacuum. There is a worldview context required to make sense out of the specific data and and, you know, the data points of human experience. And that's what Jeff is saying.

So the gentleman here says, first of all, if an idea can be put to human use, it's it isn't meaningless or purposeless. Well, sure, we can create subjective meaning for that. I can I can put the fossils, the data of the fossils to human use, and therefore it has meaning.

But the question is, does it have objective meaning in the sense that can we make sense out of these things in a meaningful way, given an unbelieving perspective? We would argue, no, I think that's where where where Jeff is getting at, that paleontology, the study of fossils and all these other things are not really are not really intelligible, independent of a worldview, a coherent worldview that can ground them.

OK, now I want to say something to actually let me continue and then I'll make the point I want to make, because I think there's something that's going to be said that will be relevant here.

One second here. Secondly, even if it did require a God given purpose, I don't see why a purpose can't be given by a God of any theistic religion or at least any Abrahamic religion.

Why does Jesus need to be involved? All right. OK, what what is Jesus? What does Jesus need to be involved? OK, this doesn't make sense. Right. Jesus, you just add Jesus. It doesn't make the whole thing.

Listen, Jesus Christ, OK, is meaningless, independent of a worldview context. OK, if I say Jesus Christ, that name has content that is worldview sensitive. Right. He's understood within a worldview. Now, we understand if we break apart the essential features of a worldview, all worldviews consist of at least three foundations.

OK, every worldview has a metaphysic, a theory of reality. What do you think is real? Every every worldview has an epistemology, a theory of knowledge. How do we know what we know? How is knowledge acquired?

What is knowledge and an ethic? How should we live our lives? OK, now, when we speak of Jesus Christ, it's not an issue of, again, adding the marble. If we can, if we have a bowl of marbles and the marble represents individual, the marbles represent individual facts and the ball represents the human mind.

Right. When we when we talk about Jesus, OK, and the Christian worldview, it's not the issue that we're taking an individual marble, the fact of a historical person, Jesus, dumping it into the bowl of marbles.

And then all of a sudden it just, you know, oh, everything makes sense because I added this one marble called Jesus. No, Jesus Christ is understood within a context, and that context is a context of a reality that consists of an ultimate triune God who has created all things.

He's created man in his image. He has implanted a knowledge of his creator in the mind of man. OK, and a man has a knowledge of this creator such that he's without excuse. And that has implications for metaphysics, that has implications for epistemology, and that has implications for ethics.

OK, it's not adding Jesus to the picture and then look, it makes sense. No, the Jesus that we're speaking of, the Jesus of the Christian worldview is part of a larger system of thought that is grounded in the triune God who has revealed himself in both general and special revelation and hold man accountable.

OK, it's not an issue of just adding Jesus and then all of a sudden everything makes sense. This kind of reminds me of my debate slash discussion with the YouTube atheist Tom Jump, where he said something to the effect toward the end of our of our discussion.

He said, well, suppose I could grant that Jesus rose from the dead, but that wouldn't make me have to accept that God is omnipotent. OK, listen to this. He says, perhaps Jesus rose from the dead, but that doesn't mean that God is omnipotent.

Look what happened there. Tom is actually doing precisely what this gentleman is doing. He's pulling apart features of the Christian worldview as though we can make sense out of these individual facts independent of the larger system.

And you can't. OK, because it is the omnipotent God who raised Jesus from the dead. You can't have Jesus rising from the dead without the broader context of the Christian worldview, which includes the triune God of Scripture who is omnipotent.

He is omniscient. He is omnipresent. And all of the attributes that we traditionally attribute to him. OK, so it's not an issue of just adding Jesus. OK. He says, even if it required a God given purpose, I don't see why a purpose can't be given by any God, any theistic system.

Easy. The reason why you can't just insert any generic theism is because generic theism always comes with a context. What is God? If I say generically God, what does that mean? Independent of a worldview context.

What does it mean? It's just the word God. Well, you need to give me characteristics of this God. How do you know about this God? That all has implications of what you think about the human capacity to reason about these things.

How do we know that these characteristics are such and such? Again, epistemology, metaphysics are all being assumed in the very question. OK, so we don't argue for a generic theism because we're Christian and that would not be faithful to our Lord.

But at the same time, when you say, well, why can't this just be any old God? Because every other God that you can bring is going to be part of a worldview. And what we're arguing is that any worldview that is not the Christian worldview is going to fall flat on its face.

Now, that's the claim. That's the claim. And of course, an apologetic interaction is required to draw that out. OK. All right. All right. I hope you guys are tracking with me again. Let me just let you guys know if you have any questions and you want me to address it towards the end.

You know, put them in the chat if you could put question next to your question, because there's often a lot of conversation going on in the chat that it's hard for me to differentiate. So if you do have a question, I will try my best to answer it.

If not, when I do finish up, we'll just I'll just say a couple of things towards the end and then wrap things up. But we're not we're not done just yet. All right. Let's let's continue here. Like if you assume something is true and we ought to pursue truth.

Well, I never assume something is true. And I'm also never entirely indubitably certain that anything is true. I also don't assume that one ought to pursue truth. I'm much more interested in ideas that are consistently useful for predicting future observations.

Wait a second. OK, I'm going to make sure I am reading this correctly. OK, well, I never assume something is true. OK, I want I don't I don't even want to address that directly. I want you to think critically.

What is wrong with that statement? OK, is it even. Let's ask the question. Is it even possible to not assume the truth of anything like like you don't ever assume that anything is true? OK, that that again, it has within its own its own self-refutation.

OK, and I'm never entirely indubitably certain that anything is true. OK, I also don't assume that one ought to pursue truth. OK, there is a whole host of implications in those comments here. But let's let's take a look at his next comment.

I'm much more interested in ideas that are consistently useful for predicting future observations rather than being true. Now, here's my question. Is it true that he's more interested in ideas that are consistently useful for predicting future observations rather than being true?

Is that true that he's more interested in those things? Well, if he says that's true, then, yes, he is assuming the truth of it. And so that's self-refuting. If it's not true, then what is he doing? He's just giving us his opinion.

Right. And who cares? His opinion is not any more closer to the truth than someone else's. Right. And if it is his opinion, is it true that it's his opinion? Well, if it's true that it's his opinion, then it's true.

I mean, this is this is simple. I'm thinking in terms of Frank Turek. If you listen to cross examine, you know, the beginning of the podcast, they have little clips from his talks and things like that.

You know, many talks about, you know, when someone denies that there's truth, you ask them, is that true? You know, I kind of having the Frank Turek moment in my head here. But you notice that this is hugely self-contradictory.

OK. And again, you're going to see this because this is a reflection of his epistemology, which you will see. If you read that last part, I'm much more interested in ideas that are consistently useful for predicting future observations rather than being true.

That's where that scientific mindset is coming in. Now, it's not a good scientific mindset and it's not an essential feature of a proper scientific mindset, because I don't think many scientists who are informed philosophically as well that they would hold to such a notion.

But it's even it's again, this is very, very important. You're going to see this play out later on when he talks about what scientists do. OK, different. We don't assume anything. Right. We do. We will.

We'll get there. But again, if you take a look at this statement, these statements here, it's it's incredible. It's incredible. I would say that he probably holds to a sort of pragmatic epistemology. So truth is what works.

Truth is, you know, it's truth is what works. It's pragmatism, which, by the way, the foundation of a pragmatic epistemology is really arbitrariness. Right. I think a pragmatic philosophy, in my opinion, is a lazy philosophy.

It doesn't answer the real question, because in fact, many pragmatists don't think you can answer the deep questions or actually get in touch with objective reality. In my debate with Souris, the skeptic, which is one of the first debates that I did on the Gospel Truth Show and on my YouTube channel.

I think it's one of the first videos that I posted in a cross examination. I asked Souris, the skeptic, because he is this gentleman I was debating is a pragmatist. And so I asked him, in your worldview, do you have access to objective truth?

OK, and he says, well, I can give you a definition of objective truth. And I said, yeah, but that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking, given your worldview, your pragmatic outlook on life, your pragmatic epistemology, do you have access to objective truth?

And he admitted and I appreciate that he did this. He says no. And then later on, he pontificated on a bunch of things that we should believe are true. You see, so you have the attention here and no doubt this gentleman here who makes it was making this critique here.

No doubt we know that he does not follow that consistently. It's impossible. OK, that's not my opinion that he doesn't follow this consistently. I think it's a fact that he does not follow this consistently because it's impossible to never assume anything is true.

OK, surely he assumes it's true that he exists. And if he denies that, is it true that he's denying it? And you have to affirm your existence in order to deny your existence. So this is this is not a proper representation of people who are on the unbelieving side, maybe more scientific minded.