Presup Refuted? A Response to David Pallmann

Introduction to the Debate on Presuppositionalism

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and today We are going to be covering a debate that happened I suppose a few weeks ago, maybe a week ago something like that between David Pallman and Seth Bloomsburg, I think I've got his name Correct there.

And of course those who have been following David Pallman's stuff on YouTube You'll notice that he has just released a around an hour long video Critiquing presuppositionalism and so this particular episode that we're gonna be having today is not going to cover his video.

But his opening statement in various parts of the debate he had with Seth which if you've watched his video kind of covers Sort of the same things and so we want to cover some points that I think are important to talk about.

This is not going to be exhausted by any means, but definitely will be helpful In understanding where where we as presuppositionalist myself and dr. Bolt see where where David has has gone wrong in terms of Properly critiquing and bringing up relevant relevant points, so we'll get into the details of that.

I do want to wait for more people to kind of jump in the room here. I'm sure we'll be having a lot of folks listening in so Super excited about that if you're new to revealed apologetics You just stumbled on this channel, or you saw me kind of flood the the interwebs with a bunch of short videos I think I released like Six or seven of them in like three days or something like that.

But you happen to see one of my videos pop up if you like the content subscribe You can subscribe to the YouTube channel. There is a revealed apologetics Podcast and also have a website and a blog revealed apologetics comm if you have any questions about Presuppositional apologetics in particular apologetics in general.

Or you would like me to interview someone that perhaps I haven't thought of you could email me at revealed apologetics at gmail .com all right, so Definitely looking forward for Having dr. Chris bolt on in this episode.

I Definitely appreciate his his work and just the way he is able to Explain you know presuppositionalism very well. He's definitely more Philosophically inclined than I am. I'm people say I'm very well spoken, but don't get it twisted I I there's a lot that I do not know and I have a lot to learn and so I'm looking forward To hearing what dr. Bolt has to say and I've appreciated what?

David Polman has had to say with respect to his his attempted I'm gonna say attempted because I don't think he's successful, but we'll see his attempted Refutation of presuppositional ism. So with that said let me invite dr. Bolt on and I'm not gonna call him.

Dr Bolt for the rest of the night. I'm just gonna call him Chris, but just to let you know, he's got a PhD in plumbing, so Topic is is Hopefully your your area of expertise is hopefully relevant to to what we're gonna be talking about today.

So All right, well, dr. Bolt, why don't you tell folks who you are very briefly and and then we'll jump right in.

Yeah, well, I have the cliche biography, I guess right. Husband father father for pastor author professor all of that fun stuff and apparently internet apologist because you guys keep trying to drag me out of retirement, so.

Here I am.

Well, I'm glad we could Draw you out of retirement. By the way, speaking of that you haven't done a lot online in the past recent years. But when I when I was finally able to successfully drag you out.

You admitted and I agree. The discussion that we had was probably one of the the best discussions that we've had on the topic of presuppositional ism. Transcendental arguments. Is that right?

Well, the first one that I had with you where we're just bubbles and I'm not on the on the screen. That was probably my favorite. Yeah.

Well, that is awesome and it is truly an honor and it was very helpful by the way the questions I was asking was actually coming from a genuine desire to know what your thoughts were. They weren't kind of preset.

So I liked how it was very organic but very in-depth and so folks can definitely check that out. All right. Well before we get into the specifics, I do want to tip my hat off to David Pullman who? Has great animosity.

Towards the free. He's not a fan. He's not a fan of presuppositional apologetics, but That said what I do appreciate and I'm sure Chris can appreciate this as well. Is that in the end of the day while we disagree with him?

He has Tried to do his homework and to properly represent the presuppositional is Perspective so that he could not his desire was not to set up a straw man. And so for that, I appreciate and and in his debate with Seth He communicated with me before that debate just trying to make sure that he got things, right?

And so I do appreciate that but that said there is a disagreement at the end of the day and so Just looking forward for Chris to lightning bolt The arguments and zap them out of existence. I don't know.

That's it. That's it's very cheesy. But at any rate, okay. So the debate on gospel truth, okay, we are going to play that debate here and the proposition in the debate is let me put this on the screen is Human reasoning autonomous and of course Seth is going to take the negative.

It is not autonomous and This might jar folks who aren't interested are not into these discussions. But David Paulman a Christian believes the Bible is arguing that human reasoning is autonomous. That's actually sounds odd when we think in terms of who God is who we are as derivative creatures and things like that.

But let's let's hear him out and see where he's coming from. I do believe he is a Christian. He's a believer. He loves the Lord, but this is an area where obviously we're gonna disagree. So I'm going to play and pause whenever Chris sees fit to pause it and then we'll we'll interact.

Okay, how's that sound? All right. All right, let's go.

Autonomy of Reason and the Regress Problem

All right, you got it. 15 minutes. All right, so there is a debate among Christian apologists regarding the proper way in which they ought to best defend their faith. Among the competing options the presuppositional method has proven to be the most controversial.

Roughly this method of apologetics seeks to argue that the very principles of rationality upon which all argumentation depends Cannot themselves be explained or justified apart from the Christian worldview.

There are many points of contention between presuppositionalists and evidentialists. But in this debate, we will zero in on what I see as our foundational difference the autonomy of reason. I intend to defend the thesis that human reasoning is autonomous.

It seems to me that denial of man's ability to reason autonomously is the key distinctive claim of presuppositionalism. If this idea is false, then the entire edifice of presuppositionalism collapses.

Let me begin in what I mean by autonomy. There's a very obvious senses in which human reasoning is not autonomous. So I must emphasize from the start that I am using the definition that presuppositionalists themselves use.

For example, Greg Bonson defines it this way. By epistemological autonomy is meant the ability to attain to knowledge independent of God's revelation and existence. The person who rejects the Word of God feels that he can find truth in his own powers of exploration.

Examination and explanation to reject Revelational epistemology then is to commit yourself to the truth of autonomous epistemology in short. Then I'm defending the proposition that human beings can attain knowledge without in any way depending upon special revelation from God.

Now this is not to say that we can gain all knowledge independently of God. Because certainly there are some truths that God reveals to us, which we could not discover on our own. I only intend to defend an epistemological model.

Which is consistent with the proposition that all knowledge does not depend upon divine revelation or theistic presuppositions. In order to gain a clearer understanding of what exactly a defense of autonomous human reasoning should look like.

It will be beneficial to examine why exactly Bonson claims one must presuppose Christian theism. The crux of his argument is that without presupposing the truth of Christian or sorry the truth of God's revelation.

One cannot justify their belief in the so-called preconditions of intelligibility. Now these are taken to be things that are necessary for one to have knowledge at all. And Bonson's favorite examples are the laws of logic and belief in the regularity of nature.

Now Bonson's argument here presents a serious challenge for my position. Because after all other than abduction we have only two forms of reasoning. Deduction and induction if our belief in deduction and induction is unjustified.

Then Bonson is quite correct when he says that autonomous human reasoning is impossible. One could of course point out that Bonson is in the same boat. He must arbitrarily suppose that the revelation contained in scripture is true without independent justification.

But this observation does nothing to salvage autonomous human reason. Thus I see no way forward other than to argue that belief in deduction and induction are indeed justifiable.

All right. I want to stop right there. But by the way, I'm assuming that when you desire to stop you're saying something so. Yeah. There is there is an error that again, perhaps assuming the inability or success of the Transcendental argument right?

He says something to the effect that well, you know Bonson has to do the same thing. And what is that same thing? He has to arbitrarily assume. You haven't even to speak to that. Is that what Bonson is doing?

Does he arbitrarily assume?

Anything when he's presenting his his presuppositional transcendental argument. Yeah. I mean, I I certainly don't think so. I don't know why. Why we would think that I think that's probably going to come up more as he progresses and gets into the issue of circularity.

Okay, but as far as the autonomy issue, this debate was a little bit confusing to me. Because I know that the presuppositionalist offered it in the sense of a distinction between believer and unbeliever.

Which seemed to me to grant part of the the proposition of the debate. It was it was odd in that sense and then also with with David's presentation here. I think that he's probably right. I think that this is.

This is a good place maybe to focus in on. For the difference between the different methodologies in theory. Then again, you run into classical apologists. You run into evidentialists and others who will insist that they are not reasoning in an autonomous fashion, even as they use their methodologies and their arguments and that sort of thing so you know, there's a lot that we can that we can work through and work out here even with regard to Something as simple as this issue of human autonomous reasoning or would-be autonomous reasoning.

I think another thing that came up in the debate. There was this issue of ultimate and proximate. I know we didn't play this part, but I was in the opening statement for the other side, I believe. And and the words were an ultimate and proximate Authority, I'm not really sure that I don't know that van Til even uses that language.

He does use the language of ultimate and proximate starting points of knowledge. So these are like epistemological starting points. So for example in the Reformed tradition, you've got this with the interpretation of Scripture.

Scripture is Magisterial so the divine revelation of God is magisterial. It is the ultimate authority and then your human reasoning is ministerial. So we're not denying human reasoning, right? So the presupposition list is going to extend that out even into like general revelation in a sense or at least analogously, so It's not as though the presupposition list is saying no we start from a God's eye view like we don't right.

We're finite. So we we do in a sense start with ourselves as approximate starting point of knowledge the issue is where do we find the ultimate starting point of knowledge in terms of Authority and this comes down to you know that authority claim it's going to be the authority claim of God.

Versus the authority claim of the individual human being and so as presupposition list we certainly want to side With God on that, right? So yes I think that that I think that does kind of boil the debate down to where we need it to be.

So, I don't know if David thought of this topic or not, but I think that's probably insightful. To start at this point and talk about that some I'm trying to think if there's anything else that I found Objectionable or not.

There are some things I'm going to bring out concerning DEDUCT. Well, one thing you mentioned was deduction and induction. Okay. So yes deductive logic is a type of reasoning and argumentation. Induction is a type of reasoning and argumentation not there are others.

I mean there's abduction there's inference to best explanation. There are debates about where those fall. I would I think classify those under induction the ones that I just mentioned in addition to the two that he mentioned.

You know, there's also pragmatism, which I know strictly speaking is not an approach to knowledge. It's not an epistemic Sort of thing and but there's also transcendental Reasoning which I think is distinct from deduction and induction not that it jettisons them.

It depends on what we're talking about when we're talking about transcendental reasoning or justification. But I do think that that's distinct at least insofar as we can draw distinctions between these different categories of say inference the best explanation or Abduction and induction and that sort of thing.

Yeah.

I do think it's important to recognize to this comes up a lot when we say. And I know RC Sproul has brought this up as well. A Lot of people will be quick to point out that it really doesn't make sense to say that you must start with God.

And then they'll bring this out. I've heard a friend of mine Eric Hernandez when he had Interaction with site and Bruggen Kate. They brought this up. So you don't just don't start with God. You must start with yourself and many folks will bring this up as though this is something the presuppositional is never considered.

Oh, oh, wait a minute. That's right. I I have to start with myself before I do all this isn't new. I mean as you said Bantill mentions it Extensively Bonson addresses it extensively. So before people are quick to kind of say, ah, look at this.

You have to start with yourself and not with God that doesn't make sense. You need to be familiar with the discussions here. Okay, you need to know the context of the broader this broader. This broader topic.

There is background music going on in which a lot of these things are are addressed. And so before people start waving the victory flag and oh look how quickly we've you know. Shown that for example, the presuppositional is confuses ontology and epistemology, you know.

Oh, no, we've never you know, we've never considered that before. No. Yes we have. So it's important to kind of dig a little a little deeper there, but let's let's say to you.

I don't know if David was able to listen tonight or not, but we're not criticizing David with these observations. We're just kind of setting, you know, playing the groundwork here. That's right. That's right.

All right, let's continue.

Circularity, Foundationalism, and Direct Acquaintance

However before turning to the question of how we can justify these methods of reasoning I'll need to lay down a stipulation and offer an account of non inferential justification. It still feels a circular reasoning and any form is principally incapable of justification.

As Seth is going to want to argue that all reasoning is circular I hope to show you that this is false. But even if it were true, but it be noted that even if circular reasoning is unavoidable This does nothing to indicate that it can be justificatory.

Like there's an implicit is-or fallacy here when presuppositionalists try to argue that circular reasoning is okay Just because everyone does it it simply doesn't follow from the fact that because all reasoning is circular.

All right, I want to stop there. I apologize for jumping the gun. I mean.

It. I don't know if he says more on circularity or not, but that's a good spot. Yes. Yeah. I.

Mean, is that what we're is that what we're doing when you when someone reads a presuppositional Author Bonson VanTale in context. Is that what we're really in for even frame? Is that what we're really saying?

Well because everyone Engages in circular reasoning at that foundational level. It's unavoidable. And so therefore it's okay. Is that really what we're saying Chris? That's not what I'm saying.

You know, I I think when you had me on the show before I may I was on somebody's show. I may have mentioned, you know, I'm not sure frame gets this exactly right particularly in the five views book on apologetics.

It seems to me if I remember correctly that he offers an argument that does look to me to be logically circular. It's not something that I would offer In my apologetic argumentation that I'm aware of.

So, I think what's happening here is perhaps a very narrow focus and this is probably owing to the language of some Presuppositionalists. I think it's a very narrow focus here on this issue of justification.

And so if you're thinking about justification as an internalist with regard to knowledge so they're externalists their internalists and Internalists with regard to the issue of knowledge is thinking about knowledge as justified true belief.

And so when we bring up this this key term here of justification what the mind immediately jumps to is justification in an error sense an Internalistic sense and what the presuppositionalist is saying is you cannot have justified true belief now is the presuppositionalist saying that yes.

But the presuppositionalist is saying more than that. The presuppositionalist is addressing this at the worldview level not just at the level of individual justifications for this or that factor. You know this or that belief or this or that knowledge claim and that sort of thing and I think that honestly I think that that's kind of where this debate kind of heads off in the wrong direction from the get-go because What well we'll get into that more when we get to to how he offers his own justification.

But no, I don't think that we're offering circularity as a type of justification we're not offering logical circularity in terms of an argument with premises and there's a Circularity there in a fallacious sense at least not so consciously what presuppositionalist are referring to with circularity.

Typically is a broad. Sometimes it's called virtuous. I'm not crazy about that van Til would convict me on that but It's a broad epistemic circularity this is found all over the place this is found outside of van Til for sure.

Thomas Morris talks about this way. I'm Austin talks about this and and many many others just off the top of my head. AC Grayley Grayling talks about this. So these are reputable scholars in philosophy who talk about this issue and say yeah, we can't escape this epistemic circularity.

There's a sense in which we can't escape it simply because of what we noted earlier. That is that we are finite, right? And so we even just admitted didn't we we conceded that we start as the proximate starting points of knowledge.

Even though we're putting those beliefs or those knowledge claims up against that ultimate Starting point of knowledge, which is the authority of God and divine revelation, right? Your your podcast is called revealed apologetics.

The one that I'm on with Brian nap is called Revelationary apologetics is faith. It's focused on revelation of God, you know. My new podcast is called Christ or chaos because it's starting with the authority of Christ or you run off into chaos.

But no, I don't think we're offering Circularity as a justification in a narrow internalist approach to knowledge. We're simply pointing out that there is a circularity that people cannot escape. That's a problem for the rationalist and that's a problem for the empiricist and that's a problem for the pragmatist.

Because their systems do not first of all want to allow such circularity as something that they can accept. Whereas in our system we can say no we start with the frank acceptance of the Word of God the Divine revelation of God we start upon the frank acceptance of that in order then to have a philosophy.

That's consistent with itself and in a philosophical system that's consistent with itself. You're always going to be coming back to those same points because it demonstrates an internal consistency. However, this is not a coherent ISM.

This is not a coherent ISM worldview. We're not offering coherent ISM as a way to solve for example, the infinite regress problem in Epistemology the last thing I want to say on that and I'll give it back to you Is is that we're not even saying that everybody's circle is the same if we're claiming that we have consistency.

We're denying that other people do. I think I spoke with you earlier about this at one point. The same thing with faith, you know, we talk about faith. But when we talk about faith in the Christian worldview and starting with the divine revelation of God.

We have in mind a completely different concept than what we have in mind for say the unbeliever who uses some sort of leap of Faith, you know a blind faith some existentialist project or something to that effect.

Those people are not placing their faith in the divine revelation of God. They're simply having faith for faith's sake which we believe is completely irrational and will not give them knowledge or justification these sorts.

Of things what I appreciated of the fact that you placed that in context when you when you mentioned virtuous circularity and Vicious circularity and I would agree with you. I don't like that terminology, but you've quoted some some philosophers that Agree with that analysis.

Maybe they wouldn't use that language which goes to show and it was one of the questions that I received from. I think it was an atheist who was in the comments. They were saying, you know is is vicious and virtuous circularity just something presuppositional is made up so that we could give an excuse To say hey, it's okay to be circular and and no again as I said before these concepts have a broader Philosophical context and if you're not aware of that, then yeah, you're gonna say ignorant things like that.

So the the presupposition list is not some, you know, weirdo in the woods making up his own philosophy, you know in a vacuum. There's a context to this and I think it's important for folks to be familiar with that context.

All right. I mean, maybe maybe the presupposition list is the weirdo making the philosophy. But you know a person like Cornelius Van Till or a person like Greg Bonson I mean they were they were philosophically trained at the academic level.

I mean they have reputable degrees. Greg Bonson studied under the same person as JP Moreland, you know, Dallas Willard Out in California for his PhD in philosophy the same thing with Cornelius Van Till and and he studied under I believe it's pronounced Jell-O.

Yeah, give me a wrong on that not at Calvin. Which is the same person that Alvin Plantinga studied under now that was at the undergraduate level. Van Till went on to Princeton and all of that. But that's only to say these guys are not people just to sneeze at you can't do that.

You can't be dismissive in that way and say well they must be nuts and just making all of this up. You know off the cuff. They actually were conversant with the philosophical literature of their times.

That's why Van Till wrote using a lot of so-called idealist language. That's why Bonson wrote using the contemporary philosophy of his time. And so that doesn't mean they're right. I understand that but they're not people just to be dismissed either which by the way, I'll give that to Paulman as well.

You know, he mentions. Hey, I have respect for Bonson, you know, I hate his method, right? But I have respect for Bonson and I understand that because there are plenty of people I have respect for who are great thinkers and and even great defenders of the faith.

Nevertheless, I would disagree with them. Sure. Absolutely. All right, let's continue.

The Laws of Logic, Analyticity, and the Problem of Induction

However, this assumption is simply wrong. If beliefs can only be justified through arguments then this would lead to an infinite regress. Every premise of every argument would need an argument in support of it and each premise of these supporting arguments But likewise need supporting arguments and so on infinitely.

Consequently, we need a working theory of premise acceptability. We need premises that have unmediated justification. Here we face the regress problem. Most of our beliefs are justified on the basis of other beliefs and these beliefs on the basis of still others.

Where does it end? I propose that classical foundationalism provides the best solution to this problem. According to foundationalism all beliefs come in one of two types Inferential and non-inferential.

Every justified inferential belief ultimately owes its justification to a justified non-inferential. These justified non-inferential beliefs are thought to be foundational because all other knowledge is built upon.

Clearly as such beliefs exist and are justified then they serve to terminate the regress. But how are these beliefs justified if not by other beliefs? I think the more promising account of non-inferential justification is the theory of direct acquaintance.

Now according to this theory non-inferential justification consists of three distinct acquaintances first direct acquaintance with a thought that would be a truth bearer. Second direct acquaintance with a fact that would be a truth maker and third direct acquaintance with the correspondence that obtains between the thought and the fact.

The direct acquaintance with Correspondence between truth bearer and truth maker ensures that the belief is justified and infallibly so. Thus these three acquaintances taken in conjunction constitute a sufficient account of non-inferential justification.

And everything that is constitutive of a thought being true is immediately before consciousness. There is nothing more one could want or need to justify a belief. Direct acquaintance is not itself a belief.

But it relates the subject to a fact in such a way that the subject is aware of the correspondence. In the fact that makes it true, this is how beliefs can be justified immediately without appealing to further beliefs.

All of that may seem a little complicated, but the basic idea is rather simple. Should I stop or keep going? The same point extends to any experience. What you see hear feel smell or taste. Is all justified through your direct acquaintance with the relevant facts.

So having set forth a working theory of non-inferential justification. Let's turn to defend methods of inference. Let's begin with the laws of logic. Greg Bonson asks what?

All right, so let's let's address that issue of direct acquaintance. Do you think his argument for direct acquaintance works in terms of the point he's trying to make with respect to Holding a belief without justification.

Is that what he was saying?

So let's say that it works in theory, right? So let's grant that for a moment. You know, what? He's trying to do is stop the infinite regress problem. He's he's trying I think in another sense to respond to the skeptic to respond to the skeptic of knowledge.

And so this is a fine way to do it to say no we have non-inferential Non-inferentially justified beliefs. This is where everybody has to go in some sense. Can you say that again? So it's a non Inferential Justified beliefs.

In other words our beliefs at the foundation are not based upon other beliefs. They're not inferred from other beliefs. The question is what do we base them upon and this is where everybody has to go, right?

So the classical foundationalist has to have something that they stop at and. Same thing with the you know The reformed epistemologist is gonna stop somewhere in this this hierarchy of knowledge as it were.

Same thing with the presupposition list what the presupposition list is saying is hey. We presuppose the Christian worldview, which by the way again I mean, I don't mean to be like mean or something about it, but people talk about circularity.

I mean I offer lots of arguments that are perfectly linear. When I do apologetics and philosophy and thinking and these sorts of things, right? The transcendental argument itself. I know that there are other people who would disagree with me and say that it's circular.

There is a sense in which transcendental reasoning as a project may be circular. But I fail to see exactly how a transcendental argument at least in principle is circular or has to be circular. There are ways to write these things out.

There are ways to look at the formulation of them. There are ways to just understand the basic transcendental direction of an argument whether it's stated deductively or whatever. And you can you can construe those in such a way that I don't see where they're circular whether they're certainly not epistemically circular in that sense because we're not talking about this amount, you know epistemic circularity we're talking about a Logical argument and so they're not logically circular either in principle, right?

So There's there's that that you know, we're The circularity things great and there are like lengthy I think there's a thesis written about this from Westminster at some point, you know dealing with Van Til's approach to circularity.

And they're saying look we we have to have circularity if you're trying to get out of circularity. You're trying to get out of Christian faith that sort of thing. What we're saying there is simply this we start based upon the frank acceptance of the Christian worldview.

And it's not merely an epistemology that we're presupposing. It is a worldview like in its fullness. That involves the metaphysical claims that involves the epistemology that involves the ethics that involves all of it and that's important because We need an internal consistency to that worldview or else.

We don't believe that it is going to provide us with something like knowledge. There's something that Paulman said at the very beginning. In his debate opening he mentioned that he believes that there are certain types of knowledge that we do need special revelation for if I understood him correctly.

I Suppose he'd have in mind here something like, you know, salvific beliefs etiological beliefs, you know. How can we be saved you have to hear Jesus that sort of thing from the Word of God? But also I think the Trinity is usually the the main example here of something that we need the Bible to Explicitly affirm for us in that way.

You can't get to the Trinity through natural theology and. The issue then is if you have a worldview that's lacking in that special revelation. Well now you've got a worldview that can't at some point.

It cannot provide for knowledge. Oh, you may have knowledge of you know a snowball or something. But that's not going to give you the knowledge that that completes that worldview and makes it a consistent approach To knowledge as it were and metaphysics and ethics and this sort of thing.

So I think that that's important to point out too. Um. So let's grant let's say okay. Well, you've answered the skeptic in terms of this Rather subjective offer of direct acquaintance. Okay, now what because we still have to justify deduction or we still have to justify Induction or did I already say induction deduction and induction?

I'm trying to use his Words here of justify and that sort of thing, which we'll get into that in a moment to Lord willing.

But well real quick real quick. Yeah, what if he were to respond? Well fine, you say you you know, you've justified that belief, but now what. Well isn't it isn't all that is required For him is to demonstrate that.

You do you could have a non inferential justified belief like even if it's something limited It proves that you don't need the Christian worldview You know necessarily a revelation to actually acquire that specific item.

So couldn't you get pushback there? I mean if you grant him and say, okay fine, I'll give you that but then then now what. Well if you give him that. Isn't that or wouldn't that be giving him too much?

I mean, how would you approach that? I would say no.

Okay, because I would say that in some sense we could incorporate that into our own approach to this topic. Anyway, so presuppositional as you mentioned earlier you said is Bonson starting arbitrarily.

No, because we believe that God has revealed himself to us. That's a Christian claim. This has been the claim in the reform tradition, you know for as far back as it goes. And so we're we're receiving that testimony from God.

We're believing that now there comes a point in the debate I believe where David says well, well, how do you know that? Well, we're presupposing it. That's the presupposition. Again, people may accuse us of oh, well, you're being circular.

No, I'm not. I'm presupposing the Christian worldview and people say well, you can't do that. I say well, I just did. We presuppose the Christian worldview. That's our starting point. That's the whole point of the argument.

You mean that you're just accepting all of Christianity on faith? Yes. Well, that's fete-ism. No, because if you can use faith at any point along the chain of reasoning I don't see why you can't use it at the very beginning at the very get-go and in addition to that I'm clearly using reasoning as I then set forth to defend the Christian worldview in terms of transcendental Reasoning and the transcendental clash of worldviews and this sort of thing.

We're saying that if you don't presuppose the Christian worldview, then you wind up in futility now to answer your question there. What about direct acquaintance as an answer to stave off the infinite regress problem and to Respond to the skeptic aren't we granting too much if we say well, that's fine that David Paulman did that I would say no.

Because he still hasn't shown that this doesn't ultimately end up in futility. There's a lot more to justify here. But just given say non-inferential beliefs and the the subjective statement I have non-inferential beliefs that are based upon, you know direct acquaintances with things.

I don't think that that's sufficient at all to support a worldview. I don't see where we get that at all. Moreover, we do as presuppositionalists believe that we are acquainted with certain things that God does give us.

These various concepts and that sort of thing were created in the image of God. That must mean something right even with regard to our reasoning and so it's not as though that's necessarily In conflict with the presuppositionalist project I think that that's a serious problem here is that we can actually go ahead and grant this.

I'm not going to but we can grant this and it still doesn't demonstrate what we need it to demonstrate. Because the problems of autonomy are going to rise up elsewhere in that noetic structure in that epistemological approach to things.