Apologetics Smorgasbord (EPIC Q&A)

Opening Remarks and Celebration of 5,000 Subscribers

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today, or tonight rather, this is a very special episode. I'm super excited. Revealed Apologetics has reached, when I first advertised this particular episode, we've reached 5 ,000 subscribers, but since then, a couple of weeks ago, within the past two weeks, we've got, I think, 100 or 200 more.

So we're somewhere around 5 ,200 or something like that. So the channel's growing. I really, really appreciate all of the support and the love that folks have just given and showered on what we're doing here.

And so I just hope that this particular Q &A session and theology and apologetic conversation is a blessing to folks who listen in. And so this is a Q &A, so we're not waiting till the end necessarily.

Depending on how the questions come in, we'll take them one by one and see how the evening goes, all right? So I have an interesting bunch of folks here. My goal in doing this was to get folks that you don't normally think of if you're in the world of apologetics and YouTube and things like that.

My goal was to get as many apologists as I can that you would never think about seeing together on the screen. I thought that'd be fun. And as you guys know from the thumbnail, if you follow all of our content, we come from different theological and apologetic backgrounds.

Now, some on the more extreme side might think, hey, Eli, what's going on here? Are you compromising on your principles? No, I am not. I stand where I stand, my guests stand where they stand, and we're just gonna have an awesome time of fellowship and answer questions from our particular perspectives.

And hopefully you guys can benefit from the wide variety and diversity of backgrounds that each of my guests have. So I'm really excited to have my guests on here. So let me introduce my guests. I'll just kind of invite them all on here.

Let's see here, boom, boom, boom. Let's fill up this screen. Gentlemen, how are you guys doing? Hey, all, awesome. Awesome, well, thank you so much for coming on and helping me celebrate 5 ,000 subs. And it's, yeah, yeah, you have the home alone.

You got the Macaulay Culkin, oh my goodness, you know? And I appreciate you guys willing to come on with me and to engage my audience. But before we do that, let's kind of share with folks. If people who follow my channel might not know who you are and what you do, maybe you guys can take a few moments to kind of introduce yourself and tell folks a little bit about what you do and where they can find you.

So I'm just gonna go in order of my screen here. My first guest here is Michael Jones from Inspiring Philosophy.

Why don't you tell folks a little bit about who you are and what you do? Yeah, I'm Michael Jones. I run Inspiring Philosophy, a YouTube channel. Now I'm on TikTok as well. I make a lot of apologetic videos, graphic animated type driven style videos.

So you can check me out on TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, all same links, same name, I mean.

Okay, excellent. And Dr. Tony Costa, why don't you introduce yourself? I know folks might be familiar. I've had you on a few times before, but why don't you just take a moment and tell folks about you?

Yeah, it's easy to identify me. I'm the only Canadian here. So I'm the only alien here, the foreigner in your midst, and you're supposed to love the alien just like yourselves. So my name is again, Tony Costa.

I'm from Toronto, Canada, and I'm also a Christian apologist, been involved in apologetics for 30 plus years. And I teach at the Toronto Baptist Seminary. I also teach as an instructor at the University of Toronto.

And my area of specialty is apologetics, general apologetics, and I'm also a pastor. I do pastoral work. So I wear two hats, basically the academic and also the pastoral dimension of ministry. So congratulations, Eli, on your 5 ,000 subscribers plus, and may the Lord continue to increase your tribe.

Thank you.

Thank you for that. All right, Matt from karm .org. Why don't you introduce yourself? Your mic is off, Matt. I can't hear you. Well. Okay. Okay. So.

Can you hear me? Yeah, there we go. There we go. Yeah. What happened? It was on Oculus. That's all right. No, no worries. All right. Yeah, I'm Matt Slick. My real name is Slick. That's why I can say I'm slicker than all of you put together.

So I've been doing apologetics since 1980, run karm .org, a huge website, read over 5 ,000 articles, been doing radio for 17 years, read a bunch of books, do impromptu debates, just teach and things like that.

Generally annoying and love to do apologetics. So God's granted me that privilege of doing it full time and that's what I do.

All right. And awesome about Matt is that his site was up when like the internet was invented. So he was kind of the, he was the head of the curve when we were still running around in the 90s doing whatever we were doing in the 90s.

Back in 95, I started it. Yep. All right. Well, thank you, Matt. And my next guest is not Wes Mantooth. I don't even know where that came from, but I left that on there. So sorry. Well, my next guest, maybe you might recognize his face from his super popular debate teacher react videos, which by the way, and I love everyone on the screen here.

I watch all of your content, but I have to admit that when Nate comes out with a debate teacher reacts video, that's the first one I go to. Cause I love, I love how you really pick apart and make awesome observations in these debates.

And I learned so much. So I learned a lot from all of you guys, but I love your little thing you got going on there with those debate teacher. They're so informative and they're exciting. So I just wanted to say that, but why don't you share with folks a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Thank you. Yeah, my name's Nate.

And I think you all made a mistake cause I don't know if I'm supposed to be on this roster. It's quite a pleasure to be with you all. So I have an organization. It's been around for shoot nine years and it's called Wise Disciple.

And we have a YouTube channel that we only really started paying attention to in the last two years, trying to make videos, good videos. And yeah, there's a debate teacher react. So I used to be a debate teacher.

And so I look at theology and apologetics debates. And I think I've looked at inspiring philosopher, Michael Jones slayed Aaron Raw. Like he was dead and not recovered. And he's like, I think he's still in the hospital from that.

So, but it was... He said in there, I win. He said, I win.

Yeah. So it's been quite a pleasure though. And it's funny cause I actually don't really consider myself to be among you all. So it's quite a pleasure to be here. I'm gonna be geeking out with everybody else.

All right.

Well, just a heads up, Matt Slick also had an interaction with Aaron Raw. And I thought he also did an excellent job slaying. So he got slayed twice. Look at that. It says that he's appointed for every man to die once.

Apparently you can die more than once. So there we go. We found a loophole in the scripture. There you go, Atheist. All right. My next guest is Braxton Hunter from Trinity Radio. Why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself?

Hi, I'm Braxton. I've never debated Aaron Raw, but... Yeah. I have debated some people and I have to say, before I say anything about me, which is only moderately important, I guess. Matt Slick, I wanted to say, said it's an honor to be here with all of you guys.

But Matt, like has been said, you've been doing apologetics online for almost as long as there's been an internet. And I just want to tell you what an honor it is to be on the stream with you because I've been listening to you for years and years and years.

And so it feels kind of like being on here with a celebrity. Although I kind of feel that way about all you guys, but I just wanted to say that from the jump.

Ken, I give you my wife's cell number and you need to call her and tell her how great I am. Because I need, seriously, I need the help. But praise God, praise God, praise God for all that.

So in any case, I run Trinity Radio, which is a podcast and a YouTube channel. If you just go on YouTube and search Trinity Radio, you'll find it. And I'm also the president of Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary in Evansville, Indiana, which is a distance learning online school, but it has existed since 1969.

And we're non-denominational, but theologically conservative. And we have, I know that we have Calvinists and non-Calvinists represented here tonight. We have Calvinist and non-Calvinist professors at Trinity.

And, but I'm honored to represent the school on this platform tonight with you.

Influences in Apologetics and Theology

Excellent. Well, I'm just going to continue to wait. There's some questions coming in, but I just want to kind of give a little bit more time for some more to flow in. So my first question for you guys is in terms of doing apologetics, who has influenced you the most in your journey to learning how to defend the faith?

Michael, why don't you go first? You can list maybe two or three if you have, or maybe one, or I'll go in order.

I think the first person that really got me interested in apologetics was someone who actually helped lead me to Christ, which would be J .P. Holding many, many years ago. I'm talking like, you know, over, not almost 20 years ago or so, but it was probably the first person that really got me interested in apologetics, as well as people like Richard Swinburne.

I feel like it's been very helpful in that sort of regard in terms of getting me interested in the evidence for God's existence and philosophical philosophy. And then from there, I really just sort of branched out and I've been just interested in a lot of different philosophers and theologians, historians like John Walton, Mike Lacona, more lately than that, as well as Richard Hess as well.

I've been reading a lot of his stuff. So, I mean, it's hard to really pin it down to one person. It's just been, I've been influenced by a lot of different people. Sure. All right. Thank you for that.

How about you, Dr. Costa?

Yeah, well, when I became a, I came from a Roman Catholic background and found Christ when I was 15 years old. And at a young age, I almost fell prey to a cult at the time, the Worldwide Church of God led by Herb W. Armstrong.

And it was really the work of Walter Martin and the Kingdom of the Cults that really the Lord used that to open my eyes. And that's when I felt a call to apologetics at a young age of 15, 16. And I went on to higher education and yeah, great.

You got the book. I got all the editions. Including the old 1961 with all the wavy lines. That's right, that's right. And then after that, I actually got to meet Dr. William Lane Craig back in early, this would have been 1990.

He came up to the University of Toronto to debate a famous atheist, the abortion doctor, Dr. Henry Morgenthaler. And this, when we're talking William Lane Craig here, he just finished his second doctorate, his THD in Germany.

And we're talking William Craig with the full beard. I think he's got the best beard in the world when he did have it.

And I have to say, I agree. Yeah. If there were apologist trading cards, I would trade my William Lane Craig beardless for the bearded William Lane Craig.

Yeah, he had the best beard. Anyway, so he debated Morgenthaler. I was absolutely blown away by the knowledge that Craig had amassed. And it showed for the first time as a young 20 year old at that time that the Christian faith was reasonable and that it could be articulated in an academic setting where he was questioned, not just by students, but professors of philosophy, professors of rhetoric and logic and so forth and so on.

So I was really, really impacted by Dr. Craig's debate. And so that led me forward. As Mike said, I branched out into various other authors, R .C. Sproul, among others. And so the Lord has been good. I've been in this ministry, as I said, for 30 plus years.

I've seen the Lord do wondrous things, seeing Mormons save Jehovah's Witnesses, save atheists, Roman Catholics coming to Christ. And so a lot of that information, I mean, if people are interested, my YouTube is Toronto Apologetics.

And a lot of that, a lot of information in that area is provided there. So yeah, apologetics is fun. It's, you know, jump in the water, the water feels great. What about you Braxton? Yeah, so I was already pastoring a church in my early 20s when I became really aware of, I mean, I knew what apologetics was generally speaking, but before I got my hands in it, and really the reason for it was because I found that it was helpful in evangelism.

I had a friend who had been struggling with same-sex attraction, and he came to decide that it was either, he could either live a biblical lifestyle or a same-sex lifestyle. And that's what he chose to do, the same-sex lifestyle.

And he gave up the Bible, and now he says he's an atheist. And so I wanted to give him, it rattled me not in a sense that I didn't have an answer, not in the sense that it caused me doubt, but it rattled me in the sense that I wanted to give him the answer that I didn't have.

I wanted to say something I didn't know how to say. So I got into apologetics at that point. That would have been when I discovered the great Matt Slick who's here with us tonight.

And, but initially I would say, Norman Cox You surprised him, he goes, who me?

You know, Matt, I'll tell you, the first time I ever saw Matt Dillon, his face, you were a caller or something to the atheist experience. That was years and years and years ago. Little did I know that I would ever debate Matt Dillon, Hunty, and all that, but Norman Geisler probably did a lot initially to spark my interest.

I bought his four-volume Systematic Theology, and I read it, and I told him I read it, and he said, well, that's you, me, and my wife are the only ones he's ever read that. After that It's a monster.

I think I, is it this one here? Yeah, well, it was originally in four volumes. Now they put it down into one. But in any case, from there, it became William Lane Craig, and Habermas, and J .P. Moreland, a lot of the ones that were really popular, and still are popular, but at that time.

And really, Mike Laicona, this is the last thing I'll say. Mike Laicona, I know that that's a, he can be, people have controversial opinions about Mike Laicona, but I was at a Southern Baptist Convention event in Atlanta and met Mike Laicona, and he didn't know who I was, and I'm not anybody now.

All my most important credentials, I'm a servant of the king, but at that time, I was really nobody. But he sat with me for three hours and poured into me, and has been a friend ever since, and that's meant a lot to me.

So those are some of the names. Obviously, there are many, many others. And really, my parents are the biggest influence, because they always had an answer, and if they didn't have an answer, I don't remember a time they didn't have an answer, but they would have found one for me,.

And it was always thoughtful. That's awesome. Awesome, dude. What about you, Nate? Yeah, I had a similar experience. I initially got saved, immersing myself into everything that is to do with Christianity, and my best man at my wedding, he was my best friend, also was on this kind of journey to a faith.

In the beginning, I thought it was, we were traveling along similar paths, and I found out that is not the case, and so we got into a lot of disputation back then. And same, I felt like I should know some things, when he was throwing challenges at me that I didn't know.

And so, it just caused me to go back and do a lot of reading. And so, in my formative years, I mean, the names that come to mind, because I feel like it was like an information dump in those first couple of years, if you guys can relate to that.

But Zinky Moreland, I think I just accidentally stumbled across a lecture of his. It was audio only, and I was just captured. He got me. It was just, I was really friendly to his style. And then from what I learned was, J .P. Moreland was taught by Dallas Willard and Howard Hendricks, and those are all heroes to me as well as a former teacher.

So it was J .P. Moreland, and then Greg Koukl. I think Greg Koukl has some kind of a radio show still. And so, in the early years as a Christian, because I got saved in 09, I'm calling the Greg Koukl radio show, asking about my friend.

What do I say about this? And my friend said that, and what do I say about that? And so, if you go back in the archives, don't. But if you go back in the archives long enough, you can find my phone calls into Greg Koukl.

And so, Greg Koukl was very helpful to me. And then Francis Schaeffer. Francis Schaeffer, I think I found his trilogy, the Francis Schaeffer trilogy. So what is that? It's like the God who was there escaped from reason, and he's there, and he's not silent, or something like that.

I found it in a bargain bin, and for almost nothing. And I picked it up, and I was working in a hospital at the time, and I read all three, the whole trilogy, in a weekend. I was just so enraptured. It was amazing.

So those three, I think, are pretty big. Those are the ones, too. Francis Schaeffer, particularly, on my particular style of communication, I think is pretty big.

Yeah, excellent. Thank you for that. What about you, Matt? Who have been the greatest influences on you in your development in apologetics and theology? Well, you're a Michael. You're muted, Matt. You're muted.

Not really. He's the guy who's been doing this since the internet was invented. He's been learning the internet. I'm working on stuff.

I got the windows open. I'm working while you guys are talking. He's writing articles while he's a guest on a show.

Yeah, well, I'm working on my Eastern Orthodox stuff, and going through a thing there, and stuff. And then I'm writing a piece of positionalism. I got another window open for another chat thing when we're done here.

I'm supposed to go. All right, so that's why I didn't let you guys hear me typing. The guys who've influenced me the most, Walter Martin and Chuck Missler. I used to attend their classes back in SoCal.

Went to seminary, and it was John Frame. And then after seminary, got introduced to Greg Bonson and learned a lot from him. And then there's this lesser-known apologist that people don't often refer to, Paul the Apostle.

And so I learned a great deal from him. I actually, for real, when I first read Paul the Apostle, my faith was shaken, because I didn't understand what he was saying. Once I understood what he was saying, it was grounded.

So I think that he's the quintessence of good apologetics. I really do believe that, and logic, and things like that. But anyway, there you go. Yeah, and just to piggyback off.

What you're saying there, Matt, I know that we all have our influences, but what I've seen in Matt's ministry that has really struck me is that in your responses to people, your responses, especially even your advice to people who are asking life questions, your responses are so filled with Scripture that you've done an excellent job, I think, in really hiding God's Word in your heart.

And that really comes out in the way that you engage a lot of the questions. I appreciate that. For myself, William Lane Craig has been a great influence on me. Of course, everyone who follows my channel knows that Greg Bonson, Cornelius Van Til, James White, just watching his debates and things like that.

And of course, Matt Slick. Actually, it was Matt Slick who, listening to CARM, the old show when you used to do all your impressions, you used to have these little characters, you know? What was the one character that you would rip, rip scriptures out of context?

What was it? Reverend E .R. Tickler. Okay, that's right. E .R. Tickler, E .R. Tickler. That's right, that's right. So, listening to you and answering, how you answered questions actually helped me gain confidence in my conversations.

And I love the way you kind of analyzed and questioned the assumptions in the question that was being asked. And I learned, just by listening, driving and listening, I learned a lot from you in how you answered questions.

Go ahead, Braxton. That's one person.

Well, here's another. I was gonna say that years ago, it wasn't too many years ago, probably in 2000, well, I guess that's relative, 2010, something like that, you were talking with somebody called the Rational Response Squad.

Ha ha! And

Ha ha! Sorry, sorry, that was a squeak that kind of came out because I love it when they say Rational Response Squad because I think it's funny.

It's just funny, sorry. But you did, you gave me some confidence in terms of that sort of thing, because I remember her saying she was nervous to be talking to you. And you said, I used to be nervous when I had these kinds of conversations.

You don't have to be nervous. Just, let's just get in there and find out what's going on. And I thought, I love that attitude, you know? And that was empowering.

But what I get scared is when I'm listening to Matt's show and a guy is being somewhat evasive and Matt just goes out and says, are you a Jehovah's Witness? Well, as soon as they don't answer the question right away, I'm like, oh man, it's about to go down.

No, no, no, wait, if you don't answer the question, I'm gonna let you go. It's my show, my rules. I'm like, oh man, yes, I'm a Jehovah's Witness. And then you go in and you do your thing. I enjoy that.

But I'm nice, I'm nice to them. If they're not gonna answer the question, just so I know where they're coming from, why talk to them, that's all. But we know that once they admit where they're coming from, it's over.

So, all right. If the buzzsaw's turned on. Okay, well, now that we kind of got, that's cool. I like hearing kind of the background of where everyone's coming from and your influences and things like that.

So let's kind of take some questions. So there's some questions here. Feel free to answer however you'd like. If you wanna chime in or piggyback on what someone else says, feel free to do so. Okay, so Alyssa Scott, thank you so much for your question.

Alyssa asks to everybody, do you continue studying other apologetic methods? I think that's what she wanted to say. Besides the one that you hold to. So are you guys still, do you guys every now and then, I mean, most of us are already fully entrenched in the methods we use, but do you occasionally kind of like trickle over into other methodologies and making sure you understand that or maybe you can draw some positives from other perspectives?

And if so, what does that look like for you guys? How about Braxton, why don't you go first?

Yeah, so I realize that there are a lot of people on the evidential side, which is the side that I'm on, who think that presuppositionalism needs to go away, it's not helpful, blah, blah, blah. But in reality, on our show, we both, though we've taken shots before, we actually find presuppositionalism to be helpful.

Now, I realize that there are some who think that the theological positions, the Calvinist theological positions are necessary or at least very important to presuppositionalism. And we don't share those positions, but we still find it very important to function in some way, often in ways that a presuppositionalist would in terms of challenging worldview, establishing the foundation of intelligibility and things like that.

So I still study it. I think the book that opened my eyes to it, aside from the five views on apologetics book, was Avery Dulles' history of apologetics. I just, I saw it emerge there in history. I saw that there was value in it.

And so I still study that. And I think we think bifurcated presuppositionalism and an evidentialism, but if you go by the categories that are set out in those kinds of books, there's classical, evidential, cumulative case, presuppositional, reformed epistemology.

And I think all of those have something of value. And I tried to say so in my book, Evangelistic Apologetics, for that very reason.

Now, Braxton looks all dignified there and he's very calm and cool, but a lot of people don't know this. Braxton and I, we talk a lot throughout the week and we've had our debates over the phone where it was a lot of fun.

I apologized to Eli and gave him $20 one time.

That was awesome. So next time I'll make sure I'll get under your skin so you can be mean to me and give me more money in Super Chat. So, all right. What about you, Michael? Do you study other apologetic methods or are you kind of locked in on your own method or do you kind of try to see what other people are saying to draw from that?

Where do you stand on that? Well, I think it's natural to check the other methods and see what other people are doing. I will say I'm definitely more of a classical apologist. I'm not convinced by the presuppositional approach.

It's fine if someone else is, go for it. But my motto basically is I'd rather be doing apologetics than talking about how to do apologetics. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'm getting like a minimal now, one testimony a month from the apologetic work I'm doing online.

So it's affecting the culture, it's helping people. So I'm just gonna keep doing it. It's working great and that's how I've been doing things, I guess. Okay, very good. Thank you.

What about you, Nate? So somebody on this, can I call this a deus? What is this? What am I looking at here? The roster? Somebody challenged me to take a look at presuppositionalism a little bit closer recently.

And his name rhymes with Eli. So I have that on my to-do list. I have not as of yet, but I find my... So I have a kind of a signature method of communicating the Christian faith. And it's very friendly to presuppositional apologetics because I think it's probably the easiest tool that anybody could pick up with minimal training.

Just put it that way. And so, that's kind of where I'm at. I feel like, I think J. Warner Wallace called it a mixed martial art apologist kind of a style where there's multiple methods, multiple tools that I use when dealing with particular kinds of people.

And I think my first question is, who am I dealing with? And sort of float out the diagnostic questions to determine that first. And then I will utilize whatever it is I've picked up along the way. So I think the last book that I read was a while back.

The five views on apologetics or something, just stay fresh. Yeah, cool. Very good. What about you, Matt?

Well, your mic's off again. I'm writing, I'm typing. Typing a list of heresies that are being spoken tonight. It's really getting long. It's just, man, we got some talking to do. No, I'm an entrenched pre-suppositionalist.

I used to use evidence as a primary and classical rationalism. But I learned that none of them can, in my opinion, can be justified without assuming the Trinitarian God because all evidence is due to the causal chain of God's initial existence and all rationality and classical stuff is due to the transcendent necessity, the laws of logic, which are reflections of God's character and mind.

So ultimately, neither of these could be justified unless we presuppose the Trinitarian God. And so I do that. And when I switched, so to speak, though I do use the others, apologetics just became that much easier, particularly with atheists and others, just ask them the right questions.

And so I like it. And then when people say they don't approve of pre-suppositionalism, I say, why would you presuppose that?

I love how Matt took the question, do you look at other methods and just started advocating for pre-suppositionalism? I forgot. Well, thank you.

I forgot. I am old, probably the oldest one in here. I am 65, but I studied other stuff.

Nate's like, whoa, okay.

Did I just hurt someone's feelings, buzzer bubble? So no, I will study other stuff, but as I've debated a lot with atheists and Eastern Orthodox and Catholics, Mormons, whoever, Muslims, I've learned more and more.

You've always got to get down to their basic assumptions, always get down to where they are and what justifies those basic assumptions. And one of the things I say is, is what must be true in order for whatever they say to be the case.

And if they can't justify that assumption, then they don't have any case. And even with the Christians, we've got to justify everything by appealing to the necessity of the Trinitarian God. And incidentally, I was just finished a while back, a 500 word paragraph on the Trinity and taught for five weeks on the Doctrine of the Trinity and stuff like that.

I love it. I think it makes sense. And so I'll use other methods, but they're all in subordination, in my opinion, to the ultimate necessity of God's existence and the emanation and causal chain of all things related to Him.

So there you go. That makes sense. Was that slick and quick? So basically, you're a presuppositionalist, but you do talk about evidences, but you try to make sure that the conversation gets to those foundations.

Yeah, evidence is only that which exists in a broader context, what justifies the context. Facts only exist in a broader context, what justifies the context, et cetera.

Sure, all right, thank you for that. What about you, Tony? Yeah, I believe that we should definitely examine other sides. I'm a presuppositionalist as well, first and reformed, but I do have evidentialist arguments I use sometimes.

I mean, we see the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, appealing to the witnesses who saw the risen Christ, the 500 brethren who saw Him at one time, the appearance to Cephas, the appearance to James and the apostles and so forth, and then saying, look, some of those 500, some of them have fallen asleep, but some witnesses are still alive, as if to say, you can check with them as well.

They're available for their testimony. So I'm not saying that we have no place for evidentialistic arguments. I believe it has its place, but I would agree with Matt that in my opinion, it would be a secondary form of argumentation.

So I would always encourage people to imitate George Whitefield and John Wesley, even though they had some very strong differences, Wesley being very strongly Arminian and George Whitefield being, of course, Calvinist.

They love each other. They did have their strong disagreements, but it is possible for Calvinists and Arminians to get together, and it's possible to have fellowship with one another. And so I think it's important that we realize that we don't have to forfeit our convictions, but at the end of the day, we are brothers in Christ.

We're trusting Christ alone for our salvation. And we should always watch out that we don't major in the minors and minor in the majors. So that seems to be a continuous problem that Christians seem to experience.

Sure, sure. Did everyone get an opportunity.

To take a swing at that one? Okay, yeah. So myself, here's the thing. As a presuppositionalist, I often find myself disappointed, not in presuppositionalism, but in the lack of many presuppositional sources in dealing with specific data points, like specific evidences.

So I think presuppositionalists do an awesome job in kind of the broader worldview, creating that context in which the evidence makes sense. But when you establish that and people have specific questions on specific points, I think, at least in my experience, there's not a lot of presuppositional material out there that really goes into the nitty gritty of those specific points, as do like my classicalist and evidentialist friends do.

So in that sense, I like to read classical and evidential literature so that I can get some of that deep nitty gritty details that I can actually put within a presuppositional framework. And I often emphasize on my channel when we talk about this, that I do make a very important distinction between the use of evidences and the utilization of evidentialism as a methodology.

I don't use evidentialism, but I do think that evidentialists do a great job in the evidences specifically. And then I use that in my own studies. I draw from that and I try my best to contextualize that so as to be consistent with the methodology that I hold to.

So I have very much benefited from the works of William Lane Craig, J .P. Moreland, listening to debates, Braxton Hunter. We've had great discussions, even in our disagreements, but I've learned so much from him and Michael Jones as well.

He does an excellent job in his debates. I mean, I've actually had him on a while back to talk about debates, debating, and we disagree on important theological and apologetical issues, but I think he does an excellent job debating and I've learned so much watching many of his debates.

So You're gonna keep complimenting, you should buy me a drink first. Okay. Okay. I'll send you a nice lemon water. Okay, let me see here. So, okay, so next question. Thank you for the super chat, Verum.

This is specifically for Inspiring Philosophy. They're trying to Here we go. We'll see how we can navigate some of these questions. It's getting ready to rumble. Okay, so the first apologetics, I'm just reading it as it happens here.

So the church fathers and the reformers were all young earth creationists. Were they all wrong? All right, and feel free to answer that in the way, don't feel like you're limited in any way and no one's gonna jump on you, but go for it.

Young Earth Creationism and the Church Fathers

Short answer, no.

Long answer is it's complicated. Okay, Isaac Newton was a young earth creationist and he was going on the best data at the time. This was before the advent of geology, advanced astronomy, paleontology.

They were going on the best data they had. And so, no, they were not wrong, but because they were working with the best data. The thing is that now, shortly after Calvin, the rise of geology, people were taking very old earth views quite quickly.