Ask Me ANYTHING (Apologetics, Theology, Philosophy)

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and welcome to today's episode.

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Oh, let me see if I can fix that. That was crazy, sorry about that. Yeah, so today is going to be the

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Q &A sesh. So if you have any questions, I already see some questions that have formulated in the comments section.

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I will try my best to go through them one by one. So this either will be super short or we'll have a really fun time and I can do my best to get through as many questions as I can.

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So just real quick, I know if you guys have watched my previous video, I had Dan Buttafuco on who is a

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Christian apologist and trial lawyer. We had a cool discussion,

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I think it was just yesterday, and I made an announcement about Thursday.

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I'm actually gonna be having Pastor Luke Pearson, who is one of the pastors at Apologia Church on, I'll be having him on this

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Thursday at 9 p .m. Eastern to talk about doing apologetics within the context of the local church.

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So basically, we're gonna be covering the issue of the importance of doing apologetics under the covering and accountability of the local church.

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That's gonna be a really, I think, interesting and I think important topic to cover as well. So I'm looking forward to having

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Pastor Luke on with me. Well, without further ado, let's see here.

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I wanna wait until we get a little bit more of an audience here. Okay, and I already do see some questions here.

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Now, some people have sent me questions through Facebook and they got tucked away in the comments and things like that.

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So if you happen to be following Revealed Apologetics on Facebook or you're just following me on Facebook, I have the two accounts,

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Revealed Apologetics and Eli Yala. If you're watching now, just you can reinsert your question in the comments here and I'll try to kind of go through them one by one.

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All right. Now, these are always very unpredictable. So far, let me see. So far,

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Revealed Apologetics on YouTube has, let me see here. We have around 4 ,940 something subscribers, okay?

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That's really good. Although in the ultimate scheme of things, there are obviously channels that are much bigger.

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So having that many subscribers does not mean that many people are actually watching live streams like this at the moment

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I go live. So these kind of Q and A sessions can kind of be unpredictable because there'll be times where people won't have questions and so the comments are just really silent and it's just awkward.

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So I have planned a teaching, okay, for tonight if there aren't a lot of questions.

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But as I'm waiting here, I see people kind of trickling in. I don't think I'll have to go through that.

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But even if I did, it's pretty interesting. So I've been reading the transcript of the debate between Greg Bonson and R .C.

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Sproul over the topic of apologetic methodology. And so I thought it would be useful for people to create an outline from Dr.

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Bonson's opening statement where he lays out the presuppositional argumentation in response to some of the objections to presuppositionalism from R .C.

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Sproul. So I figured creating an outline for that and kind of teaching through that outline because Bonson does a great job laying out the presuppositional approach there,

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I thought that might be helpful. So if I don't get to that today, which looking at the questions,

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I think I probably will not get to that today. And we'll probably just save that for another time.

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But it's there, I have it queued up. So, you know, just in case. All right, well,

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I have my coffee in hand so we can't do any of this without caffeine. And yeah, so let's get started right away.

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I don't want to waste anyone's time here. All right, so our first question comes from Kayla Henderson.

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All right, Kayla asks, and thank you so much for your question, Kayla. I appreciate it. Have you considered creating a resource to begin introducing middle school age students to presuppositionalism or even elementary students?

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I would happily pay for it. Well, you are the quintillionth person.

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I don't even know if quintillion is a real number, but you are the quintillionth person to ask that question.

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This is kind of a great need. You know, is there any teaching resources to teach presuppositionalism to young children?

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Well, here's the good news and here's the bad news, okay? Now the good news is

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I have been intending to write something along those lines, to write a resource or a curriculum of sorts to do that.

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And so the good news is the intention of my heart is to create something just for this purpose.

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Now, last year, I'm on summer break right now. I'm a full -time teacher. I teach at a

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Christian private school. And this past year, I taught 11th and 12th grade

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US history and European history. However, I've now been transferred from high school to teach middle school.

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Now I'll be teaching sixth grade and eighth grade. Now check this out. This is super cool.

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I'll be teaching sixth grade Bible and eighth grade logic with an apologetic focus.

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So when we teach the kids logic, we teach them the basic laws of logic, how to identify fallacies, and the culmination of the school year for the middle school students is to equip them with the tools of logic so as to be able to argue and debate the topic of the resurrection.

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So at the school I work at, they do that at eighth grade. So what I want to do is I want to be very intentional about this upcoming year, because as I'm going to be teaching middle school, when

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I create my lessons and I create activities and things like that, I want to simultaneously have one foot in what

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I'm doing as a teacher and another foot in using the material that I create so as to create a curriculum to teach apologetics to middle school, sixth grade, eighth grade aged students to teach them apologetics.

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And of course, with a presuppositional emphasis. So that is not impossible, right?

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However, the issue is time. Again, I'm a full -time teacher. My dream,

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I would love to do YouTube full -time. I would love to, but that requires financial support.

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You know, if people support and I'm able to, you know, keep up with the website stuff and to just open up money in terms of money and helping with ministry, it opens up time and avenues for me where I could actually dedicate time to certain projects that I want to work on.

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So if I can get the support over the next year, perhaps that will open me up for more time for writing and putting more time into creating curriculum and things like that.

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So that's definitely part of the plan, okay? Now, for those who are saying, well, cool, maybe one day you're gonna make that.

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What can we do now to introduce people to presupp middle school students, high school students? I don't know a specific resource to point to, but as a general principle, okay?

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I think one of the most helpful ways in teaching young children presuppositional apologetics apologetics is grounding your kids in a solid theology.

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Dr. Scott Oliphant at Westminster Theological Seminary in a very helpful way defined apologetics like this.

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He says, apologetics is Christian theology applied to unbelief, okay?

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Apologetics is Christian theology applied to unbelief. And so when we teach our kids basic Christian doctrine and we teach them with an ear to the importance of the authority of God in our lives and the authority of his word and how that authority kind of reigns over every aspect of our lives.

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When we teach our kids in such a way that helps them to acknowledge that authority and how it plays out in our lives, you are setting them up within a presuppositional framework because presuppositionalism is very much just grounded in the authority and Lordship of Jesus Christ over every facet of life, even the life of the mind.

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And so when you teach kids the importance of the authority of God's word in our lives, you are teaching them presuppositional principles.

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So if you wanna ground your young children in presuppositionalism, teach them theology rooted in the word of God, give them a sense of the nature of the authority of God and his word in our lives and teach them how to apply that in all areas, right?

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So these are helpful principles, right? And teach your kids what it means to have a world and life view, how everything that we see is viewed through the lens of God's revelation, okay?

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So you don't necessarily need a textbook to do that, although there are resources like catechisms, things that teach basic theology and things like that, but you could also teach them through principles, principles of scripture, principles that we are to love the

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Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and ask our kids, what do you think that means? How does that play out?

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And then it plays out in our social interactions. It plays out in how we do our schoolwork, that even the work we do in the classroom is in a sense, a form of worship when we do it to the end of honoring and glorifying

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God and being determined within ourselves to use what we learn for the furtherance of the kingdom of God and the purposes and will of God.

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So taking those principles, I think is a good way to, when we instill that in the hearts of young people, that's a good way to kind of gear them towards kind of a more presuppositional way of looking at things, okay?

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I hope that's helpful. And that's a great question. Yes, we do need some curriculum of some sort with a presuppositional emphasis and hopefully

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I'll have an opportunity to do that. All right, hope that answers your question. Okay, let's see here, we're gonna move along and Alyssa Scott has a question.

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She says, what do you think the confusion was between you and J. Warner Wallace when you were talking about apologetic methodology?

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Okay, I don't know the specific confusion that you're referring to, but in reality,

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I mean, J. Warner Wallace is an evidentialist. And so evidentialist and presuppositionalist were just on the opposite side of the apologetic spectrum.

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There's definitely overlapping in which, I wouldn't have had J. Warner Wallace on if I didn't think that what he had to say would be useful.

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We obviously want to be able to be familiar with the evidences for the reliability of the New Testament.

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We wanna be familiar with the evidences and arguments for the historical reality of the resurrection of Jesus, right?

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But the way we approach those topics are going to be different, okay? I often get this from a lot of people.

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When I interviewed Dr. Hugh Ross from Reasons to Believe, and we kind of got into the topic of apologetic methodology, he said something very interesting that I think is prevalent in a lot of evidentialists and classicalists when they take a look at kind of the full spectrum of apologetic methodologies and kind of the arguments and debates between the different traditions.

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He said something along the lines of, sometimes I use evidential apologetics and other times

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I use presuppositional apologetics because presuppositional apologetics is a useful tool to have in my tool belt, so to speak.

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So folks like J. Warner Wallace, Hugh Ross, and others, they seem to give the impression that it's possible to kind of jump in and out of apologetic methodology.

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So on the one hand, I can be an evidentialist, but if the situation calls for it,

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I can be an evidentialist. And I made a distinction in my discussion with J.

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Warner Wallace, I made the important distinction between evidentialism as a methodology and the use of evidence, okay?

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When a presuppositionalist uses evidence, the presuppositionalist does not cease to be a presuppositionalist, right?

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I am a presuppositionalist while I am using evidences, and that is because when

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I use evidence, I do not assume neutrality and autonomy in the unbeliever.

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Right, you'll often hear me say that neutrality is impossible. I think in evidentialism and classicalism, sometimes that's not the case, right?

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We will present evidences as though the unbeliever's worldview is as good as far as it goes, and so we can kind of find this neutral ground, this ground where we could agree and then work our way up to the conclusion that God exists.

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So I think the nature of the confusion between myself and say someone like J. Warner Wallace really is that I don't believe presuppositionalism is a tool in the tool belt of the apologist.

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It is an all -encompassing methodology that you can't just pick up and put down as the occasion calls for it, okay?

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So I hope that clarifies. I think that's a very big difference. That being said, I would also agree with a presuppositionalist like Greg Bonson and K.

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Scott Oliphant, especially Dr. Oliphant said this in a discussion with a classical apologist.

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He said that presuppositionalists are eminently evidentialist in this sense, that we believe that literally everything is evidence for God, right?

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So the presuppositionalist is so confident in the fact that the

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Christian worldview is the only worldview that can ground intelligible experience and knowledge that we're willing to argue for the necessity of our

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God, the God of scripture, by A, appealing to supernatural facts, like we can appeal to things like the reliability of the

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Bible and the resurrection of Jesus, right? We could appeal to the miraculous because that's evidence for God, but the presuppositionalist can also appeal to the mundane, okay?

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This is why in Greg Bonson's debate with Gordon Stein and his debate with Edward Tabash, the issue of what we call the uniformity of nature was brought into the debate.

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This idea that we assume the future will be like the past based on our past experiences.

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So our past experiences of the regularities we observe in nature give us a justification for looking into the future, so to speak, and saying the future is gonna be like the past because we assume this principle of regularity and uniformity, right?

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Now, all of science is based upon the assumption of the uniformity of nature. There's just no two ways about it.

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That's a basic fundamental presupposition of science. Yet when we appeal to the uniformity of nature, we're not appealing to anything supernatural per se, yet in the mundane nature of looking at regularities,

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I believe we can argue for God with respect to appealing to those mundane facts about the regularities of nature and things like that.

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So we would say that everything is evidence for God. We would just make the distinction that evidence must be understood within a broader worldview context in which something like evidence even makes sense to begin with.

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So I would say that that's really the heart of our disagreement. It's really this issue of whether or not we could approach facts, whether it's historical data or philosophical ideas from an autonomous and neutral perspective.

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And I think at that point, we probably would disagree. I'm not sure what he would say. Would J. Warner Wallace say, yeah, we need to approach the facts neutrally.

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I'm not sure. Even if he says we can't, I would argue that many evidentialists, even if they say we can't, they don't act that way when they actually present the arguments.

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I remember listening to a debate between, pardon, between William Lane Craig and Christopher Hitchens.

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And I remember in Dr. Craig's opening statement, he says, and this is my impression of William Lane Craig. He says, now, if I know

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Biola students, right? I know that they checked their bias at the door and they're ready to hear the evidence and go where the evidence leads, okay?

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I'm now, so this idea really reflects really what presuppositionalists reject, this idea that we could be neutral, that we can kind of leave our bias aside and kind of just approach the data as a tabula rasa, a blank slate.

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As a presuppositionalist, I would reject that. So I think that evidentialists and classicalists tend to argue along those lines, or if they don't argue along those lines because they say,

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I agree with the presupper, there's no neutrality. I would say that even when they say that with their mouths, sometimes the way they present their arguments can actually allow those elements to sneak into their methodology, okay?

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All right, thank you so much for that question, Alyssa. Excellent question, Alyssa's got another one. I'm just gonna go down in order here.

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So, yay, I'm so happy there are so many questions, good. I was nervous, I wasn't sure. Sometimes you get people asking questions, other times folks, they tend to be a little silent in the comments section there.

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All right, let's see here. So Alyssa Scott says, what are some creative opening opportunities when starting a conversation with someone you don't know?

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Well, you could always hide in a dark alley and leap out in front of someone and start a conversation.

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I suppose that's creative, right? No, I think I know what you're trying to ask. What are some ways we can kind of approach people we don't know?

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Well, first of all, what I've found, and I remember taking an evangelism class when

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I was in seminary, and we read this book called,

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Sharing Jesus Without Fear. Actually, let me see if I can get this. I wanna get the link here, and maybe

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I can share a link to that book. Sharing Jesus, Sharing Without Fear.

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Okay, I'm gonna get, here we go. And it's on Kindle too, and there's an audio book.

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Okay, good. So I'm gonna copy this, and I'm going to share it in the comments here.

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All right, so there's a cool little book called Sharing Jesus Without Fear, and it basically just takes away the fear out of sharing your faith.

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And I think one of the things that he teaches folks to begin with is asking someone, hey, do you have any religious belief?

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If you get into a conversation with someone, maybe you're just sitting down, waiting for a bus or whatever, and you happen to have a conversation, and you're asking things about a person, just take the deep dive and say, hey, do you have any religious belief?

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Oh, no, not really. And then you're off, you're on the ground, you hit the ground running, right? So you can just flat out ask.

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I mean, in Greg Kokel's book, Tactics, which is an excellent resource to answer this question specifically, right?

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He speaks of going into a store and he walks up to the cash register, and there's this woman with a pentagram around her neck.

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And he asks the woman, hey, does that necklace have any religious significance?

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And what happens, the girl answers the question, and they're off running talking about religion, right?

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So sometimes just the blunt asking, hey, do you have any religious beliefs? And let them talk.

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The important thing is when you ask those questions with people you don't know, you wanna navigate very carefully because people tend to be very personal about their religious belief, and they don't want to kind of jump into an argument.

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We have to be very careful not to go in straight into like apologetics mode. You wanna be able to ask disarming questions, but kind of draw the person a little bit out so that you can kind of talk about some of these issues more explicitly.

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So yeah, I would say we begin by asking questions. Tactics by Greg Koukl, I highly recommend that book.

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Every Christian should read it. It's an excellent, excellent resource to teach people how to engage in conversations.

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And he comes up with a bunch of different ways, not only how to start conversation, but how to navigate conversation with certain kinds of people, okay?

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So for example, there is the carpet bomber, right? The guy who, when you're arguing with, he kind of just throws out so much information that you just really can't respond to at all.

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Greg Koukl does a great job kind of teaching the reader how to interact with someone like that, how to stay in the driver's seat in a conversation so that you can kind of get your point across and navigate those conversations well.

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So highly recommend that. Thank you so much, Alyssa, for your question. Hope that was helpful.

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All right, Arthur Bear asks, is there any chance we will see you in debate again, specifically against atheism?

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Boy, I want to debate. The thing about debates is that they take time to prepare for, time that I just don't have, but I wish

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I had. I'm gonna let people in on a little secret, okay? Let me take my little sip of coffee here. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret.

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If you notice, in my show, I interview a lot of people, okay?

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Now here's the secret. The reason why I interview a lot of people is because it's easier, okay?

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It's easier than going solo like this. Like when I want to present something just by myself,

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I have to prepare because it's just me the entire time. I got to talk about something specific and I want to prepare.

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Since I don't have a lot of time to prepare, but I have background in theology and apologetics and I've taught this stuff, right?

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I am an, it is easy for me to get an expert on and ask the right questions and we could have a fruitful conversation that people who are listening will benefit from.

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So it's easier for me to do that. I wish I could debate. This is one of the reasons why I've been looking for support.

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I'm in the process of getting, hopefully getting a sponsor which will help financially and just loosen up my schedule.

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This takes a lot of time to do this sort of stuff and so the more help I get, the more time

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I have. The more time I have, the more I could write. The more time I have, the more I can debate and do these other things that I really wish

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I can do, that I can do. So hopefully, hopefully I'd love to do debates again.

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They're fun. They can be kind of, you know, it doesn't matter how good you are. Everyone gets a little nervous when they debate.

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So I get a little nervous sometimes. I feel like I need to make sure I prep really well and if I don't have the time to prep, then it kind of throws me off and I get a little upset about it.

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So I did, I did get some debate offers. I was invited to debate

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Matt Dillahunty and I turned it down for this very reason.

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I just don't have time to prep. I was invited to debate Jim Majors, who is an atheist.

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He's appeared on the Modern Day Debate show a couple of times and debated various Christians. And so I've asked,

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I've been asked to debate. I'd love to do it again. It's just an issue of having the time to do it.

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So, so there you go. All right. Arthur Bear, have you ever heard someone say,

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I don't need an objective standard of morality. Look at Moses who killed the Egyptian and fled knowing it was wrong before the law was given.

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So he knew. Okay, well, there are a couple of things wrong with this statement.

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So ready? I don't need an objective standard of morality, right? An objective standard of morality gives us what's right and wrong, independent of people's subjective opinions.

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So we use the example of look at Moses who killed the Egyptian and fled knowing it was wrong before the law was given.

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Really? Did he do that before the law was given? Now you must be talking about the 10 commandments, right?

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But prior to the 10 commandments, it is not the case that we did not have an objective standard to judge right and wrong.

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You're forgetting the law of God that was written on the hearts of man, right? And the book of Romans speaks of this.

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The law of God is written on our hearts, on the tablets of our hearts, so that we intuitively know, we can intuitively grasp when things are wrong and we are condemned by those things when we commit them.

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So the issue is not that prior to the giving of the 10 commandments, nobody knew murder was wrong or lying was wrong or anything like that, right?

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The law of God is written in our hearts. And even though I learned that in the Bible, okay, prior to the writing of the

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Bible, it was still true that God's law was written in our hearts.

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Okay? And it is written in our hearts in light of the fact that we are imago

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Dei, we are image bearers of God. And part of being an image bearer of God is having the law of God written in our hearts among other things, okay?

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So that's how I would respond to that. All right, let's see here.

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Do, do, do, do, do, okay. All right, Alyssa asks another question.

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Hypothetical situation. I got three minutes to live. I'm scared. I wanna go to heaven. What do you tell me?

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Well, now that's difficult. If it's like a random person, I have no idea of the background information of this person, but assuming that someone has somewhat heard the basic outline of the gospel,

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I would give you the gospel. It was like, you got three minutes. All right, if you have three minutes left to live and you're scared and you wanna go to heaven,

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God has created the world. He has created you in his image.

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God has given us his word. He's declared in his word that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

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I'm a sinner, you're a sinner. And the problem with the world right now is that we need to be made right before our maker.

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Now, if this is true, okay, the only way to be right with our maker is to approach him in the way that he has laid out for us in his word.

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And the Bible says that no man comes to the father, but by his son. If you cling to Jesus Christ, the son of God, who died on the cross and was raised from the dead, the

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Bible says, if we confess with our mouths, believe in our hearts and confess with our mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, we will be saved. If you put your trust in Jesus, the perfect savior, you will be saved.

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That's less than three minutes, right? Now, of course, whether the person understands that is gonna depend on the person's background knowledge and things like that.

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So it might be helpful to remember some scriptural principles and explain it very briefly. But in your hypothetical, that's very rare, although it can happen.

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Someone has just a few moments to live and they wanna know how to get to heaven, point them to Jesus, right?

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You point them to Jesus. That's why it's important to know what the gospel is, right? Part of having an all encompassing

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Christian worldview includes that when we do apologetics, when we do evangelism, when we're living our lives, we are living a life that's always oriented around the truth of the gospel, which includes the fact that I'm a sinner and that every day

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I live day by day by God's grace, okay? If that's the background music of my life, the background music of my mind, then

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I'm gonna be in a much better position to share with someone very quickly, right? Those truths.

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Now, of course, you can only go so far, right? If you only have three minutes, you can't go super deep, but I think you can kind of lay out the basic outlines of the gospel.

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What is the gospel? First Corinthians chapter 15, verses one through four. The central features of the gospel is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ and what that means for the world.

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Just lay that out there and explain what does it mean for Jesus? Who is Jesus? Why is it important that he died?

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Why is it important that he was buried? Why is it important that he was raised from the dead? And what does that mean for the world?

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And you just lay out the truth of the gospel, right? Don't, you know, go traditional on them. John 3, 16, for God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life, right?

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And then we present to them Jesus, the perfect savior who never fails to save those he intends and never turns away anyone who comes to him, all right?

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All right, good. Great question. And I'm kind of going in order here. So Alyssa has another question here.

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Eli doesn't have time to put sugar in his coffee. I doubt he'll be debating. Oh, it's not a question, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah.

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I do have time to put sugar in my coffee. Without coffee,

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I'm lost. I always say, you know, the two things you need in life are coffee and Jesus, but of course not in that order because that would be heretical, right?

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So all we need, Jesus and coffee, that's a little better. Okay. Arthur, wish you would debate him too.

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I know he had a conversation. I did have a conversation with Tom Jump. I think my conversation with Tom Jump was either my first or second debate discussion

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I ever did on YouTube. I enjoyed it. Tom's an interesting guy. I don't know if I would go back on Tom's show again.

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I'd have to think about it, but I did enjoy my conversation and got great feedback. People thought it went well also, so yeah.

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All right. So let's see here. Okay. Samuel, okay, wow.

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Hold up, time out. Okay. I'm gonna need another sip of coffee for this one. I don't wanna mispronounce the name. Hold up.

30:32

Samuel Barasa, Barasa? I mean, you can give me a thumbs up. Hopefully I pronounced that correctly. All right.

30:39

Well, Samuel says, hello, Eli, other than divine determinism, what do you think is the most plausible account of providence and omniscience?

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Mullinism, simple foreknowledge, or open theism? Okay. Open theism,

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I think is a heresy, so it is not plausible to me at all. I am not even remotely sympathetic to open theism.

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Simple foreknowledge is just too simple of an account of how these things work. Sorry for the play on words.

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I would agree with Guillaume Bignon, who is a fellow determinist as well, and we would say soft determinist.

31:19

We're compatibilist, we're not hard determinist, and I'm not gonna get into that discussion, but I would agree with him that out of all the false views, okay, on this issue, mullinism is my favorite of the false views, okay?

31:33

So if I were to say which one was the most plausible account of providence and omniscience,

31:38

I would probably go with mullinism. As I've said this before, I'm a committed Calvinist, but if I was not a

31:45

Calvinist, I probably would be a mullinist, okay? So yeah, there you go, all right?

31:51

Mullinism is just a fascinating topic. I mean, even now as a Calvinist, I used to be a mullinist, but as a

31:58

Calvinist, I just love to read about it. It's such a fascinating topic, and it touches so many different areas, not just the issue of free will, but the issue of the nature of God's knowledge.

32:08

It's just really fascinating. When you're discussing issues relating to God's providence and sovereignty and human freedom and responsibility, you're really kind of pressing in against some really deep issues that until just a few years ago,

32:26

I didn't know there was such a vast array of literature on this very topic. So I find it terribly fascinating.

32:32

So I would say mullinism if I had to choose. All right, MG, wow,

32:39

I haven't caught a live stream in ages. Congratulations, very good, I'm glad you're here. Okay, M says, good to see you on Clubhouse.

32:48

Yes, I am on Clubhouse. I do try to pop in on Clubhouse, and I try to pop in on some interesting conversations, and sometimes

32:54

I'll give my two cents, but there you go. Let's see here, who's more gangster

33:02

Puerto Rican? Eli or Ricky, roll down. Well, if you're gonna say,

33:08

I mean, look at me, bro. Like I'm Puerto Rican, but I speak no Spanish, okay?

33:13

I speak Spanglish, all right? You can speak to me in Spanish, and I'll respond to you in English.

33:18

So I know just enough Spanish that if you were to talk about me behind my back, I would know what you're saying, but I'd have to respond in English.

33:26

So my Spanish isn't, so I'm not even, I'm not even like a legit Puerto Rican, right? Okay, so I'm Puerto Rican, but I'm one of the lousy

33:33

Puerto Ricans, right? I'm definitely not gangster. Look how I, look, I even, I didn't even say gangster. I said gangster, right?

33:39

I don't even sound gangster, okay? I would be the most unintimidating mugger.

33:45

If I were to mug someone and ask them for their money, I wouldn't even sound tough. So I would give you,

33:52

Ricky, the props here. You are more of a gangster Puerto Rican than I could ever be.

33:59

I would, if you were, if you were gonna mug me in a dark alley, I would be afraid of you because of the way you sound. You sound like you're from the streets.

34:06

So, all right. Oh, thank you for that, Ricky. Let's see here.

34:16

Daniel David Shevchuk, I apologize. If somebody were to ask you to share the gospel with them, how would that sound?

34:24

Yeah, so explaining the gospel, I think if someone were to ask me, hey, why don't you explain to me the gospel?

34:33

I think a very important element of explaining the gospel is getting these two foundations down. Law, gospel, law, gospel.

34:42

So we start with bad news and we go to the good news, okay?

34:48

So law and gospel. When I present the gospel, it always includes a discussion about the nature of sin and how all have, like the scripture says, all have fallen short of the glory of God.

34:59

I think it's very important and a very powerful piece of the gospel to show how deeply separated we are from God so that we can demonstrate the need for the

35:10

Savior, right? So when I present the gospel to someone, it is all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, right?

35:19

The wages of sin is death. If the wages of sin is death and all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, if those two statements are true, then it logically follows that all deserve death, right?

35:31

So I would emphasize the impossibility of being made right with God apart from the means that he's provided.

35:40

And what is that means? It is his very son, the incarnate son of God who came as a man,

35:47

John 1, 14, the word became flesh. He lived a perfect life. Jesus Christ was without sin, 1

35:54

Peter 2, 22. And because he was the blameless, spotless son of God, he was in a position to bear our sins in his body on the cross, 1

36:05

Peter 2, 24. And in bearing our sins in his body on the cross, okay? We are granted through the mechanism of grace through faith, we are granted the right to be robed with the very righteousness of Christ so that the father sees us as he sees his son.

36:26

Jesus Christ literally is the filter through which the father views those that are positioned in him.

36:33

That's why in the New Testament, in the letters of Paul, there's oftentimes this discussion of being in Christ or being in Adam.

36:43

When we are positioned in Christ, then we are seen by the father through the lens of Christ.

36:49

And so we are seen by the father as being justified. We are declared righteous.

36:55

We are not held responsible and accountable for the sins committed because those sins having been put in place in Christ, they were placed on Christ and the penalty for those sins have been paid for, right?

37:09

As the book of Colossians says, having nailed the certificate of debt on the cross, right? He nailed the certificate of debt.

37:15

We have now peace with God. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

37:24

Okay, so I think explaining the beautiful and great lens by which

37:32

God has the things that God has done for us so that we can be placed in Christ and be made in right standing with God.

37:41

I think that message in itself is very powerful. And of course, as we present the gospel message, we pray that God uses that presentation with the working of his spirit to cause spiritual birth, right, to cause the regenerative work in the heart of the person.

37:59

As the book of Acts says, with respect to Lydia, when Paul spoke with Lydia, that God opened her heart to believe what was being spoken to her.

38:09

So I think important aspects of presenting the gospel is the law and the gospel, the bad news and the good news, the sickness and the cure, the problem and the solution.

38:22

I think those are vitally important to link together. Otherwise, you come off as the fire and brimstone person with no hope, or you come off as the

38:32

Joel Olsteen, everything's nice, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, but there is never brought into the issue, into the conversation, the reality of our sin.

38:40

I think law and gospel, these are the two things that need to be balanced together. And we see these realities placed together in Christ, the cross of Christ.

38:50

We see both the intensity of both God's love and God's wrath. This is what you see in Christ.

38:56

In the cross, you see the love of God and that it is because God loved us that Christ was suffering on the cross.

39:04

But because sin is so evil in the sight of God, you see the wrath of God being poured out on Christ.

39:10

So in the cross, in Jesus being on the cross, you observe both God's intense love and his intense hatred of sin.

39:18

You see that perfectly embodied in the cross, which I think is a beautiful, powerful picture to present.

39:25

And of course, because we are all sinners, when you present this to someone on whom God is working in their heart, they really resonate with that reality that they know that they're not good enough.

39:35

And yet, look what God has done in Christ Jesus. Yet, while we were yet sinners,

39:41

Christ came and died. That's a very powerful message indeed, I think. So, all right, thank you for that,

39:47

David. Okay. Kinsole, Kinsole, I am so sorry.

39:59

Grace and peace to you. Right back at you. My question to you is how important is it to promote presuppositionalism strictly in the context of the

40:07

Trinity as Bosterman does? Yeah, I think it's vitally important. And I wouldn't just say as Bosterman.

40:14

I think while Bosterman places a more stronger emphasis on the

40:20

Trinity, you still see the emphasis of the Trinity in Van Til. You see the emphasis of the

40:25

Trinity in Greg Bonson and others. I mean, what is Bonson arguing for in his debates?

40:31

He's arguing for the triune God of Scripture, right? Now, Bosterman kind of attacks that issue head on and really shows the importance of understanding

40:41

God as triune. But I think it is an essential feature of presuppositionalism that the God we are defending is in fact the triune

40:48

God of Scripture. And it is his triunity that is part of the issue of grounding intelligible experience and knowledge because it is within the triune

40:59

God that you have both unity and diversity brought together. This has been, you know, and I've had a couple of episodes on this.

41:06

I've had Dr. Brant Bosterman on my show multiple times. And I think I had Anthony Rogers on as well, who's typically associated with apologetics towards Muslims, but I actually had him on to talk about the

41:18

Trinity in which we address the topic of the philosophical problem of the one and the many in which this is a very important issue here.

41:25

How do we bring unity and diversity together? That is an essential feature of intelligible experience.

41:32

And so whatever grounds both unity and plurality must not be an overarching unity and must not be an overarching plurality.

41:40

And what you have in the triune God is equal ultimacy of unity and plurality.

41:46

The unity of God does not engulf and encapsulate the plurality of God. And the plurality of God does not encapsulate and engulf the unity of God.

41:57

For both unity and plurality are equally ultimate in God who is both one and many, who is both one and three, the triunity of God.

42:09

One in being in nature, three in person, right? So we are monotheistic proponents,

42:17

Christians are, but the nature of our monotheism is that it is a Trinitarian monotheism in which unity and plurality are equally ultimate.

42:25

So I think it is very important to place the presuppositional form of argumentation within a

42:31

Trinitarian context because that is the very God we are defending, okay? And it is that aspect of God that grounds intelligible experience.

42:39

The Trinity does that, no other conception of God even remotely gets close to that. So I think it's very important that we have that Trinitarian emphasis, all right?

42:48

Excellent question. Very good. Okay, Skinny Pete. Okay, so Skinny, I love the name.

42:57

Thank you for your $5 Super Chat, Skinny Pete. You came on Clubhouse and said you would find a non -question begging presuppositional argument.

43:03

Did you find it? And are you going to come and present it? I have not been able to stop and kind of look through my stuff.

43:11

I've been pretty busy. Although my schedule has opened up, as I did mention, I'm on summer break, but I also have three kids and a family and things going on.

43:19

So I definitely will look into that. However, I don't think it was this specific element here, but I said, if I remember in that discussion, there are no question begging presuppositional arguments.

43:35

So if you're saying I'm begging the question, I want you to, I want someone to demonstrate how the presuppositional argument begs the question.

43:43

Now this is important, because begging the question in an argument requires that the conclusion is found within the premises.

43:53

Now this is a feature of what we call direct argumentation. So an example of a direct argumentation would be say like a deductive argument, but transcendental arguments, especially as how

44:03

Van Til presented, is an indirect argument. It doesn't necessarily, it's not necessarily construed along deductive or inductive lines.

44:13

So begging the question, circular argument, these sorts of things are features of direct arguments.

44:20

But suppose I gave a direct argument that has a transcendental premise, there's nothing question begging about it.

44:26

And nor is there a, there is no, in the literature, there is no presuppositional argument, which explicitly begs the question in the fallacious sense.

44:35

So let me give you a deductive argument along transcendental lines, okay? If knowledge is possible, the

44:41

Christian worldview is true. Knowledge is possible, therefore the Christian worldview is true.

44:47

Look at those premises. There's nothing question begging about it, okay? There is no, the conclusion is not found in one of the premises.

44:55

However, when the argument is demonstrated, if knowledge is possible, this is the transcendental premise, if knowledge is possible, the

45:03

Christian worldview is true. Knowledge is possible, therefore the Christian worldview is true. suppose we get to the conclusion of the argument and it's demonstrated, okay, that would entail that we had to presuppose the

45:16

Christian worldview all along to even make sense out of the argument we were giving, right?

45:21

So in a sense we need to make a distinction between begging the question in that the conclusion is fallaciously in one of the premises, we want to be able to distinguish between the premise of an argument and the presupposition of an argument.

45:37

I presuppose that only the Christian worldview grounds the intelligibility of arguments itself, but there's nothing about my argument itself, the form, there's nothing about that that's circular or fallaciously question begging.

45:50

And I would challenge anyone to find one in the philosophical literature, anything in Van Til or anything like that.

45:56

I don't think you'll you'll find it. So yeah, so I think what I what I said that I would do when

46:02

I had the time was to formulate a deductive defense of the first premise. If knowledge is possible, the

46:09

Christian worldview is true, right? That's the transcendental premise, right? I'd have to prove that transcendentally.

46:14

And someone I think asked me what argument, deductive argument, I used to support that premise. And that I haven't formulated off the top of my head,

46:20

I'd have to kind of sit down and make sure I work through that. But it wasn't this point here, finding a non -question begging presuppositional argument.

46:27

I don't think there are fallaciously non -fallaciously question begging presuppositional arguments.

46:33

I would challenge someone to to show me where there is any presuppositional argument in which the conclusion is found in one of the premises.

46:40

So again, I would I would just want to clarify things along those lines. But thank you so much, Skinny Pete, for your super chat.

46:45

I really appreciate it, man. Thank you so much. All right. Let's see here.

47:04

Scroll through here. Okay. Cougario, cool name.

47:13

Cougario says, why don't more apologists use presupp? Why are some people like IP, that's inspiring philosophy, and capturing

47:21

Christianity against it? Well, I think it's very important to understand that presuppositionalism flows out of a theology, okay?

47:31

Van Til, when he constructed his presuppositional framework and these sorts of things, he desired to have it flow out of a consistent application of Reformed theology.

47:41

So that's why you see most presuppositionalists are Reformed in their theology. Now, there are some exceptions, and so we could ask the question whether presuppositionalism can consistently be used outside a

47:52

Reformed context. Some people think it can be. Others think it can't, okay?

47:59

Sorry, I had trouble speaking there. But that aside, I think people like inspiring philosophy, capturing

48:05

Christianity, I think they disagree with it because of A, they have a different theological foundation, and B, they have different views with respect to what's more pragmatic, what's more useful.

48:17

I hear a lot of people, even IP I've heard say, well, you know, presuppositionalism just doesn't work.

48:23

And so you hear these sorts of language, like whether presuppositionalism works or this method works.

48:32

Presuppositionalism is not concerned with mere pragmatics, okay? I'm not a presuppositionalist simply because I find it pragmatic, okay?

48:41

You know, being a presuppositionalist, what comes with that is some stigma. If you think about it, right?

48:47

Some presuppositionalists have a really bad rep online that because of how some presuppositionalists have conducted themselves, that's actually kind of stained the presuppositional methodology, along with the fact that there are a lot of misconceptions about what presuppositionalism actually is.

49:02

So, you know, there are a lot of misunderstandings. I think I've had some conversations with people who are classicalists and evidentialists, that when

49:09

I've explained what presuppositionalism actually is, and how it's different than the way they've been presented, which is typically in a clumsy fashion by listening to someone online, oftentimes, not all the time, but oftentimes, someone says, well, if that's presuppositionalism, then yeah,

49:24

I don't have a problem with that, right? So I think a lot of people don't use it because they often are presented with a misrepresentation of it, and they think that that's what presuppositionalism is, and it's not.

49:36

And you also have the differences in theological foundations, which, you know, because there are different theological commitments, that's going to affect the kind of methodology you're going to use.

49:45

You see, you can't separate apologetics and theology. You just can't. Some people try to, you can't, right?

49:52

Your apologetic methodology is going to flow from a consistent application of your theology, whether you are cognizant of it or not, okay?

50:01

Van Til taught us to be epistemologically self -conscious. You see, it is the believer arguing at the worldview level, we need to be self -conscious, we need to be aware of how our metaphysic, our epistemology, and our ethic bear upon how we engage in apologetics, how we engage in reasoning, or how we engage in any enterprise whatsoever.

50:22

So again, so I can't highlight the specific reasons why some people don't use presuppositionalism, but I can identify some of them, and so that's just my two cents about that, okay?

50:37

Thank you so much, Cugario. Cugario has a follow -up here, will you ever get Jay Dyer on your channel? Well, I almost had

50:42

Jay Dyer on my channel, and it didn't work out well. I reached out to him,

50:47

I actually wanted to moderate a debate between him and Dr. Tony Costa, who is a

50:53

Reformed Baptist and a friend of mine I've had on this channel, and let's just say that when I reached out to him,

50:59

Jay was willing to do it, and I was like, great, you know? And very respectful interaction,

51:06

Jay was very polite, you know? I tried to be polite, I would like to think I'm a polite guy, so.

51:12

But then when I ran this by Dr. Tony Costa, he was very apprehensive about agreeing to debate

51:18

Jay for reasons that he thought were, it would probably not be fruitful to debate someone like him, and he kind of pointed out some things in some videos that he was really, when he observed some behavior on Jay's part, he was like,

51:32

I don't know if I want to debate that sort of person, okay? Now when I brought that back to Jay, things went sour, and he started attacking me and accusing me of all sorts of things, and I, this was through text by the way, and then

51:50

I stopped texting and I gave a voice message to explain myself, hey man, it's not what, it's not like that, you know, blah blah blah, and he thought

51:58

I was being disingenuous, I really wasn't, it was truly this person didn't want to debate you for these specific reasons.

52:04

I've watched some of Jay's past interactions, and I kind of see why the person wouldn't want to debate him, and I told

52:10

Jay, but I'd be willing to have you on, because I was, at the time, studying Eastern Orthodox, and I'd love to kind of pick your brain on some stuff, but he would not have any of that.

52:18

I think he screenshot our private message and posted it all over his Twitter, and at that point I was like, yeah,

52:24

I kind of, probably wouldn't be a good idea to interact with him. That said, while I disagree with Jay, I'm not

52:33

Eastern Orthodox. I think that he's a very intelligent guy, and even though that interaction kind of went sour,

52:42

I don't have any, you know, negative feelings towards him or anything like that. It's just, I probably should be very cautious with the sorts of people that I reach out to and have on this platform.

52:54

He has a much bigger platform than I do, it's not that he needs to come on here at all. I thought it'd be interesting, because I was studying

53:00

Eastern Orthodoxy and things like that, so it really didn't turn out well, which, you know, it happens, you know, it's, that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

53:09

So, all right, thank you for that, Cagario. All right, let's see here. So, Toto Baramundo, in the

53:21

Bonson Sproul debate, the question was asked on how do you know the scripture is the Word of God by the precept approach?

53:28

Bonson answered, by the impossibility of the contrary. Yeah, so Bonson is using a transcendental argument, right?

53:35

Okay, so a transcendental argument tries to ask what are the preconditions for the truth of something else?

53:41

So, what must be the case in order for something else to be the case? So, in the case of the Bonson and Sproul debate, they were talking about knowledge.

53:47

What are the foundations of knowledge, and can we be certain? Can we be certain? So, let me take the time here.

53:53

I actually have a slide here. Maybe not that one. Let's, let's remove that. Oh, actually, you know what?

53:59

Yeah, nope, that's not the one. Is it the one? Okay, let's see here. Yes, okay.

54:05

So, I will give the context to this question. I anticipated, look at that. I'm not Pentecostal, but if I were,

54:11

I'd have the gift of foresight. I don't know if that's a spiritual gift or a Jedi gift. I'm not sure about that, but here's the context to this question, okay?

54:20

So, the context was over the, whether transcendental arguments provide epistemic certainty, okay?

54:27

So, when we use the presuppositional transcendental argument, can it establish the certainty of the

54:32

Christian worldview? And so, Sproul is having difficulty seeing how it, how it does provide this sort of certainty.

54:39

Bonson is trying to explain that it does, and he used the example of using Aristotle's argument for logic, and Bonson says, quote,

54:46

Aristotle said, how do you prove the law of non -contradiction? He wrote only a short paragraph on it, but it's devastating.

54:53

We argue for it on the impossibility of the contrary. In fact, you can't even argue without the law of non -contradiction, okay?

54:59

I'm gonna take the question off here so that I can see the rest of my slides on the screen here. So, Bonson says, Van Til's argument is the same.

55:06

We prove God's existence by the impossibility of the contrary. So, the illustration he gives is Aristotle's argument from logic.

55:12

How do I prove to you logic? Well, by the impossibility of the contrary.

55:18

Deny it, and you have to assume logical categories even in your denial. So, you have, you're gonna reject the law of non -contradiction.

55:26

You have to presuppose the law of non -contradiction even to argue against the, you know, the invalidity of the law of non -contradiction.

55:33

And so, Bonson's saying our argument for the Christian worldview is kind of like that. We are arguing by the impossibility of the contrary.

55:39

It is only the, the, the truth and existence of the triune God, who's revealed himself both general and special revelation, it's only in light of that God can knowledge be possible.

55:49

How do we know? Deny it, and you'll have to assume principles that only make sense within that framework, even in your rejection.

55:56

All right? So, that's the transcendental task. Now, again, this is not unique to presuppositionalism.

56:01

This always gets me when people criticize this. This is not unique. That is the nature of a transcendental argument.

56:08

When you prove something by the impossibility of the contrary, you prove the truth of the thing by appealing to its transcendental necessity, that it has to be presupposed even in its denial.

56:19

Now, of course, it is the job of the presuppositionalist to demonstrate that the elements of the

56:24

Christian worldview are, in fact, being presupposed in its rejection, right? But that's part of the, the interaction, and that's why we use the approach, as Bonson wrote and, and Van Til, that appeal to Proverbs chapter 26.

56:37

Well, we answer not the fool according to his folly, but then we answer the fool according to his folly. So, we don't answer the fool according to his faulty presuppositions, but then we do answer the fool according to his foolish presuppositions to show that on his foundation, he's got nothing.

56:50

And then we invite the unbeliever to step into the Christian framework, framework, and see how everything fits together, right?

56:57

So, so that's the context of that particular discussion. That's what Bonson means by the impossibility of the contrary, right?

57:05

He's offering a transcendental argument, okay? That's the nature of a transcendental argument.

57:10

And the transcendental argument is, if, if successful, gives you epistemic certainty of the truth of the thing you're arguing for.

57:19

So, so contrary to the fallacious objection that's usually pushed towards, against presuppositionalism, that we're fideists, that we just kind of, you just have to believe

57:28

God and that's it, and we'll just accept it on his own authority and that, that's it. You, you can't question God in any way because, you know, you're putting

57:34

God in, on trial, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, those sorts of things, right? Um, we're not fideists. As a matter of fact, presuppositionalists are, are not fideists, and we would say that ultimately, if you press the evidentialist and the classicalist, it is those forms of argumentation that only get you to the probability level with respect to God.

57:52

It's the presuppositionalist that is arguing for the certainty and necessity of God, that he provides the only necessary preconditions for knowledge, intelligible experience, or, or whatever.

58:03

So again, people can disagree with that, and that's fine, but you have to understand the nature of what the presuppositionalist is arguing.

58:09

It's not fideism. It's not a blind commitment to an authority claim. Bonson says, the argument for the truth of the

58:15

Christian worldview, he believes that the Christian worldview, the Christian God, is objectively provable, all right?

58:22

As a presuppositionalist, we believe in using arguments, okay? Now Bonson placed a great emphasis on the transcendental bent on the nature of argumentation, but our argument, we can, we could, uh, you know, we could adjust our arguments and apply to different areas.

58:39

You take, for example, uh, Bonson's debate with Gordon Stein. He focused in that debate on the, uh, the laws of logic and tried to show that the

58:49

Christian God is required for that. But then if you look at his debate with Edward Tabish, then he really emphasized the issue of the uniformity of nature and induction, right?

58:58

So you could talk about anything. The point is, if we take any item of human experience that we agree on, that this is something, we believe it, we ask what are the necessary preconditions for those things, and then you do worldview analysis.

59:10

Now, there can only be one foundation for intelligible experience. Otherwise, you run into other philosophical problems that we won't run into now, but there can only be one.

59:20

So if Christian, if the Christian worldview is a worldview that can provide the preconditions for intelligible experience and knowledge, then it follows it must be the only one, because you can only have one.

59:28

Now, if the objector doesn't agree that the Christian worldview does in fact ground those things, then he's gonna have to engage in an internal critique, and that's how you shove.

59:35

You can't just disagree with the argument. You have to give an argument to show where Christianity is off in terms of actually providing those preconditions for intelligible experience, and that's where you're gonna have the tug -of -war and the argumentation.

59:47

Now, again, we want to make the very important distinction between proving a proposition and persuading someone of the truth of a proposition.

59:57

You could have a foolproof argument, but fail to persuade the person you're giving the argument to, and Bonson wrote about this in his writings.

01:00:05

There's a difference between proof and persuasion. So we can prove the existence of God. That doesn't mean you're gonna be persuaded by the argument, but that doesn't mean we didn't prove it.

01:00:13

All right, so I think those are important things to keep in mind. Toto Bermundo, thank you so much for your,

01:00:19

I don't know how much that is, your 5 ,000 whatever. Thank you so much, however much that is.

01:00:26

I have no clue. I do appreciate the support. Thank you so much. All right, so let's see here.

01:00:34

Oh, I just got moved. Things just loaded a weird way, and now

01:00:40

I need to find where I am. Okay, there we go. Andrew, are you

01:00:46

Eastern Orthodox? No, I'm not Eastern Orthodox. I would be more in line with, I'm Reformed, and I am

01:00:53

Baptist in my orientation. Now, I don't hold to paedo -baptism, but I'm open. I've had,

01:00:59

I had a really good friend who was a paedo -baptist. I still have a couple of friends who are paedo -baptists, and I'm interested in those sorts of debates, but as, as of now,

01:01:07

I stand, I'm more in line with a Reformed Baptist perspective. Okay. Joshua Pillow says, why are you so good -looking?

01:01:15

I mean, I guess it's my genes. Okay, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

01:01:21

Thank you, thank you, thank you. All right, so let's see here. Jet Morgan Bork says, what do you think classical theism versus relational theism, okay, and about the apologetics related to strong proponents of classical theism, like Sproul, that God can be argued purely philosophical?

01:01:42

I'm gonna be honest, I don't understand the question. It's worded weirdly, and it really depends what you mean by the term, so I do apologize,

01:01:52

Jet. I'm unable to answer that question. I do apologize. Taylor Fletcher, thank you so much for your $4 .99

01:02:00

super chat. Any chance of getting Paul Washer on? I'd love to see it. That'd be awesome. You know what? I never really thought about getting

01:02:06

Paul Washer on. I kind of focus on, like, theology and apologetics, but I suppose I can do something on evangelism or something.

01:02:14

Maybe. I mean, that'd be cool. As a matter of fact, let me write that down. I'd love to get

01:02:19

Paul Washer on. Let me see, is this pen, is this pen working? No, it is working.

01:02:25

All right, I'm gonna jot that down. Thank you so much, Taylor. I'm gonna try to see if that can work, okay?

01:02:32

Now, here's the thing. If you notice, if you look at kind of the the backlog of my interviews, you'll notice that I've had some really great theologians and philosophers on.

01:02:43

A lot of that was due to COVID, because all of these people were stuck at home, so they had the time to come on.

01:02:49

So, obviously, things aren't the way they were back then, but since we've kind of grown in our audience, you know,

01:02:56

I'm able to get some people on. So, hopefully, maybe I can, I think I might have some connections. We'll see. Maybe that'd be, that'd be excellent.

01:03:02

I'd love to, I would love to get Paul Washer on. Thank you so much for that. All right,

01:03:09

Jay, I have two questions. What would be a good response to simulation theory, and what's a good starting point to learn philosophy?

01:03:15

Any good textbooks, introductory books, and lectures? Okay, so simulation theory, again, it depends what you mean by that.

01:03:25

There are different variations of it, and different arguments in favor of it, so I'm not sure how I would answer the first question.

01:03:32

Number two, what's a good starting point to learn philosophy? Any good textbooks, introductory books, and lectures?

01:03:41

Well, a specific book doesn't come to mind, but since I'm a presuppositionalist, right, what you want to do is all of Greg, I mean,

01:03:51

Greg Bonson had a PhD in philosophy. I don't know if some folks might not know this, but Greg Bonson was an analytic philosopher, and he did a lot of lectures, and all of his recorded lectures are available on Sermon Audio.

01:04:06

So, if you download the Sermon, and they're all free, you download the Sermon Audio app, and you scroll, and you type in the

01:04:12

Bonson Project, okay, it's got all of Bonson's audio, and there is his entire course of philosophy, okay, which

01:04:21

I highly recommend. He goes from the pre -Socratics all the way up into the modern period.

01:04:28

He has ancient philosophy. He's got philosophy during the Roman period. He's got philosophy during the

01:04:35

Middle Ages, the Renaissance, all the way up until the modern period. It is a treasure trove.

01:04:41

I've learned more philosophy listening to those lectures than I have listening to any books, and because he's presuppositional, you're also going to get that presuppositional analysis of certain philosophical thinkers that he disagrees with, and he kind of gives you that presuppositional approach as to how to critique them.

01:04:58

So, if you look up Sermon Audio, the Bonson Project, and look for his philosophy lectures, okay, they're all available for free.

01:05:07

You'll be there for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. He goes over what is philosophy.

01:05:14

He goes over the elements of philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. He goes through all of it, and it's free.

01:05:21

So, that is where I probably would point you to. Textbooks, I'd have to look.

01:05:27

I don't want to throw out a title and think later, like, actually, that might not have been a good recommendation.

01:05:33

All right? So, I hope that's helpful. All right. Ah, so Alyssa Scott provides a clarification.

01:05:43

So, clarification, I love J. Warner Wallace. I do too, okay? J. Warner Wallace was talking about how he believes once you start defending the faith, everybody becomes an evidentialist.

01:05:54

Yeah, I think, if I remember that portion of discussion correctly, I think he says that when you have an authority claim, like the

01:05:59

Mormon presents an authority claim, and the Christian presents the authority claim, then how do you break that tie?

01:06:06

He says, at that point, you're going to have to offer evidence. And so, at that point, everyone's going to be an evidentialist.

01:06:12

And again, I would just point people back to the distinction between the use of evidences and the use of evidentialism as a methodology, okay?

01:06:22

They're not the same. So, when it comes to defending our ultimate authorities, everyone does not become an evidentialist.

01:06:29

I continue to be a presuppositionalist while employing evidences that are presented consistently with my broader presuppositional framework, if that makes sense.

01:06:39

All right? Thank you so much for that clarifying point, Alyssa. All right.

01:06:47

Okay. The sire asks, what's your favorite color? I cannot say what my favorite color is because I have two favorite colors that are tied for first.

01:06:55

Okay. I've thought about this. This is not a random question. Oh, this is not good.

01:07:01

My coffee is cold. My coffee is cold. I wish there was a way to reach out to my wife or one of my children so they could heat it up.

01:07:09

I don't do good with cold coffee. So, we'll pray that the Lord grants me the grace to continue here. But my two favorite colors are black and red.

01:07:17

Black and red. If I had to choose between them, I probably would go with black. Okay? I love black.

01:07:23

So, thank you. Very profound question. MG says, thank you so much for your super chat.

01:07:30

I appreciate it. Thank you so much. That's awesome. She says, I have no question but really appreciate your channel.

01:07:36

God bless you. Well, God bless you too. I do appreciate that. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for that support.

01:07:43

Let's see here. Scott Terry, thank you so much for your $10 super chat. Thank you so much for the super chat.

01:07:49

I feel like I haven't had a super chat in a long time. Thank you so much for your support. I really do appreciate it. But Scott Terry asks, how is simply presupposing a worldview a case of question begging?

01:07:58

No atheist seems willing to explain what QB even is on a

01:08:04

Christian worldview. Oh, question begging on a Christian. Yeah. We all presuppose worldviews.

01:08:10

So, the atheist is presupposing a worldview. And if someone wants to complain, well, atheism isn't a worldview.

01:08:17

Fine. Even if atheism isn't a worldview, I think it is. But even if it wasn't, the person who identifies as an atheist still is holding to a worldview.

01:08:28

So, he's holding to a variety of an atheistic worldview. And we would argue that you're assuming those things prior to coming to the table to argue.

01:08:39

We all have fundamental starting points. The chain of reasoning in our foundation is going to have a stopping point.

01:08:46

Our stopping point is God and his revelation. The unbeliever's stopping point is something else.

01:08:52

But we know one thing for sure, it's not God and his revelation. And it's something that they take for granted.

01:08:57

And it is something within their chain of reasoning that is self -evident and self -authorizing. And so, that's why the presuppositionalist just wants to shoot right to the foundation.

01:09:06

Because we all have our Bibles, so to speak. My Bible is the Bible. The atheist Bible is whatever thing they place in the spot of ultimacy in their worldview.

01:09:18

And we want to challenge that. Which foundation can hold up the edifice of human knowledge?

01:09:23

Which foundation can hold up the edifice upon which science is based? Which worldview can hold the edifice upon which anything intelligible can stand?

01:09:33

That's really the issue there. So, we all presuppose our authority without arguing for that authority necessarily.

01:09:41

But in that sense, when I give my argument, I'm not fallaciously question -begging any more than the person who assumes their worldview when they come to the table.

01:09:51

You can't come to an argument without assuming a worldview. Everyone has a worldview. And we presuppose that.

01:09:57

So, I don't think, again, when people make this claim, it really, it's not surprising. It's not, you know, as presuppositions, we don't shake in our boots and be like, oh no, we assume the worldview we're trying to prove.

01:10:08

Well, of course, if the Christian worldview, if we're arguing the Christian worldview is the only foundation for knowledge, how can we then proceed to argue for our worldview not presupposing that?

01:10:18

But again, we make a distinction between the presupposition of an argument and the premise of an argument. Any argument that the presuppositionalist lays out is not going to have the conclusion in one of the premises.

01:10:28

And that's assuming that one uses presuppositionalism in a direct fashion. Many of the times, it's more of a form of indirect argumentation in which, you know, that problem doesn't arise.

01:10:39

So, again, not very impressive point on the part of those who accuse presuppositionalists of this fallacious form of reasoning.

01:10:49

All right. Thank you so much for that, Scott. Appreciate it. Everybody become

01:10:55

Catholic and read Thomas Aquinas. Well, you can read Thomas Aquinas without becoming Catholic. So I don't encourage people to become

01:11:02

Catholic. Okay. But thank you for that. Let's see here. Yep.

01:11:08

Okay. So I presuppose it's true, right? I presuppose it. So it's true.

01:11:14

Yeah. So again, this is a false understanding of what the presuppositionalist is arguing.

01:11:19

So it is not the case that when the presuppositionalist says that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that provides the necessary precondition for knowledge, right?

01:11:26

And we argue for the truth of the Christian worldview by the impossibility of the contrary. That is not simply a bare authority claim.

01:11:34

So when someone says here, like, I remember you 12, says, I presuppose it. So it's true. What is implicit in that statement is that what this person thinks the presuppositionalist is doing is simply making a bare authority claim.

01:11:47

Someone could say, well, couldn't the Muslim say the same thing? Yeah, the Muslim can say the same.

01:11:53

The Muslim is free to try and give a transcendental argument for the truth of Islam.

01:11:58

You could try it, right? People, anyone could, could use the transcendental argument. Anyone could say that their worldview is the only true worldview that provides the foundation for these sorts of things.

01:12:09

But there's a difference between saying that and actually, as in the words of Dr. James Anderson, he says, and it's another issue.

01:12:16

It's an issue between whether someone could say that or whether their worldview actually can pay the bills on that claim.

01:12:23

And so we would welcome if an atheist wants to give a transcendental argument for atheism or a Muslim wants to give a transcendental argument for Islam or a

01:12:31

Catholic wants to give a transcendental argument for Catholicism. Yeah, let's do it. And we do worldview comparison.

01:12:37

We see which you can actually pay the bills on those claims. So it's not merely an authority assertion.

01:12:46

There is an argument in there. And I think that this statement here fails to recognize that. All right.

01:12:56

Okay. All right. Jet asked the question, you may not be read about it.

01:13:03

It's a bit of a unique topic. Do you have a view of the means of grace? Can we consider other things, means of grace besides the word and sacraments?

01:13:12

Yeah, I think you hit it on the head. This is not an area that I've studied on.

01:13:18

So I would not be able to speak to that. So sorry about that. Let's see here. All right.

01:13:26

Vegan world order. That's awesome. When you say everything is evidence for God, what do you mean?

01:13:33

Yeah, I would say that God has revealed himself through the created order.

01:13:39

So everything that exists within creation, evidence is the one who made it.

01:13:44

If I can kind of use colloquial terminology here, everything bears the fingerprints of God.

01:13:50

Okay. Not only the things in the external world, but the very fact that we can rationally reflect about the things in the external world, that very reflection is evidence for our maker.

01:14:03

Okay. So I would say that that's what I mean by that. So when we say evidence for God, everything points to their creator, the thing, as well as the intellectual capacity to properly interpret the thing.

01:14:20

Okay. So that's what I mean by that. Okay. All right. Let's see here. Let's see here.

01:14:33

Rob B. Is determinism necessarily needed for intelligibility?

01:14:42

That's a good question. To be perfectly honest, I'm inclined to say yes, but I'm not an expert on the topic of determinism and its connection.

01:14:51

So one of the big things that I wanted to explore, I was going to have the apologist Emilio Ramos on from Red Grace Media, and we were going to talk about the connection between presuppositionalism and reformed theology.

01:15:06

And of course, reformed theology, the flavor of reformed theology that holds to the form of determinism that I would hold to, that have like a compatibilism, a soft determinist view.

01:15:15

And so I think we did an episode on that. But for me personally, I'm not an expert in that specific area and how to connect those dots.

01:15:22

But that is a good question. I'm inclined to say yes, because of the nature of the importance of how

01:15:29

God determining things and giving meaning to facts and decreeing history. There is a connection there, although I don't think

01:15:35

I'm in a position to explain that in any depth. So I do apologize. That's a good question. Good question here.

01:15:47

Let's see here. I'm just scrolling through. So please forgive me. I have to go through the comments.

01:16:00

Here we go. All right. So the sire asked the question, how do you respond to the

01:16:06

Mormon? Yeah. So Bonson speaks about this.

01:16:11

And again, I'd highly recommend folks check out that sermon audio, the collection of his lectures.

01:16:16

He does address this, how to use presuppositionalism towards other religious perspectives.

01:16:24

So again, so how I would address the Mormon. I would make a distinction here.

01:16:30

And I'm speaking to Christians now who are asking this question. I wouldn't say this to the Mormon because I'm thinking methodologically now.

01:16:36

I'm not going to talk about method with the Mormon necessarily. But Van Til made a very important distinction between common ground and neutral ground.

01:16:49

Van Til said that there is no neutral ground. There is no no man's land in which a fact can be understood independent of the frameworks.

01:16:59

Okay. But there is common ground. Okay. So Bonson brought up the point, well, if the

01:17:06

Mormon believes that the Bible is the word of God, then let's just go there. Let's go with the

01:17:11

Bible because that's an area of agreement. And we could argue via internal critique, you know, showing inconsistencies between Mormon theology and the

01:17:20

Bible. Now, granted, the Mormon is going to have pushback. They're going to have their interpretations and things like that. And we're going to have to be able to interact with that via an internal critique.

01:17:29

So so here's what I want to point out. Presuppositionalism is not a silver bullet that ends all argumentation.

01:17:35

You still, you still, people say presuppositionalism is a lazy man's apologetic. It isn't. You still have lots of work to do.

01:17:41

Right. So if the Mormon believes in the Bible, but has all this extra biblical, extra biblical revelation, I'm still going to, in doing an internal critique of the

01:17:49

Mormon perspective, I'm still going to have to grapple with those things. I still have to navigate the scriptures and interpret the scriptures and consider the presuppositions and lens through which they're viewing the scriptures and things like that.

01:18:00

So we can find common ground in scripture, or we can do a philosophical critique of the very concept of the

01:18:07

Mormon deity and things like that. So, for example, is

01:18:12

Mormonism a worldview that can ground knowledge? Okay.

01:18:18

I would say no, because one of the prerequisites to grounding knowledge, okay, that's required is, and I would argue, is an absolute all -encompassing

01:18:29

God. On Mormonism, God is limited. He exists within a context, an impersonal context of impersonality.

01:18:39

So you have an infinite number of gods that are gods of their own planets or whatever, but they exist finitely within a broader context of impersonality.

01:18:48

So these gods, these deities cannot be omniscient. So if I were debating the

01:18:55

Mormon deity, okay, I would argue transcendentally, if that was possible, right?

01:19:01

Account for knowledge, deity of Mormonism, because they are limited, the deities of Mormonism.

01:19:08

They're limited. They don't have all knowledge. How can you have all knowledge? The God in Mormonism used to be a man on another planet.

01:19:14

He has a body of flesh and bone, right? How do you ground transcendental, universal, conceptual laws when the ultimate grounding of reality is impersonal, right?

01:19:25

Whereas in Christianity, the ultimate metaphysical foundation of all reality is not impersonality, but it is the personal triune

01:19:34

God. So you could attack Mormonism philosophically and internally critique, pardon, hypothetically granting the truth of the

01:19:42

Mormon metaphysic and showing that on its own ground, it actually undermines knowledge. It actually undermines intelligible experience, okay?

01:19:50

So again, you can do that in a more philosophical route. You could do it dealing with some texts of scripture, but in doing that, we don't cease to be presuppositionalist and yeah, we're going to have to get our hands dirty and know our scripture and navigate that internal, external worldview critique, okay?

01:20:06

And hopefully that's done within the context of gentleness and respect, right?

01:20:13

So we still have to get into some of the nitty gritties. That's why I said presuppositionalist, in some cases, we need to talk about the evidence.

01:20:22

We need to talk about the data. It's not always this meta discussion, right? Even when we talk about the specifics, we might not bring in the meta considerations, but we know that the meta consideration, the worldview context are always floating on in the background.

01:20:36

We know that it's there and it's important and it gives meaning to the specific points we're talking about, but those specific things are important, okay?

01:20:42

For example, Van Til said, with respect to the resurrection of Jesus, he said that at some point he found it necessary to engage in historical apologetics, okay?

01:20:52

So there's a place to talk about the specific data points, not just the meta worldview issues, right?

01:20:58

But we do these hand in hand. We never talk about the data independent of the broader worldview. So even with the

01:21:04

Mormon, we're going to grapple with scripture. We're going to grapple with historical claims of Mormonism on their own basis, but we're also going to have one foot in the meta discussion of the worldview, which worldview can make coherent the very data points we're discussing, okay?

01:21:18

Hope that makes sense. Pine Creek, how's it going, Doug? Hope all is well.

01:21:24

He says, conversation starter. Are you one of God's elect? That is a terrible starter question.

01:21:32

Practically, it's not a good starter conversation because it brings in issues that really will lead us down a path that will make things more complicated than they need to be.

01:21:46

I want to get to the gospel, okay? And those things can be, if they come up, of course, we want to address it, but you don't want to lead with the doctrine of election predestination because we don't know the proper context of understanding this person has, and Christians don't believe we know who the elect are.

01:22:01

So it wouldn't even make sense, even as a Calvinist, it wouldn't make sense for me to say, hey, are you elected?

01:22:06

God elect you? That's not something that we are privy to. I don't know who's elect. We preach the gospel, and if those who are elect by God from before the foundation of the world, that's

01:22:18

God's business. My job is to be faithful and to present the gospel. So as a conversation starter,

01:22:24

I wouldn't go with that. All right. Thank you for that, Doug. Let's see here.

01:22:34

I'm a Calvinist atheist. That's a good one. Let's see here. Just give me one second.

01:22:42

One second. I need to go through and find the questions.

01:22:50

Arthur Bear, thank you so much for your $10 super chat. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Everybody, thank you so much for your support.

01:22:56

You guys are so generous. I appreciate it. Okay. So all right.

01:23:05

Doug asks a question. Do you believe God creates some humans for eternal destruction? Yeah. Yeah. The Bible says that God prepares even the wicked for the day of destruction.

01:23:14

So yeah, that's in the Bible. Let's see here. Nicholas Alberto Caputo.

01:23:23

I hope I pronounced that correctly. How can you prepare children for university and seminary? Yeah. Seminary too, believe it or not.

01:23:29

I had some liberal evangelical professors in many ways. Yeah. That's a great question. My answer is going to be really simple.

01:23:35

You want to equip your children with so much truth that they're able to identify error.

01:23:41

And that's why solid theology, solid grounding in the word of God, soak them in the truth so that when they hear these kind of wacky things later on, they're able to be like, hmm, that doesn't sound right.

01:23:54

So you want to create that foundation. Apologetics. Apologetics can start very young with children.

01:24:03

And you can teach them apologetics, teach them how to reason, how to think logically. I know someone who is a friend of mine who used to do this with his kids.

01:24:13

I guess when they were probably like 10 or 12 or something like that, but I suppose you can do it when they're earlier on. They'd be around the dinner table and he would say something like,

01:24:21

Wednesday sleeps faster than bones.

01:24:27

Wednesday sleeps faster than bones. What fallacy is present in my statement? What's wrong with my statement?

01:24:32

And he would have his kids argue over what's wrong with that statement. He talked about category errors and bones can't sleep and Wednesday doesn't have a speed, right?

01:24:41

These little games, the illogical techniques actually help kids have fun because it's kind of weird to talk about bones sleeping faster than Wednesday, right?

01:24:50

But also teach you how to think logically and identify faulty reasoning and things that are illogical.

01:24:56

So teach logic, play little logical games with them, Bible stories, doctrine, use a catechism or something like that, right?

01:25:04

Those sorts of things, when you do from an early age, by the time they're older, right? They are going to have that background music necessary to survive in the context in which they're now being taught all sorts of weird things because they have the truth.

01:25:17

They can use what they've learned in their foundations to kind of evaluate the things that they're hearing from the outside.

01:25:25

Okay. So that's how I would answer that. Let's see here.

01:25:31

I can fart loud. I'm not going to lie. I woke up this morning and I did not think those words would come out of my mouth, but that is the name of that is someone's screen name.

01:25:42

I can fart loud. Eli, I'm surprised you haven't had more subs signed up. Absolutely fine. Yeah. I mean,

01:25:48

Hey, where are we on stuff? So we are right now 4 ,900 and 400 and something.

01:25:55

Okay. Almost at 5 ,000. So Hey, if you know anyone who's interested in apologetics and likes these sorts of things, share the videos.

01:26:03

That's why I say sometimes share the videos, click the likes, all that, all those little catchphrases that YouTubers say.

01:26:09

If you find this channel helpful and useful. Yeah. Spread the word, man. I agree.

01:26:14

I agree. All right. Let's see here. Let's see.

01:26:22

Give me a second. All right.

01:26:34

Marcus Lobato, how do we conciliate the necessity of extra biblical knowledge to interpret the

01:26:42

Bible with the idea that we take our presuppositions from it to interpret the world?

01:26:49

Okay. See if I understand the question. How do we conciliate the necessity of extra biblical knowledge?

01:26:57

Yeah. So I'm not saying that knowledge is that all knowledge. And I apologize if I'm not understanding the question correctly, but we could have knowledge without having access to the

01:27:10

Bible. Okay. I could know things outside of the Bible.

01:27:16

Okay. But what I'm arguing is unless the biblical worldview is true, you couldn't have knowledge.

01:27:22

See, even the Bible itself gives precedent for having knowledge outside of the Bible, right?

01:27:28

We have general and special revelation. And special revelation includes scripture, but it doesn't have to. God has revealed himself at many times in many ways, right?

01:27:36

So as long as we have revelation, I think we have a proper foundation for knowledge. It doesn't necessarily mean that, see if I can understand your question correctly here.

01:27:47

So we get our presuppositions. Bible says we take our presuppositions from interpret the world. Yeah. So I would say that biblical presuppositions help inform us of the proper interpretation of the world, but I don't think that you necessarily incorrectly interpret the world because you don't have a

01:28:03

Bible. I'm saying because the biblical worldview is true, which would be true. The biblical worldview can be true prior to the

01:28:10

Bible, right? Because we take worldview, right? At the beginning in the garden, God revealed himself from the very beginning.

01:28:16

So because we have that revelation, general and special from the beginning, okay, we'll always have a grounding for knowledge.

01:28:23

It's just that scripture comes later and solidifies and clarifies and adds more content to those part of the broader worldview scope, right?

01:28:31

It's more explicit as to the presuppositions we should have. Then I would say, you know, I would say something along those lines, right?

01:28:36

I apologize if I'm misunderstanding the question. So sorry about that. All right.

01:28:42

Good question. All right. Jett Morgan, thank you so much for your $10 super chat. Appreciate your content.

01:28:47

Well, I appreciate you, man. I appreciate the support. Super helpful. I really do appreciate it.

01:28:52

You guys are great. And I'm so happy that folks are behaving in the chat. Now I don't read all of the comments and stuff like that normally, but from what

01:29:01

I've seen for the most part, people are super nice. So I do appreciate it. And if you're atheist or agnostics or anyone else from any other perspective,

01:29:09

I appreciate when you guys are nice and respectful as well. So thank you so much for that.

01:29:15

All right. Let's see here. Okay. Hello, Eli.

01:29:25

Can you answer the Christianity objection? We talked about it before and you said you would cover it.

01:29:32

Christianity. Are you talking about the Christianity objection? I'm not mumbling.

01:29:39

The Christianity objection is an actual objection to the transcendental argument.

01:29:45

So it says something along the lines, if this is what this person's asking, I apologize if it's not. But the

01:29:50

Christianity objection is the objection that what if we have a religion that is similar to Christianity in every way except some detail, right?

01:30:00

Instead of God being a Trinity, maybe God is a quadrinity, right?

01:30:07

Okay. Now I'll kind of go through this quickly. I did. I think I'm going to,

01:30:13

I'm going to give a quick answer here, but I actually want to provide, I might actually do a completely separate episode addressing this specific objection.

01:30:20

Okay. So at any rate, so again, so when we are arguing worldviews, we are all standing on something.

01:30:28

We're all standing on a foundation. I'm standing on the Christian worldview and arguing it is the only necessary precondition.

01:30:35

The unbeliever is arguing on a worldview foundation. Okay. Now, if the unbeliever who's standing on the unbelieving foundation provides a hypothetical that looks like Christianity, that is the one that provides the necessary preconditions of intelligible experience.

01:30:54

Okay. I would ask that person, do you believe in that hypothetical? Because you're standing on a worldview.

01:31:00

Do you not think the worldview that you're standing on to bring about this hypothetical, do you not believe that that worldview is sufficient to ground knowledge?

01:31:08

Well, if it's not, then what is the basis for the intelligibility of your hypothetical? You see the objection of Christianity.

01:31:15

Maybe there's this religion that I don't hold to. You don't hold to, but it's the only one you're assuming.

01:31:20

You're admitting implicitly that your worldview that you currently are standing on doesn't provide the necessary preconditions for knowledge.

01:31:27

So do you hold to that hypothetical? Well, if you do, that's odd because you just made it up.

01:31:32

It's hypothetical. If you don't, then how can you have knowledge and intelligibility when you're arguing that your view doesn't necessarily provide that this one maybe might this hypothetical, you see the argument itself presupposes that we could address the issue of intelligibility and ultimate foundations from a neutral perspective in a sense that we can kind of float in between these worldview foundations and ask the question objectively, what about this?

01:31:57

What about this? When we're pointing the finger and saying, what about this? We need to ask the question, what foundation are we standing on when we point the finger to the hypotheticals?

01:32:06

Because I would just ask for that foundation. Does the worldview you're currently standing on provide the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience so that you can bring about this hypothetical argument?

01:32:18

I would just go straight to the foundations there. And again, people can kind of go in different directions to how they would respond to that.

01:32:24

I hope that was clear. I think I'm going to do a video on this. I think it deserves more time to kind of unpack.

01:32:33

Great question. Let's see here. All right.

01:32:51

So Jill says, Eli, you seem like a nice guy. Well, thank you. I knew there was a but after that.

01:32:59

So Eli, you seem like a nice guy, but if you're telling people that they need to repent of their sins as part of the gospel, then you're going to hell for making people trust their works.

01:33:09

Now that is false because in second Timothy 2, 24 and 25, it says that repentance is granted.

01:33:17

The call to repentance, okay, is obedience on my part, because the

01:33:23

Bible says that God calls all men to repent. But the gift of repentance is something that God grants just as he grants faith.

01:33:30

Ephesians 2, 5 through 8, for by grace, you've been saved through faith and that out of your selfless, any man should boast it as a gift of God.

01:33:36

And Philippians 1, 29, it says it is granted to you to believe. So we command people to believe, but we also understand that the gift of belief is something that is bestowed by God himself.

01:33:47

Okay? So they're not trusting in their works. The fact that people repent is going to be an outflow of the transformed heart that is the result of the working of God's regenerative work through the

01:33:58

Holy Spirit. So no, they're not trusting in their works. They're trusting in the works of Christ.

01:34:04

And the fact that they can trust in the works of Christ is evidence that God is already working on that person's heart.

01:34:10

Okay? So there you go, right? We are not saved by faith. Romans 4, 5, one of my favorite Bible verses, but to the one who does not work, but the one who does not work, but believes in him, who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

01:34:23

All right. Thank you for that, Jill. Let's see here. Jay Mitchell says, is it sinful to feel hurt when people question my intelligence because of my

01:34:39

Christian beliefs? Is it sinful to feel hurt?

01:34:45

Well, I don't think it's your choice to feel hurt, right? I mean, someone could say something to me and I feel hurt.

01:34:52

Even though I might disagree, I might feel hurt that someone thinks a certain way of me. I'm not necessarily in control of every instance of how

01:35:02

I respond to something, right? If someone were to make fun of me, now I have pretty rough skin.

01:35:08

It normally doesn't bother me. But if someone were to like say something negative to me, I might feel hurt from it. But I wouldn't think it's a sin to feel hurt.

01:35:16

Now, if you feel hurt because of people questioning your intelligence, I don't think it's sinful, but I would just,

01:35:22

I would just encourage you like, just because people think that you're not intelligent, but because you're a

01:35:28

Christian, I mean, show them that you're not unintelligent by showing that you can be a

01:35:33

Christian and you could be well -informed and intelligent. How do you demonstrate that? Through respectful and gentle interaction, right?

01:35:41

When you're talking to someone says, oh man, look at you're a Christian, blah, blah, blah. And be like, well, you know, why do you think it's unintelligent for me to be a

01:35:47

Christian? Now you've just turned the tables. Oh, because you believe in A, B, and C, you believe in miracles, right?

01:35:52

And why is it, why is it the case that to believe in miracles is something unintelligent people do?

01:35:59

You, you don't believe miracles are possible? No, I don't believe miracles are possible. Well, what must be true in order for miracles to be impossible?

01:36:06

Well, in order for miracles to be impossible, you must know that God doesn't exist and doesn't act in the world.

01:36:12

Question, how do you know that? You say, oh, well, I don't really know that for sure. Oh, so then you're saying that miracles are possible.

01:36:19

So if miracles are possible, and I think I have good reasons to believe that miracles occurred, especially in the fact that God has sent a son and raised him from the dead.

01:36:24

And I have arguments for that. Why are you thinking me of being an unintelligent person? Because I have these convictions.

01:36:30

Why not actually have a conversation with me and ask me why I believe the things that I believe so that I can share with you the reasons

01:36:38

I hold to it. Right? So there you go. So if you do feel hurt, I don't think it's sinful to feel hurt, but I would encourage you to ask people why, why do you think, why are you questioning my intelligence simply because I'm a

01:36:50

Christian? What's so, what's so unintelligent about intelligent about being a Christian? Perhaps you can memorize a list of intellectual juggernauts throughout the past, uh, throughout the history of Western philosophy and show that these people were

01:37:01

Christian and they were not, they were not unintelligent. Okay. There are people who are Christians and we're much more smarter than anybody that you or I know right now.

01:37:10

That doesn't mean in and of itself that Christianity is true. Okay. Pointing out that there are smart

01:37:15

Christians, intelligent Christians doesn't demonstrate the truth of Christianity, but it definitely blows out of this, what the water, this idea that because you're a

01:37:22

Christian, you're somehow unintelligent. And I don't think, um, many atheists would say that.

01:37:27

I know many atheists who are hardcore atheists, but they would say, Hey, you know, I don't agree with Christians. I don't think they have good evidence and arguments for their perspective, but I, I wouldn't deny that some

01:37:36

Christians are really intelligent. You know, I, I, I know many atheists who would readily admit that.

01:37:41

So, um, yeah, so I would, I would turn that around and them and kind of just engage in conversation at that point. Okay. Uh, let's see here.

01:38:04

Okay. I see a lot of good conversations going on. Let's see. Let's see here.

01:38:17

Just bear with me folks. Just trying to scroll through to see, I do apologize if I miss any questions.

01:38:25

Uh, one day

01:38:31

I'll speak on this channel, but I never found the time I'll have. I'd have you on, man. Uh, we've spoken before.

01:38:37

You know, your stuff, dude, I appreciate a lot. I've learned a lot from you in various contexts. So, uh, maybe we could set something up, you know, but you'd have to show your face.

01:38:46

I don't think I've ever seen your face before. I've only spoken on the phone and on clubhouse. You don't get to see the face.

01:38:51

So if you're willing to show your face, then maybe, maybe we'll have you on. I, I'd love to, you're a cool guy and I've learned a lot, a lot from you.

01:38:58

So, uh, there you go. Uh, yeah. The sire, he's a, he's a friend there.

01:39:03

So let's see here. Ah, there we go.

01:39:10

So Brandon question, how do you respond to R .C. Sproul's leaky bucket objection to Greg Bonson during their famous debate?

01:39:18

So let me get this back up on the screen. Now I did address it a little bit in the beginning towards the beginning, but let's see here.

01:39:28

So R .C. Sproul versus Greg Bonson leaky bucket. Okay. So I'm going to,

01:39:34

I'm going to go here. Let's see here. So let's see, can

01:39:42

I do this? Nope. That doesn't work. All right. So Bonson gives the transcendental argument for the truth of Christianity being the foundation for knowledge.

01:39:54

And they were talking about, I think the context of discussion was, uh, does the transcendental argument give us epistemic certainty?

01:40:01

Okay. Now we make a distinction between, um, epistemic certainty, uh, there's moral.

01:40:06

So if you look on the slide there, uh, Sproul makes a distinction between three types of certainty. Um, he talks about demonstratively compelling certainty can only be established in formal logic and deduction.

01:40:17

Um, certainty can also be used as a feel, a feeling described as a feeling state that is associated with an idea or an assertion.

01:40:25

So we have this idea of psychological certainty and then Sproul kind of appeals to this moral certainty. Um, and so he kind of questions that and doesn't think that the transcendental argument can give epistemic certainty.

01:40:36

And so when Bonson gives the, um, the argument, uh, for the transcendental argument, uh, there is a point in which

01:40:44

Bonson quotes Anthony Flew. He says, what good is it quoting Flew? What good is it to add one leaky bucket to another leaky bucket?

01:40:50

You can't have the laws of logic. You can't have sense experience without something that goes beyond them, a transcendental foundation.

01:40:56

So the issue of leaky buckets is which worldview provides a foundation to ground the certainty of of knowledge.

01:41:04

Okay. And he, uh, goes through rationalism, uh, Bonson in that debate critiques rationalism.

01:41:09

He says, everything that's true must be coherent empiricism. Anything that's true must meet the standards of sense experience.

01:41:14

And then some people try to combine those. And so you have kind of like content of philosophical categories, um, and views of reason and Bonson shows that those views are leaky buckets.

01:41:24

They can't provide the necessary preconditions for knowledge. You're stuck in skepticism and unintelligibility, but then he argues that the

01:41:30

Christian worldview does in fact provide those things. Okay. So the debate is over the issue of certainty.

01:41:36

And so Bonson says, uh, let me see if I have it here. Um, I think

01:41:42

I had it somewhere here. Okay. So here it is.

01:41:48

Okay. So, so, uh, Sproul fails to see how presuppositionalism provides certainty. He then goes to demonstrate what sort of certainty is provided on his system.

01:41:57

And so, um, Sproul gives a deductive argument and shows that even on the deductive argument, you have issues that we can't avoid in terms of, uh, probability and uncertainty.

01:42:06

So he used the syllogism premise one, all men are mortal premise two, Socrates is a man three.

01:42:13

Therefore Socrates is mortal. And so Sproul asked the question, can we know that all men are mortal?

01:42:19

Well, we can't, well, the conclusion is true. If the premises are true, right?

01:42:25

Then the conclusion logically follows, but you can't know the truth of those premises empirically or through inductive, uh, inductive analysis, right?

01:42:35

You couldn't know that all men are mortal through empiricism and induction because you don't have universal observation.

01:42:41

Okay. So there, uh, so while on one hand you can know the conclusion, but once you get into the nitty gritty of defending the premises, yeah, there's going to be some room for, uh, uh, doubt and probability.

01:42:53

And so Sproul asks, uh, so Bonson says, you know, so, well, Sproul says, we can't really know if all men are mortal, but Bonson responds.

01:43:01

We could know if the one who knows all things told us to which a Sproul responds, but how do

01:43:08

I know it's the voice of God? I'm still dependent upon sense perception and induction at that point.

01:43:14

And so this is where they go into the distinction of the different kinds of certainty. And then Bonson kind of gives his critique.

01:43:20

So now here you have two leaky buckets. Okay. So if you have a leaky bucket, if you admit that we all have leaky buckets, these leaky buckets represent insufficient worldviews to ground the certainty of knowledge.

01:43:33

Okay. But if you're going to make an argument from one leaky bucket, which doesn't provide you certain to your knowledge and critique another bucket and accuse it of being leaky, how do you do that?

01:43:45

If you're standing in a leaky bucket, how do you just, how do you say, well, we're all just in leaky buckets. If you're going to make that argument, you're going to have to be standing on a firm foundation.

01:43:54

You see now Bonson's is willing to argue that the Christian worldview does in fact provide the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience.

01:44:02

And if it does, then it must be the only one. And therefore the Christian worldview is not a leaky bucket. If you think

01:44:08

Christianity is a leaky bucket, one of the ways you need to demonstrate that Christianity is leaky bucket is through an internal worldview critique of the bucket of Christianity.

01:44:18

Okay. Which is the whole presuppositional task. The presuppositionalist welcomes that, right? Step into my worldview, hypothetically grant its truth for the sake of argument and demonstrate that on its own foundation, this worldview is a leaky bucket.

01:44:32

Okay. Saying that, how do you know we're not all in a leaky bucket is not an argument. It's just a rhetorical question.

01:44:37

Bonson was willing to show that it's not a leaky bucket by showing that Christianity actually pays the rent, so to speak, on its authority claims.

01:44:45

Okay. So that's how I would kind of analyze the whole, we're all in leaky buckets. Basically Sproul's just appealing to a complete and utter skepticism with respect to whether we can be certain about these ultimate issues.

01:44:55

But a transcendental argument, if good, gives you certainty. It's true by the impossibility of the contrary.

01:45:01

And that's where they were kind of seeming to be talking past each other. All right. All right. Let's see here.

01:45:07

That's the leaky bucket. And we're almost coming to the end.

01:45:14

Let's see here. Again, when do we call in? When do we call in to detect the host?

01:45:22

Thank you very much for that. Okay. So do we all know? Okay. So my comments are, they kind of load very quickly.

01:45:33

So I might be skipping some questions. I do apologize.

01:45:39

Let's see here. I'm going to try to get through a couple more and I think I'm going to be losing my voice soon. So I do apologize.

01:45:46

I'm going to kind of skip through, see if I could find one. Okay. So Pine Creek argument.

01:45:59

If intelligibility, then naturalism. Okay. Good. Intelligibility. Okay. Therefore naturalism is true.

01:46:06

I presuppose one is true. Okay. Now this is a transcendental argument for naturalism. It is in deductive form and it is, as far as I can see, it's valid.

01:46:15

Okay. Now the issue is, can the first premise, which is the transcendental premise, be defended?

01:46:21

Does naturalism give you intelligibility? Okay. So you have naturally, we have to ask some more questions.

01:46:27

Is this a purely mechanical and physically determined naturalism? No, that's going to be an issue that's going to come up as to whether your world, you can ground knowledge and truth.

01:46:38

Okay. If for example, our brains are evolved, evolved in a certain way for the purpose of survival.

01:46:44

Okay. You get into the issue of whether we can trust the workings of our physically determined brains, which are not geared towards truth, but geared towards survival.

01:46:53

So again, they're going to be a couple of critiques that the naturalist is going to have to overcome. And of course, naturalists, some of them think they could overcome them.

01:47:00

And that's where some argumentation is going to go. So yeah, so you can formulate the transcendental argument for anything.

01:47:05

You can say, if intelligibility, Islam, intelligibility, therefore Islam, and then presuppose the truth of the first premise, but then argue transcendentally for, you can do it.

01:47:14

But as I said before, it's going to be whether the world you actually can pay the bills on those claims. Okay. Which I don't think naturalism can at all, not even close.

01:47:23

But there you go. Okay. Let's see here. Okay. Marcus Lobato says, is there any common feature of all non -Christian worldviews, which falsify them?

01:47:35

Vantel said in one once that all non -Christians have in common, they don't submit to Christ how to articulate it.

01:47:41

Okay. I don't understand the question, but yes. So I think all non -Christian worldviews presuppose autonomy from the

01:47:47

Christian God. Okay. And so in that sense, I'm going to critique the different varieties of autonomy.

01:47:54

All right. And that's going to get into the worldview internal critiques of worldview worldviews at that point.

01:48:01

Okay. So Vantel said that there are really only two worldviews, right? The Christian worldview and the non -Christian worldview. That's actually true.

01:48:07

Any worldview that's not the non -Christian worldview is part of the category of non -Christian worldview.

01:48:13

And all of the non -Christian worldviews have one thing in common, that they are quote unquote autonomous from the

01:48:20

Christian God. Right. So autonomy is what links all non -Christian worldviews together.

01:48:25

It's autonomy from the one true God. And it's on that basis that we're going to press the antithesis as Vantel and Bonson said, and show that on that specific unbelieving worldview, that flavor of the non -Christian worldview, can it ground intelligible experience, knowledge, so on and so forth.

01:48:39

And you're right back really to what we were originally talking about is present the worldview and let's do worldview critique.

01:48:45

Right. If someone says, well, I have a worldview that can do it. All right. Step up to the plate. Right. And then we have the apologetic encounter.

01:48:52

Right. All right. Thank you for that. Let's see here.

01:49:04

I'm going to go. Yeah. So I'm going to think

01:49:11

Rob for the super chat, but I'm going to apologize to Rob that this question was asked before.

01:49:17

And I said that I wasn't in a position to answer it because I'm not sure how to explain at this present moment off the top of my head, the connections between determinism and intelligibility.

01:49:25

There is a connection by the way. I just, I, I would not do the topic justice by trying to explain that connection just off the top.

01:49:33

Might have to think about it and kind of formulate my thoughts there. So I do apologize, but thank you so much for the super chat. I really appreciate it.

01:49:39

All right. Let's see here. Let's see. Okay.

01:49:51

I'm going to skip through some. Mongo Bongo revealed apologetics.

01:50:01

Do you think Jay Dyer is the best presuppositionalist debater today? Um, well,

01:50:08

I don't know if I fully understand his form of presuppositionalism.

01:50:14

So for example, in his debate with Matt Delahunty, he is debating transcendentally for the truth of the

01:50:20

Eastern Orthodox conception of God. And so he kind of says that that's a unique, it's different than I don't really know from that debate.

01:50:29

I think he wiped the floor with Matt Delahunty in my opinion. I think he's an excellent, just purely formal, right?

01:50:35

Okay. I disagree with Jay. We unfortunately kind of had a, you know, a thing for like two seconds.

01:50:41

Right. Um, and so things didn't end well, I guess, but from a purely formal stance, in my opinion, people can agree or disagree.

01:50:48

I think Jay Dyer is an excellent debater in terms of debate techniques.

01:50:54

Okay. Now I don't agree with all of his techniques. I think he can come across as, um, sometimes a little belligerent.

01:51:01

He probably would think I'm a wimp for even saying that, you know, all that's part of it. That's part of debate tactics to kind of press and use that sort of language.

01:51:10

Yeah, I guess. I mean, but based upon what I see, I, uh, there are some tactics that tactics that he used that I would not think is, um, appropriate, but again, people are going to agree, disagree.

01:51:21

That's fine. But in terms of debating when he's behaving, okay. If I were to say that, um, which he does often,

01:51:26

I mean, I've listened to some debates that it was great. Right. I think he is, uh, at least on YouTube, he's excellent in debating.

01:51:34

Okay. That doesn't mean I agree with him or anything in terms of his debate skill. Personally, I find him to be a very, very good debater.

01:51:42

Okay. So, uh, what is the best debater? Um, I'm, I don't think so.

01:51:48

Uh, I, in terms of debates, just debate independent of person's perspective and view,

01:51:54

I do think that, um, Trent Horne, uh, the

01:51:59

Roman Catholic apologist, I think he's an excellent debater. So in terms of just debate, I think Trent Horne, um, did well against Jay in their debate over, uh, natural theology.

01:52:09

So I think Trent is, is up there in terms of, um, debaters. Right. But again,

01:52:14

I don't hold to their positions. That's not saying I agree with them or, you know, some people say, well, Jay is not a true presupposition list because you,

01:52:21

I'm just talking about in terms of debate. I think he's an excellent debater. Trent Horne, excellent debater, um, uh, inspiring philosophy,

01:52:29

Michael Jones. Again, we don't agree on everything, but in terms of debate, okay. I think he is very well -informed in some of the data that he brings when he's talking to atheists and stuff, he comes very prepared.

01:52:39

I think he's a good debater. Um, well, who's the best? I mean, I don't, I don't know. I don't know who the best debater presupposition list debater would be.

01:52:48

That's a good, good question. Yeah. All right. So do, do, do, do, do.

01:52:56

And I think, I think that's going to be it for me. Uh, let's see.

01:53:04

It doesn't really spread out. No, let me take what we take.

01:53:09

Let me see how many questions are left. I do apologize if I didn't get to all the questions. There's just so,

01:53:15

I'll do, I'll do a couple more. I'll do maybe three more. Okay. I'll get to the super chats there too.

01:53:21

I appreciate it. Um, so question, does the Holy spirit have a seat? I think the person wants to say seat in heaven.

01:53:27

We know Jesus sits on the right side of God. Okay. So, so real quick. So when we say that Jesus sits on the right hand of God, that doesn't literally mean that Jesus sits on the right hand.

01:53:38

That's kind of like an idiom. It's a figure of speech. So like God, the father doesn't have a hand. So Jesus doesn't literally sit on God, the father's right hand, if that makes sense.

01:53:48

Um, it, to say that Jesus sits at the right hand of the father is that Jesus has a place of authority. And in that sense,

01:53:54

I would say the Holy spirit being equally God, right? So they have three persons who are the one

01:53:59

God, right? Um, I would say that they have equal authority. Um, but of course, with respect to the

01:54:05

God man, in light of what he did on earth, right? This, this exaltation of Christ being seated at the right hand of God, it kind of just reemphasizes this authority that, that he has.

01:54:15

So yes, I would say the Holy spirit does have a seat in heaven if we can use that language. Uh, but that language of course, at least to my knowledge is not used of the

01:54:23

Holy spirit in scripture. Um, this idea of sitting on the right hand, but that is a figure of speech. It's not a literal truth that he sits in the right hand of the father.

01:54:31

Okay. Thank you for that. Okay. So let's see here. Thank you Juju for your $5 super chat.

01:54:38

It's like, is it, it's logically possible that there's a Trinitarian God yet Christianity is false. If you say it's not logically possible, what's the contradiction here?

01:54:47

Well, again, it's too ambiguous, right? Uh, the Trinitarian, a Trinitarian God is not going to exist independent of a broader worldview context.

01:54:55

If I were, if I were arguing with someone who says, yeah, there's a Trinitarian God out there.

01:55:01

I need, I need more. I need a worldview, right? What is a Trinitarian God? What is the metaphysical context?

01:55:08

Epistemology? What is, what, what is the worldview system that makes intelligible the concept of a

01:55:13

Trinitarian God? That's not the Christian one. Right? Um, so again, I don't think it's possible because I think that Christianity is, um, transcendentally necessary, but if a person wanted to posit that argument, you'd have to give me more content.

01:55:27

Okay. Um, you know, I, you, it's very hard to, to internally critique a worldview in which the worldview hasn't been presented.

01:55:34

I need the details so that I can show here's why I think it's false. Okay. All right.

01:55:40

Thank you for that. This will be my last one because I feel like I'm losing my voice and we're almost up to two hours.

01:55:46

Be perfectly honest. When I started this, I didn't think anyone was going to have any questions. I thought I was going to have to tell, you know, a

01:55:52

Bible joke or something, but there's so many questions. Um, I think, uh, it was a pleasant surprise and I do appreciate it.

01:55:59

Um, but I'm losing my voice. So, uh, this is going to be my last question. This is Scott Terry. Thank you so much for your $20 super chat.

01:56:05

Wow. That's so awesome, man. I appreciate it. Um, Scott Terry says the West coast has the Bonson conference.

01:56:11

I think Eli needs to do a presupposition list conference for the East coast. That'd be awesome. I get together with all those speakers from the presupp round table, uh, maybe with, uh,

01:56:21

James Anderson. Uh, that would be, that would be super cool. Uh, yeah, maybe I'm not familiar with a lot of reformed people.

01:56:27

I like where I am now. I'm in North Carolina right now. I don't know of any Christians who are presuppositionalists around where I am.

01:56:36

Um, so I don't know. It'd be cool. Maybe, um, maybe you could host something. That'd be cool. Um, thank you for that super chat.

01:56:42

Appreciate it. And I think, I think that is going to be it for me.

01:56:49

Okay. Uh, let's see here. Yeah. I think that's going to be it for me. There's a lot more coming in and my voice is shot.

01:56:58

Okay. Now I thank you guys so much. I hope this was fun. I mean, I'm sure

01:57:03

I didn't answer everyone's questions to their satisfaction, or I maybe skipped your question and do apologize.

01:57:09

The way the comments load, they go really quick and I don't want too much dead air as I'm scrolling through. So I do apologize, but I hope that I was able to answer some of the questions to, uh, to various degrees of satisfaction.

01:57:22

All right. I don't know everything. There are some areas that when you ask a question, it makes me think and gives me something to look into some more.

01:57:29

So that's one of the reasons why I appreciate these not only are hopefully you're learning from me. I'm also learning from you guys, uh, from the different sorts of questions you guys ask.

01:57:37

So, um, yeah, so I appreciate it. So again, so this Thursday, uh, this

01:57:44

Thursday at nine, I'm going to have Luke Pearson on from Apologia Church. He's one of the pastors there to talk about apologetics within the context of the local church.

01:57:52

So looking forward to having you guys come in. Uh, Luke, pastor Luke will be taking questions as well. So if you have any questions, uh, for him, uh, and myself, you know,

01:58:01

I'd love to see you guys there in the comments, guys. Thank you so, so, so, so much for listening, supporting, subscribing.

01:58:09

I appreciate you guys. And, um, until next time, uh, that's it for tonight. Take care and God bless.