TPW 62 Worldview Apologetics Part 2 of 4

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TPW 63 Worldview Apologetics Part 3 of 4

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Welcome to the Protestant Witness, this is Pastor Patrick Hines, and today I'm posting part two of the four -part series on worldviews and apologetics, and I hope that you find this to be edifying.
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All right, part two here on this series on presuppositional apologetics, also known as worldview analysis, also known as covenantal apologetics, whatever term that you like, you're welcome to use.
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Personally, I like talking about worldviews, I think that's the most descriptive way of putting it, but today we're going to talk about the issue of worldviews.
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It's very important that people recognize that every single human being on this planet, even the people who say the loudest,
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I don't have a worldview, do. And when people say, I don't have a worldview, they will be the most controlled by and dominated by their worldview, because they don't even realize it's there.
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And because they don't even realize it's there, they're not willing to analyze it. Most people really think they're neutral.
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Most people really do think that I just follow facts wherever they go, and I don't have any commitments one way or the other.
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And of course, we know from Scripture that's not true at all. People know the one true
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God, but they successfully suppress that truth and unrighteousness to such a degree that they actually believe that they don't believe in God, when by their actions they show that they do.
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But we'll get more into that later. But right now I want to talk about what is a worldview. This is very important that we understand biblically and also conceptually what we're talking about here.
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Very simply stated, a worldview is this, a network of presuppositions, which are not verified nor testable by science, regarding reality, knowledge, and conduct.
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Reality, knowledge, and conduct. So a worldview is a person's network of mental equipment that they bring to everything that they observe in this world, regarding what's known as reality, or metaphysics, what's real, what exists.
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Knowledge, or epistemology, if you want to use a technical term, epistemology, how we know things, or if knowledge is even possible.
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And then thirdly, conduct, ethics. What is it that we're supposed to do? How does God expect us to believe in terms of what we do?
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Or how ought a person to act, given what they believe about reality, given what they believe about knowledge, and so on like that.
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Okay, so a worldview is a network of presuppositions about reality, knowledge, and conduct, or ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, in terms of which every element of human experience is related and interpreted.
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And so a person's worldview is not testable scientifically, and people have got to get this.
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If you want to understand how to do apologetics biblically, you've got to get what I just said. A person's worldview cannot be tested or verified scientifically.
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Rather, it is the beliefs that they bring to data by which they interpret it.
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So those beliefs are in place firmly before they ever even interpret any of the data that they receive from their senses, or from science, or observation, or whatever.
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And so that network of presuppositions, that person's worldview, is that by which they interpret everything in human experience.
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And for the most part, non -Christians do not even realize they have this in their thinking.
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But it's very easy to demonstrate, as we'll see. So we talk about worldviews in terms of a network or a grouping of presuppositions or beliefs about reality or metaphysics, knowledge or epistemology, and ethics or conduct.
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Now, what is a presupposition? A presupposition is an elementary assumption in one's reasoning or in the process by which opinions are formed.
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It is not just any assumption in an argument. But, listen carefully to me, a presupposition is a personal commitment that is held at the most basic level of one's network of beliefs.
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Presuppositions form a wide -ranging foundational perspective or starting point in terms of which everything else is interpreted and evaluated.
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As such, presuppositions have the greatest authority in one's thinking, being treated as one's least negotiable beliefs, and being granted the highest immunity to revision.
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And friends, that's why, until you've challenged a person's presuppositions, you really have not engaged them with the intellectual challenge of the gospel.
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So a presupposition is one of those base, low -level, personal commitments that is held at the most basic level of a person's thinking, and it is treated as the least negotiable belief, and it is given the highest immunity to revision.
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Sometimes people do have presuppositions that are theological as well. You see it with the
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Arminians with the commitment to free will. You see it among Baptists with the proper subjects of Baptism.
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I've had so many discussions with various types of Baptists over the years, and it's obvious this is a presupposition.
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Infant Baptism is not allowed to be true. It must not be true. It is not even open to the possibility that this could ever be true.
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And so, let me give you some examples of these, of presuppositions, things that are so basic that you've got to uncover these or you're with them.
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I had a friend, well, not really a friend, but an acquaintance from high school from years ago.
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I played basketball with him, and we became Facebook friends, and we started chatting, and he made the statement to me in this dialogue that we had about religious things, and I was using the presuppositional approach.
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I finally uncovered one of his presuppositions, and here it is. He said, quote, And I asked him, why not?
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No answer. No response. When someone asserts something contrary to Christianity, and you ask them why they believe this, and their answer is silence, then you have uncovered one of their presuppositions in their worldview.
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You have uncovered part of their worldview. Remember, a presupposition is not something that can be proven.
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It is literally pre -supposed. It is assumed in one's thinking ahead of time.
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What is his assumption? What was my, this acquaintance's assumption? God can't talk in a book. The Bible cannot be
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God's Word. Well, why not? Because I said it can't. But why not? And he didn't have an answer for me.
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So, that's a presupposition. That's something he just simply, it is a non -negotiable belief. It is simply accepted at the outset.
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This has to be true. I will not even hear anything contrary to it. Another example of this, of the power of worldviews, the power of presuppositions, listen to this one.
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The atheist Dr. Peter Atkins, when he debated William Lane Craig on the existence of God many years ago,
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Dr. Atkins' worldview would only allow for the following two explanations as plausible explanations for the disciples' strong proclamation that they themselves were eyewitnesses of Jesus' resurrection from the dead.
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Okay, William Lane Craig made a very good presentation about the historical facts on this matter. And during the armchair discussion that followed,
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William F. Buckley, who was the moderator, asked Dr. Atkins, what did you think of Dr. Craig's presentation on the resurrection of Christ?
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And Atkins looked at him and said, well, either the disciples were liars or they were hallucinating.
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Notice what's not even on the list as a plausible explanation, that Christ rose from the dead. Why not?
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Because dead men can't rise. But isn't, can't God rise from the dead? No, there is no
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God. His worldview doesn't allow that. So, it doesn't matter what the facts are. Dr.
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Atkins could have been an eyewitness of the resurrection himself and still would not believe it happened. Because he would think, wow, that was a weird hallucination
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I just had. And I will live by faith that at some point in the future, we will have a naturalistic explanation of what
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I just saw. But he didn't rise from the dead. Why? Because that's a presupposition. Presuppositions are not immune, are completely immune to revision in people's thinking.
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Atkins' worldview does not allow for natural laws to go out of their course by the finger of God. Naturalism is the presupposition that the laws of nature are constant and inalterable.
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There is no spirit, no spiritual realm, no gods, angels, or demons. These two unprovable presuppositions are at the center of Dr.
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Atkins' worldview. So, no matter how great of a presentation someone would make on the historical fact of the resurrection of Christ, Atkins is just going to look at that evidence and go, well, either the disciples are lying or they were hallucinating.
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And you go, wait a minute, Dr. Atkins, why isn't even the possibility that he rose from the dead on the table? Well, because people can't rise from the dead.
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You see the way this works? Presuppositions are always completely circular, and that's why you have to challenge a person's broader worldview perspective for consistency, for lacking arbitrariness, and things like that.
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Worldview analysis is potent. It's very powerful when it's well done. All non -Christian worldviews will have the same types of problems, and herein lies the power of this method of doing apologetics.
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All forms of non -Christianity, call them what you will, all forms of unbelief will have at their center worldviews whose presuppositions are contradictory, inconsistent, arbitrary, and if followed consistently, would lead to devastating consequences.
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Now, as our study of this issue progresses, we will look at examples of how to identify these kinds of internal problems with unbelieving worldviews.
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This is often called doing an internal critique. Doing an internal critique is what the book of Proverbs calls answering the fool according to his folly.
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Step inside his worldview and show what it gets you if taken seriously. And really, that's all we have to do as Christians, is all forms of unbelief, just get them to be consistent with what they're saying, and it will destroy itself.
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All right, as another example, moral absolutes cannot be justified and are rendered completely relative and arbitrary without God speaking in the
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Bible. You must train yourself to never allow unbelievers to borrow from your worldview, and they'll try to do this a lot.
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If you know someone rejects the God of the Bible and rejects the Bible as God's Word, they have forfeited their right to consistently use words like ought, right, wrong, immoral, good, bad.
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You know, that acquaintance from high school that I got on that lengthy Facebook discussion with, he kept saying, well,
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I think we all ought to just love each other and be kind to people. And my response to him was, well,
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I can understand why I as a Christian think that we ought to be kind to each other, but I don't understand why you do. Well, what do you mean?
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Well, upon what basis do you think we ought to love each other instead of eat each other? In your worldview, we're just evolved bags of pond slime.
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What does it matter if one bag of pond slime bumps into another or eats another and forgets to say, excuse me, or I'm sorry?
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It's irrelevant. It's morally, ethically irrelevant. Now, as a Christian, I have a standard by which to judge.
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I have the Word of God. Oh, well, I don't believe in that. Okay, fine, fine. Then let's talk about life.
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Let's talk about what we take for granted. You say we ought to be nice to each other. Why? Well, because everyone agrees with me.
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And I'll end up saying that. Well, if you don't agree with me, then you're insane. And you see, that's abandoning the whole field of discussion.
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That's abandoning the argument altogether. Okay, neutral worldviews are not only impossible, they are immoral.
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There's no such thing as neutrality when it comes to worldviews. And we as Christians are somewhat at a disadvantage in this regard with all forms of unbelief, because we really have to get them first to recognize they have a worldview that they hold, and then we have to do an internal critique of it.
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Most non -Christians don't even think they have a worldview. And so the first thing we have to do is show them that they do. In Matthew 12, 30,
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Jesus said, he who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. There is no neutrality with Christ.
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The common appeal of the unbelieving world to Christians is surrender to neutrality, and obviously the
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Bible demands otherwise. Many scholars, both Christian and non -Christian, attempt to take this approach.
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They compartmentalize life into sacred, which is witnessing, prayer, going to church, and then secular, the physical world, science, the natural order, sociology, things like that.
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The neutrality approach sees the Christian faith as one among many parts of life.
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People will say, look, I mean, math is math. I mean, who cares who teaches your kids math, right? If you say something like that, you've already, you're already a victim of the system.
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You've already been completely brainwashed to think like a pagan. H20 is H20, whether you believe in the
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Bible or not, right? Getting a man to the moon and the science and technology needed to do that have nothing to do with the
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Bible or Christianity, right? These are the common refrains that we hear today, but they couldn't be more wrong.
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Most people think apologetics, defending the faith and evangelizing, can be done without being entirely committed to the
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Bible while doing them. What unbelievers want is this. You've got to start with a nobody knows for sure attitude.
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The unbeliever has tricked himself into thinking he has no biases, no commitments either way.
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And hence, he's just a neutral observer of the facts. And because he thinks that's what he is, he will not like the fact that you are a
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Christian. And he'll insist that you be what he pretends to be. And of course, we have to get him to see, you're not neutral.
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You have a perspective just as I do. And then we can do battle. Then we can actually engage the issues.
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So this whole starting with a nobody knows for sure attitude, that is no part of being a Christian.
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And the non -believer will want you to pretend to be like he is. A nobody knows for sure attitude. And that's exactly what we cannot do.
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Before we were Christians, we were ignorant. Now that we're Christians, we have knowledge. We know the truth. And therefore, we can defend it.
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And it's hard to do evangelism and to even engage in apologetics with an entire culture that doesn't even think truth exists.
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That they're committed to the one great truth that there is no truth. And of course, that is itself self -contradictory.
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And that's like sawing off the tree limb that you're sitting on. But the unbeliever is not thinking usually deep enough to realize that.
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The point is this. The unbeliever is not neutral, although he thinks he is. He'd like you to think he is. And he'd love for you to discard the
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Bible as your authority before you start talking to him. And you have to resist that. You have to resist that temptation.
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When it comes to neutrality about God and worldviews as it relates to unbelievers and you as you witness, please remember the saying, they aren't neutral and you shouldn't be neutral.
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The non -believer will tell you he is. He's not. They aren't and you shouldn't be.
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So don't let the non -believer rob you of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. There are devastating consequences of attempting to be neutral as you witness and defend the faith.
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Neutrality erases the Christian's distinctiveness. Jesus prayed in John 17, 17,
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Lord, Father, sanctify my disciples by your truth. Your word is truth.
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The scripture sets me apart. The whole time I am living in this world, I am set apart by the word of God.
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Neutrality erases that. Neutrality also is impossible. Jesus said, can't do it.
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You're either for me or against me. There are no fence walkers. There's no one in the middle. You're either for me or you are against me.
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And neutrality is immoral. Attempting to be neutral is against Christ.
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It's not neutral because there's no such thing, but attempting to do it is against Christ. And so you have the whole lordship issue.
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The Christian, the true Christian does have Jesus as Lord of his life. All areas of our life are to submit to his sovereign lordship.
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There are no pieces or parts left over to the world, the flesh, or the devil. Excuse me. All belongs to Christ, including our thinking and our defending of the faith.
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We are to be biblical and to behave as biblically committed Christians in everything that we do. So why is the neutral approach, which sets the
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Bible aside as the final ultimate authority so wrong? Because outside the Bible, there is only less reliability.
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Outside of God speaking, there is only less authority. We would be transferring even greater authority to some standard other than the
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Bible. If the Bible is the ultimate authority, and I use something else to prove the ultimate authority of the
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Bible, I have given greater authority to whatever that thing is that I appeal to. When I used to be asked, how do you know the
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Bible is God's word? My response was to throw everything I'd memorized from Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands a Verdict book.
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Fulfilled prophecies, the strong historical case for Christ's bodily resurrection, the Bible's uniqueness, its coherence over time, its life -changing power.
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But were all those things really why I believed the Bible to be God's word? No. They confirmed my belief, but they were not the basis of it.
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Even when I answered them, I knew I had accepted the Bible long before I'd ever heard of any of those lines of evidences.
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And so this brings us to another point. There are no brute facts.
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This is a very important point to get. You must not allow anyone to say, well, look, as a scientist,
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I just follow the facts wherever they lead. And right now, the current scientific understanding is that everything is billions of years old.
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Folks, there are no brute facts. Facts do not speak for themselves.
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They don't just go one direction. They are always subjectively interpreted by a person who is either under the lordship of Christ or under the lordship of themselves and of the errors of men.
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Facts do not speak for themselves. They are always interpreted by one's worldview, and that worldview is never neutral.
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And always remember this, please remember this, worldviews cannot be tested scientifically, nor can they be verified scientifically.
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Presuppositions are personal commitments that are held by people at the most basic level, and are that by which they interpret scientific data.
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Presuppositions can't be tested scientifically, and that's why you've got to test them in some other way, by their arbitrariness and consistency, the preconditions of intelligibility, and whether they have workable consequences.
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And so one's worldview is either in loving submission to the lordship of Christ, or it is hostile and opposed to the lordship of Christ.
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There is no middle or neutral ground. Facts do not speak for themselves. And when a creationist and an evolutionist stand and look at the
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Grand Canyon, they are looking at the same facts. And yet those facts say completely different things to those people.
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One of them looks at it and says, wow, look at what a whole bunch of water and a little bit of time did. That's the creationist. The evolutionist looks at it and says, wow, look what a little bit of water and a whole bunch of time did.
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Now, what's the difference? They're both looking at the same thing. It's the same exact fact. People look at fossils and say, wow, there's something that died 65 million years ago.
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And the creationist looks at it and says, no, there's something that died in Noah's flood. There's something that was buried rapidly, not gradually.
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That's what fossils are. They are evidence that something happened quickly, not slowly. And the evolutionist says, no, that has to be 65 million years old.
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Well, what's the difference? They're both looking at the same rock. They're both looking at the same bone, aren't they? What's the difference?
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Their starting points are completely different. That's what determines the difference there. That's what makes people's perspectives as different as they are.
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Okay, so I'd like to move into the next section of the apologetics material here that I've got.
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The next section, if it will pull up here. Come on now. When the
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Christian faith is defended and presented biblically and accurately, and this is very important to remember, when it's done right, there are no comebacks or counter -arguments to it that have any validity whatsoever.
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Proverbs 21 verse 30 is a passage I wish people would memorize. Proverbs 21 verse 30. There is no wisdom or understanding or counsel against the
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Lord. When you present the Christian faith and the Christian gospel and the Christian worldview accurately, there will be no retort to it.
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There will be no comebacks to it. There is no wisdom or understanding or counsel against the
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Lord. It may be the case at times that we get stumped or don't know how to answer specific arguments, but the defect is only in us, never in the truth itself as it is revealed by God in Scripture.
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The second thing you need to remember is this. Not everyone is persuaded by good arguments. That's an understatement.
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Not everyone is persuaded by good arguments. Very often, in fact, people are persuaded by very bad arguments.
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This does not point to a defect in the truth, but rather a defect in people. Always remember that man suffers from spiritual blindness and incorrigible foolishness in his reasoning process.
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Always remember that. The mind of man. Men don't reason properly any longer since the fall of heaven.
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Romans 1, 22. Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible
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God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four -footed animals and creeping things. Therefore, God gave them up to uncleanness and the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchange the truth of God for the lie, and worship and serve the creature rather than the
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Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. Therefore, there's a huge difference between proof and persuasion.
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You can prove things to people. You can prove things to people, but they might not be persuaded of it.
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You may actually give a really good argument and prove your case, but they are not subjectively persuaded. Well, why not?
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Worldviews. Worldviews. Worldviews won't allow for certain things to be true, and that's why to do apologetics well, you got to challenge people's worldviews.
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So, there's a difference between proof and persuasion. Let me give you the classic example. Most people have heard of this, so bear with me if you've heard of it.
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The man who thought he was dead. A man wakes up every day and tells his whole family, I'm dead. He goes to work and tells all of his co -workers,
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I'm dead. Comes home from work. Hi, sweetheart. I'm dead. Tells his children, I'm dead. And they finally think, wow, something's really, he's got a screw loose in his brain.
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So, they take him to a psychiatrist, and he meets with them over and over again. And the guy is convinced that he's dead.
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And so, the psychiatrist convinces him to accept a simple proposition. Only living people can bleed.
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Only living people can bleed. And he shows them all kinds of scientific evidence of this. Only living people can bleed. And so, he finally gets the man who thought he was dead to say, okay,
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I will accept that as a proposition. Only living people can bleed. As soon as he says that, the guy whips out a pin and sticks it into the man's hand, pricks his hand, and there's blood coming out of his hand.
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And the man looks at it and says, gosh, I guess dead people bleed too. Now, did he prove that living people, only living people can bleed?
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Yeah. But did he persuade that guy? No. Some people are beyond persuasion. I've met some.
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I've met some. And so, you can prove things and not necessarily persuade people.
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Our job as Christian apologists and as evangelists, when it comes to objections and dealing with objections, is to shut people's mouths and take them to the cross.
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God's job is to convert them and persuade them. Only the Holy Spirit of God is able to do that. But he uses us as his hands and feet and as the instruments by which that's done.
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So, the reason that evidence for Christianity, evidence can never prove Christianity, is that the unbeliever can always come up with a rescuing device because there are always unknowns.
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We don't know everything. Consider the following lines of evidence. Here are some really good scientific evidence that confirms biblical
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Christianity. It confirms it, but it doesn't prove it. The existence of information. Dr.
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Werner Gitt, in his book, In the Beginning was Information, on page 106, said this. Gitt points out also that all information can be traced back to an intelligent mind.
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This is a problem for atheism and for evolution. When deoxyribonucleic acid,
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DNA, was discovered, it became known that this incredible molecule found in the nucleus of every living cell contains an absolutely astounding amount of information that is read as a language by enzymes in the cell.
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In fact, all the instructions needed for the building of all forms of life, from ants to trees to human beings, is found in the information contained in the volumes and volumes and volumes of information contained in the
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DNA molecule. Genetic mutations do not appear to ever generate information to genomes in which they occur, in which mutations occur.
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Dr. Lee Spetner, in his book, Not By Chance, wrote, all point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it.
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Information science and genetics confirm creation. What we observe does not confirm the evolutionary atheistic worldview.
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Okay, so does the information in DNA, does that prove to the evolution that there's a
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God? No, of course not. He's going to come up with a rescuing device based on his worldview. Namely, as Richard Dawkins has told us, well, it could have been aliens that did it.
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Maybe aliens came here and created DNA and seeded life on Earth. But that's the only option, because he won't allow for the concept of God.
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Another line of evidence, carbon -14 is found in diamonds, because it does not last more than one million years.
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That's a big problem. Carbon -14 will not last for more than a million years. If the Earth was really as old as evolutionists believe it is, there would be no carbon -14 whatsoever.
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It would have all decayed into nitrogen, and yet we have diamonds with carbon -14 in them. These diamonds are allegedly billions of years old, and yet they contain a substance which cannot possibly be that old.
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Okay, so that confirms a younger time scale, doesn't it? Is that going to persuade the committed evolutionists?
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No, because he's going to interpret that evidence to fit his personal commitments to naturalism and materialism.
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Another problem, another line of evidence, comets. As they orbit around the Sun, they are continually losing mass.
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Sometimes comets are destroyed with just one pass of the Sun. The point is, comets die very quickly.
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If the solar system is really billions of years old, there would be no comets whatsoever. None. So just take these three lines of evidence and go prove to everyone that the
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Bible is true, right? They're sinners, God is holy, and they need to repent and believe in Jesus, and it'll all work, right?
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Of course not. While each of these three things does confirm what we would expect to find if the
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Bible is true, for each of them, the unbeliever can easily come up with a rescuing device.
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People will nearly always resist change in their worldviews. Always remember that.
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People resist changing their presuppositions because they're personal commitments that they hold to. They will even conjecture things for which there is no evidence whatsoever in order to protect their worldview from collapsing.
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We've talked about in another video the Oort cloud. Jan Oort came up with the idea that there's an undetectable ring of potential comets that's outside the solar system, and once in a while, for reasons nobody knows about it, throws a comet into the solar system.
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Now is there any scientific evidence of this existing? No. Has it ever been detected in any way by instrumentation?
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No. Why are they believing it then? Well, because the universe has to be old, and we've got to have some way of explaining comets, the existence of comets.
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So that's the rescuing device, but you know what? There might be an Oort cloud. Maybe they're right about that.
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There might be an Oort cloud that's the source of comets, and therefore the existence of comets doesn't prove that the universe is young or that the
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Bible is true. Unbelievers can always invoke rescuing devices, and you know what? So do we.
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If someone shows you an alleged contradiction in the Bible, do you say, oh, well, I guess I won't be going to church anymore?
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Of course not. We regiment our thinking, and we commit to our presuppositions, and we try to do battle.
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We defend our presuppositions. The key point here is this. Believers and unbelievers all have the same facts, the same science, the same physics, the same mathematics, the same fossils, the same canyons, the same planets, and the same comets.
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We're all looking at the same thing. So why do we come to such radically different conclusions regarding what those facts mean?
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Because we have different worldviews, different presuppositions, and so what we really need to be talking about is not scientific facts, because there are no brute facts.
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We need to talk rather about our worldviews, whose worldviews can account for everything that we have to take for granted in order to be able to do science.
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Evidence by itself will never resolve a worldview conflict.
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I can't emphasize that enough. Evidence by itself will never resolve a worldview conflict.
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In fact, very often people will have theological presuppositions that they're not even aware of, that have absolute hold over them and sway in their thinking as they read the
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Bible. For example, men must have free will and the ability in themselves to convert themselves by a decision.
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Very often people are not even aware that these theological presuppositions are there. To illustrate the power of a person's unknown presuppositions, think of it like this.
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Having a boat that's on a trailer being pulled behind a pickup truck, and you back the boat into the water, and you take the trailer off, but you don't take the boat off the trailer.
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So the boat is then sitting in the water with a trailer underneath it that's holding it down in the water, and you've got the engine turned all the way on, and the boat's just going one mile an hour.
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That's the way presuppositions are. People can't see them because they're under the surface, but they make it so people can't get anywhere.
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Until you recognize what your worldview is, and what your commitments are, you're not going to be able to evaluate them and actually make a critical evaluation of how consistent they are, or inconsistent they are, what may need to change in them.
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One final point on this issue. It is not that the unbeliever doesn't have enough evidence for God's existence.
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It is that he is suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. He has presuppositions. He has a worldview in place that is causing him to misinterpret the evidence.
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Biblically speaking, who needs evidence for the existence of God? Nobody. Romans 1 .20,
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Since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because although they knew
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God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
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Who needs evidence for God's existence? Nobody does. So we all have the same facts.
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We both look at a dinosaur skull, unearthed from the ground, and we say to the unbeliever, this is great evidence of the worldwide flood and of the rapid burial of all these billions of dead things in the ground.
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And they say, that's not how I see it. The evidence of a slow process of fossilization that took millions of years.
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That's what they see. Well, why are we looking at the same thing and have completely different conclusions? Because our starting points are so different.
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Both sides accuse the other of coming up with rescuing devices. Okay, how about canyon formation?
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Mount St. Helens eruption showed that canyons and layers can form very quickly, and they respond with, well, maybe those ones did, but not these ones over here.
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They were slowly over millions of years. Another one. Look, animals reproduce according to their kinds.
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They don't evolve into other kinds. And they say, well, given enough time, they can. Just give it enough time. And we say,
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DNA has information in it, and it requires an intelligence and it requires an intelligent source. And information never comes about in matter through chance.
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And they'll say, well, maybe there's some unknown mechanism we've not yet discovered, which has the ability to bring about information.
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Give us time. We'll find it. There's comets that exist, and we know that they cannot exist for billions of years.
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And they say, well, there's an Oort cloud out there. While it's not wrong to show people evidence that God's word is true, and we should show how the evidence confirms the
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Bible and creation, evidence is never decisive in dealing with worldview conflicts.
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Worldview conflicts will never be resolved by evidence or facts. You've got to look at them in a different way.
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You've got to look at your worldview conflicts in a different way. They will never be addressed by the evidence.
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Because no matter what you show people, they're going to interpret it based on their personal commitments to their presuppositions.
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Always remember that. A person's worldview and their presuppositions are immune to revision. They have the highest authority in one's thinking, and they are not testable nor verifiable scientifically or through observation.
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They are rather the basis by which everything else is evaluated. And that's why we've got to get people to see they have this first.
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That's why this guy, this Neil D guy I've been talking to, he doesn't understand that. He thinks, I'm just going where the science tells me to go.
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Science says this and science says that, committing the fallacy of reification. Science is not a personal being.
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Science doesn't say anything. Scientists, who are atheists, say it has to mean billions of years old.
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Scientists with PhDs in the same fields who are creationists, see it differently.
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Well, don't the facts just speak for themselves? No. There are no brute facts. The facts don't speak for themselves.
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They're always interpreted through the lens of the fact observer's worldview. So we cannot ever say that our worldview is correct because of the evidence, because it is our worldview itself that tells us how the evidence is to be interpreted.
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Indeed, it is our worldview which tells us what counts as evidence in the first place.
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And thus, until you have dealt with a person's worldview and their personal commitment to that worldview and its presuppositions, you have not gone deep enough to help the unbeliever see the futility of his own position.
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So I hope this has been helpful. Worldviews and presuppositions, absolutely foundational. And just to review, a worldview is a network of presuppositions that are not testable by natural science, that are held at the most basic level of one's thinking, and in terms of which all of experience is interpreted.
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And an individual presupposition is not just any old belief, it is a personal commitment that is held not at the end of an investigation of evidence, but at the outset of looking at all evidence, and in terms of which all evidence is interpreted and made to fit.
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And that's why evidence will never resolve worldview conflicts. And instead, you've got to go underneath evidence and to understand how people think and why they interpret evidence the way they do.
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So I hope that's helpful, and we'll press on in the next section in the next time. Thanks for watching. This is
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Pastor Patrick Hines of Brittle Heights Presbyterian Church, located at 108 Brittle Heights Road in Kingsport, Tennessee, and you've been listening to the
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Protestant Witness Podcast. Please feel free to join us for worship any Sunday morning at 11 a .m. sharp, where we open the
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Word of God together, sing His praises, and rejoice in the gospel of our risen Lord. You can find us on the web at www .brittleheightspca
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.org. And may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.