Presup Applied to the Black Hebrew Israelites #Blackhebrewisraelites #presup #vocabmalone

Gotcha Welcome back to another episode of revealed apologetics

I'm your host Eli Ayala and today we are going to be discussing how to apply a presuppositional apologetical approach to the black

Hebrew Israelites If you guys are familiar with the work of vocab Malone and his apologetic efforts

He has been engaging on this topic for quite some time. He's got a bunch of debates and videos on his channel

I would highly suggest folks go over to the street apologist on YouTube. Is that what it's called their vocab?

It's just called the street apologist or is it just your name? I don't remember the channel itself is youtube .com slash vocab

Malone, but the show I do is a street apologist, right? Okay. All right. Yeah, so definitely folks want to check out his

YouTube channel. There's just lots of good stuff I was I actually have to watch later a debate you had with I think his name was

Kwaku L On the Trinity so you debate a Mormon on the topic of the Trinity so you do more than just talk about the the

BHI group and and Islam and things like that You have a wide range of discussions and topics that you go through on your channel.

So I highly recommend folks check that out also Vocab is an author.

He has written I think two books right? You've written two books so far. Yep Right and one

I don't remember the other one it's it's on the black Hebrew Israelites and yeah there we go

Barack Obama versus the black Hebrew Israelites and His second book which

I highly recommend. I highly recommend both of them I haven't read that one in its entirety, but I've read bits and pieces and and I I thought it was excellent

I got a return to that and give it a fuller read but your second book is Entitled street level apologetics, right?

You got you got a copy there. Yes. I do. There we go There we go street level apologetics, very good

Apologetics doing apologetics in the hood and I'm just kidding actually Well, I suppose it would still be very useful if you dwell in the hood

Lee parts of the inner city. It's definitely Definitely useful. So yeah, awesome.

Awesome, and I have read that one and I highly recommend folks pick that up as well Let me just check my volume here.

Well, yeah, I think You get some credit in here somewhere

Yes, I appreciate that. So you're the first one Acknowledgements shout out to you

Revealed apologetics. That's pretty cool man. Yeah chapter seven make me feel very special.

I appreciate it Yeah, well, I recommend folks pick that up. It's an excellent resource

Especially because it's not long that's actually very helpful I know a lot of people are busy and it's hard to kind of pick up a big book and kind of dive deep

But um, I it's a quick read but it's it's really good. Did you ever consider having that in an audio format?

I want both of my books to be audio format and I just Never Yeah, what are you doing that now?

Am I doing what like audio books? I it's been it's it's of interest to me as I just shared with you before we went live that I'm in the process of Working on a in a

Bonson book to do put an audio format I won't tell folks all the details because it kind of just still very fresh and I don't know all the details yet But we have the green light to eventually

Well, I might as well just say it here to eventually put Bonson's I think is this is his best book and his more his most in -depth book is van

Tills apologetic Readings and analysis. I just recently got the green light from David Bonson To do this in audio format again.

This is still very fresh. So I have no idea When that will be and how long it will take and what's that process?

But as we move along in that process, I'll definitely let folks know a very very good work

Especially if you want to dive deep into the method But yeah, I it's something

I'm interested in. I love to read and and I love to record So if you ever if you ever need someone to be the voice of your book, you know

Maybe maybe that'll be something you'd consider. All right Find out your rates and all that and then maybe you can do this book by Bono I know

I want to do all of them this book by Bonson and then this book by Bonson and there's another one coming out

Oh, yeah, what's it called? I Can't say right now. It is top tip -top secret

I just got the manuscript before it's published to do some proofreading, but I'm going to tell you right now

I've read the first six chapters and in my opinion Second to this book

What I just showed you it is my favorite. It will be my favorite because it is based upon the lectures of Bonson's He did a class or a series on transcendental arguments

So it's just on transcendental arguments and it goes much more deeper than all of those other books So I'm not sure when that's coming out, but it's obviously written already and still going through that process

But after reading the first six chapters like I'm salivating so it's gonna be really really a really great resource for folks and I think much more in -depth and meaty than some of the other books that you just flashed across the screen there, so a lot of cool things happening here on the presuppositional front and Yeah, we're just trying to bring this apologetic into various contexts so that folks can see really the flexibility and the power of the

Approach. I mean if it's a biblical approach, right? It can be used in all of the contexts in which God has called us to so Super excited.

Well, let's jump right into the topic Vocab black Hebrew Israelites this or black

Hebrew Israel is and I'm definitely not gonna be saying that the entire episode So I'm just gonna call the BHI For short, but how long have you been studying

BHI? I'm 2015 is where I dove in hardcore studying it, but it was like 10 or 12 years ago when

I first dealt with him on the street, but then 2016 is when

I really come came out publicly to start talking about it. Hmm. So it's been a little while Okay, and what what brought you to that topic?

Was it something that you just observed that you like man? No one's really speaking into this or did you actually have first -hand experience and you're like, whoa

Well, I need to I need to do something on this. Yeah. No, it was both things, you know, I I ran into them in the neighborhoods and had people call me about them and I Saw there wasn't really much available to help people felt like it was a need

I was really doing a lot on Islam and atheism and some other things things. I still believe are important But I felt like there was more people

Focus on those and hardly anyone really focused on Israel ism. Yeah, and so that was a transition.

It's still a hard Slog, you know, it's not as well known and it's pretty wild area

Sure, you know, not everyone's really interested or aware cares. I get all that but I Think I can say

I feel called to do it. So just I'm kind of like well, whatever, you know It is what it is. Somebody's got to do it, right?

Yeah, and I mean there is some segment of Christian brothers and sisters who are interacting with these people and perhaps don't have a resource

So whether it's a popular thing or it's not that popular There is some segment of Christianity that requires tools in this area to reach that that people group

So I think what you're doing is is awesome Yeah, I enjoy and now there's more and more people coming along So we get to all learn from each other and I like sharing their stuff and being on their platform

So it's nice. There's more more people. So it's good to see. Yeah, that's what's up, man Well, can you define us if I define for us very briefly?

What do they believe and maybe speak a little bit to the variation within the group and then we're gonna jump right into The apologetic stuff if folks really want to kind of dive into this topic

They can check out a more in -depth explanation on your channel But maybe you can kind of briefly summarize

Give us the variations within the group and then we'll just make some apologetic application from a presuppositional perspective sounds perfect Well started in the 1890s in the

American South Moved up pretty quickly though in the Northeast. It's seen a boom in the last decade spread on physical corners and Virtual so to speak, you know

Times Square to YouTube and the basic essence is this at least it's this

Black Americans are the true biblical Israelites Modern Jews are imposters

Christianity is a pagan tool used to hold our people down so You see a lot of it's there kind of what they're against but the main thing is

We're the real Israelites Question is how does any person? Meaning the Hebrews are like doing the speaking define we they do not define the we the same some define the we as me and That includes black

Americans plus Hispanics plus Native Americans others say no, that's not right everyone who's an

Israelite must essentially have a Black phenotype, but there's a bunch of people on the continent of Africa who would qualify and some of them is spread out so they go looking in different places, but they always include themselves and black

Americans are always included in versions of Scholars call it black Israel ism because of that I go with Hebrews lism

But there are versions of Hebrews lism that are strictly black Israel ism, okay, and and so that's the essence

Everything else is up for grabs Everything is but let me tell you some commonalities real quick.

Sure. All versions are ethnocentric You have some version of an ethnic hierarchy. Sometimes it's soft

Sometimes it's hard Okay, there's it's always there though It's always present and when you say soft and hard or you say you're just referring to the fact that some of them place a

Great emphasis upon that and others not so much In their ecclesiology, for example, if you're soft on the ethnic hierarchy scale, you may say

People who aren't like us can come in to our fellowship be grafted in become part of this and in some capacity

Maybe even teach or lead Hmm the guys out on the street with the signs and they the stuff like that They'll say you're destined for slavery if you're not on the chart

So that's a big difference as far as soft or hard ethnic hierarchy

But even the ones who say you're grafted in all this They still would view themselves essentially at the top of the food chain because they're gonna say something like well, we're

Judah We're a priest to the other nations. And so for example if you're

Chinese and you come in you cannot teach us you could only teach other Gentiles. Hmm, that'd be a version

So there's there's partiality within their within their bodies Even if they look diverse their diversity does not entail orthodoxy

So that's what I mean by a soft and a hard ethnic hierarchy, but it's present in every version So here's my point if you see a

Hebrews lights and they got white guys or Asian guys, don't be like, oh look They're okay. Jehovah's Witnesses got that too. It doesn't mean they're orthodox and it's usually still some kind of ethnic hierarchy at play all versions of Hebrewism have some

Alchemy With works meaning mixed in, you know, it's not like they're gonna deny grace

So, you know, but it's like what is it look like? You know, it's some kind of alchemy going on there and even their understanding of grace is almost always mutilated, you know

Okay, and and that's why there's this heavy emphasis on laws statutes commandments because because of that, you know and Because of that most of the groups have trouble with Paul They either interpret him radically wrong like the opposite of what he's saying or they say that's his rabbinical opinion or he went off there and That's if they set the

New Testament because remember to be a Hebrew is like it's just you got to believe you're in Israel I according to the Bible then that could make you could be to knock only

Reject Jesus Messiah, and there are those guys. They're not the main group, but there are those guys

It gets a little closer to black Judaism at that point, but still not identical Almost all of them never emphasize the gospel and if they do it's not the gospel so there's a problem of Priorities even in the groups that are a little healthier looking

Almost all of them reject the trying nature of God the full deity of Christ the personhood of the

Holy Spirit almost all of them Get Into conspiracy theories of some sort or another that take them off the trail of what an actual

Body of Christ should be doing whether it's flat earth or chemtrails or Illuminati or something with the

Jewish people All these conspiracy theories cloud What should be happening with a healthy theological vision and practice?

And honestly, this is just the tip of the iceberg With the problems, but there's a lot of diversity

That's why I almost always I'll say almost all almost all almost all hmm But the thing of where is your lights those guys aren't in the church is bad news

Those are almost all universal beliefs amongst all Israelites Wow So you making me think so so in terms of like approaching them from the context of apologetics a good rule of thumb is to follow the words of the great philosopher

Mike Tyson who said everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face You can plan yeah to run your presuppositional script and to ask certain questions, but that's gonna really depend on Which flavor of VHI you are speaking with?

How do you navigate the unpredictability of Of the fact that you you're not really sure who you're speaking with.

How do we engage that context? well, you know, I mean I I get into watching the videos and Reading the books so, you know everlasting life

From thought to reality by been on me. That's a community over there in Damona Israel He represents a strand or the earth is flat and Jesus is black by Rodney Allison You know that that that title bro.

Yeah, right I know the great awakening of the Black Hebrews lights in the last days by Jacqueline French.

The Bible is black history By Theron D Williams and I got a couple more.

I just want to show you real quick here provocative title yeah, who are the Gentiles by Jeremiah Israel and Then of course another book by Jeremiah Israel proof.

Jesus is not God and then also by a wheezy Sharifi been a voodoo the black exodus and the end of the age and X of Jesus of the prophecy of Genesis 15 12 to 14

So my point is I'm doing that kind of stuff now everyone may not but you just do it a great Coco says we ask questions

You know We just ask questions and we find out now It's difficult because you might get a lot of lectures with those questions.

And so when it comes to Hebrewism You have to pray for patience man You got to pray for the understanding like what you're talking about But you really got to pray for some patience to Eli and so you just got to ask the questions

You can ever assume don't tell them now. It's difficult because some of the groups not all some

Teach it's okay to lie to Gentiles and if they view you as a Gentile They'll lie. So specifically

Sakari says the commands don't apply to non -Israelite So they're actually a lot of high to you now

Most groups don't believe that but it doesn't mean they're all exactly honest about what they believe and sometimes you can take a while So you might go in kind of naive and then you'll find out more and that's why a lot of people don't want to do

This you like is it takes so much Patience So much patience, but you know, you can do it

I mean are all atheists the same or all Mormons the same come on guys Muslims We know that it's just the same thing.

It's just a little more exotic to a lot of people, you know, sure Yeah exotic is a is a good word now when we when we think in terms of because this showed

I don't want the show to be About right Coco's tactics, which I highly recommend folks pick up if you haven't

I mean anyone who's an apologetic should have at least have read, you know, Greg Coco's tactics game plan for I think it's game plan for Sharing your faith or something along those lines

It just teaches you how to ask questions and engage. I don't want this particular episode to get into that Although if folks are interested

I actually have had Greg Coco on a while back to talk about that so you can you can check that out but I really want to ask you vocab is as a presuppositional is one who holds to kind of Apologetics from a

Vantillion and and if I remember correctly even a kind of a more frame Ian perspective unless you've changed

I don't know where you put yourself within the presuppositional spectrum Yeah, that's me that's me frame

Ian Vantillion I heard one guy use a phrase from reform forum he said a Vantillion evidentialists.

Oh, see that's provocative to not as provocative as Jesus is black and what was the name?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, not as provocative as the earth is flat and Jesus It's just so in your face it now all these books look self -published are they just self -published?

Yes, they are. This one might be somewhat of an exception They kind of got a thing going on the folks there in Israel.

Yeah, but the rest of them to my knowledge they would be Actually, I'm not 100 % sure about this one probably is too but yeah, most of them are like that every now and then you'll get a book that's

It's rare to see Hebrews like book that's not self -published It's really rare sometimes their views aren't taken seriously in scholarship.

This is more of kind of a an exotic thing that's particular to them or are their views plausible to Scholars who are in this area for them.

So there's not a lot of scholars in this area. So some of their Stuff is taken serious by scholars who are interested in studying about Hebrew Israelism itself meaning.

Okay. What do these guys believe but as far as People taking a lot of what they say serious

It's very very rare that they they make points that Stand on their own

That you could say, okay We have a legitimate debate about this going on For example, the one Westers the guys out on the corner most of them claim that King James is black

Nobody takes that serious We have contemporaneous paintings that he commissioned during his lifetime and they do not portray anyone who?

Looks anywhere near David Dinkins or Billy Dee Williams Why did I mention those two guys because those are two guys in the past that one

Westers have said King James resembled specifically mayor David Dinkins and You mean like Captain Calrissian.

Yeah, Lando. Yeah Yeah, but it's not it's in fact in my book In my in my book.

I think I have a section entitled the Lando Calrissian translation of the Bible. Oh man in reference to anyways, so No, now they would they if someone if they're they're listening to this, they'll say that's not true

Sometimes we quote books by Harvard and Jewish scholars who agree with us

Sure, that's true. But when you act they quote them, but when you look at the quote, they're almost always getting it wrong

Your early Hebrew someone whose intellect I respect and his debate with Michael Brown was a perfect example of that He quoted

Henry Henry Abramson Michael Brown after debate called Henry Abramson emailed him and said hey, did you mean this this isn't that he said?

No, that's not what I meant at all You know the scholar so there's examples like that where they're constantly quoting stuff not understanding it getting it wrong

Misrepresenting it stuff like that not taking the full picture into play It's not something that scholars are really wrestling most of their claims or ideas

Interesting. So so let's jump in in terms of presuppositional application So we don't have to define presuppositional apologetics in detail

Although if you want to do very briefly just for some folks who might just be listening in for the first time Why don't you briefly define presuppositional ism since most of my audience is gonna know what it is

And what is the framework the mental framework with which you engage?

Bhi proponents and what does that look like in terms of intentionally applying a presuppositional method to this group?

Because as you know vocab one of the big criticisms and this criticism has been made by dr Richard Howe who's been a critic of the presuppositional approach.

He says that presuppositionalist tend to Use their method against atheists

But what happens when you have other faiths that even you know hold to to some degree like the

Bible? So they have kind of an authoritative foundation. We have an authoritative foundation, you know, some people might suggest at that point we're evidentialists, you know,

I had a J Warner Wallace on a while back where we talked about this

He said presuppositional ism is a good tool But once you have someone else with an authoritative book now, everyone's an evidentialist at that point

We need to talk about the evidence. And so how how do you engage? Bhi from a presuppositional perspective

Excellent first Eli, yeah, let me give a brief rundown of what I would say about what

You know presupp is and I'll just give some points about five things of what

I think you should do or that a presupper Should do firstly present the Christian worldview with the

Bible as the foundation Hmm, I think that's part and parcel of presuppositional apologetics. Secondly work to clear up any misconceptions about the

Christian worldview Thirdly understand as best you can and that's where the questions come in things like that in the research

Understand the other person's worldview and the way the unbeliever thinks and that's going to be important for the next one fourthly run internal critiques on the non -christian worldview so if you

Don't really have an accurate view then your internal critique won't be as helpful And so that goes together fifthly

State note observe proclaim whatever you need to do their state when an unbelieving worldview is arbitrary inconsistent absurd or Borrowed so you point those instances out

Sixly keep the gospel front and center. Make sure you're appointing people to Jesus and to God's Word now

Doing all those things in any given engagement is difficult to talk order

It's a lot going on there. Sure, but I would say that's a simple boiled -down way

What I think of when I think of presuppositional ism. Mm -hmm, and you know adding to that briefly

Presuppositionalists believe the Bible is the absolute standard for logic for ethics It's a sole basis for a worldview that makes knowledge possible and all their worldviews must borrow from the

Christian worldview To make sense of the world. So that's the mindset and understanding of the presuppositionalist as they engage

Does that work you want to add or take away? I don't know. Good. So let's let's repeat that So so an emphasis within the presuppositional apologetic methodology

You have the Bible as the absolute standard for logic and ethics The Bible is the sole basis for a worldview that makes knowledge possible and other worldviews borrow this

Van Til spoke about borrowed capital they borrow things from the Christian worldview now, those are three points

You mentioned a lot of things that can get complicated But those are kind of three simple things that I think are key features of the of the presuppositional approach

So it's not I guess my encouragement to folks is don't get bogged down in Following a script that you heard some presuppositional philosopher use, you know

You want to avoid words like transcendentals and you know complicated vocabulary if you can depending on your audience

But these basic points that vocab just brought up These are excellent kind of just things to keep in your back pocket and and just be consistent with them

So I think that's a good kind of overview of the presuppositional approach. Yeah, maybe one thing to add to it is that a

Big part of presuppositional ism is it's not just Answering the questions and not just presenting the evidences

It's making sure that the apologist in their apologetic engagement is in some way or another

Going on the offensive to confront false worldviews. And so you were

Pressuring this now none of this is has to do with being rude or speaking loudly. That's not what

I mean by any of that, but Pressuring in a sense the adherence of these other worldviews to try to defend

Their worldview in a consistent manner. And so that's what we're trying to do

As presuppositional list in that aspect and so I think that's important to understand as well

Now as you're saying this I want to put this up on the screen here we have a comment here by Ravi I won't do this all throughout our discussion, but I think it's it's relevant because this always comes up and What gets me frustrated sometimes and it's fine

Ravi that you said this but I often hear this People don't understand what the transcendental thrust of a presuppositional approaches is all about I mean

Ravi says here, but any religion can presuppose the truth of their belief They will be as justified as a

Christian pre supper stalemate Okay, is there a couple of things wrong with this statement?

Would you like to engage that statement briefly or or maybe I'll share my thoughts I don't want to steal your thunder but a

BHI proponent could say this right they'd be like well, I presuppose that my worldview is You know the standard of all things, you know, how would you engage that from a presuppositional perspective?

Yeah, well before we disagree I've got a little bit of agreement in my soul with one thing.

He's saying here if I interpret it charitably you know, I interpret it part of what he's saying at least through my way to interpret it charitably as he's recognizing the fact of the collision of worldviews that presuppositional apologetics actually seeks to happen so Like we don't happen.

Yeah, we we want this right we kind of want, you know The two trains to run into each other and see who wins

Yes, we want the differences to be seen and we want it. We want this to happen

We so there's an element of we want the worldviews to collide so if I interpret what he's saying charitably the reason why we want that is because what our

Humble confidence is Ravi. Is it Christianity will win? Yes, not that we're gonna win every debate or always look good we don't mean anything that we don't even mean that in the world's

Eyes, it'll look like we quote won anything But we mean as far as being faithful to what the

Lord has laid out and as far as you know When it's all said and said and done at the end, it's like, okay, that was true.

That was logical That was factual and that was faithful. That's that's kind of what we're saying there, but we're saying yeah

Okay, you presuppose your worldview all presuppose mine and now let's find which one holds together

Can you consistently presuppose your worldview as you engage me? So Kenham, I know a lot of people don't like him, but let me give the example.

He made a funny comment He said when we were opening up the ark some atheists rented a plane and on the plane

They they got like those little advertisement banners on it And it said thou shalt not lie and they were flying it around During the opening of the ark down there outside of Cincinnati in the

Kentucky area and Kenham made a funny point He's like because they were obviously saying you're lying with this

Evidence you present in your little museum and he's saying notice what they had to do

They had to borrow from the Christian worldview in order to critique it Yes, and that's what we must go back to Genesis It was in this case back to Exodus, right but he was exactly right he's exactly right so the atheists is like, what do

I draw on that makes a obligatory moral ethical statement that'll thou shalt not

What else were they gonna quote? Anyway, right? I don't like it if you lie Darwin said, you know

I'm being somewhat facetious but not really because they don't have resource to anything like that on their worldview It was such a it's just a beautiful illustration.

So here's what we're saying People start saying well, that's not right. Don't do that. We're we're we're

Somewhere with them that we want them to be because we want to find out do they have justification for those statements?

So that's all I'll say about that. But I know you got something to add. Yeah. No, though. I think those are I think

Ravi has correctly illustrated the the worldview Collision aspect of all of this right any religion can presuppose the truth of their of their belief.

That's true It's like if I can summarize and kind of rephrase what Ravi saying here Well, what if what if the other person wants to be a presuppositionalist too?

Well, that's that's exactly what the presuppositionalist wants to happen The presuppositionalist wants the the opponent if we can use that kind of language

Wants the opponent to recognize that he is a presuppositionalist we we both are that's not that's not a criticism of the presuppositional approach

That's exactly what the presuppositionalist wants They want a worldviews to clash together so that we can compare the two

So if you take a look at the first part of his statement, but any religion can presuppose the truth of their belief That's correct.

They and this is where I would disagree They will be as justified as a Christian presupper that I would I would I would welcome a demonstration of the truth of that statement

They will not be justified this particular last statement assumes that Christianity lacks justification or adequate justification to differentiate it from other perspectives that that's the thing the

Christian presuppositionalist is making the assertion that the Christian worldview is the necessary precondition for say something like knowledge and We think we can pay the bills if I can use dr.

James Anderson's words We can pay the bills on that claim anyone could make the claim Not everyone can pay the bills on that claim.

And so that's what where the discussion is going to be Ravi continues. Could you explain why your presuppositions are better than those of a

Muslim or a Mormon? Surely anything you can appeal to they can appeal to as well. That's false

Okay, I won't go into details, but I know vocab is familiar with the the fact that the

Trinity the idea that God is both one and many provides a metaphysical answer to a very profound difficult philosophical question with respect to what we call the problem of the one in the

Many which is a big discussion in the history of Western philosophy, especially amongst the pre

Socratics but I'm not going to get into details of that but appeals to the Trinity as a necessary precondition for Knowledge and predication these sorts of things a

Muslim cannot appeal to that a Mormon cannot appeal to that And a bunch of other things so no, they can't appeal to the same things now

That doesn't mean my perspective is true necessarily but it is false to say that Muslims and Mormons can appeal to the same things that Christians can because there are features of the

Christian faith that are completely different than Muslims and Mormons. Yeah So in this book right here, you know

Robbie to your question There's a chapter in here called it's chapter 9 Islam Jesus and presuppositionalism, right?

This is Bonson's work and he says responding to the Islamic worldview But now how do we respond to Islam?

you must not be led astray by those who say Christians have the Bible and Muslims have the Quran and that leaves us with a standoff as if each of us can appeal to his own revelation

To try to refute each other and Muslims can counter or turn back on us any arguments We use against him and here's the key right here when we do worldview apologetics

We do not simply look at bare or formal authority claims We compare the actual content of our worldview with the actual content of the worldview

Presented by our Muslim friends and so then what he does is he looks into what the

Quran teaches and finds out if it's true that it's a Confirmation of the Old Testament law and a confirmation of the

New Testament gospel because that's in essence what you have Claimed there and he gives multiple embarrassing examples as he phrases them of that not being true

So it's presuppositional in the sense of it's like, okay, we say this is it. Here's the Quran Well, then we actually start to look at the actual content of the

Quran Against its own claims and what you'll find is again and again It ends up in a catch -22

Famous basic one is well, Jesus is not God. He never said he was a son of God surah 5 and Yet surah 1094.

Hey, we've got the in jail the gospel, but before him this book is a Continuation and confirmation of what's in there.

We're not doing anything new in essence Okay, then you go to the New Testament and you find it.

It's clear that Jesus taught that he was God Okay, so if the Quran is

Saying what the gospel say, but then in the gospel is Jesus says that he is

God, but the Quran says he wasn't God It's false either way. So if the

Bible is false, this is presuppositional Or in error or whatever there then the

Quran would be false because it's saying it confirms it But if the Bible says that Jesus is God and then you have the

Quran saying Oh actually Jesus isn't God, but we confirm what was in the Bible. Well, then it's wrong.

So that's an example. So That what he's saying there this gets into not the same identical situation as what we have when

Christians and this is what we most commonly see deal with materialists or atheists or naturalists.

This is something different It's presuppositional reasoning and methodology with what we would have to describe as false

Faiths right. So The closer here's my contention the closer that the worldview we're engaging with Looks like Christianity the more

Focus is going to be on the evidence element because it's like okay this this this this and here these are outlines of The way we look at it or approach it and some of this right now is assertion

But I'm explaining the methodology and this applies to Hebrew zoids These other religions in essence when they claim to have the

Bible as their foundation in some way like a Jehovah's Witness for example They are variants

They are copies They are imitations. They are as K Scott Oliphant says bizarro versions so bizarre was the opposite of everything

Superman was but he claimed to Kind of embody like like he is like switched around there's there's like these pale imitation and copies

So they'll affirm one thing on one hand and deny it on the other. So for example One West Hebrew Israelites you say we believe in the

Word of God Christians don't and we do and then we say, okay Let's turn to the book of Galatians here. It says that if you're in Christ, you're

Abrahams. Well Paul was giving his own rabbinical opinion there and That is not what

I'm so wait when you talk about the Word of God, you're not talking about Paul's writings So you to make your position stand just had to cut out 13 of the 27

New Testament books Well, why are you telling you tell us you believe the Word of God? Well, cuz that's just a mere opinion of man, so they end up relegating 13 of the 27 and if you count

Hebrews even more to that doesn't count or something like that now coming back to the question

So this reasoning with false face looks different and Bonson and pre suppers it is true have done less work in less examples of this engagement that's why we're sort of when we go about this we're sort of I don't want to say totally blazing the trail because Bonson Bonson especially did stuff with Islam and Judaism and some people have done some stuff since them in fact in this book by case got all of it the back is a

Dialogue with a Muslim sort of like a like a graduate level type train Muslim So it's kind of a high level

But but the chapter is called you are very religious and the preface that he gets to before he gets into it in chapter 7 is

Good for all other false face that in some way would claim the Bible as part of their foundational structure as far as authority goes

Great chapter there. And so that's what we're saying along with Paul. We're saying I Perceive in every way that you are very religious.

That's kind of what we're saying but then we go from there to essentially deconstruct and show how

This God that you have in your system or gods to the person we're talking to it's no God at all

So we're essentially reasoning with idolaters is maybe a very stark way to put it But some of the idolatry looks closer to the biblical worldview than others

So, I don't know Eli what you want to say on that? I got more but I'm trying to I don't want to I want to There's there's more comments that are just very tempting to jump on right now, but then it'll take us far off topic so how about this

Ravi and Whistler I think Whistler Let us finish our discussion on BHI and some more presuppositional application and then towards the back end

I'll take some of these questions or we'll take some of these questions and maybe kind of expand on some points but thank you for those comments

Ravi and Whistler we do appreciate it, but let's return back to the main topic and then we'll get back to those questions

So so in terms of approaching a BHI Proponent, how might we use a presuppositional approach?

I mean we kind of unpacked it as to how what that would look like in terms of approaching Islam What are the similarities in that approach with BHI?

What does that look like when in terms of engaging some of their specific argumentation? let me Give what maybe

Just like in apologetics first Peter 315 is like the key verse and presuppositional list thought sometimes you have the verse in Colossians about Treasures of wisdom in Christ or maybe in Proverbs about don't answer do answer, you know the fool

I think when we deal with these comparative religions that in some way borrow more explicitly heavily from Christian authority

Jesus the Bible I Think the key verse is probably Deuteronomy 32 31 for their rock is not as our rock

Their rock is not as our rock now, this is a course In Deuteronomy in the context.

I'm not claiming is Something to do with presuppositional apologetics, but the principle applies and let me show you how

Bonson uses This is a quote from Bonson's article Presuppositionalism and false false face.

Here's what he said quote by internally examining the worldview Which is offered by whatever religious devotee is having the dialogue with him

The that's how we that's how we deal with a false face step one The formal fact that the opposing religionist speaks of God or God is not a difficulty here for they must define their specific concept of deity

Remember here the example of Scripture where their rock is not as our rock Deuteronomy 32 31

Recall the devastating prophetic critique of the heathens lifeless idols which are

Contradictory under the sovereignty of those who bow down to them the use of religious vocabulary and appeals does not change the applicability of the indirect method of disproving your opponents presuppositions and so when it comes to Hebrew Zoologism, for example, almost all of it is non

Trinitarian and so That means they're not dealing with the

God of the Bible at that point And so if you reject the Trinity, you're not worshiping the

God of the Bible Jesus is the Messiah if your Hebrews like who rejects Jesus is the Messiah You're not dealing with the

God of the Bible because that's the promise Messiah that spoken of in the talk to knock Emmanuel God with this image of the invisible

God the eternal creator who has always existed as the Son of the Word if you reject That about Jesus you have another

Jesus the God of the Bible is not a racial supremacist If you're a version of God as a racial supremacist like a lot of Hebrews lights

You're not describing the God of the Bible So what we do is when Hebrews light says we believe in this book not this book, but the

Bible they'd be holding up, right? What we do is we do compare and contrast we get a lot more to the actual content of what they say and then take some of their presuppositions no matter how ludicrous they may be and Find out if they can really work and that's maybe what

I get into next But I want to make sure that we're where we need to be with everything and sure so so so let's take a comment so so if you if if you are a black

Hebrew Israelite and you are Standing on the street corner and I'm walking by and I'm like, hey, you know, I see you guys kind of Saying some weird stuff, you know

How could I approach them in terms of like a conversation? What would that look like? What how should I start off?

with a conversation with with a With one of those guys, I mean,

I'm always just gonna probably say something like can you tell me what the gospel is? Tell me what the gospel is now if they're out on the street, you know what they'll do a lot of times

They'll go to Luke 4 where Jesus is in the synagogue Okay, and then they'll say look he's quoting in Luke 4

Isaiah 61, which is true so far And then they'll say well, let's see what Isaiah 61 says and then they'll read the rest of Isaiah 61 the parts

He didn't quote and then we'll interpret some of those parts of Isaiah 61 as saying that non

Israelites will have to be slaves of Israelites in the kingdom. And so they'll say the gospel basically is slavery

The gospel is that? That's what that's what some of the one -westers will do when you get into the gospel

So it's good news for them bad news for the Edomite So the Edomite in their worldview is the so -called white man now

Remember, these are only the street corner guys. These are one West Hebrews lights I'm talking about because you said on the street I'm talking about those kind of guys not all

Hebrews lights believe what I'm saying here So presupposition Lee, how would we use that against them say?

Okay, so you believe that descendants of Esau Edomites are who the world now calls the white men

Now it's gonna be hard to have that for this to happen in a street situation And by the way, most of them know the verse

I'm gonna turn to but are you able to type in Eli? Yeah, Deuteronomy 23 7.

Yes, so This is where it gets kind of presuppositional and this is just a basic example 20 20 3 what

Deuteronomy 23 7? So here's the beliefs of the one West Hebrews light We believe the Bible's the

Word of God. We got to follow the law and Edomites are the white man and we're gonna enslave them in the kingdom and they can't be in the kingdom as anything but slaves

Now look at Deuteronomy 23 7, what's it say? It says you shall not loathe an

Edomite for he is your brother You shall not loathe an Egyptian because you are a stranger in his land

And then keep on going when we're look at 8 verse 8. Okay, I didn't have the the whole

It's just the one portion there. So let me get to a Let me get to one that allows me to move.

Okay Is It 23 actually 23 8, well, why are you doing that?

So notice what he said so far and you'll get the next verse check it out The Edomite is your brother.

So we're using their presuppositions to get them against them Most of those guys talking you out on the street corner by any meaningful definition of the word are not

Israelites They are only Israelites if you want to put it in air quotes, which I usually do

However, they assume they're Israelites Okay, so that means this word this command that they say they hold and Christians don't is

Directly to their ancestors What does it say? It says don't abhor don't despise

Don't hate the Edomite. He's your brother so That means according to one

West versions of Hebraism Every white guy they see walking down the street that they say is going to change.

That's their brother And they can't abhor him. Now. What does that abhor have to do it?

It doesn't just mean don't dislike it actually has to do with Don't view them as ultimately

Ceremonially unclean before God and the reason why I would use that type of language is for the very next line

So this has to do with Edomites and Egyptians that in some way are associated with the congregation

As far as or I'll say the nation. I'll say the nation of Israel I have the scripture if you whenever you want me to read.

Yeah, look at look at 23 8 what to say 23 8 says the sons of the third generation who are born to them may enter the assembly of the

Lord. So true or false Hebrew is your light Edomite grandchildren

Can be in the congregation of Yahweh True or false?

The answer is true dude, right 23 explicitly says their grandchildren can enter into the assembly the assembly of the

Lord or the congregation of Yahweh means that you're Fully able to participate in covenant life with Israel because this isn't random

Edomites This is an Edomites living down in what later be called a dumia and they're just saying hey you guys

After you have some kids you can judge. Oh, these are in some way. They're around them. Don't abhor them because that's your brother

There's a reason given for this command by Yahweh and then it goes on to say in fact They can enter into the congregation the assembly of the

Lord Now, what do they do with that? Their answers are always horrible The old one they used to use is they had a stock phrase then they would simply say that was a clerical error

I have a whole video if you go to my youtube channel and type in the phrase clerical error You'll find that they misunderstood a notation on a lexicon and actually literally got it backwards

About what the clerical error was so it's not true Now some of them have caught on to that and they'll say things like well it changed after that those they give these horrible

That don't explain why they still would say they hate white people because we're not assuming Edomites are white people That's actually ridiculous

But if they were and there is your lights How can they say we follow the law and yet we do the opposite of Deuteronomy 23 7 because they would say they hate the white

Man, not only that Can you go to Genesis 25 25 now? I don't know if you have a comment on that but to me, that's very presuppositional and it's an example of using what they say and then showing how it

Conflicts with something else they say and ultimately what scripture says Genesis what? Genesis 25 25 because this now we'll get into the rationale for why they say

Edomites are actually white people It's gonna get into their there what they say is their rationale. Go ahead. I got it

So now the first came forth red all over like a hairy garment and they named him Esau So they'll say what happens if you slap a white person what happens if a white person is out in the

Sun they turn red So they're really not that they're not really the white man. They're the red man And so that's how you know, and a lot of them are hairy

So this is their evidence that Edomites are white people, right? Okay now

Do you know anyone else who is described the same way in the

Bible that Esau is described as in the in as far as the

Hebrew word goes Well, I'll show you can you go to first Samuel 16 12?

First Samuel 16 12, please And I want to show you this so remember

Hebrews the light that says hey Esau. It's white man. It's really the red man. They would misuse

Genesis 25 25 for that and then they're gonna go To Genesis 25 25 and the red there is sometimes translated as ruddy

It's the same same word we're talking about there red or ruddy the Hebrew words the same in both places

But can you read first Samuel 16 12? 16 12 so he sent and brought him in now

He was ready with beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance and the Lord said arise anoint him for this is he so who's that?

Talking about there in the context Who's the ape is this David? That's David.

So David is described using the same exact word that Moses Ultimately is the final editor used to describe

Esau in Genesis 25 25 and sometimes it's translated red Sometimes you translate a ruddy, but it's the same word.

So What will we do with that? Because if it means that he's a white man and that's what it's saying there with with David Then what does it mean for Esau?

How is it different for Esau? Versus David and if you're wondering, okay, what is the word there?

It's Admiral knee Admiral knee is is the word Do you have logos or something up there? You see what

I'm saying? I Don't have logos. Okay. Okay, that's fine I just wanted to see if you could I had to remove it from my desktop because it takes so much space

It does but the Hebrew word everyone is Admiral knee which can be read or ruddy and you can look this up.

So everyone understand David for the Hebrews of light who's a one -wester would be viewed as their ancestor and usually

According to the twelve tribes chart that the street guys use if you're so -called black as they would put it

It means you're part of the tribe of Judah. All right So if you're Judah, that means David would be an ancestor in a certain sense or at least part of your same tribe

All right, so he's described as red or ruddy Esau's described the same way. So how is it that David is your black

Israelite ancestor? But Esau is the red white man's ancestor the same word for their physical appearance here

Usually they'll say something like well, you've never been to been to a black reunion. I got a cousin who has a red tint

And so you just don't know what you're talking about. Okay? That's actually by the way, not not that far off from the truth

This ready this admoni from what I because I've looked into this lexically

It appears that it's essentially describing the reddish tint or tinge that brown gets

So it's like the red heifer people talk about the red heifer That's a real thing or the colors of certain horses where it's brown with this

Kind of only way to describe you like a reddish tint. Well, some people have that that's true But you can't not make it apply to Esau and then have it apply to David and It probably doesn't have anything to do with your cousin at the barbecue either to be honest

So so when you look at this, you're like, okay, this is arbitrary This is clearly inconsistent and it also exposes the lie

You say you hold up to scripture and you say you interpret it properly But we just gave you two examples that are very foundational to one

West Israel ism that show that you don't one more if you could like One more if you'd like.

Oh, one other thing is well, man, I'm Before you continue I just want to point out if people are getting people are following the pre suppositional nature of what you're doing

Is that you are hypothetically granting the truth of their perspective and then examining their perspective on their own presuppositions?

And the way that you're doing that vocab is that you're going to scriptures that they accept and that they use

Right that that's part of the what we call we can now can look at the pre suppositional Framework and use the pre suppositional language.

You are doing what what we call an internal critique So he might be speaking about specific text and you're like, well wait, how does pre suppositional ism relate to that?

It does because the he's using text that they agree on in their own perspective and then showing on its own base

Those those passages don't serve the purposes that they want it to serve. So you're doing that show you one more

Can you go Solomon 510? You know, I was like, you know, this is Rosa's rub it in here song of Solomon 510 this one is

This one is This one is very fascinating I think here

I've been yeah 510 All right, it says here my beloved is white and ruddy the chiefest among 10 ,000 now

What should we do with that? What should we do with that?

If we're taking these? If we're taking this the way Hebrews will I would take it?

Is this? White and ruddy What do we do with this guys, okay now look

I don't think it's saying that It's like what we'll call like literally white.

Mm -hmm I don't think that's what it's saying from my understanding and that's why the ESV which is funny because they'll

Usually not always but one Westers usually prefer the KJV over something like the ESV Okay, the

ESV gets it better here in the English. It says my beloved is radiant and ruddy

That's what that's trying to describe But if they're gonna claim well the KJV that is a and this is the she talking so she's talking about Solomon here

She's on by my beloved is radiant and ruddy So looks like his dad and daddy

David and looks like Esau and he's radiant but if we're gonna go the KJV and we're gonna take these physical descriptions without any kind of greater understanding clearly then saw

Solomon be a white guy and guess what? The Anglo Israelites and the Christian identity people use that exact verse to try to prove the

Solomon. Therefore the Jews were white So to could play at this game, but it shows the simplistic and incorrect program that they're on to try to discover because just using logic when we apply logic which

Christianity provides the the ability for this us to do this Even saying

Solomon was black. Let's say he was it was black Definitely that in no way proves that the person speaking is is black or is it

Israelite? Let's just say Psalms in Israelite. He's black. Therefore. I'm black. Therefore. I'm an Israelite.

That's not even a lot That doesn't even that doesn't work It definitely doesn't prove you're related to him But it wouldn't prove because even on their own worldview and I'm gonna use it against him again.

I'm using one Westers now one Westers believed black Hamites Sold them who are black

Semites into slavery so what I mean is on the Continent you have some people who would be there as a sentence of ham and people who came from the outside during the diaspora who?

Are the Israelites who in some way may appear to an outsider to look like them?

But they're not and that's why the Hamites sold the Semites into slavery My point is even on the one

West Hebrews like schema Eli. They have it where Certain black people are

Hamites and therefore Gentiles and that's why you can find a video that I have where I ask a

Hebrew It's like if he believes in the future, he's gonna own black slaves and he said yes Because the

Africans would be Gentiles descendants of Ham. Whereas they think that they're descendants of Shem see so My point by saying that is even on their own schema

Black being blacks not enough to be an Israelite if you're talking about one Westers So this is using all this stuff against them.

And in fact when you say, you know, your views are anti -semitic They'll say I'm Semitic. How can

I be? Anti -semitic right now. There's a lot of problems with that. But Remember, who do they think

Jacob is? That's a descendant of the Israelites Esau citizen of the Edomites These one Westers would admit that they hate white people, but they think white people under the one

West rubric are Semites too so you can be a semi and be anti -semitic according to them

Does that make sense? Yeah That's interesting. So all the stuff I'm saying

I know it's a little technical this and that and some of these guys are like, oh, we've heard this. Oh, this is dumb I'm talking about Hebrews lights.

You might watch it Sure The thing is though they don't actually give good answers on the street if a guy's got a microphone

He can outdo you on the internet. He brings you on his channel He can unmute you and drop you off and these are the things we've seen happen a lot

But as far as answering fact to fact, you'll find that almost always There's exceptions the

Israel Hebrews light proponent falls short and so we are van Tilly and Evidentialists the closer the worldview looks or purports to look in some way like Christian Christianity and some

Hebrews lights get pretty close As far as a biblical a bit more biblical worldview. It gets more into these evidences and looks a little bit more like Evidentialism to the outsider and that's because as I heard again a guy from the

Reform Forum say if you pick a leaf off the tree It's not like it's not part of the tree.

You just picked up that leaf, but it goes down to the root of the tree That's how we should view as preceptors evidences the least on the end of the tree are evidences.

Oh, look Look at this The divine name was Yahweh when you go to the oldest inscription in hieroglyphics that that speaks about these

Israelites when I say oldest inscription, I mean the oldest inscription to contain the name Yahweh you look at it and This Egyptian King because at that time

Sudan was part of Egypt this Egyptian King Describes the Israelites as the nomads of Yahweh, but in hieroglyphs, but it's in the hieroglyphs that it's saying

Yahweh What's my point by saying that that's a factual thing an evidential thing because almost all

Hebrews lights deny that God's name could be Yahweh They'll say that's a Yiddish interpretation and they'll say it's either

Yeah, howa or you who were or something like that or y 'all which is somewhat true because that's a shortened form

So y 'all okay, but it's still not the complete name of the tetragrammaton that was being written I'll be it without the vowels and so we can go and say well look even the

Egyptians knew Way back then and I tweeted about this two days ago, by the way So if someone wants more you can actually see the restored the restore

You can see it restored and everything when you see what I'm talking about and I talk about where it is I think the place is called so lab that's evidential.

So you're getting into someone says I believe in the Bible, but Yahweh was never his name Okay evidence So that's the that's the leaf at the end of the tree

We're looking at that at that point But it's okay to look at the leaves of the tree and we're still gonna go back to these

Foundational things and ultimately show them that they're idolaters because they don't believe Jesus is

God They don't believe God has tried you and a lot of these guys are getting more explicit that they themselves are gods in the same way

Jesus is God, but I just said that they say Jesus isn't God Well, they'll say he's created but they believe they share his godhood because they believe that all

Israelite males are gods now again This is the one West interpretation, but I could show you image of an image especially

I UIC Put ye are gods and they'll show themselves with like balls of fire

Like a Dragon Ball Z type thing because they believe they're gonna gain spiritual powers in the kingdom So I know that's really getting lost in the weeds.

What's my point? Their rock is not like our rock They'll say believe in the God of the Bible, but they're not talking about the

God of the Bible the Christians got to go to great lengths to try to show that especially since One of the least interesting topics to most

Hebrew slides is the nature of God They're more interested in the physical description of Israelites Which is something that is not explicitly talked about very difficult to ascertain and it's not even all across the board

Anyway, and also there's the issue of after 2 ,000 years of dispersion People don't look the same they go through Europe.

They go through Africa. They kind of come out looking like their neighbors This is all just facts of history, but that's what you got to get into with these guys.

But here's what I'm saying everyone That's still presuppositional And and we start with the basic effin essence of nonetheless.

They're idol worshipers Let me read one paragraph here Sure The God whom Nathaniel of IUIC talks about is not real

The God whom Ben Ami wrote about will never be this is from an upcoming blog

I have next Wednesday the God whom Tahar of GMS makes videos about has never existed the

God whom Hulon Mitchell Himself he believed he was God He called himself Yahweh ben Yahweh of the nation of Yahweh lectured about is not a

God at all But rather an idol the God whom Edward Meredith Bibbins the founder of one west ism taught about on the streets as a

God of His own design the God whom General Yohanna of UPK shouts about is not a

God the God whom Wentworth Matthew Spoke about is not the God of the Tanakh the God whom

Arias a gave him visions Did no such thing because that God is not even there to communicate with Aria the

God whom FS Cherry used to scream about and Philly is not a God the God who told

Jermaine Grant He was the God sent comforter did not tell him that because there was not a God There to speak to him because that God doesn't exist

Hebrew Israelites have God wrong hmm, and so to me, that's a element is recognizing that and proceeding from that and I do think that goes in line with things that Vantill and Bonson wrote about because as again, he's he said when we do worldview apologetics

We compare the actual content of our worldview with the actual content of the world you presented by our friends

Say that again the actual content. Yeah, that means the data

Yeah, not I mean people say oh, well all of this stuff is evidential ism presupposition list don't use evidence.

I mean page 152 Evidence it's not this is

This isn't like new stuff. I mean Vantill wasn't against evidence We shouldn't be either and we should be able to master the evidence as well as the framework

That gives meaning and content to that that specific data Yeah, and so I just want to point that out to people in Boston again

He was talking about Islam, but when I read this little sentence here I'm gonna replace Islam with Hebrew islism on page 153 of the same book

He said all we need to do is show conflicts between what the Bible teaches and what

Hebrew islism teaches Now he said Islam, but what he's saying is there you're holding up Opposing, you know, here's their claim, but here's something that opposes their own claim and even on a morality level

Check this out when it comes to one West Hebrew islism where they believe they're gonna enslave other nations eternally

Where some of them leave you can lie to outsiders That shows their God and I've just established.

He's not there's no God at all It's an idol product of their own imagination or desires Their God is not the basis for moral

Morality or ethics because their God doesn't say slavery is wrong He doesn't say that beating your slaves is wrong.

He just says the right people have to be cracking the whip And so that's why when some of these guys criticize

Antebellum slavery, I'll preface it by saying yes, I agree. But why are you saying it's wrong?

Now again, I'm talking about the more radical Harder edge ethnocentric guys. This is not identical with all of them.

Some of them say well, I don't believe that I don't I don't think we should own people that uh, now they still have a soft ethnic hierarchy

But I'm pointing out some ways and that's why you got to ask the questions But we're not gonna be able to get into today, but I've mentioned the twelve tribes chart

I have a whole blog that does a presuppositional Internal critique against you folks vocab where your blog is

How can people get the shield squad calm the shield squad calm and the articles called thought -provoking?

Questions to dismantle the twelve tribes chart I don't know if you allow me to do links in here, but I can drop it in there

Yeah, drop the link and I see Here is there's a sign and does do people have to sign up for it in order to access the content?

I think that's like they're trying to get you to subscribe. It doesn't cost or anything like that I think it's cuz I don't know if you have to Sign in to read it, but I know they're trying to get people to subscribe, but it's all free

But you can't support it and pay actually don't I don't actually know. How does it work? Can you look at it without signing in everyone?

Let me know. I don't know. I don't actually know it says here I think you can I can't think you can't know.

Thanks. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I see here. Okay, I'm gonna subscribe I just wanted to see the other I see the

Okay, I see all the article a week Nice and Then the next one is actually gonna be about this topic.

It's gonna be titled. Um, let me see here Presuppositionalism as applied to Hebrew is realism.

Hmm, and a lot of it's gonna be introductory so, you know, I'm glad we got to do this interview today because what I would do is continue to develop this and go farther and farther and even if Sometimes people say well that doesn't look very presuppositional

Presuppositionalism is more stark because the contrast is more stark right when dealing with like materialist that's true, and I appreciate some of the

Criticism of evidentialist. It's like well you guys sometimes just theorize and don't do the work So I'm sensitive to that and I agree.

So I'm trying to say well, here's the foundation. I know I'm not always consistent But here's what

I'm trying to do. This is the mentality I'm seeking to to to have and promote and all that and I'm trying to be faithful in it but then a lot of times it gets into just looking at the evidence and That is part of presuppositionalism.

Sure. I like the Idea, you know We were talking about this the other day

That when a presuppositionalist is talking about evidences and an evidentialist is talking about evidences

If you walked in the middle of that conversation or that discussion, it's gonna look like they're saying a lot of similar things

So again presuppositionalism is a very different methodology But that doesn't mean that we're always saying things that are completely different than the evidentialist with the classicalist and then and that's okay

You know if someone were to walk up to me in the middle of the street and say, you know What's what evidence is there for the Bible?

Well, I'm not gonna necessarily start with well well how can you account for evidence to begin with like no we can go to the specific evidences and and perhaps later on the

Presuppositions will come into play and sometimes they won't you know, if right if you get the evidence and someone's like man

I never thought about that. That's really cool. Thank you. You're not gonna be like but wait, I'm not done I need to whip out my transit.

No, that's not how it works. So yeah, so yeah I just wanted to get that piece out there agree and you know presuppers.

I think do need to be more practical You know, I'm not necessarily saying pragmatic but practical and tactable

Tactical and factual getting out there and saying well that it uh, and you know, James White debated

He wears a light on his program twice. It was a guy named elder recovered He was yeah, and you know, he would say he's a presuppositionalist now.

I know sometimes people criticize him he's not and I think that's just maybe they don't understand what presuppositionalism is and you'll see a lot of discussion how to do with facts and data and evidence and I think he did a great job as far as approaching it from that approach and That's kind of what it could look like, you know it could look like that and the debate wasn't that much different than Michael Brown's recent debate with the

Hebrews light as far as Some elements go and I understand Brown's on a pre supper I'm not saying that he is but I'm saying when you get into those evidences some of it's gonna look like okay

You'll see it and some of that's the fault of presuppositionalist Maybe we've spent so much time and trying to show how these things are different and then talk about you know

Models and methods that sometimes people haven't seen the similarities and then seeing people do it and I understand

I'm not a thought leader of Presuppositionalism, so I'm just some guy talking about it. You know, I don't have David Bonson's phone number like you do.

I don't email Never spoke to him on the phone or anything

It was a connection. He said I know a guy knows a guy give it time. Give it time.

Yeah, but no, but I'm just saying that that's Still my understanding and I and I'm glad to be able to share it here today

Hopefully in a helpful way You know be dropping more on this in the future a little by little over the years of God loves me to stick around Yeah, well, that's awesome, man well

I've been talking to vocab Malone the street apologist and he has been sharing with us the how to apply a presuppositional approach to the black

Hebrew Israelite movement and Hopefully you guys are encouraged by some of the things he has to say

I mean, yeah to defend the faith, you're gonna have to know scripture, especially if the other side affirms portions of scripture that's gonna you know really require you to get down on the mat and kind of Deal with the ins and outs of what a text is and what it means and the context and all that kind of stuff

So thank you so much for everything that you're doing on that front vocab Well, let's now that we're at the top of the hour.

We're a little bit over an hour Why don't we take some of the questions that we began to engage?

earlier and And kind of had to get back on topic. So We'll do that and then we'll wrap things up.

How does that sound? Sounds great Shout out to the live chat. All right, so got a couple of points here.

I know it was Ravi and some other gentlemen Okay, so Ravi started out give context here.

So I'm gonna read through his comments here and And then we'll engage

Some of his thoughts and there's some other ones too. So I do apologize if I miss anyone It's really hard looking at my screen

Which means I'm it looks like I'm not looking at vocab So it looks like I'm I'm playing candy crush while he's going into details, you know when

I'm looking down like this I'm actually looking directly at you when I look up at my camera I don't see my monitor and then

I have to keep track of the chat. So you know Andy crush when you when you get a point doesn't it go like You Don't get that the invitation like your cousin is inviting you to to play candy crush

No, I never played but I heard he could play it. There's like those sound effects. I hear go Like we did something.

I've never played it before All right. So let's kind of go down through here and let's see.

What's what? Okay, so here's Robbie's comments that we started with but any religion Can Presuppose the truth of their belief.

That's correct. They will be as justified as the Christian pre supper. That's false. It's not a stalemate

We think the Christian world you can pay the bills on our on our assertion That it is a necessary precondition for say like knowledge logic or whatever item you want to debate

That is based upon a transcendental principle Transcendental arguments is not something particular to presuppositional list.

I mean vocab. I know you're familiar with I know you've read frames history of Western philosophy and theology

There's discussion there and in Bonson's work the history of transcendental arguments Its basic form is for for example for X to be the case

Why must be the case because X is the necessary precondition for Y?

Okay, why is the case therefore X must be the case? So basically you're saying you're taking some agreed -upon item of human experience and asking what are the necessary preconditions for that?

and so you lay it out by presenting your worldview the Christian has his worldview that he

Presupposition Lee holds to the non -christian whether it's a BHI or Muslim or whoever has their presuppositional starting point and we compare worldviews and Analyze which world you can actually provide those preconditions to that agreed -upon item that is under discussion

All right, and so Ravi continues here Could you explain why your presuppositions are better than those of a

Muslim or a Mormon? Surely anything you could appeal to they can do as well now I addressed that in Before but why don't you share your thoughts?

What what sets us apart from say the the BHI the Muslim the Mormon or anyone? That's that doesn't have

Christian presuppositions Well, I think that's where it gets into, you know, the the data so, you know if if Joseph Smith's for example says that he got a revelation from the

God of the Bible and And we would want to say, okay, well, let's let's find out if those revelations match what the

God of the Bible has said even his descriptions of God they match the way God has revealed himself in the

Bible and And even if you don't let's say you're watching you don't think the Bible is true Well, Joseph Smith said he was there to restore the gospel.

So shouldn't match up, you know It should but it doesn't and then if Joseph Smith is is a prophet you know, we can test some of his prophecies and we can test things that he said as far as truth claims and then it becomes problematic because You know when you talk about the first vision as they call it there are multiple different versions that he gave and remember he's just one person and It changed over time and some of the different versions are actually contradictory.

Well, that's that's a problem Yeah, you got some problems and then you look into what he said happened, you know

Golden plates that he had a hold while he was running through the woods there in upstate,

New York He tells a story about running up a tree hiding from a bear while holding the gold plates, I guess all this well when you would look at the way he described the golden plates and the way that you'll see the

Mormons kind of Make models out of them and stuff It would be way too heavy

Joseph Smith would have to have the strength of he -man to be able to pull off So my man, yes, so my point by saying that is well

Doesn't Joseph Smith sound like a false prophet to you? He explicitly denied the

Trinity and and on and on and on and so You have him promoting polytheism as opposed to monotheism.

Well, how's that the biblical faith? How's he restoring something when he's contradicting it and so we're looking at our ultimate authorities there because I think that I think it can be honestly said that Mormonism's ultimate authority is the prophet hood of Joseph Smith and his

Subsequent revelations not not the scripture and that's why they say things in their general principles like The Bible insofar as it is translated correctly, and I think they actually kind of interpreted or understood correctly with that line

But you look and it's really Joseph Smith That's the ultimate authority versus anything else.

And so then we start comparing our ultimate authorities and that's why it is important for Christians to Defend scripture defend the

Word of God and that's why we do sometimes get into these You know talking about alleged discrepancies because we're defending our ultimate authorities for example

I know everyone's may not like him, but I think the Hammond Hodge volume. How do we know the Bible is true?

It's there's two volumes of it. I think it's good pretty good solid answers good starting point You know, it's not like Geisler's a big book of Bible difficulties, but it's good stuff

And I think it's helpful and that's the kind of stuff we do because we're examining the ultimate authorities Of each thing and so the question is sure is

Joseph Smith a valid place to put your hope and trust in When it comes to these matters now,

I think Eli you probably have some more Better answers, but that would be one thing. I would say

I know I didn't really focus on the Muslim I only focus on the Mormon there. No, I think that's that's great. I mean our presuppositions are better because they do in fact

Provide the necessary preconditions for knowledge and Logic if for example, if you have a worldview that is claiming or asserting to providing a

Foundation for something like logic then it must be the case that the worldview itself cannot be illogical

So if someone says well my god, you know, I'm on Mormonism God is a necessary precondition for logic

But then when you actually examine the worldview system and there are logical contradictions within that system then well

Then it it can't be a precondition for logic because it violates that very that very principle

Yes, even more even more shocking. Yeah, God of Mormonism has not always existed.

Yeah, that's right in Mormonism It's kind of I'm gonna only speak sloppily here But Mormonism is kind of like atheism in that the gods are not

Omnipresent and absolute and all -encompassing they exist in an ultimate Impersonal void so in their material and their material.

So how can you have a material deity ground immaterial universal invariant? Conceptual laws you just can't have it now a

Mormon might say my god can do that But again, that's the issue. Can they pay the bills?

Is it just a assertion and we would argue we would argue. No Yeah In order here,

I'm sorry in the Quake who debate I talked to him a little bit about some of that Yeah, he ever really responded exactly, but I got into the nature of God being able to ground these these things

So these are questions to ask and Mormons have their philosophers and I'm not claiming I've read all of them and some are very bright

But when you read through when they do answer these questions It does fall short logically and Biblically as well.

Yeah All right. So Robbie made a statement here Aristotle solved the problem of the one in the many 2 ,500 years ago.

It's not an issue in philosophy. Well, I I would just encourage Robbie to Recheck those facts.

He did not solve the problem of the one in the many and it is still a problem in Philosophy here.

Here's the thing if you have a worldview that is that has an insufficient

Epistemology that is to say that given your worldview commitments You you know say your worldview kind of reduces to skepticism or you know absurdity

Then you then any theory that's proposed by a person who holds such a world You can't be the one that solves anything for example in Aristotle's epistemology

He very much disagreed with his teacher Plato And so he believed that you'd abstract

Universals from from the particulars, right? He was empirical in his orientation.

Not only was he empirical and he is subject to the criticisms of empiricism He is also he also affirms

Autonomy with respect to human reason now, I don't have time to go into this in detail But if you assume categories of autonomy with respect to rationality and epistemology

You run into what philosophers have called the egocentric predicament if in your world do you start with yourself you end with yourself your worldview epistemologically will be reduced to subjectivism and Skepticism and so if that is something that can be demonstrated as is a result of Aristotle's epistemology which easily can given his

Commitment to epistemology. I'm sorry empirical categories and things like that. Then his worldview would be reduced to Being stuck in what we call the egocentric predicament and if that's what his epistemology entails

Then how can we know his metaphysical assertions with respect to what grounds the one and the many is true?

To assert that he solves the problem assumes that his epistemological foundations actually provide a justification for the argument

He lays out with respect to the one in the many and so I don't think he solved the problem and I don't think he holds to a sufficient

Epistemology that can justify his explanations as to what grounds these categories. All right, okay

Maybe you could speak to this vocab. He says with respect to presuppositions. He says You know that but then you're just saying that your presuppositions are better Yes, that's true.

We think the true presuppositions are better than false ones, but you have to presuppose that it's turtles all the way down So I think he's making an indirect reference to what is called

Munch had the Munchausen trilemma where when we talk about Justifying a claim or an assertion.

You really just have a few you know, you have a few options you have the option of Infinite regression you have circular a circular foundation and you have axiomatic grounding

So when you kind of push someone to justify an assertion, they're kind of left with these three categories

Infinite regress circular reasoning and holding to dogmatic axioms How in your understanding does the presupposition list avoid being stuck in those?

Not cool options If I could word it that way well, you know what we're saying with with our with our claims here is

Are your axioms justified within the framework of your own worldview

And so it's not just well like your piece of our presuppositions are better, which is which is true

We're also saying can you justify your presuppositions? And so the nature of God?

I think is what we're gonna say these elements of reality. We're talking ontology is what everything is grounded upon What is the alternative that's being offered because if it's material it's gonna fall because you're as far as it turtles all the way down what's offered that's better and I Haven't seen anything.

I just see people kind of matching or aping the pre sub claim. They'll say well

Because we'll say God is the precondition for intelligibility, you know, and they'll just say well logic is its own precondition

Well, how's mine not better than yours or something like that? well, you're just trying to match what I said, but with what what are what are you putting there in its place and You know then till made an interesting comment that sometimes gets

Cited by people who actually criticize him, but I actually appreciated it He said quote from the non -theistic point of view our

God will have to appear as the dumping ground of all difficulties Hmm and So it's true.

It's being grounded in God and in the one true God, that's that's true But what is being offered instead?

I remember I dealt with one atheist. He was really smart and really kind of prided himself as an critic of Presuppositionalism specifically and I said well basically the short version of a conversation is what do you have in place instead?

He's like I'm working on it I have a provisional a provisional explanation a

Provisional transcend explanation for all of reality. I'm still working on it and this you know, he was a graduate philosophy student

ASU He was being very serious but to me it seemed ludicrous that he was like Okay, you know

I see what you're having but he'd always accused me of kicking the can down the road type of thing You know anyway, and I would say well, what do you got man?

Well, it's provisional. I'm working on it I'll let you know in the next conversation. He never did but I and I told

I predicted I said whatever it is Spencer I bet it's gonna look really awfully close like the

God of the Bible You're probably just gonna try to make him a little less personal I guarantee whatever it is is gonna look a lot like the

God of the Bible in some way or at least had the Characteristics right in some way. I bet that's what's gonna happen.

So I don't know that's what I would say about that So, you know this kind of equivocation like well, it's all equal. I don't think this

Robbie. I don't think you believe that I don't think you you don't really think all the worldviews are

Equal or that that we're just all doing the same thing The question is well, how would you make any distinction of what's true or what's better or what's more right or less, right?

How would you do any of that? I'm just trying to follow what you would say what you would think and I don't

I don't think so What we're saying is God Stops the problem of infinite regress because he himself is eternal infinity and it he's the he's the book stops with him

So to speak. Mm -hmm. Yeah, that's a great point So with respect to the trilemma the infinite regress circularity or dogmatic axioms dogmatic axioms are arbitrary

Anyone could pick any axioms they want infinite regress is not going to be sufficient to ground To ground, you know knowledge assertions.

So we would we would take the category of ultimate circularity However, we avoid We avoid the fallaciousness of that by offering a transcendental argument.

I mean vocab just mentioned it How do we justify our presuppositions? Well, you justify your presuppositions people say well, you can't just yes

You can you can justify your presuppositions through use of a transcendental argument and that's how we do it.

We give an argument Transcendentally to justify our presuppositions as providing the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience and knowledge

That's what a transcendental argument seeks to do. That's not uniquely presuppositional That's what transcendental arguments generally seek to do but I think the

Vantillian presuppositional transcendental argument does specifically well now My wife is actually feeling a little under the weather.

So we're gonna have to wrap things up. We'll take one more Question here and then we'll wrap things up and and then

I'll have to attend to my affairs But vocab, thank you so much for being on with me. This is a lot of fun And I'm sure folks are finding this conversation useful

So let's take a last comment here and then we'll wrap things up a whistler says by what methodology can one determine?

whether or not worldview X accounts for something like Rationality.

Okay by what methodology can one determine whether or not worldview X accounts for something like?

Rationality you want to chime in there vocab? But yeah, it's got to be consistent because if something is logically inconsistent

I don't think we can say it's rational at that point and it's I think it's got a

For lack of a better phrase. It's got a sort of claim to so some of the Eastern concepts when you look at the worldview

I don't think would even actually claim something like this and That's why I think my understanding now some of this is very slippery

I'm not an expert on Eastern religions some of these puzzles and riddles that sometimes you'll like Get from some of the sages and some of the great teachers within those schools of thought.

They're actually designed to kind of unravel Those concepts or those ideas about like well, everything's ultimately rational or logical or something and so they'll they'll have things almost that kind of have no answer or Or or that it's like a logical conundrum that appears the only answer would be illogic so these these kind of like riddles and phrases that sometimes will be asked and questions or whatnot and So I think that's an element

But I mean ultimately it's like what's the grounding to this thing? The groundings got to be able to count for rationality and I don't see how you're gonna get that with material

How would you ever describe material as rational? It's gonna have to be mental by definition right mental rational

Ultimately mental and what I mean by that is If I'm using different phrases here that everyone may not be comfortable with but I think we can say unembodied mind

That's one way to describe at least part or an element of who God is the

God of the Bible is as far as characteristic It's unembodied mind. That's a proper place to ground rationality because that's mental in essence

It's not something physical and I'm having trouble seeing how anything if it's ultimately physical or material would be able to say now

We ground rationality and what where's where where was the rationality? for example, and you know if ultimate reality came back to a rock

I How would that work but how would anything else work except for a

God who is unembodied mind, right? and so I just I want to know what else is going on in there that that anyone thinks would really work and so It's it's not as um

Sometimes I don't know. I don't know if it's as difficult as we might make it seem and a lot of it has to do with just put up what you got and if you notice a lot of what people got would

Never work and sometimes it doesn't even claim to work. That's what I'm trying to say. Hopefully that was helpful

Eli Yeah, no, that was that was very helpful So by what methodology can one determine whether or not worldview

X accounts for something like rationality? Well again, we are following a transcendental method

There's transcendental argument which we would use to justify our presuppositions, but there's also a transcendental principle or method that we follow

So the methodology would off would involve Laying out for example, what rationality is so you can pick a definition, right?

I'm we can agree upon a definition so if I'm just gonna pick a dictionary definition or rationality the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or Logic and so we're gonna ask the question, you know

Which worldview the Christian worldview or fill in the blank whatever worldview given their metaphysical assumptions their epistemological assumptions?

And their ethical assumptions their worldview foundations which worldview system can provide the preconditions for that So what must be true in order for something like logic to hold?

What must be true in order for something like predication to make sense? What must be true for all the features of rational experience and at that point we do a worldview comparison

Okay, now it's not simply we don't simply demonstrate the truth of the Christian worldview

Accomplishing that simply by refuting the non -christian worldview the fact that the Christian worldview can provide those conditions

It also follows from that point that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that can do so for reasons that I actually explained in a brief video

Entitled I think it well, maybe it's not a brief video But as a video entitled the impossibility of the contrary where I explain why there can only be one

Worldview that that does this? Okay, so we don't have time to go into that But you can look at that video for the details of that.

All right. Well, unfortunately, I have to wrap things up The wife is under the weather and I need to return back to my husband and fatherly duties

But vocab, thank you so much for what you're doing in general and thank you so much for coming on today I really appreciate it.

Well, yeah, thanks for having me man Hopefully somebody got something out of it. Shout out to the live chat and everyone who watches this video

Be sure to comment like and subscribe Yes, yes, thank you very much and also check out the street apologist and vocab books

Street level apologetics and Barack Obama versus what was it called the black? He was a black.

He bears their lights That's right. You guys can pick that up on Amazon Or if you live near him, you can kind of you know, knock on his door and annoy him.

There we go awesome well, I Dropped a brief video not that long ago kind of an informational sort of video

Entitled can do Calvinist determinists lack a justification for their belief.

I was kind of messing around with some stuff It's a like literally a three minute and a half video if if folks like that format of kind of informational stuff

And where you're not just seeing my face, but I kind of just explained some some things Relating to Calvinism or presuppositional ism if you guys like that let me know in the comments of that video and I'll start making more of those because it was a

Lot of fun putting together and I think it's useful, you know, nice quick little Informational reference there, so I'd really appreciate that but that is all for this video guys this this episode

Thank you so much for being so awesome in the chat I do apologize if I skipped any questions or anything like that.

Unfortunately, I have to wrap things up here I do this show as I catch the time. So So I really appreciate the support and the respect in the comment section well until next time guys take care and god bless.