TAG and the Stroudian Objection: A Moderated Dialogue

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today I am happy to have a moderated discussion going on this afternoon about the issue of presuppositional apologetics, transcendental argumentation, and a specific objection towards the transcendental argument.

So if those who are listening are familiar with, you know, presuppositionalism and the sorts of things that, you know, that we discuss and argue about, you know, criticisms and things like that, I think you guys are going to be very, very excited to listen to this specific topic.

Now, if you are unaware, you saw the thumbnail on the YouTube channel there, and you have no idea what the Stroudian objection is, the Stroudian objection to transcendental arguments, and you might think to yourself, you know, what's going on here?

How is this relevant to apologetics? How is this practical at all? Well, on one level, it's not very practical, okay? On another level, it's actually very practical, all right? Practicality is going to depend on your context.

I mean, it is very practical for someone who is digging deep into these issues to understand, you know, powerful objections to their position and have adequate responses in like fashion. If you disagree with transcendental argumentation, presuppositionalism, you know, maybe you find it interesting, but you don't think that, you know, the argument does what it's supposed to, then, you know, that's an important point to kind of bring out.

And so, I think this discussion is going to be really, really good. And if you want some background, obviously, if you're watching now, welcome, but if you want some background as to the nature of the Stroudian objection, I did have Joshua Pillows on a couple of previous episodes.

Well, one episode. I don't know how many episodes back, but I had him a while back. And we spoke about the Stroudian objection and not just the Stroudian objection, but we talked about presuppositional apologetics in general, covered a wide range of topics.

So, please don't be misled by the abstract title. We covered a lot of stuff that's super, super important, just generally speaking about the presuppositional method. All right? All right. Well, okay. So, I got that out of the way.

I also want to let folks know that if you go to revealedapologetics .com, you can sign up for PresuppU, in which I teach online courses on presuppositional apologetic methodology. There are folks already signing up.

If you go on the website there, you can click on the menu, PresuppU, and RSVP your spot. Classes will begin on June 1st, where I'll be meeting with those who sign up, and we're going to dig deeper into the content.

So, once you watch the lectures, we're going to meet weekly and dig in deep to unpack the content of those lectures. All right? So, if you want to do that, you can do that now. Classes will start June 1st.

If anyone has questions about the courses, what's included when you pay for the course, you can private message me on Facebook, and I'll give you all the nice, juicy details. Or, you can watch the previous episode, where I literally walk you through how to sign up and things like that.

Okay? All right. Well, all of that out of the way, let me introduce our guest today. Let me introduce the familiar face, Joshua Pillows. Okay? This is the guy I mentioned. He has a super tough name. He's a guy you don't want to bump into in a dark alley somewhere, because he probably will mug you presuppositionally.

Okay? I don't know what that looks like, but, you know, he'll shank you with a transcendental argument or something. Okay. And, okay. I'm going to try to get this right. Okay? My next guest is Balint Befeke.

Did I get it? Almost. Almost. Okay. It is for our purposes. Yeah. Okay. For our...

You're wrong, but for our purposes, fine. Can you say it one more time, so that I can make sure I'm...

How do you say it? My first name you got right is Balint, and then Bekefe.

Bekefe. Okay. So, Balint Befeke. Okay. I'm just going to call him... I'm going to call him BB. So, it's like, yo, BB, why you got to hate on the transcendental argument for? The K comes before the F. Okay.

All right. So, I'm just going to call him Balint. All right. Okay. So, why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself, Joshua, and then we'll move to Balint, and then we'll get this discussion underway.

So, if folks haven't watched the previous episode when you were on, why don't.

You tell us a little bit about yourself? I am... Well, I'm Joshua. I'm 25. I've been a Christian all my life and studied music as well. I've been in music for all my life as well. I play the piano, the organ, I compose music.

That's my primary field of study is music. But then about five years ago, I found Bonson through Apologia Studios. Jeff Durbin advertised it, and at that time it was on Covenant Media Foundations. And from that point on, basically everything changed.

And that got me more into the Reformed faith and especially into apologetics as well, presuppositional apologetics. So, I've studied that for about five years now. You know, I'm given all of my devotion to the Lord.

It's all for his glory. It's not for mine. And so, yeah, that's just a brief overview of my background. So, theology, philosophy, apologetics is not a primary study I do. It's more on the side as opposed to music, but.

I'm pretty much equally as interested in both. Very good. And Balint, Balint's an interesting guy, right? I just spoke with him briefly before we went live. He was like, hey, you know, I watch your show, man.

I like your show. I'm like, well, wait a second. So then what's the beef? What's the beef with the transcendental argument, man? Come on. You know, I'm just messing around. It's been a pleasure to briefly meet Balint.

He seems like a super nice guy, and I'm definitely looking forward to hearing what he has to say today. Because if we were to segment this in teams, I guess I'm on Joshua's team here, but as brothers in Christ, we're all on the same team.

So I'm looking forward to a really good discussion. But go for it. Why don't.

You tell folks a little bit about yourself, Balint? Okay. Hey, thanks for having me, Eli. My name is Balint. I live in Budapest, Hungary. I'm 24. I have been a Christian for around 10 years now, and I used to be a presuppositionalist.

I used to be a full-blown presuppositionalist. I kind of lost some parts along the way. I have some modified views. Nowadays, I told Eli that I think I would qualify as a presuppositionalist in John Frame's sense, but then I think William Lane Craig also qualifies as a presuppositionalist by those criteria.

So that's not saying very much. Okay. Very good. All right. So let's jump right into the discussion here. So Joshua, why don't you lay out for folks your position? So you are a presuppositionalist. Balint is a presuppositionalist.

He's a presuppositionalist once removed. Okay. What is your position as a presuppositionalist? How do you understand what it means to be a presuppositionalist, and how does that relate to the sort of argumentation you use, that kind of transcendental form of argumentation?

First and foremost, to be a.

Presuppositionalist is to put Christ at the center of your apologetic. Scripture, Christ's word is the foundation for presuppositional apologetics. And so the argument employed is a transcendental argument, which in layman's terms is that only the Christian worldview can justify intelligible experience.

Why is it we have uniformity, human dignity, moral absolutes, logic, knowledge, all that sort of stuff? We ask these big, grandiose questions. Well, what has to be true in order for this to be the case?

That's basically the transcendental argument, that the existence of God, the triune God, the truths of Christianity all have to be true in order to be the case, but also presupposed as well in order to have justification for all of your beliefs as well.

And so we stand on the authority of Scripture as God's revelation and argue on that authority, not on our own authority. We don't try to pretend to be autonomous and be our own gods and try to get to the ultimate God of the triune God.

It's standing on Scripture and.

Arguing on that basis. Okay, very good. That's kind of a basic outline of the presuppositional approach and the type of argumentation that Joshua would use. Balint, what's your position with respect to that sort of argumentation?

What are some of.

The issues that you have with that? Yeah, I think one way to understand the argument is that Valentin and his followers basically want to have two things at the same time, no neutrality, the antithesis, right?

So Christianity and non-Christianity are two completely opposite comprehensive worldviews, and there is no neutral ground shared by the two. That's one. And the other is that there's a positive argument for Christianity or apologetics is possible, right?

So you can prove the Christian worldview. And, you know, sometimes this is shown as the neo-Calvinist or the Dutch side of Vantill and the Warfield side of Vantill, so that's a combination. And as far as I currently can see, the combination doesn't work.

That's basically my position. I think if you push into one direction, you will lose neutrality and will have to argue more than Vantillians typically do. If you push in the other direction, you will go.

Too much into circularity and it won't work for that reason. Okay. So, I mean, Joshua, obviously you disagree with those points. Where would you give some pushback there? The latter. I mean,.

I've read Vantill's synthesis of Warfield and Kuiper and how he took aspects from both of them, but the latter issue with, if you go with Vantill, you're too much on Vantill's side, you embrace circularity and you're kind of just enclosed in your own bubble, if you will.

And then you shout from that tower and say, we're right and you're wrong. Well, everyone else has their own bubble and they're shouting from their tower. And at the end of the day, you get nothing done.

I think that's, and I'm pretty sure Balint and I have talked about that and others on Facebook threads about the circularity involved. So I think that would be the pinnacle. Yeah.

So now, how would you address some of those? You said you disagreed with the latter part. Why don't you clarify what that latter part was? Do you agree with his previous part? It's kind of the.

Two prong disagreements that Balint had there. Yeah. Again, I haven't read Warfield in a while and the context of apologetics, but Vantill is adamant about scripture is the rock. We argue from the truths of scripture.

We don't argue apart from them. And then we'll get there. Eventually we argue within the Christian worldview within those confines. And so if you do that, then you are at the forefront embracing Christianity, which is dogmatic and absolutistic.

And ultimately, people say, well, that's circular reasoning. You can just assume, which you want to prove. You have to be open-minded. Let's all look at the facts neutrally. And then we'll go to one circle or another, wherever it leads us to.

So the problem is you are at the outset coming in with a bias and saying, I'm right now, let me show you why you're wrong. And it amounts, I think Balint said, it's just not, it's not productive. It's not really.

Argumentation at all. Okay. And Balint, do you have anything to speak to what he just said there? Is there anything, I mean, he disagrees that the transcendental form of argumentation leads someone to the specific, two extremes that you pointed out previously there.

How would you.

Speak to that? Yeah. My view basically is that if you get into the details of tag, of formulating and supporting tag, you will find some holes there. And if you want to fill those holes, you will have to appear to the Christian worldview in such a way that the argument won't be persuasive to anyone who doesn't already accept the Christian worldview.

And I.

Think that's a serious problem. Okay. So Joshua, do you have any issues to speak? I mean, I'm thinking in terms of, I'm not sure, obviously I don't agree with something there, but I'm not, I'm trying to stay out of the discussion.

Is there something you'd want to speak to, to that, Joshua? I mean, do you think that in order to argue consistently, we're going to have to argue in a way that's not persuasive? I mean, what is the role of persuasion even play?

Is that even a valid element to bring into the discussion with.

Respect to critiquing transcendental argumentation? Yes. I believe it was in my appendix of my paper. Okay. Proof and persuasion are different things. It's one thing to persuade someone. It's another thing to prove your point.

You can be persuasive and not prove anything. You can prove something and not be persuasive. And I think that's the important thing that Balint's getting at. The question, I guess, would have to be, what would the holes be?

I mean, I've read your paper, Balint, but again, it's been a while. What exactly are the holes in the transcendental argument that need to be filled such that it reduces to not getting anywhere, basically?

Yeah. What are those, Balint? What are the holes? So you have the transcendental argument, you're taking out your philosophical guns and you're shooting holes in it. Where are these holes? And let's see if we can get into some of the details of these supposed holes.

Yeah. I mean, I think eventually we will have to get to introducing this throughout the objection itself. Do you mind if I do that, Eli? Absolutely. So let me phrase it for folks. Okay.

So if you're listening to this discussion here and you're saying, okay, I like presuppositionalism. I don't even know where I stand. Maybe I'm for it. Maybe I'm against it. The transcendental argument, yada, yada, yada.

But I have no idea what this Stroudian objection is. Balint, why don't you tell us who Stroud is and what is his objection to the transcendental argument?

Okay. So Barry Stroud was a secular philosopher. He wrote on transcendental arguments because in roughly the 1960s, secular philosophers have started talking again about transcendental arguments and proposing their own.

And Barry Stroud pointed out a problem with some of the transcendental arguments that he interacted with. He didn't interact with Van Til as far as I know. And his problem was the following. Okay. So the way TAG works, for example, is some of the sentences apologists say is like the proof for God is that without God, you couldn't prove anything and things like that.

So the idea is you take some phenomenon which you cannot deny or cannot deny without some kind of self-defeat like language, intelligibility, reason, knowledge, stuff like that. And you argue that something is a precondition for that in the sense that if that were to fail or something like that, then you would not be able to justify or have or something like that with the team experience.

And Stroud says that in many arguments that he had seen back then, it would be enough of a conclusion to say that, okay, this thing, this X you say must exist. We can just say that we must believe that.

So you say if there is no God, without God, you can't prove anything. Okay. So what if I can't prove anything? That's an option. So basically, we have to assume that God exists for us to get on with our lives well enough, like for morality to exist, the science to work, for us to have knowledge.

But even if God is necessary for these things, the skeptic and the transcendental argument is an anti-skeptical argument. The skeptic can still deny any of these. So this is why Stroud says that the argument either needs to somehow bridge this, what Michael Butler has called the conceptual ontological gap.

Something is necessary. We have to have as a concept necessarily, and it must exist in the world necessarily. We have to bridge that gap, but then the gap is bridged. So no need for an anti-skeptical argument, or you just end up with arguing for conceptual necessity for arguing that we have to believe things to go around.

So what you're saying is that if the transcendental argument as Van Till has put it forth, as Bonson has defended, if it proves anything, it proves only that the Christian worldview is conceptually necessary for knowledge.

In other words, not that it's ontologically true, but that you need it as an intellectual framework to say you can have knowledge about certain things.

Right. So it doesn't prove actually I must believe in it. I must believe in it in order to have all these things or in order to be consistent in the forming all those things, but it doesn't follow that it is actually true.

Okay. All right. So Joshua, why don't you speak to that? Why do you think that the transcendental argument, Joshua, goes further than that? So if he says, fine, even if I grant you the transcendental argument as presuppositionalist along stronger lines, someone that takes a more, I would say a more purist presuppositional position, right?

If I were to take Van Till and like Bonson, who's not as, well, Van Till's not as critical about his own position, right? Bonson wasn't very critical of Van Till except on some points, but in my opinion, and you can clarify, I think Bonson was a little bit closer in line with Van Till's position than Frame was.

If we grant Van Till, Bonson's argument, why doesn't that just prove the conceptual necessity? By the way, before you answer that, even if that were true, which I think it goes further, but even if that was, that's pretty good.

Still a very powerful argument, but I don't think it would go as far enough. But Joshua, why don't you speak to that? Why is it not just a conceptual issue here? Oh, and before you answer, I see the comments going, because not many people know who Bolland is.

People are asking if he's a Christian. So yes, I should have clarified that before, because people know who Joshua is. Bolland is a Christian. He loves Jesus, okay? He used to be a presuppositionalist.

Now he is a presuppositionalist with a lowercase p. He is a believer. So I just wanted to clarify that so people don't just assume you're... You could be a Christian and have criticisms against.

The presuppositional arguments. You would have to be a bad Christian though.

That's right. All right. So let me stop rambling here. Joshua, why don't you speak to that whole conceptual necessity versus the actual necessity, the ontological necessity of the Christian world.

Being true? Yeah. Bonson said... Actually, he said that even if Stroud is right, and he didn't believe Stroud was correct in his analysis of Mantilla, because even Bonson and Stroud... I don't even know if Stroud even knew Mantilla existed, to be honest.

But even if Stroud was right, and we come with this argument, and we don't actually prove that God exists, but we prove that we have to believe that He exists and all the truths of Christianity are true, we need to believe that just so we can save intelligibility.

Bonson said, well, it's still pretty good because you're basically telling your opponent, you have to assume you're wrong in order to argue against me. You have to assume I'm right. But of course, that keeps it in the play field of assuming.

It's purely epistemic. There's no metaphysical assumptions there. The reason I have argued Stroud does not affect Mantilla's transcendental argument is because Stroud was coming to the table with one worldview, and Mantilla has a different worldview.

So Stroud was coming to the table with a worldview that was plagued by egocentrism. We really can't get outside of ourselves. We have to start with ourselves, and then we look out to the external world, and we try to find the truths of the external world.

But of course, you can't really do that in an autonomous philosophy. You're kind of stuck with yourself. But he came to the table with that presupposition, that skeptical presupposition that we can't really know anything outside of ourselves, pretty much like Kant.

But that's not our worldview. Mantilla's worldview, we start with God as well. I mean, we start with ourselves as well, but we start with God at the same time. And so ultimately, the conclusion through a long series of premises would be it's ultimately a non-issue because it's not our worldview.

So Stroud needs to come over to our worldview and give an internal critique of that. And then we'll say, okay, yeah, your criticism applies to us as well, not just to autonomous worldviews. So that's been my contention we haven't even been on the same playing field.

So it's really not fair.

Okay. So then how would you speak to what Balint's getting at though? He says that the argument doesn't go far enough. Are you saying that it only seems to not go far enough because the criticism is presupposing some element of autonomy?

Since Stroud is not coming from a Christian perspective, he might not have even known who Mantilla was, he's critiquing Mantilla's transcendental argument with the assumption of autonomy, and that's why he's running into those issues.

So that transcendental arguments based on autonomy, they have the deficiencies that Stroud points out, but Mantilla's argument is not that sort of transcendental.

Argument. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Stroud was dead on. He was right. You can prove that you have to conceptualize something in order to make sense of it, but you can't necessarily prove that what it is you're conceptualizing exists in an autonomous atheistic worldview.

You can't do that. So conflicting presuppositions here, conflicting worldviews, and that's the problem is he affects all the autonomous worldviews over here, but we're over here kind of partying and dancing and whatnot, and he needs to come.

Over here and deal with us, and he hasn't done that. Join Christianity because we got the better dancers, bro. Come on, bro. All right. So Balint, so in your face, man, right? I'm totally kidding. Okay.

So on a more serious note, so Joshua's saying that the criticism doesn't fly because it is not accurately critiquing the transcendental argument along Vantillian assumptions, right? He's like, well, listen, autonomy is impossible.

Neutrality is impossible, and these objections seem to have hidden assumptions of autonomy and neutrality. How would you speak to that, Balint, from your.

Perspective? Well, it's kind of hard to get at the real issue here, I think. So saying that the argument, so this is the holes that I appealed to earlier. Saying that the argument's holes are filled by the Christian worldview doesn't make the argument successful.

It just means that the Christian worldview is internally coherent, but Stroud isn't critiquing the Christian worldview. He's explaining why he doesn't see a need to accept the argument, why the argument has no force from his perspective, and that's the issue here, I think, is that, okay, one way to illustrate this is with a parody argument.

I call it bag is the bad argument for God, and it has two premises. Hey, that's pretty good. That's pretty.

Good. Are you a proponent of tag? I'm a proponent of bag, all right? That's awesome. The first.

Premise of bag is that either the moon is made of cheese or God exists. The second premise is that the moon is not made of cheese, and the conclusion is that God exists. Now, both premises are true. The conclusion logically follows.

So what's wrong with this argument? I think that what's wrong with this argument is it is not appealing to anyone who doesn't already believe the conclusion, because the only reason to accept the conclusion, to accept the premises, is if you accept the conclusion.

But if we want to put into tag the premise that if Christianity is conceptually necessary, then it is also ontologically necessary. If you want to put in this premise for the argument to work, then the question is, how can we make this premise appealing to the unbeliever without him already accepting the.

Conclusion of the argument? How would you address that? Why don't you explain. For folks, then, Joshua, how do you move from conceptual necessity to ontological necessity? Or do you.

Not move from it? Can you unpack that? Well, me personally, I bag it all together, because that's what a worldview is. It's a network of presuppositions. So you have the presuppositional side of it. It's all in your head.

It's the knowledge aspect of it. But given the Christian worldview, you can't divorce the two. It's impossible. Definitionally, you can't separate the reality from the logic of it, if you will. So I come with it as an all or nothing argument.

Now, I could come to an unbeliever and argue conceptual necessity only, or I could argue ontological necessity only, or whatever. But for me personally, I come with both sides, because one implies the other, given the Christian worldview.

Yeah, he's right, though. I mean, this goes back to earlier. It's not an appealing argument, if you don't already... I mean, if you already accept the conclusion, it's appealing that God exists. But if you don't, like, all right, good luck.

Good job, Christian. I'm still an atheist. What are you going to do now? Well, what's the procedure then? Because you have... The transcendental argument typically is laid out as a syllogism. For P to be the case, Q must be the case, because Q is a necessary precondition for P.

And then you go on, P is the case, therefore, Q is the case. Well, how do you prove that Q is a necessary precondition of P? Well, it's from the impossibility of the contrary. So it's not as if I give the argument, and I just proclaim that God must exist, and that it justifies all intelligibility, and that's the case.

Case is closed. Well, no, I have to go on and elaborate on that, on the Q. Yeah. So how would you elaborate?

So if you were to say, you know, Q is the necessary precondition for P, and you have to demonstrate how it is the necessary precondition. So why don't you... Can you give, like, an example that would perhaps help Balint see, like, okay...

Or maybe this isn't a contention on your part. I mean, would you agree that the Christian worldview, Balint, provides necessary preconditions? I mean,.

What's your position with respect to that? Sure. If you mean whether that rules out any other world, you're also providing the necessary preconditions. I mean, if they were true, I think that's a slightly trickier issue, but I'm still sympathetic.

Do you believe that there can be other worldviews that can provide necessary preconditions, Balint?

So this would mean... This is like a conditional claim. So if Islam were true, would it be able to provide the necessary preconditions? I'm not talking about whether other worldviews are actually true.

And here my issue is that there is a big difference between the content of general revelation and special revelation. And I don't think we can say that the content of special revelation is transcendentally necessary in that sense.

So if there is another worldview that shares with Christianity whatever is revealed in general revelation, then I think I would have to say that that is also fine from this transcendental perspective.

But this is actually tangential to the current discussion, because that's another.

Question we have to ask. Sure. How would you speak to that, Joshua? Is there anything in.

There that you would take issue with? Yeah. To the question of could another worldview be true, being faithful to Van Til, the answer would be no, because by definition, you can only have one true worldview.

You can only have one ultimate transcendental. Because if you say yes, then you have every right to go around saying Christianity is true and atheism is true. If they're both consistent, then you have to say that they're both true, because you can have multiple transcendentals, but you can't have multiple transcendentals because they can't contradict each other.

You lose unity, you lose coherence, and then you lose intelligibility. So yeah, if someone just asked me, could another worldview be true, I'd just be like, no. My worldview already justifies intelligibility.

And so definitionally, every other worldview is wrong. That's one of the powerful things with tag is it's exclusive. You can't have contradictory realities.

Now, Balint, you said something to the effect that we can construct an argument, but it wouldn't be convincing to an unbeliever. What do you think is the role of persuasion? What's your view with respect to the role of the Holy Spirit?

It seems to me that if I were Joshua, and I'm not, and he could speak for himself, but I was just thinking, you were saying, well, it's not going to be appealing to the unbeliever, persuasive. I was thinking to myself, well, what's persuasive is really the work of the Holy Spirit working alongside what we're saying.

So of course, unless the Spirit is not persuading in a supernatural sense, and of course it's not going to be persuasive, but if his argument is successful, it will, as Bonson said, it will shut his mouth in the sense that he doesn't have any rational, I guess, response to the form of argumentation.

So it still plays a very powerful role in that regard. How would you speak to that?

Yeah. I mean, on one level, I obviously agree that it is the role of the Holy Spirit to convince anyone of Christianity and to bring people to the gospel. I mean, that's obviously true. But I think that's kind of a different sense of persuasion that's actually, that's effecting a change in one's position.

But I think when we talk about arguments, it's a bit different. Like if you give me an argument and I have no reason to accept the premises, unless I already accept the conclusion, I'm just going to ignore the argument, because it's just not relevant to me.

So I think any argument that even attempts to persuade has to have premises that the other person is expected to sympathize with. Can I get back to two points, Eli? Sure, absolutely. I have this mental list that's growing about things I want to respond to.

No problem. Okay. So one of the things is that getting back to this transcendental issue, of course, if Christianity is true, then all other religions are false or other worldviews are false, of course.

And of course, I believe that Christianity is true. So of course, I believe that other worldviews are false. But the other question is, is it true that if one worldview is able to account for transcendentals, let's say, then that automatically means that other worldviews couldn't, even if they were true?

I think that's a different question that has to be assessed.

Can you say that again? So repeat that phrase again.

Okay. So Christianity can account for transcendentals if it is true. So let's put it in conditional sense. If it is true, it can account for transcendentals. Does that mean that other worldviews couldn't, even if they were true?

So it would seem as though if a worldview is true,.

Then it would provide the necessary preconditions, wouldn't it?

So you're referring to transcendentals in a secular sense, like Wittgenstein? Are you talking about local transcendentals or broad considerations like Vantils?

I'm trying to keep with your terminology, Josh. So whatever you meant. He's putting it back on me.

I mean, you're probably not going to like this answer. But from a Vantilian side, again, and we'll get to this later, I'm sure. But since Christianity is true, there is no other worldview that can make sense of transcendentals.

Because Christianity is true, the only reason we can make sense of transcendentals in the first place is because Christianity is true. So again, I'm not open to allowing the hypothetical possibility of other worldviews being true, even though I know you don't believe they're true either.

But I'm not open to that hypothetical. I hope that helps.

Would you say, Josh, that because you're a Vantilian in your argumentation, and you say, well, I don't grant the possibility of any other worldview possibly being true. Would you say that that is, and maybe this might be a good way to invite Balint onto the other side of the fence, maybe not.

But would you be able to, or would you suggest that that can be defended biblically? That within the Bible itself, there's this idea that only God can be that sort of foundation, and he's the only sort of foundation.

I mean, I was reading a Vantil just the other day, that when you, for example, try to demonstrate the probability of God, you're not proving the God of Christianity because the God of Christianity is the Lord of possibility, the Lord of probability.

There's nothing more foundational than him. So if you demonstrate the existence of a God who's probably true, then that's not the God of Christianity. Do you think that perhaps there's a biblical argumentation to be had there to highlight the sort of God that you're trying.

To defend in a transcendental argument, Josh? If I follow you correctly, I would say that scripture comes to man as with God's authority. It comes with the authority of God, Christ speaking through it.

So there's no, again, I'm not sure what you were asking, but there's no probabilistic conclusion there. It's absolute because it says so on its own authority. There's one God, and you're either for Christ or you're against Christ, stuff like that.

So I hope that.

Answered your question. Well, let's shift a little bit then. There was something that Bollin said, and that you responded, Joshua, and said, well, I start with the entire worldview, right? You start with the existence of the Christian God.

Would a criticism of Bollin's view from your perspective be, and then Bollin, you could speak to this, is that your position is holistic, whereas the way he's coming about, it seems to be kind of a blockhouse methodology in the way he's critiquing you.

Does that make sense or am I off somewhere? Yeah, it's not.

Blockhouse in the same way. Well, it might be the same way where you build up your worldview one by one, but it all comes together. You can't, because now you've got to find a way to bring it all, all the blocks together.

But no, I mean, you could call it a blockhouse method. Certainly I don't, because I'm a Vantilian, agree with a blockhouse method. I agree with the, or I take the epistemic and metaphysical baggage altogether, and I go with that.

And it's crucial to note that every other worldview does that too. Atheists do that, Muslims do that, Buddhists, Hindus, whatever, they do that too. They can pretend or they can, for the sake of the argument, give up their presuppositions, but at the end of the day, you're either going to start with God or you're not going to start with God.

So it's inescapable. That's one of the points of, there's no neutrality at all. I mean, metaphysically, when it's these grandiose issues over the existence of God or whatever, you can't help but either start with it or without it.

And so that's kind of what we're getting at when we say everyone begs the question in that regard. You can't just be neutral about it. You're either with him or against him. So I'm begging the question, but if you're going to say I'm begging the question, then Strahd was begging the question because he started without God and I started with God.