TAG and the Stroudian Objection: A Moderated Dialogue

Revealed Apologetics

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00:02

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

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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.

00:26

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,

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I think you guys are going to be very, very excited to listen to this specific topic.

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Now, if you are unaware, you saw the thumbnail on the YouTube channel there, and you have no idea what the

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Stroudian objection is, the Stroudian objection to transcendental arguments, and you might think to yourself, you know, what's going on here?

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How is this relevant to apologetics? How is this practical at all? Well, on one level, it's not very practical, okay?

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On another level, it's actually very practical, all right? Practicality is going to depend on your context.

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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.

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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.

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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

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Stroudian objection, I did have Joshua Pillows on a couple of previous episodes, well, one episode,

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I don't know how many episodes are back, but I had him a while back, and we spoke about the Stroudian objection, and not just the

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Stroudian objection, but we talked about presuppositional apologetics in general and covered a wide range of topics, so please don't be misled by the abstract title.

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We covered a lot of stuff that's super, super important, just generally speaking about the presuppositional method, all right?

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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,

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you can sign up for PresuppU, in which I teach online courses on presuppositional apologetic methodology.

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There are folks already signing up. If you go on the website there, you can click on the menu, PresuppU, and RSVP your spot.

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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.

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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?

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So if you want to do that, you can do that now. Classes will start June 1st. If anyone has questions about the courses, you know, what's included, you know, 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?

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All right, well, all of that out of the way, let me introduce our guest today.

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Let me introduce the familiar face, Joshua Pillows, okay? This is the guy

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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?

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I don't know what that looks like, but, you know, he'll shank you with a transcendental argument or something, I don't know.

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Okay. And, okay, I'm going to try to get this right, okay? My next guest is

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Balint Befeke. Did I get it? Almost. Almost.

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Okay. It is for our purposes, yeah. Okay. You're wrong, but for our purposes, fine.

04:03

Can you say it one more time, so that I can make sure? My first name you got right is

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Balint, and then Bekefe. Bekefe. Okay, so Balint Befeke. Okay. I'm going to call him

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BB. So, it's like, yo, BB, why you got a hate on the transcendental argument for? The K comes before the

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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,

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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?

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I am, well, I'm Joshua. I'm 25. I've been a Christian all my life and studied music as well.

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I've been in music for all my life as well. I play the piano, the organ. I compose music.

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That's my primary field of study is music. But then about five years ago, I found

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Bonson through Apologia Studios. Jeff Durbin advertised it. And at that time, it was on Covenant Media Foundations.

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And from that point on, basically, everything changed. And that got me more into the

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Reformed faith, and especially into apologetics as well, presuppositional apologetics. So, I've studied that for about five years now.

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You know, I've 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.

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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.

05:43

Very good. And Bolland, Bolland's an interesting guy, right? I just spoke with him briefly before he went live.

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He was like, hey, you know, I watch your show, man. I like your show. I'm like, well, wait a second.

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So then what's the beef? What's the beef with the transcendental argument, man? Come on. You know, I'm just messing around.

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It's been a pleasure to briefly meet Bolland. He seems like a super nice guy, and I'm definitely looking forward to hearing what he has to say today.

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Because if we were to segment this in teams, I guess I'm on Joshua's team here.

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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.

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Why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself, Bolland? Okay. Hey, thanks for having me, Eli. My name is

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Bolland. I live in Budapest, Hungary. I'm 24. I have been a Christian for around 10 years now.

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And I used to be a presuppositionalist. I used to be a full -blown presuppositionalist. I kind of lost some parts along the way.

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And yeah, I have some modified views nowadays.

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I told Eli that I think I would qualify as a presuppositionalist in John Frame's sense. But then

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I think William Lane Craig also qualifies as a presuppositionalist by those criteria. So that's not saying very much.

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Okay. Very good. All right. So let's jump right into the discussion here.

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So Joshua, why don't you lay out for folks your position? So you are a presuppositionalist.

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Bolland is a presuppositionalist. He's a presuppositionalist once removed.

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Okay. What is your position as a presuppositionalist? How do you understand what it means to be a presuppositionalist?

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And how does that relate to the sort of argumentation you use, that kind of transcendental form of argumentation?

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First and foremost, to be a presuppositionalist is to put Christ at the center of your apologetic. It lays the foundation.

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Scripture, Christ's word is the foundation for presuppositional apologetics.

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And so the argument employed as a transcendental argument, which in layman's terms is that only the

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Christian worldview can justify intelligible experience. Why is it we have uniformity, human dignity, moral absolutes, logic, knowledge, all that sort of stuff?

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We ask these big, grandiose questions. Well, how is it that, you know, what has to be true in order for this to be the case?

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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.

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And so we stand on the authority of Scripture as God's revelation and argue on that authority, not on our own authority.

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We don't try to be, pretend to be autonomous and be our own gods and try to, you know, get to the ultimate

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God of the triune God. It's standing on Scripture and arguing on that basis. Okay, very good.

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That's kind of a basic outline of the presuppositional approach and the type of argumentation that Joshua would use.

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Balint, what's your position with respect to that sort of argumentation? What are some of the issues that you have with that?

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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?

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So Christianity and non -Christianity are two completely opposite comprehensive worldviews and there is no neutral ground shared by the two.

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That's one. And the other is that there's a positive argument for Christianity, or apologetics is possible, right?

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So you can prove the Christian worldview. And, you know, sometimes this is shown as the neo -Calvinist or the

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Dutch side of Vantill and the Warfield side of Vantill. So that's combination. And as far as I currently can see, the combination doesn't work.

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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.

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If you push in the other direction, you will go too much into circularity and it won't work for that reason. Okay.

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So, I mean, Joshua, obviously you disagree with those points. Where would you give some pushback there?

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The latter. I mean, I've read Vantill's synthesis of Warfield and Kuyper and how he took aspects from both of them.

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But the latter issue with, if you go with Vantill, too much on Vantill's side, you embrace circularity and you're kind of just enclosed in your own bubble, if you will.

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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.

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And at the end of the day, you get nothing done. I think that's, and I'm pretty sure Valentin and I have talked about that and others on Facebook threads about the circularity involved.

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So I think that would be the pinnacle. Yeah. So now, how would you address some of those?

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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?

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Kind of the two prong disagreements that Balin had there? Yeah. Again, I haven't read Warfield in a while and the context of apologetics, but Vantill is adamant about, you know, scripture is the rock.

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We argue from the truths of scripture. We don't argue apart from them. And we'll get there eventually. We argue within the

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Christian worldview, within those confines. And so if you do that, then you are at the forefront embracing

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Christianity, which is dogmatic and absolutistic. And ultimately, people say, well, that's circular reasoning.

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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.

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So the problem is you are at the outset coming in with a bias and saying,

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I'm right. Now, let me show you why you're wrong. And it amounts, I think Balin said, it's just not, it's not productive.

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It's not really an argumentation at all. Okay. And Balin, do you have anything to speak to what he just said there?

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I mean, is there anything, I mean, he disagrees that the transcendental form of argumentation leads someone to the specific, you know, two extremes that you pointed out previously there.

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How would you speak to that? Yeah. My view basically is that if you get into the details of TAG, of formulating and supporting

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TAG, you will find some holes there. And if you want to fill those holes, you will have to appear to the

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Christian worldview in such a way that the argument won't be persuasive to anyone who doesn't already accept the

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Christian worldview. And I think that's a serious problem. Okay. So Joshua, do you have issues to speak?

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I mean, I'm thinking in terms of, I'm not sure, obviously I don't agree with something there, but I'm not,

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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?

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I mean, what is the role of persuasion even play? Is that even a valid element to bring into the discussion with respect to transcendental argumentation?

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Yes. I believe it was in my appendix of my paper. Okay. Proof and persuasion are different things.

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It's one thing to persuade someone. It's another thing to prove your point. You can be persuasive and not prove anything.

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You could prove something and not be persuasive. And I think that's the important thing that Val is getting at. The question

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I guess would have to be, what would the holes be? I mean, I've read your paper, but again, it's been a while.

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What the holes, what exactly are the holes in the transcendental argument that need to be filled such that it reduces to, you know, not getting anywhere basically.

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Yeah. What, what are those Balin? What, what are the holes? So you have the transcendental argument, you take it out to your philosophical guns and you're shooting holes in it.

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Where, where are these holes? And let's see if we can get into some of the details of these supposed holes. Yeah.

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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?

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Absolutely. So, so let me phrase it for folks. Okay. So if you're listening to this discussion here and you're saying, okay,

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I like presuppositionalism. I don't even know where I stand. Maybe I'm for it. Maybe I'm against it. You know, the transcendental argument, yada, yada, yada.

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

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Okay. So Barry Stroud was, 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.

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And Barry Stroud pointed out a problem with some of the transcendental arguments that he interacted with.

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He didn't interact with Van Til as far as I know. And, and his problem was, was the following.

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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.

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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.

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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 that experience.

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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

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X you say must exist. We can just say that we must believe that.

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So you say if there is no God, without God, you can't prove anything.

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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, for morality to exist, the science to work for us to have knowledge.

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But even if God is necessary for these things, the skeptic and the transcendental argument is an anti -skeptical argument.

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The skeptic can still deny any of these. So this is why

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Stroud says that the argument either needs to somehow bridge this, what Michael Butler has called the conceptual ontological gap.

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Something is necessary. We have to have as a concept necessarily, and it must exist in the world necessarily.

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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.

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So what you're saying is that if the transcendental argument as Van Til has put it forth, as Bonson has defended, if it proves anything, you know, it proves only that the

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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.

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

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Okay. All right. So Joshua, why don't you speak to that? Why do you think that the transcendental argument,

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Joshua, goes further than that? So if he says, fine, you know, even if I grant you the transcendental argument as presuppositionalist along stronger lines, someone that takes a more,

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I would say a more purist presuppositional position, right? If I were to take Van Til and like Bonson, who's not as, well,

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Van Til is not as critical about his own position, right? Bonson wasn't very critical of Van Til except on some points, but in my opinion, and you can clarify,

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I think Bonson was a little bit closer in line with Van Til's position than Frame was. If we grant

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Van Til, Bonson's argument, why doesn't that just prove the conceptual necessity?

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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, a powerful argument, but I don't think it would go as far enough, but Joshua, why don't you speak to that?

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Why is it not just a conceptual issue here? Oh, and before you answer,

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I see the comments going because not many people know who Bolland is. People are asking if he's a

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Christian. So yes, here's the thing. I should have clarified that before because people know who

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Joshua is. Bolland is a Christian. He loves Jesus. Okay. He used to be a presuppositionalist.

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Now he is a presuppositionalist with a lowercase p.

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He is a believer. So I just wanted to clarify that. So people don't just assume you're, you know, you could be a

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Christian and have criticisms against the presuppositional argument. And you would have to be a bad Christian though.

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

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Christian worldview being true. Yeah. Bonson said, actually, he said that even if Stroud is right, and he didn't believe

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Stroud was correct in his analysis of Mantilla, because, you know, even balance it and Stroud, I don't even know if Stroud even knew Mantilla existed, to be honest.

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But even if, even if Stroud was right, and, you know, 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.

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We need to believe that just so we can, you know, 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.

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You have to assume I'm right. But of course, that keeps it in the play field of assuming it's purely epistemic.

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There's no metaphysical, you know, assumptions there. The reason I have argued Stroud does not affect

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Mantilla's transcendental argument is because Stroud was coming to the table with one worldview and, you know,

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Mantilla has a different worldview. So Stroud was coming to the table with a worldview that was plagued by egocentrism.

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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, you know, find the truths of the external world.

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And then, 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.

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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.

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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.

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So Stroud needs to, you know, 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.

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So that's been my contention is we haven't even been on the same playing field. So it's really not fair. Okay. So, so then what, how would you speak to what

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Bolland's getting at though? If, you know, he says that the argument doesn't go far enough.

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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

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Christian perspective? He might not have even known who Vantill was. He's critiquing Vantill's transcendental argument with the assumption of, of autonomy.

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And that's why he's running into those issues. So, so that transcendental arguments based on autonomy run, they have the deficiencies that Stroud points out, but Vantill's argument is not that sort of transcendental argument.

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Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Stroud was like dead on. He was right. You know, you can't, you know, 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, you know, atheistic worldview.

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

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And he needs to come over here and, and, you know, deal with us. And he hasn't done that. Join Christianity.

22:35

We got the better dancers, bro. Come on, bro. All right. So, so, so Balin, so, so in your face, man.

22:41

Right. Totally kidding. So, so, okay. So on a, on a more serious note, so um,

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Joshua was saying that the criticism doesn't fly because it is not, it is not accurately critiquing the transcendental argument along Vantillion assumptions, right?

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He's like, well, listen, you know, autonomy is impossible. Neutrality is impossible. And these objections seem to have hidden assumptions of autonomy and neutrality.

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What, how would you speak to that Balin from your perspective? Well, um, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of hard to, to get at the real issue here,

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I think. Um, so saying that the argument, um, so this is the holes that I appealed to earlier saying that the arguments holes are filled by the

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Christian worldview doesn't make the argument successful. Um, it just means that the

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Christian worldview is internally coherent, but, um, Stroud isn't critiquing, uh, the

23:43

Christian worldview. He, he's explaining why the argument, um, why he doesn't see a need to accept the argument, um, why the argument has no force from his perspective.

23:58

Um, and, and that's, that's the issue here. I think is that, um, um, okay.

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One way to illustrate this is with the parody argument. I call it bag is the bad argument for God. And it has two premises.

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Are you a proponent of tag? I'm a proponent of bag. All right. That's awesome.

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The first premise of bag is that, um, either the moon is made of cheese or God exists.

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Um, the second premise is that the moon is not made of cheese. And the conclusion is that God exists.

24:34

Now, both premises are true. The conclusion logically follows. So what's wrong with this argument?

24:43

I think that what's wrong with this argument is, um, 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.

24:58

But if, if we want to put into tag the premise that if Christianity is conceptual necessary, then it is also ontologically necessary.

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If you want to put in this premise for the argument to work, um, then the question is, how can we make this premise appealing to the unbeliever without him already accepting the argument?

25:24

How would you address that? Um, 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?

25:33

Is it, I mean, can you unpack that? Uh, well, me personally, I, I bag it all together. Um, you can, cause that's what a worldview is.

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It's network of presuppositions and, um, you know, so you have the presuppositional side of it and it's all in your head.

25:46

It's the knowledge aspect of it. But, um, given the Christian worldview, you can't divorce the two. It's impossible.

25:51

Like that's definitionally, you can't separate the reality from the logic of it, if you will.

25:57

So I, I come with it like, um, as an all or nothing argument, you know, now

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I could, you know, come to an unbeliever and argue conceptual necessity only, or I could argue ontological necessity only or whatever.

26:10

But for me personally, I come with, um, both sides because one implies the other, given the

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Christian worldview. Um, yeah, he's right though. I mean, this goes back to earlier, it's not an appealing argument if you don't already.

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I mean, if you already accept the conclusion, it's appealing that God exists, you know, but if you don't, you know, like, all right, good luck.

26:29

Good job, Christian. I'm still an atheist. What are you going to do now? You know, well, well, what's the procedure then? Because you have, you know, the transcendental argument typically is laid out as a syllogism, you know, for P to be the case,

26:40

Q must be the case because Q is a necessary precondition for P. Uh, and then you go on P is the case, therefore

26:46

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.

26:53

So it's, it's not as if, you know, 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.

27:04

Well, no, I have to go on and elaborate on that, on the, on the Q. Yeah. Mm -hmm.

27:10

So how would you, how would you elaborate? So, so if you were to say, you know,

27:15

Q is the necessary precondition for P and you have to demonstrate how it is the necessary precondition.

27:22

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.

27:29

I mean, would you agree that the Christian worldview Balint provides necessary preconditions?

27:35

I mean, what's your position with respect to that? Sure. If, if, if, if you mean whether that rules out any other world, you also providing the necessary preconditions.

27:47

I mean, if they were true I think that's a slightly trickier issue but I'm still sympathetic.

27:56

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

28:01

Balint? So this would mean, this is like a conditional claim.

28:09

So if Islam were true, would it be able to provide necessary preconditions?

28:15

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.

28:25

And I don't think we can say that the content of special revelation is transcendentally necessary in that sense.

28:32

So if there is another worldview that shares with Christianity, whatever is revealed in general revelation, then

28:40

I think I would have to say that that is also fine from this transcendental perspective. But this is, this is actually tangential to the current discussion because that's another problem, question with that.

28:52

Sure. How would you speak to that, Joshua? Is there anything in there that you would take issue with?

28:59

Yeah. If to the question of could another worldview be true, being faithful to Van Tilt, the answer would be no, because by definition you can only have one true worldview.

29:11

You can only have one ultimate transcendental. You know, that's like, because if you say yes, then you have every right to go around saying, you know,

29:18

Christianity is true and atheism is true. You know, 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, you know, contradict each other.

29:28

You lose unity, you lose coherence, and then you lose intelligibility. So yeah, if someone just asked me, could another worldview be true?

29:35

I'd just be like, no, my worldview already justifies intelligibility. And so definitionally every other worldview is wrong.

29:41

That's, that's one of the powerful things with tag is it's exclusive. You can't have contradictory realities.

29:48

Now, Bolland, you said something to the effect that we can construct an argument, but it wouldn't be convincing to an unbeliever.

29:56

What do you think is the role of, you know, persuasion?

30:01

I mean, what, what's your, what's your view with respect to the role of the Holy Spirit? I mean, it seems to me that if I were

30:07

Joshua and I'm not, and he could speak for himself, but I mean, I was just thinking, you were saying, well, it's not going to be appealing to the unbeliever persuasive.

30:15

I was thinking to myself, well, what's persuasive is really the work of the Holy Spirit working alongside what we're saying.

30:21

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, you know, rational,

30:38

I guess, response, response to the form of argumentation.

30:43

So it still plays a very powerful role in that regard. How would you speak to that? Yeah. I mean, on one level,

30:50

I obviously agree that it is the role of the Holy Spirit to convince anyone of Christianity and to bring people to the gospel.

30:58

I mean, that's obviously true. But the, I think that's, that's kind of a different sense of persuasion.

31:06

That's actually, that's effecting a change in one's position. But I think when we talk about arguments, it's a bit, it's a bit different.

31:15

Like if you give me an argument and I, and I have no reason to accept the premises, unless I already accept the conclusion,

31:25

I'm just going to ignore the argument because it's just not relevant to me.

31:31

So I think any argument that even attempts to persuade has to have premises that the other person is expected to, to sympathize with.

31:43

But can I get to, get back to two points, Eli? Sure. Absolutely. I have this mental list that's growing about things

31:50

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.

32:04

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 it's, then that automatically means that other worldviews couldn't, even if they were true.

32:28

I think that's a different question. Can you say that? Can you say that again?

32:34

So repeat that phrase again. Okay. So suppose, so Christianity can account for transcendentals if it is true.

32:43

So let's put it in the conditional sense. If it is true, it can account for, for transcendentals.

32:50

Does that mean that other worldviews couldn't, even if they were true?

32:58

So it would seem as though if a worldview is true, then it would provide the necessary preconditions, wouldn't it?

33:06

Or referring to transcendentals, like in a secular sense, like Wittgenstein or, you know, are you talking about like local transcendentals or like, you know, broad considerations like Van Til's?

33:17

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

33:29

I mean, you're probably not going to like this answer, but from a Van Tilian side, again, and we'll get to this later,

33:37

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.

33:49

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.

33:56

But I'm not open to that hypothetical. I hope that helps. Would you say,

34:02

Josh, that because you're a Van Tilian in your argumentation and you say, well,

34:09

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

34:20

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?

34:29

That within the Bible itself, there is this idea that only God can be that sort of foundation and he's the only sort of foundation.

34:36

I mean, I was reading in Van Til just the other day that when you, for example, try to demonstrate the probability of God, you're not proving the

34:45

God of Christianity because the God of Christianity is the Lord of possibility, the Lord of probability.

34:50

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

34:57

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,

35:06

Josh? If I follow you correctly, I would say that scripture comes to man as with God's authority.

35:16

It comes with the authority of God, Christ speaking through it. So there's no, again,

35:22

I'm not sure what you're asking, but there's no probability, there's no probabilistic conclusion there. It's absolute because it says so on its own authority.

35:30

There's one God, you're either for Christ or you're against Christ, stuff like that. So I hope that answered your question.

35:39

Well, let's shift a little bit then. There was something that Bollin said and that you responded,

35:47

Joshua, and said, well, I start with the entire worldview, right? You start with the existence of the

35:52

Christian God. Would a criticism of Bollin's view from your perspective be, and then

35:58

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.

36:12

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.

36:22

You can't, because now you've got to find a way to bring it all, all the blocks together. But no,

36:29

I mean, you could call it a blockhouse method. Certainly I don't, because I'm a Vantilian, agree with a blockhouse method.

36:36

I agree with the, or I take the epistemic and metaphysical baggage altogether, and I go with that.

36:43

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.

36:51

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.

37:01

So it's inescapable. That's one of the points of, there's no neutrality at all.

37:06

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.

37:15

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.

37:21

You're either with him or against them. So I'm begging the question, but if you're going to say I'm begging the question, then

37:27

Straub was begging the question because he started without God and I started with God. And so that brings us back to our circles.

37:33

And now we need to talk about, well, how do we be persuasive at that point? Because this doesn't look really good if we're all just here.

37:41

Sure. So you kind of get like a postmodernist situation. Yeah. Right. So Balan, is there anything you'd want to touch with respect to what

37:49

Joshua just said there? Kind of. I mean, I think one of the ways that he wanted to connect the dots here earlier, which would possibly bridge this gap of these two antithetical worldviews is, of course, the argument that Christianity is a necessary precondition for intelligibility.

38:14

And we can show this from the impossibility of the contrary. I mean, I think if this work,

38:22

I mean, this could work. The problem is, in my view, is that when presuppositionalists get to argue the point in fact, they don't argue the impossibility of the contrary.

38:35

They argue something like the irrationality of the contrary or the untenability of the contrary.

38:42

And that's when the problems come in, because when you want to say that if that's irrational, it must be impossible, you're again back to bridging this conceptual ontological gap.

38:52

Yeah. Okay. And Joshua, how would you respond to that? Is that what the transcendental argument is simply doing?

38:58

It's just pointing out the irrational? I mean, I hear this all the time. They'll say, well, you know, when I had, I had

39:03

Hugh Ross on from Reasons to Believe, and we talked very briefly about apologetic methodology.

39:09

And he says that sometimes I use evidential apologetics. He says, sometimes I use presuppositional apologetics.

39:15

Wow. He says, I mean, that's another issue. But he said something that I think is relevant here is that he says presuppositionalism is really good when pointing out the irrationality of the unbeliever's perspective.

39:31

But when I give a positive case, then I jump back into evidential. So, so without addressing the impossibility of hopping in and out of methodologies, how would you speak to that latter part, which

39:41

I think violent was alluding to is that if anything, you're just showing the irrationality of the person position, but that's it.

39:47

That doesn't get you to where you want to go. Yeah, it's a good criticism, actually, because classicist or classicalist make the same, criticism.

39:54

We start with ontology and then we conclude somehow with irrationality within epistemology instead when we lost our way throughout the argument.

40:05

Yeah. And in my paper, I did say that in worldview considerations, irrationality necessitates impossibility, precisely because the

40:14

Christian worldview is true and it can make sense of intelligibility. So we're going to keep going back to this issue of how it's being shown, how it's persuasive.

40:21

Say that again, Josh, please. I want to get that exactly.

40:27

So you said in worldview considerations, irrationality implies impossibility.

40:32

Yeah. And I put that, that's in my paper. I don't remember where, I think it's towards the end. Because the

40:39

Christian worldview is true and it can make sense of intelligibility, because Christ's revelation comes to us materially, because we have a history and all of that stuff bagged together.

40:50

It's argued from the impossibility of the contrary. And that irrationality does imply impossibility since Christianity is true.

40:58

I hope I worded that. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Here is, I think here is the center of our disagreement or here's the center of my problem.

41:06

We reached the center. How many licks does it take to get to the center?

41:15

Okay. So the issue is Josh, I think that you are again, bridging this gap by appealing to the truth of Christianity.

41:26

And I think that still makes tag just like bag.

41:31

Yeah. So again, we got to get back to how do we be persuasive about it? It's more of how do you illustrate it?

41:38

Because I can say the conclusion all day long that Christianity is true. And it's just going to bounce off the unbeliever's head, like, you know, water on a rock.

41:45

Well, how do you do it? Well, you argue from, you do internal critiques. You don't do an external critique.

41:51

So when John Warwick Montgomery, you know, criticized Van Til, Van Til's response was to do an internal critique of Montgomery's position.

41:59

So for the sake of the argument, you say, I'm wrong. Christianity is not true. You walk over to the unbeliever's side.

42:05

You first of all, show him that he has to assume metaphysical commitments as well as epistemic commitments.

42:11

You would do an internal critique of his worldview, show that it's not true. And I say, okay, well, how about you come over here to my worldview?

42:16

And then I can show, because I have metaphysical commitments to you, my worldview can make sense of intelligible experience.

42:22

It's not just consistent. It makes sense of logic, science, uniformity, and all that sort of stuff. And then we'll draw the conclusion from there.

42:31

Okay. Well, it meant that I think that's great as a strategy for discussing worldviews with unbelievers.

42:39

I think that's good, but I don't think that's a tag. I think that's kind of distinct because that's not making the argument that Christianity is true because of the impossibility of the contrary.

42:52

You say, well, one alternative has maybe several problems or is even irrational.

42:59

Christianity isn't, but what's the conclusion? Right. But remember there can only be one transcendental.

43:06

And so if Christianity satisfies that, then by default, it's the only position that's true. You can't have conflicting worldviews, true.

43:13

No, but you haven't shown that Christianity is true. How? Well, you just said it doesn't have the problems that you just shown for this given non -Christian worldviews to have.

43:27

Well, you don't, first and foremost, you have to show that, okay, Christianity is holistically consistent. You don't want to have an inconsistent philosophy or anything, but you also have to connect that as well to preconditions of intelligibility, because I could read

43:40

J .R .R. Tolkien and believe that the Lord of the Rings universe is holistically consistent, but that doesn't justify laws of logic, the one in the many, you know, induction, all that sort of stuff.

43:49

So it's a matter of showing, going through the worldview, comparing worldviews and showing in the Christian worldview, we can make sense of these preconditions.

43:58

Well, I just, I just don't see how you can make the inference that in the

44:04

Christian worldview, we can make sense of these preconditions. Therefore it is true.

44:10

I just don't see where you get that conditional from. Well, it would just have to come back.

44:15

We're going to keep coming back to the, I guess, the nature of a transcendental. You can't have conflicting transcendentals at the end of the day.

44:22

Otherwise you'd have to hold to a position where you believe there are contradictory realities happening simultaneously and not in like a multiverse theory, but like in one universe.

44:32

I think, I think you're, you're kind of jumping between two senses of precondition or transcendental or something like that.

44:40

One is that, for example, reason is possible because Christianity is true, right?

44:49

So there's this actual sense of presupposition. What is the actual precondition of reason?

44:56

Christianity. Christianity is true. And that's what makes reason possible. Okay. In that sense, obviously the truth without alternatives, but when we are comparing worldviews, you can only talk about in a sort of hypothetical sense, right?

45:10

So look, your worldview is unable to account for transcendentals, even if it were true, like even on its own grounds, it's insufficient.

45:20

And look, on its own grounds, Christianity is sufficient. It can account for transcendentals.

45:28

But at this point, we're not yet supposing that it is true. So I don't see how you make this jump still.

45:37

The jump from, are you talking about the jump from showing that we can make sense of transcendentals to it being true?

45:43

Yes. Are you talking about the jump from conceptual necessity to ontological necessity?

45:51

So I think what Joshua was saying is that if, if Christianity does in fact provide the preconditions, which is demonstrated by actually explaining how it does, then it must be true since you can't have multiple transcendentals.

46:05

And so at that point, when you're unpacking it and the person has questions, you just answer the questions throughout the course of the discussion, part of building the case.

46:12

Am I, am I right on that? Josh, I don't want to speak for you. And then if we took, let's take like one transcendental, right?

46:18

Let's, you know, take uniformity in nature for instance. And so what, what would your criticism be if we just focused on that one transcendental?

46:29

Well, one criticism is, so I think they are talking about two different issues here. So one of my criticisms, which is actually relevant to Stroud is that even if you show that Christianity has to be true for nature to be uniform, you haven't shown that nature is indeed uniform, right?

46:48

So unless you can show that as well, you're just saying that, well, if you want to think that nature is uniform, you have to also think that Christianity is true.

47:03

So if I, so if I came along and I said, my worldview can make sense of uniformity in nature.

47:09

And you're saying that an atheist could say, well, well, it doesn't, you may have to believe it, but that doesn't mean nature is actually uniform.

47:15

Is that what you're saying? Yes. Okay. At that point,

47:21

I would ask on what basis does he conclude that or anyone, it doesn't have to be an atheist, but again,

47:28

I have to ask on what basis does he conclude that nature is not uniform? Because again, we're going to, I'm going to keep pushing on the opponent.

47:35

I'm going to keep bringing him back to his worldview and ask him on what basis does he reach these conclusions? Because on my worldview, the transcendental reasoning necessitates the existence of God on his non -Christian worldview.

47:48

It's not going to do that. So when he comes with that conclusion, I'm going to push back on him and say, well, how do you know nature's not uniform?

47:54

Or, you know, explain the logic behind your criticism against me. So I'm not going to just let him get away with it at that point.

48:00

He still has his presuppositions that I'm going to hold him to. Right. And, and in that sense,

48:09

I think, so I think this kind of argument is helpful in basically what

48:17

Bonson called pushing the antithesis, right? So pushing for a more consistently skeptical version of non -Christianity, like, okay, you can't have this and this and this, if you don't want to believe in God, right?

48:32

You can't have ethics, you can't have science, you can't have this, that, and the other thing. That's true,

48:38

I think. So but the, the thing still is, you, you, you haven't proven

48:48

Christianity, right? So the problem here, I think, is that transcendental arguments are, are kind of anti -skeptical arguments, which is why

48:59

Goventil said that they are like, the tag is an absolutely certain proof, an objectively valid, absolutely certain proof, it just shows that it is true.

49:10

And, and it rules out all the alternatives. Well, if a version of autonomy, according to which science is unreliable, and ethics does not exist, is still viable, then

49:23

Goventil hasn't shown that Christianity is the only viable worldview. Well, it's, it's, you're not just critiquing the, again,

49:32

I'll take an atheist, you're not just going to the atheistic worldview and critiquing him, logically.

49:38

I mean, you also want to show the metaphysical incompatibilities there. There is no God. Okay, well, now we have this issue of how do you solve the problem of induction?

49:46

Where do you get the causal principle? How do you get one and many together, you know, moral absolutes, all that sort of stuff. So it goes beyond just the mere conceptual scheme that he's bringing to the table, and I'm bringing to the table.

49:55

I'm not only critiquing his worldview internally to show that it's incoherent, conceptually, I'm saying on your own grounds, you have no factor by which to reconcile the one and the many, uniformity in nature, you can't save science, you can't, you know, save moral absolutes or human dignity.

50:10

So I think it's important to note that I'm going after both epistemic assumptions, as well as the metaphysical baggage that comes with that worldview.

50:25

Well, honestly, I'm not sure what difference that makes, right?

50:30

Okay, so say you make the argument that the one and the many have to be unified in the

50:36

Trinity. Why? Because unless the one and the many are unified, there is no rationality, right?

50:47

So our predication or our thinking or whatever doesn't map onto reality, right?

50:54

That's basically the argument. Well, maybe it doesn't. So it still presupposes the falsity of skepticism, it still presupposes that these things are true.

51:11

I have a quick question. I do have a quick question. So I'm thinking, so you're saying, well, maybe it doesn't.

51:16

But wouldn't the intelligibility of your maybe it doesn't presuppose that what you're denying is, what you're saying is actually false.

51:24

I mean, unless the world is intelligible, even your objection wouldn't make sense. But here you are, assuming that there's intelligibility to your very objection.

51:33

So it seemed as though to even utter your objection, you'd have to presuppose the opposite of what you're rejecting.

51:40

Have I got that? Have I got that straight? Sure. Yes. And I think you are getting in the only direction that might actually save tag, because that's in my humble opinion, of course.

51:55

So one philosopher called Adrian Borden makes a distinction between two kinds of self -defeat.

52:02

One he calls self -stultification. So if a proposition is self -stultifying, then if it is true, you cannot be rational in accepting it, okay?

52:14

So think, for example, the idea that only empirically confirmed propositions can be known.

52:22

This proposition then cannot be known because it can be empirically confirmed. It still could be true for all we know.

52:29

It still could be true, but you could never get into a position where you accept it rationally. The other kind of self -defeat is what he calls performative self -falsification.

52:39

This is, say, the idea that no language exists. In the process of uttering this proposition,

52:46

I have proven it's false, right? So there is a sense of self -defeat which proves that the alternative is true, and there is a sense of self -defeat which doesn't prove that the alternative is true.

52:59

So if someone can put tag in terms of performative self -falsification, so in the sense that every aspect of it is such that if you deny it, you already proven that it's true, then that can work.

53:15

But I don't think that the argument from morals, from uniformity, from knowledge are such.

53:22

Okay. Let's say you. Can you meet the requirement that Valin has laid out,

53:29

Joshua? Or do you disagree that that's what needs to be done necessarily? How would you speak to that?

53:34

I don't debate the delineation between the two. I mean, that's what he opened up with in his paper.

53:42

Again, we're just going to keep coming back to the fact that the Christian worldview is true. I go to an atheist, he's going to say, my worldview is true, no matter what.

53:50

Now I can show that he's wrong and he can show that I'm wrong. But again, we're going to keep going back to that self -falsification of your worldview.

53:57

There's no God. Everything's random. It's chance. There's no immaterial unless you're anomalous or whatever.

54:04

I'm going to keep pushing him on that because he says it's true. And if I accept that as true, then I can't accept that as true because on his own assumptions, it makes no sense.

54:13

So in order to say that atheism is true, I have to assume it's false. And so that's where the self -falsification comes in.

54:19

I believe Valin might disagree, but again, I'm taking the baggage of metaphysics in with it because the atheist is doing the exact same thing.

54:27

He can't help it. You either start with the Christian metaphysical view or you don't start with the Christian metaphysical view.

54:33

So on his metaphysical view, there is no God. Therefore, he can't make sense of intelligibility.

54:39

So if I say you're right, I have to say he's wrong. Come over to my worldview. He has to say I'm right because I'm right.

54:45

Of course, I'm going to elaborate on that. I'm not going to just say I'm right because I'm right. And there's a circle, but of course, I'm going to expound on that.

54:51

But I think right there, what you said there is important, Joshua, regardless of whatever position someone holds, because a lot of presuppositionalists will stop with just the assertion that the

55:03

Christian worldview does all these things. I mean, that requires some elaboration. So I think that's an important point.

55:09

Now, whether one can elaborate sufficiently to meet the requirements of the argument, I think that's where Valin will say, no, it doesn't go far enough.

55:19

Valin, did you have anything to speak to what Josh was saying? Well, it sounded to me,

55:26

Joshua, like you're still, you're kind of making the argument that, well, the unbeliever does this conceptual ontological jump as well.

55:37

So he cannot object to us doing it as well. Well, I mean, that is true.

55:44

But my point is he is doing that. If you have an epistemology, of course, you're going to have a corresponding metaphysic to it.

55:51

And so you're not, you're just going to have some logical positivist sort of view. So he is assuming simultaneously epistemology metaphysics.

56:00

So I'm not going to allow him to object to me doing it as well. That's true. But that's the pivotal point that I'm getting at is he's believing in both.

56:07

So I'm to go to his worldview and assume both are true, not conceptually, but actually ontologically true, and then conclude that because your worldview is true, granting it's true,

56:17

I have to say it's false because it's self -defeating, it's self -falsifying. So that's the crucial juncture that I think the disagreements is going to be at is that the inextricable link between epistemology and metaphysics of a worldview, you know,

56:31

Bonson defined a worldview as a network of presuppositions, and that's what it is. But a worldview also has the baggage of it being true.

56:38

If you just had it at, you know, a network of presuppositions, it would be, as you say, a conceptual scheme, really.

56:44

And so now you get into the problem of conflating a conceptual scheme with a worldview. Well, what's the difference between the two?

56:49

And I argued that a worldview comes in with metaphysical truths. It is true. It is the case. And so when we do a reductio of our opponent's position,

56:57

I assume, no, God, that is the case. And now I have to conclude it's self -falsifying. Come over to my worldview and I'll show you it's not.

57:07

I hope that made sense. Okay. I'm trying to think what to say here.

57:14

So, okay. So one way to think about this is the concept of worldview here.

57:24

Do you think that the unbeliever will grant that connection? Between epistemology and metaphysics?

57:32

Yeah. If he was striving to be consistent, yes. Okay. So you think that the unbeliever will also, will not find the

57:45

Stroudian rejection persuasive because he already disagrees with it? No, the unbeliever,

57:52

Stroud is right with the unbeliever. It goes directly against his epistemology and his metaphysics.

57:58

You're stuck at the ecocentric predicament. And so you can't escape it. And so he has no basis to object to Stroud.

58:03

I mean, he might, I don't know, but he has no basis to do it. Okay. Eli, you got to help us out because I'm stuck in the dialectic.

58:13

I don't know where we are anymore. Okay. Well, very good.

58:20

I just want to let folks know if you have questions and there are some questions, you can send them in and I will try to go through them in a couple of minutes.

58:29

We'll do Q &A here. And that should be, that's a very fun part of the show because you never know what people ask.

58:37

There's someone asking if I can put the people's, you got your descriptions in the link, but you guys don't have like websites or anything like that to my knowledge, right?

58:46

I mean, do you have anything that people can go to, Balint, to read up on your paper or something like that?

58:53

Yeah. If you search for my name in Google, you will find my academia .edu page. And you can find a lot of Hungarian articles there, and you will also find this paper in English.

59:03

Okay. And what about you, Joshua, where can people go to read up on your stuff? I think the website is apologeticscentral.

59:11

It's a New Zealand website, but I actually, I just emailed Dr. Anderson about uploading my paper on to vantill .info.

59:19

And so I'm going to, I think I'm going to upload that on either academia or humanities, one of those two websites.

59:25

And then from there I'll say, Hey, I uploaded it. And then he'll put it on that website. So it should be up on vantill .info

59:31

pretty soon. All right. Well, to be perfectly honest, I have been very, very

59:37

I have been enjoying this discussion. There's some interesting stuff here, especially for people who have some, some background where they can kind of follow little rabbit trails that are somewhat important, but not the focus of this discussion.

59:50

So if you have some background, you guys have opened up a can of worms and other areas that I think are interesting to pursue, you know, poor

59:56

Bolland was like, Oh, well I have the whole list of questions that I want to have. You know, that that's usually when someone clarifies and gives an answer, there's like more questions that arise.

01:00:04

And that's, that's, that's simply how these sorts of discussions go. So we can't avoid that. So okay.

01:00:10

So we kind of know what the heart of the disagreement is. Why don't we summarize each position again to clarify for some context, maybe for some questions, and then we'll move into the questions here.

01:00:20

So we're right at the top of the hour. I think this is it's this heavy stuff. And I think this is going to be really, really good for people to review and kind of, as they're learning on their own, kind of becoming familiar with these sorts of issues that are related to transcendental arguments and things like that.

01:00:35

So so Joshua, why don't you briefly summarize your position again, Bolland will summarize his disagreements with, with your position.

01:00:43

And you can take as long as you'd like. There's no, there's no rush here. And then we'll move to the questions to move to the questions in the comments there.

01:00:52

So why don't you go for Josh? All right. So my position, I've argued that Christianity is true from the impossibility of the contrary.

01:01:01

And so a lot of this has been expounded on that. Well, how do we know that everyone has a worldview that they hold to everyone assumes that that worldview is true.

01:01:09

And so with that, I'm going to tag on that the reality of the worldview is itself true as well.

01:01:15

I'll take that for granted, because in my Christian worldview, the conceptual part and the ontological part of God existing are both true.

01:01:23

That's my worldview. So if an unbeliever wants to come to me and criticize that he's got to come on my worldview and show how there's an incompatibility there somewhere from the impossibility of the contrary,

01:01:34

I will open up invitation to any non -Christian who wants to prove their position or disprove

01:01:40

Christianity. And I'll stand on his worldview, not just conceptually on his web of beliefs in his brain, but ontologically as well.

01:01:47

What's the reality of stuff that's happening outside of you? What's going on in the numinal realm over there.

01:01:53

And on that basis, I'll critique it and show that it is an impossible worldview to hold to. Not only is it impossible, but it assumes that my worldview is already true.

01:02:02

It has to assume the truths of Christianity in order to argue against the truths of Christianity. That's the power of the transcendental argument.

01:02:10

And so I hold to the faithful Vantillian side of arguing transcendentally with Scripture as my foundation, starting with the existence of God, with revelation, the concrete revelation that we have in the pages of Scripture, and showing that only on the

01:02:26

Christian basis can we make sense of uniformity, logic, intelligibility, and only on the

01:02:32

Christian worldview can we make sense of there being an external reality that we can be in touch with. On every other non -Christian worldview, you have a problem.

01:02:39

You're cut off from yourself and what's external to you. But on the Christian worldview, we don't have that problem.

01:02:45

So we know it's true, and we argue from the impossibility of the contrary, that every other worldview is false. You cut off that connection.

01:02:52

You don't know what's external to you, but I'll grant that it's the case and show how it still leads to metaphysical absurdity and show that my position is true.

01:03:00

Okay, Balan, why don't you summarize your position? Sure. Well, I'm a Christian. I believe the

01:03:06

Bible. I've learned a lot from presuppositionalists. All of this is fine for me.

01:03:14

I've been making the technical point that I think the argument, the transcendental argument has a step in which it claims more than what it performs.

01:03:27

That is that it claims to show, to prove the truth of Christianity.

01:03:32

But I think that's kind of incompatible with the nature of transcendental arguments, because transcendental arguments kind of uncover our conceptual structure.

01:03:43

They uncover how we must think. I think this can be seen when presuppositionalists argue the impossibility of the contrary, because they actually usually argue something like the untenability of the rationality of the contrary.

01:03:58

And if then they want to breach the conceptual ontological gap to argue that Christianity is in fact true,

01:04:05

I think they engage in a version of circularity that is vicious. Okay. I said it before,

01:04:12

I really enjoyed this. I didn't know what to expect. I mean, I know Joshua, I don't know Balint and he is a very smart guy and has brought some interesting things to the discussion here.

01:04:24

And I think Joshua also has shared some really good points that definitely gives the listeners some food for thought.

01:04:31

So that's exactly what I was hoping for. I was in the corner praying while they were talking like, Lord, please don't let this be a dumpster fire.

01:04:38

Totally kidding. But this ended up being an excellent discussion. So with that, with those two summaries, why don't we move?

01:04:45

I'm going to scroll all the way up to the top here.

01:04:51

Okay. So let's start taking some questions. So Scott has a question. He says, how is Stroud's criticism relevant to Van Till since he admits that Donald Davidson's rejoinder, that the skeptic's very thoughts require metaphysical truths is successful, but obligates

01:05:07

Davidson. I don't know. Obligates Davidson to accept

01:05:13

Kantian idealism, which Stroud also thinks is problematic. While Van Till's model seems to equally answer

01:05:19

Stroud without the weaknesses of Kant. So I'll go through that question again here. That's a kind of a long one. Let's try to keep the questions simple, but okay.

01:05:29

So how is Stroud's criticism relevant to Van Till since he admits that Donald Davidson's rejoinder, that the skeptic's very thoughts require metaphysical truths is successful, but obligates

01:05:39

Davidson to accept Kantian idealism, which Stroud also thinks is problematic.

01:05:44

While Van Till's model seems to equally answer Stroud without the weakness of Kant. Now, I'll let you go first Bellant, because I believe you addressed this directly in your paper, right?

01:05:55

Okay. Yeah. I have to tell the story first that Scott is actually in the, in the acknowledgements of my paper, because back in 2015 or so, he almost convinced me that actually works.

01:06:07

Then I concluded that it doesn't, but part of my paper is based on his arguments. Yeah. So I think the issue here is that just like accepting idealism, accepting

01:06:22

Christianity supplies this bridging principle from conceptual, conceptuality to ontology, right?

01:06:31

But the problem is you, you cannot have as a premise what you want to prove.

01:06:40

So you cannot use Christianity to bridge this gap if you already want to, your conclusion to be that Christianity is true.

01:06:46

So I think there's a sense of circularity there, which is why Stroud says that idealism renders transcendental arguments kind of superfluous because you're already at that position, which you're trying to prove.

01:06:59

Yeah. Okay. All right. Scott also asks, how long has

01:07:07

Bellant been modeling for Calvin Klein? I told you, man,

01:07:13

I told you he's a good looking dude. I hope my wife sees this.

01:07:19

Okay. All right. Here's a question from redefine living. One can only argue against the

01:07:25

Christian worldview. If the, if, if the first presuppose it is false, that's a kind of a grammatical error.

01:07:31

I would like to know what evidence they have to come to the conclusion that Christianity is false.

01:07:37

I don't know if this is a rhetorical question, but is that something that any, anyone could speak to there or is it incoherent?

01:07:44

I'm not sure what the first sentence, if they're saying you can only argue against Christianity, the

01:07:50

Christian worldview, if you presuppose that the Christian worldview is false or presuppose that your own worldview is false.

01:07:56

Yeah. It seems to be like if the person is arguing from a non -Christian perspective, he has to presuppose it's false.

01:08:04

So I guess he must know what perspective or the Christian perspective. Well, I think it would be the non -Christian perspective since he wouldn't argue from the

01:08:11

Christian perspective that Christianity is false. Right. Yeah. I think he, I think he's making the point that arguments against Christianity are question begging.

01:08:21

Oh, well, if that's the case, then I'll just point out 10 things that you have to do. You beg the question all the time, not you Balint, but everyone does to see you prove reason without reason, prove logic without logic, prove uniformity without uniformity.

01:08:31

You know, there's some things you have to assume, you know, and that's where you get to the difference between vicious circularity and virtuous circularity, which would be again, another discussion.

01:08:42

But I mean, there are some things you have to assume in order to argue for or against, those are the transcendentals, such as laws of logic, laws of mathematics, causal principle, uniformity, all that sort of stuff.

01:08:53

So yeah, I'm not sure how to answer this particular question. Okay. That's all right.

01:08:58

We can, we can move on here. You know, this is a statement, but I'm actually interested in it here.

01:09:04

So epidemic 2020 says, it seems to me that Stroud's objection is an internal critique.

01:09:12

I suppose that would be a question for, well, I guess for both of you, Balint, do you think that Stroud's objection is a sufficient internal critique of Van Til's version of the transcendental argument?

01:09:25

Well, I'm a Christian and I think the argument is good. So the objection is good. So I guess it is internal in that sense.

01:09:31

It works in my Christian worldview. So I don't think Christianity supplies the conditional that whatever is conceptually necessary is metaphysically necessary.

01:09:44

I don't think that's in the Bible or anything. I mean, obviously Christianity has the claim that Christianity is true, but it doesn't work for everything.

01:09:53

I agree. Okay. Yeah. I'm pretty sure this is Aaron. Aaron, if you're seeing this, I know this is you.

01:10:00

I have to give him, I told him I'd give him a shout out last time and I forgot. Yeah. Again, I stayed in my position earlier that really it would depend on what theology you hold to.

01:10:10

I mean, if knowledge of God is inescapable, if we're made in his image, then it's not an internal critique because again,

01:10:16

Stroud starts without God, divorced from God. We start with God simultaneously. We can't escape it.

01:10:22

There's no point in which we don't know God. So again, I would disagree that it's an internal critique. I think it's more of an external critique.

01:10:29

Okay. Now this is a statement by urban reform podcast,

01:10:35

Ricky Roldan. And the reason why I put up there is because I actually have to say, because this addresses what

01:10:41

Bolland said with regard to persuasion. Ricky says here, I persuaded quite a few atheists that Christianity was true, given our worldview.

01:10:48

I have to say that I have too. It seems that with a lot of people think, well, that's not just persuasive.

01:10:54

Well, I mean, it depends. I mean, I've persuaded some people before. I mean, someone could say, well,

01:10:59

I don't think the cosmological argument is persuasive. Well, I don't think the fine tuning argument is persuasive. I think there's that issue of proof and persuasion is the persuasiveness of the argument, a necessary component of the argument.

01:11:14

How would you speak to that Bolland? And maybe Joshua can share his thoughts there. So, if Ricky were to tell you

01:11:19

Bolland, well, I've persuaded people. Some people have found it persuasive and I've used it in effective ways.

01:11:26

How does that go against your statement before that it's not really persuasive to the unbeliever? And so therefore, it seems to be a sort of deficiency within the position.

01:11:34

Right. So first I want to say that Ricky is my nemesis and thanks for watching Ricky and I love you.

01:11:42

And yeah, so I don't think that like all of presuppositionalism is like question begging and not persuasive.

01:11:50

I think that the specific move that Joshua makes to fix this gap in the argument ends up being question begging.

01:11:57

But like, if you show an unbeliever that his worldview is untenable and Christianity is great and accounts for everything, that itself can be persuasive.

01:12:07

It's just not in a technical, logical sense, a proof of Christianity. Okay. All right.

01:12:12

Josh, would you like to speak to that at all? Yeah, I agree. It's persuasive. If you can show, it's kind of like a logical trick, if you study logic, if I can show that your position looks stupid, then obviously it's wrong.

01:12:24

So then my position must be true. And I agree, it doesn't logically follow in all cases.

01:12:32

Again, I've argued it does in worldview considerations, but again, that's part of a 40 page paper that I'm definitely not going to read out to you right now.

01:12:41

But yeah, if you show that an atheist, his worldview is absurd, that is persuasive and it can lead them to Christ.

01:12:48

But again, I've argued many times that I grant the metaphysical truths of their worldview to show that it's not only absurd, it falsifies itself.

01:12:57

I mean, praise God for persuading. I mean, they may have been persuaded, Ricky, I don't know if they actually converted or not, but yeah.

01:13:05

Sure. Okay. Very good. Tanner asks the question, either the moon is made of green,

01:13:10

I'm sorry, green cheese is usually the example that's being used, so it doesn't say green there.

01:13:16

So there we go. So either the moon is made of cheese or God exists in the form of A or B.

01:13:23

Tag is in the form of A or not A. Can you give bag in the form of a true dichotomy rather than a false dichotomy?

01:13:34

So I guess bag is your argument, Balint, right? Yeah. Honestly, I think this is, okay.

01:13:43

I think this comment is confused because like, and if you, if you look that up, there's a very long discussion between Alex Malpass and Matt Slick who makes, who proposes kind of an argument like this and Alex Malpass tries to explain to him why it's logically confused and he fails in explaining it, but he's right because A or not

01:14:12

A is just by definition true for anything. Like that's, you shouldn't put that in an argument because it's just a law of logic.

01:14:19

You don't put the laws of logic in your argument as premises, right? So if you want to make an interesting statement, you say not

01:14:25

A or not A, you say you state A or B and then you decide if that dichotomy is true or not, right?

01:14:34

Because then you can infer that if one is false, then the other is true. Otherwise it's just a logical tautology. Okay. Did you want to speak to that at all,

01:14:43

Joshua, or is, or was that sufficient? I think he did. Okay. Okay. Tanner has another question.

01:14:52

Tanner asks, does Balint believe that a worldview's position on the ontological nature of man will logically entail things about the nature of logic and reason?

01:15:04

Not logic in the abstract, but in the epistemological sense, yes. Right. So our access to logic, uh, our ability to reason that definitely makes me, uh, uh, has entailments.

01:15:16

Yes. Okay. Um, do you have anything to say to that, Josh? Okay. Give some questions to Josh to Eli.

01:15:25

I know. I'm just, there's not a lot of questions that are, they don't really specify who's there, who's from, and then

01:15:31

I have to get through the comments so that I can get to the questions. Here's a, here's a good one. Okay.

01:15:41

All right. Let's see here. All right. Here's a statement here by Chris Matthew.

01:15:48

Um, I think it was related to, um, Balint's comments on stealth, on self -stullification.

01:15:53

So he says self -stullification, the denial of some proposition P cannot be rationally affirmed.

01:15:59

So I think that's something in reference to when you said, well, maybe, maybe, maybe everything is irrational.

01:16:06

So, uh, is there something you could kind of expound in there? Is this kind of a saying, well, you can't say that I guess this is how

01:16:12

I'm understanding the statement here. You can't say that because to even say, well, maybe it's that way is kind of self -refuting.

01:16:19

I think Chris is just stating the definition of self -stultification and I agree with that. Okay. All right.

01:16:25

Well, well played. That was good. Okay. Let's see here.

01:16:31

Moving along. Let's see here. You guys doing a good, good job.

01:16:39

Okay. Here. Uh, Tanner has another question. Thank you, Tanner, for these questions. If someone rejects uniformity, then on what grounds can their use of language consistently be the cause of the meaning transferred between agents,

01:16:54

Josh, Josh, you want to, well, I mean, if there is no uniformity, then there really is no consistency, but I don't know if he's referring to the assumption of rejecting it or if it's actually, if it actually is not uniform because if nature is not uniform, then language wouldn't be consistent.

01:17:15

Nothing would be consistent. Everything would be, you know, chaos and fury signifying nothing. Um, so,

01:17:21

I mean, if you reject uniformity, then you have the logical tension because now you have two propositions that are in conflict with one another.

01:17:27

You've got to find a way to resolve it. Hmm. Okay. Um, Marcus Lovato says, uh, or asks if it's argued that a particular epistemology that rules out alternatives is true and we give the possibility of others being true, wouldn't that mean we use other epistemologies other than what we argued?

01:17:49

I don't know if that makes, if that question makes sense, anyone could take a stab at it.

01:17:56

I'm not sure if who's referred to. Um, I mean,

01:18:02

I think this is correct, but I, I'm not exactly sure. Um, oh, I see what the indication is.

01:18:08

Yeah. So he's, I think he's trying to say, well, if, if I can say Christianity is true and it can make sense of intelligibility, um, and non -Christian worldviews are not true.

01:18:17

Well, does that mean that I need another worldview, um, higher above the Christian and non -Christian worldviews in order to make sense of the other two?

01:18:25

Uh, and the answer ultimately would be no, since Christianity is true, which brings us back to the issue of circularity.

01:18:31

Everything is within the Christian framework, but it is a good question. It's kind of similar to, um, well, what if you had another transcendental?

01:18:37

Well, then you'd need a third transcendental to make sense of the other two and on and on you go forever and ever and ever. Um, so it is a good question.

01:18:45

Uh, but you know, you're using, if you're ruling out other worldviews, other epistemologies that is, um, grounded in the

01:18:51

Christian epistemology. Okay. Thank you for that. Um, Bolland, was there anything you wanted to speak to with regards to that?

01:18:57

I didn't want to pass you by there. Okay. Tanner strikes again. If axiology is not necessary for knowledge, then how does one build a logical system without value judgments between truth and falsehood and between irrationality and rationality?

01:19:12

Anyone could take a stab at that. I'm not sure. Okay. That's fine.

01:19:21

I kind of feel like the commenters think I don't have a Christian worldview and they are trying to convince me, but I already do.

01:19:28

You've said it like three times already. He's a Christian. He's a Christian. When you go to heaven, when you go to heaven,

01:19:34

Bolland is going to welcome, if he dies before you, he's going to welcome you with his transcendental denying arms. Yeah.

01:19:40

I mean, Bolland holds to Christian axioms. I don't know how you're going to define the term axiom, but like he has a, he's a, he has a

01:19:48

Christian worldview. I'm not sure this doesn't apply to Stroud. I don't think. Okay.

01:19:53

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

01:19:59

Moving. We're almost done. There was a question here. So I just skipped it.

01:20:04

Where did you go? Oh my. Okay. So here we go.

01:20:10

Um, this is not a related question. You want, I could just move on to the questions that seem related, but we do get a mixed bag here.

01:20:17

Um, maybe someone might want to address this. If not, we can move along. What is the difference between faith and reason and how, how, and how your answer relates to tag?

01:20:26

So what is your understanding of faith and reason? And how does that relate to your understanding of the transcendental argument?

01:20:33

And maybe Bolland could share his thoughts with respect to however, Joshua answers this question.

01:20:39

Uh, yeah. So faith lays the foundation for reason that has been the, um, orthodox view and presuppositional circles.

01:20:48

So the faith or the promises we hold to in scripture, um, those revelatory truths are the foundation by which we go on to reason, um, in any field whatsoever.

01:20:58

And so this goes back, I think to my opening, opening statement of how, um, the transcendental argument proceeds off of scripture and the truths therein.

01:21:07

And so our faith in, uh, scriptural truths is how we proceed. So we definitely don't place reason above faith, autonomous human reason, because we're fallible or subjective, but, um, our faith in the infallible scriptures is the foundation for our apologetic.

01:21:23

Okay. Is there anything you don't, you want to speak to that Bolland? Um, not really.

01:21:30

I mean, I think some would make the point that, um, um, a, there being an absolutely certain proof for Christianity is somehow incompatible with, with this requiring faith.

01:21:42

Right. So some people think about faith in that way as somehow being incompatible with like absolutely certain proof.

01:21:50

Um, I, I don't have a firm position on that. So, okay.

01:21:56

All right. Thank you. Uh, your nemesis strikes again, Bolland. He says I got to run, but, but ask Bolland if he believes that Christianity is objectively true.

01:22:05

And if so, why? And if not, then why? I guess, I guess, I guess this question is striking at your epistemology maybe.

01:22:13

I mean, he knows you're a Christian, so he knows you believe Christianity to be true, but maybe he's striking at kind of a more fundamental question.

01:22:20

And how would you address that from your perspective? Okay. Um, well,

01:22:26

I've just finished my thesis on biblical epistemology. And my conclusion is that the

01:22:31

Bible is roughly evidentialist, just to ruffle some feathers there.

01:22:38

Um, and, um, yeah, so I think, um, there, there is a part that's like objective evidence and arguments, including the presuppositions of intelligibility.

01:22:51

Um, but I also think like, if you look at first Corinthians one and two, um, you find a sort of epistemology that is, um, that is antithetical to both the

01:23:03

Greek pursuit of wisdom and the Jewish pursuit of evidence, right? So, um, instead

01:23:11

Christ is a stumbling block and the gospel is a stumbling block to these epistemologies. And I think they can, uh, that means something like the epistemology of believing the gospel is something

01:23:23

I can experience something in like something that's available to us internally, but that's, that, that is neither a philosophical argument nor an evidential proof.

01:23:34

Yeah. Okay. Would you have anything to say to that Joshua or, or no, like the, uh, like, like how the spirit convicts us of the truths, right.

01:23:42

Is that, yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. This one's for Josh. I'm sorry. Most of them were for, for,

01:23:47

I think for you, Bob, but here's one for, for Josh. Brenda asks by what criteria do you distinguish virtuous, virtuously circular arguments from non -virtuously circular, circular ones?

01:23:59

A virtuous circular argument is one in which the prem or the conclusion of the argument has to be assumed in the premises of the argument.

01:24:07

Um, by definition, it can't just be taken for granted. So, you know, Jason Lyle likes to use the laws of logic.

01:24:15

How do I prove the laws of logic? And I can give all these premises and then the conclusion is therefore the laws of logic exist.

01:24:21

Well, what did I do in the process of getting the argument? I assumed that laws of logic exist and you have to, it's inescapable.

01:24:28

So a virtuous circle is when you have to assume the conclusion, um, in the premises. And I think balance said the same thing.

01:24:34

I think Stroud was, uh, well aware of that as well in his transcendental analysis, a vicious, uh, a non -virtuous, um, argument is a circular argument in which the conclusion is not necessarily, um, needed, not needing to necessarily be presupposed.

01:24:50

So, you know, if I said, um, the sky is blue because the sky is blue, you know, that's about as circular as it gets, but there's no necessary factor that says the sky must be blue.

01:25:01

Um, whereas the laws of logic, you have to assume them, you have to assume the conclusion in the premises. Hmm. All right.

01:25:08

Can I respond to that quickly? Oh, go for it. Go for it. Okay. Okay. Because I, I think, um, this is, this is like a tricky movie in presuppositionalism, um, because, okay, the dialectic is like, okay, here's the, um, charge of, um, vicious circularity.

01:25:25

And the answer is that, well, on the worldview level, you must be circular. And, um, so that's not a good objection or that's the question.

01:25:33

So what? And I think presuppositionalists sometimes conclude that therefore there is no problem with DAG, but I don't think that's the argument.

01:25:41

I think, I think the conclusion is that very, quite a bit of a pickle there, uh, because then there are no ways to decide between the worldviews.

01:25:50

If we grant that all of our arguments for worldviews are viciously are circular, even if virtuously, because if you have to have the worldview in the premises, then you're just not, there's just no way of supporting the worldview for those who don't already believe it.

01:26:11

Okay. All right. Uh, Tanner asks another question. Uh, maybe I misheard Balint.

01:26:17

Did he not say that he believed morality, uniformity, and something else were not things that were transcendental?

01:26:25

I think you said something to that effect. You want to clarify that? If you remember, if not, no worries. Depends on what he means by transcendental.

01:26:35

I mean, I believe they are true. Does that help?

01:26:42

It's fine. People need to ask more of their questions more clearly, but it's, it's okay.

01:26:48

All right. I think that's the last question that I see here. Gentlemen, I think you guys did an excellent job and this has been a great discussion.

01:26:55

I hope folks have found it. Uh, we had, uh, up to I think 30 people, at least on the YouTube or we're watching.

01:27:01

And I'm sure these videos do get some mileage after I, you know, they're officially posted and stuff like that. So there's definitely a lot here in this discussion and hopefully, um, it has clarified some things or perhaps confused some things and, uh, encourages folks to look a little deeper into these, into these issues.

01:27:16

Uh, before we sign off, uh, this live stream, is there anything you'd like to say to conclude, uh, Joshua and then

01:27:21

Balint? Uh, thank you for having me on again. Um, Eli for, it's always a pleasure to be here.

01:27:29

Balint, you are an amazing man. Um, I love you. And, um, I have no harsh feelings towards you and I'm hoping one day you'll see the light.

01:27:41

That's awesome. And how about Balint, would you like to close out with any words? Sure. Uh, thanks

01:27:47

Eli for having us. Thanks Josh for engaging. Thanks for writing 40 pages on my argument. And, uh, yeah, um,

01:27:55

I enjoyed my time here and thanks for having us. All right. Well, it has definitely been my pleasure. Balint, thank you so much because I mean, you are, you said you were in Hungary right now.

01:28:04

Yeah. What time is, what time is it there? Uh, it's midnight. Wow. It's midnight.

01:28:10

See that that's commitment right there. So, uh, we have, we have to end now because it's the strike of midnight.

01:28:15

His, you know, his flowery appearance, he no longer looks like a Calvin Klein model. And when it's 12, when it's 1201, he turns back into a presuppositionalist.

01:28:24

So that's right. Well, well, thank you so much guys.

01:28:30

And thank you so much for those who listened. I hope you guys have found this, um, helpful and useful. Be sure to, uh, subscribe to reveal the apologetics if you haven't already and share the videos, uh, discuss argue.

01:28:40

But, uh, if you're a Christian and you're following scripture, always remember to do so with gentleness and respect.

01:28:46

First Peter chapter three verse 15 tells us. Thank you so much guys. That's all for this live, this, uh, live stream.