Ask Me Anything Livestream

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today we are doing an

Ask Me Anything live stream. And I have my good friend here, Matt Slick, from CARM .org.

That is C -A -R -M .org. If you do not know about CARM, you can first remove the stone that you've been living under, just cast it aside, and get to your nearest device, and go to C -A -R -M .org,

Christian Apologetics Research Ministry. It is the oldest, I think, the oldest apologetics website on the internet, where there are so many articles on there on literally every single topic.

So definitely check that out if you have not already. And I understand,

Matt, that you have, you're on YouTube, but you're switching over to Rumble. Yes.

Right, so I'm hoping all of your YouTube subscribers just shift over to my channel. I'm just kidding.

You're still, you're still streaming there, but you are, it's like small little snippets, right?

And then you're kind of telling folks to go over to Rumble, right? Yeah, because the

Gestapo at YouTube doesn't like some of the things I say. Like, I think that COVID was used by the government to oppress us.

Masks, the cloth masks are only 3 % effective. The other kind of masks that you see the doctors wear are 50 to 80%, depending on how you hold them and how you don't, how you wear them.

And if you touch them, they're bad, and you should change them every two to three hours, but you don't have that.

People put in their pockets, so it's bad. I can go to CDC website and show you from the CDC website. I could go in here, show you from the

CDC website, for example, how the COVID vaccines are killing people from the CDC documentation more than any other virus, any other vaccines combined since the 60s.

I do all that kind of stuff. You're gone. You can't do that, even though it's from the CDC website, stuff like that.

Oh, you keep saying the stuff here. I'm going to have to transfer over to Rumble myself. You may have to. They may ding you for what

I just said. I have not been dinged for anything so far. I have. Yeah, thankfully, but I understand.

I do hear some stories. Want me to help you out? Well, I'm sure throughout the course of questions that we're going to get today, there's plenty of opportunity to get me dinged.

Oh, I can mess you up. I can cause problems. Like I say to people, just come have me preach at your church.

You'll have weeks and weeks of cleanup work to do. You'll be busy. It's good for you. Yeah. Well, today, tonight rather, is an ask me anything.

And of course, Matt is included in that. So I will have Matt share his thoughts on questions that are geared towards me as well, if he has something to speak on that.

And if we have dead air, then I could ask Matt about his wonderful experience last night debating the topic of,

I don't know if it was the main topic, but the issue when I hopped into clubhouse for a couple of minutes, you were discussing the issue of the deity of Christ and the two natures of Christ and whether Christ knew the day of his return.

So maybe we can talk about that later. We were going at it. We were going at it. You know, normally

I'll say one thing at a time. Let's keep it calm. Yesterday I just felt like I do about once six months, once every year, but once a year

I'll go to town, we just, the gloves are off. We went at it. And so for three hours I did it with two guys.

Right. So, yeah, no, it's all good. All right. So let's get to some of these questions here.

So let's see here. Apologetics 101. Eli, are you aware of Erica from Gutsick Gibbon YouTube channel responding to your video and interview with Dr.

Jason Lyle over evolution? And are you going to make a response video to that? I have no idea who

Erica is, but if you email me at revealed apologetics dot, I'm sorry, revealed apologetics at gmail .com

and you can, or maybe put the link in the comments here. I'll take a look at it. Maybe that'll be something that, that I can do in the future.

But are you familiar with Erica from Gutsick Gibbon YouTube channel, Matt? Never heard of a person.

No. Okay. Yeah. Sorry about that. Apologetics 101. Yeah. Send me the link. I'll, I'll check it out. I'm on summer break, so I have time.

So I'm send me things, send me things so that I can get to it. All right.

Alyssa Scott, precept is hard for me to explain to others. How can I explain it simply?

All right. I have a quote here and maybe Matt can share his thoughts. How about you go first? Why don't you, if someone says, how do you define presuppositional apologetics to someone who has a hard time explaining it?

And then I have a, I have a text up here that I want to kind of share with folks as to how I like how the method is summarized, but go ahead.

Yeah. What I would do for the uber simple view, just presuppose the truth of the

Christian Trinitarian God. And when you do that, everything makes sense. That's the first step.

That's the very, very basic presuppositionalism. Presuppose the truth of the Christian Trinitarian God and everything makes sense.

If you do that, the corollary is then other things don't make sense. They make presuppositions.

You deal with their presuppositions and then their skill set comes in doing both of those.

Yeah, that's very simple. My favorite definition, and I use this definition a lot.

It comes from the book, um, resurrection scripture and reformed apologetics, a test for consistency in theology and apologetic method.

Um, the author, I have to move. We get to the, is Stephen D West, Stephen D West.

You guys want to check out this book, resurrection scripture and reformed apologetics. And he goes through different methodologies, evidentialism, reformed epistemology, um, and a bunch of other stuff.

But here's how he defines it in the opening chapter on chapter four. Presuppositionalism is a school of thought that attempts to bring all human thinking into subjection to the authority of the word of God.

That's it. Now, the, what I love about this definition is that it is simple, but very profound.

Check this out. It is a school of thought that attempts to bring all human thinking into subjection to the authority of the word of God.

Now that is an allusion to, um, second Corinthians chapter 10, um, verse five, where it speaks about taking captive every thought, making it obedient to Christ.

Now we often speak of this passage in reference to the Christian kind of conforming our thinking to the, to the teachings of Christ and to scripture.

But in reality, in apologetic context, we are bringing all thinking into subjection to the authority of the word of God, including the thinking of the unbeliever.

And that's it. That's what the method seeks to do is to show that unless the unbeliever starts with submission to the authority of Christ, he can't make sense of anything.

Now, Stephen West continues his methodologically presuppositional apologists endeavor to achieve this goal by demonstrating that all human thought that does not submit to the word of God is fallacious and untrustworthy.

And how does that work out? That works out in the apologetic encounter. That's going to depend on who you're talking with and, and, and things like that, but, um, definitely check out that book.

It is, uh, an awesome, awesome resource. All right. Uh, let's see here.

Thank you so much for your question. If God ordains all evil, does that mean it is his will for evil to occur?

And if he ordains evil, does that mean he causes evil? Now, Matt, you are, you deal with, um,

Calvinism a lot and me too. And, uh, I have some thoughts on this question, but why don't you take a stab at it?

And maybe I'll add some stuff in, um, if you don't cover what I was going to. The first part of the question requires a yes answer, because look what it says.

If God ordains evil, that means God is doing something by his desires decree as well. Ephesians 1 .11,

he works all things after the counsel of his will. Ordination is within that. Does it mean that it's his will for evil to occur?

Yes. It logically is necessary because the first statement says, if God ordains evil, if that's the condition, then yes, it's in his will.

All right. So if he does ordain evil, does it mean he causes evil? Ordination of evil is different than causation of evil.

So we have, and, uh, one of the ways we're looking at this is efficient, proximate, and ultimate causation.

So I'll go through it quickly. Adam was in the garden. No one forced him to take the fruit. No one put a gun to his head and said, eat this.

No one, uh, took his hand and put the fruit in his hand and opened his mouth and hit him. I mean, put him there and hit him in the stomach and he, you know, he was chewing and then he, you know, made him swallow.

Uh, that didn't happen. He, of his own free will did that. And that's, so he's the efficient cause of his own, uh, sin.

God is the proximate cause in that God is the one who arranged the circumstances.

So the garden, Adam, Eve, trees, let the devil come in and et cetera.

So the proximate cause is the conditions that are around that efficient cause. And so we have to understand there's a division between the efficient and the proximate because in the efficient causation, it rests totally with the individual's will.

And he's doing that. Well, you made me do it. No, don't say that. You know, you make your own choice. And so that's what it basically is.

We can get a more, but that's a basic, uh, a basic look at it. Yeah. And, and we want to be careful to not assume that these words that we use in these discussions are, are just, you know, at face value, we all mean the same thing when we, when we speak them, if God ordains all evil, does that mean it is his will for evil to occur?

I agree with Matt. Yes. And if he ordains evil, does that mean he causes evil?

You have to understand that the issue of cause is a very complex issue. There are different ways in which things can be caused.

Some ways would make the person bringing about the causation culpable and other ways, not, not.

So we want to keep those distinctions in mind. These are not, um, straightforward terms. There's whole literature and history and philosophy and philosophical discourse where we make a differentiation between, um, different senses in cause, how we understand decrees and ordination,

God's active decrees and passive decrees, and these sorts of things. And we also bring into the issue of, um, compatibilism, um, you know, compatibilism, libertarianism, and these sorts of things.

Um, people tend to think that if God causes, then therefore they draw a conclusion, not making the proper distinction, um, well, not the distinction, but not making the proper, not giving proper attention to the issues of whether divine determinism and God bringing about things with certainty is compatible with our freedom and responsibility.

So all of these deep theological and philosophical discussions kind of are hiding behind these terms that we kind of just throw around.

So it's important to know the context and different contexts in which these terms can be used. Um, so, so there you go.

All right. Um, let's see here. Ray, Leon, Leon, or just Leon, we could say

Leon, make you sound really, uh, cool in French, or I can just call you Ray Leon. I think that's how you,

I suppose that's how you say it. Uh, how should I answer the objection that even though I'm presupposing the truthfulness of the

Christian worldview, I need fallible men to tell me what the Bible says in terms of translation.

Um, you want to give that a stab and then I'll share my thoughts there, Matt. Sure. When people ask me something like that,

I say, yeah, so seriously, I do. Why am

I doing that? Seriously? Yeah. Yeah. We have fallible men in translations. Yeah. So now what, what

I'm doing is not taking the bait. They're laying something out. There's an objection, the truthfulness of the

Christian worldview, but it's by fallible men. Now you're obligated, right? Or are you to be able to explain how all this works through fallible men?

And we can do that. But what I'll do with people is go, well, what's the problem? And then they'll say, well, you know, they're fallible.

Yeah, they are. And so were the original writers of the Bible, but God's able to work through them.

So what are you saying? Just tell me what you're saying. Let's see if what you're saying, what you're asserting has merit to it.

That's what I do. That's one of the reasons. I just simply say, so see what happens.

Very good. Yeah. Fallible men. If something comes from fallible men, it does not logically entail that what a fallible person says can't be trusted.

Just doesn't, just doesn't logically follow by the way, the person who's asking this question is fallible. So if we kind of run that on the, on the you know, on the person asking the question,

I can't trust that the person asking the question is actually asking the question I'm reading on the page.

Maybe this person means something different than the words he's using in formulating the question, right? Well, I can't trust him.

So, I mean, you see what I'm saying? So one of the presuppositions of the Christian faith is that language is a meaningful mechanism for ascertaining truth and understanding things rationally.

This is why a God speaks through language. He speaks to us in creation, but he also has given us words, propositional truths that are inscription rated in the word of God.

And so that is one of the presuppositions. If you reject that presupposition, that language is a meaningful mechanism for understanding and gaining truth, then you've now kind of taken the rug out from under your feet and you've removed one of the necessary preconditions for having this rational discussion we're having and even asking the question.

So yeah. And of course, we have a worldview, right? The worldview includes God using the infallible

God, using fallible men in such a way that he gets his infallible message across such that we can know it and be certain of what

God says. So there you go. Yeah. All right. Thank you for that, Ray.

Leon, I hope that is helpful. Speaking of Leon, you ever see that movie, Matt?

I think it was with Natalie Portman. It was a first movie and she is a little girl in an apartment building and she becomes friends with an assassin.

And it's called The Professional, but there's another name and when it was released in Europe, it was called

Leon. Leon something. You ever see that movie? I don't watch pagan movies. Come on.

It's an assassin movie. It was so good. All right. Fine. You're right. I see something.

I watch alien movies. No, I there's something about it. There was an assassin. But were there aliens there?

If it's aliens, it makes it better. That's just how it works. No, no. Good movie. Anyway.

All right. A .W. or A .W., however you say that. What is the best way to explain to your kids the

Bible is the word of God, but then explain the addition of the women in John chapter eight, the woman in John chapter eight.

This is the pericope adultery. Is that was that what the person is referring to, Matt? How is a child?

Yeah. I mean, because there's certain things you want to just add later on at age appropriate, you know.

So I would just say, look, I just leave it simply. The Bible is the word of God. If they're under 10,

I would just do that. The Bible is the word of God because God worked through the apostles, worked through Jesus.

Jesus is God, you know, and what does that mean? And you talk about that. And so we have what we have right there and that we talk about it.

I'd get them ingrained in that word first. And then later on, when their minds are developed enough to understand the concept of contradiction, differences, perspective, then

I would introduce textual variants and things like that. There's only three major ones, and that's one of them.

And talk about it and have analogies by it. It's not a big deal. It's it's easy to do.

It's right. Yeah, it's different than Bible study. It's kind of a question relating to how we got our

Bibles and why our Bibles look the way that they do now. That's going to take a discussion on, you know, textual criticism and textual variants.

And that that's a discussion that is not it's not a question, a discussion you're going to have with like a six or seven year old.

But I mean, I teach middle school logic and sixth grade

Bible, and I have brought up this very this issue of textual variants and things like that.

So what is the best way? There's no one answer to that, I guess. I don't know who told me this, but the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

You introduce this issue of textual criticism bit by bit, all the while standing on the fact that God has spoken and God has ordained a way in which the

Bible has come to us in the form that it is today. So it's really talking about the history of the Bible.

So that can be done in piecemeal fashion, not going so deep, really depending on who you're speaking with.

Know your kid, know the kids you're speaking with and see how deep they can go in and kind of take it from there.

But unfortunately, there are no children's books on textual criticism. Maybe maybe someone should write that.

That'd be a great, you know, a great book there to give to a little kid.

But thanks. Good, good, good question. Good question. Dwayne McDowell, Dwayne McDowell, I've seen and enjoyed many of your

Internet conversations. What are some of the concepts atheists continually struggle or refuse to grasp when you talk with them as a presuppositionalist?

Um, one of the things that I find, and Matt, I'm sure you're much more experienced in this area than I am, but I find that atheists, at least the ones

I speak with, have no category for transcendental reasoning. It's almost like they think like presuppositionalists made this up, right?

I mean, you look at this, you study the history of philosophy. I mean, you have you have different, you have different kinds of proof.

You have empirical proof, which is part of the empirical tradition. You have people like John Locke. You have rationalistic proofs that tend to use kind of deductive formulations and things like that.

You know, rationalists. Rene Descartes is in that tradition. Leibniz, Spinoza, these sorts of people.

And along comes David Hume, criticizes empiricism, drives empiricism to skepticism, right? And then, of course,

David Hume's analysis of these issues, these epistemological issues, awaken Immanuel Kant from his dogmatic slumbers.

And Immanuel Kant brings in this other category, doesn't invent it, but definitely highlights this issue of transcendental categories.

So these are not things that are particular to presuppositionalists. And so I find that a lot of atheists will see presuppositional argumentation as kind of a sleight of hand.

We're trying to be creepy and sneaky so that we don't have to talk about the evidence, which is just not the case.

So that's typically what I find people have a difficult time grasping.

What about you, Matt? Yeah, same thing. They are, by default, most of them are materialists.

And then when you enter or introduce the idea of the concept of universals, they stub their toe.

And I was just talking with some atheists a while back, just a few days ago. And I said, this is where we always come to a problem here with you atheists.

And I said, you can't deal with the issue of what transcendentals are. And for those who don't know, for example, tree is a particular tree and tree -ness.

Okay, you're in a church, there's all these chairs. Well, there's a chair, it's called a primary substance.

And then the chair -ness is a secondary substance. How is it that you can have these secondary substances or transcendentals or universals?

How do you have them exist in a materialistic world? And I can get quite deep into this, but I'm not going to, unless you guys want me to.

But these are the topics that I find that they don't do well on.

So I need to write an article called Bumping into Transcendentals and go into that and explain it some more.

I think people are so stuck in deductive argumentation too. I mean, you can give a transcendental argument along presuppositional lines in a deductive fashion.

People have seen me do this. If knowledge is possible, Christianity is true. Knowledge is possible, therefore

Christianity is true. That's a deductive transcendental argument. But transcendental arguments don't need to be put in a deductive form because transcendental arguments ask a more foundational question, what are the necessary preconditions for deductive arguments themselves?

So when someone's like, give me the argument, bro, you're just making an assertion. No, I'm giving an argument, but I'm not giving an argument along traditional lines of deductive and inductive categories.

And so people tend to think those are the only categories we can use. And if we're not using those categories, then we're just making authoritative assertions.

And that's just not the case. Right. Yeah, they do that a lot. I said, no,

I'm not going to play that. I said, why am I obligated to do what you want? What logic says that that's what

I must do? Right. And now they don't realize by answering the question, they're playing in my territory.

So, oh, okay. So you're presupposing certain values, right? That's why you're saying, I must do this a certain way.

What justifies your presupposition as being right? Because you're appealing to the universal laws of logic. How do you justify those?

And then we go on. Very good. All right. Let's see here. Senor Blondie.

Okay. Nice name. What is the best way? I like these questions. What is the best?

What is the best way to explain the Trinity to kids? And also to skeptics like Muslims?

Matt has done a lot of work in the Trinity. I guess my simple answer, the best way to avoid problems that are brought about by using certain analogies.

Okay. When we're very careful using analogies, when you're talking about the Trinity, some of them are good, but analogies only go so far.

And some other analogies, which are popular, actually tiptoe or dive head straight or headlong into heresy.

So we want to be very careful. So what I find the best way to explain to kids the Trinity is to just explain the biblical data.

Not so much using an analogy, although that's okay. Sometimes I just will show them here.

Look, the Bible affirms there is only one God. You got Deuteronomy 6 .4, Isaiah 43, 44 speak about the monotheism of scripture.

And then of course you have Jesus also being called God and the Holy Spirit being called God. So the biblical data, right?

God has spoken to us. This is how he has revealed himself. And we create language to encapsulate these biblical truths.

And that's what I do when I teach my students. You can use analogies, but you got to be very careful. What about you, Matt? I absolutely agree.

All analogies have weaknesses, but Romans 1 .20 says that God reveals his invisible nature is made known in creation.

So I think there's, God states that there's an analogy that way. And I think it's fair for us to say that the fingerprints of God are in creation.

And one of the best things I've seen is the issue of time. And I think pretty young children can understand the concept of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

And I don't like to use the word parts, but depending on the age, there's three parts to time.

That's partialism, Patrick. That's partialism, Patrick. That's partialism. That's right. We don't want to say partialism with God, but depending on the child, but young.

And I would say, I don't like to use the word parts, but blah, blah, blah. At any rate, I'd say you can get the concept of these three things.

They're the same thing, but they have different parts to them, different aspects to them. I said, God's like that, but God's not made of parts.

Just like time is one thing. We just see it differently. And it's there. And like I said, no analogy is perfect.

But one of the things I think is interesting is that there are three realms of existence. And I'll go to Romans 1 .20.

I'm going to read this verse. And that's what it says, Romans 1 .20.

For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power, and divine nature, divine nature have been clearly seen.

I was reading that a few months ago. And I was like, how is his divine nature clearly seen? His nature is

Trinitarian and holy and other things. But I started thinking in the context of the Trinity. Well, my conclusion was that there's three realms of existence, material, spiritual, conceptual.

And the material realm is conceived of matter and time and space, space, time, and matter.

And he said, those can be broken down into three. We can get into that if you want. And the spiritual realm, God, angels, man.

And then in the conceptual realm, I forgot proposition. I forgot what it was.

I don't know if it was a really good trifecta I had going, got it written down someplace. But the idea is that we could see,

I believe the fingerprints of God in nature. And that what we should do is point our children to nature as well as a reflection of God and look for his fingerprints there that then tell us more about his greatness.

And as the child matures and he is inculcated with the truth of scripture, both of them will work.

Because remember there's three revelations, general, which is creation, special, which is scripture, and incarnational, and that's

Jesus. And so look to all of them. Very good. All right.

Standing for truth says a question for Matt. Why are you so good at refuting the oneness and Unitarian crowd?

Also, what about ERVs? I don't know what ERVs are. Yeah. So oneness and Unitarian crowds, basically there's a theological category.

You'll see in a lot of systematic theologies on the back under sucking canal water, and you'll see oneness there.

You'll see Unitarianism. And then we can get into the issues there. I like debating them and teaching on them.

They are highly problematic views. I love doing it. ERVs, endogenous retroviruses.

I'm learning my stuff from actually from standing for truth. He's really good at that stuff and learning about what they are.

Retroviruses that have theoretically an evolutionary system have been woven, have entered from outside.

They became part of our genome and are passed down in certain places in the gene to our gene pool.

And then through speciation, you can see the divergence of the same entrance of virus information.

And this is what I've researched. And I'm really happy because as I was researching the science articles on it,

I was thinking of the same kind of reputations and arguments he was coming up with, not as well articulated, not as deep and not as well designed, but the same concept.

I went, ah, so I'm on the right track. And he would say that. So ERVs, I got to complete my research on that.

I've only read, I read about three quarters, no, two thirds of his book, I think. Good stuff. I recommend it.

Shameless plug, but it is, ERVs are interesting. Nice. All right. Daniel Patino.

That sounds Spanish. I might be wrong, but I don't speak Spanish, but I can sound like I speak

Spanish and I could read Spanish pretty well. It's really weird. From a precept point of view, how do we know our senses are reliable and that there is an external world?

Okay. Remember what I said a few minutes ago? I said that language is, language as a meaningful mechanism of acquiring truth and communication is one of the presuppositions of the

Christian worldview, right? If that is a presupposition of the Christian worldview, okay, that means language is an adequate mechanism to convey truth.

God has used language as an adequate mechanism to convey truth in scripture, right?

And scripture teaches us that there is a distinction between, the scripture teaches that God has created us with certain abilities and that there is a world outside of our own minds, okay?

Whether it teaches it explicitly or it can be logically deduced from scriptural propositions, I think both is the case, right?

An external world, I think, is presupposed in creation. In the beginning, God created, right, the heavens and the earth.

So there is a physical cosmos along with those other categories, spiritual entities and conceptual realities and things like that.

But if language is a sufficient mechanism for communication, God has communicated to us the nature of the world and that includes an external world, an internal world, right?

And the fact that we can use our God -given senses to learn about his creation, right?

Look and see, right? The heavens declare the glory of God. What can be known about God has been shown to us through what has been made.

There's an assumption within Romans chapter one, for example, of a world outside of ourselves that we can look and see and draw conclusions.

So again, it would be wrapped up in presuppositions. Now, deny that. Okay, well then,

I don't know my senses are reliable. Okay, so now you are now thrusted into subjectivism, right?

And solipsism. And so every time that person is going to come from that perspective, I'm just gonna, you know, who are you debating, bro?

Like, I'm just a figment of your imagination, right? At that point, we want to make them consistent with the assumption of the opposite of what

I just said the Bible teaches or the Bible or what can be logically deduced from biblical principle, right?

You have anything to say about that? Anything to say about that, Matt? Well, yeah, from presuppositional points, it's from made in God's image.

He made our senses so we can trust what he made. Yeah. Simple. And to enjoy, to enjoy.

Especially when I look at my beautiful wife. That's right. Now, if you're not beautiful, you might pray that solipsism is true, maybe this is a bad dream.

She's mentioning solipsism all the time when she looks at me. Oh boy,

I don't want to get in trouble. Okay, so thank you for that. Apologetics 101, speaking at a conference next week on how genetics confirms special creation, so basically just working on my presentation.

Got some good stuff. That's awesome. Keep up the great work, man. That is awesome. Roger Vincent. We tend to ask atheists, how do they know that they are not in the matrix?

How do we presuppositionalists know that we are not in the matrix also? I did a video on that.

It's a small little segment called, well, the kind of equivalent to brain in the vat scenarios.

But do you want to share your thoughts there, Matt? I'll share my thoughts. You'll notice what I do is I like to give short answers when

I'm talking to people. And the reason is I want them to give me more information. I can jump in and do all kinds of stuff.

So I'd say, well, because the Bible says that we're not. That's right.

That's it. Reject that. Now here's the transcendental application. Reject that.

And yeah, you couldn't know if you're in the matrix or not. And then you've undercut your entire, any argument that you could make against the

Christian who thinks he's not in the matrix is going to be undercut by the fact that from your worldview, you could be in the matrix.

So everything you think or believe that's happening is false. So well, here's one of the things I've said to people who say they're in the matrix of solipsism is true.

I'll say, so wait a minute. So you're the only brain that's really going on or you're in a brain of that. You don't know. So you might be the only one.

Yeah, that's true. So then why in your brain, am I arguing with you about why you're false? Yup. And if it sounds dumb, it's because it is.

That's right. How do we know we're not in the matrix? Well, remember we are answering, we answer that question from a worldview, right?

I'm standing on something when I answer that question. For us, the one is

Jesus. What was that? For us, the one, Neo one is

Jesus. That's right. That's right. Oh, you've seen that movie. There are no aliens in that one, is there? That's a good movie.

Well, there's alien life. There's AI in there, I guess. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. And if you see any Democrats in there, that would be an alien.

That's right. But when we answer that question, Roger, we're answering the question from a worldview, right?

From the Christian perspective, given biblical revelation, it's impossible that we're in a matrix.

That's not a possibility. And so I presuppose God's revelation. And so that's my starting point. I start from the position that God has revealed the nature of the world to me, and he's revealed a world such that we can interact and know things to know the nature of reality because he's revealed it.

Someone wants to reject that and be like, no, on my worldview, it's possible that we're in the matrix. All right, good for you. That's not my worldview.

And anytime they disagree with you, you can just appeal to the matrix that they affirm that they're possibly in.

So there you go. All right. Let's see here. Matt Slick, you are the man.

OK, you the man. Sorry, I have to get the slang right. Roger Vincent, $5 super sticker.

Thank you so much, man. I really appreciate that. Thank you. See, my friendship with you,

Matt, will make me money. There you go. I got excited. It took me a while to notice that there was a decimal there like five hundred.

Oh, no, no, it's just five. It's all good. Anything is helpful. I really do appreciate it. Thank you. Marlon Wilson's in the chat.

Cool. Good to see he's doing some good stuff there. Let's see here. Baltimore, Maryland.

Can Hebrews 10, 12 and 817 be used to support Christ not know the day or the hour when he will return to get that up there.

But having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sit down to the right hand of God. Hebrews 10, 12. And what was the other one?

And 817. Oops. And 817.

When he said a new covenant, I've been a new one, old and obsolete. I don't know how those deal with that issue.

Yeah, I don't. Are you sure those are the right references? Hebrews 10, 12.

Let me just double check here. But I can talk about the issue of he doesn't know the day nor the hour, what that is, if you guys want, what the historical context is.

I had a big brouhaha with a guy last night about this. It's really interesting how the conversation went. I don't remember that one on one.

Sorry, I talked to so many people. So in the wedding feast, remember, Jesus says that he'll return with the trumpets.

He goes to prepare a father, I mean, a place for you in his father's house. And he calls us the bride and he gives parables about bride and wedding and things like that.

Well, in the back of the day, when a wedding would occur, the father and the father of another family, they would arrange a wedding.

It'd be a, for the son and daughter, be a year long engagement. And during that year long engagement, the son was obligated to go build an additional room under the father's house.

And then they make the arrangement for the wine and for the fatted, whatever it is, calf or whatever it is that you're going to have, depending on how many people responded that they're going to be there, because it would take a while for people to travel, make arrangements if they were extended out to any place at any time.

So this is how that was done in the Jewish culture. And the date and the time of the wedding would be known.

Otherwise they couldn't have people show up. So what is an idiomatic expression that, this is interesting because I was debating it last night, this very thing, this idiomatic expression that says the bridegroom, the groomsman's friend, the groomsman would say to the groom, so when is your father going to say it's okay for you to go get the bride?

Because the culture was the father's position as authority in the house, he'd say, now go.

And they would go get the bride. And then they would get the trumpeters, they would go and go get her, bring her back.

You know where I am, I go to bring you to my place. Jesus talks about all this. So this is how it is. All right.

So it's not that Jesus did not know. It's that he's submitting to the authority of the father to do the sending.

It's an idiomatic expression in that. And that's what the solution is there. But Matt, if that is the cultural context, it's still assuming that the son did not know.

Right. I was just going to say that that's what they said. They said, well, then it still means he did not know. And I said, it's not a literal expression.

Right. You're making a mistake. It's not a literal expression. So I said this to a guy last night and I said, it's not to be taken literally.

And he said, just what you said. He said, well, even if it's not literal, then you, he didn't know. I said, but then you're taking it literally.

And I said, what do you do? Because this guy denied Jesus had a pre -existence. I said, no one is,

John 3, 13, no one has ascended into heaven, but he who descended from heaven, the son of man.

This was like separated by a minute or two or some time. And he said, that's figurative. I said, well, the other thing is figurative.

Right. He said, but you, I said, you take the literalness out of the figurativeness here, but you deny it here.

You sent it out of heaven. Why the inconsistency? And so they are inconsistent to how they want to apply things.

So when they, when they say that, that Noman says, I said, look, I already gave you the answer. It doesn't mean he didn't know.

It's just an idiomatic expression. And if you're not familiar with that, you need to go study it. And that's that. There you go. What's the big deal.

Yep. All right. And, and, uh, what to say,

I'll remember their sins no more. I'll ask you about that. And I'll tell you what that means. Remembering is different than forgetting. So if you also, um, if you go to revelation 1912, uh,

Jesus, his eyes are a flame of fire on his head are many diadems. He has a name written on him, which no one knows except himself.

Oh, wait a minute. If Jesus can't be God, because he doesn't know the day nor the hour, then the father can't be

God because he doesn't know the name that only Jesus knows. Well, you see Matt and John in Revelation 1912, it's just an exaggeration.

Oh, so now we're through exegetical land make -believe land here is you pick which one you want to land on and how you're going to argue from.

So I said, look, you know, go learn, I said, geez, I mean, go learn exegesis and hermeneutics and come back.

We'll talk later. Hopscotch. And I used to do hopscotch pretty good, huh? But hopscotching is not a good exegetical tool though.

That's which is hopscotch is in the context, right? Yeah. Taxicab theology.

You're driving along, you get out, you walk a little bit, you get back in, you go, you get in and out of the argument, depending on what suits your presupposition.

And then that's where you got to get into presuppositionalism anyway. So there you go. All right. Chris in Christ says, do you think

Molinism? I haven't done something on Molinism in a while. Do you think Molinism is similar to Calvinism?

Where in, if any, or I'm sorry, where in, if they say Calvinist doctrine makes God the author of evil,

Molinist doctrine does too, just under the guise of libertarian free will of man. All right.

So do I think it's similar? Yes, I do think it's similar. They're not exactly the same, obviously, right?

They're similar in that they both assert a meticulous kind of sovereign control by God, but the way that he does it is very different.

And if you understand Molinism, Molinism is a view of God's omniscience in which God, God's omniscience, his knowledge is broken up into three categories.

His natural knowledge, his middle knowledge, and his free knowledge. God's natural knowledge is his knowledge of all possibilities, all the could knowledge, what could be.

His middle knowledge is his knowledge of what would be if conditions were different. And his free knowledge comes after his divine decree.

It is God's knowledge of what will in fact happen because he's decreed. Now it's very important that God's middle knowledge, his knowledge of what would occur, what free creatures would choose in any given set of circumstances exists logically prior to the divine decree.

Okay, this is where all issues of like the grounding issue and you know what makes the, what gives those counterfactuals of what a free creature would do, what gives those counterfactuals their truth value, these sorts of things.

You've heard Dr. James White talk about it a lot as well. So there is a big difference in terms of grounding.

Calvinists tend to think that all of the truths are grounded in God. Things have their truth values because God decrees it.

Whereas on Molinism there are truth values that are not grounded in God because they exist logically prior to his decree.

Okay, so can we say that the Molinist God is the author of evil and can we say the

Calvinist God is the author of evil? Well again here's where you're going to get to the ambiguity of phraseology.

I would say that on Calvinism, and before Matt throws something at me I'm going to qualify this, on Calvinism God is the author of evil and on Molinism God is the author of evil but we need to ask the question what do we mean by author, right?

Without God decreeing a world, evil would not have existed. God decreed a world and that made evil exist with a certainty.

It would have came into existence with a certainty. Author of evil does not mean the same thing for everyone.

There are different ways that one can be the author of something. So I think ultimately on Molinism and Calvinism, evil would not have existed or come into existence at all if it had not been at some level

God's will for it to come into existence to accomplish the various purposes that he has for it coming into existence.

So I think Molinism and Calvinism in different ways are still connected to that although Molinists will say no we're not, we avoid it because of you know how the

Molinist system sets up and explains all that jazz. So but I don't think it removes itself from the accusation.

I just think it's important that we know how we are using the term or the phrase author of evil.

It's like cause. Does God cause everything? Yes, but what does that mean? God ordains it.

Yes, but what does ordination mean? What does it mean for God to decree, passively decree, actively?

All of these things need to be defined. So if you're interested in this, there is a full discussion that I had with Dr.

Guillaume Bignon. We talked about the author of sin objection. The entire episode was on that very point.

So if you want to look up Eli Ayala and Guillaume Bignon author of sin or author of evil and there's a fuller discussion on that.

Do you have anything to say about that Matt? Yeah, so in Molinism, middle knowledge or counterfactuals,

God knows what people will do under different circumstances. And so it's in those different circumstances that evil can occur and so God knows what will occur.

So his hands are a little bit more off. We're in Calvinism, a little more on, but we got to be careful because we don't want to say that he's the direct cause of evil, but nothing can occur outside of the will of God.

And then we get into what's called the decretive will, the prescriptive will and the permissive will. So these kinds of questions are worth delving into.

You and I, for example, could talk about just on the issue of will, application, counterfactuals, actualities for an hour and not really get out of any, anything else.

There's just a lot of topics there and you and I've had many interesting conversations like this over the years. So we could talk, yeah,

I think you did a good job there. Just get into the basics of what it is and don't need to add much more than that for now.

Wow, Matt, really? You've seen Aliens two, 73 times.

I could tell you like Aliens two because you know the exact amount of times that you've watched it.

That means you were counting. There's a reason though, but I have a reason, but I have to, you know what?

I haven't seen Alien in so long and I remember watching Alien three and liking it and you probably don't think it's a big deal, but I need to go back and watch the originals, the whole, well, how many are there now?

Four, but Alien one was just groundbreaking and it really was for the time.

Aliens two was just incredible. Aliens three and four just kind of took a dive after that, but the reason

I watched it so much is because I love sci -fi. I've written a sci -fi novel too, but when it came out,

I was on the quarter system in college taking 27 units. I just got engaged.

Chernobyl had happened. My wife was in Europe. My dad just got in the hospital. My mom just got out of the hospital.

My brother's wife was in the hospital. I just moved, just got evicted out of an apartment.

I didn't do anything wrong. It's just the lady went crazy, the manager. So all these super stressors and so it was like Aliens came out.

I was like, yes, I'll watch it again. I'll watch it again because it helped. So it was a good escape and I just kept counting after that.

That's all. That's awesome. Now it becomes a thing. Hey, all movies are judged by Aliens, you know, so that's no use.

Hey, I just want to pat you on the back real quick. I'm going to give a shout out to my friend, uh,

Michael Austin, who's not in the chat or even watching this right now, but I gave him a copy of your book, the influence, and he never read books like,

I mean, he doesn't, he doesn't read theology. He wanted to kind of start reading some stuff and he's a, he likes fiction, but he wants to, you know, wants to get into like doctrine and theology and stuff.

And he said that he was blown away by that book that he was, it was better than other books that he read.

And here's a popular book that you're, you might be familiar with this present darkness by Frank Peretti. Right now it stands at one, two, three, four, uh, four and a half stars out of five, uh, with 6 ,247 reviews, very popular book.

And he said that, that he read that book and your book blew that one away. Uh, so he really, really liked your book a lot.

So if folks haven't read the influence, uh, by Matt Slick, you should check it out if you like fiction, but with solid theology.

Um, and you can kind of see how twisted his mind is, you know, descriptions of the demonic realm.

Uh, it's some good stuff. So actually I've been working on the second one too. And, uh, so the opening chapter is one page and, uh, people

I read it to, they go, oh, so they like it. People want me to write a second and a third. So I got to do that.

Well, my friend definitely, he, he actually liked it so much. He started, I think he shared it with another friend. So it's paid, it's being passed around.

Um, a lot of people have said that and make a great movie too. It would, um, yeah. Influence starring

Matthew Slick. Oh yeah. Yeah. I could be one of the demons. I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.

Get out now. You know, that'd be pretty good. That was pretty good. Thank you. Thank you. I've seen a lot. Ask your buddy.

Did he cry at the end? I will ask, I will ask him. He's a man, so I don't know if he'll admit it, but we'll.

So am I. Okay. I'll, I'll ask him. I cried writing it at the end.

Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I'll, I'll ask him there. So, all right. Peter W the biggest problem I've seen is atheists think precepts are saying that they don't have rationality, but the precept is actually saying their worldview doesn't account for rationale.

That's true. I think that's going back to that other question of what do we think atheists kind of miss when they hear the question,

Van Til said it this way that, um, atheists can, um, they can count and sometimes they can count better than Christians, but they cannot account for counting.

Right. Right. And that's not just a simple assertion. There's an argument in there. So anyone's like, bro, that was just, you're just nice to search in man.

That's not an assertion. We say that unbelievers can count, but they cannot account for their counting. The argument for that is that their worldview cannot account for rational discourse.

Now the unbeliever is supposed to disagree. He's not going to be like, well, of course, I guess you're right. He's supposed to disagree. And in response, he now lays out his worldview and explains how he could account for counting, but that's what they never do.

They never do it. Um, and, uh, that's interesting, you know, when I would say never, there's some people out there that try to do it, but they don't succeed in my estimation.

All right. Let's see here. Uh, I'm not sure if this is a question, uh,

Christ in Christ. I've seen Dr. John Lennox say that Hume is the worst person to use when giving an argument against miracle, because he didn't really believe in cause and effect or induction.

Um, uh, he believed in causation cause and effect.

He just didn't think you could account for it because there is an unjustified premise of the assumption of the uniformity of nature.

You cannot, you cannot prove the uniformity of nature without presupposing the uniformity of nature.

So Hume didn't deny cause and effect. He just didn't think that you can justify it.

It's just kind of patterns that we expect because of the repetitious patterns of the past with respect to cause and effect.

We can't just project that into the future, uh, because doing so is begging the question. Um, but I think there are other problems for Hume, like his bundle theory.

Are you familiar with Hume's bundle theory or just bundle of perceptions? There's no unifier. Uh, there's no unifying self.

I mean, there's a whole, this is what happens when you push empiricism to the, uh, when you push that philosophy to the edge, uh, it really undermines, uh, really the, the continuity of, of what it means to be a person.

Uh, so, you know, I think that's a problem there, but any thoughts there, Matt? I agree with you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. You said it a lot. You're going in, you're going deep and you're saying it all.

I mean, you know, I'm not going to really add to it because you're right. The bundle, I like the bundle stuff cause that's what the atheists will do.

The bundle, bundle a bunch of stuff together and I go, good, justify it. That's right. Just, it just is.

Well, then God just is next. That's right. Yep. You don't want to argue with someone who can't even account for continuity of self identity.

If you're a materialist, how would you count? How would you account for it? Yeah. I had a discussion with a young man.

He was like, yeah, that's right. I don't, I don't exist because to say I exist is to assume continuity of personal identity through time.

But because he was a materialist, he's like, I don't exist. I'm constantly changing. Well, I went to debate. He's like, what do you mean?

He's like, I'm not debating anyways. No, that's not what I meant. Oh, not what I meant. I thought you said you didn't exist. Right now, not everyone's going to argue that way, but people who do, you want to point that out.

I mean, if your world, you can't account for your, their own identity, right?

They can't guarantee that I'm talking to the same person I started the conversation with. I mean, there, that is a gaping hole that you want to expose, um, you know, gently, but you want to gently, um, pour salt there.

You can just kick them in the groin and say, it wasn't me. I'm not the same person I was half a second ago.

That's right. Ouch. That was really extreme there. Okay. Uh, question for Matt, what is the strongest argument you erred, oh, against transcendental arguments in your response?

The strongest argument that you've heard, the strongest argument that you've erred or eared?

Oh, I don't understand. I don't understand the question. Well, I'm just, I'm just, they misspelled words and I was just doing what you do when you read hate mail.

Oh, okay. You read the misspelling. Oh, what's the strongest argument you've, you heard a go against.

Okay. I get you. Yeah, but you gotta do it with style. You gotta do it with style. What is the strongest argument you erred, oh, against transcendental argument?

You gotta, you know, get up there, get a little nauseating. All right. Um, I haven't heard any,

I can't remember any good arguments against transcendental. Sorry. I I'm serious because the reason is because they all presuppose transcendentals to argue against transcendentals.

You have to argue to use logic and then they give me, I say, but okay, all your arguments, but you're still presupposing the laws of logic account for them.

And so I think all their arguments are in the same, uh, the same shell game. It's just the same thing.

That's all it is. So that's it. Yeah. And it depends. There are different levels of objections, right?

So you have like the, the lower tier, you know, you're begging the question, bro.

And then we roll our eyes in the back of our brain. Of course I'm begging the question. What's wrong with begging the question.

We all beg the question. You have to assume certain values consistent with your worldview. Otherwise you're inconsistent.

The problem is about begging the question. The question is what justifies you're begging the question as being valid.

Well, it's asking a more, a more foundational question, right? I mean, we have to make a distinction too, between a premise and an argument and a presupposition of an argument.

Um, if I lay out the transcendental argument in deductive form, there is no, um, circularity in my argument because I don't have the conclusion baked into one of the premises, but I am presupposing the truth of my assertion when

I'm making the argument, but I have to, if I'm arguing for the Christian worldview as a necessary precondition, then obviously I'm not going to argue for Christianity as the only necessary precondition for knowledge, but then make my argument while not presupposing that.

Right. So there are certain levels of presupposing the truth of what we're arguing for. I don't think that presuppositionalism, uh, is fallaciously, um, engaging in circularity.

However, there is more sophisticated objections against the presuppositional transcendental argument or transcendental arguments in general.

Um, and one of the strongest arguments against transcendental arguments, uh, notice I'm saying arguments with plural, because there is a distinction to be made between transcendental arguments in general, and the transcendental argument more specifically,

Barry Stroud, the Stroudian objection to transcendental arguments, um, goes something along the lines where it says that even if a transcendental argument goes through, all it shows is that the thing we're arguing as the transcendental necessity is transcendental, is epistemologically necessary.

In other words, I need to believe this thing in order to have rationality. But, um, that does not give us ontological certainty that the thing actually exists.

It only shows that we need to believe this thing to make sense. And that is, um, one of the strongest and more popular arguments in the philosophical literature.

The problem is, is that it's critiquing transcendental arguments that are not the presuppositional transcendental argument.

Are you debating the issue of transcendentals from a, an autonomous worldview?

All right. So people who are autonomous, who try to use transcendental arguments will fall prey to Stroud's objection.

Whereas from the Christian perspective, we, as Van Til says, we start with a concrete universal. We start with the ontological reality of God and the epistemological necessity of his revelation, uh, for us having knowledge about the world.

That's a starting point. It's presupposition. We don't start with ourselves ultimately. And so we are not stuck in what philosophers call the egocentric predicament.

Whereas if you start from a philosophy, that's autonomous, then you can't escape the egocentric predicament. And you will be, um, you'll kind of leave yourself open for some of those, from some of those more sophisticated objections.

All right. All right. Let me add what I'll do with people come up with new things. I'll say, everybody has a starting point.

Everybody has a starting point in their argumentation. Great. Two things. What is that starting point?

I'll write it down. What justifies a starting point? Then that's it.

The argument basically is over because they won't be able to justify their starting point because they don't have a worldview that can account for it.

Right. Yep. Very good. Simple stuff. Trevor Lewis 251 says, do you believe that people that believe in free will are

Christians? If so, did God determine them to believe that in this, believe that in the sense that Binyon says, all things are determined.

Do you believe that people that people believe in free will are Christians? Well, some of them are.

There are people who believe in free will, uh, libertarian free will, who are, who are atheists.

Um, so if you're just talking about Christians who believe in free will, well, I think unless you're a hard determinist, all

Christians believe in free will. The question is, what kind of free will are you talking about? This is another example, Matt, of those terms we throw around, not recognizing that there are some philosophical and theological assumptions baked into these concepts.

So if you're to say, do people who believe in libertarian free will, are they Christians? Some of them are. I mean,

I can't, I can't evaluate every single person, you know, just because you have a view on free will doesn't mean you're not heretical in some other, in some area that's super essential to the

Christian faith. You know, Pelagians, uh, believe in libertarian free will. Um, and I think that's, uh, their

Christianity can be called into question, um, for, um, for obvious reasons. So if so, did

God determine them to believe? Yes. So if determinism is true, then God determines people to believe in libertarian freedom or believe in other views.

That's true. Yeah. It was like, aha, but he determined it all. Well, again, there's the assumption of incompatibilism.

The, so the, when someone puts their finger up and says, aha, I got you, you're secretly baking into your assumptions.

I'm not saying Trevor's doing this, but people do this. They're assuming incompatibilism namely that determinism is incompatible with either moral responsibility, some kind of freedom or rationality.

Right. Um, and I don't think that they are incompatible. There needs to be an argument there, not just, uh, having that idea baked into the assertion.

And so I think being young more gracefully and sophisticatedly would, would agree with me.

Um, I hope so. You probably wouldn't have said it the way that I did, but any thoughts there, Matt? Oh, just, you've you're, you're covering the ground pretty well here.

Uh, but we have to define our terms. What's free will. And, uh, and people sometimes assume a certain value to it.

They kind of assume libertarianism, but I would just say, well, let's define what free will is. And then once we do that, then we can see is

God sovereign over that as well. And if he is not a problem, if he's not, that's a problem.

Always begin with, uh, in this context, defining free will, you know, apologetics for me more and more is coming down to just a few things.

If someone has an assumption, what validates the assumption and what's defining the term, define the term.

Let's see, uh, let's, let's work with it. And I'm discovering more and more. I've to deal with stuff.

If you just understand these basic principles and then don't give too much information out, have them, uh, just come after you because in order to do that, they have to string their line from their base point to get over to where you are.

That means there's more information they disclosed and it's always not going to work because they're not based on a

Christian worldview. It just takes practice for you to identify those problems. And that's why I give my answers in a short way with unbelievers.

Now with Christians, if they want more dedicated answers, we can get into some very deep stuff, but I'm trying not to get too deep here, but yeah, define our terms.

Always define our terms. One of the first things we do. Yeah. You're, you're good at that. You're like, so Matt, you're a Christian, right?

You believe the Bible's true, right? Yes. I do it for a reason. I go, yes.

And they'll say, well, do you want to explain? I can, if you want, you know, and they go, go ahead.

Why are you a Christian? I'm a Christian because God ordained that I'm a Christian. He granted to me, granted me my faith. It's one 29.

That faith is in Christ. John 6, 29, because he chose you from the foundation of the world. Ephesians one, four through five in Christ.

That's why I'm a Christian. Boom, done. Well, they don't like that.

Okay. You don't have to like it, but you're going to have to talk to God on the day of judgment about that. You're not liking it. It doesn't make it go away.

And that's why I quote the scriptures to them about things like that. Quick. I call it quick and slick.

That's right. That's right. Okay. Very good. Ray Leon strikes again concerning the Trinity.

What happens when we separate person and being, and when we don't distinct person and being, um,

I don't know exactly what you're at, what you mean by separating. I would say that the concept of the

Trinity, first of all, the Trinity is monotheistic. No, it's not. It's three gods. Then you don't know what you're talking about.

It's monotheistic by definition. It's monotheistic. Okay. Now, if you disagree with the doctrine or whatever, we can talk about that stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it is a monotheistic position.

So we make a distinction between the being or whatness of God and the person or wholeness of God.

What is God? He is the one triune God creator of heaven and earth and the sovereign King and all the titles that we can give to him.

Who is God? God is father, son, and Holy spirit, um, simultaneously existing co eternal.

They share in all of the same attributes. Um, and, um, they distinctly express attributes of personhood.

So the son can say, I, me, the father can say, I, me, and the

Holy spirit can say, I, me. Uh, so they are distinct in their personhood, but they are unified in their being, in their essence.

Okay. So, uh, God is one, what and three who's. So we don't separate what happens when we separate person and being,

I mean, I don't know exactly what you mean by that, but once you separate those categories, you're going to run into one of the many heresies that the church has condemned throughout its history and which clearly contrary to what scripture teaches.

So there you go. Don't separate those concepts, keep them together and make sure you delineate between them.

However, however, defining the terms is always essential. And someone says, how do you, can you separate them?

Well, in one sense, yes. In another sense, no. Depends on what you're doing because yes, I can separate person from being when

I'm defining one very precisely as it relates to something else. So I differentiate truth.

Values require distinctions. And so we had to have a distinction between person and being.

So what do we mean by person? What do we mean by being? Then once we can define them, then we can relate them.

But don't forget, we've got to define them as it relates to the nature of God, because he's the ultimate standard of all truth, all righteousness.

So we have to define personhood and being as it relates to him. We can't therefore define them in a way that's contradictory to say every person is its own being.

That would not be a Christian worldview option. So we have to define our terms. And then when we do that, we can see how they are distinct, but yet also related, because we want to have truth values.

And truth values requires distinction and precision. So again, I'm going to tell you guys, always want to define your terms first.

Define your terms, define your terms. Then number two is use the terms in sentences. Number three, use scripture and logic to validate or invalidate the sentences.

There you go. Yeah, simple, simple, simple. The other

Paul, hey man, how's it going? Paul Facey is a cool guy. If you haven't checked out his website, the other Paul, I think that's literally what it's called, his

YouTube channel, the other Paul, definitely subscribe. He's got some good stuff. I've had him on the show multiple times. And so he is asking, do any of you gents affirm the regulative principle of worship?

If so, can you explain why a high liturgical form of worship that does not offend scriptural teaching is nonetheless ruled out?

Are you familiar with the regulative principle? Is that like the, you know, we don't use instruments. We just kind of say, yeah, the

Lutheran negative principle is basically in worship. You can do whatever you want as long as it's not forbidden in scripture.

And I understand the reformed one to be the reverse of that. You can only do what's proclaimed in scripture.

And I've heard variations of that, but that's what I've understood it to be basically. So if you, for example, you only sing

Psalms and some views of the regular principle, the high view is

Solus Somnola. Well, if that's the case, you can't ever sing praises directly to Jesus. You can't mention his name.

So there's problems with it. So I think that we, you know, again, we define what the boundaries are of the, of the different main, different perspectives of the regular principle in different areas.

But I would, what I would do is first of all, of course, what you try to define them is validate the definitions in scripture.

I think it's in Colossians 3 .16, I think, and I forgot where, but it says something about, speak to one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

So there's a division there and we need to address that. And how are we to worship God? Are we to worship standing or sitting?

Can we worship on our face? We worship on our back. We worship with our hands raised, our hands lowered, our head lowered, our head raised.

And all these things are decreed or revealed in scriptures in different ways. And people will talk about the regular principles the right way to do it.

And they don't do those things. So there's always inconsistencies.

And I think that God, what God wants in worship is a heartfelt adoration that manifests in a bodily manifestation, whether it's the head bowed.

I just never, I don't get the connection between the Bible mentioning specific instruments and then logically concluding that those are the only ways, this is the only way we are to worship.

Like the fact that the Bible mentioned something doesn't necessarily mean it's commanding us to do that. And so when you kind of make that binding on someone, it seems like you're going kind of beyond what's written.

And yeah, I believe that you can do a smoke machine to the glory of God. Well, don't forget,

I think it's in Psalms. Let me see if I can find it. Do you think smoke machines can be used to the glory of God with the contemporary?

Yes, I do. They can be, because I'm not going to say, no, they can never be. I wouldn't do that.

But I think that, doesn't the Psalms say to use timbrels and to dance before God?

So, okay, if you can do what the scripture says, you better get up to start dancing. So don't hate on those women who run across the front with the flags, you know.

Now, as long as it's not in disorder and distracting, good in the back of the church, you can do it if you want.

That's right. I've been to a church where I got hit in the face with the flag, not hit with the pole, but this, I'm like at the front.

I'm like, oh my goodness, it was pretty intense. Hey, but she was worshiping, man. I mean, whatever. I mean, okay.

All right. Julio Jimenez. Julio Jimenez. Okay. Can you fathom?

Such a profound, it just starts with such profundity. Can you fathom a church where both Reformed Paedo -Baptists and Credo -Baptists can be united in a single local church?

Can you fathom that, Matt? Is that fathomable? Oh yeah, no problem. I'm a Paedo -Baptist and I go to churches where there's

Credo -Baptists. I don't have any problem with that. As long as they don't start snotting on me and say, I don't know what

I'm talking about. I'm going to say, do you really want to have that conversation? Let's talk, but whatever.

I'm a 50 point Calvinist and I go to a non -denominational church. 50 point?

50 points. Wow, man, you are serious. I out -Calvined Calvin. I guess so.

50, I'm a 50 pointer. Wow, that's awesome. I want to see the list of those things.

I don't mess, somewhere in my back of the book somewhere. Let's see here. Noah, Noah Kill.

How does the presuppositional approach to apologetics address and reconcile with the philosophical assertions put forth by moral realism?

Which philosophical assertions are you referring to? What philosophical assertions are moral realists putting forth that is an issue for presuppositional apologetics?

I'm not really sure. If someone were to say, if you are a moral anti -realist,

I could simply remember. That's why I made a distinction before between transcendental arguments, plural, and the transcendental argument.

You could have what's called localized transcendental arguments. For example, the argument for one's own existence is a localized transcendental argument.

I exist. I know I exist by the impossibility of the contrary. If I deny my existence, I must exist in order to deny my own existence.

That's a localized transcendental argument. It's asking, what are the necessary preconditions for my own existence?

It's not asking the more fundamental question of what are the necessary preconditions for intelligibility itself and existence.

In other words, Van Til's transcendental argument is arguing for a transcendental context that houses all of the other transcendental categories and brings them together.

If someone's a moral anti -realist and says, I don't affirm morality. Morality, by the way, is a form of the moral argument.

It is a transcendental argument. You're asking, what are the preconditions for objective moral values and duties?

If someone says a moral anti -realist, you can go the practical route and show examples how they do not live consistently with that, or you can just move into a more foundational area of rationality.

You don't want to argue morality. You reject morality. Let's talk about rationality. You can't be a rational anti -realist.

Rationality is not a thing. Well, then you fall right into the hands of the transcendentalist. I'm not sure exactly what they're referring to, but any thoughts there,

Matt? Sure. Moral realism, that's what it is.

Moral realism says that basically there are such things as moral truth values that have a transcendent necessity or a universal property to them.

They're essentially what's called abstract entities, but these require some sort of a mind and some other stuff we can get into.

When I'm talking to moral realists, I'll say, look, I'm going to get my finger on my keyboard, and I'm going to take notes what you particularly believe, because not all moral realists believe the same thing.

Then you diagnose as you get information, but here's some basic stuff. All facts exist in a context.

No fact that exists exists autonomously. Anybody's moral realist fact has to exist for a reason.

They're in the concept of their own mind. They believe in it. Why do you believe in it? That's one aspect.

I ask, can you define your moral realism, and can you give me an example of a realistic moral that comes out of that?

I'd write it down. Then I'd work with what they said, and what I'll do is ask a lot of questions.

This is what I do. One of my hobbies is fishing. I fish, put something out there to see what's going to strike.

I found that that's far more effective than jumping in headlong into the deep waters and then finding out

I'm having trouble swimming. What I want to do is bring them to where I'm at. I can do that by discovering what they believe.

A moral realist says that there's a relationship here with presuppositional.

Yeah, you're presupposing moral realism. I'm presupposing the moral realistic

God. I can say that my presuppositions, which include certain moral absolutes, which

I can offer you one, I'd say to them to see if they bite on that one. Can you give me the worldview that can account for your perspective, whatever that one that they've narrowly defined in your overarching umbrella of moral realism?

That's where you're on. Remember, everybody has a starting point. What justifies the starting point?

It's as simple as that. Define terms. What do you mean by your moral realism?

Then you want to examine stuff, but also know that everybody has a starting point. Facts don't exist independently, and all facts ultimately have to go back to the ultimate source of all things.

We get into that because of the causal chain of existence, blah, blah, blah. That's what you got to do.

Those are the basics, what you do. If you do that, if you get those, practice them, you'll do very well.

You'd be surprised if that helps enough. Nice. Very good. Let's see here.

How do we apply presupp to Judaism since they observe the Old Testament? Any good material on it?

I don't know any good material. Sure. Oh, yeah. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

I would then go to Joshua. I'd presuppose the validity of the scriptures. I'd presuppose what they say.

I would go into what they said and argue from that perspective and say, you presuppose the same thing

I do, that these are the words of God. Let's go into them and look at them together. I would go into Isaiah 53.

I'd go to Zechariah 12 .10. I'd go to Genesis 1 .26 where God says, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness and say, why the plurality?

I would go in and I would ask questions and do this whole thing. It's the same thing.

Now, Acts 17 .3. I'll do Acts 17 .2.

This is my answer to your question and then I'm going to share a link. Let me share the link first. I had Anthony Rogers on to talk about applying presupp to Islam.

He's a hacker. He also talks about how to apply it to Judaism. It's a long discussion, but I'm going to put it there in the chat.

I highly recommend people check that out. Just so you know, I think Anthony Rogers is great.

Everybody just, I'm joking. He's a good guy. But if you're going to speak to the

Jews, you want to do what Matt just said. You go to the Old Testament. But if you want to learn presuppositional application and how to do it, you want to go to the

New Testament because Paul would have been in the same exact position as this person asking this question.

Because I think Paul is a presuppositionalist. Not, of course, like Van Til using that language, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But in Acts 17, chapter 17, verse 2 and 3, as was his custom,

Paul went into the synagogue and on three Sabbaths, he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that the

Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the

Christ he declared. Now, what does this teach us? This teaches us that if the

Jew and the Christian have common ground in the Old Testament, Paul believed, because he didn't have the

New Testament at his disposal, Paul believed that the Old Testament was sufficient to demonstrate who

Jesus was. And so the presuppositional approach would be to presuppose the truth of the Old Testament and show in the

Old Testament that Jesus was the Christ, that he's the Messiah, so on and so forth. So you don't need to apply some transcendental argument.

Sometimes we just look, hey, there's a common ground between the Jew and the Christian. Notice what I'm saying, common ground.

There's not a neutral ground, but there is a common ground, and the common ground are the Old Testament scriptures. And this is how the apostles argued.

They argued from the Old Testament to try and demonstrate that Jesus was, in fact, the Christ. And so if Paul can do it, that's probably how we should be doing it as well.

Now, if you're asking, how do we apply a transcendental argument? Well, you could apply it to not the

Old Testament, because we both believe the Old Testament, but the Jew will have a different interpretation of the Old Testament. You have to understand that specifically the

Talmudic Jews, we think of Jews as Old Testament people, but really they're seeing the Old Testament through the lens of the

Talmud. So they are seeing the Old Testament through interpretations of and the traditions of the rabbis.

And so we believe that the scripture is more authoritative than the Talmudic interpretations. And so you're going to do a transcendental internal critique of the

Talmudic interpretations. If they're going to reject a God, then they're subject to the problem of the one in the many.

And of course, we can use prophecies that are found in Daniel to show that they're waiting for the

Messiah. They're late. There's a powerful argument you can use with Daniel, 70 weeks of years and things like that, which we don't have time to unpack, but it can be done.

So go to the Old Testament. That's what Paul did. But if you want to use a transcendental approach, you can critique the

Talmudic presuppositions that many Jews bring to the text itself. That's how I would go about it. All right.

Truth. Does the Roman Catholic Church teach another Jesus by distorting the person of the son in transubstantiation by making

Jesus' body ubiquitous? Rome's Jesus has an omnipresent physical body.

I don't know if Catholics would affirm an omnipresent physical body because if he's omnipresent, then we would not fit in the physical cosmos.

So there is, if you know what I mean there, Matt, right? He would crush us if he's physically literally everywhere, taking up all space.

You've done more work in Roman Catholicism. What are your thoughts on that, if you have any? That's actually a good question. Seriously, it's a good question.

I've thought about it in different forms. Does the RCC, Roman Catholic Church, which is an apostate church of the devil, teach another

Jesus by distorting the person of the son of this transubstantiation? In one sense,

I think we can make an argument there's a yes to it. But the person of Christ, whoops, how'd that come up?

The person of Christ is described by the

Hypostatic Union and the Catholic Church affirms that.

Then what they do is they take the physical aspect, the attributes, which they still say are ascribed to the single person, the

Hypostatic Union, and then they add ubiquity to it. And I think that's the place to get them.

Because what I've done with them before is say, do you know of any case where a physical man is in more than one place at a time?

Because by definition, he can't be. How is it that you say he can be? I've used the same argument different ways to try and get them to see that with some other things, with the

Eucharistic adoration and idolatry that they commit in it. But I think you've got a point there.

I don't know how far we could go with it, but it's something I've pondered before. It's a good question, seriously, and Rome's Jesus as an omnipresent physical body.

But it's not omnipresent, that's not the word, that wouldn't be the word, but multi -present. Omni means everywhere, but multi means situated logically.

What they would then say in transubstantiation is that the in within under kind of a thing, that the substance is actually his physical body, even though the elements or the accidents are actually the bread.

So even though it appears to be one thing, it's not, it's something else. So the essence of his physicalness is there, even though physically he may not be there.

Somehow I've heard him say that. So then you get into this philosophical mumbo -jumbo about the nature of essence and properties and things like that.

And so I don't go down that road very far with them, because not many of them know, and if they do, they don't represent

Catholicism, so why bother? If I find several people who know the same thing and then it becomes a theme, then

I would discuss it further. Does that help? I hope so. I hope it helped the

Truth Defenders. Adam Carmichael, in the view of Eastern Orthodoxy, their view of God is different in that the

Son proceeds from the Father and the Spirit proceeds from only the Father. This represents a different God, right?

No, I would say that that would deal with the economy of the persons, how they work and function within themselves, not so much to their nature and being.

So I do not think that's a different God, although I do think that Eastern Orthodoxy presents a different gospel with their denial of justification by faith alone and these sorts of things.

Well said. Perfect. I couldn't improve that one if I tried. Julio, T -Jump,

Tom Jump, atheist you both debated, has stated that I think therefore I am is sufficient to disprove the presuppositional approach.

Any thoughts? Yeah, I have lots of thoughts on that. That's easy. Come on, T -Jump.

You have to be very careful. My discussion with Tom Jump was really nice, although I have seen some dumpster fire discussions.

If you want to see a really dumpster fire discussion, watch the Tom Jump with Jay Dyer.

That was a hot mess. Unfortunately, I was actually looking forward to that discussion. I thought they were going to have a good conversation, but it kind of just went downhill.

But anyway, I think therefore I am is sufficient to disprove the presuppositional approach.

No. Okay. I think therefore I am, as a starting point, there's a couple of problems with it, even though Tom disagrees here.

Number one, it's fallaciously circular. I think therefore I am. You have the I am as the conclusion, which is also baked into the premise, right?

This has been pointed out not by Christians or presuppositional. It's been pointed out by Bertrand Russell and others that this is fallacious, at least on an argument level.

That's number one. Number two, Rene Descartes tried to doubt everything until he can find something that survived his doubt.

And that which survives his doubt, survived his doubt, is his own existence. So cogito ergo sum. I think therefore

I am. The problem is, in that assertion, there are other unaccounted for and unjustified presuppositions that he did not doubt.

Number one, I think therefore I am presupposes continuity of identity throughout time. He didn't address that.

I think therefore I am is a sentence, which is a proposition, which presupposes categories of logic, which

I guarantee he did not doubt when he was doing his exercise of doubting. So when you look at those categories that are presupposed in that statement,

I could ask those logically prior questions about how you know those deeper presuppositions.

And you're going to have to account for those. You can't just say, I start with myself and there we go, close our eyes and pretend that there are no deeper presuppositions baked into that.

Well, presuppositionalist wants to push deeper and ask them for the metaphysical grounds for that very statement itself.

I think, what is the I? This is a question presuppositionalist didn't make up this question. This has been throughout the history of philosophy.

People have criticized the cogito ergo sum as an axiom. What is the

I? To answer that question is to assume a metaphysical state of affairs. How do you know that's the metaphysical state of affairs?

So these are all sorts of questions that you need to ask to push deeper. They're not presuppositionalist trying to be annoying.

It's presuppositionalist trying to push for consistency and for non -arbitrariness.

We want to say, hey, don't be arbitrary. I think, therefore, I am. Justify those deeper presuppositions. What do you think, Matt? Wow, good stuff.

The only thing I might want to sprinkle a little salt and pepper on there a little bit is to say, to think, therefore, I am, is to presuppose the identity issues in there,

I, me, conclusions, logic. He's presupposing certain things. And how does a presuppositions of those validity, those valid things mean that presuppositional itself isn't true?

It doesn't make any sense because he's contradicting himself in the statement. Also, not only is it, does the statement presuppose the laws of logic, it presupposes or I mean, he presupposed the universality of the laws of logic.

So I think, therefore, I am, is that always true? Or only of him?

Right. And if you talk to Tom, he's very big on empiricism. How do you establish the universality of the laws of logic based on empiricism?

So I don't know exactly what his view is, but I know he's very big on empirical observation, these sorts of things.

And he also seems to be very Kantian in a lot of his assertions. But then again,

I found it to be very inconsistent in preparing for my discussion with him. He said a lot of things in the discussions I was listening to, and then it seemed like he was changing his tune when

I actually had a discussion. So I, I was kind of, if you watched that debate I had with him, I was like, I can't answer your question because I heard you say something over here and now you're saying something different.

So if you're not giving me more information and you're not being consistent, there's really not much I can say. So. That's what

I've always found with the atheists. The more you dig, ultimately, what you find is there inconsistencies every single time.

If you keep digging, if they stop the conversation, you can't, but that's what I've found. T -jump is no exception.

Right. And some people do it because they're just inconsistent and other people do it on purpose to be evasive, which is unfortunate.

Matt Yester, what's up, bro? Why you dude so cool? I don't know, man.

We're trying to be like you, Matt. That's what it is. We're looking up to you, Matt. Let's see.

How are you? We're on one hour and 25 minutes. How are you? Are you, are you super tired?

Okay. I'm tired, but keep going. It's all right. You're doing most of the talking anyway. This is great. I can just rest on your laurels and say, yeah,

I would have said that too. Yeah. Cool, man. Okay. Daniel Patino says, do you guys have any tips on learning for someone who is very new to it?

Yes. There are a bunch of good books that you can get. I just lent a person all of them, except there was one that escaped me.

Don't be turned off by the title. It was written for high schoolers.

If you could find it, pushing the antithesis, the apologetic methodology of Greg Bonson. Very simple, dumbed down and has study questions.

It even gives you homework assignments on the end of the chapters. It's super, super useful.

Pushing the antithesis, the apologetic methodology of Greg Bonson. Then of course, there's always ready against all opposition, which is put out by American vision.

The impossibility of the contrary, which is also put out by American vision. Those are introductory material.

Of course, if you want to learn the way I learned, a lot of people don't know this, but most of the presupposition that I learned is not from reading

Bonson's books. I've read them. My favorite one here that I don't lend this to anyone.

You could see it's filled with notes is Van Til's Apologetic.

This is my favorite apologetics book, but the number one way I learned is by listening to his lectures and his teachings.

If you want to go to sermon audio, every single recorded lecture that Bonson has ever done is available there for free.

You would be an idiot not to go over there and listen to them. My car,

I have a 45 minute commute. My car turns into a Bonson seminary when I'm heading to work and coming home from work.

When I need to mix it up, I'll listen to Matt destroy a

Unitarian or something like that. Just throw this in the mix too.

I agree with everything you said. Listen to the debate, Gordon Stein and Greg Bonson.

It's an interesting intro to the application of the argumentation. Gordon Stein was an atheist and he got his clock cleaned thoroughly by Bonson.

There's a lot in it. There's a lot more in that debate than you would realize the first two or three times you listened to it.

I think also, Daniel, this is super important. I guess all joking aside, I can show you books on the screen, but a super easy way to learn presuppositional apologetics.

You have to understand that presuppositionalism is an apologetic method that flows out of theology.

It takes apologetics as something that flows out of theology. If you want to be a good presuppositionalist, you want to master the scriptures as best as you can and be grounded in solid theology.

Basically, know what the Christian worldview is. Now, this is important because an important feature of presuppositionalism is doing what we call the internal critique in which we hypothetically grant the truth of the unbeliever's position to show that if it were true, it actually undercuts rationality and intelligible experience.

But when the unbeliever gets the hint and says, wait a minute, let me internally critique the Christian worldview, the key to surviving the internal critique is to simply know what you believe.

Master the scriptures as best you can, be grounded in solid theology, and you already have half of the coin done.

The internal critique, you can survive because you know your theology and you can answer attempts to internally critique your worldview.

The other side of that is be familiar with the unbeliever. Ask questions, you ask questions, you learn what they believe, and you internally critique their perspective.

There you go. Absolutely. You know me, I use a lot of scripture because I believe that's the final authority.

Absolutely, you have to know your biblical theology. If you're going to debate presuppositionally and get very deep into it, the issue of Christian theology is going to be paramount.

You're going to have to learn the Trinitarian God. Notice in Genesis 1 .1 in beginning

God, it doesn't defend God, it assumes God. You have to know how to do the same thing and defend him,

Trinitarian speaking, economic trinity, ontological trinity, perichoresis, divine simplicity, aseity, immutability.

You need to know these things and be able to describe them and how they interrelate. The way to learn how they interrelate is by debating them, teaching them because you'll see how truths are interconnected and interrelated.

It's just something that takes practice. You absolutely have to do that. It's absolutely true. You also need to learn logic.

You don't have to learn a big thick book on logic, just the basic laws of logic and the basic application of the laws.

A simple level is fine. Then take notes. That's one thing I recommend. I know that Eli's seen my notes.

I do outlines. I think it's an underutilized aspect of apologetics to use outline note systems.

In fact, in our discussions here, I've opened up different files of my notes to go through on stuff, philosophy,

Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholicism. I have a biblical apologetics. The issue of the one and the many is in two of the files.

I do that. I also have my OneNote open. I'm adding notes into the presuppositional area, which

I'll move over to another area. At any rate, just take notes, what you're doing. If you want to learn this stuff, here's something that you won't know until later.

I think outlines are tremendously valuable because it forces you to arrange information in logical sequences.

It's as simple as that. As I'm working on a new project, which I could tell you guys about, that is a very important aspect of theology.

You'll also find out that it will relate to philosophy and logic. I'd recommend, and if you want, sometime

I can show you guys how to do this, how to do a good outline system inside of Word, and how to do some tricks and some stuff like that.

It's very, very helpful because you want to not forget what you learn, and you want to be able to retrieve what you learn.

These things are exceedingly helpful. They are. They are. I agree.

I use your outline system. I was just doing that the other day.

I was watching videos and reading books and just creating outlines. The outlines just help you map out what you're reading.

It's super, super helpful, even if you never look at the outline again. The process of doing the outline seals it into your mind.

You'll end up using it later, though, the more you do apologetics. Because of it, here's my phone. I have a phone that's a couple of years old.

In August or late July, they're going to release the Fold 5, which opens up.

I'm getting it because I use my phone so much for outlining.

Even at night, before I go to bed, I watch TV. I'll take notes on all kinds of topics.

Now, I'm very adept at just doing notes and outlines and stuff like that and working on it.

How do you make the notes on your phone? What are you using? Microsoft Word? I use

OneNote first. Microsoft Word isn't as efficient and kind on my phone.

Once I get the big phone, then hopefully everything will work fine. I can use the full system and then just adapt that way.

I adapt to whatever technology I have at the time. I have written 200 to 300 pages of notes just on my phone over the years, seriously.

Oh, interesting. Now, we have a question here from the man in charge. Hello, the man in charge.

What is a good defense for the Protestant canon against the Roman Catholic canon or against the

Roman Catholic, I guess? What is a good defense for the Protestant canon? Now, I'll give you the short version, and if you want,

I can expand it. But the very, very short version is the Jews never recognized the

Apocrypha. The Jews are the ones who are given the Scriptures, and the

Jews never recognized the Apocrypha as being Scripture. That's one thing. Now, the church comes along while we do.

Well, you didn't give us the Old Testament, and the Jews didn't consider it. That's one thing. You can go to Luke 1151, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the house of God.

Yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation. In Luke 1151, the blood of Abel to Zechariah was the arrangement of the first and last book of the canon in the

Old Testament style where the Jews were back then. It's equivalent to Genesis to Malachi, but then it was

Genesis to Chronicles. That's just how it was arranged. Jesus was citing the arrangement of the canon at the time, saying the first and the last book.

Furthermore, you can go to Luke 2444, where Jesus says, these are my words which

I've spoken to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the

Psalms must be fulfilled. Notice what he says, all that's written about me here. He's appointing to those as being about him.

He did not include the apocrypha. He certainly knew what they were. They are not about him. Therefore, they're not inspired, et cetera.

We can get into more. I even have outline notes on the canon, which are pages and pages and pages.

A lot of it's from that book right there, which is a very good book. This book is very helpful. That's right.

It's an awesome book. I actually have, let's see, do I have it on my, do I have it right there? Let's see.

Yes, I do. Outlines on the canon. I'm opening up that. I like 30 outlines I'm doing.

This has been a very important issue recently with the influx of Eastern orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, especially in the online community.

Knowing about the canon, it's not an area that I'm strong in. It's definitely something I need to be beefing up on, but it's definitely, this is a great question.

Yes. My notes on the canon are only 10 pages. Very small. Only. That's only.

Seriously, that's embarrassingly small. All right. Well, Dinesh D'Souza is not asking a question, but he's,

Dinesh, I didn't know you were on this channel. Trevor Lewis asks, Dinesh D'Souza had a short video talking about the difference between belief and knowledge.

Can you explain the difference of us being believers in Christ and knowing

Christ? Yeah. So a belief is an acceptance that a proposition is true or that something exists or something along those lines.

Knowledge can be defined in different ways. You want to be very careful. There's some, I take the tripartite definition that knowledge is a justified, true belief.

So a belief is not necessarily knowledge, but knowledge necessarily entails belief.

If that makes sense. I'll say that again. Belief is not necessarily knowledge, but knowledge necessarily entails belief.

Okay. To have knowledge, belief must be part of that. So you need to have a belief. The belief needs to be true.

It needs to correspond with what is, what is, it needs to respond, correspond with what is actually the case.

And you need to have an adequate justification for that. Okay. So you can believe something.

And when you have justification and it actually accords with what is the case, then it is called knowledge.

So can you explain the difference of us being believers in Christ and knowing Christ? I think within the

Christian context to know Christ is also to believe in him, not just the mental ascent, an essential kind of not, not so much a faith, but we have a faith in Christ, but there's a very profound way in which we know him personally.

So we know him, we know him, we believe who he is, and we have a justification for knowing.

Now that's an intellectual knowing, but there's also a relational knowing. And so we want to make those distinctions as well.

So we believe in Christ. The proposition Christ is, is the son of God, right? He's God in human flesh.

I have that propositional knowledge here, but I also have knowledge of, of Christ in a relationship within the context of trust.

You see this in Jesus' statements with respect to the judgment. He says to those on his right, enter into the kingdom that has been prepared for you from before the foundation of the world.

But then he says to those on his left, get away from me. I never knew you. The omniscient all knowing Christ says, get away from me.

I never knew you. Now, of course, if God is, if Christ is omniscient, then he knows everyone, but there is a sense in which he does not know the unbelievers.

And so that sense, the knowing in that context is a relational knowing. So yes, we believe in Christ and we also have knowledge of Christ, but that knowledge goes beyond simple intellectual knowledge of who he is.

There is also a relational aspect to that. Do you have any thoughts on that, Matt? Yeah. Let me just sidestep a little bit, one foot in and one foot out.

Truth is what God has, knowledge is what we have. Look at it that way.

So our knowledge is true only when it comports with the mind of God. Since God knows all things, he has knowledge of all things, because he's ordained all things, and that's another topic.

Then truth is that which comports with the mind of God. And so I like to say, this is overly simplified, but truth is what

God has, knowledge is what we have. Our knowledge is true only when it comports with the mind of God.

Our belief is a spiritual trust in the truth of God. And by proxy, we then have knowledge of his truth.

Okay. I'll post that in there. And that's what I would say. Very good. That helps.

All right, good. So slam

RN says, is that plant real in the background? It doesn't look like it's growing. I like how people pay attention to the back stuff.

Okay. That's awesome. All right. Question from Anthony J. D. Nicola.

Can we use precept morality argument against other religions or only atheists?

Yeah, you can. Now remember morality, this is the thing we want to be careful with as presupposition, we want to be careful not to argue in piecemeal fashion, right?

We argue for the Christian worldview, right? And so we typically talk about knowledge and intelligible experience and logic, because those are logically prior to say the intelligibility of concepts of morality and things like that.

But you can, for example, on Mormonism. Mormonism is a polytheistic religion.

Okay. What is the absolute objective moral standard on Mormonism? If you have multiple deities who function under various moral codes, which one should we follow?

Which one do the gods follow? Are they obligated? Is there a moral code that transcends the gods that they all have to follow?

If so, does that objective morality that transcends all these gods, is it rooted in impersonality or personality?

How is that the case? So you could use it in certain contexts, although it's not always the best move to make, because if you agree generally on objective morals, you're probably better off moving to some other aspect where there's going to be a key disagreement.

But it's possible. What do you think? Yeah, and there's several different directions.

You could tie the one in the mini into it, universals, particulars. The issue of moral truth values, can they have universal applicability, which requires a universal mind, because morals are abstract entities, which require a transcendental necessity and some other things.

And then you get into the presuppositional necessity that can account for their actuality.

Then you get into moral realism and you can get into platonic norms. You can do all kinds of stuff. And I enjoy delving into those waters, but yeah, you can definitely do it.

It just takes a little bit more skill, a little bit more knowledge to do it. Not saying that Eli and I are really smart and really knowledgeable and better than you guys.

No, we're just saying, hey, we both have mental problems. We like studying this stuff. So we're practiced at it.

All right. Young Flav, awesome name, by the way. Can you provide some context on John chapter 10, verse 31 through 39, mostly verse 34?

I got to pull it up here. Yeah. The context is easy. Just read before and after. Next question.

I mean, you ain't lying. That's what it is. Context. Yeah. I can help you on that. John 10.

Yeah. I and our father are one. They pick up stones again to throw at him. For many good works to the father I've shown you. For which of these are you stoning me?

For the good work we don't stone you. I told you, but you being a man, make yourself out to be God. Is it not written in your lives that you are gods?

It's the law of God and it goes on. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I deal with that verse of the pericope a lot.

So they're asking what is the context of it? The historical context is probably what he's talking about.

John 10, 30, I and the father are one. That's the thing that started them off. You got to understand. He says, I and the father are one.

What's he referring to that would cause him to think that he's claiming to be God? Well, this is one of the things I'll ask them because they want to stone him right there in that pericope.

A pericope is a section of scripture. They want to stone him. The previous mentioning in John of stoning is

John 8, 59. They pick up stone to throw at him. This is after he said before Abraham was, I am, and he hid himself.

Okay. Then the next time they have stoning is here. He says, I and the father are one. Now what he's doing,

I believe he's alluding to the Shema. The hero is, or the Lord of God is one. He's saying,

I and the father are one because the word one is, is Echad, not Yahid. And, you know, you could go, what's he saying?

You can't prove anything, but, and then, uh, he's, what he does is he quotes Psalm 82, verse six, an imprecatory

Psalm, uh, which is a, a Psalm of condemnation against the unrighteous judges.

And he applies it to the Jews. I can go into it quite a bit. There's a lot of different angles in here. I use, if you want me to expand on those different ways to use in different contexts,

I can, I'm familiar with it, but it's up to you guys, what you want. Well, it is an appropriate text to go into demonstrate the deity of Christ.

I mean, it's clear. I mean, I just had a discussion with a Jehovah's witness not that long ago about, um, revelation one 17 and revelation 22, 13, where, um,

I asked him, is, is God the alpha and the omega? And he's like, yes. And I was like, all right, well, Jesus is called the first and the last.

And linguistically that's equivalent. They're like, well, no first and the last and alpha and omega are different. And I was like, that's not, that's not the case.

But if you continue to go on to revelation 22, 13, uh,

Lucas speaking, he says, I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end showing linguistically that they're equivalent.

And whoever's speaking in 22, 13 is affirming all three of those titles. And Jesus affirms at least one of them that he's the first and the first and the last, uh, which would attribute only to deity.

So, um, you know, John revelation, all these passages, I think they're a good place to go.

If he's asking in terms of understanding whether this is a good for the deity of Christ, I think those are good places to go.

Yeah. Uh, let's see here. Did it to do Julio asks first Timothy two 11 through 15 talking about married couples?

Question mark. Oh, that's a woman quietly received submission. A woman's authority to 15 preserved through childbirth.

Yeah. I can talk about those if you want. Is that talking about married couples? That's what he's asking.

A woman must quietly, Oh, receive instruction without it with entire submissiveness. So that's first Timothy two 11.

There's a lot of debate about some of the stuff in here, but nevertheless, the next chapter over in first Timothy three 15,

Paul says he's giving instruction on how to behave in the household of God. He's specifically talking in the church. He goes on and he says in verse 12, don't allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but remain silent for Adam was first created.

So the word silent is in the Greek. It means keep it down. It doesn't mean absolute silence like Sagao does, but he ties it into the created order.

It was Adam was first created. And then Eve was not, Adam was deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression, but women would be preserved in childbearing.

Now I'm going to make a comment about that, but what's going on here. Some people say that a woman is a particular individual in a church and that there's only one woman in that entire church must remain submissive.

That doesn't make any sense. Or a woman must receive instruction with entire submissiveness. Well, in what context is that?

Some say it's the, it's the marriage context. Well, it is because women were married just how it was back then.

It was, it's kind of a given, but what he's talking about here is, is church order. And so this is one of the verses, pericopes

I'll go to, to show women are not to be pastors and elders. And there's more to it. Besides that, furthermore, here's something that a friend of mine pointed out once she did reach,

I've never heard anybody else say this, but she brought it up. Women will be preserved in childbearing and, uh, the, or preserved, but the

Greek word there is, uh, sothesitai and it has to do with sozo, to save.

And I, I think it was Diana was the goddess of childbirth. And so the, the people at the time, what they would do is when they would be pregnant, dangerous, they, uh, would go offer offerings to the goddess of childbirth and, uh,

Diana, I think was her name, but another term used for her was soterios, which is a pun or play off the word salvation in Greek, which is used here.

So Paul might be alluding to this issue inside of childbirth, inside the marriage covenant, that her hope is in Christ, not in this false goddess.

There's all kinds of stuff that's woven in here, uh, for stuff. So I'm not exactly sure which direction they want to go, but, uh, no, it's not really talking about married couples per se, it's talking about church organization polity.

Okay. Nice. I love this one. Uh, Paul, other Paul says strongest argument against the tag.

If God real, why space big? I love that. Uh, uh, why did

Adam sin? Because God ordained that he would. Yeah.

There's a, there's a different reasons for the, there's a different senses in the why, but ultimately, yeah, God ordained that Adam do that.

Here's something else though, that I've been pondering about this very thing. And this is my theory. This is slickology here.

Slick, theology. Um, God says, be holy for I'm holy.

First Peter, uh, one 16. And so holiness is a quality of God's character. Not of us.

It's not endemic or natural to our nature, but it is natural to God's nature and his essence.

Holiness is the inability to hit for him to contradict his purity. And he, he cannot sin.

He cannot lie. Cannot, cannot. We don't possess that we're creatures. What clued me into another little bit about this is in first Peter five 21.

I think it is the elect angels. Why would there be elect angels? Because the elect angels are the ones chosen by God not to sin.

Why would he not to fall? Why would he have to elect them? Because they naturally would have, why would they naturally would have because they weren't holy.

So here's my, uh, just like we aren't holy. Adam wasn't holy. Here's my theory. Every sentient being got created by God will end up sinning because they don't possess the divine quality of holiness, which is part of God's nature alone.

It's just a matter of time before we blow it. That's what my theory is. I'm going to listen to you while I go use the restroom, but I'll mute myself.

I'm going to mute myself, but I need to hear. So go ahead. All right. Chris in Christ. He, I don't know if there's a compliment or an insult.

Eli has a S a smaller bookshelf than many other YouTubers. Here comes the compliment, but I'm almost certain he's actually read every book on his shelf.

No, I haven't read all of them. Let me see. I've read little bits of most of them, if that makes sense.

And some of them I've read a lot of them. Remember a lot of these theology books are not meant to be read in chronological order.

So certain chapters or certain sections that I'll read as they are related or relevant to whatever I'm studying.

So, but thank you for thinking that I read all of those books. Oh man.

Oh, and here we go. So slam around. I think Eli's computer is on top of a pile of books.

It used to be, but I've kind of upgraded. I wish I can show you here. Yeah, man, not upgraded.

I haven't really upgraded, but it's a lot nicer. I have a nicer setup this time around.

I don't have my laptop balancing on, on five Vantill books and you know, some apologetics manual, but there you go.

Let's see here. Let's see. I'm going to go through. Oh, thank you here.

So Richie Torres, thank you for your 499 super chat question, Eli, with all the

ET talk, ET recently, what are your thoughts on the existence of ETs and does the

Bible speak to extraterrestrials? I had to think about that for a second with all the

ET talk. What are my thoughts on the existence of extraterrestrials?

I don't know. They probably don't exist, but if aliens existed that wouldn't refute

Christianity, it would just cause us to ask different questions about certain issues, what role they play, you know, if you're talking about like intelligent, you know, extraterrestrial life, things like that.

So I tend to not think that aliens exist, not so much because I just think like, oh, that's just dumb.

It's not. I mean, we do live in a vast, a vast universe, but the majority of what we know about the universe is that much of the, much of the universe is hostile to carbon based life.

So I tend to think that that's probably not the case, that there is no extraterrestrials, but I mean, if there were, you know, discovered,

I mean, you know, the Lord created them. So that's my view. I know some other people have different views and connect it with kind of spiritual occult things.

And I think those are interesting as well, but that's my spin on extraterrestrials, if that's what you meant by ETs, which

I think that is, that'd be funny if it's completely something else that you're referring to. But what about you?

Aliens? Oh boy. I think you probably have a lot to say about aliens. Aliens abduct people and they're teaching a cultic satanic doctrine.

I know you're going to go somewhere in that direction. Well, they are. It's true. Mathematically, life can't form by chance any place on the universe.

It's just impossible. People say it's impossible. It's not impossible. Yes, it is. I know about the Drake equation. I know what the mathematics, mathematics relates to reality.

And we can get into permutability with DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, genomic information formation things.

It's just not going to happen. If any alien life exists out there, it's because God created it.

That's the only way. Okay. So what are these things? Well, they're real.

And by the way, I've studied a lot of them. I've studied a lot. They're real. They have been around for centuries.

Alexander the Great even reported seeing a formation of fiery shields moving across the sky.

And it's recorded. And they're not the only ones. They've been around for a long time. So what are they? I suspect they're

Nephilim, the breeding program after the fall, after the flood. And I got reasons for that, which could get into a really interesting ramification of what's going to be happening.

But nevertheless, they do teach theology. They teach Jesus is not God. Not every alien abduction does, but Jesus is not

God. We're all divine and reincarnation's true. And Christians don't get abducted. And they find out that when people cry out to Jesus in the middle of these abductions that they suddenly end.

There are physical craft. There have been plenty of sightings all over the world from extremely reliable individuals, even some who have physically touched them, and physical imprints in grounds, radar, radiation, and things like this.

There's something going on. I could talk about it a lot more, but it is. It's probably demonic.

I believe it's a demonic manifestation, and I suspect it might also be used in the end time deception that's coming when things get really bad before Christ returns.

Because remember, I teach, unlike some people here, I teach deprescatology.

I'm a grimy post mill. He's a pessimist.

I mean, he's pessimistic. I mean, you guys, you've seen his stuff, man. He's always like, dude, the world's going to hell in a handbasket.

I've got a good reason for it. Wait, don't move to Canada. Nevermind. Canada's going to hell in a handbasket. No, I believe.

If you haven't seen the movie Aliens, the second one, you need to because - It's prophetic. It's part of the apocrypha.

That's right. It's prophetic because just picture the aliens as being the governmental oppressive system of the

Antichrist. And what do you end up doing? Running here as you scream, running over there as you scream, running over there as you scream.

The masks, it predicted COVID, bro. The masks, there you go, getting down in there, trying to intrude.

And, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We could probably - Hey, that was pretty funny. I just made that up right now. I'm going to - Pretty good.

I'm surprised you're that smart. Good. That was good. That was good. Coren's Chandler, thank you so much for that $5 super chat.

Super, super appreciate that. Let's go through just a few more and then we'll wrap things up here. Apologetics 101, question for Eli.

Are you a young earth creationist? Yes. Yes, I am. Yes. I don't know how young, but not millions of years, but young, yeah.

I struggled with that for a while, but I had, it's one of my, let's see what it's got right now. Hold up.

One of my most watched video on my channel is, let's see here.

It's at 32 ,000 views, which is a big deal for me. I don't have a lot of videos that are that widely watched, but it is the debate

I moderated, open discussion I moderated between Hugh Ross and Jason Lyle. And that discussion was excellent.

And for me, it kind of sealed the deal for me. That was a very helpful discussion. And so I'm happily a young earth creationist.

Do I have the answers to everything? No, I'm still studying stuff, but I think that that is the best position in my opinion.

Let's see here. How about this one,

Matt? You want to try this one here? Do the sacraments save in the reformed view? And if so, how?

No, they don't save in a reformed view. The sacraments in the reformed view, from what I understand, are a means of grace in that they, they're not the same way as a means of grace in Catholicism.

In Catholicism, in paragraph 1999 of Catholic Catechism, grace is infused in the soul through the sacramental system called sacerdotalism.

And each sacrament is, has a certain amount of grace related to it. We don't, this reformed position doesn't teach that.

And some of the higher aspects of the reformed view, I've heard some say, well, it's a means of grace. And how is that a means of grace?

That God is, I'm going to say this, this is not the right way, extra favorable to you in the participation of them.

And that he looks upon you and considers them, and you're blessed even more by participating in them.

So they call that a means of grace. And there's, and trust me, there are some interesting views within reformed theology on this.

And it's something that gets a little too close to Catholicism, or even Lutheranism for my view. But for the most part, they don't.

And so I'm not exactly sure how I hold the position. I'm not even sure what my position is. I like to say that Jesus is present with the supper, the same way he was the first time.

That's what I say. And it's a good out, it's biblical, and I don't know exactly what it means at the same time.

Okay. Chris in Christ, thank you so much for the $5 super chat. Just because I wasn't smart enough to put my actual questions in a super chat.

Thanks for the great answers. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let's see. We'll take one more.

And we'll end with a simple one. How about that one? Simple one. Ready? This is our last question.

I'm going to scroll all the way down and see is a question. Let's see here.

Okay. Yeah. I'm going to end there. That'd be a good place to end. So can you explain the issue of the one and the many?

Let's end with a simple one. I have an entire video on this one question, but we can...

Well, I'll let Matt tackle it because he's my special guest hanging out with me at this live

Q &A, which I appreciate. Thank you. It's been a lot of fun. So let me explain something to explain it.

So you're sitting in a church full of chairs, they're all identical chairs, and you have one chair you're sitting in and your friend is sitting in another chair.

You have two chairs and people are sitting in all the chairs. What's the ultimate nature of reality?

Is it one manifestation or is it the idea behind them all?

So the philosophers have been asking the question, what's the ultimate nature of reality? Is it one thing or many? One substance that has different appearances or is it many independent things that have a unified kind of appearance?

This is a general topic. So if the ultimate nature reality is one thing, then there are no distinctions between objects like chairs and trees.

But without distinctions between objects, you can't then promote truth values because you have to have distinctions for truth values.

So it leads to a type of incoherence. If plurality is the ultimate, it's called atomism, then we've lost a unity between those coherent or between those particular objects.

And so you don't have an overarching issue that you can then unify across them.

And so it's a problem. It's called the one and the many. Now, so people ask the wrong question, which is the ultimate?

Is it one or is it many? There's a third option. The third option is that the one and the many are equally ultimate and they are equally ultimate because God is one and many, one

God, three persons. When you presuppose the equal ultimacy of that value, not that the term is right,

I'm using it here. But in that context, then you don't have a problem with the one and the many issue.

You can then understand particulars. You can understand truth values. You can understand universals and particular manifestations of universals.

And all of it makes sense. You know, Eli and I could, if you guys were ever interested sometime, just sit and talk about this issue for a long time.

There's a lot here behind it. It's a fun topic. It's a fun topic. Yeah. All right.

So that is the last one. I haven't done a two -hour in a long time. I'm sorry if you're super tired.

I was having fun. No, it's about an 11 -hour day for me so far.

So it's okay. Okay. It's all right. It's standard for me. When we're done, you should just go watch

Alien 2 again and make it 74. Well, if I wasn't married, my wife wasn't here, whatever,

I would do more apologetics. I would just go work on video editing out of my program. I got to put together some stuff for a new project

I got going, which I got to tell you about, see what you think of it. And we can do it off the air if you want. But I would do that.

But otherwise, I'm going to take care of my wife and go watch TV and stuff like that. All right.

Hey, man, tell me when you want me to come on your show. I'd love to hop on your show. Yeah. You know what?

I have an idea for something, is that we could do an analysis of a debate recently, which

I haven't seen yet. I've heard about. Okay. Which debate was it? William Lane Craig and a oneness guy about nine months ago.

Someone turned me on to it and said that William Lane Craig was pushing modalism. But I don't know.

He's going to hear. And so we'll see. It might be interesting to go over it and then review it because I want to start doing

Patreon again and we'll see. Yeah. All right. Cool. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much.

We had a nice crowd, some great questions. I hope it was useful for people.

Thanks again for the super chats as well. If you are looking to support an apologetics ministry,

CARM is an awesome ministry to support. Matt's been doing it for a really long time and he's got so much useful and helpful information on his website.

So definitely consider that. If you're looking to support a more youngish, you know, a youngish.

A svelte ministry. That's right. You know, you could also support

Revealed Apologetics. You go to the website, revealedapologetics .com. There's a donate page and you can support by purchasing one of my many courses and conferences that are available there.

You type on the pre -sup you when you go on the website and we can send you that material and the money that you spend to purchase that material helps me do a lot of the back -end stuff.

As you guys know, all of this stuff costs money and it is kind of like a second job. So I'm sure either myself or Matt or any

Christian ministry you decide to support would be greatly appreciative. If anything, your prayers would be appreciated as well.

All right. Well, that's it for this two hour and five minute live stream of Q and a. Take care guys.