Apologetics Q & A

Hmm, okay, go live, it's giving me some trouble here. All right, it's giving me some trouble. Let me try something real quick. All right, I'm gonna exit the room and come back in the room. So it's giving me some technical difficulties.

Opening Technical Difficulties and Welcome

One second here. All right, I guess it was playing. Sorry about that, folks. We were having some technical difficulties there. Welcome to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and just want to apologize straight up.

Just a little frazzled. I had a long day at work and I came home and I had to move my setup to a different location. And so I literally just walked in the door and a little disoriented. So I'm looking forward to a fun Q &A session.

You will know that I actually will have a guest with me today who is unfortunately not Dr. Matthew Barrett. I know folks were following Revealed Apologetics on social media. I posted it on Instagram and other places as well.

I was supposed to have Dr. Matthew Barrett to talk about Sola Scriptura, but he's actually not feeling well today. So we had to push back our interview a little further. And so we will, I'm pretty sure there will not be any issues.

We should be good to go for next Thursday at, I think it's five o 'clock, five o 'clock, 5 .30 or something like that. I'll post it and share it again. So that's Dr. Matthew Barrett next Thursday, all right, September 30th.

All right, well, since at last second, my guest kind of fell through for health issues, I have invited a friend of mine who is a really awesome guy, a very, very sharp dude. And definitely one of those guys that if I have a theological question or an apologetics question, he's one of those guys that he's really good to run things by.

He's a very sharp thinker. So I think you guys are in for a treat. And we're gonna go casual today. We're gonna open it up to questions and hopefully if we can answer your questions, answers. So if you have any questions, this is the time to ask them.

I'm gonna wait a couple of minutes for people to start coming in. But if you have any questions about theology, apologetics, philosophy, you can go all out and ask all the questions you want and we'll try our best to tackle them.

If you don't have any questions, then we're just gonna blab about apologetics, theology, and hopefully it'll be beneficial for those who are listening. So without further ado, I am the revealed apologist.

I'd like to introduce you to the reformed apologist. Everyone say hello to my good friend, Ron D. Giacomo. I think I pronounced that correctly. How's it going, Ron?

It's going well, good to be here.

Well, I'm glad you agreed to come on such short notice because I cannot guarantee the orthodoxy of what will be coming out of my mouth. I'm still a little fuzzy. My brain is a little out there right now.

It's been a crazy day, but I enjoy talking about theology and I know you do too.

Well, great, yeah.

All right, so why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself? You go by the name Reformed Apologist, is that correct?

Yeah, I should drop the definite article, but yeah, I used to blog under Reformed Apologist. So I never actually had the definite article there, but others have said that, but no. So I used to blog at Blogspot under that handle, reformedapologic .blogspot .com.

And then I haven't done that in quite a while. I started a new blog, philosophical-theology .com, and that's a WordPress blog, and it's more focused. It's more what my interests are, it's not as broad.

Sure.

Now, I remember the first time seeing your name kind of going around on Dr. James Anderson's blog. So folks who know Dr. James Anderson from RTS, Reformed Theological Seminary, he's a noted Christian apologist, philosopher, and I've seen you interact with some of his posts, and I recognized very quickly that you're very conversant in some of these philosophical issues as they relate to apologetic methodology.

So I was really taken with some of your comments there, and then I found your blog, which I found very helpful. Are you still writing on the blog?

I'm writing on philosophical-theology .com. Perhaps my last blog post on Reformed Apologists was a link to my new blog, and it's interesting because you wanted me to come on the show. It was well over a year ago, and it got held up in the Spam folder.

And then, but you and I had spoken a few times after you had made the request, but I didn't know you had made the request. So yeah, it was kind of weird.

Okay, well, I'm glad to have actually gotten to meet you, at least on the phone. We have, you and I, we've spoken a lot on the phone, but we haven't met each other in person. So hopefully one day that'll happen.

But all right, well, let's jump in. First, just to let folks know, what specific apologetic methodology do you identify with? And perhaps that'll give a framework for people as to how we answer some of the questions that are already coming in.

The biblical one.

The biblical one, I knew it.

No, I would call myself a presuppositionalist.

Okay, all right, very good.

And what are your apologetic influences? What got you into presuppositionalism?

Well, I was, at first, when I went into the OPC over 20 years ago, I'm in the PCA now, but when I got into the OPC, I started to hear more of this approach to apologetics. And I'm actually reluctant to call it Vantillian apologetics only because there's so much baggage that goes with that term.

Some baggage is warranted, I think. And some I don't think it is. So it's a big mess. I don't call myself a covenantal apologist or anything like that. I just call myself a presuppositional apologist.

If somebody needs a label, and then you've got to distinguish that from even a Clarkian presuppositionalist.

All right, very good. Now, I know you're throwing around some terms, folks who may not be familiar with some of this language of Clarkianism, Vantillianism, and sometimes we mention things like transcendentals and things like that.

I don't want to give the wrong impression for folks. Ron and myself are used to having apologetic discussions at a pretty high level with some people, and sometimes not as high of a level, depending on who you're talking about.

But this apologetic methodology can be used by anybody. So why don't you, here's my question for you, and then we'll take some of the questions in the comments because a bunch of them are coming in. How would you explain a presuppositional approach in a very simple way that perhaps a teenager could grasp and say, hey, you know what?

I think I can use that with my friends. So say I'm 16, 17 years old, and I'm a Christian. I know my basic theology.

I love the Lord.

Ron, I want to learn how to kind of engage my friends.

In school.

How might I do that from this presuppositional approach?

Presuppositional Apologetics and the Problem of Evil

Yeah, good question. I think we should approach apologetics like we approach any discipline, and we should take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. I mean, we should try to, if there is a way of doing apologetics that's biblical, then we should probably want to search out that way.

So the context in which I would put apologetics is that every man knows God, every woman knows God, every child knows God. And because they know God, they are under God's judgment, and they're aware of that.

So first, negatively, I do not want to approach apologetics with an unbeliever in any way that implicitly says to that person that God has not revealed himself to them in a way that's understood. So if I come to him or her with arguments for the existence of God, even if they're sound, am I suggesting to that person that they do not know God, and if they do not know God, they are not culpable for suppressing him or denying him in conscience, and that God would therefore be unjust for casting them into outer darkness should they not become a Christian?

God would, am I suggesting that God would be unjust for judging them according to a knowledge that I'm suggesting they don't have? I don't want to, so I don't want to approach an apologetic as proving God in that way.

Sure.

Okay. Now, I do believe there is an approach about answering the fool, and when the Bible calls someone a fool, the God is not just pejoratively naming people things just to be nasty. They are a fool.

They're dull in their reasoning, okay? So I'm gonna try to, I'm not going to answer him according to his presuppositions, according to his autonomous reason, but in another way, I am going to answer him according to his presuppositions.

I am going to take his presuppositions and show how they're internally inconsistent.

Right.

And then I'm gonna show him or her, hopefully I will demonstrate that the Christian worldview can make sense of their presuppositions.

Okay.

Their assumption, the basic assumptions they live by. So we do a two-step approach.

Sure, and so how would we unpack this for a teenager? So like, let's take a hypothetical example that a teenager might be struggling with if they're sharing, you know, if you're familiar with some of the things that teenagers tend to say, like, hey man, I don't see God, you know?

If God exists, why is there evil? Why don't we pick one of those kind of popular things that pop up and maybe apply what you just said there to the specific situation?

Yeah, okay. Okay, I'm gonna defend the Christian worldview.

Okay. Right.

And there's only one Christian worldview. It's whatever God thinks.

Right.

Okay, and we're trying to press into that Christian worldview. I believe that the closest we can come, I mean, the Reformed faith, I believe, is the 24 karat variety of offering that we know in the church.

Okay.

Okay, so take the problem of evil you just mentioned. I would, you know, an Arminian's answer is evil because of free will. More sophisticated Arminians would say, well, God did have to, he could have chosen a feasible world, not necessarily a possible world for them, but a feasible world where nobody sinned or Adam and Eve didn't sin.

I mean, I don't know if that feasible world would exist in an Arminian thought. It certainly exists in a Reformed thought. So for the 17-year-old, 15-year-old, or the mature unbeliever, my answer is there's evil in the world, yes, but God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil that he has ordained, that he has not just allowed, but that he has determined according to his wisdom for his glory and the good of the alive.

Okay, so I've got a different answer even on the problem of evil than I think an Arminian can consistently make.

So to say that God has morally sufficient reasons for the evil that he allows, that would alleviate really the assumed contradiction. So when someone says, hey, you know, how can there be a God and there be evil in the world?

The implicit suggestion is that there is somehow some logical inconsistency with the existence of the God we're speaking of within Christianity and the existence of evil.

So he's either not all powerful or he's not all loving.

Right, so to say that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil is just to show that on the Christian worldview, they're not logically incompatible because on the Christian worldview, not only can God have morally sufficient reasons, if you look at the biblical story, there are plenty of examples in which God does have morally sufficient reasons for the things that he allows.

Is that what you're getting at?

Yeah, I mean, he has a morally sufficient reason. And if he wants to tell us more about those reasons in eternity, or maybe they're in the scriptures and I don't see them. So it's for his glory and our good.

Maybe there's things that he could not have revealed to us on a creaturely level that we would understand or appreciate because redemption is in the context of evil. Without evil, there is no redemption.

So if God wants to redeem and show his attribute of love and grace that way and display his justice and mercy in one symbol of the cross, then that's his prerogative. God is accountable to nobody, but God does not sin.

Right.

God does not sin.

Right.

All right, thank you for that. Well, those are a nice preliminary conversation. I'm waiting, as I was waiting for more folks to come in. So we have a couple of people in listening in live and we have some questions.

So let's just go through these. And if they're specifically addressed to me, I'll try to address it. And if they're kind of generically addressed to any of us, I'll throw it over to Ron and we'll unpack some of these.

All right.

All right. So I don't know if you could see that up on the screen there. I know you're using perhaps your phone. It's pretty small, but I'll read it out loud. Isaiah asks, hi, Eli. Sorry to ask again.

I guess Isaiah has been asking me questions on Facebook. But by the way, I'm not ignoring folks who engage me in the comments. I just don't have time to sit and respond. And so that's what I love when Ron jumps in in some of my threads and I'm like, all right,.

Yeah, go for it, man.

I don't have time. But now I'm here. So hopefully I could address some of these. Okay, so what verses make you not a convinced young earth creationist? I seriously haven't heard a good response from Exodus 20 verse 11 that clarifies what Moses wrote in Genesis 1 .1.

Well, Isaiah, I did make a previous video, not the previous one right before this one, but the one before the one before this one, okay? In which I lay out a whole host of my own theological beliefs. And I actually confirmed, I put a flag down.

I said that I lean more towards a young earth creationist perspective because I'm convinced of the straightforward reading. And I think that there's a lot of jumping through the hoops that is required to adopt some of these other perspectives.

Okay, so I would agree with you. Exodus 20 verse 11, I think is a very powerful confirmation of a literal understanding of Genesis 1. Now, again, I will admit though, the discussion of interpreting Genesis is a very nuanced discussion.

It's a very nuanced debate. A lot of different things that are involved in that. So I'm not going to like hand wave what other positions have to offer. I don't think that people who reject the young earth position are compromisers necessarily.

I do think that there is a valid debate to be had. But what about you, Ron? What do you think about Genesis chapters 1 through 11? Are you a young earth creationist? Do you not identify yourself as a particular label?

Where are you on that topic?

Yeah, I'm a younger, but I try to answer things as if you wouldn't know. This question in particular, I think this question has a bias. It presumes an onus of proof. Okay, why are you convinced of the young earth creation?

Well, who has the burden of proof given the text?

Mm-hmm.

And so that needs to be established up front. I mean, the people, like the framework people I know, they are framework because they believe the genre of the text.

Sure.

It requires it. Well, it requires a non-literal 24 hour a day interpretation, right? So my concern, if I come across a framework or another theory of the age of the earth, or creation, my concern is what is behind it?

What is driving it? And if it is autonomous reasoning, or if it is the science, that's a concern. If he's got exegetical hermeneutical principles in place that move in that direction, that's fine, okay?

I mean, but the question I have is why is it, I mean, as Paul asked Agrippa, I think it was Acts 26, maybe it was 27, I think it was 26. Why do you deem it impossible that God raised the dead? Well, why do we deem it possible that God creates with apparent age?

On day one, Adam did not look like an infant.

Sure.

So could he have sent starlight into the future and had it already there immediately without waiting for the natural time to have elapsed?

Right.

I mean, this isn't something I'm deeply concerned about. My comment on the Facebook page the other day is I don't see how it's really relevant. If they do it on hermeneutic principles, it doesn't deny the existence of God for the intelligibility of knowledge, reality, ethics, and it doesn't deny the authority of scripture as the justification for those things we know off by our eye.

Right.

So I don't see it. I mean, it's important to know the truth, but I don't see it as any type of deal breaker for an apologetic approach.

And I think for a Christian who's trying to decide on this issue, I was asked the question, and I know you read the post on Facebook, like what amount of evidence would convince you, right? Of, I think it was of old earth or something like that.

And a lot of these questions come from the perspective as though evidence is worldview independent. I mean, if the Bible is the word of God and it actually provides a framework through which we interpret evidence, through which we interpret data, there's no amount of evidence.

It's not an issue of the amount of evidence, it's an issue of whether I'm interpreting the evidence in a way that is consistent with what God has revealed. And so there is a debate between young earth, old earth, and other positions as to what God has in fact revealed.

What does it mean? But it's never an issue of just, look, you need more evidence, or, hey, can't you see that this is obvious that it's this old or that old? I don't think it has much to do with the facts, rather the interpretation of the facts and whether we're interpreting scripture correctly.

The evidence will never give us an answer to origin.

Right.

Because God could have created with apparent age. So the question, what I always see come up, well, is God trying to deceive us? Well, I could respond to that. Well, God said on day one, day two, day three.

So I can say, has God said? Who is the deceiver? Why, if I can drop in a scenario, abductively uses and say, this scenario does truth to the text, it doesn't deny the text.

Sure.

What denies the text, again, unless you have some really strong case for a hermeneutical principle, but I don't know that that hermeneutical principle will necessarily deny the younger. Okay, it might allow for an older, but I don't see how it would therefore deny the younger, unless they are inferring that if they would be using a different type of word or something.

And again, I'm not studied on it, but what struck me on your Facebook page is somebody said, well, if the Bible said it was a flatter, would you believe that? And that struck me, that struck me a little odd because if the Bible in this world said, if a book called the Bible in this world said that, then it wouldn't be the scriptures.

Okay, the Bible in this world doesn't. If there's a possible world in which that the Bible says that, well, maybe it's true in that possible world that the earth is flat. Okay, God could have created a flat earth.

Or if it's a possible world in which the world is spherical, and the Bible in that world says that, well, then is there exegetical or hermeneutical principles that would say we would not interpret it that way.

We would take the genre as whatever, like apocalyptic literature, we interpret a certain way. So we would take it as a different sort of genre. So I'd need to have more facts about the alleged Bible that's saying this in some world.

Sure, and with the whole, is God deceiving us? When I, okay, so I said that I lean more towards a young earth creationist perspective, but before I leaned in that direction and I was kind of like, kind of agnostic on this question, I never found that point very relevant because if the young earth interpretation's correct, then God isn't deceiving us.

He's not deceiving us, he's saying, I made it day one, day two, day three, and there you go. So it's not an issue of deception, it's an issue of whether you're understanding what God seems to be clearly saying.

So I don't, I never found that convincing at all.

You're right, you're right. And if we grant, assume for argument's sake that the world is y 'all, then the only deceiver would be, has God said?

Yeah. Yeah.

So I don't think we're gonna settle it on deception.

All right, yep.

This is such a big, big topic. I actually have invited Dr. Jonathan Sephardi on my show, and he's agreed to come on, but we're gonna set up a date. So I know he's a, a lot of people suggested him to me as a really strong proponent of the young earth perspective.

So I'm looking forward to diving into it. I'm still kind of, I'm not new to the topic. I'm just new to giving the topic as much attention, if that makes sense, than I have in the past. So definitely love those sorts of, those questions.

Thank you so much, Isaiah, for your question. Let's, let's move along. All right, Clayton Weaver. Thank you for your question, Clayton. Clayton asks, would you say that there is only one coherent worldview?

If so, how is Judaism logically incoherent? Would you like me to go on that one, or would you like to take a stab on that one, Ron?

I mean, I'll take a stab at it. I mean, where Judaism and any, any revelational worldview that overlaps in its special revelation with the Christian worldview, we have to do an internal critique of that worldview and show where it's wrong.

So the Christian, Judaism, as an ism, is wrong on the gospel.

Sure.

Okay, it's a gospel of works. It's not even a gospel of grace through faith. They don't object to not having animal sacrifices for atonement. They've now substituted that with prayer. So it's an apostate form of biblical Judaism.

They've fallen away from the roots of Judaism, which are the roots of Christianity. And Islam has made the mistake of acknowledging the gospel accounts. I mean, they say ours are corrupted, but they, and they acknowledge the Torah.

So they have, they deny that Abraham was saved by grace through faith. So their worldviews are wrong because they deny their own book. I mean, if the Quran is the book that Muslims say it is, and I'm morphing into the crowd, the fact of Judaism, that it cannot reveal the God of the Quran who's transcended over it, who's not personal.

So the Quran cannot be the book it claims to be, or they claim it to be. So Judaism, where it's correct, the faith would be in really aping Christianity. They're borrowing from my worldview, but they cannot save themselves really even philosophically, or theologically.

It's just internally inconsistent. I mean, the prophecies have been fulfilled. I think one of the biggest prophecies that people do not appeal to is the 70 weeks of Daniel. I mean, we have a timetable that's set in place for the coming of Messiah.

Sure.

And that comes at the time of Christ, and they should have been looking for it.

Yeah, yeah.

With respect to this question, Clayton, I actually agree with what Van Til often said that when you really boil down to it, there really are only two worldviews, the Christian worldview and the non-Christian worldview.

And any worldview that rejects Christ, that rejects the triune God, is operating from a non-Christian worldview, even though you have some of that overlap, like in Judaism. So there was a point in which Judaism was on the right track and then there was a point in which certain Jews or a large portion of Jews began to reject God's revelation and in doing so, have rejected really the foundations of the genuinely, truly biblical worldview that's grounded in the God who has revealed himself as the triune God of scripture.

And so I would say that there is only one true worldview, I wouldn't, or coherent worldview, because when you get down to the fundamental foundation of any worldview perspective, we're gonna have to ask the question, and I've repeated this question before and folks have heard this, we wanna ask that deep philosophical question, does the worldview in question provide the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience?

Does the worldview in question provide a foundation for knowledge, a foundation for ethical norms, a foundation for the universal laws of logic, a foundation for bringing together both unity and plurality?

And when you really get down to it, a form of Judaism that rejects the triune God is going to run into some of the same philosophical problems that other unitarian groups will run into and those problems will persist even if there is overlap.

Because what is Judaism? What is true Judaism? If not just Christianity, if you could just say that, I mean, Judaism that rejects Christ is not a genuine Judaism, right? It's not a genuine carryover of what the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has given us, because what has the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob given us?

He's given us a promise of the Messiah that would come to deliver us, we see this in the person and work of Christ. So I would say that there is only one coherent worldview and any perspective like Judaism or other overlapping sort of religions that what Ron said, kind of ape Christianity, I would say that while there are elements there that are consistent with the Christian perspective, ultimately, they will veer off in areas that really will define them outside a proper quote, Christian worldview and therefore outside the bounds of a coherent worldview.

Now, there are some people who think that there are multiple coherent worldviews. I don't think that's necessarily true for a bunch of reasons that we don't have time to go into. But when you get to that foundational level, bringing together unity and plurality, things like that, that's going to cancel out those Unitarian perspectives, those monistic perspectives in which the grounding, the metaphysical grounding of reality is an ultimate one.

Any perspective in which the ultimate grounding of reality is an ultimate plurality, you're gonna have problems there. And so there might be consistency with another worldview on the surface level, but when you reach down to more of those foundational levels, I think there are gonna be some problems there.

So those are my two cents on that question.

Yep.

You know, I'd probably leave that. I mean, and I'm not sure what Clayton Weaver is getting at, but I think the question about coherence, our worldview doesn't just need to be coherent.

Right, it needs to be true.

It needs to be consistent. It needs to be explanatory, okay? And so let's say someone says, well, I have consistency in my worldview, and we don't do certain things, because certain ethical things, not because there's moral absolutes, though they believe in moral absolutes, otherwise they couldn't have moral proximates could be measured, they have to be measured against an absolute.

But they're thinking in terms of, okay, I don't do this because of convention, and it doesn't work well. When people do this, and if I participate in this, it's gonna be bad for society, and ultimately it's gonna be bad for me.

There's gonna be this systemic problem, and I'm not gonna do it. So he says, I'm consistent. And I'm like, well, yeah, but you're trying to isolate your metaphysic from your epistemology and your ethics.

So you're saying it's gonna work badly for me. Well, why? Well, because in the past, these types of things have worked badly. Oh, well, then you're reasoning from certain events to other events, which is presupposing some sort of uniformity of nature.

So you're not bringing together, but you don't have a basis for this uniformity of nature, given your denial of the creature-creator distinction and all that entails. You're basically chance-acting upon matter over time.

So they can't even reconcile that thought that what goes around comes around, maybe not in another life, but even in this life. They can't reconcile the reason why they believe it'll end badly this time, simply because it ended badly the last time.

And there's one other thing about the Trinity. I have to say that God is unity and plurality, and I believe that he is reflecting that equal ultimacy and that the triune God does make sense of the one and the many, and he's reflecting that.

That doesn't mean, though, that God is not quadrinity. And I think more meat needs to be put on the bones there. I think there is something there. I think more scholarship needs to go into that. I mean, we have an answer, I think, to Christianity and all that sort of thing.

It's just counterfactually about the Christian worldview.

Yeah, all right.

If you wanna explore that whole unity and plurality issue with the Trinity, Clayton, you might wanna check out my discussion with Brent Bosserman, who is, this is really a strength area. Also, I had an awesome discussion with the Christian apologist, Anthony Rogers, and that episode was entitled Applying Presuppositional Apologetics to Islam.

And so we talk a little bit about these issues as well. So you might wanna check that out on the channel. Thank you so much for that, Clayton. Let's move along here. Daniel C. asks, why is neutrality philosophically impossible?

Neutrality, Objectivity, and the Christian Starting Point

Why is neutrality philosophically impossible? You wanna take a stab at that, Ron?

Why is neutrality philosophically impossible? Well, neutrality according to what? If we have to, there are no brute facts, okay? The facts always have to be interpreted, okay? Take the pandemic. The science, let's say we all agree upon the science.

When we draw a moral conclusion about what one ought to do, we step into an ethical question, a moral question. We're no longer talking about purely a metaphysical question. We're not talking about inductive inference.

So science, empiricism is never going to, empiricism cannot really justify itself, okay? We have to have certain interpretation of the facts and what they mean. How can someone approach matter and motion and draw inferences unless they have universals?

So they have these universals in their mind. Well, where do they come from? Why do the universals of our mind, our categories of thought, why are they so useful? How come they can tell us about the world and what is really happening in the world?

In the external world, as opposed to just psychologizing science in the mind and being the objectivity creator that Kant wanted to be. So we have an answer for that in neutrality. You are either going to oppose the solution that God, the common creator of my mind and the external universe provides that fruitful connection.

So I can know about not just triangularity or the raw stuff out there, but I can actually know it because God is providing that fruitful connection. And I am then believing what God believes. I'm believing what an omniscient God believes.

So the bias would be, take ethics. We have certain acts that people do. How can we interpret those acts as moral or not moral without a bias? Our bias is gonna be informed as a Christian from the word of God.

That's what's going to inform our bias. So when we get to what I would call common notions, I'm good with that term. When we get to common notions, we share all of these common notions with the unbeliever, memory, sensory experience, certain, the uniformity of nature, certain laws of morality.

Now they may not deny this in their creed, in order to try to maintain consistency with their creed, but they affirm them in practice. And they believe that these things actually exist. Where our point of disagreement is, is on a presupposition that we believe that the 66 books of the Bible are authoritative.

They're inspired, they're inherent, they're God-breathed. And we believe it is our authority for faith and practice. But that unique presupposition, and what is their unique presupposition relative to the Christian worldview?

It's the denial of that presupposition, the negation of the Bible. But the Bible for the believer is what informs and justifies his, what he shares with the unbeliever in principle. We share these things in principle, but formally, or excuse me, informally, we share this on a superficial formal basis according to common grace.

But we're on a collision course with them because they cannot count for these common notions of memory, sensory perception, and morality. They cannot account for them given their denial of the creator-creature distinction as revealed to us in nature and in the books of the Bible.

Okay, so they come with their presupposition. So we speak to them of the resurrection, and their presupposition is people do not rise from the dead. I've met many a liar. I've met many a religious fanatic.

We've seen religious fanatics fly airplanes in the buildings. Okay, so we point to that the apostles turned the world upside down, and they were zealous for the Lord Jesus Christ, and they believed in the resurrection.

Well, you go that to the unbeliever, what's his, he's not neutral. He's coming according to his naturalistic worldview, and he's never seen, and like us, we've never seen a resurrection. We've met many a liar.

Okay, so if we're gonna just look at the evidence that's uninterpreted from the scriptures, the most rational thing to believe from the unbelieving worldview is that there is no resurrection. And that's why I think it's absolutely foolish to take an evidentialist approach and remove it from the soteriological context in which the Bible interprets it.