Does Presuppositionalism Downplay Evidence? #apologetics #theology

Presuppositional Apologetics and the Charge of Downplaying Evidence

That's helpful. And another thing, another objection often heard is that, you know, presuppositional apologetics often downplay the role of natural theology or common notion or like common grace. So evidence and things like that, they're going to say that they only want to do the transcendental argument, but they don't want to talk about anything else.

I think Bonson is a perfect example of how that's not true. If you take a look at Bonson's debate with Gordon Stein, he used a transcendental art. He showed the flexibility of a transcendental argument.

In other words, if you think along transcendental lines, we can talk about anything. In his debate with Gordon Stein, his focus was the transcendental necessity of logic. But when he debated Edward Tabash, he argued transcendentally for the intelligibility of inductive reasoning, right?

Inductive inference, where he talked about the uniformity of nature, for example, which is a necessary precondition for science. And he just said that unless you have a Christian world, you can't make sense out of the uniformity of nature, which is a necessary precondition for the intelligibility of science.

So he happened to talk about logic in one debate. He talked about the uniformity of nature and inductive reasoning in another debate. And he even suggested that toothpaste, toothpaste, you can talk about toothpaste.

He had, Greg Bonson had a toothpaste proof for God's existence, showing that you can use as mundane a thing as a tube of toothpaste to prove a point that God is the necessary precondition for us to expect that toothpaste will come out of the tube tomorrow, just as it has come out of the tube in the past.

Presuppositionalism as an Evidential Method

So we don't downplay evidence, as Scott Oliphant has said in a debate slash discussion with a proponent of natural theology. He says that presuppositionalists are eminently evidentialists, because unlike many other apologists, we think literally everything is evidence for God, like anything.

The transcendental argument says that you can start with any agreed upon notion and ask what are the necessary preconditions for that, right? So if X stands for some item of human experience, let's just take some item of human experience that both the Christian and the non-Christian agree on.

Logic? You think there are universal conceptual laws of logic? I think there are universal conceptual laws of logic. Which worldview provides the preconditions for that? Let's look at a piece of art. You believe in beauty?

I believe in beauty. Which world do you make sense out of beauty? Let's take moral truths. You believe in moral truths? I believe in moral truths. Which world do you make sense out of that? We can start anywhere.

So I think we are more evidential than the evidentialists. I think we're.

More evidential than the classicalists. Yeah, that's really helpful. Thank you, Eli.

Natural Theology, Neutrality, and the Knowledge of God

And natural theology, by the way, is not necessarily a bad thing from a presuppositional perspective. What we have problems with is the hidden assumptions of neutrality and autonomy with respect to man's capacity to reason about these things.

So yeah, I think if you look at nature, God's fingerprints are all over nature, right? But can you truly understand nature independent of a broader context? Can you understand nature independent of an already simultaneous, inherent, immediate knowledge of God?

I'd say no.