Introduction to Presuppositional Apologetics
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"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction." Proverbs 1:7
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- Today I want to kind of, Jeremiah's one of my close friends and he loves presuppositional apologetics.
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- He kind of got me encouraged to go do some reading on it. And I read on Bonson's book on Always Be Ready, I think that's what it's called.
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- And I think I also read his book on Van Til's Presuppositional Method. And so today me and him kind of going to talk about what is presuppositional apologetics.
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- And so I guess I kind of, we can start with, you know, what are the four main kind of methods you use today?
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- We got classical, presuppositional, what are some other methods people commonly use? Yeah, another one's called evidential apologetics.
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- And I actually have a book. I'll talk and try to find it in time, but there's kind of the views of apologetics.
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- And so here it is, the five views on apologetics. And this, I recommend everybody to go read this. It's awesome because it has
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- William Lane Craig as an author, Gary Habermas, John Frame, Kelly James Clark, and then
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- Paul Feinberg. And they all have different apologetic views. What they do is they spend a positive presentation of their own method.
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- And then the rest of the chapter is all the other guys critiquing it. And then they all take turns giving a positive presentation and the other ones take turns critiquing it.
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- So the five views of apologetic here, like you said, you've got, you have the
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- William Lane Craig represents the classical apologetics, Gary Habermas, he promotes the, you know, some of these are escaping me.
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- Let's see. So you got classical apologetics, evidential apologetics, the cumulative case of apologetics, the presuppositional apologetics, and then number five, you have the reformed epistemology apologetics.
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- So a lot of those are confusing. And what I tell people is you really have two approaches, like there's nuance, but you either have the presuppositional method, that's a top down view, starting with God reasoning down to man.
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- And then you have the bottom up view, which just, just there's nuance here, but that's really more of the evidential apologetics.
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- Yeah, there is nuance between the classical model and the evidential model, but for all intents and purposes, they're reasoning the same way.
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- So you can either start with God and reason down, or you can start with man and reason up to God. Definitely.
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- I forgot the name of the YouTube channel that you always, I think it's called Real Apologetics. Revealed, Revealed Apologetics.
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- And I highly recommend that because Eli Ayala, he's been 36 years now, and I started following him at the very beginning.
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- So I've seen him learn and grow a lot, and he's been pulling, he doesn't even know this, and I've contacted him from time to time, but he's been pulling me along the way.
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- I've just been eating it up. Love it so much. Definitely. I think you told me on the phone, an illustration that he used, and we kind of, this kind of jump board us into the discussion, but he said, you know, how much common sense would it make for somebody to kind of have a debate whether or not air exists or the logic exists.
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- And the reason I think that's so important is like, you know, if someone were debating, you know, does air exist, they have to take in the precondition of air to debate that topic.
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- And it's the same, you know, vice versa, the laws of logic. If someone were to use, you know, to argue against the laws of logic, they have to use the laws of logic to even have a debate.
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- On the same way, me and Jermiah kind of talk about in a couple minutes, how in the same way, you know, I see what it is to argue against air and laws of logic, and God, he is our precondition.
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- So to argue against him, you need God to even, you know, kind of have a debate. Yes. So I love those two examples because air is so fundamental to our experience.
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- So much so that to deny it, you have to borrow it in order to try to make your case against it. Logic works the same way.
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- And then as we're going to develop this more and more, KJ, it's the Christian worldview that represents reality so much so that if you try to deny it, you're actually going to borrow principles from the
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- Christian order to make your case against it. And I'm with you. That is incredible. And if you can demonstrate that and show that, then it's no surprise that it's the apologetic method in my mind, because not only do
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- I think we get principles in scripture, but it represents the truth. It's really hard to contend against the truth when you're just trying to suppress it.
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- You know what I mean? Definitely. Now, this is kind of like an intro episode. Me and Jermar are probably doing an episode to kind of go more in depth.
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- But just in the limited amount of time we have, let's talk about worldviews. Can you define what a worldview is?
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- Yes. Yes. And I'll do another word with it because we're talking about presuppositional apologetics.
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- And when we're talking about presuppositional, basically this method is saying everybody has presuppositions that they approach with everything.
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- Their most basic convictions of how they understand who they are, how to interpret facts, all of these things are seen through someone's most basic presuppositional lenses.
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- Now, we would say those basic lenses that everyone has is actually their worldview, how they view and understand the world and understand how they ought to live in that world and how they ought to treat other people.
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- These are their ultimate standards of how they view reality. So, a worldview,
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- I think, can be summed up in three bullet points. It's made up of ontology, which is the study of existence or being.
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- A worldview is made up of ontology and epistemology. This is the study of knowledge, how we know what we know.
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- I can't express to people how intrigued I am in the realm of epistemology.
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- But you have ontology, epistemology, and number three, you have value theory or morality or ethics.
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- They're all talking about the same thing. Now, this is what's interesting, KJ. A worldview and those three points, those three pillars, they all lean and depend on one another.
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- Someone that has a theory of epistemology of how they know facts, you can't divorce that from their assumptions of what they think existence is too, whether they say,
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- I don't know what my ontology is or I don't know what existence is. That's fine.
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- You're still some context of existence as you're trying to explain things. And everyone has an ethic or a morality of how they are to interact with other people and the standards of how they ought to live.
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- Whether that, you know, like we're going to be getting at, everyone's made in the image of God.
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- This is a Christian principle because it's true. And everybody will, whether they realize it or not, they will step into the
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- Christian worldview when they can't account for something. Get these principles and these truths, stuff them into their pockets, borrow capital, and then walk back over to their unbelieving worldview.
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- And we're trying to say, hey, that belongs over here. It doesn't belong in your worldview. And that's the rub in those apologetic encounters when you're trying to reason with atheists or people even in Islam, for example.
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- Definitely. I want to read a couple of verses. The first one, Acts 17, I believe it's verse 28.
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- It says, for in him, we live and move and exist. I like that because, kind of what you said, we're all made in the image of God.
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- It's in him we find our being, as the KJV says. And so when you think about that, I think it's also Colossians chapter 2, maybe 3, verse 3 talks about how in Christ is hidden all truth.
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- And that's also similar to John 14, Jesus says, I'm the way, the life, and the truth. And so since we know that statement is true, that all truth is found in Christ, Jeremiah says that in each worldview, there's something known as epistemology.
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- What can be known? And so Christ tells us that what can be known is all truth comes from God.
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- And so the question then becomes this, if that's true, how can we engage these other worldviews? And so I like how
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- Jeremiah said, we're all made in the image of God. And so there's, like in Bonson's book, I was reading, he talks about how there's no neutral ground between believers and unbelievers, which basically means that we shouldn't be neutral in our thinking as far as epistemology.
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- We can't leave the Christian worldview to engage in somebody in that worldview and try to make sense in that worldview and point that to God.
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- But where we should be able to stand on truth, not neutral in our thinking, but stand on truth, which is Christ. And I like you say, you start with God and go down, whereas start from down and go upwards.
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- Well, you keyed in on another big thing is there's no neutrality.
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- We're not going to engage with the unbeliever. Well, can't we just set aside our religious convictions? Let's kind of just share this neutral platform as human beings, just trying to look at the evidence and just let the evidence lead us to their natural conclusion.
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- That is so tempting for everyone to do, but no one is neutral. They are not leaving their most basic presuppositions and commitments, and neither should the
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- Christian. And that basic commitment is God is true. He's revealed himself through his son
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- Jesus to me and saved me, and he has spoken to me clearly in his word. Those are
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- Christians' most basic commitments, and we don't leave those because the unbeliever is not going to leave their
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- God -hating denial presuppositions. So we don't want to be neutral in those things, and we know because God has told us that they hate
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- God. They are suppressing the truth of that God in their love for sin. We know that, so we're not going to set those truths aside.
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- Now, we might have a point of contact and talk about that you and me, an unbeliever, can reason.
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- We can utilize logic, and we can find things in common, but you and I know it's because we're made in the image of God. And so I wanted to throw another verse out.
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- There's actually kind of two more that are important. I'm going to try to just quote this from memory, but I think it's Proverbs 1, verse 7, which says the fear of God, the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge.
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- And I think it's Proverbs 9 that kind of says the same thing and says also is the beginning of wisdom, and it's knowledge of the
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- Holy One, the one who is to come, Jesus. So that kind of sounds like Paul in Colossians 2 there. And we're learning that this
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- God that we must revere in our hearts and give worship to is the triune
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- God, and that has other implications later when we're talking about a worldview, a world that is particularly diverse and unified in ways that just blows our minds and how it's all connected and unified in some miraculous fashion.
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- God has to transcend this unified and diverse world that's also one in many, right?
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- So those are more clues that point to the Trinity accounting for those facts. But I love what Jesus said at the end of the
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- Sermon on the Mount. He said, Now, I think a lot of applications can be made here.
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- So we must build our understanding of knowledge and truth, our entire world on the rock of Christ.
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- When we do that, we're going to be equipped to contend for the faith, right? But if we build our theory of truth and knowledge on human reasoning, pagan philosophy, worldly philosophy, it's going to crumble.
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- And so I just always loved kind of that application. It was Greg Bonson that really highlighted that.
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- Definitely, definitely. I think it's two illustrations. I'll let you use the van to illustration.
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- But one of Bonson's illustration he talks about, what does it mean how people suppress the truth for a lie?
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- Romans one talks about how there is a mother. She has two boys. You know, these boys are in gangs and they raise up bad environment.
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- They shoot people. They rob people. They break into stores, break into cars and a whole bunch of terrible things.
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- Right. But when she's around her friends, she always tells her friends that, hey, my boys are good. I'm going to good. But when her boys come home to visit her, she has her most valuable possessions.
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- The question is, does the mother in that moment truly believe her boys are good? And we all say no.
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- Somebody said why? Because her actions say that she doesn't believe that those boys are good because she's hiding things from them.
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- On the same way, in some degree, Romans one talks about really Roman, the whole book of Romans, how we're all dead in sin.
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- We know because we're dead in sin, it points back to original sin. But since we're all made in the image of God, we come in this world, we're born under sin.
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- And so people, they suppress the truth. We're all made in the image of God. So we know God is real because we can use lies and logic and reason.
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- And the Bible talks about how God has made us unknown to us. I think Ecclesiastes 2 talks about that, too. I forgot how the verse goes, but basically he's put existence in our hearts to know that he's real.
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- Some of the lines of that. And so we all can reason and know that there is a God, right? But the question is, well, not the question, the statement, part of that is that people suppress that truth for a lie.
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- And so I think too, Van Til, Jeremiah knows how the illustration goes. But I think it's like the child slapping the parent in the face.
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- Yeah, so there's a couple of illustrations that I really, really like that Van Til and perhaps
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- Bonson and others have used. But I think one of the famous ones that Van Til used is like the unbeliever, someone who's made in the image of God, reflects many of his attributes, can reason, can understand logic and truth being absolute and kind of having that the golden rule impressed on our heart that we should treat others how we want to be treated.
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- That unbeliever spits at God, hates him, even though that his every existence and every step that he takes is dependent on God's eternal existence.
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- It's like a rebellious child sitting in their father's lap, slapping him in the face.
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- And the only reason that child is being able to be held up is because the father is holding them in his lap.
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- But the idea is the rebellion is happening, but the rebellion can only happen because the father is sustaining that action.
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- You read probably the best verse to illustrate this in Acts 17, For in God, for in him, we live and move and have our being.
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- Our being is contingent on God's eternal, everlasting existence and being.
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- And there's a verse in Proverbs KJ that says we see light in his light. And that's kind of getting at that we know things temporarily because God knows it eternally.
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- And so another illustration when we're talking presuppositionally with somebody, another good illustration says we're all in this living room of a house.
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- We're all walking. We all share this platform. And we're all walking around and we're saying we know that this floor has to be held up by beams underneath the floor.
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- We can't see the beams, but we know that they exist because the very fact that we're standing on this floor presupposes a greater support.
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- And so we're talking about worldviews. We're saying what can justify and give a reason why we live and interact with other people that we can think, how we can know truth.
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- Why is reality the way that it is? And I'll just say pagan philosophy cannot tell you why without just giving you mere opinion and saying maybe it's this, maybe it's that.
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- At the end of the day, I don't know. And this is the folly of the I don't know statement. They know that they don't know, and that's a self -contradiction.
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- Their epistemology, their not knowing is collapsing in on itself. And that proves their epistemology doesn't work, even though that they're convinced of so many things that they experienced.
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- You ask the stinger of a question. Well, how do you know you're experiencing X, Y, or Z? Well, I just am.
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- It's so convinced. That's not a reasonable justification. This is where Christianity wins every single time in these conversations.
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- Why am I here? How can I know things? Because God has eternally existed and revealed himself and created me in such a way to have reasonable cognition and ability to see things and reason in this inductive manner probabilistically.
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- But the foundation of that probability rests in the absolute creator that made me in his image. Those are non -negotiables.
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- That's the only proper foundation to reason and to continue to look at nature and say, man, these laws seem pretty consistent.
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- But why? How could I know that without just being begging the question to say, well, it's always been like that.
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- So it must continue to be like that in the future. Well, you don't know what tomorrow holds. You don't know. Right. And how do you know that your senses aren't deceiving you?
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- The Christian could say, well, God's made me in an intelligible way to reflect himself. We can always go back to scripture and say that's why.
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- So there's a lot there. Definitely, definitely. Now, two of the most common arguments that presuppositional people that's supposed to use is the transcendental argument and a precondition of intelligibility.
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- Now, just briefly, how would you define the transcendental argument? I like how you nicely tell me just briefly because you know my temptation to go really long -winded.
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- So my understanding, because you mentioned two things there, the transcendental argument and necessary preconditions.
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- Right. My understanding is transcendentals are necessary preconditions.
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- So you got you got transcendental arguments, plural, and then you have the transcendental argument.
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- So small t transcendentals are what must exist in order for me to be an uncle.
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- Well, I must have other siblings. That must be a precondition and they must have children.
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- Those things must be true in order for me to be an uncle. Right. So those are preconditions.
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- When we say when we look at it, this is another illustration I think being so used. So maybe we're jumping on a diving board at a pool.
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- Right. That's that's our immediate sense experience. We're on the diving board. But what is a necessary precondition for the diving board to be there?
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- Well, it must have an anchor. It must be attached to the concrete around it.
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- That must be there first so that the diving board can be there. So we're talking about transcendentals.
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- We're saying what are necessary preconditions? What must be true in order for something else to be true?
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- Does that make sense? So the transcendental argument is God must be true in order for our human experience to be true.
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- So do you want to chime in on that? Yeah, I've heard people say to that, like, apart from the
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- Christian worldview, everything else is falling. So kind of exactly what you just said. But, you know, the existence of God must be true wherever the worldview kind of collapses in on itself.
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- Now, a quick demonstration of that. Let's say the atheists, he said, we just use kind of what was it you mentioned earlier, ethics and what else is it called?
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- Ontology, epistemology and then value theory. Value theory. Yeah. So but it basically means morality. Right. So the atheists in their worldview, they say that morality, there is a morality.
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- We're all just evolved from monkeys or apes and whatnot. And then, you know, animal kingdom, if an animal kills the animal, is that wrong?
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- No, because it's just about goodness. Right. When a similar way like they would teach that, you know, there is no there is no purpose in life.
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- There is no there is no morality, all these things. Right. So in a purpose is universe where there is no morality, there is no good and bad for atheists to say to the
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- Christian, I don't believe in God because in the Old Testament, your God is evil. How can atheists ever even how can they even come out of his mouth if they teach the opposite of that very statement?
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- It's kind of like what you might have said. They have to borrow from our view. But again, the existence of God kind of disproves the world anyway.
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- How would you kind of try to get an attitude to kind of tag along? Everything we've been saying is worldview, worldview, worldview.
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- And so we don't want to give them the benefit of getting away with saying, oh, well,
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- God of the Old Testament is just evil. Well, they have made so many presuppositions in that statement.
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- They are claiming to have a standard of morality that's superior to the God of the
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- Old Testament. And so thinking presuppositionally, I was going to read perhaps two verses real quick.
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- I learned this from Greg Bonson in Romans or Proverbs 26, verse four and five says, answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him.
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- Answer a fool to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. So when someone says, well, the
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- God of the Old Testament is evil, we should be thinking of this twofold method. Now, I'm not just going to say, well, let's just not talk about the
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- God of the Bible. And let's try to meet on this common ground and just look at these isolated evidences and see where they lead.
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- No, we're actually stepping onto his turf. We're actually starting to reason like the fool and we are going to be like him.
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- Answer not a fool according to his own folly, lest you be like him yourself.
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- But rather, we answer a fool to his own folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.
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- So what Bonson pointed out, there's a principle here. Let's, for the sake of argument, let's say, okay, you have a standard of morality.
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- Let's hypothetically grant the atheistic worldview for a moment. Okay, where do you get your morality from?
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- I mean, that's the question. We're over here. We're granting your worldview for the moment. And then you get questions like, well, you just do what feels right.
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- Oh, well, now Stalin and all these mass murder serial killers, they did what they felt was right.
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- So what makes you right and them wrong? Well, okay, well, it's not just you, but you have to look to society.
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- You have to make a vote. Oh, well, then I guess Hitler was right in everything that they did. So you let them die according to their own standard.
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- You pointed out that when you leave God as the precipium, the starting point, then any standard you make for anything, your ontology, epistemology, or value theory, it's going to collapse in on it.
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- It's going to be self -refuting, not self -vindicating, like we're saying, hey, the truth is awesome.
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- Like we eventually want to destroy. I mean, when I say destroy, that's a strong word, but that's what the apostle
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- Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10. We destroy arguments that rival the knowledge of God.
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- So for the sake of argument, we step in this unbelieving worldview, and we show how it refutes itself on its own terms.
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- Now, KJ, this is important, and we got to do this with love and with charity and compassion, with gentleness and patience.
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- This is where those fiery apologists beat people upside the head with theological hammer like they're doing any good.
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- You got to love on them. Show them the folly of their worldview, and then invite them.
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- Say, hey, for the sake of art, come back over here to Christianity. Let me show you that everything is derived from its creator.
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- How do I know something is good or evil? Well, it reflects God's nature, and he's revealed himself to us in his word.
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- We have this consistent standard that can account for itself. And I would just continue down that route.
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- Definitely, and just again to whet the appetite really quickly on the precondition of intelligibility. So we would say, for example,
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- I like how you say truth is dependent upon knowledge, and knowledge is dependent upon truth. And so I would talk about a little bit.
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- But again, I love it. It's easier for me to kind of deal with atheists. And you can also use the presumption of method.
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- All the world views as well, such as other religions. But it's so easy to hate this because they have their bar so much in the
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- Christian worldview. So for the atheists, we're going to bring up any kind of truth claim. We would say, well, how do you know that statement is true?
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- Because, again, the Bible says that all truth is hidden in Christ. And so anytime an atheist makes a truth claim, again, in that universe, they're barring from the
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- Christian worldview. I got to let Jeremiah talk of this. Well, you're exactly right. Whenever they make a truth claim, we want to be asking them, how do you know that?
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- How do you know that that is a statement of fact? And this to me is the gotcha moment that I'm waiting for with them, not to be mean or try to just win an argument, but to lovingly show them the futility of their own worldview.
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- The moment they say, well, it just seems to be that I'm standing here talking to you.
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- How could I not be? I'm having this experience. I'm going to say, no, I want you to tell me why.
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- I want you to give me a justification. Because the moment you just say it just is, well, then that's a double standard.
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- When I just say, well, God just is, and you don't like that. And you're not going to let me say that God just exists and it just is the case.
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- You're going to say, oh, you're begging the question. You're going to get mad at me. And it's like, let's be fair here.
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- Let's use a logic. Now, the reason why I bring that up is you can't just arbitrarily, randomly say that something just is.
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- You can't appeal to majority rule because majority could be wrong. But I will say they do have some most basic presuppositions that just seem so real to them that they can't deny like their own existence.
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- And that's great. I'm saying for you to deny your own existence, you would have to first exist.
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- But why do you exist? And how do you know that? There's a greater accounting that has to take place.
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- And a lot of atheists will try to stop the buck. I think, therefore, I am. Once again,
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- KJ, even though that's a type of transcendental, when you actually observe that,
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- I think, therefore, I am was said by Socrates, the cargo ergo sum. There's so many assumptions that go into the
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- I. How do you know that that you are the I? How do you know that you are the one experiencing this?
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- And so you can see how you can ask the epistemological questions at every point in turn.
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- And when we get asked, how do you know God exists? We'd say because he's revealed himself to us in creation, in our hearts, and in his word.
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- Well, how do you know? Well, we could say for the sake of argument, if we were to assume the opposite, it would fail, therefore vindicating itself, just like logic.
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- How do you know logic doesn't work in all points of time? Well, try to argue against logic.
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- It's opposite. Well, you have to keep borrowing principles from it. So try to argue against the Christian worldview, the triune
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- God who has revealed himself. And you're going to act like an image bearer of God, having a standard of right and wrong, a standard of truth.
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- And I'm like, these are all principles that are found in the Christian worldview. And like you said, there's a way to still use the presuppositional method of the triune
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- God against Islam and other religions. But just for the sake of this conversation, atheism has already tied both arms behind their back because they cannot account for their own worldview.
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- And they know it, and they think it's something by just pointing out inconsistencies in other worldviews.
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- The problem is they've not even grounded logic on their own worldview. So why should that even be a good method on their own terms?
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- Now, we're over here saying it is a good method, and we have justification for logic. But yeah, those are some more good things to point out.
- 28:21
- I know, I mean, you have also had conversations in the past that we as Christians, we're the only people that can have a justifiable standard when it comes to truth.
- 28:28
- And we also can have a false justifiable standard. Like I say, for example, if we have a belief or something that happens to be false, we still have a standard for what's true and what's false because the
- 28:38
- Christian worldview. Whereas the atheists, they have no justification for that system.
- 28:43
- So like, for example, atheists, they can know two plus two is four, and that's truth. But in their worldview, they have no standard to know what's true and what's wrong.
- 28:50
- But we would say Christians, that because they're made in the image of God, they can account and use laws of logic to determine what truth is.
- 28:56
- But they have no standard for that. But the standard is Christ. How are you going to deal with that too? There's two important definitions,
- 29:03
- KJ, and this is why the apologetic dog finds itself in 1 Timothy 6, verse 20.
- 29:10
- Do you care if I read that real quick? Go ahead. O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you, avoid irreverent babble, or pagan philosophy, worldly philosophy, and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.
- 29:27
- Two key definitions in these worldview conversations is the definition of truth and the definition of knowledge.
- 29:34
- Now you already kind of brought this out earlier. They're both, we'll give it away, they're both dependent on one another.
- 29:40
- Remember one of the most profound questions, and it was even asked insincerely to Jesus himself at Pontius Pilate, what is truth?
- 29:49
- I teach at the college, and I teach on apologetics and Bible study. And I try to tell
- 29:55
- Christians, look, if you are a Christian because this is what your parents brought you up in, that's not a good reason to be a
- 30:02
- Christian. You ought to be a Christian because you are committed to the truth. And you believe
- 30:07
- Jesus when he says, I am the way, the truth, the life, the truth. No one comes to the Father except through me.
- 30:12
- And you believe that that is true and everything else that claims to either provide salvation or whatever is false.
- 30:19
- I mean that, I tell them, that is why you ought to be a Christian. That's what Jesus himself said. So what is truth?
- 30:28
- I think the scripture equips us enough to be able to like, oh, well, truth is the ultimate standard of everything, right?
- 30:34
- It's God. I think it's Isaiah 65 where God says, I am the God of truth, right?
- 30:41
- Jesus says, your word is truth. Jesus is the word, the truth that has made himself known and dwelt among us.
- 30:49
- So the best definition for truth, as you begin to kind of tease this out, is truth is that which corresponds to reality.
- 30:57
- Think about this. Truth is that which is real. Now, the Christians, we shouldn't be only satisfied with that.
- 31:03
- We'd say, well, then who gets to determine what is real? So truth is that which corresponds to reality as perceived by God.
- 31:12
- That's the true definition of truth. And you see, when I start talking about truth, it assumes itself in these conversations.
- 31:18
- So that's the correspondence theory of truth. And then you've got to have the right definition for knowledge.
- 31:24
- Remember, this is under that umbrella of epistemology. Knowledge is, three points, justified, true, belief.
- 31:32
- And like you said, the best atheists can do, because one objection to presubstantialism is you say, oh, well, atheists can't know anything.
- 31:41
- I know things all the time like two plus two. We're saying, well, in a very general sense, oh, of course you know things, but not in virtue of your own worldview, but because Christianity is true.
- 31:51
- But on your own worldview, you could only have unjustified, perhaps true belief.
- 31:57
- But in spite of your own worldview, it's because Christianity is true. And then like you said, we flip it.
- 32:03
- Christians, we don't have all knowledge. We just know the one who does have all knowledge. That's why we get our justification.
- 32:09
- But when we have a proper foundation to reason and then kind of use probabilities and try to guess what tomorrow is going to hold.
- 32:17
- We don't know, but God does. Then, yeah, we can have a justified, false belief.
- 32:23
- We could be wrong about things, but we still have a justification for how we reason and we conclude it wrongly.
- 32:28
- But our overall justification for everything is still intact. And nobody escapes belief.
- 32:35
- People try to pit faith and reason against each other. I'm like, you are having faith in your own reasoning faculties.
- 32:43
- But without God, that is a fallacious reasoning because you're already assuming that your faculties are reasonable before you've even arrived to your reasonable conclusion.
- 32:54
- And we're saying that's just circular reasoning and begging the question. Christians can say that we have reasonable faculties.
- 33:02
- We can use logic and we can use deduction and laws of induction because God has created us in his image.
- 33:09
- God is the God of truth. He cannot lie. No lie is of the truth. And we all know this because of his work.
- 33:16
- Wonderful, wonderful. Now, quick summary, man. I definitely the next episode we do these things.
- 33:23
- Practically, a lot of people that probably get it practically. A lot of people can kind of just get the knowledge aspect of it. But when you show a practical,
- 33:28
- I think they both kind of intertwine. But a quick summary. Everybody has presuppositions about how the world is.
- 33:35
- And he's different ways in terms of the world. But he's going to call world views. Right. And everywhere you have metaphysics, ontology, morality or ethics and epistemology.
- 33:46
- And I think Jeremiah talks about ontology. You study the being metaphysics after being epistemology is what can be known or, you know, truth and stuff like that.
- 33:55
- And then morality or ethics is again, what's good and what's wrong. And so everybody presupposes something they bought.
- 34:00
- You know, they use those things and tell me what the world is. And pre -deposition apologetics method would say, hey,
- 34:06
- I'm the Christian world. You can account for all four of these things. They read the world view. They may say they can count for it, but it all fails down at some point.
- 34:14
- And so I like that's why I like the illustration of Jeremiah. He told me in the past that, like, how silly is it to kind of have a discussion or debate about air?
- 34:22
- Because you have to, you know, take in air to even argue against it. And how silly is it to kind of argue against laws of logic?
- 34:28
- You have to take in the laws of logic or use the laws of logic on how to debate. On the same way, we would say, too, it's silly to kind of debate
- 34:35
- God because you have to take in God and say it's his world view to even argue against him.
- 34:41
- And your world view would kind of crumble. And it's kind of, in essence, what pre -deposition method is using the transitional argument and the precondition, which is really.
- 34:49
- And so next time, definitely, I want you to kind of put this practically. So maybe one of us can pretend to be atheist and we can kind of see what we have to show some statements.
- 34:58
- I got dibs on being the atheist. It's going to be fun. It'll be fun.
- 35:04
- But, yeah, thank you so much for helping me do this. It's kind of what the appetite for this. And again, please check out his debate.
- 35:10
- Jeremiah Nortier on YouTube channel. And I think you can go on Facebook as well. 12 Five Facebook page as well.
- 35:17
- Yep. 12 Five Church on Facebook. We also have a church website. And it's the it's the word 12, the number five church dot com.
- 35:27
- And then you can look me up on YouTube. Just type in Jeremiah Nortier and then be on the lookout for the apologetic dog.
- 35:33
- That'll be the apologetics ministry. I'm pursuing and then doing frequent collaborations with K .J.