The Myth of Neutrality

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Well, good evening, everyone.
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It's good to see everyone back for our study of the subject of apologetics.
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And if you remember from last week, for those of you if you were not here, the subject of apologetics is the is the practice of defending our faith.
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The Bible says that we are to sanctify the Lord Jesus Christ in our hearts, always being ready to give a apologia or a defense for the hope that is within us.
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But we are to do so with gentleness and reverence.
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That last part often trips people up.
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People are ready to go take the sword and cut both ways when they're giving an apologetic defense of their faith.
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But they're not often ready to do it with grace and with gentleness.
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And so this course in seeks to involve all of that.
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And in our lesson last week, I left you all with a question regarding the three systems of apologetics.
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And for the sake of tonight, I want to just remind you what they are.
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We talked about the fact that there are three apologetic methodologies.
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The first one is what we would call classical apologetics.
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And then we have evidential apologetics.
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And then we have what is called pre suppositional apologetics.
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So those are the three main schools and within those three schools of apologetics.
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There also exists some sub categories.
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Yes, sir.
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Not yet.
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Because the handout gives the answer.
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No, you're fine.
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I wanted to ask how many of you gave some thought to last week's ending question.
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And the ending question was, which one of these three apologetic methods would you think is the most biblical method? Before you answer, I'm we are going to take a show of hands.
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And I want to say this, I'm not going to give anyone a hard time if you disagree with me.
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But I am going to be coming from one particular position.
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So I did want to say though, if you're willing to do a hand raise vote, does anyone think that classical apologetics would be the one that would be most biblical? And okay, we have a couple.
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All right.
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So there's a couple that would mark classical apologetics.
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That is the one that begins, as we noted last week, with making a rational case for the existence of God in a theistic universe.
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So as to then demonstrate that we live in a theistic universe, so as to then put forward why we believe the Bible is true, because we exist in a theistic universe.
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So it begins with rational discourse.
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The second is evidential.
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Is there are there those who would take the position of the evidential apologetic? Okay, I have one evidential apologetic.
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Anyone else? Okay, I'm not too many.
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All right.
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Now, is there anyone who would say the third? I didn't have many hands.
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So I'm either going to have a lot of hands now, or nobody wants to be honest.
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Okay, so we have more hands on the presuppositional apologetic position.
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Okay, well, I am now going to give you the handout.
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The title of tonight's lesson is the myth of neutrality.
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That is the title.
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And I'm going to tell you that my position is the third position.
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That does not make you right if you agree with me.
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And it doesn't make you necessarily wrong if you disagree, but I will be taking the position of the presuppositional and I'll explain why as we go.
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But if you'll pass these out for me, I would appreciate it.
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While he is passing these out, I want to share a story.
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There was a man who believed that he was dead.
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Some of you have heard this illustration before.
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But if you haven't, or if you have, don't spoil it for those who haven't.
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There's a man who believed that he was dead.
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And he told his wife, I am dead.
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And his wife said, it's obvious that you're not dead.
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You're talking to me.
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I can see your face is pink.
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Your blood is flowing through your veins.
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I can put my hand against your chest.
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I can feel your pulse and your heartbeat.
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You are a living man.
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And he said, no, I'm a dead man.
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And she says, well, I'm going to take you to a doctor and have the doctor demonstrate that you're alive.
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So they packed themselves into the car.
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They drove down to the doctor's office.
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She walked into the doctor's office and she said, my husband believes that he is dead.
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And the doctor said, okay, I will prove to him otherwise.
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So the doctor sits down.
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Thank you.
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The doctor sits down and he says, okay, I'm going to take your pulse.
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He takes his pulse.
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He's got a standard pulse of 80 beats per minute.
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Okay, your heart is beating normally.
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You're alive.
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And he said, no, I'm dead.
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And he said, okay, well, he takes in and holds his hand up to or his mouth up to a mirror and he sees the mirrors is beginning to fog up with the breath of his mouth.
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And he says, see, you're breathing and the breath is coming out of your mouth.
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You're obviously alive.
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And he says, no, I'm dead.
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So the doctor goes and he pulls a big medical textbook off of his shelf.
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And he opens the medical textbook up and he and he and he finds the place that he's looking for.
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And he says, see here in this medical textbook, it says that dead men do not bleed.
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And as on a personal note, I've worked for a funeral home for several years.
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I know dead people do not bleed.
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I can say that from experience, because the blood is no longer pumping through the body, you can cut a cadaver and it will not bleed.
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So he read that in the book.
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And he took that as the truth.
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He said, Okay, dead men do not bleed.
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I agree with you.
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At which point the doctor took a needle from his desk, and he poked the man in his arm.
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And the man looked down and he began to see blood trickle down his arm, to which he responded and said, Well, look at their dead men bleed after all.
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You see, this man was convinced of an overriding presupposition.
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And some would point to the fact that that is the reason why presuppositional ism is flawed.
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And yet I intend to demonstrate that this very story helps me explain why presuppositional ism is the most biblically sound position, because all who deny God are doing so because they are starting from the wrong presupposition.
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Like the man who believed he was dead and could not be proved otherwise.
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The man who denies Jesus Christ will often not be proved otherwise, because there's more at stake and more at issue than simple evidence.
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There's more at stake and more at issue than simple rationality.
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It is because he has come to this case and this position with the presupposition that Jesus Christ cannot be who he claimed to be, because God is not there.
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As I said, I am a presuppositional ism because I believe that I am one by necessity.
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Evidentialists and classical apologists alike believe that to be convinced of a truth, that that truth must be supported by the preponderance of the evidence.
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In fact, if you want to write something on your notes, it may already be there, I'm not sure.
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But if you want to write something somewhere on your notes, you may want to write this.
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The preponderance of the evidence, because when it comes to evidential apologetics, that is a term you will hear.
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The preponderance, meaning the load of the evidence or the amount of the evidence points to a particular truth.
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But I want to say this.
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Even that statement is based on a presupposition.
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I'll say it again.
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Truth must be supported by the preponderance of the evidence.
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That's what the evidentialist says.
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Truth must be supported by the preponderance of the evidence.
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What is the presupposition that is behind that claim? Well, that's one that there is truth.
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Well, the the presupposition is that truth can be determined by evidence.
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They're already presupposing that.
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They haven't proved that.
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They're presupposing that.
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They're presupposing that truth can be determined by evidence.
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The evidentialist says, I need evidence to be certain.
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But let me ask you this.
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Why would someone believe truth can be determined by evidence? I'm asking that as a real question, because is there not a sense in which you're making a presupposition regarding the reliability of what you call evidence and your own ability to interpret that evidence? You're presuming, one, that evidence has the power to prove and not prove something.
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You have to presume that to believe that evidence is what brings you to the truth.
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You haven't proved that, because you can't.
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That's called an axiom.
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It's a place to start from.
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It's a place to begin with that is itself unprovable.
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It's called axiomatic.
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You're familiar with this.
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The axiom, let me explain.
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I keep wanting to get up.
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I am.
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I'm gonna stand for a few minutes.
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Change the camera.
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I'm gonna stand for a minute, because I'm going to be using the board.
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This is important.
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Aristotle.
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You've heard of this guy? Yeah, yeah.
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His work's been around a little while.
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Aristotle believed in three axioms that were necessary for all logic.
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You can set it down and just turn it.
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The three axioms that were necessary for logic was first called the law of identity.
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The law of identity was the first.
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He says A must equal A.
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A can't equal B.
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A can't equals A has to equal A.
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He called that the law of identity.
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For anything in this world to be rational, A must equal A.
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What he said is also this.
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A cannot equal not A.
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That's called the law of non-contradiction.
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You can't have A and not A at the same time and in the same relationship.
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You can't be and not be at the same time and in the same relationship.
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You're either here or you ain't here.
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You either exist or you don't exist.
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Right? Huh? You're either alive or you're dead.
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You are or you ain't.
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And it's a law of non-contradiction.
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Now the third one is similar to the second one but it's not the exact same and this is called the law of the excluded middle and basically this is this.
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A and not A cannot exist at the same time.
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The principle that one and only one of two contradictory positions can be true.
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If I say something is true and Mike says something is true and we're both saying something different about the same thing and in the same relationship, one of us must be wrong.
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Now the world doesn't like that anymore but that is true.
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If I say it is and he says it isn't, one of us and we're speaking the same relationship, same thing, one is a contradiction of the other, they both can't be true.
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Okay? There's no middle ground.
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That's why it's called the law of the excluded middle.
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You can't, there's no gray.
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Either is or it ain't.
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So these three axioms are actually the foundation for logic and reason.
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An axiom is on its face a presupposition.
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It is not meant to be proven.
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It is meant to be the thing by which all other things are proven.
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You understand that? You understand what I just said? An axiom or presupposition is not meant to be proven.
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It's meant to be the thing by which other things are proven.
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If I say you cannot be and not be, you can't, let me say it again, you can't be and not be at the same time in the same relationship, law of non-contradiction, the only way that I can prove that is by showing it but I have to assume it's true to show it to you.
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Right? Because all someone would have to do to disprove it was be and not be at the same time but I don't believe that's possible.
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So that's the axiom.
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That's the presupposition.
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That's the beginning point and that begins all everything else.
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You see that's the presupposition that's necessary for my logic to exist.
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You know we ever talk to an atheist and they say well you can believe in God and I won't believe in God and we can both be right? That ain't how logic works.
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Now they can say you can worship God and be wrong but they don't say that.
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They'll say you believe in God you can be right I won't believe in God and I'll be right and everybody will be happy.
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That's not the way it works.
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God exists whether I want him to or not and God exists whether the atheist wants him to or not and for someone to argue that I get to choose my logical conclusion is incorrect.
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Now the reason why I'm saying all this is because certain presuppositions, by the way this is your first blank on your seat, certain presuppositions are necessary to be able to have rational discourse.
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Certain presuppositions are necessary to be able to have rational discourse.
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Let me give you one.
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One presupposition is necessary for all rational discourse.
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Our brains produce thoughts that have the genuine capacity to comprehend the world around us.
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I'll say it again.
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Our brains have the capacity or rather our brains produce thoughts that have the capacity to comprehend the world around us.
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Is that true? How do you know? Now how would you know if you didn't know? No.
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You wouldn't know if you didn't know.
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Let me explain it the way C.S.
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Lewis did because he's a little more articulate than I am.
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C.S.
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Lewis said this.
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He said suppose there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind.
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In that case nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking.
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It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen for physical or chemical reasons to arrange themselves in a certain way this gives me as a byproduct the sensation I call thought.
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But if so how can I truly trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself out will give a map of London.
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But if I can't trust my own thinking of course I can't trust the arguments leading to atheism and therefore I have no reason to be an atheist or anything else.
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Unless I believe in God I cannot believe in thought.
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So I can never use thought to disbelieve God.
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Well it's not just who gave me the thought.
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Why would I trust my thought if I didn't think my brain was designed for thinking? If I thought my brain was just a byproduct of the universe and I thought my brain was just as it were chemicals firing inside my head.
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You know when you shake up a soda bottle, Cy Tim Brugengate is an apologist that I really like.
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I'm hoping that throughout this course I might be able to introduce you to him through video.
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But he makes an argument.
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He says if you shake up a soda bottle there's a chemical reaction and we all see it happening inside the soda bottle.
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All those little bubbles mixing about.
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And he said if you had a Mr.
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Pibb and a Sprite and you shake them up next to each other and you set them down who cares? But if all that's inside of your brain are chemical reactions what does it matter if you sit and have a conversation with somebody else? How do you know that that conversation has any meaning if it wasn't designed for that purpose? How do you know? Let me give you a philosophical argument.
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How many of you ever heard the brain in a vat theory? You went to college for psychology.
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Have you heard of the brain in the vat theory? Okay, it's more philosophy than psychology.
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But philosophers argue that we cannot prove that reality actually exists because we don't know that you're not just a brain in a vat being fed all of this through electrical impulse as it were like a hologram.
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Now what's funny is recently I have heard scientists make the argument that we don't exist.
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That it's all just happening as a hologram.
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You know what's funny is I was in my notes it literally says the matrix.
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Because how do you know? How do you know you're not a brain in a vat? How do you know you're not simply experiencing all this and it's not real? Why do you believe that it's real? Descartes said I think therefore I am.
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He said because if I wasn't thinking I would I wouldn't be but I think therefore I be and if I even thought that I couldn't think I would be thinking that I can't think and thus I would still be.
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But my argument is simply this and the point is simply this.
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How do you know that you even exist? What evident argument would you use? Well I'm thinking.
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How do you know you're not a brain in a vat? But you just presume something.
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You just presuppose the Bible is a source and that's where I'm getting to.
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That's where I'm headed.
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You jumped ahead three steps and I appreciate it because that's where we're going to get to.
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There are certain presumptions that the atheist makes and my job in interacting with him is demonstrating his presupposition and the error of his presupposition because the atheist can't prove he's not a brain in a vat.
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There's no reason to believe anything around him is real because he has no reason to believe that his mind was even created for thinking that it's real.
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Yes, go ahead.
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That's fine.
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I've got the audio.
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I'm doing my best.
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It's probably a bad connection.
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It's no ramblings of a mad person.
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I hope I'm not just leaving everybody in the dust tonight because this is all important because ultimately presuppositional apologetics is focused on getting people to recognize where they have presupposed something that their worldview doesn't support.
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Presuppositionalism seeks to prove the existence of God by simply demonstrating the impossibility of the contrary.
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That it would be impossible that he did not exist.
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It is impossible that he doesn't exist.
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It's because we begin with God.
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The rational classical apologist begins with rationality.
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The evidential apologetics begins with neutrality.
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We're all going to start from the neutral position and the presuppositionalist begins with the Bible.
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That's really where the difference is.
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This one begins with the rational.
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This one begins with the evidence.
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This one begins with the Bible and that's why I'm a presuppositionalist because I'm not going to let somebody keep me from beginning with the Bible.
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Yeah, I've heard people say, you can't use the Bible when you're addressing unbelievers.
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Well, who are you to tell me I can't use the Bible? Well, they don't believe the Bible.
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Well, I ain't going to keep them from using Darwinian evolution.
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It's not going to keep them from bringing up their presuppositions.
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The difference between me and the evidentialist and the classical apologist, I'm willing to say, I am presuming the truth of Scripture and I'm making my argument from that.
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I am making my argument from the Bible.
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The evidence supports the Bible.
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Rationality supports the Bible, but the Bible is first.
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Make sense? Okay, now again, Greg Bonson is a good person.
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If you have any interest at all in this, in studying further, I recommend going online and this is available on YouTube.
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Look up the great debate with Greg Bonson.
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B-A-H-N-S-E-N.
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B-A-H-N-S-E-N.
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You know Greg Bonson, I'm sure, Richard.
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In the mid 80s, Bonson debated a man by the name of Gordon Stein.
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They debated in a college.
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During that debate, Bonson absolutely destroyed Stein's arguments, but he made it pointed at the beginning.
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I am beginning with the presupposition that the Bible is true and my arguments are going to come from that position and I'm going to demonstrate that your arguments will borrow from my worldview.
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Because the atheist will make an argument like this.
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He'll say, I don't believe in God because there's evil in the world.
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In fact, one of the greatest ones, in fact, how many of you saw Batman vs.
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Superman? I meant, okay, that's fine.
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But I only bring it up because the antagonist, Lex Luthor, if you remember Lex Luthor from the comics, he makes the argument in the movie, I don't believe in God because if God were all good, there wouldn't be evil in the world.
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Or if he were all powerful, there wouldn't be evil in the world.
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But the evil in the world proves that God doesn't exist.
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He says God is either not all powerful or he's not all good.
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I cannot believe in a God who's all good and all powerful because if he were there and he was all powerful and all good, there wouldn't be evil in the world.
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Well, it's a wrong view of God, but it starts with what presupposition? What's the presupposition of the argument? Evil.
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Evil exists.
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The presupposition of the argument is that there is evil in the world.
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In the famous debate between Greg Bonson and Gordon Stein on the existence of God, Gordon Stein, who was the atheist, was unable to give a transcendental reason why Hitler's actions were inherently evil.
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Bonson asked him, why was what Hitler did evil? I want to read to you his response.
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It's all available online.
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You can read the whole thing.
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This was the response of the atheist as to why what Hitler did was evil.
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Quote, Germany is part of the Western European tradition.
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It is not the deepest Africa or someplace on Mars.
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They have the same Judeo-Christian background and basically the same connection with the rest of the developed world.
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So therefore, the standards of morality that have worked out as a consensus on that society apply to them too.
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They can't arbitrarily, Hitler can't arbitrarily say, well I'm not going by the consensus that genocide is evil or wrong.
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I'm just going to change it and make it right.
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He has not the prerogative to do that, neither does the German society as a whole, because it is still a part of the larger society, which you might call a Western society.
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So even though morality is a consensus of an entire civilization, he cannot just arbitrarily do that.
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So what he did is evil and wrong.
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What's the argument he made? Hitler can't do that because it's wrong to do that.
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He can't go and hurt people because the morality of society has determined that it's wrong.
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He doesn't have the right to go against society.
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What's his presupposition? That there's such a thing as right and wrong.
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All he did was take a step back.
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He can't say that's evil because then he would be agreeing with Bonson that there is evil.
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So he says, well he doesn't have the right to do it because morals and the mores of the Western society would not allow it.
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But he's only taking a step back.
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If you push an atheist, I did this.
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When Kevin and I were at dinner and that young man came up to the table and he sat down with me and we're talking about God and he asked me why do you believe in God and and and I began to ask him questions about evil and about the nature of the world and I got him to admit that according to his worldview there is no standard upon which to base righteousness, justice, and goodness outside of his own opinion.
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There is no foundation.
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So when an unbeliever says I can't believe in God because of all the evil in the world, your response is simply you can't believe in all the evil the world without God because without God nothing is objectively evil or good.
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As one Christian philosopher said, without God all things are permissible.
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But that's just one thing to consider.
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That's just one argument.
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The next blank on your sheet.
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When we engage in apologetics it is important that we listen for people's presuppositions and be able to identify them and address them.
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Atheists borrow from a theistic worldview and they don't even know it.
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As I mentioned evil and good being objective realities, they're borrowing from theism because atheism has not a basis upon which to stand to make that argument.
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When they demand that the world is governed by scientific laws and logical absolutes, they are borrowing from theism.
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Let me ask you a question.
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Why do you believe that tomorrow when you get up you're not just going to float into space? Because you believe in a law that governs this world, the law of gravity.
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Why do you believe that law is consistent and universal and will continue? You say, well it is because it always has been.
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How do you know tomorrow is not going to be different? I read last year during one of our lessons, I didn't bring it tonight, but I read from a book that was talked about that very thing.
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A world without governance.
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You wake up and tomorrow up is down and water is cold and not hot or whatever.
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Everything changes.
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I didn't say cold and hot, I meant wet and dry.
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Water is dry.
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That doesn't make sense.
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Well why do we believe in consistency? Why do we believe in the uniformity of nature if there's nothing governing it? You know what atheists do? They personalize and anthropomorphize nature by calling it things like mother nature, mother earth.
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I've heard this more times than I can even stand anymore.
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People say, well the universe gave me a job.
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The universe sent me a wife.
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You've heard people say that? Or they'll say I'm sending good vibes your direction.
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What does that even mean? Because they live in a theistic world.
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They live in a world governed by God.
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They live in a world that they have to make sense of, but they want to deny God.
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So in doing so they have to come up with another language.
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So they have mother earth, they have father universe and they have the good vibes instead of prayers and the God who created all things.
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Presuppositionalism is more than just an apologetic methodology.
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It is something we get from scripture.
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Now I'm going to take you to the word.
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I know we've spent the vast majority of our time prior to the word tonight, but I want to take you to the word.
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You've got it printed on your sheet.
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Romans chapter 1.
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Now if you, this is the ESV version that's printed on your sheet.
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If you have another version, that's fine.
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They all say essentially the same thing.
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Romans 1 verse 18 says this.
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It says for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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Notice that it does not say that they are by their unrighteousness ignorant of the truth.
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They are not ignorant of the truth.
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They suppress the truth.
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Going on to verse 19.
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It says for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made so that they may know the truth.
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So they are without excuse.
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I heard an atheist one time who was so bold as to say if I die and I find out that God does exist, I'm going to look him right in his face and I'm going to say to God, you did not give me enough evidence that you existed.
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Well, what I say is when that guy does die and if he doesn't come to the Lord prior to his death, he is going to be so absolutely crushed under the weight of God's holiness, he won't be giving any sass to anyone.
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But this is what this text is telling us.
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They are without excuse.
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The man who says he has an excuse is a liar.
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The man who tells you I don't have a reason to believe in a God, you can look him in the eye and say you are wrong.
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Now how you do that with gentleness and reverence may be determined by the situation.
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Because you might not always just look at a man and say you are lying, you are a fool.
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But you can know it.
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This is how it affects your methodology.
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This is how it affects your apologetic.
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Because when I talk to an atheist, I don't believe in him.
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He doesn't believe in God, I don't believe in him.
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Because I don't believe in an atheist.
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I believe that every man knows in his heart that God exists.
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This text tells me that.
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So that's the foundation for my apologetic.
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I presume his understanding that God exists because the Bible tells me that he knows God exists.
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Verse 21 says, For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
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Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things.
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Isn't that what we see around the world? Men know God exists, they do not want to worship him as God, so they replace him with something else so as to suppress the need to worship that is in their own soul.
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Every man does have a desire to worship, so what does he do? He worships something other than his creator so as to supplant that need.
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I have a shirt that I printed, and I printed it for Psy.
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I mentioned Psy Tembrugengate earlier.
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The shirt says, very simply, it says, How do I know God exists? And it's got two fingers, the same way you do.
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And I wear it out all the time.
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I love it when the people at the cash register look at me and they kind of get me to look.
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But that was actually from a sermon that Psy preached.
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He told the story.
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He was talking to a lady who was just dead set against the truth.
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And he's talking to her and reasoning with her, and she looked at him and she says, How can you be so sure that God exists? And he says, The same way you are.
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And she wept, because she realized she'd been found out.
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This is where apologetic method and evangelistic method coincide.
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Instead of trying to convince a man of something he already knows is true, we speak to him as a man who already knows it's true.
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As I said, I put this on Facebook this week, apologetic methodologies, the problem with most apologetic methodologies is they're trying to prove that God exists.
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And that's the one thing the Apostle Paul says we ain't got to prove.
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It's the one presupposition that the Bible says we can begin with, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
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The Bible begins with one overarching presupposition, God is.
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And so when I begin, I begin with that presupposition, God is.
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I don't have to prove that.
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You have to prove He ain't.
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And your worldview don't cut it.
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Your worldview doesn't work without my God.
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And I simply demonstrate the error of their worldview.
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I don't believe in your God because of this, that, or the other.
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Why does any of that matter if God doesn't exist? Why do you think your brain works in a way that is functionally correct if it wasn't created to do what it was intended to do? Again, these are all questions that we ask.
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This is the next blank on your sheet because this is important and this goes back to something Mike asked earlier.
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Presuppositionalism does not deny the reality of the value of evidences.
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And this gets it back to here.
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This is why I said if you came tonight and you said well I'm classical or I'm evidential, that's fine.
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I'm not going to argue with you because I think the issue is more so where we begin.
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But I will still use evidences when talking to an unbeliever because the Bible tells me that the evidence proves to him because he sees it.
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Yeah, exactly.
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It's proof.
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It stands as proof.
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But who's the judge? That's the issue that presuppositionalism does seek to deal with because when I say to you I'm going to present you with evidence and you get to judge.
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No, God's the judge.
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He's given all the evidence in the world, not so that you can be the judge, but to let you know that you're going to be judged.
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And so that's where, again, it's just a different starting point.
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Absolutely, and that's the beginning of everything.
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And like I said, evidence is not bad.
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We're going to spend some time in the weeks to come looking at some grand evidences for the truth of Scripture.
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We're going to watch a video on Noah's Ark.
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We're going to watch a video on why young people get so confused when they go to college.
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Because how college professors try to confuse them with big lofty terms.
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This course is going to be very interesting.
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I hope you all can continue to come.
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But like I said, so don't think that I'm saying evidences aren't valuable.
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What I'm saying is they're not where we begin.
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Because that is the myth of neutrality.
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That's the title of tonight's lesson.
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The myth of neutrality is that if I present you with evidence, you're neutral and you're simply going to weigh the evidence based on its absolute objectivity.
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But men are not objective.
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Men are subjective.
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They weigh all evidence through the filter of their presupposition.
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You know what the title of my master's thesis was? The problem of atheism is the presupposition of anti-supernaturalism.
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I did it fancy because I wanted to impress my professor.
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But the problem of atheism is the presupposition of anti-supernaturalism.
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They do not believe that anything is beyond the capacity of the natural to see, taste, smell, touch, or hear.
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They believe everything that exists is measurable.
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The Bible says God is spirit.
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Spirit is not measurable.
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Thus it can't exist.
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But that's a presupposition, isn't it? It's a presupposition of anti-supernaturalism.
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It's the heart of the problem.
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Greg Bonson, I mentioned him earlier.
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He quotes Van Til in an article.
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And he says this.
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Presuppositional apologetic, rather, I'm going to read the quote.
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He says, in popular misconception today, the choice of an apologetic method facing a Bible-believing Christian is between presuppositional or appealing to evidences from history and nature in support of Christianity.
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But that is entirely wrong.
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Presuppositional apologetics endorses and indeed encourages the use of evidences, but not evidences offered in the traditional manner as an appeal to the authority of the unbeliever's autonomous reason.
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Unbelievers who are self-conscious in their autonomy will usually fight against the force of the facts to which we can appeal in favor of the Bible's veracity.
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When unbelievers resist the factual arguments which apologists can and should readily set before them to confirm and defend the Christian position, Van Til said, we must then realize and take seriously that the battle, listen to this part, this is the quote on your sheet.
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The battle is not one primarily of this fact or of that fact.
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The battle is basically with respect to a philosophy of the facts.
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No one can be a scientist in any intelligible way without at the same time having a philosophy of reality as a whole.
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You have to believe that evidence leads to truth, but you then have to believe that you can interpret the evidence correctly.
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There's a philosophy that starts before science can even begin.
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But why do you believe that? Why do you believe you can interpret evidence properly? Why do you believe that you have the capacity for that? Why aren't you a brain and a vet? Last blank.
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Presuppositionalism begins with the belief that the Bible is true and makes its argument from that presupposition.
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Someone might say, that is absurd.
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What if I don't believe the Bible's true? Another man's lack of faith does not make me unable to use my faith.
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And as I said earlier, if a man says, you cannot use the Bible, as Votie Bauckham says, says who? David Wright writes this, he's with Answers in Genesis.
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He says, the battle is not over evidence, but it is over philosophical starting points.
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Presuppositions.
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As Christians, we should never put away our axiom, the Bible, when discussing truth with others.
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This would be like a soldier going into battle without any armor or any weapons.
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Asking a Christian to abandon the Bible for the sake of discussion is like asking an atheist to prove there is no God by only using the Bible.
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You would be asking the atheist to give up his axiom, because his axiom is the Bible is not true.
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The prophets and the apostles never tried to prove God's existence.
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They started with the presupposition that God exists, and they reasoned from that position.
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By using the word of God, we are pitting the unbeliever against God, and not us.
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See, that's the key in all of this.
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If you study evidential apologetics and classical apologetics, you've pretty much got to be a philosopher or a scientist.
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I'm just going to give them the word.
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What did we say last week? You can't argue someone into being a believer, because if you could, someone else could come along and argue them out of it.
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Because if it's on the weight of your arguments, then they're not being saved by what really saves.
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So we give people the word.
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We start with the word.
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Do we believe the word is true? Absolutely.
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Do we have all the evidence in the world to support the truth of the word? Yes.
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Are we going to study those evidences so as to further confirm our belief? Yes.
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But at the end of the day, when we go out into the world and we share the gospel with the unbeliever, don't lay down our arms and say we can all be neutral and start this conversation, because neutrality is a myth.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I pray this has been helpful.
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I pray that as we continue our study next week, that you would help us to better understand how we are to share the truth of the word of God with those that we come in contact with, especially those who argue against your very existence.
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In Jesus' name we pray.
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Amen.
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Alright, you'll see at the bottom of your page you have a question for the week.
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The question is, what are the noetic effects of sin? What are the noetic effects of sin? I'll give you a hint, it doesn't have anything to do with Noah.
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Look it up, that's what I'm asking you to do.
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What are the noetic effects of sin? Not right now.
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Go home, study, and have a thought on the subject.
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Next week we're going to look throughout the scripture and see what are the noetic effects of sin.
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God bless.