Has TAG been DEFEATED?

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May 15, 2024

In this episode, Eli tackles the claim that academia has debunked transcendental arguments. He dives into their history, highlights how presuppositionalists uniquely employ them, and then addresses the well-known Stroudian Objection.  Related Videos: https://www.youtube.com/live/gTOAAXaBwc0?si=PrhL9_nwmcUGYfJD https://www.youtube.com/live/3W5yiCgwFUY?si=j9IWPp4-WpP9dsnu

00:01: All right, welcome back to Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and tonight we're gonna be talking about the apparent death of the transcendental argument for God's existence.
00:13: So super excited to be talking about this topic. This once upon a time when
00:18: I wanted to do my PhD and long, long story,
00:23: I wasn't able to do it. So although in my recent speaking engagement, I was introduced as Dr.
00:31: Ayala. So perception, right? So I'm not actually a doctor. It's funny, when
00:37: I speak somewhere, I'm often introduced either as doctor, reverend, or pastor.
00:44: And I'm not a reverend, I'm not a pastor, and I'm not a doctor. So it's just funny to see how that usually works out when
00:52: I'm speaking somewhere. But nevertheless, when I wanted to do my
00:57: PhD, this specific area that we're gonna be talking about today was going to be my topic in terms of a dissertation.
01:05: So I'm extremely interested in the topic that we're gonna be discussing. We're gonna be talking about transcendental arguments, the transcendental argument, presuppositionalism, and all that sort of stuff.
01:19: So I hope you guys who tune in appreciate the focus of this channel.
01:24: I know, I'm not aware, maybe there are channels that dedicate to presuppositional apologetics and kind of unpacking all of the details of that and the different applications.
01:35: But I try to do that. I try to be unique in that way, hopefully offering or filling a void in terms of bringing some of these complex issues down to like the average person.
01:48: So I try to find a middle ground. So there's like the scholarly stuff, and then there's kind of the bottom of the philosophical and theological food chain.
01:56: I try to stay somewhere in the middle in the hopes that it goes beyond introductory, but not so highfalutin that people run away when they hear the word transcendental argument or the preconditions of intelligible experience and things like that.
02:09: So hopefully this channel kind of hits that mark in that way. So I'm super excited about this specific topic.
02:18: But before I get into the topic for tonight, I wanna give folks a heads up.
02:23: My second course is complete. It will be, quote unquote, live and available for folks to sign up for.
02:34: I will let people know that. Whoever is on my emailing list and they're subscribed to the blog and all that kind of stuff, we'll send all of that information out there.
02:43: And so hopefully folks will find that useful. It's basically Practical Presup or Presup Apply.
02:51: That's the name of the course. Folks might be aware that I did some recordings with Apologia Studios covering this topic.
02:59: Those are 20 minute, 20 something minute lectures and they're excellent by the way. They're professionally done, all that jazz.
03:07: But the course that I'll be offering on my website when it's released is much longer. So each of the sessions are about an hour, a little bit over an hour.
03:14: And there's visuals, PowerPoints and these sorts of things. So there'll be a lot more available for folks there.
03:21: And signing up for courses, and you could still sign up for older courses, a great way to support what
03:27: I do and also to have a more kind of a structured kind of education in the realm of Presuppositional Apologetics.
03:34: So just wanted to throw that out there. Now, Rick Sonora, Rick Sonora says here, this sounds already like it's going to fly over my head.
03:45: Well, I'm gonna make it my goal, Rick, tonight to have it not fly over your head completely, okay?
03:53: I wanna be like right above your head so that all you need to do is you kind of just, you know, you just jump up a little bit and you can go, oh yeah,
04:01: I get that. So hopefully we could achieve that tonight and this will be useful for you, okay?
04:11: So basically, we're gonna ask the question, has
04:16: TAG, Transcendental Argument for God's Existence, has it been defeated? Every time I do a video and I mention the
04:23: Transcendental Argument, there's always someone in the comments saying, bro, you know, philosophy put this argument to sleep.
04:29: And you know, people say all those sorts of things. And of course, they never reproduce the argument that apparently, you know, put
04:35: TAG to sleep or put it in its grave, right? That's why we need to get into the specifics.
04:43: So I hear this often and I know specifically what they're referring to, okay?
04:48: In the philosophical literature, there is what is known as the Stroudian Objection to Transcendental Arguments.
04:55: And so I wanna, hopefully, I can kind of bring that objection down to the mid -level so that the average person who's trying to learn
05:04: Presuppositional Apologetics and the Transcendental Argument, things like that, that you understand what the objection is, okay?
05:12: Now, this is very important because when we talk about Transcendental Arguments, plural, okay, we want to make a distinction between Transcendental Arguments, plural, and the
05:27: Transcendental Argument, singular, okay? Just like the
05:32: Cosmological Argument or the Teleological Argument or arguments along those kind of like traditional arguments, the variety of the traditional arguments.
05:44: It's important to understand that those arguments are a family of arguments. So for example, if you have the
05:49: Cosmological Argument, the Cosmological Argument is not one argument, it is a broad category under which other versions or particular versions of the
06:01: Cosmological Argument exists. So you have the Kalam Cosmological Argument and you have
06:07: Aquinas' Cosmological Argument, his particular version of that. And so for example, criticizing and critiquing one version of the
06:16: Cosmological Argument is not the same as criticizing and critiquing and refuting Cosmological Arguments in general.
06:23: And the same thing with Transcendental Arguments. We can speak of Transcendental Arguments in general, but to say that Transcendental Arguments have been refuted, and I don't think they have in the exact way that some critics imply, but to say that the
06:39: Transcendental Arguments have been dealt with is not to make the proper distinction between the unique Transcendental Argument that presuppositionalists use, because it's not the same thing.
06:48: The structure and the form of a Transcendental Argument might be the same. So if you were to ask me as a presuppositionalist, what is the logical structure of a
06:57: Transcendental Argument? I will give you a response to that, that you can find in a philosophy textbook.
07:05: Transcendental Arguments are, I'm not talking about a different formulation of it, but the nature of what we're arguing,
07:13: I think it differentiates it from the traditional run -of -the -mill Transcendental Arguments that are dealt with in some of the philosophical literature that is often referred to.
07:22: So that's an important distinction to keep in mind. So to begin, kind of just to throw this out here right at the beginning, when someone says that TAG has been defeated or the
07:35: Transcendental Arguments have been dealt with by philosophy, they are referring, when people say this, they're referring to the
07:42: Stroudian objection, okay? And so let's talk a little bit first about who Stroud is,
07:48: Barry Stroud, who's a philosopher, okay? So we're gonna kind of walk through this slowly and hopefully you can follow along, okay?
07:55: So Barry Stroud was pretty much a philosopher. I think he's Canadian, if that matters, okay?
08:02: I don't know why we do this. So when I have my friend Guillaume Bignon on, I always introduce him as a
08:07: French philosopher. I don't know why, I don't know why. It's because of his accent, right?
08:12: So Barry Stroud is a Canadian philosopher. I can't do a Canadian accent, so you're not gonna get that from me. But anyway, so Barry Stroud was a
08:20: Canadian philosopher and he's basically known for his contributions to the areas of epistemology and meta -philosophy.
08:27: And he was a professor at the University, I think, of California, Berkeley.
08:33: And his work often kind of explored pretty much fundamental questions about knowledge and epistemology, like I mentioned before.
08:41: But one of his key areas is that he focused on the nature and possibility of transcendental arguments, okay?
08:48: So he's kind of, his focus area is on transcendental arguments. So to put it basically, to understand the transcendental argument, right, before we kind of jump in here, maybe you're new and you're like, what is this transcendental, what?
09:00: Like, what's going on here, okay? So transcendental arguments are a type of argument or a type of reasoning used to show that certain concepts or beliefs must be true because they are the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience or knowledge.
09:19: And so you've heard me say this in the past, a transcendental argument basically tries to argue that in order for something to be the case, this other thing must already be the case, right?
09:28: This is what we talk about, something that is the preconditions of something else. So what must be true in order for something else to obtain?
09:37: Okay? So transcendental arguments are a type of reasoning or argument used to show that certain concepts or beliefs must be true because they are the necessary conditions for the possibility of human experience or knowledge or whatever you wanna put in that placeholder.
09:52: And so these arguments try to establish what must be the case for us to have the experiences or the knowledge that we do.
09:59: That's what basically transcendental arguments try to do. All right, so imagine you're trying to prove that something must exist because without it, something else that we all agree exists wouldn't be possible, okay?
10:11: So for example, if you're trying to prove that, I don't know, the external world exists, right?
10:17: You might argue that without an external world, we couldn't have the kinds of experiences we do like seeing trees or feeling the wind or something along those lines, okay?
10:26: And so pretty much Stroud's work critically examined those kinds of arguments, particularly in his book entitled "'The
10:34: Significance of Philosophical Skepticism," I think was published in the mid 80s or something like that.
10:41: And so basically he explored whether transcendental arguments can really succeed in proving the necessary conditions for our experiences and whether they could effectively counter skepticism, which is pretty much the view that we can't have certain or reliable knowledge about the world, okay?
11:00: Now this is important because when I often offer transcendental argument, people on the internet,
11:06: I mean, not scholarly types or people who are philosophically self -conscious, they think that this is kind of like a weird presuppositional voodoo thing that we just made up, right?
11:16: Transcendental arguments are actual arguments that you can find throughout the history of philosophy. It's not kind of a weird thing that we made up, okay?
11:25: So I think that's important to keep in mind. So when we're arguing that God, for example, the
11:32: Christian worldview provides the necessary preconditions for knowledge, the argument is unique in that we are arguing for the
11:40: Christian worldview in a transcendental way, but the form of the argument, it's not like a new argument, okay?
11:48: Now, just philosophically, it's important to recognize what is the purpose of a transcendental argument?
11:55: Well, in the history of philosophy, the purpose of transcendental arguments is that they are anti -skeptical arguments, okay?
12:03: They are anti -skeptical arguments. Basically, they're arguments to combat skepticism by proving that something is true by the impossibility of the contrary.
12:12: If the contrary is impossible, then the skeptic can't hide in his skepticism.
12:19: You see how that works? And again, that's not like some weird presuppositional voodoo thing that we made up.
12:24: That's transcendental arguments. That's what kind of arguments they are, right? They're anti -skeptical arguments, okay?
12:32: And so pretty much, Barry Stroud was skeptical about the success of these arguments, okay?
12:39: So you have these transcendental arguments. Barry Stroud's like, eh, I'm not sure that they do what many people who use these sorts of arguments claim that they do, right?
12:46: Basically, he argued that while transcendental arguments, and this is key, he argued that while transcendental arguments might show that we must believe certain things to make sense of our experiences, ready?
12:58: This is key. They don't necessarily prove that those things are actually true in the real world, okay?
13:06: And so this means that while these arguments can explain why we hold certain beliefs, they might not be able to provide the kind of robust proof against skepticism that many philosophers were hoping for in terms of using these sorts of arguments.
13:21: So in essence, Barry Stroud's work invites us to think more deeply about the limits of these sorts of philosophical arguments and what we can genuinely claim to know, okay?
13:32: And I think this is good, right? We don't get a free pass as Christians using a transcendental argument.
13:38: I think it's good when we critically analyze the sorts of arguments that we are using because we, as defenders of the
13:46: Christian faith, we want to reason correctly. We want to use good arguments.
13:51: We don't want to use arguments that are simply convincing. We want to use arguments that are convincing and that they're good arguments.
13:59: And that's one of the ways in which we honor God, okay? Just real quick,
14:06: Sizzler TX, what is TAG? TAG is the transcendental, that's the
14:12: T, argument, that's the A, for God's existence. That's the G, okay?
14:17: So TAG is short for the transcendental argument for God's existence, okay? All righty, let's see here.
14:26: All right, so let's talk a little bit about the history of transcendental arguments.
14:31: Again, this didn't just kind of come out, like appear out of thin air when
14:36: Van Til came along. Remember, Van Til stands on the shoulders of those who went before him.
14:42: As many philosophers do, it's very rare where you have someone who is completely and utterly original in their thought, okay?
14:48: We're kind of working off of philosophical observations and principles that were laid out in the past, okay?
14:56: And so when we take a look at the history of philosophy, you can see transcendental sorts of reasoning and argumentation as far back as Aristotle, okay?
15:06: Aristotle set the stage a long time ago with his discussions on the laws of logic, especially focusing on the law of non -contradiction.
15:13: And so basically argued that you can't deny the law of non -contradiction without using it, okay?
15:19: Hence establishing it that is a foundational must -have for any kind of serious thinking, right? So the laws of logic, the laws of logic are the necessary preconditions, right?
15:30: For meaningful sentences or whatever, right? So you see this kind of reasoning as far back as Aristotle, okay?
15:39: Now, of course, when people talk about transcendental arguments in terms of really when it comes to the forefront in the history of philosophy, it's really impossible to talk about it without mentioning the influence of Immanuel Kant, okay?
15:53: And so you fast forward to the 18th century and Immanuel Kant really shapes what we consider transcendental arguments pretty much in his work, the critique of pure reason, okay?
16:02: And so Kant is interested in how we can come to know things before we experience them. He's talking about a priori kind of knowledge.
16:09: And so he proposed that certain concepts like time, space, right, time and space and others, he had a bunch of other categories, they're necessary to even have experiences at all, okay?
16:22: So we argue that these things were preconditions, time and space, and I think he had like, I think it was like 11 or 12 categories,
16:28: I think, maybe someone could fact check me there, okay? That were necessary preconditions, okay?
16:34: For intelligibility, these sorts of things, okay? And so Kant's work here was all about proving why certain things must be true for us to experience and understand the world coherently, okay?
16:47: And so there you have transcendental argumentation, transcendental reasoning, these sorts of things associated with Immanuel Kant, okay?
16:57: Now, I do see questions in the comments and I will try to get to them. Just wanna get through this to lay out kind of what
17:06: I wanted to lay out. And you know what? Nevermind, okay? You guys are taking the time to listen.
17:12: Let me take a couple of questions here and then I'll continue through our walk through the history of philosophy.
17:18: Okay, let's see here. Scott says, I predict this will not be the death of Tagg.
17:24: Yes, that is a good prediction. I mean, he's got the gift of foresight. Rick, you gotta stay with us, man.
17:33: You let me know if something is too far over your head and so I'll bring it down, okay?
17:39: I'm a teacher, so I don't like to move along without the people kind of following along, so let me know, okay?
17:47: Martin Luther, thank you so much. I really appreciate your channel. I really appreciate you, Martin Luther, thank you. There we go,
17:54: Tagg's not defeated. All right, Apologetics 101, hello, how are you doing?
18:02: Apologetics 101 asked the question, why do you think people straw man Tagg as much as they do?
18:10: Oh boy, I don't know. That's a great question because it's not hard.
18:16: Maybe, why do people straw man it? Maybe because they're just not used to hearing these sorts of arguments.
18:24: I don't know, it's a good question. I think I've explained it a bajillion times to people and still
18:31: I don't get it right and I don't find it difficult to understand. I'm not sure, yeah.
18:38: Sorry about that, I don't look at that. I'll take the questions. He asked a question, I don't know how to answer it. Let's see here.
18:47: Turk Baikal, hey, Eli, if all we need is language to understand the Bible, couldn't everyone interpret language differently?
18:54: Well, I wouldn't say all we need is language. A bunch of preconditions to understanding the Bible like logic, the
19:01: Holy Spirit, okay? Language, of course, yeah. This is important to understand,
19:07: Turk, that yes, people could interpret things differently, okay? Oh, let me see.
19:13: Let me make sure I understand your question. Hey, Eli, if all we need is language to understand the Bible, couldn't everyone interpret language differently?
19:21: I don't know what that sentence means. Interpret language differently. I'm not sure, interpret language,
19:28: I mean, yes. I mean, if you're saying people could have different interpretations of the Bible, yeah, people can interpret the
19:34: Bible in many different ways, but you wanna keep this in mind, that the possibility of multiple interpretations, it does not logically follow that because there are multiple interpretations that therefore there's not a right one, or one cannot justify their particular interpretation, okay, that just doesn't follow.
19:55: That's like saying, you know, if I give a math test and every one of my students put for number two, what's four plus four?
20:03: One student says nine, another student says 50, another student says eight, and I say, well,
20:09: I guess everyone's got a different answer. They've interpreted the mathematical equation differently, so therefore we can't know what four plus four is.
20:16: Well, of course not, right? So I would say that the existence of multiple interpretations does not negate the possibility of knowing and being able to justify your interpretation, okay?
20:26: All right, I hope that makes sense. Let's see here, do -do -do -do -do,
20:32: Dalton says, I believe a strong man because it flies in the face of human autonomy and is consistent with it. Yeah, well, that might be, you might be onto something here, okay?
20:41: Do -do -do -do -do, so Turk is saying, my bad, could you explain why sola scriptura? Yeah, I don't wanna get into sola scriptura here because that's not really the topic of the video here, and I don't wanna get too off topic because sola scriptura is a huge topic, super important.
20:55: I've got some stuff on that topic on my channel, okay? So there you go, all right, sorry about that.
21:02: All right, let's continue. So I'm talking about Kant, all right, Immanuel Kant, and then we're gonna get to the objection, the
21:07: Stroudian objection, okay? Immanuel Kant, again, is the one who's associated with transcendental arguments, and of course, after Kant, you have the
21:15: German idealists, post -Kantian philosophers, philosophers like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.
21:22: They kind of take Kant's ideas and kind of put their own spin on what he was working with, okay, and they kind of dove in deeper into how our understanding of the world is shaped by our perceptions, okay?
21:35: And they kind of leaned more towards kind of a philosophy of idealism, where the mind itself helps construct reality, okay?
21:43: This is what Kant was working with in terms of his phenomenal noumenal distinction, okay?
21:49: For Kant, we could not know reality in and of itself, okay?
21:55: We only know our perception, because the mind is active in interpreting the data that we experience, and so what we see is our perception of reality.
22:05: We don't see reality in and of itself, okay? And so you have other philosophers kind of working with that, and of course, you have in the 20th century analytic schools of philosophy, phenomenological kinds of philosophy, and I don't wanna get so much into all of those people associated with that, but enter
22:22: Barry Stroud, okay? Hopefully, fast forward. Enter Barry Stroud, okay? And so Barry Stroud really is the one who is appealed to in terms of the contemporary debate on transcendental arguments, and so Barry Stroud kind of later brings some,
22:37: I think, healthy skepticism to transcendental arguments as they were typically formulated throughout the course of philosophical history, okay?
22:45: And so basically, he's questioning whether proving something is necessary for thought really means that it exists out there in the world, and so this kind of sparked a lot of rethinking on these sorts of philosophical discussions, all right?
22:59: So that is my walkthrough, the history of philosophy. Now we're here at Barry Stroud.
23:05: What the heck is Barry Stroud concerned with in terms of his objection that many people kind of say, hey, this is the reason why you pre -suppers, when you use the transcendental argument, you are trying to resurrect the zombie, right?
23:20: It's dead, leave it, you know, the past is dead. What was that phrase from The Last Jedi?
23:27: It was something with the kill the past or something like, oh man, you know, I hate when
23:32: I'm about to quote a movie and then I forget the quote, and then it just gets awkward, so I'm not gonna quote it, and I don't want people to unsubscribe by quoting
23:40: The Last Jedi, the worst Star Wars ever. Anyway, all right, so Barry Stroud's critique of transcendental arguments,
23:48: I think was a crucial turning point in understanding the limits and implications of these sorts of arguments.
23:57: And so he highlighted pretty much the significant distinction between, as I was saying before, conceptual necessity, this is so important, and ontological reality, okay?
24:08: I want you to remember those phrases, conceptual necessity versus ontological reality.
24:13: Okay, I'm gonna explain what these are, but basically, Stroud is gonna say, thank you,
24:20: Adam, let the past die, kill it if you have to, it's the only way to become who you were meant to be.
24:27: Man, you know, I'm not a big fan of The Last Jedi, but I've seen it a lot because I'm a big
24:33: Star Wars fan, and so I tried to give it a shot by watching it multiple times and hoping that the more
24:38: I watch it, I'm like, you know, maybe it'll grow on me. Parts of it have grown on me, but I still have issues.
24:44: So thank you, Adam, thank you very much for that, appreciate it, appreciate it, okay? All right, so here's some things that you wanna keep in mind.
24:51: So what is the Stroudian objection? Why is this a big deal? Why does this present a challenge to the presuppositionalist, okay?
24:58: You're going, now, this is for Rick, okay? Rick's like, man, all this stuff is over my head. We're gonna go really slow for Rick here, okay?
25:04: Okay, you want to keep in mind the distinction between conceptual necessity and ontological reality, okay?
25:15: So let's begin with conceptual necessity, all right? So Stroud observes that transcendental arguments operate by showing that certain concepts or conditions are conceptually necessary, okay?
25:29: That is, they must be assumed for us to have coherent experiences or engage in meaningful discourse.
25:37: So for example, the concept of causality is seen as necessary for understanding the physical world or the rules of logic for engaging in any rational argumentation.
25:46: So these conditions are argued to be prerequisites for the possibility of knowledge and experience.
25:53: So conceptual necessity basically is saying, okay, you must believe these things in order to speak meaningfully so they are necessary beliefs as conceptual schemes, right?
26:08: You have to believe this thing in order to make sense of anything, all right? That's the conceptual necessity, okay?
26:15: And I think Stroud is right here in making this distinction, okay? So he has the conceptual necessity and then he makes the distinction between the conceptual with the ontological reality, okay?
26:27: So Stroud argues now, we think in terms of ontological reality. Stroud argued that just because something is conceptually necessary, okay?
26:36: Rick, you're listening up, Rick, okay? Just because something is conceptually necessary doesn't mean that it corresponds to an actual external reality or ontological reality.
26:49: And so he pointed out that by, he pointed out that proving the necessity of certain conditions for our experiences doesn't automatically prove that these conditions truly exist in the way that we assume that they do in the actual world, okay?
27:02: So for instance, just because our understanding of the world requires us to use the concept of causality, for example, it doesn't necessarily mean that causality is a fundamental feature of the universe in the way that we think about it, okay?
27:15: And so Stroud perceived kind of this, let's see, we have a question here.
27:24: Yes, okay, yes. So Dalton says here, so the objection states that TAG only works in thought, but not ontologically.
27:33: Would that not also be admitting that unbelief relies on an epistemology that is not based? Yeah, so from this perspective, you couldn't really know, or transcendental arguments would not be the right route to know ontological reality.
27:47: You're only, for Stroud, you're dealing with conceptual schemes, not necessarily ontological reality.
27:53: And this is wrapped up in the gap that he perceives. So he perceives a gap. So the key issue for Stroud is that he identifies this gap between what is necessary for our thoughts, and Dalton, you've correctly identified that, and what is actually true about the external world, okay?
28:11: That's basically what he's saying. You can't leap over that gap, okay? Transcendental arguments don't do that, right?
28:17: So for him, he recognized that transcendental arguments tend to move from what we must think, okay?
28:24: We move from, we must think this way, to the world must be this way.
28:30: And so Stroud is skeptical of this leap. You can't move from, we need to think this way, to this is actually the case.
28:36: So he challenges the idea that our intellectual frameworks, which help us make sense of experiences and these sorts of things, are guaranteed reflections of the external structures of reality itself, okay?
28:47: And so this distinction led to a deeper reflection on the nature of these sorts of arguments and the limits of what we can conclude about reality based on our conceptual schemes or conceptual frameworks.
28:57: And so Stroud's insight, I think, presses philosophers to be more cautious in claiming that our necessary ways of thinking provide direct insight into the actual structure of the world, okay?
29:09: And so what this has encouraged in the realm of philosophy is a more nuanced approach in this area, where the implications of our conceptual necessities, are considered more critically, against the backdrop of what we're ontologically asserting about the nature of reality itself, okay?
29:26: All right, so I hope that makes a little sense. And if I can give a little example, if this is kind of flying over your head,
29:33: Ricky, okay? This is for you, Rick, sorry. You're like my main person that I'm focusing on because I want you to get it, okay?
29:40: So let me use an analogy, there we go.
29:57: I muted myself on accident on technology, okay? So imagine you have a rule that says everyone needs to wear glasses to see a special kind of picture, okay?
30:05: Now, someone might say, if we can see the picture, then that proves everyone is wearing these special glasses, right?
30:12: But along comes Barry Stroud, who's gonna say, just because the glasses are needed to see the picture, doesn't mean everyone actually has them on.
30:21: Maybe there's another way to see the picture that we haven't thought of, right? So that's basically what he's saying. So in the same way,
30:26: Stroud argues that just because certain things might seem necessary for us to have knowledge and experience, it doesn't automatically mean that those things are truly real in the actual world.
30:38: And so he's kind of saying, it's great, you think you need those glasses, but can you prove they're actually on everyone's faces?
30:45: So basically, he challenges the idea that just knowing what's necessary tells us what's actually true and real, okay?
30:53: So I hope that makes a little sense here. Can you guys still hear me? Can someone give me a thumbs up?
30:58: Because my mic went off and then I fixed it, I think. Okay, all right.
31:06: Okay, I hope you can hear me. That'd be weird if I just kept going. I don't wanna keep going if you can't hear me.
31:13: All right, so here I am. I'm going to say the Stroudian objection, okay, is basically this idea, this criticism of transcendental arguments, that just because you assert that we need to think in a certain way in order to make sense out of intelligible experience doesn't mean that what we think we need conceptually maps out onto what is actually the case in reality, okay?
31:41: So you're still stuck in a traditional transcendental kinds of arguments. You're still stuck in kind of what we would call in philosophy the egocentric predicament.
31:51: You're dealing with a conceptual scheme, but there's no way to bridge the gap between your conceptual scheme and what is actually the case.
31:58: It kind of sounds like Immanuel Kant, right? It's our perception. We don't, it's our perception of reality.
32:03: We don't actually see the thing in itself, reality in itself, okay? So there you go.
32:09: So that's his critique. And I think it is an insightful distinction to make between the conceptual and the ontological.
32:16: I think that's important. And I agree with him that that is a problem if you take the traditional transcendental arguments as they have been presented, okay?
32:28: Let's see here. There we go. Let's see here.
32:34: Is Henry here? Hello, hello, Henry. Yeah, the philosophical lingo is hard.
32:40: But if I say something that you don't understand, or I use a word, you let me know, and I will try to define my terms, okay?
32:51: The beauty of live stream, here's why I do live stream. Number one, I don't have time to edit.
32:56: So when I do things like prerecorded, I don't have time. I'd rather just go live. That's number one. Number two, it's interactive.
33:02: So if you have a question, you could just ask it. Or if you need me to define something, you could just ask me to define it, okay? So I'll try my best to do that.
33:10: All right, let's see here.
33:17: All right. Okay, so that's kind of the Stroudian objection against transcendental arguments. So what's the difference, okay?
33:23: As presuppositionalist, kind of the centerpiece of presuppositional apologetics is the utilization of the transcendental argument.
33:33: And I say the transcendental argument because the nature of the transcendental argument, the nature of the transcendental argument is not the same as the traditional transcendental arguments that Stroud is critiquing, okay?
33:49: So the difference between the presuppositional kind of Vantillian transcendental kind of form of argumentation and say kind of secular versions of the transcendental arguments, all right?
33:58: They basically, the difference lies in their foundational assumptions, their objections, and the nature of the conclusions that they seek to establish, okay?
34:06: So let's talk a little bit about foundational assumptions. So kind of a Vantillian transcendental argument basically is rooted in the idea that God and his revelation provide the necessary precondition for intelligibility and rational thought.
34:22: So it presupposes that all truth, logic, morality, the uniformity of nature are contingent upon the character and the existence of specifically the
34:31: Christian God. So the argument does not merely propose God as a possible explanation, but as the only basis through which we can make sense of reality consistently, okay?
34:43: So we're not talking within the presuppositional, let's see here.
34:58: All right, I'll try to get to that later because I don't wanna get sidetracked. I do apologize, Neil. I'll see if I can get back to you there, okay?
35:07: Okay, so from a presuppositional perspective, we are not arguing for the
35:13: Christian worldview, the triune God and his revelation as kind of a hypothetical or an abstract idea.
35:19: This is why Vantill referred to God as a concrete universal. We're arguing for the ontological reality of God that it is
35:26: God himself and his revelation that provide the necessary preconditions for intelligibility, not the idea of God or anything along those lines.
35:34: Now, in a secular transcendental argument that doesn't kind of connect itself with what we're arguing for as presuppositionalists, these arguments generally start from a more, an apparent, this is not truly the case, but a apparent more neutral foundation, okay?
35:49: They do not, the secular kind of transcendental forms of argumentation, they don't presuppose any,
35:58: Christian conception of reality or anything like that, okay? The goal is, with respect to transcendental arguments traditionally formulated, the goal is to demonstrate that certain concepts or conditions,
36:08: I don't know, like the existence of other minds, the reality of the past or the necessity of causality, these sorts of things are necessary for the possibility of experience or knowledge without invoking kind of, there's not necessarily a religious framework that's at work in these kind of more secular arguments.
36:24: Now, of course, I say kind of, sort of, because I do believe that everyone has kind of a fundamental starting point that impacts how they understand even transcendental categories, okay?
36:36: Because you have the other problem, that if you identify these preconditions like causality and logic and all these other things, you have these multiple transcendental categories.
36:49: But how do you bring them together? How are they related? You see, from a secular standpoint, you can't bring them together because there is no mind connecting them.
36:59: There is no God in these secular perspectives, okay? So secular transcendental arguments typically assume categories of autonomy and neutrality, okay?
37:10: Which are basically two things that presuppositionalists try to avoid, okay? So again, this is important to kind of know that there's a different foundation in terms of how a
37:19: Christian presuppositionalist is gonna use a transcendental argument and how a, say, kind of a secularist or someone who's not explicitly committed to some
37:29: God concept or something along those lines, okay? Now, in terms of objectives, I mean, for Van Til and the presuppositionalists, the primary objective when we use these arguments is gonna be apologetic, it's gonna be evangelistic, right?
37:40: These are arguments that we're giving for God and these sorts of things. And basically, we're aiming to show that the denial of the
37:47: Christian worldview is gonna lead to a collapse, okay, in one's worldview, okay?
37:55: It's gonna lead to a collapse of rationality, right?
38:00: That all attempts to argue against Christianity for an alternative worldview, we're gonna argue, is gonna presuppose the truth of the
38:07: Christian worldview. And that's basically what we're trying to show because that's what a transcendental argument seeks to do, showing that the position is true by the impossibility of the contrary, okay?
38:15: And so we wanna use these arguments for kind of an apologetics evangelistic context, okay?
38:21: It's not simply to say, hey, here's this cool argument. We wanna give justifications for our worldview and we do this with the hopes that also the
38:29: Spirit of God is working with how we're arguing and discussing with the unbeliever to bring about the sinner's repentance and conversion, okay?
38:38: So there is theological reasons in terms of our objective, okay? Now, when you take a look at traditional transcendental arguments, obviously the objective is not going to, they're not gonna be the same, okay?
38:54: Now, let's see here. So in terms of the objection, the objective, sorry, the objection, the strategy objection, how do we respond to this?
39:05: Okay, well, first, I think it's important to recognize that point that I made at the beginning is that there's a distinction between transcendental arguments in general and the
39:13: Christian transcendental argument specifically, okay? So we wanna make that distinction, okay?
39:20: Because criticisms of one kind of transcendental argument is not going to be necessarily the same in terms of how you criticize another kind of transcendental argument, all right?
39:29: That's gonna be important. Non -Christian presuppositional arguments are going to, we took a look at transcendental arguments throughout history they will be coming from a position of an assumed autonomy, okay?
39:47: And so there's not going to be an appeal to the necessity of divine revelation.
39:52: And that's gonna be key because this is really what differentiates. You guys have heard
39:58: Van Til say this. Maybe you've heard me say this that there are really only two worldviews. Now that's true in one sense and it's not true in another sense.
40:06: It's not true in the sense that you have multiple worldviews. Obviously there are Buddhists, there are Hindus, there are atheists, there are agnostics, there are
40:12: Mormons, right? But in a sense, there's only two worldviews. There is the
40:18: Christian worldview and everyone else. Now, why do I say that? I say that because while there are multiple everything else worldviews, they all share something in common.
40:30: They share the assumption of autonomy, autonomy or a proclaimed autonomy.
40:37: No one is really autonomous, okay? I mean, this is going to be the distinction between why the traditional transcendental arguments fall into the trap of the ontological and the conceptual gap and the
40:49: Christian one does not, right? Basically, because you start with yourself, you cannot finish with anything else.
40:56: You're stuck within the egocentric predicament. You cannot leap the gap between conceptual schemes and ontological reality, okay?
41:05: So from a presuppositional apologetic perspective, we do think that we're offering a distinct form of the transcendental argument and Barry Stroud's critique,
41:16: I think largely focuses on transcendental arguments that operate within a framework, assuming human reason and experience as the autonomous ground for establishing the necessity of certain conditions for knowledge and so forth.
41:27: And so these arguments attempt to demonstrate that certain structures or entities like causal relationships, the self, things like this must exist because without them, knowledge and experience wouldn't be possible.
41:38: So Stroud's challenge, Stroud challenges this point by pretty much pointing out that demonstrating the necessity of these conditions for understanding doesn't necessarily prove their actual existence in the real world, okay?
41:54: Again, from our perspective, we're arguing that the existence of God and the truth of the Christian revelation are not just necessary conditions for the possibility of knowledge, but are rather the actual conditions under which anything is intelligible.
42:08: So the presuppositional approach asserts that all reasoning, all understanding and all knowledge are contingent upon the self -revealing
42:15: God who's revealed himself in general and special revelation. So this approach doesn't merely suggest that God's existence is a necessary kind of backdrop for logical thought and moral reasoning.
42:25: It posits that such rational activities are only possible and meaningful because they actually occur within the context of God's real revealed order.
42:36: And so we are philosophical realists. I do not hold, my worldview does not hold to the
42:42: Kantian divide, okay, between my perception and what is actually the case.
42:50: Now, don't assume realism. Don't assume the Christian position.
42:56: Don't assume that God is the ontological reality and the necessary preconditions for knowledge and so forth.
43:02: And what do you get? Well, you get the Kantian divide. You get the inability to transcend the self, okay?
43:10: This is the difference between beginning with yourself and beginning with God, okay? The presuppositionalist begins with God and hence
43:18: God and his revelation provides the tether that connects our internal subjective experience to knowing what is actually the case externally, okay?
43:29: If you lack revelation and you start with yourself, there's no way to transcend yourself.
43:34: And so a worldview that starts with itself is not going to be able to jump that gap that is identified in the
43:41: Stroudian objection, okay? I think that's super, super important. So let's kind of simplify this then, okay?
43:47: So here's a straightforward way of understanding, how we think about these things. So Barry Stroud argued that just because we need certain ideas or conditions to make sense of our experience like the laws of logic or causality, it doesn't necessarily mean those conditions actually exist in the real world, okay?
44:01: So along comes the presuppositionalist, right? We're going to say, well, unlike other transcendental arguments that might start from human reasoning or experience, a presuppositional argument starts with the belief that God has revealed himself in the
44:13: Bible. He actually exists. He actually has revealed himself. This is actually the case. And so this revelation includes the truth about our world and the conditions necessary for our reasoning and our understanding.
44:25: And so we basically argue that because God is the creator of all things, the conditions we find necessary like logic and morality, they're not just ideas we have to like make sense out of the world, but they're actual characteristics of the universe
44:39: God created. And so if these conditions are necessary for us to think and live coherently, it's because they really are there.
44:46: They're established by God, right? We're not just thinking in terms of conceptual schemes, okay? This is super, super important, okay?
44:55: Now, as a presuppositionalist, we're going to also want to say that trying to understand these necessary conditions without God is not going to work, okay?
45:04: Because there is nothing that unifies these multiple transcendental categories, okay? It's kind of like, you know, trying to read a book in the dark, right?
45:12: God's revelation is the light that makes understanding possible. And so the conditions we find necessary are real because they come from God's actual nature and actions, not just our mind.
45:24: They're not just us imposing something on our experience, okay?
45:29: And so presuppositionalists believe basically that everything necessary for understanding and reasoning actually exists because it's rooted in the nature and reality of God as revealed to us in nature and scripture, okay?
45:40: And this view, this is not just a necessary way to think, but as reflecting the true structure of the world
45:47: God actually created, okay? And so this addresses Stroud's concern by tying what is conceptually necessary directly to an ontological reality,
45:57: God's existence and his creation as described in the Bible, okay? Now, you're gonna listen to this and be like, well, just saying that doesn't prove it, right?
46:06: Okay, yes. So that's right. Saying it doesn't make it so. But then this is where the argumentation needs to come, okay?
46:14: Assume the opposite. What happens? You assume the opposite of God and his revelation, the reality of God and his revelation, and you're stuck in subjectivism.
46:25: You're stuck in arbitrariness. You're stuck in not being able to jump the gap between conceptual schemes and what is actually the case, okay?
46:34: And this is where you get into like the whole solipsism stuff. Well, how do you know you're not a brain in a vat, right? You wouldn't know without God, okay?
46:42: I know I'm not a brain in the vat because my worldview does not posit the self as ultimate.
46:51: I start with myself within the context of God's revelation.
46:57: And it is God and his revelation that tethers my subjective experience to being able to know what is actually the case in the external world, okay?
47:06: So that's a huge distinction, okay? And how do we argue for this? How do we justify that?
47:11: Well, the transcendental argument. Christian worldview is true by the impossibility of the contrary, okay?
47:17: On the one hand, if you deny the Christian worldview, you end up in subjectivity and arbitrariness and incoherence.
47:24: And on the other hand, when we actually positively lay out the metaphysical scheme of the
47:32: Christian worldview, it's epistemological scheme and the foundations of the
47:37: Christian world, we lay that out in terms of what God has revealed. God has revealed to us that which is necessary and can sufficiently account for intelligibility.
47:49: And so we argue that only the Christian worldview, the Christian worldview is the only thing that can provide the necessary transcendental preconditions for intelligible experience.
47:59: But here's the kicker. When we're dealing with the issue of a transcendentally necessary precondition, then by definition, you could only have one necessary transcendental precondition.
48:12: Because if you have more than one, then it's not necessary. So if the Christian worldview does in fact provide the necessary transcendental preconditions for intelligibility, then it follows, it must be the only worldview that can do it because you can only have one necessary.
48:30: So on the one hand, when the unbeliever denies the Christian worldview, he's reduced to absurdity.
48:37: But we don't stop there. We actually show that given Christian presuppositions, all of the necessary preconditions for knowledge and intelligible experience are met.
48:45: And because it does in fact provide those necessary preconditions, you can only have one necessary. One necessary, right?
48:51: And so it follows it's the only one, okay? So that can be fleshed out more, but that's basically what we're arguing for.
48:57: And that's different than the different kinds of transcendental arguments that have been offered.
49:03: Because traditionally transcendental arguments have not typically been used for arguments for the existence of God and things like that.
49:08: You have a difference between transcendental argument as I've been presenting it here, and then you have kind of localized transcendental arguments which will say like the self is the necessary precondition for me uttering the sentences that I'm saying.
49:21: And that's true. That's a localized transcendental argument. But then we asked the question, what are the necessary preconditions for the meaningfulness of the self, right?
49:29: Or logic is a necessary precondition for meaningful sentences. But then we asked the question, well, what's the necessary precondition for logic?
49:37: That's kind of a broader. Now, what is the transcendental foundation that brings together all the localized transcendental categories like time, space and logic and all those other things?
49:51: What brings it all together? And of course, for the Christian, it's God, okay? So super, super, super, super important.
50:00: All right. So is the transcendental argument defeated? No. Is it dead? No, okay?
50:06: To critique a transcendental arguments is different than critiquing the transcendental argument, the specific kind of argumentation that presuppositionalist are putting forth.
50:21: All right. Okay, so let's go through some questions here, okay? Let's see here.
50:27: I hope that makes sense, Rick. Okay, if Rick is still in the chat, you let me know if that was too much over your head, okay?
50:36: I will try my best to simplify. Let's see here. All right, let's see here.
50:49: Apologize one on one. Someone made the straw man that they thought that God created the laws of logic when I specifically said that laws of logic come from the mind of God.
50:57: Yeah, so you wanna be careful. So if you hold to the position that God did not create the laws of logic, when you say,
51:04: I specifically said that the laws of logic come from the mind of God, that language can give the impression that they come from, they are created or they originate.
51:15: You wanna be careful. So if you hold to the position that the laws of logic are uncreated, you're gonna wanna say that the laws of logic reflect the mind of God, okay?
51:22: And so they are just as eternal as he is because it's a reflection of his mind, right? So just a little point of, let me see here.
51:32: Do, do, do, do, do, okay, just scrolling down, just scrolling down.
51:45: So, okay, so Henry, it's Henry. I'm learning a lot here. Been following you for a while now, but still rewatching your stuff over and over because the philosophical lingo is foreign to me.
51:55: Help, yes. My number one advice for you is to always ask to define terms.
52:01: When I read Van Til, I look at the pages and I say, Van Til, help.
52:07: It's really hard to follow sometimes. So ask questions, keep listening. There are certain lectures and things that I've listened to on YouTube like a bajillion times and then eventually it clicks.
52:17: So if you're having difficulty, that's normal. That's part of the learning process. All right, let's see here.
52:27: What book did, yeah, what I would have, I can't show it to you here because I let someone borrow it, but the objective proof for Christianity was just put out by American Vision.
52:37: And it is basically a transcription of Greg Bonson's lectures on transcendental arguments, which he covers all of this, okay?
52:44: So you wanna go on American Vision and type in the objective proof for Christianity, okay?
52:51: All right, let's see here. Let's see here.
52:56: So Neil says, so if TAG has its own categorical principle for intelligibility, how can the idea of God be the necessary condition for, or otherwise we remove all
53:07: Kantian categories then posit God? Yeah, so I would reject the Kantian categories. I think they are, first of all, if Kant's position is that we can't know the true nature of reality, then it seems to me that he's in a contradiction because he's telling us that the nature of reality is such that there is this phenomenal noumenal divide, right?
53:32: So on the one hand, we can't know reality in itself, but then he goes on and tells us what reality is. Namely, reality is such that we can't know reality.
53:41: We only know our perception. Well, how does he know that, right? So the formulation of the noumenal phenomenal divide is to say something about what he thinks the nature of reality is, the way it really is.
53:54: And so I think there's problems. So yeah, I remove Kantian categories. I believe that we are not divided subjectively and then objectively in terms of knowing the external world, okay?
54:09: And I believe that because I believe God created us in a certain way that we could apprehend the world that he's created and so forth.
54:16: And so I think that God and his revelation, which we exist and we exist within the context of revelation, right?
54:22: He makes it possible that we can know his creation and know him, okay? All right, let's see here.
54:32: All right, Earth. Hello, Earth. I've never been asked a question by a planet. Interesting, all right.
54:38: Since we're on the topic of preconditions, would you agree that rationality and free will are both two sides of the same coin and you cannot have one without the other?
54:48: It depends what you mean. I think that rationality and free will are preconditions for other things, but you'd have to flesh that out more, yeah?
54:58: And it depends what you mean by free will, right? So I'm a compatibilist. So when people mention free will, they typically mean like libertarian free will, and I reject the concept of libertarian free will.
55:10: But I do accept free will more specifically defined. So it just depends what you mean.
55:17: Okay, let's see here. All right, Nate Werner says, can you give an example of a non -presuppositional, maybe even on a non -Christian transcendence law, just so we can hear the difference?
55:28: Yeah, so a transcendental argument is going to argue that in order for something to be the case, something else must also be the case as a precondition, okay?
55:39: Now, if you're going to give an argument, there has been an attempt to provide a transcendental argument for the non -existence of God.
55:53: I think it was, let me see, I think it was called Tang. It was called
55:59: Tang, one second, let me see here. Transcendental argument for the non -existence of God.
56:08: Let's see here. Was it Michael Martin? I think it was Michael Martin, let me see.
56:15: Maybe someone in the chat knows. Transcendental argument,
56:25: I think it was Michael Martin. He made an argument called
56:31: Tang. I don't know the specific nature of the argument, just to know it doesn't work.
56:36: But if you're going to argue from a non -Christian perspective, it depends what you're arguing. Are you arguing for a localized transcendental?
56:44: In other words, in order for me to utter a sentence, I must exist, so the self is a necessary precondition for me making statements or whatever.
56:53: You can argue transcendental. People use localized transcendental arguments. Now, if someone wanted to argue for the truth of their worldview and they weren't a
57:00: Christian, maybe they're an atheist, I can't imagine how they might do that. If you're interested in that, you can check out
57:07: Tang, T -A -N -G. I think Michael Martin, the atheist, developed that argument and had an interaction with John Frame, who was a
57:18: Christian presuppositionalist. Not quite exactly like Bonson and Van Til, there was some significant differences there.
57:25: But if you look John Frame up, Michael Martin, and Tang, T -A -N -G, you can get more details on that.
57:35: Scott Terry, whatever Van Til meant by indirect argument, he didn't mean a direct classical mimicking deductive argument with a special fancy transcendental premise.
57:44: No, he didn't. He didn't mean that. Direct argument would have premises, okay?
57:51: This is why when someone accuses Van Til of circular argumentation, they really don't know what they're saying because circular argument is a feature of a direct argument, premise, premise, conclusion, in which the conclusion is baked into one of the premises, okay?
58:09: However, you can formulate a transcendental argument as a deductive argument and have a transcendental premise, which
58:15: I don't think there's any problem with that at all. But there is an aspect of indirectness in terms of how you defend the transcendental premise, the nature of transcendental, so, all right.
58:29: Eli is to Bonson as Bonson was to Van Til. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that.
58:36: Thank you, that was very nice. Day, terium, terium.
58:44: I don't understand why those transcendental categories need to be brought together. Yeah, they need to be brought together because if they're not related to each other, right?
58:52: You have to presuppose these things. If they're not related to each other, then you don't have a coherent worldview that brings them together in a sensible way.
59:00: It's kind of like what Van Til said in terms of having beads without a string bringing them together, okay?
59:07: Are they related to each other? If not, there are philosophical ramifications.
59:12: If so, then there are also philosophical ramifications. So yes, they do need to be unified and brought together.
59:18: If your worldview is based upon, if the preconditions for intelligibility, the transcendental categories are just loose, disjointed and unrelated, that is not to have a coherent worldview and a coherent account of transcendentals as necessary preconditions, all right?
59:35: Let's see here. Am I running a 101 course at any time?
59:42: Not on Zoom, but what do you mean like a 101, like a presuppositional apologetics for dummies or something like that?
59:49: I wouldn't mind doing that. Maybe I'll set something up like that, yeah. Thank you.
01:00:00: Earth, how can you be rational if you can't freely choose the ideas that make something true or not?
01:00:06: And how can you be free if you can't be rational in your thinking? Let me see if I understand your question.
01:00:12: How can you be rational if you can't freely choose? Well, it depends what you mean by freely choose, right?
01:00:22: So it's all gonna depend on what you mean by free. If you know anything about the debates on free will, it is a very, very nuanced discussion.
01:00:32: So it's gonna depend what you mean. Are you holding to libertarian free will? Are you a compatibilist?
01:00:38: And you assert that God's determining everything is compatible with human responsibility and praiseworthiness and blameworthiness.
01:00:47: I just don't know from just reading your question here. So I apologize. Let's see here.
01:00:57: Okay, so Nate says, I still don't understand. What makes a transcendental argument in general? What makes a transcendental argument?
01:01:04: Well, a transcendental argument takes the form for any X to be the case, Y must be the case because Y is the necessary precondition for X.
01:01:15: X is the case, therefore, Y is the case, okay? That's what it is, okay?
01:01:22: That's the form, okay? So for X to be possible, Y must be true because Y is the necessary precondition for the possibility of X.
01:01:30: X is possible, therefore, Y, right? That's basically the structure of it.
01:01:37: And historically, transcendental arguments are anti -skeptical arguments. So basically, you take something between the unbeliever and the believer.
01:01:47: What do they agree on? Well, let's say they agree on some X, X being the laws of logic.
01:01:54: You take something that you agree and then we ask the question, well, what must be true in order for the thing we agree on to be the case, okay?
01:02:03: And so you'll do worldview analysis. So the Christian worldview, how do we account for logic? The non -Christian worldview, how do they account for logic?
01:02:09: And we'll see which one can actually provide what must be the case within their worldview in order for the thing they both agreed on to be the case.
01:02:16: Does that make sense? Okay, I hope that makes sense, all right? All right, let's see here.
01:02:25: Let me see here. This is fun. Carbon dioxide exists, therefore, oxygen must exist because oxygen must exist in order for carbon,
01:02:36: I mean, if I understand you, kind of, yeah, there are many kinds of things you can offer as preconditions for something else, right?
01:02:44: But eventually, we can talk about like fact over here. What's the precondition of this fact?
01:02:51: Well, it's this fact, okay? So you can kind of say that's kind of a transcendental category that provides the necessary preconditions for this fact over here.
01:02:58: But then, of course, we can ask, well, what's the precondition for this, right? Eventually, you're gonna have to get to a metaphysical ultimate.
01:03:05: Otherwise, you get into an infinite regress. There's some problems there. All right, let's see here.
01:03:11: It shows that it is, okay. All right, so I got a couple other questions here that are not included in the chat.
01:03:18: Okay, so someone asked, what exactly does ontological reality mean?
01:03:24: Okay, that's a good question. So ontological reality refers to what actually exists in the world.
01:03:30: So the nature and structure of reality itself, pretty much beyond just our thoughts or our perceptions about reality, okay?
01:03:39: So ontology deals with being in existence and those sorts of things. Okay, let's see here.
01:03:49: So trying to prove Y exists because Y being true makes X true. Since X is true,
01:03:55: Y is true. It all hinges on Y, then X. So if X is the case, let's take
01:04:02: X as something that we know to be true. Okay, we agree.
01:04:07: So like, hey, I'm a Christian, I agree that X is true. And then the non -Christian, I agree that X is true.
01:04:13: Oh, cool, so we both agree that X is true. Now we're gonna ask the question, well, what must be true in order for the thing we both agree on to be true?
01:04:22: And in that case, then you're gonna lay out the worldview. Which worldview provides the preconditions for the truth or the reality of the
01:04:29: X in question, okay? All right, let's see here.
01:04:36: Okay, all right, another question here is a good question. Can someone use transcendental arguments for religions other than Christianity?
01:04:45: Yes, yes, they can. Okay, now this is a question I've gotten a lot. Someone might say, well, bro, a
01:04:52: Muslim could use the transcendental argument or fill in the blank with whatever religion.
01:05:00: Yeah, that's true. Anybody can use any argument. The question is, can they pay the bills on the actual argument, right?
01:05:10: So while transcendental arguments could theoretically be formulated for other religions, we're gonna argue that it's only the
01:05:15: Christian worldview that actually provides the sufficient and consistent foundation for the preconditions of intelligibility and things like that, okay?
01:05:23: And so we're gonna have to argue the details of the worldview to show that the non -Christian worldview does not in fact provide the necessary preconditions that it claims that it can provide.
01:05:35: And then of course, from the Christian perspective, we're gonna have to defend that the Christian worldview does provide those preconditions. And then hence you have the interaction, the debate, the discussion, okay?
01:05:46: All right, let's see here. Okay, so what does
01:06:00: Stroud say about using logic and reason without a basis in God or the divine?
01:06:06: All right, so, okay, so that's a good question. So this is important because this shows really the fact that when Stroud was criticizing transcendental arguments, he wasn't criticizing like Van Til's arguments.
01:06:17: I don't even know if he knew who Van Til was, right? So Stroud's objections don't specifically address like theistic or divine foundations, right?
01:06:24: But rather he criticizes the leap traditionally made in transcendental arguments from conceptual necessity to ontological reality, okay?
01:06:34: And so he challenges whether our necessary conceptual frameworks really tell us anything definitive about what actually exists out there, okay?
01:06:45: All right, last question here, and I'll kind of wrap things here. That was when I met my first question.
01:06:54: How are the, only the Christian world we can keep lights on paying the bills. That's right, that's right.
01:07:01: How are the pain meds? They're working, I feel good right now. I sound okay, right? Before I'll call my throat was,
01:07:09: I actually feel okay right now. So thank you, thank you for asking, appreciate it. All right, so here's my last question.
01:07:16: We'll end here, okay? And don't worry, we're gonna be doing a video where I'm gonna be doing a video.
01:07:21: I don't have like a team with me. I don't know why I speak like we, we're gonna be talking, it's just me. In my next video,
01:07:28: I'm gonna be talking about the problem of induction, okay? We'll explore that a little bit, okay?
01:07:34: So yeah, I'm feeling good. Now I have to go back to the dentist and get a bridge done, okay?
01:07:41: But that's not gonna hurt as much as what I got before where they just yanked my wisdom tooth and my molar.
01:07:46: It was terrible, it was terrible. All right, last question. How does the presuppositional approach influence everyday faith and practice for believers?
01:07:55: That's a good question. I think it encourages believers to view all of life through the lens of scripture, right?
01:08:07: That every aspect of existence, whether it's intellectual, moral, practical, all of these things are governed by the truths of God's word, right?
01:08:16: And I think this kind of thinking also reinforces the belief that God is completely and absolutely sovereign over everything, including reality and knowledge itself and the reasoning process, right?
01:08:30: That's why presuppositionalism resonates so much with me is I think it is right in line with biblical principles that God is
01:08:37: God over all. There is no category of which God is not the Lord, okay?
01:08:44: So that he is the Lord of the earth. He is the Lord of every creature in the earth.
01:08:49: He is the Lord over every human being, every spiritual entity. He is the Lord over our minds.
01:08:55: He is the Lord over how we reason, okay? He is the Lord. And so I think the presuppositional framework with its emphasis on worldview and the
01:09:04: Lordship of Jesus Christ and the sovereignty of God, I think kind of reinforces those important concepts, okay?
01:09:11: All right, yes. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, brother Eli. Be careful with those meds.
01:09:17: It is super easy to get addicted. Love you, man. Well, thank you. I'm not addicted just yet, right?
01:09:24: But thank you for that warning. I appreciate it. And the sympathy. Yes, poor baby, yes.
01:09:31: Pat me on the back. Let's see here. Dalton asks, was there a new date for the
01:09:38: Apologetics Dog Talk on Original Sin? There is not a new date, but it is on the menu in terms of planning.
01:09:46: So I'm a teacher. My full -time job is a teacher. And this week's our last week. So what
01:09:52: I'm doing here, it's easy for me to kind of just do this, and have this show for you guys. But in planning to schedule people,
01:09:58: I have to do a little more. And so I haven't really had time to reach out and nail down a specific date. Because it's not just Jeremiah Nortier, the
01:10:06: Apologetics Dog. It's also with Anthony Rogers as well. So I have two guests. So I have to orchestrate that in the background.
01:10:12: But my summer break's coming up. And so I'm super excited, because I'll be able to do a lot more, okay?
01:10:18: So now, before I kind of close off this stream, I want to remind people, again, this is not available yet, but my new course will be available and being promoted through the emailing list.
01:10:28: And then I'll also, you know, let folks know throughout the next live streams that I do.
01:10:34: One of the best ways that you can support Revealed Apologetics is purchasing those courses.
01:10:40: I know they're super helpful. You have a more structured way of learning. And it is helpful for me, kind of helped me basically pay the bill.
01:10:46: So if you're considering having a more structured kind of instruction in terms of apologetics, please consider supporting
01:10:53: Revealed Apologetics in that way. If not, and I know people say this, and I don't mean this lightly, I appreciate your prayers.
01:11:00: So praying for this ministry and praying for me is greatly appreciated as well, okay?
01:11:06: Guys, thank you so much for putting up with me for an hour and 11 minutes, talking about a kind of a heavy topic.
01:11:13: Hopefully it was understandable and easy to follow. And I know
01:11:18: I talk really fast, so I'm sorry about that. But hopefully you guys have found this useful. If you like this video,
01:11:25: I got to say this, because as the YouTuber said, click the like button, right? If you haven't subscribed yet, oh my goodness, like what's wrong with you, man, right?
01:11:33: Or you can go over to, you go over to iTunes and write a review, okay?
01:11:41: On iTunes, I almost had a perfect five score. There's one person, okay, wrote a review.
01:11:48: It was a nice review, but they forgot to click the last star. So it's like the stellar review, but it's like four out of five stars.
01:11:55: So it doesn't look as nice when you go and you see the stars there. But stuff like that, it helps a lot.
01:12:01: So if you have a couple of minutes, maybe you'd write something nice there, would greatly appreciate it, all right?
01:12:09: All right, well, that's it for this episode, guys. Until next time, take care and God bless, bye -bye.