Presup 101 for Dummies

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February 10, 2024

In this episode, Eli tries to simplify the presuppositional apologetic method for beginners. #presup #apologetics #bible #dummies

00:01: Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and today
00:07: I am going to be giving a brief presentation. Well, I don't know how long I'm going to go.
00:13: I suppose just a presentation entitled Presupp for Dummies. So this is not meant to be condescending but basically what
00:23: I want to do in this video is present the presuppositional apologetic method in a very simple way.
00:30: So that I get this question all the time. Hey, when I hear presupp being done, it can be very philosophical.
00:37: We often use really big terms and philosophical concepts and abstract ideas.
00:43: Is there any resource you can point me to that I could learn the method in a very basic way?
00:49: And so I'm a teacher at heart. And so keeping that in mind, I was like, okay, well, let me kind of just put something together that I think would be easy to follow, not overly technical and provide something that you can link to this video.
01:08: Someone was like, hey, can you give me a good resource on how to do presuppositional apologetics? You can kind of send them this video and hopefully it will be useful.
01:17: Now, I do want to tip my hat off to my good friend Saiten Bruggenkate, which while we both are presuppositionalist, if you know some of the things that Sai has done and you know how
01:28: I do things, we do things a little differently in how we do the method. But what I think, and I've got to give kudos to brother
01:35: Sai, is that I think he's done an excellent job in laying out the main nuggets of the presuppositional approach in an easy to understand way.
01:43: So I'm relying heavily on a lot of the things that he said, of course, with my own emphasis and own twist.
01:49: So there's not going to be something brand new presented here, but I'm going to try my best to simplify and maybe expand on some ideas that people often are mixed up about.
01:59: All right. And depending on how my voice is towards the end,
02:05: I will try, if there are any questions in the chat, I'll try my best to take some questions.
02:11: But I'm hoping that the questions are on topic with respect to what I'm presenting or, you know, questions relating to presuppositional apologetics.
02:20: So this is going to be primarily geared towards the layman, the person who maybe knows a little bit about apologetics and is interested in presuppositional apologetics.
02:30: So that's really my goal. And before I jump in, though, I'd like to let folks know that yesterday,
02:37: I think it was yesterday. What's today? Today's Tuesday. Yesterday, we had our last PresuppU Zoom session.
02:46: Okay. As you guys know, I provide an online course that goes through the methodology of presuppositionalism.
02:52: And I've been meeting with the students privately throughout the course of five weeks. And we had our last session last night and it went wonderfully.
03:02: So if folks are interested, again, in taking a kind of a course where you have to go through material in a more structured way, while the premium version of the course just finished, there is a basic version of the course where you can purchase the lectures.
03:16: It comes with the PowerPoint slides and all of the outlines. And you can work through the material on your own. That's still available.
03:22: It's always available. It's not like a seasonal thing. And folks can sign up for that on my website, revealedapologetics .com.
03:29: And click down the menu, and you could purchase the course through the website.
03:35: Okay. But be that as it may, if you're just looking for dipping your foot into presuppositional apologetics, just imagine me sitting in your living room, sipping on a cup of coffee and giving this presentation, hopefully successfully summarizing the presuppositional method.
03:56: So I have my slides up here that I'm going to share. And again, I want to encourage folks that if you do have any questions, please preface your question with question, so that I can differentiate between the questions and the comments, and just regular comments.
04:12: If you don't have any questions and you just want to follow along, that's perfectly fine as well. Okay. So let's jump right in.
04:18: Presupp for dummies. Okay. And again, not calling anyone a dummy, but I'm trying to really kind of just lay out the basics of this methodology, and hopefully it will be useful for folks.
04:31: All right. Let's jump right in. All right. So let me get this set up here. Make sure
04:37: I'm all good. There we go. All right. So first, before we get into what
04:44: I would say is the proper way of defending the faith, I want to identify what the problem is in apologetics.
04:52: Okay. And I think the problem in apologetics is an issue of inconsistency. Okay. On the one hand, we defend what we don't believe in, namely the probability of God's existence.
05:06: Okay. In traditional arguments that you'll typically hear in the realm of apologetics, people will try to defend the high probability of the existence of God or the reasonableness of the existence of God.
05:19: Okay. And there's an interesting inconsistency between how we worship God in church and in our personal life and how we defend
05:28: God out in the world. Right. In church, we defend or we rather we worship the certainty, the
05:35: God that we know, the God that we are in intimate relationship with, that's the God we worship. And then we take a completely different route when we're defending
05:43: God out in the world. And we give arguments that highlight the high probability.
05:49: We often will even say, hey, I could be wrong, you know, but I think, I think I'm right because the evidence seems to point in this direction.
05:56: And I think there's an inconsistency there. Now, I know this might be kind of a controversial to some,
06:03: I do think that there is a place for certain arguments that, you know, lend to probability and things like that, but they're done in a specific context.
06:13: So not in the way that it's traditionally presented. I think that we want to defend the certainty of the
06:20: God that we most certainly know exists, the God that we worship, the God that we lift our hands to and devote our entire lives to, that is the
06:27: God that we are defending. So the certainty of the God we worship is the same
06:34: God we are defending when we are doing apologetics. And this is simply a roundabout way of saying that our relationship with God, our theology, what the
06:46: Bible teaches, the way we do apologetics, the way we defend the faith must be consistent with the foundation of the faith, namely the scriptures.
06:58: And of course, even our personal relationship with the Lord. I want to defend the faith in a way that is consistent with the reality and certainty of the
07:06: God that I know, my Lord and savior, the triune God. I want to be able to bring my theology to bear upon my apologetics so that I'm consistent.
07:16: Okay. Now, does that mean that God can't use, you know, the classical apologist or the evidentialist?
07:23: Of course not. Of course not. God uses, as the saying goes, he uses broken sticks, right?
07:29: I don't do apologetics perfectly. And God uses the words that I say and arguments that I do, and he uses it for his purposes.
07:36: And I think the same can happen when, you know, someone like a Frank Turek goes to a university campus and answers atheist questions.
07:43: God can work through his people regardless of whether we are doing things in a consistent way or an appropriate way or whatever.
07:52: Okay. So I think this is, this is a problem. We want to, we want to be consistent. So we, we don't want to make a distinction between the certainty we worship and a probability that we defend.
08:02: We are defending the certainty of God's existence. God, pardon, God most certainly exists.
08:10: And so I think that's an important thing to, to lay out right there at the beginning.
08:15: Okay. All right. Well, we do tend to draw, be drawn to a lot of the traditional arguments that we do here, for example, on YouTube or popular apologetics books.
08:26: If you're, you know, I'm not going to talk about the scholarly stuff because that's, you know, that's at a different level, right? There are different issues there that are brought up, but at a popular level, we tend to be drawn to kind of the popular level apologetics.
08:38: And why do, why do we, why do we feel drawn to those arguments that we hear? Arguments like the cosmological argument, you know, there's the famous Kalam cosmological argument.
08:48: Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore the universe has a cause.
08:53: And we love that argument. And I love that argument. I've used that argument in various contexts.
08:59: But why do we tend to find them so convincing? Well, it's because the conclusions are true, right?
09:05: We, we agree with the conclusions and we, because of our presuppositions and our pre commitments.
09:12: Yeah. The cosmological argument kind of makes sense. And we find it very convincing. And of course it can be used as a tool in discussions with people and it can be convincing to people as well.
09:23: I've seen that myself. Okay. But we tend to love these traditional arguments because we, you know, the conclusions are true.
09:31: But I don't think that many of these arguments as traditionally presented really touch on the key issues with the unbeliever.
09:40: And that's the issue of the assumption of neutrality and autonomy on the unbelievers part. And so we want to be careful.
09:46: Van Til Cornelius Van Til, who was the father of presuppositional apologetics. He wasn't necessarily against the traditional arguments.
09:54: Van Til said, I think it was, I don't remember which book it was. So I apologize. I don't know the source, but he says, I do not reject the traditional arguments or the traditional truths.
10:03: I only ask that we formulate them in such a way so as to be consistent with our
10:08: Christian presuppositions. And so to that end, I think the traditional arguments do have a good use if we use them appropriately and in a way that is consistent with our
10:17: Christian commitments. Okay. So I love the traditional arguments and some of them
10:23: I don't, but if I don't like one of the traditional arguments, it is not because I'm presuppositional.
10:28: It may just be because of the argument itself might have issues with the argument. But I think that's an important thing to point out.
10:36: Okay. All right. Well, here's another thing that we need to keep in mind. Okay. Doing apologetics or you're not, if you're not doing it on YouTube and you're not doing debates and you're really just kind of wanting to reach out to people on the street or in your family, there is this, this issue of fear.
10:50: It can be really scary. Okay. It can be, it can be, it can be very nerve wracking to, to start spiritual conversations, to press someone on some issue.
11:01: You don't want to overstep the bounds or cut the lines of communication. And so it can be, you know, it can be hard to do apologetics in one sense.
11:11: Apologetics is easy, especially if you kind of, you know, you've studied a bit, you kind of know some of the issues, but then it can be difficult as to how to navigate conversations with real human beings, right?
11:22: It's a big difference when you're reading something and then you're disagreeing with the author, you know, and then you're, you apply your
11:28: Christian position, your arguments to kind of an impersonal author on a page versus actually talking to someone face to face.
11:35: There's definitely a big difference there. And the same thing with online apologetics. It's very easy to interact with someone through a text, but when you see someone face to face, you have a different situation, right?
11:47: So it can be nerve wracking, like, you know, overcoming fear is going to be one of the challenges in actually getting up and doing the thing that we know that scripture teaches us to do.
11:58: And that is to defend the faith when the opportunity presents itself. All right.
12:06: So I think it's important, okay, that we need to be careful not to see apologetics as simply a test of one's intellectual strength, right?
12:20: I got to be smarter than the unbeliever, right? It's not an issue of simply smarts and intellectual, you know, sharpness.
12:28: I think we have to also take these opportunities when we are engaging unbelievers to pray before talking with unbelievers to understand the very real spiritual aspect to apologetics.
12:40: We are not only engaged in intellectual warfare, but apologetics entails spiritual warfare as well.
12:46: Okay. Now the spiritual warfare aspect does not necessarily impinge upon the logical nature of your arguments, right?
12:55: Whether, you know, whether to the degree of spiritual influence there is in your engagement, that's not going to touch on whether your arguments are valid or invalid or anything along those lines.
13:07: But you do want to understand that we're not just talking to, you know, another human being that is not influenced by other factors other than intellectual issues.
13:18: There are definitely spiritual strongholds that are involved as well. And so I think it's important that before we go out and share the gospel and defend the gospel, that we are in prayer.
13:28: We pray for those that we are sharing the gospel with. Okay. Or, or we,
13:35: I'm getting a notification here. Someone is saying my video is blurry.
13:41: I don't know. I look great here on my monitor. It looks really clear. Yeah. Not sure. Okay. My video's clearer than normal as well.
13:50: Let me do this real quick. I get here. I could see myself. Yeah. I look pretty clear.
13:56: Yeah. I'm not sure. Sorry about that. But thank you for letting me know. I appreciate that brother. All right.
14:02: All right. So we want to pray before talking with unbelievers and we want to, and this is a key part, not just as Christians, right?
14:10: But as believers in general, read our Bible and believe it.
14:16: Okay. This goes in, you know, this has wider application than in apologetics.
14:22: Okay. For example, if someone is, okay, so I'm getting a bunch of, it's blurry.
14:28: I don't, I don't know what to say. It looks good on my end.
14:34: So it looks blurry. I'm not sure why it looks blurry. Yeah.
14:40: I there's really literally nothing to fix because let me see here.
14:47: There's nothing to fix. It looks completely clear to me on my end and right in front of my camera.
14:53: I mean, the lights are on about the lights. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you about.
15:01: How about now? Does it look, look a little better? Someone let me know it's blurry when
15:06: I go small. Well, I have to go small to what's more important is not that you see my face, but the text needs to be readable.
15:20: Okay. Okay. So let's see here. Let's bring the text back up. Okay. On my, on my end, it looks great.
15:27: Let me, let me actually check on my phone. I'm going to go onto YouTube on my phone and see what it looks like.
15:34: It looks clear now. Okay. All right. We'll make it work. We'll pick up the here.
15:43: Yeah. I'm on YouTube. It looks clear on YouTube. So I think it's no, no worries.
15:51: You're not distracting me. I want to make sure, you know, things are good quality. So I checked YouTube, but it's clear on my end.
15:56: So maybe it's y 'all internet. I don't know I got good internet over here. So, all right, so let's, let's continue on here.
16:03: Okay. So we want to pray before talking with unbelievers and we want to read our Bibles and believe it. And this is important for apologetics, but it's also important for the
16:11: Christian life. Okay. And I just want to make this clear that when
16:18: I say that it's, it's not just important for apologetics, but the Christian life, I'm not no longer talking about apologetics because apologetics is something holistic, right?
16:29: We are, we are Christians that have a holistic experience, our spiritual health in other areas, impact our ability to be effective in other areas as well.
16:38: And so I think it's really important that we are reading our Bibles and believing it apologetically, believing what the
16:46: Bible says about the nature of the world, God's revelation, the clarity of God's revelation, what
16:52: God has said about the nature of the unbeliever, that he has a knowledge of God, right?
16:58: That's, that's the consistency between what we say we believe with respect to scripture and how that actually plays out when we're interacting with someone.
17:06: And then of course, when we kind of shift from the apologetic focus to our personal lives, right? We want to still read our
17:12: Bibles and believe it. You know, sometimes we can be in a situation in our lives where we feel alone, we feel abandoned, but the scripture says,
17:21: I will never leave you nor forsake you. And so whether you feel like comforted or not, the feeling of being comforted and the feeling of being alone is irrelevant to the fact of, is irrelevant to the reality that you are not alone, that he is with us.
17:39: And so that truth comes in believing God's word, regardless of how we feel.
17:45: And so there's huge, important application that goes beyond the realm of apologetics. So I think it's important to kind of have a balanced view on this, but with regards to apologetics, and this is a simple aspect of presuppositionalism.
17:58: You want to be a faithful, consistent presuppositional apologist. You want to read your Bible, believe it, and then apply what the
18:06: Bible teaches to the apologetic context that you find yourself in. Super, super important.
18:13: All right. Let me click here. There we go. All right. So what is the danger of this apologetics, the danger of presuppositionalism?
18:22: Okay. There are a couple of dangers, and I think it's not just the danger that is inherent in presuppositionalism.
18:28: I think it's a danger in anything we do in which there are people who we look up to who are doing these sorts of things.
18:37: I think the danger of this apologetic and apologetics in general is becoming too much of a fanboy of a
18:43: Greg Monson, a Van Til, or anyone else. Okay. We want to recognize that we are not doing this apologetic because we really, really like some philosopher or theologian.
18:53: We're doing this apologetic because we truly believe that it is the apologetic that is provided for us in scripture.
18:59: The principles of presuppositional apologetics is right there in the scriptures. And so we want to be very careful with that.
19:06: Now, also when you master, okay, the presuppositional method and you begin to use it, and this is something that I can say of myself and personal interactions, you're going to find yourself doing very well in engaging unbelievers.
19:19: You're going to, you're going to win a lot of arguments if you use it consistently and you are, you know, you're on point in being able to analyze the unbelievers worldview and to identify presuppositions.
19:32: And so, again, there is going to be this element, this danger of pride. Okay. The danger is that you're going to win arguments and people will credit you.
19:41: All right. And this is something that Saiten Bruggenke had pointed out in a past video that I thought was spot on.
19:47: That is so true. Especially when you quote unquote, come to someone's rescue. Oh man,
19:52: I had this atheist friend who was saying such and such, and I'm so happy that so -and -so came in and was able to address those answers.
19:59: You know, oh man, this person's awesome. I wish I could put you in my back pocket and just take you out every time, you know, my atheist friend comes in with his objections.
20:06: Okay. Very easy that when you master the apologetic to become prideful.
20:12: And so we want to be very careful because this is, this is genuinely a threat to Christians.
20:18: The, the, the specter of pride. And when you are dealing with an apologetic weapon, like presuppositional apologetics, it is very easy to become prideful.
20:30: And I've seen this too, unfortunately, in a lot of internet personalities, people, when people speak about presuppositionalism, especially as it's seen online, it's not really seen in a positive light.
20:43: And I would, and I would venture to say that it's not seen in a positive light simply because the people disagree with the form of argumentation.
20:52: There's obviously that as well, but I think a lot of what hurts presuppositionalism is the personalities of the people who use it.
21:01: Okay. They can be very cocky. They can be very prideful. They can be very arrogant and you just become a person that really no one wants to talk to.
21:12: And so again, there, there is a time and a place to be forward and strong. But again, we need to be very careful with this issue of arrogance and over confidence.
21:23: Okay. I think that's very, very important. And again, one's ability to successfully, to successfully engage unbelief from a presuppositional perspective, the ability to do that is, is granted by God, right?
21:36: It is God who in his word in Luke chapter 21, verse 15, it says, I will give you words and wisdom that your adversaries will not be able to resist or contradict.
21:46: Notice it says, I will give you the words and wisdom, the words that we speak and the wisdom that we have. And we apply to the apologetic context is not something that is it from in and of ourselves.
21:57: Okay. We are saved by grace through faith alone, but we are granted wisdom and knowledge and the ability to communicate and all these other things.
22:06: Those two are gifts from God. Okay. So I think it's very important that we avoid the specter of pride and arrogance by remembering why it's even possible for us to do what we do and hopefully do it successfully.
22:21: It is all to the praise of his glorious grace in gifting us the ability and the resources, right?
22:28: To defend the faith in the way that we do right. Super, super important.
22:34: Now what is the place of scripture? Now the place of scripture in presuppositional apologetics is that it is it, the scriptures holds a central place in the apologetic.
22:47: Okay. A lot of people will say something along the lines of, well, you can't use the Bible to prove the
22:52: Bible. And so let's put the Bible over here to the side and let's talk about these other issues. And then eventually we'll get to the
22:58: Bible, right? That is not how the presupposition list argues. It doesn't, it's not how he engages in the apologetic.
23:06: The place of scripture is going to be vitally important because that is the foundation upon which the Christian, especially the presupposition list must stand.
23:14: All right. Your worldview is grounded in a biblical categories. And so we must never move away from that foundation, regardless of what the unbeliever demands of us throughout the context of the discussion or debate, the argument or whatever.
23:29: Okay. So if you can answer objections using scripture, do it.
23:34: Okay. For example it is true that the Bible is not a philosophy textbook, but it definitely provides sufficient ingredients to respond to just about anything.
23:47: Okay. So a good way to prepare to do this is anticipate, collect, write down, get a journal or something.
23:56: Okay. Write down popular objections to the Christian faith and see if you could find scripture that can be applied to responding to those questions and those objections and put that in your back pocket, right?
24:10: Quote the scriptures because this word of God never comes back void. We want to quote the scriptures just because the unbeliever doesn't accept the scriptures doesn't mean we shouldn't quote the scriptures as our answers and responses back to the unbeliever is going to be coming from a foundation of scripture.
24:28: And so that's very, very important. So scripture plays a central role, not just in the apologetic and how it looks in the engagement itself, but also in, in the fact that the scripture frames our worldview.
24:40: And so if we're defending the Christian worldview, then we need to be very familiar with the Christian worldview as presented in the
24:46: Bible. Okay. All right. So what are we doing when we do all of this stuff, when we're talking with our friends, when we're engaging in debate and these sorts of things put simply, okay.
24:57: For the beginner, if you are, again, you are seasoned in this realm, obviously this is going to be, you know, an obvious point for you, but for those who are saying, yeah, well, what is this?
25:08: What are we doing here? Okay. Basically we are doing what is called apologetics. Okay. Apologetics is simply the defense of the faith.
25:16: Okay. And so what we're doing in apologetics is we are presenting our worldview as truth.
25:22: And we give a reason defense of what we believe to be true. That's basically what we're doing.
25:28: And notice what it says there. It says in apologetics, we present our worldview as possibly true, most likely true to a high probability.
25:40: True. No, we present the fully truth and certainty of the
25:47: Christian worldview. And we do not simply assert it's true. We give a reasoned defense of that truth.
25:55: And that's basically what we're doing in apologetics. Okay. Now what is presuppositional apologetics?
26:02: Now say that five times fast, and it will sound like you're, if you're a Presbyterian and you say presuppositional apologetics five times fast, people might mistake you for a
26:12: Pentecostal. You know, it sounds like you're speaking in tongues, right? What is presuppositional apologetics here?
26:18: This might be controversial for some folks, but here we go. Here's what I, what I have in my slide here.
26:24: And I think this is important. Okay. Big words that scare people away. All right.
26:30: When you say, well, I'm doing presuppositional apologetics, right? Those are big words in YouTube, on YouTube, when we're talking to other people and on Facebook, yeah, there are people that they speak the language.
26:41: They know what you mean, if they're familiar, but the average person on the street, you want to be very careful with using words like presuppositional or transcendental or preconditions of intelligible experience or intelligibility.
26:58: It's perfectly fine to know what those words mean, but I think a very important aspect of doing apologetics and communicating with people is being able to contextualize those difficult concepts to the specific context that you find yourself in, right?
27:15: If I walk around using big fancy words, it can come across in a negative way.
27:21: It can be seen as you showing off and then you close off lines of communication. It can be seen as you're kind of grandstanding.
27:28: Like you're just trying to, you know, flex your, the fact that you're intelligent. Okay. And again, in some contexts, it's completely appropriate to use the terminology, but in the average situation in the street, it's probably not the best time to use some of the technical terms that you've learned when reading, you know, a
27:47: Greg Bonson book or a Van Till book or watch a video, you know, that I put out. I've done more technical stuff and, you know, but then there's the more simple stuff, right?
27:56: You might be tempted to use that language, but you really need to learn and master the art of context.
28:03: Okay. If I'm in a particular context, how do I communicate this truth that God is the ultimate foundation for everything, right?
28:12: In order for anything to be meaningful and make sense, we must be standing on the foundation of God.
28:18: How do I say that in a way that doesn't sound too convoluted and, you know, using fancy terminology and things like that.
28:25: I think that's a really important, important skill to master. And it's not easy. It definitely is not easy.
28:31: Because when you read apologetic literature, you kind of adopt the language of what you're reading. And then when we talk about with others, we use the language and the other person is not privy to what you're saying.
28:41: Transcendental what, you know? So we want to be very careful. All right. Be careful of big, scary words.
28:47: Okay. In essence, presuppositional apologetics is saying this. Ready?
28:53: God exists. His word is true. And we argue from that position, not to that position.
29:02: I'm going to say that slowly again. Okay. Remember, this is precept for dummies. We got to go really slow.
29:07: Okay. For people who don't get it. I'm so sorry. Okay. Ready? What is presuppositional apologetics?
29:13: Basically, here's what we're saying as presuppositionalists. God exists.
29:19: His word is true. And we argue from that position, not to that position.
29:28: Okay. Now, if you've watched my more technical videos, where I talk about worldviews, and the fact that every worldview is composed of at least three foundations, and I've thrown fancy terms like metaphysics, one's theory of reality, epistemology, one's theory of how we know what we know, and ethics, you know, one's theory of how we should live our lives.
29:51: That's all baked into this very simple summary. God exists. That's the metaphysics.
29:58: His word is true. That's the epistemology, right? God has revealed himself. And we argue from that position.
30:04: We argue from the authority of God and his word, not to the existence of God and the authority of his word.
30:12: Okay. And so we are presuppositionalists because we presuppose God and his revelation.
30:21: And we argue that that presupposition is the necessary presupposition for anything else to make sense.
30:27: It provides the context for everything else that we believe. Okay. That's basically what we mean or what we're arguing for.
30:35: All right. All right. I hope this is simple enough. And give me a thumbs up or some indication that you're following along and it's making sense.
30:44: All right. So that would be very helpful to me because sometimes, you know, I have my things up on the screen here, and I have no idea how you are receiving this.
30:52: Hopefully it's making sense. All right. Let's continue on here. Now, this is the key point here.
30:58: So I'm going to take that away and put it back up again. Look at that. Ready? There you go. Look, it's going back up again.
31:05: There we go. This is so important, guys. God exists. His word is true.
31:11: And we argue from that position, not to that position. And here is the key thing. You do not, under any circumstance, give up that presupposition.
31:23: I will repeat. You do not, under any circumstance, give up that presupposition.
31:30: To give up the presupposition that God exists, his word is true, and we argue from that position and not to that position is to stumble into the realm of neutrality.
31:45: Okay? And that is what we want to avoid. Okay? We want to avoid neutrality because it is not what the
31:53: Christian should be doing, arguing in a neutral fashion, and it is impossible to argue from a neutral fashion.
32:01: So you shouldn't try to, and even if you try to, you can't do so in any consistent way.
32:07: Okay? So we're going to hold true to that ultimate presupposition.
32:13: God exists. His word is true. And we argue from that position, not to that position.
32:19: And that is to say, you might have heard me say this in another video, that when I compare, for example, the presuppositional apologetic method to like evidential apologetics or classical apologetics,
32:30: I will often say that the traditional methodologies like classical and evidential, they are a bottom -up approach.
32:39: They work their way up to the conclusion God exists. Presuppositionalist does not work its way up.
32:47: It works its way down from the position that God exists and argues indirectly.
32:53: We argue presuppositionally that if you don't start with this presupposition, you lose the foundation to prove anything at all.
33:01: Okay? So that's basically what we're saying. And you do not give up that presupposition, because that presupposition is wrapped up in everything.
33:08: Our trust in God, if we really believe that God is our authority, how can we give up the assumption of his existence and the surety and clarity of his word, right?
33:18: And the necessity of his word. How can we do that consistently? We can't. Okay? So, okay.
33:23: Very, very important. Don't give up that presupposition. We want to be consistent. All right. Now, we've heard this a billion times, right?
33:32: And this is all on the Facebook threads, and you see this face -to -face interactions, debates. Just give me evidence, bro.
33:37: That's all I need. Just give me one, one piece of evidence. I bet you anything that when I'm done with this video, someone is going to post in the comments, great little talk,
33:48: Eli, but it's interesting to observe that you did not give one shred of evidence for your sky daddy.
33:54: I know. I get comments like that. I don't read the comments that much, but, but I always get a, you know, a, a comment like that.
34:03: Okay. So give me the evidence. We hear this all the time. Okay. And this is, again,
34:09: I want to, I want to emphasize, I think, great point that Saiten Bruggenkind has often made in the past, in his past videos and debates.
34:15: Evidence is provided before a judge and a jury. That, that's correct. I think the courtroom analogy is, is apropos.
34:23: It's appropriate to, to, to make that analogy. Okay. And remember from the presuppositional perspective,
34:30: God exists. There's the metaphysics. His word is true. Okay. And God, of course, the
34:36: Christian world is true. God is not being judged. Man is. And so when the unbeliever demands evidence, we do not give it to him in the context.
34:48: Okay. I'm going to clarify this. We do not give evidence to the unbeliever in the context of him being judged over God.
34:56: Now notice what I said. We don't give the evidence in that context. That does not mean we don't give the evidence.
35:03: Okay. But we just don't give it to him in the way that he demands it. All right.
35:09: So as to be judged over God. All right. Evidence is not from a presuppositional perspective, evidence is not to give information to another wise, innocent and ignorant person.
35:23: When we do give evidence, evidence is presented to expose suppression.
35:30: Okay. This is very, very important. Okay. Evidence is presented to expose suppression.
35:38: Now I see a question popping up in the comments and I did say at the beginning of this video, I will take questions, but I'm going to remind folks that if you ask a question, please, so it makes it easier for me that you put the word question before your question, and that will help me differentiate your question from the comments.
35:55: So please, please, please do that when you ask a question so that I can find it. And I don't want to miss your question.
36:01: I want to try my best to get to questions that people might have. Okay. All right.
36:06: So evidence is presented to suppress, to expose the suppression notice that inherent within that is
36:12: Romans chapter one, right? Okay. Because we believe that the Bible presupposition was believed that the
36:18: Bible teaches that in a very profound sense, all men know that God exists. And so the issue of for the unbeliever is not an issue of evidence.
36:27: It is an issue of the suppression of the knowledge of God in unrighteousness.
36:33: Okay. And that's what the Bible teaches. And hence that's part of our presupposition, right?
36:38: Because God exists is what is true. Right? So it always goes back to, to that.
36:44: All right. Okay. A thing about evidence here. Okay. This is important, especially from a presuppositional perspective.
36:53: Obviously you don't have to be a presuppositionalist to acknowledge this, but I mean, more specifically presuppositionalist should be more sensitive to this fact is that we will always interpret evidence according to what we believe, according to our foundational beliefs, according to our presuppositions.
37:13: Okay. In essence, one of the most effective debate tactics to take a question that I see in the comments that I have found is to demonstrate that the unbeliever is just as much a presuppositionalist as I am.
37:31: Right. So we use that term and we assume that we know what it means. Presuppositional apologetics, I'm a presuppositionalist and I presuppose my ultimate authority and these sorts of things.
37:41: I want, I want, okay. To expose the fact that the unbeliever has his
37:47: Bible too. He has his ultimate authority. And so we want to get his ultimate authority out on the table, just as we've expressed our ultimate authority and have placed it on the table and engage in a worldview interaction.
38:01: That's what I really want to do. But when we throw out evidence and data, you know, you might be debating evolution or Bible contradictions or whatever the case may be.
38:10: You need to always remind yourself, evidence will always be interpreted according to a person's beliefs, according to their foundational beliefs, according to their presuppositions.
38:23: Okay. All right. I'm going to take a quick break and take some questions from the chat.
38:28: So I'm going to scroll through some of these, take a few, and then we'll jump right back in. And so I want to thank you guys for listening in so far, and I hope that you're finding this useful.
38:38: If you really think this is useful and this, it might be beneficial to someone, you know, share it, link it to your
38:45: Facebook page or, you know, email it, email the link to someone, whatever, whatever you do, share this video.
38:50: And hopefully we can kind of spread this idea that presuppositional apologetics, what is it?
38:56: And it can be very effective. Okay. All right. So let me try to get to some of the questions here.
39:04: Oh, let's see here. We do get past the comments about the blurriness.
39:10: Glad that was fixed. Okay. So Matt Bell says, what if we demand the evidence that atheism is true?
39:23: How would that go? I don't know if he's joking because he has a laughing emoji. Yeah. But you could say, if the person affirms atheism,
39:32: I think it's important, Matt, that we ask the person to define what they mean by atheism.
39:38: Atheism is a slippery term these days. Okay. Namely because you have, you have the more sophisticated definitions that maybe you can find in kind of like the
39:46: Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. And then you have kind of this like lack beliefism, right?
39:53: Like I'm an atheist, I lack belief in God. And that can be a little tricky too, because the lack of belief in God is actually logically consistent with the existence of God.
40:04: So that form of atheism is not necessarily explicitly denying God's existence. Although I would say it is implicitly denying
40:11: God's existence, or at least it's implicit, it's implicitly denying a particular kind of God, namely the kind of God that says that he knows the
40:19: God that he asserts or rejects verbally. Okay. So what if we demand the evidence that atheism is true?
40:26: Well, it's going to depend, you know, people might say, well, atheism is not a position. It's a denial, denial of the positive assertion, right?
40:33: So at that point, you're going to have to go to the presuppositions that undergird the particular person's flavor of atheism.
40:41: And so I think you need to ask some key questions to get to the foundation of what he means and how he defines his own position.
40:48: Okay. All right. Let's see here. Turk Baikal asks most effective debate tactics.
40:55: Yeah. Okay. So I said one of the most effective debate tactics is to expose the fact that the other person is a presuppositionalist.
41:03: That's true. But for me, suppose you're not knowledgeable in a specific area, you know, let's say, for example, like evolution.
41:12: Okay. And you're, you're debating an atheist who's bringing up all this technical information about evolution. The temptation is to go tit for tat on the details.
41:21: And if the particular unbeliever has more knowledge in that area, on the specific information, he's going to, he's going to roast you.
41:29: You're not going to be able to keep up with the data that he can bring to bear in that kind of discussion. And so one of the most effective debate tactics for me is to keep the discussion at the broad worldview level.
41:42: All right. So it's not so much getting into the details of the data, but it's the broad worldview. See, I know about worldviews and I know that everything you say about evolution comes with presuppositions that are dependent on your worldview.
41:55: And so I try to keep the discussion on that big picture. And now we don't do this to avoid dealing with the issues that are brought up.
42:03: I think keeping the discussion at that worldview level, I think is the best way to really get the core difference between the
42:11: Christian and the unbeliever. Cause that's the difference, right? It's not simply the facts, right? The debate is who is interpreting the facts correctly, who has the proper framework in engaging the specific facts and evidence for or against the position.
42:24: So I think the most effective debate tactic for me at least is engaging in kind of a worldview discussion and keeping it at that level.
42:31: Especially if you don't feel comfortable with the details of a specific position that's being presented.
42:38: Now, of course, we want to be open and honest. If someone whips out a list of facts with respect to some topic,
42:46: I think it's important to say, Hey, I'm not really familiar with that area, but I do know, look at the transition ready.
42:52: But I do know that the position you hold comes with certain important assumptions and it comes from a particular worldview perspective.
43:00: Hey, why don't you share with me how you make sense out of the specific things you just listed from within your worldview?
43:06: If a person's an atheist or an agnostic, those philosophical commitments that person holds is going to impact how they understand the specific data that they lay out when they get into the details of their position.
43:18: So for me, I think bringing up the issue of worldview is the most effective. Okay. All right.
43:25: Look, just because I'm here doesn't mean I'm a dummy. Just, just needed you all to know that. Well, Corinth, thank you for your $5 super chat.
43:32: And yes, I do not believe you are a dummy. Okay. All right. Turk by call says, why aren't you
43:39: Orthodox Christian? Oh, that is a big, wow. That is a big question.
43:46: Okay. I'm going to save that question for a little bit later because then that's going to take me on a rabbit trail, but I will share why
43:55: I'm not Orthodox Christian. Okay. I can't go into too much detail because there's a lot of reasons and a bunch of issues.
44:03: And I know that when I open my mouth and give my reasons, people will have, yeah, but what about, what about, and then now we have a live stream that is about Orthodoxy, why
44:12: I reject Orthodoxy. Okay. So let me stop here and I will return to those later.
44:18: And thank you so much for the questions. Let's see here.
44:27: All right. Yeah. Some good questions there. All right. So let me continue here and let me remove this here. Okay. So let's continue.
44:34: And thank you for those questions. I'll try my best to get to them later. All right. So presuppositions to be examined.
44:41: When someone says, give me the evidence in this discussion, what are the presuppositions that we want to examine when the unbeliever asks for evidence?
44:50: Okay. When the unbeliever says I want evidence, you need to understand that when he says that there are presuppositions entailed in that very statement itself.
44:58: Okay. So we don't just, we don't just flat out present neutral, you know, evidences that we can kind of just follow the evidence wherever it goes, because that's impossible, right?
45:08: We're always going to come from a perspective. So we want to be able to examine what is being presupposed, even in the, in the question, you know, where is the evidence for the existence of God?
45:18: Well, first we're going to have truth. Okay. Any statement that the person is going to assert is going to presuppose truth. It's going to presuppose logic.
45:25: It's going to presuppose reason. Okay. And what we're going to want to do is because we are
45:31: Christian, we believe in God, the Bible is true. Right. And we argue from God, not to God. Right.
45:36: And we do not give up that presupposition. Part of the presuppositional argument is basically going to say things like truth, logic, and reason only make sense with God and they make no sense without God.
45:47: Okay. How do you demonstrate that? Well, that's going to depend on the nature of the discussion, but basically just kind of a broad, a broad explanation of that.
45:57: You're basically going to show that the worldview of the unbeliever is inconsistent with the assumptions of truth, logic, reason, and so forth.
46:09: Okay. And this can be done in many ways. For example, you know, just real quick, throwing this out here, but if you're a materialistic atheist, you're going to ask the atheist, how do you make sense out of immaterial conceptual laws of logic?
46:21: Okay. And he could respond in any number of ways. And you're going to, depending on how they respond, you're going to engage accordingly.
46:27: Okay. But basically we want to examine these undergirding presuppositions and ask, how do they make sense out of these things without God?
46:35: And again, this is going to require you to hear them out. Okay. And, um, and provide what we call an internal critique of their worldview.
46:43: Okay. All right. So let's continue on here for a Christian. We believe all these things like truth, logic, and reason are from God, as the scripture says in Romans chapter 11, verse 36 from him through him and to him are all things.
46:57: All right. So not only do we ask the unbeliever to give an account for truth, logic, reason, these sorts of things from his non -Christian perspective.
47:05: We also want to account for these from within our own perspective. And of course, all of these things come from God.
47:11: Okay. Um, this is good. This is what the scripture teaches. Okay. Now what is required for evidence?
47:17: Someone asked for evidence. Well, what do we need in order for evidence to even make sense again, true logic, reason.
47:24: Okay. Excellent. Much of other things as well. Okay. How do you make sense out of these things?
47:29: And if you can't tell me how you make sense out of these things, then how can we meaningfully talk about evidence?
47:35: All right. What counts as evidence? What must be true in order for evidence to even be a thing? These are important questions that we need to ask if we're going to deal with the fundamental presuppositional issues.
47:45: All right. All right. When someone says, give me evidence. Okay. Here, here, here, here's, here's, here's my suggestion.
47:52: Give it to them. Now, this is important because giving evidence to the unbeliever is not anti presuppositional.
48:01: What is anti presuppositional is giving evidence in a neutral and autonomous fashion.
48:08: Okay. And that's what we're not going to do. Okay. The reason for the evidence, as we said before, is to expose the suppression of truth.
48:16: We're not providing education to innocent, um, you know, people who are genuinely seeking after God.
48:22: We know what the Bible says about those, about whether people are seeking God or not. Okay.
48:28: So giving evidence is not equal to assuming neutrality and autonomy.
48:33: So when someone says, give me the evidence, go into some of the evidence, there's nothing wrong and nothing anti presuppositional about that.
48:40: Now we give the evidence of course, from within a Christian context. Why? Because as presuppositionalist, as Christians, God exists.
48:50: His word is true. And his word teaches that things only make sense in light of his revelation.
48:56: Right? So I'm not going to give you the evidence within a context that is not a Christian worldview context, because part of our argument is that the non -Christian worldview context can't make sense of the evidence.
49:07: Now, of course, the moment you give evidence within a Christian context, you know, the unbeliever is going to reject it because why the unbeliever is going to reject your
49:15: Christian context. And at that point, we're simply going to ask, okay, you reject the Christian context. Uh, what context do you have to understand the evidence?
49:23: And at that point, you're going to listen to what they say and offer internal critique of what they say.
49:29: Well, if you say, if what you say is true over here, then there's some problems over here in terms of how you want to understand evidence, logic, knowledge, and so forth.
49:37: Okay. And that's basically the route we would take. Now, what that looks like, of course, going to depend on the nature of the discussion who you're speaking with and things like that.
49:46: Okay. All right. Give me evidence. Okay. What do people mean when they say, give me evidence?
49:54: This is, this is important. Okay. When the unbeliever asks for evidence or demands evidence, what he really needs, because he's going to reject the kinds of evidence you're going to give him, especially if you're giving it from a
50:05: Christian worldview context. What the unbeliever really means when he says, give me evidence is this, what they really mean is give me evidence that is independently supported, neutral, and unbiased that we can objectively evaluate and then draw conclusions.
50:21: So basically he's asking for neutral evidence. And every time you give evidence, he's going to reject it because if you're going to offer the evidence within a
50:29: Christian context, it's not neutral evidence. So he wants neutral evidence, but you're not going to give him neutral evidence because a, we do not want to grant him that evidence can be neutral and B neutrality is impossible.
50:45: Okay. There is no such thing as neutrality. There is no such thing as examining the evidence in an unbiased fashion.
50:53: Indeed, to assert the possibility of neutral facts is to already be biased against the position that says there are no neutral facts.
51:06: Isn't that right? If you say we need to approach the evidence in a neutral and unbiased fashion, you already have an implicit bias against the view that says that there are no unbiased facts, right?
51:18: So reality is there is no neutrality. And so we do not give this kind of evidence. We give evidence, but not this kind of evidence.
51:25: Okay. And so, uh, again, it's because of our commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the truth of, um, of our worldview.
51:32: God exists is where it is true. And we argue from that position, not to that position.
51:38: Okay. All right. So, um, here's a little thing I learned from, uh, Doug Wilson, pastor
51:43: Doug Wilson. He was on my show a few years back and he said something that I, that stuck with me and I use it all the time.
51:49: Suppose you have the nice atheist who's asking for evidence and, you know, he's, you know, you, you see, he seems really open, you know, maybe the spirit of God is working on him and he says, man,
51:58: I just want to, you know, I want to be familiar with the evidence for what you believe as a Christian, when a nice atheist asks, when the, when the atheist is behaving as pastor
52:07: Doug says, um, yeah, give me evidence, right. What's the evidence for the resurrection? Well, here's the evidence for the resurrection.
52:13: And here's what Christians believe. Here's the history. Here's some of the data, those sorts of things. Okay. And, uh, depending on their response, then you, then you deal with the presuppositions if necessary.
52:23: If someone asked me, what's the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. And I gave the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.
52:31: And the person says, oh my goodness, I've never heard this before. This is wow.
52:36: This is life changing and transforming. And then God opens his heart and he receives Christ. I'm not going to say, well, wait a minute, you didn't let me get into the presuppositions in the transit.
52:47: That's not what we do. Right. He asked for the evidence, give me evidence. Now, of course, when we give the evidence, we always have one foot in the data and another foot in the broader worldview context, which makes sense of the data.
53:00: But sometimes the broader worldview issue does not come out in the discussion in an explicit way.
53:05: And sometimes it does. Sometimes when you present the evidence, there'll be pushback and that pushback will actually highlight an important worldview presupposition that the unbeliever has.
53:15: Okay. And so this is very important, right? There's nothing wrong with giving evidence again, as I said before, we don't give it in a neutral fact.
53:22: And that's, that's the key. All right. Now, suppose you have an atheist troll who's, you know, he's just, he's being a jerk, right?
53:30: You know, we've seen these types and of course Christians can do this as well. Right. But we see these types.
53:35: Okay. Give me evidence. And I love size answer to this sites and Brinkley to answer it.
53:40: And I think he's spot on here. He says, well, what evidence would convince you of the God who says you already have enough, right?
53:47: So now we're just, we're now we're being more explicit and in your face. Yeah. God, the Bible says you already know that God exists and you're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.
53:56: Do I say that in every conversation? No, but is it appropriate sometimes to bring that out right out in the front?
54:02: Absolutely. Okay. And at that point we just go for the, for the jugular, right? I don't grant you anything, bro.
54:08: You know, make sense out of any to make sense out of truth, make sense out of logic, make sense out of reason without God. All right.
54:14: And every time he tries, I'm going to show him that a, his view is absurd. It reduces to absurdity or B he has to borrow from my worldview even to get his view off the ground.
54:22: Okay. And that's what we're, that's what we try to do. Now, basically what Doug Wilson told me is
54:28: I think he was talking about CS Lewis and he says, you know, I see some, some aspects of presuppositionalism in CS Lewis.
54:36: And of course I'm not saying that CS Lewis was like a van Tilly and presuppositionalist, but he said, uh, pastor, uh, pastor
54:42: Wilson said that when the, uh, for CS Lewis, when the atheist was behaving, uh, he just gave him the evidence, but when the atheist was misbehaving, uh, then he would argue, yeah, without God, you can't make sense out of anything.
54:53: And then he would take this kind of jugular approach. Okay. So I think there's a, there's an appropriate place for, for both those, uh, those ways of going about things.
55:02: Okay. All right. So first we also want to, um, recognize what evidence is.
55:08: People talk about evidence. We want to make a distinction between evidence and proof, evidence and proof. You give evidence for your position.
55:14: And then someone might say, we didn't prove your, your God, you didn't prove your position. Well, evidence and proof is different, right?
55:20: Proof is, is an aspect of arguments. Evidence deals with not necessarily arguments.
55:26: Evidence can support an argument, but evidence in and of itself is not necessarily an argument, right? So evidence is the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true.
55:38: Okay. It's important to know what evidence is. Okay. And it's also important to know that in the very idea of evidence, there are presuppositions.
55:45: Why are the presuppositions of evidence? That's right. Now we're going to go back to press the repeat button, right?
55:51: Evidence presupposes true evidence presupposes. And in this case, the reliability of our cognitive faculties, our senses presupposes the uniformity of nature, all these fancy words that will not use pardon necessarily in our conversation, but there are things you should be familiar with up here.
56:10: Okay. Evidence has a whole host of presuppositions behind it. Okay. Logic, knowledge, and reason and so forth.
56:16: Okay. And at that point with, especially with the patrolling person, right, we're going to lay down the gauntlet.
56:22: Okay. If you want to have a discussion with me, you're going to have to justify these things because I'm not simply going to grant you things like truth, knowledge, reason, all these sorts of things for the purpose of undermining the gospel.
56:33: So if you think you do not need the Christian God, okay. To make sense of your worldview, then build me a worldview.
56:39: Show me how you understand, you know, logic, knowledge, all these sorts of things without God.
56:45: And at that point, we are now at the clash of worldviews. Okay. And then we are going to engage in a critique of the position.
56:52: Now again, is this easy to do? No, not necessarily. It can be difficult, be challenging. Right. But that's basically the, what we're doing in principle.
57:00: Okay. All right. So that is my last slide. I'm going to take this down here.
57:05: I hope that that was useful for folks. And now we're going to transition into taking some of the questions.
57:11: Okay. But before we do that, I'm going to take a little sip of my coffee real quick. No, the coffee got cold.
57:20: That's so sad. Oh well. I guess I'll have to try and survive anyway.
57:26: Okay. All right. So let's get back over here.
57:32: Okay. So why aren't you Orthodox? Yes. So I reject the
57:38: Orthodox authority structure. It's kind of the same reason I reject Roman Catholicism.
57:44: Now Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism are not exactly the same, but I reject the authority structures of both.
57:51: I reject the claim that they either, you know, Eastern Orthodox say, well, we gave you the scriptures and you wouldn't even know the scriptures without us.
57:59: And then the Roman Catholic says the same thing. And then Eastern Orthodox appeals to their fathers and the Roman Catholics appeal to their,
58:05: I reject the authority structure. One of the presuppositions of my worldview is that language is a sufficient mechanism for conveying truth.
58:15: And so, because that is the case, I believe that I could read the scriptures and know what it means without, at least from a
58:23: Catholic perspective, without an infallible interpretation. And from an Eastern Orthodox perspective,
58:29: I do not need the traditions of the Eastern Orthodox church to know what the scriptures mean. Okay.
58:35: I believe that the Bible is revealed to us in human language that we can understand. And the fact that people disagree over what the
58:45: Bible means doesn't undermine the fact that human language is still a sufficient mechanism to convey truth.
58:51: Okay. Because the fact that people disagree, you hear this all the time from Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics that, you know, you
58:57: Protestants, you know, you have all these different denominations. Okay. The fact that there are different denominations and different interpretations of various texts of scripture does not negate the fact that there is a correct interpretation and that I could know my interpretation is correct with respect to some essential feature of the
59:12: Christian faith. I have no problem with Christians disagreeing over certain interpretations on non -essential issues.
59:20: Okay. And how do I know which issues are essential or not? I think we can derive that from scripture in many cases.
59:26: And I think there can be fruitful discussion and debate within the household of God that is healthy. Okay. But I do not accept the authority structure of the
59:35: Eastern Orthodox church or the Roman Catholic church. So that's in a nutshell. And when I do read the scriptures, it's very hard for me to affirm, say for example,
59:46: Eastern Orthodox soteriology. I am firmly convinced that the Bible teaches a justification by faith alone.
59:55: It's very hard for me to like someone say, Hey, we reject justification by faith alone. And okay.
01:00:03: Even though it seems that the Bible is teaching that I have to affirm what I've been taught. That's very difficult for me because I do believe, and it's a presupposition that human language is a sufficient mechanism for conveying truth.
01:00:14: So when I read the scripture, I think that the argument for justification by faith alone is clinching as I see it.
01:00:21: So that's one of the reasons why, and there's many, I accept sola scriptura. I don't find the objections against sola scriptura all that convincing.
01:00:31: A lot of it is based on kind of just popular jargon and, you know, uh, you know, some of the critiques that you hear online, they're just not really good.
01:00:40: Now that you do have some stronger critiques in, in some of the scholarly literature and throughout history is some interesting interactions on that view.
01:00:46: Um, but I am convinced of sola scriptura Eastern Orthodoxy rejects that principle, um, as well as Roman Catholicism.
01:00:53: So those are just a few points. Obviously there's much more to this discussion. And I would imagine that an
01:00:58: Eastern Orthodox person would have much to respond to in light of just a little of what I said. But, uh, here's one thing though.
01:01:04: I am incredibly interested in Eastern Orthodoxy, not because I think it's true, but I think there's a lot of interesting things within it that I find fascinating and, um, um,
01:01:14: I like to study. So I'm not an expert in Eastern Orthodoxy. There's a lot. I don't know, but I do know this.
01:01:21: I know enough about Eastern Orthodoxy, um, to, to be grounded in my rejection of it.
01:01:30: In other words, I reject Eastern Orthodoxy for reasons that I understand, even though there are some aspects of Eastern Orthodoxy that I don't understand.
01:01:37: Okay. Um, so I hope that makes sense. Okay. Why am I a Protestant? Um, I am a
01:01:43: Protestant and more specifically, I'm a Calvinist and I, uh, lean towards kind of a
01:01:49: Baptist understanding. So a Reformed Baptist, and I'm a Protestant because I am convinced of the principle of sola scriptura.
01:01:56: I'm convinced of the doctrines of grace. I'm convinced of the particular view of baptism with respect to the
01:02:03: Reformed Baptist position, the London Baptist confession of faith. Um, and so I'm convinced of those things from scripture.
01:02:11: Um, and I'm willing, you know, if I have my Presbyterian friends, I'm willing to like, look at some of those issues and like, like baptism of levered baptism versus Pato baptism, those sorts of things.
01:02:21: Uh, but when it comes to the central features of Protestant theology, yeah, I'm convinced they're true.
01:02:26: And, and the specific tradition that I, that I find myself in is within the Reformed Baptist, uh, tradition.
01:02:32: Um, I'm convinced that it's the most accurate position as represented in And with respect to the non -essentials of the faith,
01:02:41: I'm open to discussion and open to having my mind changed on a bunch of different things. And I think there's a healthy flexibility within there, whereas in the essential features of the gospel,
01:02:50: I am staunchly committed to. Okay. All right. See here,
01:02:56: Turk by call says, what did I major in college? Okay. So I went to a couple of colleges. I went to community college to get my liberal arts degree.
01:03:04: I went to St. Joseph's college, which was a private college in Long Island, New York, where I earned my, uh, my bachelor's degree in secondary education and social studies history.
01:03:15: And then I went to Liberty Baptist theological seminary and earned a double masters, one mass, one, a master of arts and theological studies and a master at divinity with a theological focus.
01:03:26: And that is the entirety of my seminary, um, uh, training. Okay. Um, now
01:03:33: I didn't want to go to Liberty, although when I did go, I actually enjoyed it very much. They had a really good online program.
01:03:39: Now I know Liberty has been in the news, not that, not that long ago for some controversial stuff, but, but my experience at Liberty was, was excellent.
01:03:47: I had a great time. I'd get great professors. Um, I enjoyed the reading, the assignments and papers and all that kind of stuff.
01:03:54: Sometimes I wish I was still in seminary. Um, but I do enjoy not paying thousands of dollars and having a passion for learning.
01:04:02: And so I'm able to do this stuff on YouTube where I invite guests on and talk to super smart people.
01:04:07: And I get an education that's, uh, that's free. So, uh, I enjoy this, this side of, uh, this side of the, of the, of the coin as well.
01:04:17: Okay. All right. Uh, how did I get well, well, thank you.
01:04:23: Uh, how did I get so good at debating? Um, am I good at debating?
01:04:29: Let me see. I've had maybe four or five debates to my name on YouTube.
01:04:35: Um, I think I thought they went very well. I had a debate slash discussion with Tom jump. I thought went very well, got some really good feedback.
01:04:42: If folks know who Tom jump is. Um, I had a debate on Wilson's channel. I think it was my first debate with service, the skeptic.
01:04:49: I have debated on modern day debates with gentlemen by the name of, it goes by the name of negation of P, which
01:04:56: I thought was a really good discussion and debate. Um, and a couple of other informal interactions.
01:05:02: And that's about, yeah, I think it was on latent flowers show. We had a little interaction on his show, um, some years ago, but that's about it.
01:05:10: Well, if you think I'm a good debater, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Okay. All right.
01:05:16: I'm going in order here. So Turk has asked questions here. I don't want to be here.
01:05:25: Okay. So we're going to go. So Toto says, I know your
01:05:30: Bible says all believe in God. They just denied, but I truly do not believe in God.
01:05:35: What do you say to that? He lied. Do we flat out, call them a liar? No. If you flat out, call them a liar.
01:05:42: Then chances are you are now going to break down lines of communication, which is not good.
01:05:48: We want to communicate and have discussion. So one of the ways that we respond to this, okay.
01:05:54: When someone says, I know your Bible says that, but I'm just telling you, I don't know your
01:05:59: God. Okay. Now our job as apologists then is to try and demonstrate that he actually does.
01:06:07: And the way we show that actually does is we press him on his own worldview and show that he must rely on principles that only make sense from within our worldview.
01:06:21: In other words, he couldn't make sense of the things that he thinks he can without having a knowledge of God, the specifically the
01:06:28: God that we're presented. And that's where the internal critique is going to come. Okay. So basically we want to expose the image of God that he has in him and the knowledge of God that he has in him that he's suppressing.
01:06:41: And we expose that by pressing him in his worldview and showing that he must borrow from the Christian worldview in order to even argue against it.
01:06:48: And that is evidence that he's doing that because he actually does have a knowledge of the
01:06:53: God we're speaking. So that, that's how I would go about it. I wouldn't just flat out call him a liar. I would try to bear the burden of proof.
01:07:01: So if I say, you know, the God I'm speaking of, I will bear that burden and I will try my best to expose the fact that he, that he actually does know this guy.
01:07:09: And that will come in the form of kind of the line of questioning and critique of his worldview that I just expressed a few moments ago.
01:07:17: Okay. Let's see here. Will you debate other
01:07:24: Christian denominations? Yeah, I'm not against it. The reason why I don't debate so much is
01:07:30: I'm so busy and debate takes so much prep, but perhaps one day I will get back into debating, but I wouldn't,
01:07:35: I wouldn't have a problem debating someone from another Christian denomination. Yeah, that's fine. Let's see here.
01:07:43: So how do you know that you have the correct interpretation? Yeah. I know
01:07:48: I have the correct interpretation of something because I believe that language is a sufficient mechanism for conveying truth.
01:07:54: So I would study context. I would examine words, you know, if you're debating an translations, uh, the way we determine the correct interpretation of anything.
01:08:06: Right now, someone's going to say, but yeah, someone's going to disagree with you. Yeah, that's fine. There's a difference between me knowing
01:08:13: I have the correct interpretation and me persuading someone else that I have the correct interpretation. Someone could deny.
01:08:18: I have the correct interpretation until they're blue in the face. That does not mean that I don't have the correct interpretation.
01:08:24: Right? So, um, I will demonstrate the correctness of my interpretation in the same way
01:08:30: I would demonstrate that I'm understanding any text that I'm reading. Okay. I'm not a textual or linguistic agnostic where, well, because everyone disagrees, we can't know what anything means, right?
01:08:43: Um, I would argue in the same way I would argue for anything else that's written down, right? You study the context, you, you know, you read what's going on there, what's going on in the text, you know, who's the audience, all those sorts of things that's involved in hermeneutics,
01:08:54: I think, um, we could use and, um, employ to demonstrate why we think our interpretation of some concept or passage of scripture is correct.
01:09:04: Yeah. That's how I do it. All right.
01:09:12: Creamy cold. How do I answer someone making fun of biblical history? Like example, lots white turning to salt.
01:09:19: Yeah. Well, you need to point out that making fun of the position is irrelevant as to whether the position is true, right?
01:09:28: And the fact that someone makes fun of the position or find something silly, I would just say, of course you would find it silly because you have your worldview, right?
01:09:38: The reason why someone thinks someone turning into a pillar of salt is silly is because they have a different worldview.
01:09:43: They don't have a worldview that acknowledges God and the fact that God has revealed himself. And in that revelation, we have this story in which we find lots white turning to a pillar of salt, right?
01:09:53: It's like, oh, you believe you guys believe people coming back from the dead. That's ridiculous. Well, I would expect you to say it's ridiculous because you don't have a
01:09:58: Christian worldview, right? Surprise, surprise. There's nothing surprising about that. So what I would do is
01:10:04: I would highlight the fact that making fun of a position is irrelevant as to whether it's true. And so let's get to the real issues.
01:10:10: Let's talk about why we think the Bible is true. And then you're right there hitting the ground running, doing apologetics and giving reasons for the hope that is within you.
01:10:18: Okay. Making fun of someone or making fun of the Bible isn't an argument.
01:10:24: So, okay. Oh, I think that's silly. Okay. You haven't added anything to the, to the discussion.
01:10:30: Okay. I think it's silly. If the person's an atheist, I think it's silly that you don't believe in God. That doesn't get anywhere, right?
01:10:37: That doesn't prove God's existence. It doesn't disprove God's existence. So let's talk about the real issues and if they are genuine and they are interested in those issues, then yeah, then maybe the conversation will redirect itself and you're able to talk about, you know, the issues that really matter.
01:10:53: Okay. All right. Let's see here. I got a couple more. What are your thoughts on Jay Dyer?
01:11:00: Yeah. So I've, I've watched a lot of Jay Dyer stuff. Again, I'm not Eastern Orthodox, but I, I really enjoy his debates.
01:11:09: The debates where, I don't want to say, the debates where he's behaving when he's actually just debating,
01:11:17: I think he is an excellent debater in my opinion. I love his responses to atheists when he takes atheist calls and things like that.
01:11:26: I think at kind of a general surface level, I think he does use the presuppositional approach in a very effective way.
01:11:33: Now there is that deeper question as to whether presuppositional methodology is consistent with an Eastern Orthodox perspective.
01:11:40: And of course Jay thinks that's the case. Of course, me coming from a Vantillian perspective, I think that consistent presuppositional method flows from a consistent
01:11:49: Reformed theology. But be that as it may, those differences aside,
01:11:54: I think Jay does use the presuppositional approach effectively in his discussions and debates.
01:12:00: He's very knowledgeable in church history. Again, as a Reformed Christian, I'm going to disagree with him on his critiques of Sola Scriptura and justification by faith alone and those sorts of things.
01:12:11: But as a debater, I have benefited greatly from watching a lot of his stuff. Now, on the other hand, he can also come across in another way that I don't think is very helpful, and I'm sure those who follow
01:12:24: Jay, they'll probably be like, oh, Eli's just a softie, I don't know. I just disagree with his approach.
01:12:31: And I'm not a softie. I think debate involves pressing someone, critiquing them, and even exposing the foolishness, just pounding the opposing view to the ground like powder.
01:12:52: I think that debate is an appropriate place for that. But calling someone retarded in a debate, right, calling someone a retard, that kind of stuff, it's that kind of stuff that I'm kind of like, you know.
01:13:03: Now, people who support that, they try to justify and be like, oh, there's nothing wrong with using this kind of language.
01:13:11: What do they say? I'm a soy boy or something like that. Okay. All right. We have a different view on that, okay?
01:13:18: So when Jay is not doing that, I think he's very effective, and I enjoy listening to him. Now, that being the case,
01:13:27: Jay's use of the transcendental argument, I see
01:13:35: Ricky here, he says Jay Dyer argues for a generic God using tag and or for the authority of EO.
01:13:42: Yeah, I'm not sure that's, I don't think I've ever heard Jay say
01:13:47: I'm defending a generic God. The things that I've heard is trying to defend the existence of the triune
01:13:56: God as understood within the context of Eastern Orthodoxy. So as I understand his epistemology, his metaphysics, he has an
01:14:06: Eastern Orthodox view of God. He has an ecclesiastical epistemology where, of course, the authority of the church is going to play a very important role in how we know what the argument is.
01:14:20: So I haven't heard that. If you have, okay, I'll take your word for it. I haven't, and I've listened to a lot. So be that as it may, though, obviously,
01:14:27: Jay and I are going to disagree on the core issues. So the way we argue would be different when push comes to shove.
01:14:34: But overall, all that to say, I think Jay is an excellent debater, and I find him, he might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I think he's hilarious when he goes off on his little riffs when he starts singing and doing weird stuff.
01:14:47: I actually think he's funny. So yeah, I've enjoyed some of the stuff I've listened to. Other stuff,
01:14:52: I'm kind of like, yeah, I probably would take a different approach. But there you go. That's just the fact that people are different.
01:14:58: So hope that's helpful here. Let's see here. How did you learn precept?
01:15:04: Did you just read Van Til and Bonson? Yeah, primary way I learned presuppositional apologetics was listening to Bonson lectures.
01:15:10: I've listened to almost all of his lectures on apologetic methodology and reading the books.
01:15:17: Bonson is my main access point. I have read Van Til, but he's a little bit more abstract, and it's kind of difficult to take what he's saying and kind of get the nuts and bolts.
01:15:25: So Bonson has really been my main access point to presuppositionalism. I've read his books.
01:15:41: I have a lot of audio.
01:15:59: The reason why I listen to audio is because I could hear, because Bonson was an excellent teacher, and he's a great debater.
01:16:08: So when I hear him teach the method, I don't just learn the content. I learn the different ways in which
01:16:14: I can convey the content. Does that make sense? So it's not just learning about the presuppositional method.
01:16:20: I learn how to use it in conversation when I hear him speak or when he gives a hypothetical example of how he would interact with someone.
01:16:29: So in my learning, I've learned more presuppositional apologetics by listening than reading.
01:16:36: But of course, I have also read the material as well. All right. Creamy Cold has gone down in order.
01:16:43: So I do apologize if people see like, oh, there's really only just a few people asking questions, but that's fine.
01:16:50: I don't mind. Creamy Cold says, how did you get to understand the presumption apologetics are presumption?
01:16:58: And is it true that the apologetic has to start with God first? Oh, you mean the presuppositional. Yeah. How did you get to understand the presuppositional apologetic argument?
01:17:06: Well, I understand it when I came to the fact that, yeah, people have presuppositions. When you're using evidence to support a view, you know, there are things that go before that.
01:17:16: There are things that we assume and what we assume impact how we understand everything else. And so when
01:17:22: I understood that, I'm like, oh, I get it. This is why our starting points are very important because they will dictate everything else that we do.
01:17:30: Okay. So, so yeah. So I've come to understand the presuppositional apologetic argument when
01:17:36: I understood the importance of presuppositions. Okay. And is it true that we have to start with God?
01:17:41: Yes. We start with God in the ultimate sense. I don't want to get too technical, but we would make a distinction between proximate starting points and ultimate starting points.
01:17:49: So proximate starting points, I would start with myself. I have to reason, but my reason only makes sense within the broader context of the existence of God and his revelation.
01:17:58: So approximately, I start with myself. Ultimately, I start with God. And so in that sense, we start with God.
01:18:04: I don't start with myself and then reason my way up to God. I start with God as my ultimate presupposition.
01:18:11: Okay. All right. Good question. Good question. Hope that was helpful. Let's see here.
01:18:18: Do you regret your college major? Nope. My degrees in education helped me be a teacher and I'm able to teach and speak and that helps sharpen my skills in other areas like apologetics.
01:18:31: So it's actually been everything that I've taken in school has been very beneficial to me. So Brian's fear says ridicule is not reputation.
01:18:39: That's correct. Yep. You could ridicule a position that has no bearing as to whether it's true. Okay. Michael Mock says if knowledge is justified true belief and the unbeliever knows that God is, how does he have a justified true belief that God is?
01:18:51: Yeah. So he has a belief. Okay. And that belief is justified in the fact that even in the unbeliever's rejection of that position, he has to hold to that.
01:19:01: He has to rely on the very things he denies with his mouth. So it is justified.
01:19:07: Okay. He has a belief. It's true. And there's reasons that it's true. And they're valid reasons.
01:19:13: And the reasons are that the Christian world is true by the impossibility of the contrary. So the unbeliever's denial of the knowledge that he has, the suppression of the knowledge, he can't do it successfully because it's the kind of knowledge he can't deny without reducing his own position to absurdity.
01:19:28: Okay. All right. Let's see here. Advice for reading these technical precept books and hard books in general, read with a dictionary.
01:19:43: Actually, my advice is listen to lectures. I've listened to so many precept lectures that I begin to hear certain words and phrases thrown around that when
01:19:54: I read the books, I'm like, oh yeah, I remember that. I remember what this word means. I remember what necessary preconditions means because I remember
01:20:02: Bonson mentioned it in a lecture or something like that. So I would say couple your audio listening with your reading.
01:20:09: It's kind of like you're sitting in a class. You listen to the teacher, then you go home and you do the reading. So I would listen to lectures.
01:20:17: And then when I get a grasp, a good grasp on like what's being said, then I will go to the reading and hopefully things will make a little bit more sense.
01:20:24: Okay. All right. Let's see here in the creed says for all things we can't answer with certainty, visible starlight and distance from earth carbon dating.
01:20:34: What is the best way to overcome the eventual God of the gaps accusation? Well, the God of the gaps accusation is
01:20:41: I think often misdirected. So the God of the gaps is kind of like a peeling peeling to our ignorance.
01:20:49: So like, if I don't know how to explain something, I kind of fill my ignorance with like,
01:20:55: God did it. And this is often asserted towards the believer when the believer offers arguments for the existence of God.
01:21:02: And it's just in many cases, not true. Let's take, for example, the cosmological argument, the Kalam cosmological argument.
01:21:08: Okay. The Kalam cosmological argument goes like this. Whatever begins to exist has caused the universe began to exist.
01:21:14: Therefore the universe has a cause. And so then we try to philosophically analyze what it means to be a cause of the universe.
01:21:20: And then we try to show that some of the characteristics actually match the characteristics of the traditional conception of God.
01:21:26: Okay. Now what the unbeliever could say, and they have said as well, you're just putting God into explain what we don't understand.
01:21:33: Okay. Now, whether you like the cosmological argument or not, that's not what's being done because the argument is not based upon what we don't know.
01:21:40: It's based upon what we do know, whatever begins to exist as a cause. That's something that we can be fairly, fairly certain about.
01:21:49: Okay. Uh, the universe began to exist. There seems to be evidence of that. Again, evidence is going to be interpreted in world.
01:21:55: And you get to the whole issue of younger, older, and those sorts of things. And you don't have to consider all those things. Right. But the argument attempts, whether we agree with the premises or not, it attempts to argue based upon what we do know.
01:22:09: Okay. Now maybe the conclusion doesn't follow. Maybe, maybe the conclusion that we're trying to doesn't work, but it's not an argument that is trying to plug up gaps in our knowledge.
01:22:20: It is trying to make an argument based upon what we think we can know. And in that sense, it's not, it's not a
01:22:25: God of the gaps. Okay. The presuppositional, the transcendental argument is not a God of the gaps argument either. Okay.
01:22:31: The argument, uh, the transcendental argument, um, often takes the logical form of, um, you know, in order for X to be possible,
01:22:37: Y must be the case because Y is the necessary precondition for X X is the case. Therefore Y must be the case.
01:22:43: Okay. That's not a God of the gaps. You're basically taking some agreed upon fact and asking what must be true in order for that fact to be possible or meaningful.
01:22:52: I mean, you're just exploring the necessary. It's not a God of the gaps argument. Even if transcendental argument was bunk, it is not a
01:23:00: God of the gaps, not a God of the gaps fallacy. Okay. So we want to make sure that when someone accuses someone of the
01:23:06: God of the gaps fallacy, that we want to make sure that that's actually what they're doing. Otherwise we're misapplying that fallacy.
01:23:13: Okay. All right. Uh, Brian Spears says, how does one justify a presupposition? If it's another presupposition, does that not lead to an infinite regress?
01:23:21: Uh, yeah, you justify a presupposition through transcendental argument. That's it.
01:23:29: And the transcendental argument demonstrates that the presupposition that is in question is a necessary presupposition.
01:23:38: It is a necessary precondition for everything else. Okay. So I don't say my presupposition is true because of this other presupposition.
01:23:47: That's kind of on the same level as that other piece of, no, we're talking about an ultimate presupposition that has a transcendental necessity about it.
01:23:55: Okay. For example, how do I justify logic? Okay. Well, I justify logic because of the impossibility of the contrary.
01:24:03: If I reject logic, I can't justify anything or even make sense out of the question. How do I justify logic? It's a necessary precondition, right?
01:24:10: So that's basically a mess, a transcendental kind of argument. So we justify presuppositions by, um, flying a transcendental argument and showing that the presupposition in question is true by the impossibility of the contrary.
01:24:22: So it does not lead to an infinite regress. Okay. All right. Let me see here in the creed.
01:24:35: In other words, when the unbeliever asserts, so you don't know you just plug in God, where are you comfortable drawing the line with?
01:24:43: Yeah, I don't know. And can't know that. Yeah. There are, um, when I argue presuppositionally and I claim to know with certainty that God exists,
01:24:52: I'm not claiming to be certain about everything. There are certain things that I can say, yeah,
01:24:58: I'm not certain about that. But those things that I'm not certain about are not the things that God has clearly revealed in his
01:25:04: Bible, in his word, we can be certain of the things that God has revealed. Okay. Um, and there are other things like how science works in some specific sphere.
01:25:13: I know that God is the foundation for science, but I can't be sure of how something works or whether I'm applying a principle correctly all the time.
01:25:21: Yeah. So I hope that helps. Michael Mox says, how does the unbeliever know and yet not know that God is?
01:25:29: Yeah, because there are different ways in which you can know, um, you could know God, uh, redemptively and you could know
01:25:35: God in judgment. The unbeliever knows God in judgment. He has a knowledge of God that damns him, not a knowledge of God that saves him.
01:25:41: Believers have a knowledge of God that saves them. Okay. So there is a knowledge of, uh, a covenant keeping knowledge of God and a covenant breaking knowledge of God.
01:25:52: All right. Uh, let's see here. How do believers typically assume brute facts in the manner of unbelievers?
01:26:02: When you assume that a fact is just self -evident, that's it doesn't require a context.
01:26:08: It just is that is assuming a brute factuality in a way that I don't think is consistent with a
01:26:14: Christian worldview because as Van Til said, um, brute facts are mute facts. Brute facts are mute facts.
01:26:20: Facts don't speak. You need a worldview to interpret the fact and the worldview is going to give meaning to that fact and explanation of that fact.
01:26:28: So a brute facts would assume a certain level of neutrality, um, and autonomy with respect to how we know what that root fact is.
01:26:40: How many, I love this question. How many pages, how often and how fast do you read? Okay. See all these books behind me.
01:26:47: I haven't touched those books in years. Okay. I got them often when I showed you, right? I don't have time to sit with a book and read uninterrupted.
01:26:59: So the primary way that I read is through audio. I canceled my audio, my audible subscription because my phone reads to me every
01:27:12: Kindle book that I have. There's a feature in the phone that reads to you and it's with a high quality voice that doesn't sound like a robot.
01:27:20: Also, if you download Alexa, Alexa on your phone, you know,
01:27:25: Alexa, when you say, Hey Alexa, and she has a nice, super nice clear voice. Yes. You know, the weather today is 82 degrees and sunny.
01:27:32: Um, Alexa actually reads your entire Kindle library to you and you can chapter select in all of your books.
01:27:40: So basically what I did was I downloaded for free the Alexa app and I enabled the read function, the assistability function.
01:27:48: And I literally, every morning I have a 45 minute ride to home every morning to work. Every morning I will have
01:27:54: Alexa read to me, uh, any book that I choose any chapter that I want.
01:27:59: And so the primary way that I get most of my study in is through audio. Okay. Now, if you have the opportunity to read with a book in front of you uninterrupted, great.
01:28:09: I don't. So the primary way that I read is through audio and, uh, with good high quality.
01:28:15: So I can read, technically listen, um, you know, anywhere I am, if I'm online,
01:28:20: I'm in a supermarket or driving to work, that's how I get all of my reading done. I read scholarly articles or read books or read devotionals or read systematic theologies.
01:28:29: Um, and, uh, it's awesome. So I'm a primarily, uh, audio learner. So, so there you go.
01:28:34: Love that question. Let's see here. The sire, if God creates, do you think he would have to create this world?
01:28:42: Uh, that's a really hard question. I don't think I'm very careful when I, when I would, I would very careful with the idea that God has to do something like if this world is necessary,
01:28:52: I do affirm that God is free, but then we get into a very difficult question of what does it mean for God to be free?
01:28:58: And I, I, to be perfectly honest, I, I'm not sure how to answer that question off the top of my dome, so to speak.
01:29:04: I'd have to think about, think about it a little bit. So, so sorry. Yeah. You stumped me sire.
01:29:11: Thanks a lot, man. Make me look bad. I'm not sure what's up with that. All right. Let's see here.
01:29:23: Yeah. So, uh, Turk asks why doesn't a generic God justify precept? Uh, that's the wrong question.
01:29:30: How does the Christian God specifically justify precept? Okay. It's not justifying precept. Okay. Um, when we just, a generic
01:29:40: God cannot justify the necessary preconditions for knowledge because a generic
01:29:46: God is a God that we don't know much about. It's the metaphysical qualities of the God that need to be fleshed out.
01:29:53: So as to demonstrate the necessity of those qualities as being preconditions for intelligible experience, knowledge, and so forth, the
01:30:02: Christian God reveals himself. We have his attributes set and we can, we could argue how his attributes set actually provide the necessary preconditions for knowledge and intelligible experience.
01:30:13: For example, um, one of the key features of the Christian worldview is that God is triune. And so, uh, because we know metaphysically that God is both a unity and a plurality.
01:30:24: Okay. That helps us answer a very important philosophical question of the problem of the one in the many, how do we bring together the ideas of both unity and plurality in the world, which by the way, having an answer to the one in the many problem is related to having intelligibility because in order to speak intelligibly and predicate about anything, you need to make sense out of categories of unity and plurality, the oneness and manyness of things.
01:30:50: So the metaphysical character set of the God is going to be, have to be fleshed out.
01:30:55: So as to be put forth as an option to in fact, provide the necessary preconditions for knowledge and intelligible experience and logic and things like that.
01:31:05: Also a generic God, uh, again, what do you mean by generic? Does this generic God reveal himself?
01:31:11: If he doesn't, then how can you argue that a generic God is the foundation for knowledge when this generic
01:31:18: God hasn't revealed himself in any meaningful way. And so to assume a generic God is also to assume the sufficiency and autonomy of an individual's ability to reason his way up to this
01:31:30: God. And so when you assume autonomy, then there's some philosophical problems with that concept, because then, um, you know, there are a bunch of problems with this concept, but you run into the issue of the egocentric predicament.
01:31:41: There's no revelation coming from the outside. You start with yourself. You could only end with yourself. There's no way to transcend yourself to get an objective picture of the world, unless an omniscient, all powerful
01:31:51: God reveals himself. So you need to flesh out the details of this God in order to put, put forth this
01:31:59: God concept as a contender for being the necessary precondition for knowledge, intelligible experience and so forth.
01:32:06: Okay. I hope that makes sense. This is a precept for dummies. Now these questions are super technical. I'm so sorry.
01:32:11: So that people can watch the first part of the video and benefit. And then they listen to the questions like, oh boy. Uh, okay.
01:32:17: Let's see here. Uh, Henry Sproul, Sproul, Sproul has said that we must first start with self -consciousness and then get to God consciousness.
01:32:26: To what extent do you agree with him? Yeah. So the Bonson and, um, Bonson and Vantill would agree that we start with ourselves approximately, but we do not start with ourselves ultimately.
01:32:43: Okay. Um, we do not start with ourselves in the way that Sproul, for example, for Sproul, the knowledge of God, it seemed to be, um, knowledge that we, um, how can
01:32:54: I say this? I don't want to misquote Sproul. It's been a while since I've explored his view. Let me just say that in a sense,
01:33:01: Sproul is right. If when we say we start with ourselves, it's correct.
01:33:08: If he means that in the proximate sense, the presuppositionalist would not disagree that we start with our own self -consciousness, um, in approximate sense.
01:33:16: However, the knowledge of self and the knowledge of God are simultaneous according to Calvin.
01:33:25: And of course, Bonson and Sproul were Calvinists. And so, um, Bonson would probably argue that Calvin, if you're going to apply a
01:33:32: Calvinistic understanding of this, that our knowledge of ourselves and our knowledge of God are simultaneous and that you cannot properly understand self -consciousness without the metaphysical ultimate context of the
01:33:42: God that we also know. So there, we make a distinction between proximate starting points ourselves and the ultimate starting point
01:33:49: God. And so I would make that distinction between those different ways in which we quote unquote, start with that phrase to start with needs to be teased out because you can start with something chronologically, or you can start with something logically.
01:34:06: We do not start with God chronologically because I have the first thing about God and think about things, but I do start with God logically.
01:34:14: God is logically prior because his ultimate context gives meaning to the very self -consciousness that I have and the reasoning process that I engage in.
01:34:23: All right. All right. Um, we should discuss that if you're ever free.
01:34:29: Yeah, absolutely. I'd be down to discuss that. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, let's see here.
01:34:35: To do in the creed says in your travels and experiences, do you find any particular Christian denomination more affirming or preset than others?
01:34:41: Have you ever had a congregation put off by it? I've never had a congregation put off by it. People typically like the fact that I place a great emphasis on the
01:34:50: Bible. The average Christian, um, feels uncomfortable when you say, well, you can't use the Bible to prove the
01:34:56: Bible. So we need to put the Bible aside and talk about these other things and prove God that kind of sets some people off.
01:35:02: When I say, Hey, we start with the authority of the word of God. The average Christian tends to gravitate towards that, at least in my experience.
01:35:08: Okay. Now, um, particular denominations that are typically, um, associate themselves with presuppositionalism tend to be kind of reform circles like Presbyterians, uh, reform
01:35:18: Baptist. I mean, Greg Bonson and Van Till were a part of the OPC, the Orthodox Presbyterian church.
01:35:24: And, uh, James White is a presuppositionalist. He's a reform Baptist. So, um, people specifically in kind of the reformed camp would typically associate themselves with a presuppositional method.
01:35:33: Although you do have exceptions, like we mentioned before, Jay Dyer is an Eastern Orthodox, um, and he uses presuppositionalism.
01:35:39: So you have a wide variety of people, but typically it's associated with the reform camp. Okay. All right.
01:35:46: Let's see here. All right. How do I study my physical books?
01:35:52: Okay. Ready? Here's what I do. I study with my iPad next to me, so I can't be bothered by, um, see, so I have,
01:36:04: I have here some highlights. Okay. I can't be bothered with always stopping my reading and highlighting something and I lose track.
01:36:13: So what I do is I open up a document on my iPad and then when
01:36:19: I'm reading and I, and I'm about to read something that's important, I will press the voice, uh, the, the, uh, the voice to text function on my iPad so that I would read through the portion that I want to write down and it will write it out for me on the iPad.
01:36:38: And then when I'm done with the chapter, I will go back to my iPad and organize my notes in bullet form. So that's, that's how
01:36:43: I would do with my physical books. I still use technology to help me, um, remember and organize the information.
01:36:50: Okay. So I'm a, I'm a techie guy. I love to use, you know, voice to text, you know, and I, and it, and it helps me,
01:36:57: I have to speak clearly. So I'll say, um, Van Till defined apologetics, and then
01:37:05: I'll press the, uh, the, the voice to text defined apologetics as the vindication of the
01:37:11: Christian philosophy of life over against the non -Christian philosophy of life, period.
01:37:17: And then I'll press the button and continue reading. And by the time I'm done with the chapter, I have a whole document filled with a bunch of quotes, and then
01:37:22: I'll go back and make it into an outline. So speaking the word slowly while it's because while it's turning into text helps me help it helps me get it glued in my mind.
01:37:31: And then going back and organizing the outline helps me, uh, seal, seal the information in my mind as well.
01:37:37: And then I have it in an organized way to go back to and study or to teach from. So that's how I would do that.
01:37:44: Okay. Uh, let's see here. What do I learn in your paid classes that I didn't learn in this stream?
01:37:51: Yeah. So, um, I do expand on some things. So the first lecture in my class,
01:37:56: I talk about, uh, why apologetics is important. What is presuppositional apologetics? I go over the ingredients of a worldview.
01:38:04: So we talk about metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, and a little bit more in depth, giving illustrations as to how to ask certain questions that expose, uh, the unbelievers, metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical positions.
01:38:16: Uh, I talk about how God, why it's important to see God as the metaphysical ultimate foundation for derivational facts.
01:38:24: So I speak about the idea that all derived facts, creative facts must be grounded in a metaphysical ultimate.
01:38:30: So I talk a little bit about the philosophy of that. I also lay out different ways to present the argument, the presuppositional argument.
01:38:38: So I will give you in common parlance, here's how we would frame the, the, the argument.
01:38:44: If you're talking to someone more technical, I'll talk, this is how I would phrase the position from a more technical perspective.
01:38:49: If I'm kind of talking to a scholarly minded person, then this is the more sophisticated way out because it's, I give different ways to present the presuppositional argument to help the person who's taking the course to contextualize the information to the specific audience that they might be interested in speaking with, engaging with.
01:39:05: Okay. All right. I got two more questions and, uh, let's see here.
01:39:13: Creamy cold says, can you explain a little more on starting with yourself and ending with yourself? Yep. So if I start with my own reason, the ultimacy of my own reason and try to work my way up to God exists.
01:39:24: Okay. When I start with myself, there is no way for me to transcend my own bias, my own limitations, and my own finitude.
01:39:33: And so, um, if I start with my limited self, the conclusions I draw are only going to be limited because there's no way to transcend your own perspective to have a quote unquote,
01:39:44: God's eye perspective on reality. Okay. And this is why it's important for the Christian that we start not just with ourselves, but we ourselves within the context of revelation of an omniscient
01:39:55: God who's revealed himself. Okay. So if you're interested in this concept, look up the ego centric predicament, the ego centric predicament in philosophy, it'll be helpful in kind of drawing out what
01:40:06: I'm trying to say. Okay. All right. Let's see here. Question from Jay.
01:40:12: How do you have a dialogue with an agnostic who thinks our minds are too limited to know that God exists? I have a coworker who thinks all arguments for God are
01:40:19: God of the gaps type. So there are two questions there. Um, if someone says all arguments are
01:40:26: God of the gaps arguments, all you need to do to counter that is to show an argument that does not rely upon something that we don't know, and that we're simply plugging
01:40:35: God into it. Like the cosmological argument, whether you like the cosmological argument or not, it's not a God of the gaps fallacy, right?
01:40:41: We're arguing based upon what we think we can know and then trying to draw conclusions. We are not arguing based upon what we don't know.
01:40:47: We don't know this. And so therefore God, that's not what we're arguing. Okay. And the first part of your question, how do you know, how do you have a dialogue with an agnostic who thinks our minds are too limited to know
01:40:57: God exists? Um, well, I would point out that this agnostic is interestingly not agnostic enough because apparently he knows the limits of everyone's minds.
01:41:06: How does this agnostic know that everyone's minds are so limited that we can't know, uh, if God exists?
01:41:13: He's also, this person's also assuming that the God who's revealed himself in scripture is wrong in that he tells us he creates, uh, image bearers that can know him.
01:41:26: Okay. It's kind of like the person who says, I'm an agnostic. I don't know if God exists, but, um, neither do you.
01:41:33: If God did exist, you couldn't know anything about him because you're so limited. That assertion is itself logically incoherent because it is self -contradictory.
01:41:43: If someone were to say, I can't know if God exists, you can't know anything about him. My question, my question will be, well, how do you know that about him?
01:41:51: Namely that if a God did exist, he's the kind of God, or it's the kind of God that is unable to reveal himself such that I can know him.
01:41:58: You know that about him. So then it turns out that the agnostic position is not, not that agnostic, uh, as we think it is actually a very dogmatic position.
01:42:08: So I would, um, I would turn that view on its head by shooting that right back at them.
01:42:14: It's right. How do you know the limitations of the human mind and how do you know the limitations of God?
01:42:19: If God exists, couldn't God reveal himself such that we know him? I'd ask them, do you believe that God could reveal himself?
01:42:25: If he says yes, it was like, okay, so then you can't say that our minds are too limited because perhaps God made our minds such that we are able to apprehend him.
01:42:33: Now, if I say, if God exists, do you think he could reveal himself? And they say no. Well, then how do they know that about God?
01:42:42: Namely that if God existed, he's the kind of God that can't, they can't reveal himself. See, so it's the position is, is self contradictory.
01:42:48: All right. Um, what's my favorite sports team. I grew up playing basketball.
01:42:54: Basketball is the only sport that I can play very well. And I grew up in the nineties. So I was a diehard Bulls fan all throughout the nineties.
01:43:00: I grew up in Long Island, New York, and all my friends were Knicks fans. But I was a hardcore Chicago Bulls fan. And then
01:43:06: I stopped watching basketball in the two thousands and got too busy to keep up with stuff. So, uh, a Bulls fan,
01:43:11: I guess. I hope that's, uh, I hope that's useful to you. Uh, Henry says I've read Bonson criticize some of Mansell students for treating
01:43:19: God as a hypothesis being compared to other worldview hypothesis. Is Bonson right to approach? Yes, I think he's right.
01:43:25: God is not a hypothesis. We, what, what did we say at the beginning of the stream? We said that God exists is where it is true.
01:43:32: And we argue from that position, not to that position. Right? So we start with God, God exists.
01:43:39: And then we argue that if you reject this, your position is reduced to absurdity. Okay. And so, um, we do not present
01:43:46: God as a hypothetical because that assumes neutrality. Cause when you say
01:43:51: God may exist, what you are implicitly presupposing is that God is not necessary for the meaningfulness of all facts because to assert his hypothetical possible existence is to implicitly assume that facts, the facts that you're acquainted with are meaningful without his necessary existence, which again is problematic.
01:44:16: So I would not present God as a hypothesis. I would present God as God presents himself. He is the,
01:44:23: I am the everlasting one, the one who is from everlasting to everlasting. He is the creator and is the judge of all the earth.
01:44:29: And we put forth that fully orbed, um, all encompassing God who puts himself out there as the one true and living
01:44:37: God that is known by every man, um, center and redeemed the like, and that we will be held responsible, uh, for our actions.
01:44:45: God will judge us in the person of Jesus Christ. Um, and we call people to repent, right? This is not, you know, you need to repent possibly, right?
01:44:53: You might have to repent because the God of Christianity may or may not exist, right? That's not, that's not the
01:44:58: God we're arguing for. Okay. All right. Uh, let's see here.
01:45:03: Jay says, thank you for your answer. I feel stupid not seeing the inconsistency in that statement. Ha ha ha. Don't feel stupid.
01:45:10: Uh, we are all in a process of learning and, uh, you know, things that seem easy for me to see now is because I've, I've talked about this stuff, you know, but there are people who are kind of just working their way through this and yeah, they're, the more you think about these things, the easier it will be to recognize, you know, these kind of like inconsistencies, but you know, it takes time.
01:45:30: You work at it and it's all good. All right. All right. Well, uh, the person say you would, you look like you would be a great
01:45:42: Bible actor. Maybe. Okay. All right. All right.
01:45:48: Okay. Thank you. Uh, what would be a presuppositional approach to the simulation hypothesis brain in the vat scenario?
01:45:55: Yeah. So I know I'm not a brain in the vat because brain will equal skepticism and destroy the possibility of knowing anything at all.
01:46:02: And if that is the case, then the person has no foundation for knowing whether the idea of being a brain in the vat is meaningful.
01:46:09: Right? So I would say that I know I'm not a brain in a vat because God has not revealed reality such that knowledge is impossible.
01:46:17: Knowledge would be impossible for brains and vats. Everything I think I know is just an illusion. It's just being stimulated into my brain.
01:46:22: Okay. But the Bible teaches that we can know things, but if we can know things, then I'm not a brain in a vat and God reveals to us.
01:46:30: Okay. What the nature of man is right. And what God requires of us. And, uh, there's none of this business of, you know, brain in the vats and, and unable, not being able to understand the truth about reality.
01:46:41: Okay. Cause God holds us responsible for the truth, but if we can't know the truth, then how can you hold us responsible for the truth? Right. So, um, someone said, well, yeah, but how do you know, maybe that's part of the thing that's being put into your brain.
01:46:52: It's it is my worldview that I'm not a brain in a vat, right? That's my starting point.
01:46:57: God exists is where it is true. And I argue from that position, not to that position. If God exists, the
01:47:03: Bible's true. The Bible does not teach that knowledge is impossible and knowledge would be impossible if there's a brain in a vat.
01:47:08: So this scenario, this hypothetical is what we would call an external critique. It's trying to put doubt into the mind of the
01:47:16: Christian, but in reality, it, it is an impossibility on the Christian worldview perspective.
01:47:22: Okay. And I would just point that out. That's an external critique. Uh, that's impossible on the Christian worldview. Okay. All right.
01:47:29: Let's see. Here's some more questions. Truth defenders are noticing a trend of non or anti -Calvinist mockingly replying to everything by saying, well,
01:47:42: God predestined me to whatever foolish thing they say or do. What would you say to someone to someone like that?
01:47:49: Okay. If God predestines all events where he decrees or determines all events, someone's like, well,
01:47:54: God just determined me to say that if determinism is true, you are determined to believe the stupid thing that you're putting forth.
01:48:02: The implicit assumption is that God's determination is incompatible with the rationality and culpability of the things that we believe in a certain.
01:48:12: And that is an assumption that needs to be defended. So he has a Calvinist. I'm a compatibilist. I believe that determinism is compatible with, um, moral praiseworthy or blameworthiness.
01:48:23: Okay. I don't think that they're incompatible. They're compatible. So when someone says, oh, well, God just determined me.
01:48:28: Well, yeah, if determinism is true, then yes, you were determined. But what's implicit there that I want an argument for is show me that determinism entails that.
01:48:38: Therefore it doesn't matter what I say or believe, because that's just the way God determined. That's man of our position.
01:48:45: Okay. Problem of evil from presuppositional perspective, you Christians have a problem of evil.
01:48:51: And my response is going to be what, what is the problem of evil for the Christian, right? Evil is proof that God exists.
01:48:59: If evil exists, that presupposes an ultimate standard of good by which to judge. If evil is really evil, then there must be an ultimate standard of good.
01:49:06: How do you make sense of an ultimate standard of good without God? So the existence of an ultimate good is evidence for God.
01:49:13: And the, um, existence of objective evil is evidence for God. So there is no problem within the
01:49:19: Christian worldview. We acknowledge evil. We're told where it comes from and we're told where it's going. So there's no, there's no problem.
01:49:25: Logically, at least maybe emotionally, there's some issues there. Obviously we struggle with a wide variety of evils in this world, but logically there is no problem.
01:49:32: And the logic is really what's going to get down to the truth or falsity. So that's the more important point. Okay. Henry, how do you understand
01:49:42: Aquinas' teaching on God being a higher level being compared to humans being less? I'm not sure. I'm not familiar with Aquinas on that point.
01:49:50: So I do apologize, Henry. Okay. And the truth defender says, thanks. Hey guys, I hope that this was super helpful.
01:49:57: This went much longer than I thought. Totally fine. Totally fine. I hope the first part of the presentation was useful.
01:50:05: Free stuff, free stuff for dummies. I hope it was useful. But the questions at the end were super good.
01:50:10: And I know I'm going really fast. So I apologize if I didn't answer your question to your satisfaction or as in depth as you'd like.
01:50:17: There are a lot of questions and I talk a lot throughout the day. And so my voice is kind of tired right now.
01:50:23: So I would like to thank everybody for listening in, sending in your questions. Pardon.
01:50:30: And I appreciate you guys. Whether you agree with me or disagree, I hope that folks are learning and that you guys are having better conversations.
01:50:39: Say, for example, you're a classical apologist. You completely hate precept. Maybe you understand precept a little bit better and that will help your conversations with other people as you critique it and vice versa.
01:50:49: Maybe you're trying to learn precept and you really didn't understand how the method goes, but this is useful to you.
01:50:54: I hope that it's beneficial to that end. As me personally, I am convinced that this is the best apologetic.
01:50:59: It is the most powerful, logically speaking, and it is the most biblically, uh, biblical, um, apologetic in my estimation.
01:51:05: So hopefully it has been useful to you and a blessing. All right. Thank you so much guys. Please, please, please, uh, show some love by liking the video, sharing it.
01:51:14: Um, writing a review on iTunes is super helpful as well. Um, for folks who don't know when
01:51:19: I'm not doing YouTube and I'm not teaching, I am a traveling speaker and I travel across the country. Um, giving talks on apologetics, workshops, and those sorts of things.
01:51:27: So if you're interested in having me come to your church or your event or your conference or anything along those lines, uh, you can set that up by going to revealedapologetics .com
01:51:34: and there's a section right there on the homepage where you can reach out to me and I will respond and we could set something up. So, um, other than that, guys, thank you so much.