Answering Objections to Presuppositional Apologetics

Revealed Apologetics

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All right, welcome to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Elias Ayala. And today,

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I'm super excited. I always say I'm super excited, but I'm especially super excited to have with us astrophysicist and presuppositional apologist,

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Dr. Jason Lyle. And many of you guys might be familiar with his work, especially his book,

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The Ultimate Proof for Creation. For those of you who are interested in young earth creationism and that topic, he's got a lot of material now.

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Now people might think, well, Eli, you're not a real fan of Dr. Lyle because where are your Dr. Lyle books?

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Well, I have two different areas where I have, this is my office. This is generically where my books are.

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But I have a section in my bedroom where I have books that I specifically need close, to be close in hand.

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And I have Dr. Lyle's books there alongside my Bonson's and some of my other literature.

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But I did forget to bring one to my bedroom. And so I had your introduction to logic this year in informal fallacies by Jason Lyle.

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And it's definitely a great tool if you want to think logically. He does a very good job in teaching folks how to do that.

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So without further ado, I would like to introduce Dr. Jason Lyle. Why don't you introduce yourself and share a little bit about what you do?

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Okay, well, I'm Jason Lyle. I'm an astrophysicist and a full -time apologist. I do as a vocation.

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I defend the Christian faith. And I've headed up a ministry called the Biblical Science Institute.

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And what I really try to focus on are those aspects of science that some people think have disproved the

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Bible. And I show people that actually when you understand science, it confirms what the Bible teaches. And I particularly focus in on Genesis, but I'm not limited to that.

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I do other areas as well. But I believe that God's word is true from the beginning, that it's inerrant and infallible in the original autographa.

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And I try to help people to defend that, particularly in the area of science and creation. Yeah, and I think that's vitally important.

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As people have heard me say in the past that the presuppositional method is a very powerful apologetic method.

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We believe it's biblically grounded. But there are areas in it that I think our forebearers like Vantill and Bonson kind of, because Vantill is gone,

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Bonson is gone, there is a torch to be passed. And I think that specific area needs to be a little hashed out more by the current generation, of which

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I think Dr. Lyle is doing a great job. I'm not sure where most of the folks stand on the creation debate, but one cannot deny that Dr.

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Lyle definitely tries to be intentional about utilizing evidence within a presuppositional framework.

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And so for that, we can be very much appreciative. All right, so again, we're not gonna focus so much on astrophysics and creation, but of course, if you think any of these questions might relate to it and you think it might be relevant to bring up, feel free to share that.

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But we wanna get into apologetic methodology and respond to some common misconceptions.

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And so we're going to pre, I was joking around before, we're gonna presuppose, okay, that people have a background knowledge of these issues.

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And so for those who are beginners, you might say, well, what's all this terminology? Don't worry, once you learn these terms, you'll know that these questions are actually vitally important.

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And so you definitely wanna still pay attention. For those of you guys who are just really hungry to hear what Dr. Lyle has to say, well,

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Merry Christmas. All right, so why don't you, just from a beginning, I have everyone do this when we talk about apologetic methodology.

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Can you define for us the presuppositional method as you see it, as you understand it, just a bare definition, how do you understand the methodology?

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The presuppositional apologetic method demonstrates the truth of the Christian worldview by pointing out that unless the

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Christian worldview is presupposed, knowledge would be impossible. We couldn't know anything about science or history or anything you can think of, you would not be able to justify it.

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Now, that's not to say that you can't believe things apart from the Christian worldview, you can. And that's not to say that some of those things might be true, they might be, but you could never justify them because all the things that we use to justify knowledge, to know that we really, it's not just a belief that we know it to be true.

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There are certain things that we use like laws of logic, we use our sensory experiences of the universe and so on.

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But how do you know those things are reliable? And most people can't answer that or they can't give a good answer to it.

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But I would suggest the Christian worldview allows us to know that laws of logic will be reliable because they're a reflection of the way

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God thinks, that our senses will be basically reliable because they've been designed by God, albeit they're finite, they can't do everything.

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But nonetheless, there's a degree of reliability there, not necessarily perfectly because of sin and so on. But the

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Christian worldview allows us to have knowledge of things and everyone has knowledge of things, therefore the

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Christian worldview must be true. Yeah, and I think that's very important too, to understand, you just asked the question, kind of the rhetorical question, how do you have knowledge on a non -Christian perspective?

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I mean, I think on the popular level, when people use this methodology, it almost comes down to a, well, how do you know? How do you know?

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How do you know? And people get really annoyed about that. But this methodology is very much more than just that, right? What do you think's the reason why presuppositionalists tend to ask the how do you know question so much?

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Because most people are not aware of their own epistemology. And the way I like to put it,

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I say you can think of your epistemology, your theory of knowledge, like most people think of their kidneys, which is to say they don't think about them at all.

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Your kidneys are just constantly doing what they're doing. You can't live without them, but you don't think about them until something goes wrong with one of them.

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And so what I tell people is, what I try to do as an apologist is give the unbeliever the epistemological equivalent of a kidney stone.

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Because when you have a kidney stone, you're very aware of your kidneys and that something is wrong with them. And it's gonna be painful.

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It's not gonna kill you in most cases. It's just incredibly, I've had kidney stones. It's incredibly painful. But what you wanna do is show the unbeliever that his epistemology, his theory of knowledge is flawed.

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He can't make sense. He's actually borrowing from the Christian worldview, tacitly to support his own.

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And so most people are not aware of their epistemology. And so what we have to do is give them a little bit of a lesson on what epistemology is, kind of flesh out, ask them some questions to find out what their epistemology is, and then ask them some questions that show, that reveal that their epistemology doesn't make any sense apart from the

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Christian worldview. Right, right. Very good. And a lot of people will say, it's easy to make the claim that I can't account for knowledge, but then within the apologetic encounter, we invite them.

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Okay, your epistemology, right? I wanna show you that your inability to ground these things actually works in favor of what we're saying.

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So it's more than just making a statement. I think that's an important key. Now, so you've defined for us presuppositional apologetics.

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What in your estimation differentiates the presuppositional methodology from the other apologetic approaches?

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The key difference is that in the presuppositional approach, the Bible is the ultimate standard for all truth claims, including its own defense.

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Now, some of these other methods would agree that the Bible's the ultimate standard for truth claims, but they would say, except when you're defending it.

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That's the difference. They say, when you're defending it, you have to use some other standard by which to prove the

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Bible, because they think that all forms of circular reasoning are wrong. They think it would be circular to presuppose the

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Bible while defending it. And we can get into that, but that's an error in reasoning on their part.

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But in any case, that's the key difference is these other apologetic methods, they put man as the judge and they put the

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Bible as the defendant. And they're the defense attorney. And, you know, please let me defend the

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Bible. And you can judge it, Mr. Unbeliever. And your mind is more than sufficient to be able to judge the

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Bible. And you'll see that when I present these evidences, you'll see that the Bible is true. The presuppositional approach reverses that and says, no,

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God is on the throne. God is the judge and his word will judge your mind. It's not your mind that will judge

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God's word. And the only reason that your mind has any capacity to judge anything is because God's word is true.

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And so it reverses the rules. It puts the Bible as the judge of man's mind rather than man's mind as the judge of the

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Bible. Now, you said something that these other methodologies are not really grounded in the word of God as their ultimate foundation.

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Now, I know what you don't mean by that is that you don't mean that they acknowledge that that's what they're doing.

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Probably be an implication of their method, right? They might not want to do that, but their implication of their method is that that's in fact what they're doing, right?

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Yes, although some would even admit it. I remember seeing Sean McDowell saying, now, the one thing you can't use when you're defending the

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Bible is what? The audience shouts, the Bible. And I'm thinking, no, if you were defending the laws of logic, what's the one thing you can't use?

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Laws of, wait a minute, that doesn't work. You have to use laws of logic to defend anything, including laws of logic.

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And so when it comes to an ultimate standard, you have to stand on what you're defending. And some of these other methods would say, we are standing on the authority of God's word, but we just don't think as a method that you can use it while you're defending it.

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Whereas I would say, you have to. You have to tacitly presuppose the truths contained in scripture, even when you're defending the scripture.

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And I'm just honest about it. That's the difference. And there's some evidentialist even that would even say that, that yeah, you have to, it is true.

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You have to tacitly assume the Christian worldview while defending it, but you don't dare admit that. And I'm thinking, well, why not? It's true.

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And the fact is the unbeliever also has to tacitly presuppose the Christian worldview, even to defend his non -Christian worldview, which is irrational.

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Yeah. And I often say that everyone has their own Bible, their own ultimate authority, right? We just are gonna be open and admit it at the beginning.

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And we argue from there, trying our best to be faithful to the word of God. So let's move on to the next question here.

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So there is a common misconception that presuppositionalists don't believe in using evidences.

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Okay, we hear this all the time, right? What role does evidence play within the presuppositional framework? And is the presuppositionalist simply relegated to using the transcendental argument, right?

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Why don't you iron that out for us? Yeah, that is one of the big misconceptions. And I remember

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Dr. Bonson in one of his, I think it was in his DVD course, seminary level apologetics course, where he clarifies, you know, we do believe in the use of evidence.

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And then he says, I'm sure that'll settle the issue once for all many chuckles, knowing that people will continue to misrepresent the presuppositional method that way.

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Yes, we do believe in the use of evidence. And in a very real sense, evidence becomes even more relevant in the presuppositional view, because if you're a true presuppositionalist, you recognize that all evidence is evidence of the

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Christian worldview, because no evidence would be intelligible apart from the truth of the Christian worldview. You can use evidence, you can use any evidence to defend the

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Bible in the presuppositional way. The question is, how are you gonna use that evidence? Are you gonna use it as, are you going to make the claim that the mind of man, apart from Christian presuppositions, is able to interpret the evidence properly and thereby judge

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God's word according to it? I would say no, because the mind of man is fallible. We make mistakes in reasoning.

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And the only way that we're able to reason properly at all is when we are consistent with the way God thinks.

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So what are some appropriate uses for evidence then? Well, there are many. I would argue that any use of evidence that's truthful and that does not subjugate

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God's word as being less than man's interpretation of the evidence is gonna be fine.

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You can use it to get people to think. A lot of times, the folks that I encounter believe in evolution, they believe in the billions of years.

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And I'll point out little pieces of evidence. Well, how do you account for this? Which evolved first, the

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DNA or the mechanism that reads the DNA or the ribosomes that produce the

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DNA from the mech? Because each one depends on the other. So which one evolved first? And people, oh yeah, I never thought about that.

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It gets them to think. It pokes holes in their world view. Kidney stones.

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That's right. Exactly, exactly. I'm giving you a little hint. Oh, okay, wait, wait, wait. Exactly.

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So that's a perfectly appropriate use of evidence right there. You can use it as an introduction to the transcendental argument, which is often how

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I use it. I'll say, okay, but how would any of this evidence be intelligible? You're assuming your senses are reliable.

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How do you know that? You're assuming that your reasoning is valid. How do you know that? Well, I use my reasoning to know that my reasoning is valid.

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Well, wait a minute. You just told me we can't be circular and so on and so forth. And so there's lots of, actually in the book,

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Ultimate Proof of Creation, I have a chapter on appropriate uses of evidence. And I give several different examples in that chapter.

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And I'd like to think that this ministry, the Biblical Science Institute, is a whopping big example of how you can use evidence appropriately in a presuppositional way.

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I've been recently doing a series of articles on the solar system called Roles of Creation.

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And I just started with the sun and Mercury, and then I've just worked my way out. We'll be on Saturn by Friday. And how each one of these declares

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God's glory and how it challenges an evolutionary paradigm. But at no point do

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I assume that our interpretation of the evidence is superior to the word of God. And that's what makes the presuppositional approach distinct from these other methods.

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Yeah, and I don't think it's enough too. When we talk about young earth creationism, for example, and the prominence of the evolutionary theory,

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I think a lot of the critics, and not all, I think others have some substantive back and forth, as you know,

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I mean, it's a debated topic. A lot of these evolutionists will just appeal to, well, to believe that the universe is six to 10 ,000 years old is just ridiculous.

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I think comments like that completely ignore the presuppositional issue. Well, ridiculous according to whose presuppositions?

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And I think that's a very important how you link those together and why those are important to keep the foundation of scripture, providing the lens through which we look at these things.

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I think that's very, very important. Yeah. All right, well, good, yeah. Okay, so also, and you mentioned it before, but this question always comes up.

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A common and overly, and when I say overly, I mean like overly, like if you're a presuppositionalist, it just gets you so annoyed to hear this.

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The overly repeated criticism of presuppositionalism is that it is circular. Can you define, now this is,

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I'm gonna throw a bone to the people who talk about this online. Can you define for us vicious circularity versus virtuous circularity and how the presuppositionalist avoids the prior and affirms the latter, okay?

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And, and then we'll break this up so you can take it piece by piece. And are these concepts of virtuous and vicious circularity categories invented by the presuppositionalist?

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Okay, go for it. So a vicious circle would be where the conclusion of one argument is the premise of another.

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So A, therefore B, B, therefore A, that would be a vicious circle where both

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A and B, each one of the two has been arbitrarily assumed as the sole proof of the other.

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It's arbitrary, it doesn't prove anything beyond what it has assumed. A virtuous circle would be the kind that is logically necessary.

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For example, in order to reason about laws of logic, I would have to use laws of logic. There's no escaping that because that's what we use to reason.

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And yet I can meaningfully defend the existence of laws of logic by pointing out that if they didn't exist, we couldn't prove anything because we use logic to prove things.

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I think that's a good argument, but it is circular because I've used logic in making the argument, how could you not?

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That's the point. And so a virtuous circle would be a circle that kind of goes out of its own plane.

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It doesn't just arbitrarily assume something. It necessarily assumes what it's trying to prove that that has to be the case, but it goes beyond that and makes knowledge possible.

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And so I would argue that, first of all, any ultimate standard must be defended in a circular fashion.

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Think about that. There's what they call the Munchausen trilemma. How do you know? How do

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I know this? Well, because it follows logically from the thing below it. And if that follows logically from the thing below it and so on, but that can't go on forever, right?

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Because you don't know an infinite number of things and you don't have enough time. Any chain of reasoning must terminate in an ultimate standard.

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How do you prove that? Well, you can't say it's proved from something more basic because then it wouldn't be ultimate.

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It'd just be the next. Okay, well, how do you prove that one then? And so on. And you could say, well, I guess I can't prove it.

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I just assume it. Well, if that's the case, then you don't know anything because the foundational thing that you claim justifies your belief in everything else, if you can't prove it, then all the things that follow from that are unproved as well.

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You can have no knowledge if you just assume your ultimate standard. And so the only alternative to those two is that this ultimate standard must prove itself and make knowledge possible of other things.

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And that's what the Christian worldview, I would argue, does. And so people would say, well, you're reasoning in a circle. I'd say, well, you are too.

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The only difference is mine is self -consistent and makes knowledge possible, whereas yours is inconsistent because you're borrowing bits from the

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Christian worldview to support your own circle. And your circle blows itself up when it comes back around.

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It's a self -destructive circle, whereas the Christian worldview, it is circular. There's no doubt about that.

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People think, well, that's wrong. Well, what does the Bible say about circular reasoning? Since God could swear by no one greater than himself, he swore by himself, right?

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That's what the Bible says in Hebrews 6. If you think about it, all of God's reasoning is circular because God doesn't draw any new conclusions that he didn't already know.

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And so there is a circularity within the Godhead, within the Trinity. And so to say that all circular reasoning is wrong is to say that God is wrong.

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And that's not acceptable to the Christian worldview. And I think a common criticism too of that is to appeal to these foundational circles that I think we're all kind of stuck in.

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I don't think we're stuck. You know, they would accuse presuppositionalism of being kind of a form of post -modernism.

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It's like, well, you can't escape your circle. What you just expressed there is we can escape our circle only by appealing to the necessity of our circle.

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It has a transcendental necessity about it that makes it impossible to be false. That's right. So if somebody says, you're reasoning in a circle,

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I would say, well, that's right. You either reason within the Christian circle or you don't reason. Those are your options. You can take the

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Christian circle and have knowledge or you can reject it and you can't know anything. You can have beliefs that happen to be true but you can never ultimately justify them outside of the

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Christian circle. That's right. And we're willing to defend that. That's not just an assertion. I think for some folks, that's important to keep in mind.

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That's not an assertion that's just put out there. We're willing to defend that. And I think that's important to keep in mind.

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All right, great. You're doing good, Dr. Lai. I didn't expect anything less. He's passing the test so far.

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All right. All right. My next question here. Now you've interacted with Dr.

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Richard Howe. Okay. There's some stuff on YouTube where people can check that out. Very good discussion.

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I think it was yourself, Dr. Howe, Scott Oliphant. Was there someone else on there? Frank Turek was moderator.

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Frank Turek, yeah, that's right. And I think he did a good job as a moderator too. I agree. Yeah, it was a really good event there.

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And you can kind of see the comparison of the different apologetic methodologies and things like that.

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So I wanna interact a little bit with something that Dr. Howe said in his criticism of presubpositional apologetics.

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Now just as a disclaimer, Dr. Howe is a fine scholar. He's a gentleman. We just have methodological disagreements.

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And so it's important to be able to talk about these things so we can help other folks out in working through these things themselves.

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So I'm gonna read a quote from Dr. Howe, which he highlights a common mistake he thinks presuppositionalists make, okay?

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And here's what he says in an interview. And for folks who want to look this up, this is at the six minute and eight second mark in his interview with Cameron Bertuzzi on capturing

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Christianity. Okay, and here's what he says, quote, he says, this is what I think is the perennial mistake in all that I've read of all the presuppositionalists that I've read, including

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Bonson's material. When they define presuppositionalism, they say it this way. The assumption of God is the precondition of knowledge.

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But when they try to explain what that means, what they end up defending is God is the precondition of knowledge, okay?

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So you see the claim here is we say that the assumption of God is necessary, but when we hash that out, we're talking about, well, actually the existence of God is necessary.

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You see the epistemological and ontological conflation there as he sees it. How would you respond to him if he were to bring this up to you in conversation?

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I don't think he understands the method, frankly. And when I met Dr. Howell, he hit it off really well.

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He's a very likable guy. He's very witty and charming. I like the guy, but I don't think he understands the presuppositional method.

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One, when we're talking about what we believe, that's epistemology, but unless that epistemology is grounded in a metaphysical truth, it's useless.

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So unless God really is the way he claims that he is, unless God really exists in reality, that's a metaphysical claim, then we couldn't justify anything that's an epistemological claim.

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It's ironic because he thinks that those two are conflated by presuppositionalists, that we conflate metaphysics or ontology with epistemology.

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But I don't think he recognizes that those two, although they're asking different questions, they're not totally independent of each other.

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Your epistemology cannot be completely independent of your metaphysics. And I'm a little disappointed to hear him still making that claim because that was one of the things, we actually did a written debate in addition to our verbal debate.

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And that's actually recorded in the journal that they do there at Southern Evangelical Seminary. The Journal of, what is it?

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The Journal of Christian Apologetics Journal, volume 11, number two, it's the 2013 issue.

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We did a written exchange. We were back there, I thought it was just an online thing. Oh, cool. It's online too.

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And I think, in fact, Dr. Howell posted the online version on his website, which I guess he works for the university.

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So I guess that's okay. But you can read it there. And that's one of the things

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I clarified. I said, your epistemology and your metaphysics or ontology, they're connected.

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Epistemology, how do we know what we know? What is true? Metaphysics, what kind of things exist? What is the nature of the universe?

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Not totally independent. And I gave an example, and I can't remember if this is the example I gave, but one example would be, suppose my epistemology is that laws of logic are a very good tool for discerning truth and error.

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And that is part of my epistemology. It's not all of it, but it's part of it. Now, that would be inconsistent if my metaphysics was the view that only material things exist.

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Because if only material things exist, laws of logic can't, because they're not material. You can't pull a law of logic out of the refrigerator or accidentally swallow one, they're non -material.

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And so that metaphysics is incompatible with that epistemology. So what we try to do as presuppositionalists is point out that the metaphysical reality of God is necessary in order for us to justify our truth claims, which is an epistemological issue.

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And so now maybe we can say it a little better. Maybe he's got a legitimate criticism about the way that we say it.

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But the fact is we're arguing for a metaphysical reality that is necessary in order for any epistemology to make any sense whatsoever.

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And for us to justify any epistemological claim, God must metaphysically exist. In reading some of Howell's comments, it seems like he's confusing that.

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It seems like he's confusing the transcendental argument with more of a causation argument, that God is necessary cause of the universe.

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But we're not talking about causation. That's different. We're talking about justification, which is providing a reason for the beliefs that we have, and what is the basis for that reason, and so on.

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Unless God, as revealed in scripture, is the base of that, we couldn't have knowledge of anything. So our epistemology would collapse without the metaphysical reality described in the

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Bible. Now, would you say, so this issue of, is it that we must assume

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God, or is it the case that God must exist? Would you say that we both have to assume him, and it has to be the case that he exists?

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Would you say it's both? Absolutely, it is both. God must exist, and we must presuppose that he exists in order for us to have knowledge of anything.

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So both of those are true, and they go together. Because if you presuppose something that doesn't exist, then your epistemology is worthless, because it's based on fiction rather than reality.

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So unless God is metaphysically real, our epistemological claim that he justifies everything would be useless.

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And that's related to the knowledge of God, of the unbeliever, so that he assumes God, while at the same time

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God actually existing, he assumes God because he's made in the image of God and has an innate knowledge of God. He can't help but to think in those categories.

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That's right. God has hardwired all human beings to know that he exists, and to, such that when we look out into creation, we immediately recognize it as the handiwork of God.

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There's not even a, there's not a processing there. It's just, we recognize it as God's handiwork.

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It's what Romans 1 tells us, that such that there's no excuse for denying God's existence. That God's made it obvious to us, he's hardwired us that way, so that we all have knowledge of him, but people work very hard to suppress that knowledge in unrighteousness.

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They know God, they claim they don't know God, and they work very hard to convince others and themselves that they don't know

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God. That's right. And again, I keep repeating this, but that's not a mere assertion.

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That's not even just you quoting the scripture. I mean, we believe the scripture teaches that, but part of the apologetical task, and I'm saying this because there are a lot of people who are just happy with the presuppositional platitudes and quick kind of snippets, which have a rhetorical strength to them, but we need to go a little deeper.

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And I think the apologetic encounter involves us bringing that truth out. So it's more than just an assertion, and apologists have to work to be better at that, and I think that's important.

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All right, very good. So there seems to be a confusion among a lot of people that hopefully you can clear up once and for all.

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There's no pressure, right? With this issue of starting points. So in various discussions over apologetic methodology, the presuppositionalists will often say that a person must start with God in their reasoning, right?

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And of course, our fellow classicalists and evidentialists are quick to politely remind us that, no, you don't start with God, nor can you start with God.

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Rather, one must start with themselves. Now, of course, in order to think of God, it is we who need to reason, and so in essence, we must begin with ourselves, or they'll say something that when the presupper says, we start with the

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Bible to reason, they'll say, well, you need to reason first in order to read and understand the Bible. So how is it that you start with God or you start with the

27:12

Bible when in reality, you have to start with yourself by necessity? How would you respond to that? The confusion on that issue is an equivocation between first chronologically and first logically, and there's a difference between those two.

27:28

And as an example, the foundation of a house is logically prior to the house.

27:36

A house requires a foundation. Nobody starts with the roof when they build a house. They lay the foundation first, and then they build, you know, and then they, right?

27:46

You love, you levitate over there until I need you. That would be very interesting. So the foundation of a house is logically prior to the house.

27:54

The house is logically prior to the roof. But the, my awareness of that might be the opposite.

28:00

Maybe I'm driving over a hill. As I come over the hill, the first thing I see is the roof of the house. And I say, ah, and then

28:06

I come over and then I can come a little further and I see the house itself. Now, the first thing I'm aware of is the roof. The second thing is the house.

28:12

And I never actually see the foundation, probably. Okay, because it's underground. But I would assume that there is one because that's logically necessary for the house.

28:20

So of course, when we start thinking, we're starting with our thinking. There's no doubt about that. But what is the foundation of that?

28:27

Yes, we see the roof of the house first. But does that mean the roof of the house came first? Does that mean that it is logically necessary for the foundation?

28:34

No, the foundation is logically necessary for the house and the roof. So God is logically primary in his word.

28:42

That's how we know about God is the revealed word of God. So yes, of course, I have to know how to reason a little bit in order to read the

28:48

Bible. That's true. And God has given us all a little bit of knowledge. We have general revelation.

28:54

He's given us enough that when we read God's word, we can understand it. And it can correct misconceptions that we have because we come into the world with an imperfect worldview.

29:03

We're tainted by sin. And so, but we have enough light that when we look at God's word, we're able to understand it and read it and so on.

29:10

And so another way to put it, what about the basic reliability of our senses?

29:16

What is the basis for that belief? The logical primary basis for that is that we have been created by God.

29:24

God made the seeing eye and the hearing ear, the Bible says. They've been designed by God. That's the logical reason why we can trust our senses.

29:31

But the fact is everyone chronologically first trusts his senses in order to read the

29:37

Bible, to learn that the Bible is the foundation for that belief. Okay, and so we're born irrational.

29:43

We're born believing things that we can't justify. Babies are irrational. We expect nothing less.

29:50

But as we grow up, as we get older, we're supposed to become rational. And so we're supposed to use our senses that we assume are reliable to read the

29:58

Bible. And we say, ah, that's the reason that I can trust my senses. Now I know

30:04

I can trust my senses. It's not just a belief, it's true. So think about it in terms of chronological versus logical.

30:12

We claim, we don't claim that the Bible is chronologically first. We claim that the worldview presented in scripture is logically prior to our other beliefs, but not chronologically prior.

30:23

I hope that clears that up. That's very good. And by the way, we're making excellent time. I hope if we make even better time as we go through these next few questions that we can take some questions from the live chat.

30:35

I'm sure folks would really appreciate that. All right, so let's get into some of the nitty gritty aspects of presuppositional.

30:41

I like as though we haven't already. Now there's a twofold aspect to what I'm about to ask. And I think this is, Bonson has expressed this in a various number of his talks, but the sound quality when he goes through this is sometimes not very good because, you know, back in the nineties, right?

30:57

Let's work through this here. So when we say that the truth of the Christian worldview is true by the impossibility of the contrary, how is the

31:06

Christian position specifically vindicated here? One doesn't demonstrate the truth of one's perspective by simply refuting the perspective of others, right?

31:15

How does that argument, the transcendental argument, positively demonstrate the truth of specifically the

31:21

Christian perspective? I think there are a few different ways that I could answer that.

31:27

One of the ways that is, I think, just intuitive, it's an inductive argument, but it's still,

31:33

I think, cogent. And this was the analogy that Bonson himself used, was that if a boxer gets into the ring and anyone who gets in the ring with him, he knocks him out first punch.

31:45

Next contender, he gets in, he knocks him out first punch. Next contender, he knocks him out first punch. To me, often.

31:51

I mean, getting knocked out, so. Now, it would be reasonable for him, after he had done this for years, to say,

31:59

I'm the best in the world. I'm the best boxer in the world. Now, somebody can claim, oh, no, you're not, because you haven't boxed every human being in the world.

32:07

That's true, but the main contenders, he's knocked him out of the ring. And if somebody claims, no, there's somebody better, hey, step into the ring.

32:15

And so I would argue it's the same way with the Christian worldview. The Christian worldview has been demonstrated to be true.

32:21

We can disprove, we can show that Islam is false. We can show that Hinduism is false.

32:27

We can show that atheism. The main contenders have been knocked out of the ring by the Christian worldview.

32:32

And so it is reasonable to say that's the one. Now, if somebody says, well, there's another one, step into the ring.

32:39

That's one way you could answer that. There's another way you can answer that, but that's inductive, because you could always claim, well, there is some worldview in the future that will be able to do what

32:47

Christianity does. Okay, but - Which, by the way, if that's what they say, and they acknowledge that their own worldview doesn't provide the foundations, but they reject the

32:56

Christian one, then they have no foundation for the truth of what they're saying. That's right. We don't know anything until that worldview comes along, and you can't even know that.

33:07

Right, that's when people tell me that, when they say, yeah, okay, you've knocked my worldview out of the water, but there could be one in the future that's discovered that holds its own against the worldview, and then

33:16

I'll believe that one. Then I would say, okay, then in the future, you'll be rational. But right now, you're not being rational, because your own worldview cannot provide these preconditions of intelligibility.

33:27

Another way you could look at it is you could say, well, broadly speaking, there's only two worldviews.

33:32

There's the Christian worldview, and there's the non -Christian worldview. Now, there are lots of different varieties of the non -Christian worldview, but they all really have the same deficits.

33:40

And so by refuting the non -Christian worldview, I have proven the Christian worldview, because the law of the excluded middle, if A is false, then not

33:51

A has to be true. And so if I've disproved the non -Christian worldview,

33:56

I've proved the Christian worldview. You'd say, oh, but you need to examine all the different categories. Well, we could do that. And you might think, well, there's an infinite number of worldviews.

34:04

Sure, but there's only a finite number of categories in terms of how you divide them. You have worldviews that say there's one

34:13

God. You have worldviews that say there's many gods. You have worldviews that say that there's no God. What are your other options?

34:20

That's it. And you find, well, there's the ones that have many gods. You can't justify morality, for example, because whose divine decree would you follow?

34:29

You can't have an absolute objective morality in a polytheistic system. It's not gonna work. Or in an atheistic system, because if we're just rearranged pond scum, then what one chemical accident does to another is morally irrelevant.

34:40

And then that narrows you down to the one God position, but how many religions have one God? Well, there's the Christian worldview, there's

34:46

Judaism, there's Islam, and we've already demolished Judaism and Islam. So you really can narrow it down to the

34:52

Christian position. And Bonson actually has a wonderful series on that that's produced by American Vision.

35:00

I think they still sell it. It's a 12 -CD series. There's actually two, volume one, volume two, but there's a lot of overlap between them.

35:07

They're just superb. And Bonson does exactly that. He analyzes all non -Christian worldviews, divides them into so many, there's only so many possible categories, and then he systematically refutes each one.

35:17

And it's glorious to see. It really is neat. I highly recommend that. And then the nice thing about that too is the audio quality is very good.

35:24

As you mentioned, a lot of the stuff from the Covenant Media Foundation, the content is gold, but the audio quality is always great.

35:33

Well, let's tease this out a little bit. I think that's excellent. Now, there are countless number of religions, but all of these religious perspectives can be categorized into these broader categories, which are not as numerous as the individual manifestation of religions that we see in the world today, right?

35:48

So you can have Hinduism, you could have some cult running around or someone inventing a religion somewhere around, but their metaphysic and their epistemology and their ethic are all gonna be categorized into a larger, you know, for example, you have monistic worldviews, you have, you know, like materialistic worldviews and all, and if you, is it the case that if you refute the general category, you've by extension also refuted the various manifestations within that category?

36:15

Exactly, exactly. There are a finite number of categories depending on how you, you can split the cake different ways, but there's this one cake, you gotta divide it.

36:24

And that's what Bonson does in that 12 part CD series.

36:30

He does it very masterfully, because he just dissects, he just analyzes. And, you know, there are different ways you can divide it.

36:37

Is the universe one? Is it two? Is it many? Is, you know, monism, dualism, atomism, whatever, but they're all, unless you have a

36:45

Christian worldview, you're gonna find that all of those have effectively the same deficit. They can't, they don't make knowledge possible.

36:51

Their epistemology does not make sense. It cannot stand on the metaphysics that is provided by that worldview.

36:58

Now you said that there are really only two worldviews. I agree. There's the Christian worldview and the non -Christian worldview. And then there are similarities within the non -Christian worldviews that just make it legitimate to categorize them as just the one of, but I can hear a skeptic saying, well, that's a false dichotomy.

37:13

How would you unpack that a little bit to show that really in reality, because of the exclusive nature of Christianity, when you're set against Christianity, there really is only two positions.

37:22

Why don't you unpack that a little bit more for us? Well, it can't be a false dichotomy because of the law of the excluded middle.

37:28

A and not A are the only two positions according to the law of the excluded middle. So he's still a critic. He would say it's a false dichotomy is ignoring a lot of logic.

37:36

Now he could say, but I can divide it a different way. I can say there's atheism and non -atheism. That's true.

37:41

You can divide it that way. And that's also not a false dichotomy. It's a true dichotomy because there's no excluded middle there.

37:49

But then I'm going to point out that the atheism worldview fails and all the other categories of the non -atheism worldview, except Christianity, they also fail to produce knowledge.

37:58

So, but again, people don't have possible worldviews.

38:05

They have an actual worldview. They have a way of thinking. And my job as an apologist, I mean, we can talk about hypothetical worldviews that haven't been invented yet.

38:12

We can talk about that. But the fact is that all real worldviews that people have tried to bring against Christianity have been demolished.

38:20

They've been knocked out of the ring in the first punch. And if anybody thinks that they've got an argument, bring it to me, we'll chat about it.

38:27

You think, well, my version of atheism will work. Well, let's try it. Let's see what happens. Now, isn't it the case also that by not only refuting the non -Christian worldview, we can also present a positive case as to how

38:41

Christianity provides a metaphysic epistemology and ethic that is consistent and itself provides the necessary preconditions for intelligibility.

38:50

And because we defend the Christian worldview as a package deal of which includes its exclusive claims, wouldn't it not also be the case that if we show that Christianity is a foundation for knowledge, we by extension demonstrate that it is the only one since part of the package is that it has the claim that it's the only one.

39:09

Wouldn't that eliminate the need to inductively go through every single worldview perspective out there if we actually present a positive case for Christianity's ability to provide those foundations?

39:18

Yes, that's another way you could answer that question. I think that's totally legitimate. And I think we need to do some of that as presuppositionalists.

39:27

We need to demonstrate why is it that we can have knowledge? Well, we have a God whose mind determines knowledge.

39:33

God's mind is not like ours. We're made in his image, but we're creatures. He's the creator. God's mind is the source of all truth.

39:40

Something is true. That's how I define truth. Something is true if it corresponds to the mind of God. Something is true if it's something

39:46

God would say. And how can we have truth? Well, because we have a God who has revealed himself.

39:51

That's what the scriptures tell us. God has revealed some of his thoughts to us in the scriptures. Some of them he's hardwired directly into us.

39:58

He's revealed himself in nature too, but most clearly in the scriptures because that's written in a human language. And so we can have knowledge in the

40:04

Christian worldview because we have a God who is the source of all knowledge. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are deposited in Christ according to the scriptures.

40:12

And so we can have knowledge because we have a knowledge giver. And according to the scriptures, this

40:17

God has given us knowledge in a number of ways. And then we can go through some of the specifics and talk about how laws of logic makes sense in the

40:24

Christian worldview, how morality makes sense in the Christian worldview. So it's not just a negative. It's not just your worldview doesn't make sense of these things, but it's a positive as well.

40:32

The Christian worldview does. It makes sense of these things. It justifies our confidence in laws of logic and in objective morality and basic reliability of senses and so on.

40:42

Yeah, now, I could just imagine people saying stuff in the comments. You said something very intriguing.

40:48

As Christians, we'd be like, amen. I could just picture this captain. All the non -Christian worldviews were knocked out with one punch.

40:55

Again, in defense of Dr. Lyle here, he's making a passing statement, but that can be defended.

41:01

And that is where the apologetic task is taking place when we interact with those. So obviously not everyone's gonna agree with that statement, but that's where you get into the nitty gritty of which obviously we're not going to do that at this moment.

41:11

Just so folks know, you're not just making these passive dismissive statements of other perspectives.

41:18

And in fact, just to elaborate on that, one of the articles I have on the Biblical Science Institute website demonstrates how science is predicated upon the

41:27

Christian worldview and would be impossible, apart from it, would be impossible if, for example, evolution were true, if atheism were true.

41:35

And so take a look at that article if you wanna see the meaty details of how this is developed. Obviously in a brief show like this, we can't get all the nuances, but this has been done.

41:46

I'm just reporting sort of the results of the intellectual work that's been done by a number of different people.

41:52

Thank you very much for that, yeah. Okay, in a debate that I had with someone,

41:57

I used the argument, of course, that the Christian worldview provides the necessary foundation for knowledge and intelligibility.

42:04

And so the skeptic responded and I had an answer for him, but I wanted to see how you would unpack this. This is one of my greedy questions.

42:10

All the other questions where people ask, this is one of my questions, let me see what he would say. He says, well, I know that I exist.

42:16

And so while I don't think we can know the ontology of reality, he says, it doesn't matter because the proposition

42:21

I exist would be true regardless of the ontological situation. So he says, I could know at least that.

42:26

And I think there are problems with that, intense problems with that. You cannot dismiss, you know, you're making metaphysical statements even when you say

42:34

I exist. But how would you have responded to someone who suggested, well,

42:39

I know that I exist and it doesn't matter what ontology, that's true regardless of the ontology. How do you know you exist?

42:45

How do you know that? Of course, a lot of people will quote Descartes. Well, I think, therefore

42:50

I am. But of course, as Bonson pointed out and others, when you say, I think, you've already presupposed your own existence, right?

42:58

Because you should say thinking is occurring, therefore. But wait, you can't conclude I exist from thinking is occurring.

43:04

So you can't even demonstrate your own existence. And so Descartes was wrong.

43:09

And the one thing he thought he could prove, Descartes wanted to establish a basis for knowledge by establishing something that he could not doubt.

43:19

And so he concluded, well, I can't doubt my own existence. I think, therefore, I am. But in fact, he was reasoning in a vicious circle because he arbitrarily assumed his own existence as the person who was doing the thinking and then concluded that he was the person doing the thinking.

43:34

But you can't conclude that logically. From the statement thinking occurs, you can't conclude, therefore,

43:39

I exist because it could be somebody else doing the thinking. So you can't even know that you exist apart from the Christian worldview.

43:45

You say, but I know I exist. Yes, you do because the Christian worldview is true and God's given you that knowledge. So yes, you can know that.

43:51

But apart from the Christian worldview, you couldn't even know that trivial thing. I think also an interesting way to answer it as I found helpful in certain discussions the common criticism is you ask, what is the

44:02

I? How can you talk about the I, the self, independent of a metaphysical context? I don't even know what

44:07

I means independent of a metaphysic. And so I try to do that to force the person to adopt some form of metaphysics so that we could actually progress in the conversation.

44:16

Any number of ways to take that question there. Good, very good. So now here's my last question.

44:23

And then we're gonna move on to the comments. How are you doing? Are you hanging in there? Yeah. Okay, that's the portion where folks really enjoy because I just, you know, the guest is in the hot seat and we just question after question and people really do find that really helpful.

44:37

So, all right, folks have been asking me ad nauseum and so, you know,

44:43

I'm gonna ask you so I don't have to answer it. Folks have been asking me about classical foundationalism.

44:49

Are you familiar with this? Somewhat, yes. Okay, do you think you can kind of unpack and you're just off the top of your head as best you can.

44:58

What is classical foundationalism and why is it an issue in these sorts of discussions when we're talking about the presuppositional foundation versus say a classical foundation?

45:08

Why is the classical foundation perspective not sufficient to ground those foundations and the presuppositional foundations do in fact do the job?

45:18

If I understand it properly, the classical foundation can't justify itself. Yes, there are a number of different foundational views actually where people say, this is my foundational belief and from that I can learn other things.

45:31

But then I gotta ask the question, how do you know that that foundational belief is true? And that's where most people, they just, their head explodes because they haven't thought about that.

45:38

Well, it makes sense to me. Well, that doesn't mean anything. It may, maybe it doesn't, maybe somebody else has a different foundation.

45:44

Well, it's probably basic, Dr. Lyle. It's just probably basic. Yeah, but okay, but how do you know that? How do you know it's properly basic?

45:50

You know, laws of logic are properly basic. Well, how do you know that? How do you know that they have the properties that they have too, that they're universal and invariant?

46:00

And, well, that's just - Possibility of the contrary, and then boom, welcome to presuppositionalism.

46:06

But if they're gonna pull the properly basic, I'm gonna say, well, in that case, everything I claim is properly basic. So you can't argue with me because everything

46:15

I say is true and it's properly basic, so you can't argue with it. And then people realize, wait a minute, I have to defend even those things that I claim are basic.

46:24

I still have to defend that. And the only way you can do that, if it's foundational, the only way you can defend it is by a somewhat circular, hopefully virtuous, transcendental argument.

46:35

That's right. Very good, very good. All right, those are all the questions that I have. Now we're gonna go through the live chat. This is where the fun begins.

46:41

Some of the questions may not even be related, and it is completely up to you whether you wanna entertain any of them.

46:47

And they might go in any which direction. So here is the first question here.

46:54

It's gonna pop up on the screen. Does paraconsistent logic like the liar's paradox or quantum logic pose a problem for Tagg?

47:00

And although I think he's probably suggesting that Tagg presupposes kind of Aristotelian categories of like the basic three laws of logic, law of identity, law of excluded middle, law of contradiction.

47:09

But people often ask about this, what about other logics, right? So what is paraconsistent logic and does it pose a problem?

47:17

Well, I'm not sure if I understand the question. I guess there's the liar's paradox.

47:22

If you say I'm lying, are you telling the truth or are you lying? You can't classify it as true or false.

47:29

So does that mean there's a third category? I would say no, I would say that's not a proposition because a proposition has to be a meaningful truth claim.

47:36

And so when you say I'm lying, you're really speaking nonsense. I mean, it may sound, it's grammatically correct, but you're not making a meaningful statement or this statement is false.

47:45

That's not a meaningful statement. It refers, it's self -referential in a way that's contradictory. I would say it's not a proposition.

47:51

True and false apply to propositions and they always apply to propositions. Every proposition is either true or false. Quantum logic, now

47:57

I know something about quantum physics. And in quantum, you deal with probabilities, but those probabilities collapse whenever you observe the system.

48:07

And so it's still true or false, it's still one or zero ultimately. It's just that when you're not observing it, particles don't act like particles, they act like waves that are distributed in space.

48:19

But it's still perfectly logical. Some people think, well, the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics where the cat is both dead and alive until you look at it.

48:30

That's a way of solving a problem because of course it doesn't work on the large scale anyway.

48:38

But in the quantum world, particles really aren't particles. They don't have a discrete location in space until you make a measurement and then they assume a discrete location in space.

48:48

Otherwise they're distributed in a wave like fashion that we can describe. But the fact is it still obeys all the laws of logic.

48:56

The standard rules of logic are still followed in quantum mechanics. And otherwise we wouldn't have been able to discover any of them because we use logic, we use reason to discover those things.

49:05

So I don't think those are a problem for TAG. Some people have added other categories to logic too.

49:11

They'll say there's true and false and there's I don't know. Well, you're confusing issues there because you're confusing the truth value with my knowledge of the truth value.

49:21

The claim is either true or false. The fact that you may or may not know about it is irrelevant. Now there may be certain situations where you can use a three or four category system like that where you're combining the truth value with my knowledge of the truth value.

49:34

But they are separate issues. Ultimately any proposition is either true or false. And so I don't think it's a challenge for TAG.

49:41

Very good, very good. Jeff says, looking nice Eli with a jacket. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

49:47

Here's a question here. That was one for me, one for me. Here's another for you. As a scientist, how does one start a conversation with a fellow scientist?

49:55

I find that they want to jump right into the evidences. That's a great question. It's not a formula that I use.

50:03

It depends on the situation. If they want to jump into the, well, I'm a scientist. So I'm happy to jump into the evidence.

50:09

That's great. Perhaps a lot of people watching this are not scientists and they don't want to deal with the details.

50:15

I understand that, that's fine. Keep in mind, one thing to keep in mind because you might have a

50:20

PhD who's an expert. He's an expert in his nuanced field. He doesn't know everything about everything.

50:26

And even in that field, there are other experts that if you say he's an evolutionist and he's saying this evidence proves evolution.

50:34

Well, keep in mind for every expert, there's an equal and opposite expert. I can find PhD biologists who would argue that this evidence strongly confirms creation.

50:42

One of the things that I would try to do with scientists is to talk about the scientific method and why is that a reasonable approach to doing science?

50:54

Why is it that, I mean, science is all about finding patterns in nature. And so I might ask him, why is it that we expect to find patterns in nature?

51:03

And in particular, what I would like to work back to, and it takes a little while to get to this, but I would like to work back to the inductive principle because science is based among other things on the inductive principle.

51:13

The inductive principle is where we sample a few individual circumstances and we conclude a general pattern from that.

51:21

And so we find, you drop something and it falls at 9 .8 meters per second squared. You do it again, you do it again, you drop different things, they all fall at 9 .8

51:28

meters per second squared. When you say all things fall at 9 .8 meters per second squared, you haven't sampled the entire universe.

51:34

You've just, you've done a few and you've extrapolated the general pattern. Science is all about that. Now, I, as a

51:41

Christian can make sense of the scientific method because I would say there is a God who has imposed order on creation.

51:47

He's designed our minds, he's designed our senses so I can rely on my senses basically, maybe not perfectly because of sin and so on.

51:53

But in any case, the scientific method makes sense to me. We live in an ordered universe because God has imposed order on it.

52:00

He upholds it in a consistent fashion. He's promised us to continue to uphold it in a consistent fashion.

52:05

Genesis 8 .22, God promises the basic cycles of nature, daytime, nighttime, seed time harvest will continue as long as the earth remains.

52:13

So I would expect the inductive principle to work in a Christian worldview. But if you're not a Christian, how do you make sense of the inductive principle upon which all science is based?

52:22

It seems to me, you know, Mr. Unbeliever, you're using a method and I'm glad you are. I like science too.

52:27

You're using a method that doesn't comport with your worldview. It doesn't make sense that you should have confidence in the scientific method given your rejection of the

52:35

Christian worldview. And if I get them back to induction, if they understand it, the argument's over right there because no unbeliever can justify induction.

52:43

It can't be done. Admittedly so. A lot of them admit we don't have an answer to that. Great, excellent. Here's another question.

52:48

To formulate TAG, is it necessary for the laws of logic to be universal and invariant? Uh, I think so.

52:58

Yes, I've never really thought about that. They are, they are universal and invariant.

53:03

Right. And that stems from the nature of God. They're universal because God's sovereign over the entire universe.

53:08

And they're invariant because God doesn't change with time. He's beyond time. So they are universal and invariant.

53:13

Is it necessary for TAG? I'd have to think about that a little bit. That's a very abstract question.

53:20

Yeah, yeah, to formulate TAG, I think, well, it would seem to be, since we're gonna appeal to the transcendental necessity of God, which is connected to the transcendental necessity of his thinking, which is the foundation for logic.

53:31

So it would seem that that would have to be the case. I would think so. Yeah, yeah, good question. Daniel asks, what is the best way in your view to argue for the laws of logic as immaterial?

53:41

Well, if they're material, where are they? Cause I'd like to see one. I'd like to, you know, would it make sense if I say, hey, you know what?

53:48

You can't use the law of non -contradiction anymore because I found it yesterday and I exploded it with dynamite. So I mean,

53:55

I think just a very, a very simple argument like that would suffice to do it.

54:01

Of course, that came up in the famous Bonson -Stein debate. It was funny the way it happened too, cause

54:07

Stein had asked, no, cause Bonson was asking

54:13

Stein if laws of logic were material or immaterial. And Stein said, well, how can a law be material?

54:19

And Bonson said, that's what I'm gonna ask you. He said, well, they're immaterial. And then it turned around cause

54:25

Stein then asked Bonson of one example of something other than God that's immaterial. And he said, laws of logic. Of course,

54:30

Stein had just admitted that. So skeptics, even if it's just a moment's reflection, you can't have material in the sense of, you know, material would mean extended space.

54:41

It has a location in space. Laws of logic are not like that. They're abstract. They work everywhere in the universe.

54:47

They don't change with time. They're not material. And if they're material, but universal, we would be killed because we wouldn't fit in the universe.

54:55

You know, all right. Very good. Very good. Does the ASC model have flaws?

55:02

And I'm sure you know what that is. Would it not be simpler to assume the speed of light to be the same way, same both ways? Now I would imagine the way you're gonna answer this, you can go into great length.

55:10

We'll try to keep the answers as distinct as possible so we can get some more questions. But I know people that you're on, they wanna kind of ask you those depressing questions that they have.

55:18

That's fine. I don't think it has flaws. Just briefly as background, it's called the

55:24

Anisotropic Synchrony Convention ASC model. It's a model that I've proposed as to how God got the light from the distant galaxies to the earth within the biblical timescale.

55:33

And what it does is it presupposes that the Bible is using the more ancient synchrony convention rather than the modern

55:41

Einstein convention. And in the ancient synchrony convention, the speed of light when it's moving toward an observer is instantaneous and perhaps different directions, different speeds in other directions.

55:54

And people have a big problem with this because we tend to think of space and time as absolute. They're not.

56:01

Einstein discovered that the rate at which time flows, the length of rulers depends on the motion of the observer.

56:08

And that's counterintuitive. I know it is. And so people tend to think that the speed of light in one direction should either be this or that.

56:16

There's just no way we can measure it, but it's not. The speed of light in one, now the round trip speed of light, you take speed of light, shoot it out to a mirror, bring it back, you'll get the same answer every time.

56:26

If the distance doesn't change, it'll be exactly the same number. The round trip time average speed of light is constant in vacuum.

56:33

The speed of light on a one -way trip, it could be very different that way than this way. And we get to define that.

56:38

And I know that's counterintuitive because you'd think, well, it's either this or that. If only we had a God's eye perspective of the universe, if only he would whisper into our ear what it is, but it's not that way.

56:48

The one -way speed of light is very much like the metric system versus the English system.

56:54

And so the question is a bit like saying, isn't the metric system really the right system because it's much simpler than the

57:00

English system? Because everything in the metric is divisible by 10, which is why scientists use it and not the English system, which only the

57:07

United States and one other nation uses. But in any case, does that mean the metric system's right?

57:14

No, because Occam's razor, the idea that the simpler model was better is about competing models.

57:20

It's not about competing conventions. You can use metric, you can use English, and you can convert between the two.

57:26

You can use the ASC convention, you can use the modern Einstein convention, you can convert between the two. There's no contradiction, there's no discrepancy.

57:32

They're just different ways of measuring the same phenomenon. Very good. Here's a question.

57:39

Is the Trinitarian argument for predication the only answer the presuppositionalist can give in response to other monotheistic worldviews?

57:46

Now, just to give you context, I don't know if you understand the question, but the Trinitarian argument is the argument that we use that the ontological

57:52

Trinity grounds the issue of the one and the many. So they're saying, is that the only way we can respond to the monotheistic position?

58:01

No, I don't think it's the only way. It's a good way. I think it's true that the

58:07

Trinity accounts for the one and the many. The fact that we have a universe, one but diverse universe, it makes sense of that.

58:15

There are other ways though that you could argue against competing monotheistic worldviews like Islam and Judaism.

58:22

You don't have to use the one and the many. Islam, you could point out that there's no ultimate justice in Islam because Allah does forgive people, but the penalty for sins never paid.

58:32

So there's no ultimate justice there. And so how do you have morality? How do you have an absolute objective morality that Allah himself doesn't seem to follow?

58:39

Not consistently. There are other ways to argue against the non -Christian monotheistic worldviews.

58:46

Very good. Another question here. What is the best way to respond to so -called Bible contradictions if you don't know the answer by heart?

58:53

Now, first of all, before you answer Dr. Lyle, if you're interested in how to answer

58:58

Bible contradictions, Dr. Lyle has a pretty cool book where he covers a lot of apparent

59:04

Bible contradictions. The title escapes me because it's not in this library. It's in the bedroom. I don't remember.

59:10

It's called Keeping Faith in the Age of Reason. There we go. Keeping Faith in the Age of Reason. You might wanna check that out, but go ahead.

59:15

Why don't you answer the question for Dan? And that book answers over 400 alleged Bible contradictions. But I got a great answer for you if you don't know the answer to that specific contradiction.

59:24

The quick answer is, why would that be wrong? If the Bible has contradictions, why would that, in your view, disprove it?

59:31

Because you see, the law of non -contradiction is a Christian conception. The reason I, as a Christian, know that two contradictory statements cannot both be true is because the

59:39

Bible tells me that God cannot deny himself. And it tells me that all truth, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are deposited in Christ.

59:47

And so that means truth cannot contradict truth. So, and I know that this is gonna be true at all times because my God doesn't change with time.

59:53

And I know it's gonna be true everywhere in the universe because my God's sovereign and omnipresent. So I can account, so if I find a contradiction between these two statements,

01:00:02

I, as a Christian, can say, that's wrong. One of those two statements has to be false. But if you're claiming that the

01:00:08

Bible has contradictions and therefore it shouldn't be believed, what is your basis for believing that the law of non -contradiction is always true?

01:00:15

Maybe you found an example of two contradictions that are both true. Now, how can you, as an unbeliever, possibly argue against that?

01:00:22

It says, well, I've never seen two true contradictions. I say, I've never seen Antarctica, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, right?

01:00:28

Have you explored everywhere in the universe? Have you explored all possible truth claims that you can know that no two contradictory cannot both be true?

01:00:35

And of course, he can't do that because he doesn't have universal experience. And so that, I think, is a great way to answer that. Very good, very good.

01:00:42

Next question here. Could other religions that have a revelational epistemology claim that they can know things for certain because their all -knowing

01:00:49

God has told them? Well, they can certainly make that claim. And now we have an issue of competing Bibles.

01:00:55

And I'm gonna win that debate because the Bible is unique in terms of literature.

01:01:00

All the other revelations, one person writes down his beliefs. That's it. The Bible written by 40 different people over a time span of 2 ,000 years, and it has a common theme going throughout it.

01:01:11

So, but yeah, they can make that claim. And then we can analyze their alleged God, and we can talk about the pro,

01:01:17

I mean, the fact, there's many different ways you could refute that. But you could ask them, okay, how do you know that what you have is knowledge from God?

01:01:27

Tell me about your God, how you have knowledge from your God. How did you get it? Well, it was privately revealed to me.

01:01:33

Well, how do you know it was from God and not just a bit of undigested cheese that was producing some experience in your mind?

01:01:40

How do you know that, right? Well, how do you know? I've got an objective word, an objective written revelation that anyone can examine.

01:01:47

So we know it's not just a bit of undigested cheese and so on. So now we have competing revelations, and I would deal with it on that basis.

01:01:56

And you could analyze their God, point out how they're, because if their God is not the biblical God, he's not gonna provide the preconditions of intelligibility.

01:02:02

You're gonna find, you can't justify laws of logic, their invariance and universality can't, so there's multiple ways you can answer that.

01:02:11

Sure, sure, very good. Another question here, what do you say to those who argue for older through evolution by God's guidance?

01:02:17

I've had many try to argue that God used evolution in creation. Well, a number of ways you'd answer that.

01:02:24

First of all, it's not what God said he did. I mean, Genesis tells us that God created, he did so, he spoke things into existence, and he didn't, now if he,

01:02:35

God certainly had the power to use an evolutionary process, there's no doubt about that, but he chose not to, and he tells us the way he created things.

01:02:42

And people say, oh, but you're not interpreting Genesis right. Well, I've actually got a book on how do we interpret scripture called understanding

01:02:48

Genesis, and it's not just about Genesis. It's basically presuppositional hermeneutics. It's if we have a high view of scripture, how should we interpret it?

01:02:57

Genesis is historical narrative. We know that many ways, the frequent use of the Vaughn consecutives and this happened and that happened and so on.

01:03:04

It's written in the same style as Exodus and so on. It's events that happened in history. It's not poetic. Hebrew has a very specific form of poetry.

01:03:14

It's characterized by parallelism, where you'll say something and you'll say the same thing using different words or the flip side.

01:03:20

And so the heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Kind of says the same thing, two different ways. You don't find that in Genesis.

01:03:27

It's not poetic. It's literal history. If God used evolution, then you got death before sin. And that's a problem because if death occurred millions of years before Adam was even created, then death is not the enemy.

01:03:39

It's not something that came into the world as a result of Adam's sin. I know some people say, it was just human death that was introduced.

01:03:45

I don't think you can defend that scripturally. When Adam and Eve sinned, God killed an animal to provide skins of clothing for them, right?

01:03:51

Killing is not mentioned, but the skins of clothing are. Those would be animal skins. So God instituted animal death even at the time of Adam's sin.

01:03:58

We find evidence of fossils with things like arthritis and cancer in them. There's a whole field called paleopathology that studies disease and fossils.

01:04:06

Now, if those were around before Adam, because life forms have been evolving for billions of years, and then

01:04:13

God finally got around to creating Adam and called it very good, then that means death and suffering are very good.

01:04:19

They're part of God's very good world. Instead of being an intruder, an enemy that has been introduced, an enemy that will be destroyed in the end.

01:04:26

And I think the gospel message itself depends on a literal Adam. Paul certainly believed that.

01:04:33

The way that he argued it, 1 Corinthians 15, one man, that's Adam, came death.

01:04:38

By one man comes resurrection from the dead. So he certainly saw those as comparable. And so if Adam's just a metaphor for evolution, then what is

01:04:46

Jesus? What's he a metaphor for? It doesn't make sense. And what else was

01:04:51

I gonna say about that? I mean, those are the main points,

01:04:57

I think. Yeah, no worries. But also very briefly too, the whole concept of the kinsmen redeemer, it's because we're related to Jesus that he can die on the cross in our place.

01:05:08

We're all of one blood, the Bible says. That goes back to a literal Genesis. But the Bible says the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins,

01:05:15

Hebrew 10 .4. They were a reminder of sins. They pointed forward to the savior. But if evolution's true, we are related to animals.

01:05:22

And so why can't their blood atone for sin? So you see, all these Christian doctrines just crumble if you think that God used evolution somehow.

01:05:30

Excellent. Here's a question. Does the uncertainty principle prove that the fundamental nature of reality is indeterminate?

01:05:36

Well, that's deep. It means that things at the quantum scale don't work exactly the way we assume they work in the large scale.

01:05:47

The uncertainty principle is rooted in the fact that at the smallest scale, all objects have a wave nature to them.

01:05:55

They behave kind of like waves. And a wave is extended in space, right? In example, if you throw a rock into a pond, the ripples, they're not just one location.

01:06:05

They're not over the entire universe, but they are extended in space. They don't have one specific location.

01:06:12

And it turns out that particles, subatomic particles, will behave like that until a measurement is done on them.

01:06:19

And when a measurement is done on them, they will assume one location and it will always be either a peak or a trough, or they're most probable at the peak or the trough of that wave.

01:06:27

So what does that mean? Does it mean that nature is indeterminate? Not necessarily.

01:06:33

If you're talking about determinism in the sense that any effect is determined by a precedent cause, then the uncertainty principle doesn't necessarily prove indeterminism.

01:06:50

Are you still there? All right. Do we cut out there for a second?

01:06:56

You're good. You froze. And I thought you were upset at something. How far do

01:07:04

I need to go back? No, you got through. You got your answer through. Okay, because I will point out though that the uncertainty principle means that not everything can be calculated.

01:07:14

You cannot determine from a human perspective event

01:07:21

B from cause A beyond a certain level of precision. It does prove that, but it doesn't necessarily prove indeterminacy.

01:07:29

That's an open question in physics. All right, this happened before once we got started.

01:07:38

So he'll just reconnect in just a few moments. Guys, I hope you're enjoying this discussion.

01:07:43

I sure am. We're covering some really great stuff. You guys have some really good questions coming through. We may not be able to get all of them, but I'm gonna try to reach out to Dr.

01:07:54

Lyle right now to make sure he can reconnect. So, you know, we'll be right back after these messages.

01:08:00

Yeah, I think he's on already. There you go. There we go. We thought we had the demons cast out of there, but I guess this guy comes only to outlive her faster.

01:08:08

I didn't pray over the computer before we started. So that's my bad. I think I got most of the answer out. So there you go.

01:08:13

You're doing an excellent job. Here's a question here. Is there a philosophical reason why we must justify the reliability of logic?

01:08:20

What if the non -Christian denies we need to give justification to be justified? Oh, then you just say, well, then

01:08:27

I'm glad you agree with me that I'm right and you're wrong. And if you say, well, wait a minute, you need to justify that statement.

01:08:33

You just told me I don't. Do we need to justify those things we believe in? That's the issue. And if the answer is no, then

01:08:40

I'm just going to say I'm right and the Christian worldview is right. You need to repent. If the answer is, well, yes, we do need to justify things.

01:08:47

Then I'm going to point out you can't in your world. Do you justify those things necessary knowledge? I can, and therefore you need to repent and be a

01:08:52

Christian. And if you're not going to justify your claims, then you're not arguing like get off. Yeah, you're giving up reason.

01:09:00

That's right. Okay. Someone has a question here. Dr. Lyle, in your debate with Hugh Ross, he largely dismissed your young earth evidences.

01:09:07

Have you addressed his debate rebuttal somewhere? Maybe give him a source or something. I mean, he can dismiss them if he likes, but they're there.

01:09:16

I mean, the evidences are there on our website, biblical sciences. I haven't gone through in specific.

01:09:23

I mean, if he's just going to dismiss something but not give me a logical reason, there's not much I can do, right? I mean, I can't say, well, yes, yes, it really is.

01:09:33

I mean, he's going to say, no, it's not. Yes, it really is. I mean, if he wants to give me some evidence that challenges my position by all means, but if he's just going to dismiss it, there's not much

01:09:41

I can say about that. The evidences that I present, I have backed them up. They're referenced. I'm not all creationists or as rigorous as they should be, but I try to,

01:09:50

I'm a scientist. I'm a PhD scientist. I try to be very careful. I don't use evidence that I think is questionable.

01:09:59

I do think that science is limited in its ability to discover what happened in the past, but nonetheless,

01:10:06

I think there are things that are inconsistent if you believe in the millions of years. And so our website has a lot of those. Our series on the planets shows some evidence that winds up with recent creation and not the billions of years.

01:10:19

If your presentation of TAG presupposes that we know that our faculties are reliable, how do you refute the skeptic who doubts that reliability and thus doubts our need to justify it?

01:10:30

I don't think they, well, let me see if I understand that. It does presuppose that our faculties are reliable, but everybody assumes that because you couldn't get off the ground if you don't assume that your own faculties are reliable.

01:10:48

The question is, what is the epistemological justification for that belief? Or do you have epistemological justification for that belief?

01:10:54

And I would argue only the Christian worldview gives a reasonable, it gives us a reason for trusting in the reliability of our senses.

01:11:03

And this again is, this might concern that issue we talked about previously about chronological versus logical primacy.

01:11:10

Certainly I assume chronologically first that my faculties are basically reliable in order for me to read the scriptures and discover the logical foundation for why that is the case.

01:11:21

So, but we do need to justify anything that you believe. You have to justify it. Otherwise I can assume the exact opposite.

01:11:28

Sure. Right? I don't need to justify A. I'll say, okay, then I can assume not A and I don't need to justify that either. Yeah. And now that I'm thinking about it, if your presentation of TAG presupposes that we know our faculty are reliable,

01:11:37

I don't even think, now I believe our senses are reliable, but I don't think that's a necessary condition of the transcendental argument.

01:11:43

Suppose our senses aren't reliable. We don't know the transcendental necessity of what we're demonstrating based on our senses.

01:11:49

So if you want to throw out senses hypothetically, the argument doesn't rely on sensation at all, I don't think. Yeah. Although I think the skeptic who doubts that reliability,

01:11:59

I don't think skeptics do doubt that reliability because the fact is the skeptic still looks both ways before he crosses the street.

01:12:06

So he does believe that his senses are basically reliable, that his faculties are basically reliable. So he does believe that.

01:12:13

And so then, and does he doubt our need to justify? If he doubts our need to justify something, then again, you're giving up the debate at that point.

01:12:22

You're saying, I don't have a good reason for what I believe. And okay, you've given up. Yeah. Very good.

01:12:28

We only got a few more. You're doing excellent. And we're just under an hour and 15 and then we'll wrap things up. Okay? Okay. All right.

01:12:34

Here's a question, Cameron, again. Would TAG be sound if the law of excluded middle were false or dubitable?

01:12:43

The one version of it that I presented that demonstrates the truth of the Christian worldview by the impossibility of the contrary.

01:12:51

If you could say there's a third option, then I guess that would fail, wouldn't it?

01:12:57

But I think the law of the excluded middle, if somebody doubts that, I think

01:13:02

I would go about it another way. I think I would say, what is your basis for doubting the excluded middle? Can you give me some examples of where it's false?

01:13:11

So I'm not sure. Yeah. It depends on how you answer it. But if you take it in terms of a positive case, rather than I'm falsifying the non -Christian position, instead

01:13:22

I'm presenting a positive case for the Christian worldview, then maybe it wouldn't depend on that so much. That's a really abstract question.

01:13:31

Well, I'm only gonna show one more question here just to give you a break because you have been doing excellent. And I know people are gonna, some of the questions people are asking are overlapping.

01:13:40

I think this is a fun question. What is your favorite movie line to use to illustrate a presuppositional principle?

01:13:47

Now, I'm not gonna have it posted on there because I think let me see if I could find, here we go. Someone posted it here.

01:13:52

Let me see. That's a response.

01:13:57

Let me see here. Oh man, I lost it. Okay, here we go. What is your favorite movie line to use in presenting presuppositional thinking?

01:14:07

I think that's a fun question since you can incorporate little cultural references that might bring your point across really well.

01:14:12

So I'll put you on the spot there. I have no idea. And it's my good friend, Dan Leitha, posting that too.

01:14:21

Presuppositional thinking. I don't know. I don't know.

01:14:26

What comes to your mind, Eli? What do you think of? I'll probably think of something after, if you think of one, I'll probably think of another.

01:14:32

I don't know. That's a good question. Look at that. He stumped the people on the show. Look at that. Thanks a lot,

01:14:38

Dan. The movie, I can't think of a specific line, but the movie, The Matrix, just so people know, and I don't make a hard line about it.

01:14:50

I've seen it on network television where some, because I know it's a rated R movie. I've seen it on network TV where some of that stuff's edited out.

01:14:55

So I haven't seen the full thing, but it really opened up some categories for folks because it causes you to think, how do

01:15:03

I know that my senses are basically reliable? And I think that's a wonderful question that people need to ask.

01:15:08

And so, you know, maybe one of the lines, why do my eyes hurt so much?

01:15:14

Because you've never used them before. Maybe that's a good line.

01:15:19

I don't know. There'll probably be 10 others that pop into my head after this conversation, but The Matrix is neat in exposing presuppositions and how do we really know what we know?

01:15:29

That's right, that's right. Well, Dr. Lyle, thank you so much. You have done an excellent job in answering my questions and then interacting with folks' questions here.

01:15:37

Where can people find you if they want to take a look at some of your articles? The Biblical Science Institute, and it's just one word, biblicalscienceinstitute .com.

01:15:45

You can check us out there, lots of free articles online. We have a bookstore there too if they wanna get some resources. And hopefully at some point, we'll start doing speaking engagements again.

01:15:54

So be praying for that. Yeah, definitely will. And what are your top three books you would suggest to people to look into if they're interested in presuppositional apologetics?

01:16:04

And it's no worries if you include your own. Okay, well, yeah, The Ultimate Proof of Creation, which you mentioned, and that's kind of a primer.

01:16:13

It's really to introduce presuppositional apologetics to especially in the light of creation.

01:16:18

A follow -up for that, Understanding Genesis, which is presuppositional hermeneutics. How do we read the Bible presuppositionally?

01:16:25

Anything by Bonson would be good. He's got, his primer is called, I think it's called Always Ready. And that's just a, that's a classic.

01:16:34

Right here, there we go. Always Ready. And that's a collection of articles that he wrote, arranged in a logical order.

01:16:41

I think it was published posthumously, but in any case, it's a great resource. Right, well, very good.

01:16:46

Well, folks, I hope you guys have enjoyed this content. There's a lot to unpack here. I am a fan of my own show, so people

01:16:52

I interview, I go back and I listen to it myself. So I hope you guys have found this useful.

01:16:58

If you have not already, go onto YouTube, if you're watching this on Facebook, and subscribe to the

01:17:04

Revealed Apologetics YouTube page. There are a lot of other interviews there that we cover presuppositional apologetics from a whole wide range of perspectives.

01:17:12

And we look forward to continue to do that, to show the strength, the biblical foundation, and the flexibility with which one can use this methodology.

01:17:18

So subscribe if you haven't already, and go over and check Dr. Lyle's website as well.

01:17:24

Once again, thank you so much for being on, and that concludes our show for today. Take care, and God bless. Bye -bye.