The Folly of Unbelief: An Interview with the Author

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and I am happy to be doing,

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I don't think I've done it before, but a morning live stream. So hopefully folks, they can get their cups of coffee and have their computer open or their phone to listen in on this conversation that I'm going to be having with my very special guest.

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I'm looking forward to this discussion. I'm always excited when apologists write books, books that need to be written.

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We're gonna be talking with a new young author of this book here,

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The Folly of Unbelief, which I highly recommend folks to pick up. You can pick it up on Kindle, on Amazon, both in a

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Kindle format and a physical format. I'm kind of the nerdy type. I like to get books in both formats, especially books that I really enjoy.

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I haven't finished it yet, but as I've been reading through it, I really like what I'm reading. And if you guys are interested in presuppositional apologetics,

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I highly recommend you pick that up. And support, support your fellow apologists. It takes a lot of work to write books.

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It takes a lot of work to do the study. People aren't just sitting around twiddling their thumbs. This, for apologists who get their information from YouTube and other books, it's very important that you support those people because it takes a lot of work to do all those things.

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All right, well, before we get started, I want to let folks know that registration is now open for my apologetics online course entitled

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PresuppU, An Introduction to Biblical Apologetics. If you wanna learn presuppositional apologetics, but you're too broke, busted, and disgusted to pay for seminary, believe me,

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I am a seminary graduate. I earned two master's degrees at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.

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And while that sounds highfalutin, I am, I cry myself to sleep with all of the loans

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I still have to pay off, so it's expensive. But if you're not gonna go the seminary route, but you wanna learn apologetics,

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I have a five -week long online course that you can sign up.

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I left a link in the comments section on revealedapologetics .com. And just click the menu that's entitled

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PresuppU, and you can actually sign up for the class and enroll. And there are two formats of the class.

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If you are the type of person that likes to listen to lectures and just work at your own pace, there is a basic package available for folks who wanna do that.

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And for folks who need kind of that in -class experience, if you sign up for the premium version of the course, the students who sign up on that version will be able to meet with me once a week for an hour or two, where we break down in more depth the content of the course.

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We even do some role -playing, so we can try and use the material that's being taught in the course in kind of real time and see, like, how does this work?

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And so folks are able to ask their questions. Super exciting. I did do the course twice before, and we had folks from all over the world sign up.

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It was really awesome to kind of get together and meet other believers of like mind. So if you guys are interested, you can sign up for that at revealedapologetics .com.

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Click down PresuppU, short for Presupp University, and follow the instructions. And I greatly appreciate the support as well.

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All right, well, without further ado, I have with me Daniel.

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Okay, I'm gonna default. He told me how to properly pronounce the name, but I think I'm gonna default to the not right way.

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So I'm gonna call him Daniel Akande, but when I invite him on, I want him to pronounce it again, because after doing my little intros here,

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I forgot what it was. Daniel Akande, I'd like to welcome Daniel from, would you say

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Nigeria? Yeah, Nigeria. Nigeria, okay, very good.

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So he's coming at us all the way from Nigeria. Thank you so much, Daniel, for coming on. You wanna take a few moments just to say hello to everyone?

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Hello, everyone, I'm Daniel Akande, yeah. Akande, okay,

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I will try my best to remember that. All right, well, so you're from Nigeria.

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I think this is very fascinating, because Christianity here in the States tends to take on a particular flavor.

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We tend to be drawn to apologetics in the way that people from other parts of the world don't have easy access to.

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When someone says, hey, I'm a presuppositional apologist from Nigeria, people are like, well, how did you learn about presuppositionalism?

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So that's my first question for you. Is presuppositionalism even popular in Nigeria, or are you a rare breed?

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I call myself a rare breed, because apologetics itself isn't so popular over here.

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And then we have presuppositionalism, which is not even the most popular form of apologetics.

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So I think, yes, I'm quite a rare breed, yeah. All right, very cool.

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Now, how did you learn about presuppositional apologetics? If it's not very popular where you're from, does someone hear about this at a church, or are there conferences that are put on where you live, or is it just the internet that's exposed you to presuppositionalism?

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Well, basically it's the internet, because I was a Christian all my life. I was raised a

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Christian. So for a very long time, I wasn't required, or I didn't have to face people who do not believe what

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I believe in terms of Christianity, because this country is very religious.

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So you don't really encounter unbelief as much as you would perhaps in the

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United States. And so, but when I got on the internet, I made a couple of friends on the internet who challenged my faith.

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And in my attempt to provide good answers to their questions,

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I started researching apologetics, and that's how I got into, that's how

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I ran into William Lane Craig. And for a amount of time,

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I was a classical apologist, and I really read his works and the works of others.

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And that I just, so at that point, I considered myself an apologist, but then as time went on,

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I stumbled upon Greg Bonson and his debate with Gordon Stein.

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And when I watched that, when I listened to that, it started the process of me becoming a fancily and presuppositionalist.

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So it was through, the thing that did it for you is listening to the

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Bonson and Stein debate. I think a lot of people who do apologetics resonate with that. I mean, when

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I got started doing apologetics, it was through William Lane Craig. And I still, there's a lot of things that the classical apologetic tradition has much to offer.

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But when, and maybe you resonate with this, but when I listened to that Bonson debate, I knew right away, there is something different about this, and there was something very biblical about it.

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And so that was very much that drew me to Bonson. Is that kind of the same situation with you?

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Did you get a sense of its biblical grounding, or were you persuaded more by just the philosophical strength of the argument as it was presented in that debate?

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I think it was a bit of both. So if I can try to remember, the first time

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I listened to the debate, I remember I was quite enthralled, and I was like, wow, this is really, it's really good.

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I couldn't really put my finger on it, but something about it felt really, really compelling.

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So I think it was, first of all, I think it was the rhetorical forcefulness of the argument.

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I think Bonson himself was a really gifted debater. And so I think that at first drew me in.

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And then I think the philosophical cogency of his arguments,

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I felt they were the likes of something I haven't heard before. And then

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I think the third thing was the insistence on defending

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Christianity, not some vague notion of God. And so I think that dogmatism is what drew me in and sold me, and that's how

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I became precept. Yeah, very good. All right, that's super interesting. I would very much resonate with that.

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There's something weird about being a Christian who worships the Lord and has a relationship with God, and then when we're speaking with unbelievers,

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God very probably exists. There seems to be kind of an inconsistency there with our personal commitment and the way we talk about God within the context of apologetics.

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So you wrote this book, all right? I mean, my goodness. Before we went live,

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I was saying to Daniel, thanks a lot. You wrote the book that I wanted to write. Now I can't write it. But that's not a bad thing.

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That's not a bad thing. He has here a book of 10, 11 chapters, and it covers issues from just the basic outlining of the presuppositional method.

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He covers things on metaphysics, epistemology, brute factuality, chance, and indeterminacy, the problem of the one and the many, the egocentric predicament, which is an awesome concept as it relates to this whole methodology in terms of pointing out this problem that comes with anyone who rejects a worldview that is grounded in a

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God who reveals. And then you go into applying presuppositionalism to other religious forms of unbelief.

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So you cover a lot of things in this book. What led you to write this book in the way that you did to cover this wide variety of topics?

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I'd point out two things that really motivated me to write the book in that way. First of all, it was my, because I felt,

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I wish I had a book like that when I was learning presuppositionalism, because my journey to learn presuppositionalism was a couple of years.

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And from when I started using presuppositionalism and to now,

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I think it was a slow process of growing and learning more of what exactly this method is about.

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And so I wish I had a book like this, which condensed all the arguments into one place.

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And secondly, my reading of someone like Van Til made me understand that if this particular transcendental program that we use with presuppositionalism can be thought of as, it deals with human knowledge, right?

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And how it's possible. And to demonstrate how only the

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Christian view gives the foundation for knowledge, you have to think about the human subject, which is the knower and the objects of knowledge.

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And so that's what motivated me to try and categorize the arguments into the ones dealing with the object -object relationship, the ones dealing with the subject -object relationship, and the ones dealing with the subject -subject relationship.

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And yeah, that's basically what gave me the outline for how to categorize the arguments.

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Hmm, and then how was the process of organizing your material?

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Did you have to brush up on a bunch of things by reading? I mean, I haven't read the whole thing, so I don't know if you quote a lot of people at all, or is this kind of just your crystallization of how you understand all of these major themes within the presuppositional tradition?

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Yeah, the only person I quote in the book is David Hume. And so I, yeah, yeah, in the chapter about the problem of induction,

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I quote him a bit. So basically it's a crystallization of how

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I understood the core arguments in Van Til's thought.

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So I tried to bring it all together and explain it in a way that I feel anyone can understand, because when one reads

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Van Til, it's very easy to be confused, and like, what are you talking about? But I thought that there is a -

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I think Van Til was confused. I think Van Til was confused with what he wrote. He's like, that sounds good. I think I'm gonna put that there. I'm just kidding.

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Yeah, yeah, I think he has a lot of profound ideas which would benefit the church and the apologetic ministry.

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And so I thought I had to find a way to make all of this accessible to people who aren't philosophically inclined.

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So that's how I wrote about it. Okay, excellent. Now, okay, so are you able to give us kind of a broad overview of your book?

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What are some of the major themes that you thought were very important to cover related to presuppositional apologetics?

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Well, the first, the book is basically motivated by the challenge, the intellectual challenge of unbelief.

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Because I think at some point, every Christian is going to be faced with that challenge.

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You're gonna have people who do not believe what you believe, and people who are going to claim that there are rational or intellectual reasons that they have for not believing what you believe.

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And so what the book is trying to do is trying to say, no, hold on. You do not have any rational basis for rejecting the

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Christian view because scripture says so. That's why the first chapter, we look into what scripture actually says about unbelief.

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And we learned that the Bible says that the unbeliever and those who reject

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God became futile in their reasoning. And only the fool says in his heart that there is no

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God. And so from those teachings, we can say that there is no rational basis for unbelief.

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And so what I go on to do is try to propose a way we can go ahead and demonstrate that philosophically.

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And so that's what gives rise to the different issues, the different philosophical issues

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I tackle in the book. So that's basically the entire outline. Okay, excellent.

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Now, okay, so when we do apologetics and when someone learns, hey, okay, I know what apologetics is, it's defending the faith, but how do

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I do that? There's kind of like a buffet of options out there. I mean, you have classical apologetics, you have evidential apologetics, you have various degrees of reformed epistemology, which is not really an apologetic, but it's related to this issue of, hey, maybe

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I'm justified without having these arguments and how that impacts how we engage the unbeliever and talk with them.

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Can you explain the difference between a presuppositional approach as you understand it and say, the classical approach or the evidential approach, do you think you can give us kind of a broad summary with respect to what are the key differences and why presuppositionalism stands out as a more unique approach to take?

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Well, the way I'd put it is, we, just like the classical apologists, the presuppositionalists, everyone, we start with the challenge of unbelief, right?

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And so what we're trying to do is to rationally defend the Christian faith.

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And so the question is, how do we go about doing that? So the classical apologist or the evidentialist would say, hey, there are different facts that show that the

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Christian view is true or probably true. And so what the classical apologist or the evidentialist does is he brings all these facts, all these arguments together and shows the unbeliever, look, all the facts and the evidence points to the truth of the

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Christian faith. And well, the presuppositionalist doesn't necessarily have a problem with that.

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But what sets the presupp approach apart is the understanding that, first of all, the problem isn't just about the facts, right?

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Problem isn't just about the evidence. And he also acknowledges what scripture says about the unbeliever, that the unbeliever isn't some honest observer who is trying to seek out the truth.

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The presuppositionalist understands that scripture tells us that the unbeliever is predisposed to rejecting what the

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Bible says. And so with those teachings in mind, the presuppositionalist knows that if you just present the unbeliever with facts, that's not going to have any effect because he has a certain system that he uses to interpret those facts.

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And that system is anti -Christian. And since the system is anti -Christian, he can never, on the basis of those facts, conclude the truth of Christianity.

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And so what the presuppositionalist tries to do is to merge the facts that show the truth of Christianity, is to merge those facts with the system.

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So that's the Christian system. And so he presents the Christian system with all its facts and all the interpretations of those facts.

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He presents that system to the unbeliever and says, look, without this system, you cannot even make sense of whatever it is you're saying.

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So that's how he approaches the unbeliever.

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He says, I have a system. I'm Christian. You have your system. But if we place our system side by side, you cannot even understand what it means to provide evidence or facts if your system is correct.

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So that's basically how the presuppositionalist and the evidentialist see the approach.

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All right. Okay, well, I've heard an interesting point here. Presuppositionalism, when it was obscure,

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I think threw a lot of people off, both Christian and non -Christian alike. So for example, we have someone like Saiten Bruggenkait, who

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I think really made presuppositional apologetics popular on the internet when he first started going around, doing debates and things like that.

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And he came along at a time when most unbelievers were almost completely unfamiliar with presuppositional apologetics.

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But now it has kind of made its splash. And I think that wave is kind of over. People are somewhat familiar.

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I mean, somewhat. There's so many misrepresentations of it, it's not even funny. But for the most part, people kind of know the gist of what we're trying to argue.

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And so you have a lot of unbelievers kind of try to preempt the presuppositional line by taking certain positions that they think effectively fight against the presuppositional argumentation.

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So I heard an atheist say, when the presuppositionalist says, we all have presuppositions, right?

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The presuppositionalist is gonna set the context. We all have presuppositions. And this particular unbeliever says, well,

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I don't have any presuppositions. How would you respond to something like that? I mean, when we say the folly of unbelief, what is the folly of the position that asserts that I don't have presuppositions?

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How would you respond to that? Well, I think the folly of such a position is just that it's demonstrably false, right?

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I don't think anyone who says they do not have any presuppositions either does not understand what presuppositions, hasn't just thought about these things carefully.

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Because if someone says, okay, I do not have presupposition. Okay, I was just asking, do you believe that Christ is

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Lord, that he's the son of God, that he's the second person in Trinity and that the truth of scripture exists?

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I'm gonna ask him that. And he's gonna give an answer. He is either gonna say, no,

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I do not believe. Or perhaps if he's a atheist, he might say I lack a belief in such a

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God. But from there, you can show that anyone who does not affirm the

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Lordship of Christ or the existence of the triune God has the precision that such a

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God does not exist. Because scripture says, you're either with me or against me.

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Jesus said, you're either with me or against me. So anyone who does not affirm the biblical view of God is implicitly assuming throughout his life and throughout his thinking that such a

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God does not exist. And that is a very, very loaded metaphysical presupposition.

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So the idea that someone doesn't have presuppositions is just false.

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All right. Yeah, you hear all sorts of interesting attempts to combat a presuppositional approach.

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And that was one of the things that kind of as well, if I just deny that I have presuppositions and that takes the sword out of the presuppositionalist hands because they can't appeal to the necessity of presuppositions and blah, blah, blah.

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So I hear all sorts of things like that. All right, well, the title of your book is The Folly of Unbelief, okay?

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And unbelief comes in many forms. You have atheism, you have agnosticism, you have

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Islam, you have Hinduism, you have Wicca, you have every religious perspective that one can list.

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When you speak of unbelief, I know that when we speak within the presuppositional context, I know

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Van Til believed this, and I'm pretty sure you said it somewhere in your book, I don't remember the page, that in reality, there are only two worldviews.

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That doesn't seem true because there's just so many different perspectives out there. How would you explain to someone when you say there are really only two worldviews, how would you explain it to someone who thinks, well, that's absurd?

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I mean, there are many worldviews. Can you break that down for us? Well, yeah, what

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I'd say is that if we, first of all, I can phrase it logically speaking, as just a matter of logic,

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I can say that there are only two philosophical systems, the

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Christian system and its negation, so logically speaking.

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And so if from that logical foundation, that means all variations or all philosophical systems or religions that we encounter can in principle be reduced logically to one of those, either the

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Christian or its negation. And so that's basically what

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I'd say. And so how I would explain that would be to say that all of these views, atheism, agnosticism, naturalism or Islam or Judaism, all of these views can be reduced to just one generic system.

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And that system is the antithesis or the negation, logically speaking, of the

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Christian worldview. And so we can just reduce all of these views to one on the basis of a certain principle.

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And I think I point that out in my book and that principle, the principle that unites all non -Christian views is the principle of autonomy.

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And so we can frame it as the revelational view and the autonomous view.

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And those two are contradictory. So they are logically speaking

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P and not P. And so they exhaust all possibilities. So that's how

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I'd explain it. So, okay, so you said something that brings all of the, a common similarity between all unbelieving thought is autonomy.

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Is that what you said? Yes. Daniel? Yeah, okay, all right.

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So, okay, so let's explore that a little bit because I think folks might be confused on this.

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And I see a confusion that's often brought up. Autonomy means self -law, right?

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So you are a law unto oneself. Autonomy is typically associated with neutrality. Because I'm autonomous,

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I can also be neutral with respect to examining the facts, right? I'm sufficient within myself to kind of analyze these things.

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But what about when you have another religious perspective that has a creator God? So for example, if we take

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Islam, does Islam posit an autonomous perspective? Because it is a form of unbelief, but it's not a

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Christian perspective. So they have a God who reveals and man must rely on Allah. So in what sense is autonomy being played out in Islam?

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Does my question make sense? Yeah, it makes sense.

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So what I'd say that autonomy as I'm using it is defined with respect to the

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Christian worldview. So autonomy to give a kind of more precise definition is say autonomy is the principle or the thesis that man can have knowledge or man live or can make sense of experience either morally, intellectually, or philosophically.

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Man can make sense of his experience without relying or without accepting

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Christian revelation and God's providence. So basically, it is the

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Christian revelation that the autonomous view rejects.

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So Islam is autonomous. It's a form of religious autonomy because Islam rejects the

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Christian view of God that was revealed in scripture. And so in that sense, it is a form of autonomy.

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So in other words, in their religion, they rely on Allah, but in reality, that position presupposes that there is not a necessity to rely upon the

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God of Christianity because they believe Christianity is false. Is that what you're saying? Okay, all right.

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Well, sure. Because even though their view may, yeah,

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I was saying that even though their view may look as if it is revelation in nature, in reality, they are just being autonomous by rejecting

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Christian revelation.

30:43

Daniel, I just wanna let you know your sound is coming in a little choppy and you're freezing up a little bit.

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I don't know how strong your connection is where you are. If you wanna try to check that out and I'll give you a few moments to do that.

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And I'll let you know when you're coming in good. All right.

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Can you hear me okay? There seems to be a delay.

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All right, well, how about this, Daniel? If you could hear me, why don't you sign out? Why don't you click out and then come back in, follow that same link and see if it works a little better.

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Is that okay? All right. So if you could hear me, try to unclick, remove yourself from the stream and then click the link that I sent you so you can get back in.

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Maybe it'll have a better connection then, okay? All right, well, while Daniel is working on that, I'll take a question here.

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Mr. C says, can all belief systems say the same thing? Yeah, yeah, they can say the same thing.

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When a presuppositionalist argues transcendentally, for example, and we say that the proof for the truth of the

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Christian worldview is that without the Christian worldview, if it were not true, you couldn't prove anything at all or you couldn't know anything at all.

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When we're arguing for the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience, any perspective can argue along those lines.

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However, the ability to argue along those lines is not equivalent to being able to argue successfully along those lines, all right?

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You can say that your God is the necessary preconditions, but what is a mistake in asserting that as an option is that someone who says, well, any religious perspective can argue along these lines, what they think incorrectly is that the transcendental argument as the presuppositionalist is presenting it is just a bare assertion.

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So that when the Christian, for example, says that the Christian worldview, the God of Christianity and his revelation provide the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience, the person who posits the hypothetical that was just offered here, they just think that's an assertion.

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It's not. Actually, the Christian is willing to back up that assertion by actually going through the weeds and showing that the

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Christian worldview actually can pay the bills on the claim that it does in fact provide those necessary preconditions.

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Islam could say that it can, but then that's where you're gonna have the clash of worldviews and you're gonna have the internal critique of perspectives.

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And within that process, you will show that Islam cannot in fact do what it says it can do.

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So yeah, there we go. Anyway, let's return.

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I see Daniel is back. Let's hope that the connection is better. And I hope my answer is sufficient, Mr. C.

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I know there's a lot more to unpack there, but basically what I'm saying is the presuppositional argument, the transcendental argument is not a mere assertion.

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There is an argument there that the presuppositionalist is willing to defend and actually demonstrate. All right, welcome back,

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Daniel. Sorry about that. Sometimes you get some technical difficulties. It's just the way things go, especially when you're on a live stream.

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So can you hear me okay? Yeah, I can hear you. All right, so there seems to be just a little...

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Yep, I can hear you okay. There's just a little delay, but that's fine. Let's continue then where we left off, okay?

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So again, the title of your book is The Folly of Unbelief. Again, if folks haven't picked it up, pick it up.

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Amazon, physical copy or Kindle version are both available right now. What I am going to move on to now is to kind of explore this title here, okay?

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The Folly of Unbelief or the Foolishness of Unbelief. How is unbelief foolish,

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Daniel? So that's the name of the book. Okay, prove it. I know that you do so in the book, but how would you show someone within the context of a conversation that unbelief is in fact folly?

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Well, we can look into a number of things. So basically if I was in the conversation,

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I'd try to ask some questions about what exactly the person believes about God and the

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Christian view, et cetera. So basically we can look into any of the things

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I go into in the book. So if I were asked to show how exactly unbelief is foolish,

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I'd basically say that it's foolish because it destroys the coherence and intelligibility of our experience.

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Because if the unbelieving view is true, then we cannot have knowledge.

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And so I think that that kind of consequence is just absurd and foolish, philosophically speaking.

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And so that's my answer to the question of why it's foolish. Then we can then proceed to show how exactly the unbelieving view makes knowledge impossible.

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So why don't you unpack that a little bit? So as someone who's an unbeliever listening might say, well, that's just an assertion.

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On unbelieving position, you can't have knowledge. Okay, well,

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I know you argue in your book. So if this was conversation, someone would be in their rights to say, well, that's an assertion, it's not an argument, which you're not making an argument at this point,

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I just asked you a question. But what would that argument look like? How would you demonstrate the truth of the proposition?

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The unbeliever cannot have knowledge if his worldview were true, it would make knowledge impossible.

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How does that look? Why don't you demonstrate that for us if you can? You can use any example you like.

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Something that, all right. So one of my favorites that I like to use is the argument that we have to think of, let's think of ourselves as thinkers, right?

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As knowers, we human beings, we aim to have knowledge of the world.

37:21

And when we go to experience the world, because the world is basically the object of knowledge, that is what we aim to know.

37:32

And the world has different objects and facts in it.

37:39

And when we experience the world, what we experience is characterized by diversity and change and plurality.

37:52

So for example, there are many, many apples in the world.

37:58

For example, there are many shoes.

38:04

So we experience various things. And so if we are to analyze what it means to know something, and what must be the case for us to be able to know things, we have to see that human knowledge presupposes system.

38:25

And here's what I mean. That for us to know anything, we would have to relate various facts into a system.

38:39

Okay. And so our knowledge presupposes relations between facts.

38:45

So for example, you might have one apple and another apple.

38:53

Those are two different objects, but there is a relation between them.

38:58

There's a relation of being an apple. Or you can say, you might have one event, for example, the striking of a match.

39:09

Then you might have another event, for example, the match catching on fire.

39:16

And so those are two different events, but there's a relation between, causal relation in this case, that is the striking of the match causes the match to catch on fire.

39:30

And so we see that our experience, for it to be coherent, for it to make sense, there has to be various types of relations between us.

39:41

We have causal relations, we can have conceptual relations, we can have logical relation, mathematical relations, even numerical relations.

39:50

All these types of relations are necessary in our experience is to make sense, if we're to have knowledge.

39:59

And so how I'd say is that the question we can ask is what exactly provides the relation between these different facts?

40:11

I think there are only three possible answers to this question.

40:17

The relation between facts are either provided by God or by man, or they are just abstractly related out there in the world.

40:34

And so if the relation between facts are provided by the mind of man, then that would mean that all the relationships between the objects are basically illusory.

40:52

They only exist in our own minds. And so that leads to subjectivism and relativism because that would imply that in reality, there is no relation between one apple and another apple, for example.

41:09

There is no relation between striking the match and Matt catching on fire. What you would have would be various disjointed and unrelated objects.

41:22

If relationships between facts, it's provided by the mind of man. And so that leads to subjectivism and subjectivism implies that knowledge is impossible because what you're knowing, you're just knowing your own mind.

41:37

You're not knowing the world. And as I mentioned, the world is the object of knowledge. And so there's no difference between you and perhaps it's schizophrenic because you're just trapped in your own mind.

41:52

And so if that makes possible, we can ask, what about if the relationship between facts are provided by something out there in the world?

42:06

Like it's just abstract or it's just a brute fact that they are related. Maybe there is an abstract principle that relates all the facts.

42:16

But in that case, that abstract principle would have to be related to the fact by another abstract principle.

42:26

And we have an infinite regress on our hands. And in that case, knowledge still becomes impossible because there is no relation between facts.

42:40

And so the only option that can make knowledge possible is if God, the mind of God provides the relations, the objects relations between facts.

42:57

And it is that knowledge, that system and him revealing that system to us that makes knowledge possible.

43:05

So that's basically a tip one can use. Okay, so you said that if unbelief is true, the knowledge is impossible.

43:16

But I'm sure you know that the definition of knowledge is a debated topic in and of itself.

43:24

How would you define knowledge? And I think it's important what you just said. I'm not sure if folks caught the gist of what you're saying is that knowledge is related not only to knowing a fact truly, but in order to know a fact truly, you need to know how it relates to the other facts.

43:41

So that basically what you're saying is that facts are not, they're not brute. You can't make intelligible individual facts without a system of fact and knowing the relationship between those facts and what brings that relationship together.

43:54

But how would you define knowledge yourself? And how is that different? If it all is different with how philosophers typically define knowledge today?

44:10

Well, personally, I think knowledge, we can go with the contemporary definition of knowledge in epistemology.

44:22

We can say knowledge is justified true belief or perhaps warranted true belief.

44:29

I think there are any number of definitions of knowledge can work in this argument.

44:38

Just all that's needed is that the term is defined in such a way as we know that, okay, knowledge presupposes certain things like truth and roots for even that thing.

44:55

And I think this argument just requires that, basically is asking the question of whether the objects in the world are actually knowable and what it means or what it takes for them to be knowable.

45:13

So we can basically just, okay, we can take the standard definition of knowledge philosophically just to find true belief, but I don't really affects how the argument would proceed.

45:30

Can you say that last part there? Your voice kind of skipped out a little bit. Can you hear me okay?

45:40

Yeah, I said we can take the standard definition of knowledge and yeah,

45:47

I can hear you. Okay, yeah, I think there's a little delay. So when I ask a question, I think it takes a little bit for it.

45:53

I mean, you're all the way out in Nigeria. I'm here in North Carolina. It takes a while to go through.

45:59

I'm sorry if there's a little delay there. Oh, well, let's move along then. I do see some comments in the comment section.

46:08

Do you want me to read through some of these and maybe we can kind of address some things that folks are talking about in the comments?

46:14

Would that be okay? Sure, sure, that'd be okay.

46:22

All right, so let's see here. Well, this is not, well, there we go. Samuel says that Daniel's book has been promoted like crazy on Facebook.

46:30

LOL, I pre -ordered it on Kindle. Hope I can get to it. Yeah, good, thank you for the support. I'm sure

46:35

Daniel appreciates the support. Let's see here. We have a question from Simon.

46:43

He says, are you able to translate presuppositionalism into your language, not English?

46:48

So I think what he's asking is not so much translating your book, but the concepts. So like when you argue from the impossibility of the contrary, is there something equivalent in your own language when you're using this approach with folks who speak your native tongue?

47:09

No, I actually only speak English.

47:15

Okay. So I'm not really that fluent in my language.

47:23

Okay, fair enough. I'm Hispanic and I don't speak Spanish that well, so we're in the same court.

47:29

All right, we have a question by Josiah. Hello, Josiah, how's it going?

47:35

He asked, oh, actually, no, no, no, that's not a question. He had a question, but let me see if I can find it.

47:42

Ah, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. All right, so Brenda made a comment here.

47:48

How can anyone still believe in presuppositionalism when it's such a well -known logical howler? And I assume that the logical howler in the quotes is a reference to William Lane Craig's criticism of presuppositionalism, that it's circular as he presents it in the five views on apologetics.

48:06

But number one, I don't take, I respect Dr. Craig very, very much, but I don't take his criticisms of presuppositionalism seriously at all.

48:15

He does not show a thorough understanding of the methodology and while he has two PhDs and I have none,

48:22

I do think that I am in a position to know the methodology a little bit better than he does, as a lot of his critiques are just, they're just bad.

48:30

So, but why don't you address this? I think the claim that it's a logical howler is actually predicated upon the assumption that presuppositionalism commits the logical fallacy of begging the question, circular reasoning.

48:45

How would you address that? I'm sure this is a common thing you hear often. Yeah, so first of all,

48:57

I'd say that, I think the quotes from Dr.

49:02

Craig was a bit misunderstood, even though he said it's a logical howler.

49:10

Later on, he goes on to say that hidden in the method that even though it's not clearly stated all the time is a powerful epistemological transcendental argument.

49:24

So he goes on to say that. So I think we can interpret his earlier statement charitably and say he was just talking about presuppositionalism perhaps as popularly presented.

49:41

So basically maybe he was just saying we should do better in explaining our arguments.

49:47

But if I were to address the objection that it begs the question, I'd say that it's just, it's clearly not the case because our method is indirect.

50:00

It's not a direct method. And because it's not a direct method, it is incapable of begging the question because the fallacy of Petitio Principi or begging the question only applies in the context of direct arguments.

50:18

So that's what I'd say. Okay, very good. Let's see here,

50:24

Josiah. Here's Josiah's question. Josiah says, is the argument for the Christian worldview by the impossibility of the contrary contingent on us never being able to come up with a system that also satisfies the preconditions for intelligibility?

50:40

Do you understand the question? Just have patience folks, there's a little delay.

50:52

Perhaps. I mean, I could take a stab at it if you - I don't really understand the question.

50:59

Okay, all right. Josiah asks, is the argument for the Christian worldview - Yeah, perhaps you could try to explain it. Sure, sure.

51:06

Josiah asks, is the argument for the Christian worldview by the impossibility of the contrary? Basically the transcendental argument.

51:12

Is the transcendental argument contingent upon not being able to come up with another system?

51:20

It's not contingent upon it, it's contingent upon God. The argument is true because God is our foundation.

51:27

It just so happens that the way we demonstrate the argument, part of the way we demonstrate the argument is showing the insufficiency of the competing perspective.

51:36

Now, that being said, demonstrating the insufficiency of the unbeliever's perspective is not done by itself.

51:44

There is also the attempt by the Christian to actually explain how the Christian worldview does in fact provide the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience.

51:53

So the argument has kind of two aspects to it. One, in which you show the insufficiency of the unbelieving perspective.

51:59

And then two, you actually show the sufficiency of the Christian perspective and you actually invite the unbeliever to hypothetically grant the truth of the

52:07

Christian worldview so that he can see that it does in fact provide those necessary preconditions. And we hope by God's grace that that argument and along with the whole host of the evangelistic encounter is used by God to proclaim the gospel and to bring about repentance.

52:22

So there's a whole broader category here. But I would say that that's just one element of the argument in which we engage in what we call the internal critique.

52:32

All right, I hope that makes sense, Josiah. Thanks for the question. Let's see here. Daniel C. asks -

52:38

Yeah, I think I understand his question. Oh, okay. All right, did you have any further comments there?

52:48

Yeah, I think I understood his question. I think basically he was asking that is the success of the arguments contingent on the other person not being able to come up with a system that provides the precondition of intelligibility?

53:06

Right. I think that's what he was trying to ask. But what I'd say is that the, well, technically the success of the arguments is contingent on the unbeliever being unable to provide an alternative.

53:22

But what I explain is that we don't have to worry about sometime in the future, someone coming up that can provide the preconditions because the argument, the way, if it's laid out correctly, the argument shows that it is impossible for such an alternative to arise.

53:49

So that's what I'd say. All right, thank you for that. All right, let's see here.

53:58

Mr. C. says, perhaps Eli will bring a Muslim apologist on one day. I've heard some very good ones use the same line of reasoning.

54:05

So I think he's referring to the apparent use of presuppositional apologetics from a Muslim perspective.

54:11

I haven't seen that before, but I know Islam enough that, again, it's not the issue of making the same claim as presuppositionalists are making, is whether that worldview does in fact have the capacity to provide those necessary preconditions.

54:27

So that would be interesting to see. Maybe you can leave a link, Mr. C., maybe to a video where a

54:33

Muslim is using that line of reasoning. I think that'd be interesting. Thank you for that. All right, let's see here.

54:39

Do, do, do, do, do. Have to get through some of the comments here.

54:54

There was another question. All right,

55:00

I think that was okay. I think that was the last one. All right. Okay, well, if there are no other questions,

55:07

I would just like to conclude with just encouraging folks to pick up the folly of unbelief.

55:13

I think it's a good overall summary of the presuppositional method. He covers a lot of topics here, and I think he should be congratulated.

55:22

Writing a book is not easy. So thank you so much, Daniel, for what you've written, and thank you for everything else that you're doing.

55:28

Is there any new project you're currently working on? Well, yes, like I'm working on some other books that will be out perhaps next year or the year after that, so look out for that.

55:50

Excellent, and is there a website that folks could find you at? If you have a blog or something like that that you wanna share?

56:01

Yeah, I have a blog. It's pushingtheantithesis .blogspot .com.

56:10

All right, thank you so much, guys, for listening in, and thank you so much, Daniel, for coming on, and it is a pleasure.

56:17

I'm looking forward to reading through the rest of your book, and I encourage folks to pick it up also. Again, if anyone's interested in registering for my online course, you can do that over at revealedapologetics .com.

56:28

Click the Precept You, and then fill out the information there. So thank you so much, Daniel, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of your book and seeing what else you're gonna be coming out with.