Bahnsen vs. Stein and Presuppositional Apologetics | Eli Ayala

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It is Friday. It's time to party. I'm your excellent host, Nate Sala, and I'm the president of a

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Christian nonprofit organization called Wise Disciple. And here at Wise Disciple, we're all about giving you the tools you need to live effectively as Christians in today's culture.

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And so I have a very special chat with you today with a friend of mine. His name is

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Eli, and he runs a very cool YouTube channel called Revealed Apologetics.

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You should definitely check out that channel. If you don't already know who Eli is, I'll share the link in the notes below.

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But I did a Debate Teacher Reacts video a couple weeks ago on the Greg Bonson -Gordon

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Stein debate. Was that a couple weeks ago? Somebody fact checked me. Maybe that was last week. I don't know. When you're in your mid -40s, everything blurs together.

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So what can I tell you? Well, anyway, I thought it was a very interesting debate. I was a big fan of what

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Greg Bonson did. And so some of you reached out and said, you know what, you got to talk to Eli about this.

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So I figured, sure, let's do it. So I got Eli, and we are going to discuss the

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Greg Bonson -Gordon Stein debate. We're going to talk about some of the big moments there, what

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Greg Bonson was really good at, if Gordon Stein actually represents atheists today.

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I mean, you got to think, that debate was, what, back in 1985? We talk about all of those things, and we talk about presuppositional apologetics.

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Now, truth be told, at the outset of the interview, I don't think I would consider myself a presuppositional list.

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Okay, I don't know if that's news to you. But maybe Eli has told me things in the interview to where I change my mind.

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Are you curious? Well, let's find out right now. Here's my interview with Eli Ayala. Eli, thanks so much for joining me.

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We are going to jump into a very important conversation, and we talked about this.

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But what I'd like to do is tonight talk to you all about 1963 Dallas, and who shot

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JFK for real. So we're gonna, wait a second, is that, is that not, that's not what we're talking about tonight, right?

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That's, we're doing something different. That's a - Definitely not. You're already upset with me.

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I apologize. We should, we're off on the wrong foot already. No, tonight, we're going to talk about the great debate with Greg Bonson and Gordon Stein.

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So I'll tell you, we, you and I had a conversation right around Christmas or something like that about doing, you know, a video along those lines.

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And I, I think I had seen the, a portion of the debate, but never, never heard the whole thing.

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Never really gave it much thought and didn't really know about the general reaction afterwards.

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And so I have some thoughts about that, but I mean, let's, let's just start with like, how, how did we become aware of this in the first place?

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How did you hear about the Bonson -Stein debate? Well, the debate happened in,

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I think, 1985. So I was born in 82. So I was just a little baby when it happened.

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But I heard of the debate for the first time when I let my brother -in -law borrow my iPod.

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He was actually DJing a friend's wedding. I think, if I remember the story correctly, the

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DJ that was supposed to DJ the, the reception, something happened where he couldn't make it.

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So my brother -in -law was, needed music. They're going to put it on a speaker, whatever. And he put his content onto my iPod and never took it off.

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And when I'm listening to my iPod, I'm like, what is this? He's got all these podcasts on there. And it was through, through that situation where I actually heard the

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Greg Bonson and Gordon Steinbeck for the first time. And I had already been into apologetics, but listening to that debate,

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I noticed that it was very different than a lot of the debates that I had listened to before. So next.

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At what point are, you know, are you into studying apologetics and maybe even becoming an apologist yourself when you came across this debate?

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Oh yeah, I was already along my, my way in terms of doing apologetics. I have been defending my faith actively since high school.

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So I grew up in church. So I've been a Christian my whole life. And but it was really like in like high school where I started really interacting with my friends and things like that.

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And I first got into apologetics by reading articles on the website, CARM, C -A -R -M,

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CARM .org, the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry. And I think that's by Matt Slick.

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And so I've been listening, I've been reading a lot of those articles and interacting with people. So I was into apologetics, but I really didn't get into the issue of like apologetic methodology until I became more aware of kind of like the different schools of thought.

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And then I began to kind of explore that a little more. And it was that debate that really sold me on presuppositionalism.

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After listening to that debate, I started reading Greg Bonson's books and, you know, stuff related to that sort of like methodological issue.

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And I've been presuppositionalist ever since. So it's weird for me because, you know, and we talked about this before, but I got saved in an interesting kind of way.

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I had an experience of God and then wanted to make sure that I hadn't had, you know, a lot of beans that night and had some weird gaseous reaction or something, you know what

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I mean? Like the subjective experience of God is just that, it's subjective. So my entryway into apologetics was to, you know, try to explain logically what it was that I felt.

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And so anyway, long story short, like I came in in one particular angle into the realm of Christianity through apologetics, but not really aware of debates, you know, anything like that until I became a really a teacher and had to teach debate.

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And now I'm stepping out of that. And so now I'm looking at these things that have been established debates for a very long time.

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And I've been largely ignorant of the whole thing. The reason I bring that up is because I was just preparing to talk to you.

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And I came across something that somebody said, and I'm wondering like what you think about this. But obviously

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I went through the debate and my video is what it is. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. But I was really impressed with Bonson.

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I was looking at a Christian, I won't name him, let's not do that. But I was looking at a

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Christian's response and he said, well, basically, it was Bonson's strategy in the debate was just claim, claim, claim, claim all the way down the line.

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I disagree. I was rather shocked. And I realized there is a subset of Christians out there who actually critique

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Bonson for not making enough arguments. Are you aware of this at all?

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Yes, there is a common misunderstanding about the transcendental argument, which is kind of the central argument in presuppositional methodology.

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The critique is that the presuppositionalist is simply making the bare authority claim that the

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Christian worldview is the only worldview that provides the preconditions of intelligible experience, knowledge, these sorts of things.

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And so we make that authority claim and that's it. That's our argument. We just make the claim. And if you don't accept it, you're suppressing the truth and that's all.

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And that's actually not the case. The transcendental argument as a broader argument within the history of philosophy, transcendental arguments are arguments.

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They're just not the run of the mill, say deductive argument where you have a premise, a premise and a conclusion.

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So yeah, I do hear that a lot because people misunderstand the nature of a transcendental argument.

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It's not simply a claim. It is a claim that we make. It is an authority claim that the

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Christian God exists and it's objectively provable. And here's how we prove it. And the way we do that is transcendentally.

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And of course, you need to know a little bit about that form of argumentation to unpack that. Right, right. And that was one of the main contentions that Bonson gave in his opener.

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And I'm rather taken with it, with the transcendental argument. So maybe I can just ask you this, like overall, what was your take on the debate itself?

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Yeah. When I first listened to it, of course, I was taken aback by the uniqueness of the argument.

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I've never heard someone argue for the Christian God specifically in such a bold and kind of explicit way.

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So for example, when you have the debates that are typically done by classical apologists, if folks know anything about classical apologetical methodology, it is a two -step approach in which you demonstrate the existence of a theistic

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God, right? Through cosmological arguments, teleological arguments, moral arguments, taking those together, you demonstrate the existence of a theistic

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God, and then you narrow the scope to the New Testament. It's a reliable document.

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What facts can we know about the historical Jesus? So what I was taken aback was that the classical approach that I was used to,

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I recognized was a bottom -up approach. You're working your way up to the conclusion that God exists.

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What struck me when I listened to the Bonson debate was that he was using a top -down approach, right?

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And to me, this top -down approach seemed biblical also. So it's not that God is the conclusion to an argument.

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Rather, he is the necessary precondition for argument itself.

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And so he's saying, unless you start with the biblical God, you can't make sense out of anything.

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And in laying out the argument that way, I thought that was very much in line with how

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God presents himself. When God swears to Abraham, he couldn't swear by anything or anyone higher than himself, right?

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We take God as the ultimate authority. And so Bonson seemed to really be arguing in a way that took that concept of God being the ultimate very seriously in a way that I think other methodologies don't do as much.

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Yeah. I like the way of arguing that I saw

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Bonson utilize. And so like you, I thought Bonson actually did a very good job.

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The thing that I noticed about Bonson was he was a really good framer of the argumentation.

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In other words, I say this quite a bit in other videos, but a debater's job is multi -pronged.

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And one of the prongs or one of the jobs that a debater has is to narrate what is happening to the audience so that they can keep track.

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And for in terms of helping your position out, getting the audience to adopt your framework of the way that the arguments are going and setting up the other side so that when the audience hears the other side, they think in terms of what you've already framed.

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And so Bonson, man, Bonson did a great job with that kind of stuff. What was the biggest takeaway moment?

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I mean, there was one moment where everybody just went nuts in the room. And I'm sure we all noticed when

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Bonson said the laws of logic and everybody, you know, what was your favorite moment?

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Okay. So that was my favorite moment because it's the famous zinger, right? People can go listen to the debate and hear that.

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But actually, my favorite part of the debate was the opening statement actually, because when

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I wanted to learn presuppositionalism and what was being argued, right?

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How does Bonson argue the way that he does when he says that the proof for the Christian God is that without him, you couldn't prove anything.

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The opening statement lays out, in my opinion, the best summary form of a transcendental argument.

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And so it helped me make sense out of not just evidence and facts, which is something

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I was very concerned with as an apologist back in the day, but he spoke about the philosophy of fact, the necessary context by which facts are interpreted.

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And so laying that framework, he was able to set side by side the nature of the dispute.

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And it was not, I have more facts than you, or I have more evidence than you. It was a setup of worldview versus worldview.

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The Christian does not argue for the fact of the resurrection, for example, independent of a broader philosophical framework.

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We are arguing worldview systems. And so he laid that out in such a way where you really see the antithesis between a believer's position and an unbeliever's position.

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And I think he set those parameters so well that when Stein tried to give his argumentation, right?

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He already set the framework, as you often say, of this diametric opposition between these systems of thought.

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And so that helped me as a person listening to the debate to kind of see those two sides. And if atheism is true, how does he account for this?

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See, I'm always thinking if his system is true, how does he account for this? If the Christian system is true, how does the

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Christian account for that? That framework was vitally important for me. Otherwise I would have gotten lost in the sea of facts being thrown out at each other without the framework.

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So he laid that really good context. And now everything that I do when I do apologetics is always within a context.

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I never speak of a fact independent of a system that allows that particular fact to have meaning and coherency.

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So he's taught me, and I've learned this from his opening statement, he's taught me how to really keep in mind that every fact is understood within a context.

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And I think that's so important. Yeah. No, I totally agree. And this is something that I tried to convey to my students, although I don't know if you'd ask them now, years later, if they remember this.

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But the bottom line is when you are a speaker, whatever, pastor, teacher, rhetorician, debater, it really always does come back down to being a good storyteller.

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You have to tell a good story because people tend to receive the information in narrative form.

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The Bible is a narrative, you know? It's not a systematics textbook. And so it always ends up coming back to that.

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And like I said, Bonson's a really good storyteller of the debate that everybody's receiving.

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Well, I think that's why I appreciate presuppositional apologetics so much is because it is a worldview apologetic.

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It is an apologetic that focuses on one's meta narrative, right?

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Our ultimate story. So the very nature of the methodology forces the defender of the faith that's coming from that perspective to tell a story.

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Here's the story. I have a worldview. You have a worldview, right? Every fact that we engage with, any data point is going to have to understood within a framework.

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And we are able to lay out that foundation so that when we actually get into the weeds, we have those worldview considerations always as the background music of our mind informing us what move we should make when we're responding to the unbeliever's objections.

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Yeah. Is there anything else that you think that Bonson did really well?

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So I mean, we spent a lot of time on how he was able to lay a proper framework for the debate, but was there anything else that you noticed that he was like, yeah, this guy's really good at this?

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Yeah. Well, a very important point that Bonson was trying to make was he was trying to get

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Dr. Stein to understand the importance of induction and the fact that his atheistic worldview could not account for induction, right?

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The uniformity of nature, these sorts of things. And when Dr. Stein didn't know, for example, what

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David Hume said about that topic and why it's an important issue to bring up, that could have actually been a stumbling block because that was a very important point, especially when

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Bonson's trying to show that science doesn't make sense within an atheistic worldview since science presupposes the uniformity of nature, the inductive principle, these sorts of things.

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And what I thought Bonson did very well was that when Dr. Stein was ignorant as to what

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David Hume brought up and what the problem was, he was able to quickly narrate the issue and then present it back to Dr.

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Stein. He wasn't going to let Dr. Stein escape having to answer that important question by just saying, oh,

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I haven't read Hume in a long time. He's like, no, no, no, this is a key issue. And so let me tell you the story. This is what

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Hume said. This is why it's a problem. Now what's your response to it? And so I thought he did a very good job sticking to that point of the uniformity of nature, even when having to explain it to his otherwise ignorant opponent.

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Yeah, no, I like that, you know, and I think you're right to point that out. Another debater, maybe in a different circumstance, would have seen that, you know, like they probably would have intended to have those questions ready to go and they would have seen that, oh, they don't, they're not familiar with this.

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Let's just move on. And no, that actually was a really good move. He actually got, didn't he get a little scolded from the moderator?

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He's like, can you get to the question the moderator was saying? He did. I thought the moderator did a good job. But in that particular instance,

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I thought that it was appropriate that Dr. Bonson told the story just so that he can, because I don't think,

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I don't think Dr. Bonson was getting off track and like, you know, just filibustering, right?

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He was getting to a point. And so he had to set up because of the ignorance of his opponent on this specific issue.

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He had to set up the question. And by telling the story, here's what Hume says, here's what Bertrand Russell says.

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So I think he did a good job, even though the moderator was trying to do his job as well. But I thought it was appropriate at the time.

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No, totally agree. Yeah. Well, I mean, we've been talking about Bonson. What do you think about Gordon Stein?

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Did he, is he the best representation of atheists, you know? Could he have done a little bit more research?

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What do you think? No, he's not the best representation of atheism.

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There is clearly more sophisticated versions of atheism and both in literature and even just rhetorically people being able to argue their points with more sophistication.

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I think he is a low hanging fruit. Now that is not to say that the debate between Dr.

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Bonson and Gordon Stein, Dr. Stein was not useful. It is useful, not because Dr. Bonson is debating an intellectual juggernaut.

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He wasn't. It is useful in that it allows people for the first time to see what the presuppositional method looks like in actual debate.

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You see, there are people who we will argue with other Christians about what's the proper apologetic methodology.

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And so people will argue theory. And of course the classical tradition has not only theory behind it, but practice.

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We've seen what classical apologetics looks like in real interaction. We have, you know, the William Lane Craig debates and, you know, the

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Frank Turek's and all the evidentialist school. Up until that point in the eighties, I don't think anyone really saw what the presuppositional approach looked like in an actual debate situation.

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And I think in that sense, it was helpful, even though Dr. Stein was not the best opponent.

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I mean, golly, as I'm a presuppositionalist, if I was a classicalist, my, my intestines, my stomach turned when

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I heard him try to just so, so easily, you know, refute some of the traditional proofs for God's existence.

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I mean, butchering cosmological argument, he butchered almost every argument that he tried to refute.

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So I don't think he was the best. But I do think he's typical of say, like the generic, like online atheists that one might encounter.

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That's not informed, that really doesn't respect the theistic tradition. And so it's very easy for them to kind of hand wave some of the arguments based upon their limited understanding of them.

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Well, let's get ourselves into trouble. Eli, what I noticed was there was a moment and I'm trying to remember exactly what

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Stein said, because he said something like, well, in cross exam, you know, which is all supposed to be leading questions to, you know, expose errors and flaws, and etc.

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But like he said something, he asked a question, like, about a problem that he perceived with Christian worldview.

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And then Bonson answers the question, and Stein goes, well, I will show you later that that is actually the case.

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And I heard that in my immediate thought was, oh, my gosh, that's Aaron Raw, or however you pronounce it, Aaron Raw.

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Aaron Raw does that quite a bit. There was some things that Stein did. I was like, oh, my gosh, that's Dillahunty. Like, so, you know,

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I do see these guys. Do you think so? Now this is speculation, Your Honor. Like, do you think that, like, are these guys going to the same school?

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Like, how are they arguing this way? I think, okay, so if I remember the context correctly, the point that Dr.

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Stein wanted to get back to was he was going to bring up the euthyphro dilemma. And this is,

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I mean, if you think about it, right, he was saying, you know, how can you, how can God be good, and he kind of botched up the euthyphro dilemma.

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But that's basically what he was trying to get at. And I think the problem with using this is that it's dead.

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Philosophically, people on the internet use it, but no one in academia of any note is trying to argue, for example, the logical, you know, logical incoherencies between God's goodness and these sorts of things.

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Even when you come to, like, the problem of evil, for example. Problems of evil take more of, like, a probabilistic flavor as opposed to kind of, like, a logical incoherency between the idea of an all -good

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God and there being evil in the world. The euthyphro dilemma is so easy to answer as a

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Christian that it's surprising that atheists still use it. And Christians simply respond that goodness is not an arbitrary decision on God's part, nor does

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God appeal to a standard above himself. Goodness is a reflection of God's own nature, as you know, right?

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We split the horns of the apparent dilemma and showed that goodness is just a reflection of who

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God is. It's not arbitrary. It's not above him. It's just who he is. And so there you go. There's no logical incoherency.

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Now, you might not agree with that. You might say, well, you know, but there is no logical conflict. And in the philosophical literature, this has been cast aside.

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Yet people who are on the internet continue to use, like, old school arguments that people in academia aren't really using anymore.

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I hear you, man. I hear you. The other day, somebody brought this up again. And it's like, it's amazing.

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It's like, why does this keep getting brought up? Who created God? You know, like that whole thing, as if, and they're very, when this is thrown out at Christians, it's almost like you can see the confident smiles, like, gotcha, you know?

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Yeah, yeah. It's not who created God. It's, oh, yeah? Well, who created God? It's one of those, like, we've never thought about it before.

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Even Stein's formulation of the cosmological argument is based upon just a common, you know, the internet wasn't around back then, but a common internet atheist, you know, presentation.

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Everything that exists has a cause. I don't know of any cosmological argument that has a premise that says everything that exists has a cause because that would clearly vitiate against our own position.

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If everything has a cause, then God has a cause. So, again, he was very sloppy. He did not properly represent the arguments that he was critiquing.

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And of course, the killer, he didn't address the argument that Bonson presented. I mean, why are you trying to refute cosmological arguments and teleological arguments against a person who's using a transcendental argument?

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He doesn't. Bonson doesn't even, not only did Bonson not use those arguments, he doesn't use them.

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Like, Bonson, I disagree with Bonson here, but Bonson thinks that the cosmological argument's a bad argument.

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Like, he doesn't, yeah. So, he critiques it. Now, I disagree with him. I think it's a good argument, but he never uses it.

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So, he would help, you know, Stein refute the cosmological argument because none of his arguments depend on that particular argument.

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Well, I mean, again, it's a great observation here. And as I was going through the video,

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I mean, my thought, so, I mean, my weird brain is filled with pop cultural references and lots of movies and stuff. But, I mean, to go to 11 proofs in the sloppy manner that you identified that Stein did, it reminded me of that scene in Raiders of the

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Lost Ark when Indiana Jones is trying to find Marion in the crowd of, and all of a sudden there's a guy with a sword, and then he starts, like, doing all this crazy, like, sword work, and he just pulls out a gun and shoots him.

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Like, it's so useless. But you know what? Christians do the same thing. Christians do so much work, and at the end of the day, the arguments and evidences that they use go right around the person or right over their head, and it's not even directly dealing with what they're talking about.

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Right. Yeah. No, I agree. Yeah. They were really bad. They were really sloppy.

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And it shows, in my opinion, because this is common, especially on the internet, it shows not a lack of intelligence, but a lack of respect for the philosophy that they're critiquing.

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They think so lowly of theism that they don't do any work in understanding the arguments, and so they think it's as simple as just hand -waving it and presenting it the way that they do.

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You know, faith—remember when Klein defined faith? He says that faith is believing something with insufficient evidence.

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I'm, like, looking in the dictionary. Which—where'd he look? Where's that definition? I've never heard faith defined in those categories at all.

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But to him, that's what faith is. Faith is you just believe stuff, and there's no evidence for it. Well, that's—but that's what

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I mean. That's R &R. I mean, if you go back to the—what is it? Inspiring Philosophy R &R Debate at some bar, which seems like a really fun place.

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You know, you say, remember that debate back at the university? I was like, that debate back in the bar. The bar.

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Some bar. No, but he's like, he defined faith that way in Inspiring Philosophy.

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Michael— Michael Jones. Michael Jones, yeah, called him out on it, which is what he should have done.

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So that's very good. There was the last time that the Who Created God thing floated out there on the internet.

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I typed back a comment, very tongue -in -cheek, but like, well, if God created the universe, who created category errors?

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And then I just left it at that. So that's fantastic. Well, if anyone's interested, I actually—I actually—Revealed

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Apologetics is on TikTok, and I have a short little video responding to a bunch of, you know, atheists arguing the

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Who Made God. It's pretty funny, so if folks want to check it out. It's like two minutes long. TikTok.

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Now, what is that? Um, it is— No, I'm kidding. TikTok is the sewer of social media.

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I was warned not to make an account, like, you don't want to go on TikTok. I was like, you know what? There are sinners there, too.

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Let me go on TikTok and see if I could make a video or two. So, yeah, it's not the best platform to do apologetics because it's not a lot of—you don't have a lot of time, but it can be done.

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And I've heard a lot of people say that, yeah, we need Christians even on TikTok.

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Eli, I totally agree with you. If I could just figure out half of what's going on on my phone these days as I'm in my mid -40s,

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I would join you. Yeah, we have the same phone. Look at it. We have the red. We have the product red. Look at this. This just turned into an

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Apple commercial. Hey, nice. Look at that. I knew we were friends for a reason. There we go. Well, okay, so we're obviously talking about the

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Great Debate, and we're talking about Bonson, and all the things that he did really well, but let's talk about his methodology, because this is totally in your wheelhouse, and I'd like to maybe just investigate a little bit further for maybe my listeners who are not too familiar.

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But let me just ask you a very basic question. You tell me everything that comes into your head about it. What is presuppositional apologetics?

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Okay. Well, first, many presuppositionalists don't like the word presuppositional.

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It's confusing, and it sounds complicated, but if I were to simplify that mouthful, presuppositional apologetics, and this might sound pious language, but I honestly think that this perfectly summarizes the presuppositional method.

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The presuppositional method is an apologetic methodology which seeks to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, even the thoughts of the unbeliever, okay?

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Now, that's very key, okay? Now, I just quoted a scripture there, okay, bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

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The presuppositionalist believes that that includes, right, what we bring under the obedience of Christ.

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That includes the way we think, the way we reason, the way we engage with unbelievers.

29:16

And so I like how Dr. Scott Oliphant has defined presuppositional apologetics.

29:21

I don't know if this is original to him, but I really liked how he phrased it. Presuppositional apologetics, or just apologetics, is

29:28

Christian theology applied to unbelief, so that when we're speaking with the unbeliever, what we bring to that is what we believe about what the

29:38

Bible teaches about the nature of the unbeliever, the nature of man's reasoning, the effects of the fall upon man's mind, the fact that the

29:47

Bible teaches that all men actually know that God exists but is suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.

29:52

I believe that biblically, but I don't throw that away because I'm talking with someone who doesn't believe the

29:58

Bible. You see what I'm saying? So I come with that theological and biblical baggage because it's a foundation, right, that's the

30:06

Word of God, and I argue in a way that is consistent with that. Now, of course, other apologetic methodologies will say probably that's probably what they're trying to do to some extent as well, but the presuppositional would probably argue that the presuppositional methodology does it more consistently for various issues that we can get into if you want, but we don't have to.

30:26

So I would say that presuppositional apologetics is a top -down approach to apologetics. It is to start with the

30:32

God of the Bible and argue that unless you start with God and his revelation, you can't make sense out of anything. And so with that form of argumentation in place, you can talk about anything.

30:42

We can talk about art, we can talk about science, we can talk about philosophy, because we would argue that God is necessary for all of it.

30:50

Yeah. So you mentioned Scripture, 2 Corinthians 10 .5 is what I imagine you were quoting there, or paraphrasing, is that right?

30:57

I believe so. Can we unpack that a little bit more maybe? You know, we are striking down arguments and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.

31:08

How does, because I'm bringing every thought captive.

31:14

That's the, every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. You have this concept wrapped up in the

31:20

Lordship of Jesus Christ over our hearts and minds. So 1 Peter 3, verse 15, which says to set apart

31:25

Christ as Lord in our hearts, always being ready to give a reason for the hope, right? We know this passage. Now this passage in 1

31:31

Peter 3, 15, for example, many people focus on the always be ready to make a defense. But what the presuppositionalist wants to point out is that prior, the prerequisite for always being ready is to set apart

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Christ as Lord in our hearts. Now, biblically, the heart has been associated with the mind, the center of one's being that faculty of the intellect that goes into decision -making.

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Jesus Christ is to be set apart as Lord over that. So everything we think, everything we do in terms of our reasoning process must be submitted to the

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Lordship of Jesus Christ. And the way that plays out in the apologetic engagement is very important because in light of the

32:09

Lordship of Jesus Christ over our minds, we do not argue with the unbeliever in such a way where we put

32:15

God on trial, rather the unbelievers on trial, and he needs to give an account for the things he thinks he knows, independent of his maker.

32:23

And so we try to push those points in our discussion with them. So, I mean, this is great because, so let me just be very transparent because I don't think in any video

32:32

I've really given, I guess, my view or a characterization of my view on this issue.

32:40

And largely, I don't want to do this because I guess as I do more of these videos,

32:46

I'm realizing that I'm kind of becoming an avatar for Christians from various flavors and persuasions.

32:55

And so if I'm going to sit here and talk about a debate and who did better and whatnot,

33:00

I get the sense that I just, it's not necessary for me to categorize myself in a certain way because I know that immediately as soon as I do, people are going to be dismissive and then they're going to,

33:12

I'm not going to hear what he has to say. But I will say this, very briefly,

33:17

I, when I first became a Christian, cut my teeth on the writings of Francis Schaeffer. He has had a seminal influence on me who,

33:27

I mean, I guess he would be a flavor of a presuppositionalist along with Van Til. And so if I am friendly to presuppositionalism or the presuppositional approach, it's

33:39

Schaefferian. I mean, first -date evangelism to me is very reformed in its epistemological approach.

33:46

That is that just like what you said, it's not our job to sit here and try to give a ton of defense for the existence of God and all those things.

33:55

It's the person who's making the claim that Christianity is not true. It's their job to back themselves up.

34:02

And that's why, you know, the methodology that we advocate for here at my ministry is very

34:08

Socratic in its approach and it puts the burden of proof as much as possible on the person that we're talking to.

34:15

So, but having said all that, I don't fancy myself a presuppositionalist.

34:22

There's a few things holding me back, which is why I guess we're having this conversation because maybe you're going to change my mind tonight. You know, I'm open to that.

34:28

So, well, even though it's the work of the Lord to overcome that total depravity. So we'll pray for you now.

34:36

That's right. That's just my grimy Calvinist humor coming out. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, that's good. That's good.

34:42

Well, so, and you will find me in total agreement. So I'm asking you a question where I'm a friend.

34:48

So don't take the, don't get the wrong idea. Sure. How am I going to, some critics would read into Van Till.

34:55

I've read this. They've read into Van Till, maybe unjustifiably, that he basically argued that non -believers couldn't know anything.

35:04

That there is a, I'm trying to remember the phrase, like a noetic effect of sin on the non -believer such that their knowledge has been deleteriously affected.

35:14

And we get that from like Romans one, the suppression of truth that Paul describes there, you know, and in other words, non -believers knowledge has been badly affected.

35:25

Do you think that that is the case that, because I think the critics would say, well, no, this can't be non -believing scientists get facts about the world correct all the time, you know, and if non -believers didn't know anything, like we wouldn't even be able to have coherent conversations back and forth.

35:39

Like, what do you think about that? Well, I don't mean to sound cocky and arrogant, but it's not what

35:46

I think it's what I know. Van Till did not teach that the unbeliever doesn't know anything.

35:52

As a matter of fact, Bonson recalls an interaction that he had with Alvin Plantinga at a philosophical meeting.

36:00

And his, he asked, Dr. Bonson asked Dr. Plantinga what he thought about Van Till.

36:06

And he says, well, you know what the problem with Van Till is that he says the unbeliever can't know anything. And I think that's, that's just absurd.

36:12

And Bonson, of course, is telling the story. He's like, I can't believe a person this brilliant can read Van Till and think that's what

36:18

Van Till is saying. Van Till does not teach that the unbeliever doesn't know anything. Van Till teaches that if the unbelievers worldview were true, if we hypothetically granted the truth of his unbelieving framework, he wouldn't know the things he thinks he knows.

36:33

But he does know that's why that's why Van Till is famous for saying that unbelievers can count, right?

36:39

And they can count better than believers sometimes, but the unbeliever cannot account for counting. So, and that coupled with Romans one, if all men have a knowledge of God, such that they are without an apologetic, without an excuse, and they suppress the truth in unrighteousness, you are suppressing what you are suppressing the truth, right?

36:59

You can't suppress something that you don't have. So they do have the truth. They do have a knowledge of God.

37:06

Um, so I would say they know a bunch of things and it's there on, it is their knowledge that they have that they do not give credit to their

37:13

Lord is part of what makes them guilty before God. And this is what Romans one speaks about, right? Instead of giving thanks to God, what do they do?

37:20

They worship the creation rather than the, than the creator. So, um, so yeah, that, that's not the, if you look up the 10 common misconceptions about presuppositional apologetics, that'll be one of them.

37:31

That's not a, and that has been documented in the writings of Vance Hilda. That's not at all. Um, what he's saying, we want to use the knowledge.

37:39

We want to use the knowledge that the unbeliever has as an argument against his own position. The reason why, you know, the things you claim to know is not because your worldview is true, but because you know, the

37:48

God I'm talking about, he's written his law in your heart, right? So that actually allows us to, to pivot to the gospel, right?

37:56

You know, the God that we're talking about, you're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. You need to repent, right? Elementary question then,

38:05

I mean, is the presuppositional, cause I'm sure that there is somebody watching this video right now, um, who is, you know, very fresh to it.

38:13

Um, not, not very well read, which by the way, at the end, I'm going to ask you, uh, where, uh, the viewers can go for more information, if they can read up some books or go see some videos or whatever that is.

38:25

Um, so we'll definitely get there, but, um, sure. It's elementary question. Like, uh, is the presuppositional approach finding those points that we would affirm as Christians and latching onto them in a way, conversationally speaking, in a way that then we can, um, affirm the

38:44

Christian worldview. Would you agree with that characterization? I don't understand your question. Can you ask it?

38:51

So, uh, you said a moment ago that, um, ultimately, you see what I did there? You see what

38:56

I did? I did. I pulled a Greg Kokel on you. What do you mean by that? Yeah, right. Um, a moment ago, you said that a non -believer, it's not that a non -believer doesn't know anything.

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It's that the things that they do know, they need to give an account for. And I guess that's what I'm asking.

39:11

Is that basically the presuppositional approach? Um, finding the points of truth that we would both agree,

39:18

Christian and non -believer. Um, but, but really zooming in on those points of agreement. Yes.

39:24

And I, uh, this is what Vantill will would call the point of contact between the believer and unbeliever.

39:30

Now there's a common misconception. Uh, people will say, well, because, uh, Vantill taught that the believer has a worldview, the non -believer has a worldview and they interpret all facts in light of those, and those opposing frameworks, there is no point of contact.

39:43

There's just no common ground between them. And that's, that's false. Um, Vantill did say that there, um, that there is no neutral ground between the believer and unbeliever, but there was common ground.

39:54

There's a difference between neutral ground and common ground. There is no neutral ground in the sense that there is a fact that the believer and unbeliever can make sense out of independent of our worldview perspectives, right?

40:07

That doesn't exist. Everything is understood within a framework. There are no, for Vantill, there are no brute facts.

40:13

He, he, um, he wrote and he often repeated, he said, brute facts are mute facts. Facts do not speak for themselves.

40:20

They must be interpreted. Um, and that's where the worldview comes in. So, um, he believed that there was common ground and that common ground is

40:27

Christian ground. The common ground is the knowledge that I have as a Christian and the knowledge that the unbeliever is suppressing.

40:34

I want to appeal to that suppressed knowledge when I'm interacting with the unbeliever. And I want to ask questions,

40:40

Socratically ask questions and bring out the fact that he actually knows the God that I'm speaking of.

40:45

And the evidence of that is he's assuming things he's presupposing things that are actually in conflict with his professed unbelief.

40:53

And that basically the job of the unbeliever is not, uh, the job of the believer is not to give knowledge to an otherwise ignorant unbeliever, but rather it is to unmask the reality that the unbeliever is suppressing the truth that he knows in his heart of hearts.

41:08

Yeah. I want to zoom in a little bit more on the noetic effect of sin for another moment, if you don't mind.

41:18

Um, because again, I think that you will find me in total agreement. Um, I'm actually very taken with the, uh, reformed epistemology, uh, the, the reformed epistemological approach.

41:29

Uh, I think Kelly Clark is, uh, somebody who's written on this a little bit. And, um, again, one of those things that's floating around in the back of my mind as, as I've kind of come up in the faith.

41:40

Um, and I think it's completely, completely true, uh, you know, rooted and connected to Plantinga and, uh, the like, but, um, the, the idea of desire as being the thing that, uh, drives belief in decision -making.

41:57

Um, I, it's funny cause behavioral science, and I keep saying this to anybody who will listen behavioral science is only now, just in the last couple of decades, getting caught up to where we have been as Christians and what the

42:08

Bible has been teaching. I think the Bible teaches us that basically the things that we hold to as belief and the things that we know really is so attached to our desires that there's no way that you can disentangle them.

42:22

Um, such that if, if our desires change, our knowledge will change, but sometimes our knowledge changes.

42:30

And because our desires don't want them to change, we don't change our beliefs. We don't change our behavior.

42:35

We don't, we don't change our decision -making, you know? Um, is, is that a way of understanding the noetic effect of sin on a non -believer?

42:45

Does that make sense? Well, I, I, the way you described it, again, now my, my analytic mind is thinking, well, wait a minute.

42:51

If your desires change, your knowledge changes. I'm not, I don't know what that means. So if knowledge is a justified true belief, if I believe something that's true and have a justification for it,

43:01

I don't think it's necessarily because I have a particular desire. So I'm not sure what you're trying to say there.

43:08

Right. So God, the existence of God. Um, okay. Would Christians say that they know that God exists?

43:16

Yes. I think the answer is yes. Well, I would. Some Christians would say no. Right. Well, on a probabilistic scale, in the

43:22

Bayesian way, no, um, I would say the, I would say the same thing, but that's what

43:28

I mean. You could take a non -believer, which by the way, I was a non -believer in 2009, right?

43:34

Yeah. Uh, you could take on a Tuesday, you could have taken me and I would have said, no, God does not exist. Right. And then, uh, a week later, because, because of what has happened, my, my disposition has changed such that now

43:48

I have bended knee, uh, to the Lord. Now I would say, yeah, I, I, I know that God exists.

43:54

Um, and that's what I mean, at least with the, with the existence of God question that can change based on, but that's what

44:00

I mean. Like when you flip that around and you try to engage a non -believer, like a Dillahunty or somebody like that, I keep bringing him up one day.

44:07

He's going to respond to me, but, um, he, he would say, well, I haven't heard the best. Yeah.

44:12

Right. We know he's a debater. No, he's not. Um, he, he would tell you with a straight face.

44:18

I, and then people like him, I have not heard the evidence. There is no argument. So therefore

44:23

I don't believe, and I would say, uh, bull roar. Can I say that it's because you don't want it to be true.

44:29

And that's where the desire comes in. Uh, yeah, I guess on that surface level.

44:34

Um, yes. Um, but again, I would say that, um, he knows God exists. And if you were to become a

44:40

Christian, he knows God exists. There's the difference is that one is suppressing the truth and the other one is embracing it.

44:47

Hmm. I, I, I know people look at me and say, well, I know that God does not exist.

44:52

Well, that's not what the Bible says. If the Bible is true and God is correct, he's all knowing.

44:58

And he tells us the nature and state of the unbeliever's heart and mind. Then I want to believe, and this is where the

45:03

Christian theology being consistently applied to our apologetic comes in. I want to believe what God has to say about the unbeliever, not what the unbeliever has to say about himself.

45:13

And how do I demonstrate that? If, how do I demonstrate that? If someone says, how can you demonstrate that? I know God, that is where we do what

45:21

Bonson mentioned the internal critique, the internal worldview critique. Let's see if in your

45:27

God denying position, you can justify the things you take for granted. And what we want to show in the apologetic encounter is you actually are relying on Christian presuppositions, even to argue against the

45:37

Christian position. And that's because you have a knowledge of the God I'm talking about. Now you can say with a straight face that I don't know

45:44

God. Um, but again, who am I going to believe? This is why it is important to understand that our apologetic methodology, our apologetic, our defense of the faith must flow out of the soil of the scriptures.

45:58

And so how I defend the faith must be consistent with what the Bible says, how I should be doing it.

46:04

And including everything else. The Bible says, namely that the unbeliever that I'm speaking with actually has a suppressed knowledge.

46:10

I don't want to go to the unbeliever and pretend he doesn't have a suppressed knowledge. Let's just look at things objectively and follow the evidence wherever it goes.

46:17

We can talk about evidence, but it's not, you're not this innocent little kid just walking through a park saying, I just want to believe because I've, I've spoken to antagonistic atheists who explicitly it's obvious they don't want

46:27

God to exist. Right. And I've spoken to people who are gentle, soft hearted, open and honest.

46:33

But when you start drilling to the core, then they later admit, even if your God exists,

46:38

I wouldn't worship him. I was like, ah, you should have said that at the beginning. You see, we can be fooled by outward appearance.

46:44

And the Bible says that God does not judge by outward appearance. He sees the heart, our problem in apologetics and how we rate success in apologetics is that we base a lot of that on outward appearance.

46:54

Oh, when I claim that scripture teaches this, and this is why God exists, they just laugh in my face. And so that argument didn't work.

47:01

No. Bonson said that if you shoot a bear with a dart and the bear keeps running at you, that doesn't mean your darts aren't working.

47:08

Some bears require more shots. You just keep pulling away, just keep shooting away, shooting away and keep drilling those points.

47:14

And even to all intents and purposes to observations, it might not look like you're making progress in your discussion with the person.

47:21

But when that person goes home and puts his head on the pillow and thinks in the quietness of the night, what you say with respect to him being accountable before his maker, he's going to be thinking about that.

47:32

And by God's grace, we pray that God uses that to change his heart. I like that.

47:37

In the quietness of the night, you're a poet at heart. I like that. That's good. Well, you know, yeah, not really.

47:44

Roses are red, violets are blue. That's all I got. No, you ruined it. No, you shouldn't have done that. Well, so let me ask you this question,

47:51

Eli. I mean, based on everything that you've said then, and I think I'm getting a great picture of the presuppositional method, do you think, and I've heard this, which is why

48:03

I want to clarify with you, do you think that the presuppositional method is the only legitimate method of communicating to nonbelievers?

48:13

Yes. And that's not to say, and again, this is where we have to have some clarification, right? When you think in terms of apologetic frameworks, we think of presuppositionalist over here, classicalist over here, evidentialist over here.

48:26

Someone's going to hear what I just said, say, Eli, are you trying to tell me that presuppositionalism is the only way to go?

48:33

What about looking at the evidence? Well, yeah, presuppositionalists believe in looking at the evidence. There's this common misconception along with that other misconception you mentioned that Van Til teaches that unbelievers don't know anything.

48:44

Another common misconception is that presuppositionalists can't use evidence, right?

48:50

There is a difference between using evidence in apologetics and using evidentialism as an apologetic methodology.

48:58

When I, as a presuppositionalist, talk about the historical facts surrounding the resurrection of Jesus, I do not cease to be a presuppositionalist.

49:07

I am a presuppositionalist even when talking about the facts. So yes, I want to talk about the facts in a way that is consistent with my presuppositional commitments, which

49:16

I think are in turn biblical commitments. And so I take all of these things as part of my system.

49:23

So presuppositionalism, as I said before, is an attempt, an apologetic methodological attempt, to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, even the thoughts of the unbeliever.

49:32

I want to keep that in my mind because I know where my commitments are, and I want to be consistent with those commitments even when

49:39

I talk about the evidence. So that's a very important point. It's an issue of consistency.

49:45

Yeah. It sounds like, okay, so let me ask you this.

49:52

Well, what do you have in mind? So when you say it's the only legitimate, I mean, if presuppositionalism teaches that we should have a

50:00

Christian worldview, and that we should engage the unbeliever in a way that's consistent with a Christian worldview, which includes the knowledge of God that the unbeliever has, the fact that nothing can be made sense out of independent of God and his revelation.

50:12

I mean, what's the alternative? You see, other methodologies, I don't think, consistently do that unless someone's going to argue we do.

50:21

And there you have the debate between the different methodologies, which obviously we're not going to get into here. But I don't see why, if presuppositionalism is correct, how could a different method that doesn't keep those commitments to denying autonomy and neutrality with respect to human thinking, what's my alternative?

50:42

If I'm not a presuppositionalist, then I'm going to sacrifice some of the commitments that I think some of the other methodologies do.

50:49

Well, I guess that's where I'm going with this is maybe this is just a more robust system, and the other ones, if you focus on them as separate methodologies, are incomplete.

50:59

I would say that they are incomplete, and I think in some cases they can be inconsistent.

51:07

We always want to keep in mind our presuppositional commitments. We don't go into the apologetic encounter, allowing for neutrality.

51:18

We don't believe that anyone can be neutral with respect to the interpretation of facts, and we do not cater to the unbeliever's attempted autonomy, his attempt to reason in a way independent of God and leading him to believe that he's okay as far as he goes.

51:32

Nope, you're not okay as far as you go. When you're reasoning outside of the confines of divine revelation and God is your foundation, you can't make sense out of anything, and I'm not going to pretend that you can for the sake of conversation.

51:43

So I'm going to put your feet to the fire in our apologetic encounter, and I do this with, of course, gentleness and respect.

51:49

We're not yelling at the person and speaking to them arrogantly, but I'm going to put your feet to the fire. If you're going to reject the

51:55

Christian worldview, make sense out of anything without him, without the Christian worldview.

52:00

Oh, I can do that. Okay, account for immaterial, universal, conceptual laws of logic. Account for the uniformity of nature.

52:06

Account for everything that you just simply take for granted and you don't think is a point of contention. The presuppositionalist is going to hit those core foundations, which

52:15

I don't think classical and evidential methods even point to. They're so busy talking about the facts that they don't often get to the heart of the issue, which is the framework.

52:26

So I was interviewing William Lane Craig a long, long, long time ago, who's a classicalist, a classical apologist, and he was talking about how he came up, how he got started in apologetics.

52:41

Excellent debater, by the way. You said something in passing when you were,

52:46

I don't remember the video it was, but you called William Lane Craig the goat. Yeah, and I, in my opinion, while I disagree with him methodologically and with theologically,

52:57

I think he is one of the best debaters that Christianity has in terms of debating tactic and strategy.

53:03

He's excellent, but go ahead. I just wanted to put that out there. Well, and I'll, I mean, just to bring it back to Bonson, one of the main reasons why

53:09

I say that is because Craig also does an excellent job of laying a proper framework for the audience, and he consistently comes back to it after, you know, in his opener, then he comes back to it in his, if there's a second opener, his rebuttal, all of it, his conclusion, you know.

53:24

Anyway, but I was talking to him and he was just describing the world that he was coming up in as a young Christian going to school and all that stuff, and he said that the guy, the man at the time, one of them was

53:37

Schaeffer. And one of his critiques, and I didn't really press him at that point, but he said one of his critiques of that approach, the

53:48

Schaefferian approach, if I can call it that, was that it was negative. There was a negative sort of case that was being utilized or a negative approach, but that there was no positive case to be made, and that those things didn't quite exist back in his day, and so therefore here comes sort of the classical approach, the evidentialist approach, and all those things, and they provide a positive argument.

54:18

It sounds like what you're saying is, in one sense, presuppositional, the presuppositional approach is, it's almost an entirely different methodology because of the fact that it does force the burden of proof back on the person who's making the claim that God doesn't exist.

54:36

Is that right? Well, okay, so there are a couple of things you said. I want to focus on, it's not forcing the burden of proof.

54:42

It's bringing out the reality that both coming from worldview foundations, we both have a burden of proof.

54:49

So for example, when someone says, well, I don't know if God exists, well, guess what? That's not what the

54:54

Bible says. So in your, I don't know if God exists, if that's true, then the Bible's wrong when it you actually do know and you're suppressing the truth, you see?

55:02

So even in your, I don't know, you are antithetical towards the Christian position, which means you're implicitly arguing that Christianity is false.

55:12

Remember, it's the system, right? If what God says about the unbeliever is false, that's detrimental to Christianity because God has told us something about the nature of the unbeliever and it's false according to these sorts of statements.

55:26

So that makes you have a burden of proof. That's why we keep it at the worldview level.

55:32

From my worldview, from my perspective, you actually do have a knowledge of God that's being suppressed. Now, of course, you're disagreeing with me, but that's because you have a worldview.

55:40

So now we have worldview versus worldview. We both have a burden of proof. And I, as a Christian, welcome that burden of proof, but I'm not going to sit here as though you have no burden of proof and I'm just kind of vomiting explanations and arguments while you throw them over your shoulder.

55:53

When that's what I'm trying to point out is that a lot of skeptics and non -believers today act as if they have no burden of proof.

56:00

And so it's almost like trying to force feed a baby. I hate to make it sound that way. It's condescending, but no, you do actually have a burden of proof.

56:08

Everybody does. That's good. And I think the presuppositionalist brings that out better than some of the other methodologies.

56:18

Because the classicalist and the evidentialist and those guys are really set on making those positive cases instead of bringing the burden to bear on the non -believer.

56:30

Well, thank you for saying that because it reminded me of the other point I wanted to say is that presuppositional apologetic methodology also has a positive case.

56:38

So I critiqued Dr. Hugh Ross. Hugh Ross wrote an article on presuppositionalism and he said it's really good for negative apologetics, but you need all these other arguments for positive apologetics.

56:50

And I'm like, eh, that's not how it works, bro. That's what Craig said. Yes. And I think it's incorrect.

56:56

So part of the, for example, the transcendental argument critiques the unbeliever's worldview.

57:03

But the other part of the argument is to show that the Christian worldview actually does provide the necessary preconditions for human experience and knowledge.

57:13

That's a key point. We do not demonstrate the proof of the Christian God by simply pointing out inconsistencies in the unbeliever's worldview.

57:21

That's never been the presuppositionalist case that Christianity is true because, look, your worldview is contradictory.

57:27

No. But what we're saying is your worldview is contradictory. And now that I've hypothetically granted the truth of your position and showed why it can't be true, what

57:36

I want to invite the unbeliever to do is to hypothetically grant the truth of Christian theism and show him that given the truth of this system, look, we can make sense out of science, we can make sense out of philosophy, and we have a foundation for knowledge.

57:50

We have an account for the uniformity of nature, right? Given our framework, we can answer these hard questions, you see?

57:57

So it's not simply a negative. It's just that often in these debates, we never get to that part. We're so busy critiquing that by the time the debate's over, the

58:04

Christian really hasn't laid out, the presuppositionalist hasn't laid out why the Christian worldview actually does this.

58:09

And I think we can do a better job in navigating that a little bit better, doing the internal critique, but also providing that positive case.

58:17

Right. I think I know what your answer is to this question, but it came to mind and I want to ask it.

58:23

What is the essential difference between the presuppositional approach and a cumulative approach?

58:31

Or maybe there's another way to describe it, like an abductive approach, an inference to the best explanation.

58:38

Inference to the best explanation, yeah. Right. The cumulative case is not simply a defense of God's existence or theism.

58:45

It's an apologetic for Christianity, but if successful, it doesn't just establish God's existence in some deistic sense.

58:52

It does establish the Christian worldview, not just a theistic Christian worldview. So is there a difference there?

58:58

Yeah, there is a difference. If you're going to take the presuppositionalism in the form like Vantill or Bonson, according to Vantillian methodology, we do not take the

59:09

Christian worldview as a hypothesis in need of verification so that we speak of the truth of the

59:16

Christian worldview in the abstract. Right. So it's a hypothesis. Let's see, given the cumulative case that we present, which out of all the different hypotheses, you have atheism, you have

59:28

Christian theism, you have Buddhism, you have Hinduism, which out of these hypotheses best explains the data.

59:34

And of course, you show through the cumulative case that given the Christian worldview, when you take all of the data of human experience, the

59:42

Christian worldview makes the best sense out of the data. The difference there is that the cumulative case treats

59:49

Christianity as a hypothesis, whereas the Vantillian approach doesn't treat the

59:55

Christian worldview as a hypothesis. It's not, let's hypothetically see what works over here. It's saying, no, unless this is actually true, you can't make sense out of anything.

01:00:03

And the reason for this is that the reason why Bonson, for example, would not treat Christianity as a hypothesis is that in doing so, you've now allowed neutrality and autonomy to sneak in.

01:00:16

And that's, again, I call this, I teach a course on presuppositional apologetics, and one of my lectures is entitled the twin poisons, the twin poisons of autonomy and neutrality.

01:00:27

It is, it is those two things that sneak into a lot of the non -presuppositional methodologies and whether folks acknowledge it or not, the presuppositionalist really tries to point those out and say, look, this is a detriment to your view.

01:00:39

It weakens your view. And it's not consistent with what we think the Bible teaches with respect to the nature of man being not autonomous.

01:00:46

He can't be right. And there are no neutral facts. So those are two important things to identify.

01:00:52

And I think the cumulative case allows those to sneak in, whereas the presuppositionalist does not treat

01:00:58

Christianity as a hypothesis. So my beagle agrees with you.

01:01:04

So how do you okay. So I guess the last question is, by the way, you're really helping me to understand, you know, the method and the approach in a very holistic sense.

01:01:16

So I really do appreciate the conversation. My heart is always boots on the ground. How do we make this happen?

01:01:21

So I guess the last question that I have for you is like, how how can we utilize what you're describing the presuppositional approach in regular conversations with nonbelievers today?

01:01:34

Yeah, well, again, a lot of what we're going to say as presuppositionalist may look very similar to what other methodologies would use.

01:01:44

They don't have to be the presuppositionalist approach doesn't have to be look completely different. I you know,

01:01:50

I may ask as a classicalist, hey, from an unbelieving perspective, how do you account for universal conceptual laws of logic?

01:01:56

How do you account for morality? That's a nice one to use on the boots on the ground. So to get morality is kind of an easy thing to talk about.

01:02:02

That is presuppositional in its approach. How do you account for morality? That's simple.

01:02:08

It is conversation. I don't have to use all of this language. I can talk about the evidence first. And depending on the nature of our conversation, bringing the importance of our presuppositions,

01:02:16

I don't have to lay it out in a formal, you know, you know, Christianity is true by the impossibility of the contrary.

01:02:23

Look, you've been reduced to foolishness. No, that's not what we do, right? You ask questions, you try to identify the person's worldview.

01:02:31

See, so so the way that this plays out in conversation is we don't simply talk about, like, you know, we'll look at the evidence for or against, you know, evolution or something like that.

01:02:41

We're not having those conversations that only rest on like the facts. We ask questions that help us identify their framework, because that will actually put us in a better position to ask key questions to get to the core of the issue, which is the suppressed knowledge of God.

01:02:57

So an easy way to do that is to talk about morality. As a matter of fact, the argument for morality is actually a kind of transcendental argument that unless God exists, you can't make sense out of objective moral values and duties.

01:03:09

So a lot of what I would say when I'm speaking about morality, for example, is going to sound a lot like the classical apologetic methodology.

01:03:17

But when you dig deeper, it's different. But I don't have to talk about that with the unbeliever, right?

01:03:22

I'm just trying to ask questions, see where they're at, what's their worldview, and allow what I learn about their worldview to inform the sorts of questions

01:03:29

I could ask to push and to expose the knowledge of God that they do have. So that's how

01:03:35

I would go about it, depending on who you're talking with. You just ask those questions. Hey, man, I hear what you're saying, but I'm a

01:03:40

Christian. I kind of see the world from a Christian perspective. How do you make sense out of things we take for granted all the time?

01:03:46

Well, I believe in science. Okay, well, I believe in science. How do you make science in a world that's random and chaotic?

01:03:52

How do you get uniformity and laws in a random universe? Those are good questions to ask because it allows the unbeliever to really reflect upon not just the things they believe, but their entire outlook.

01:04:06

It is helping the unbeliever become, and we can use this complicated terminology, Van Til used it, you're helping the unbeliever become epistemologically self -conscious.

01:04:16

Make him aware of his theory of knowledge. How do I know the things that I claim I know?

01:04:21

The average person on the street doesn't think about that, right? No, they don't. We just know things because everybody knows it, right?

01:04:27

Wrong. There are people who disagree with you. There are people who believe that the physical world is an illusion.

01:04:34

You have pantheistic views out there. We can't let the unbeliever simply take things for granted.

01:04:40

When we have these common conversations, we need to strategically ask those questions and help them become more aware of their own worldview so that we can point to things that poke holes in their worldview, right?

01:04:52

And to kind of bring out the knowledge of God that we know as Christians, we know that they have. I mean, it sounds like what you can do here is have conversations that are more protracted, that maybe don't—we

01:05:08

Christians get hit with this quite a bit, but like being a used car salesman, trying to get to the sale, you know, trying to get to the cross in 10 minutes or less.

01:05:16

But like, we're not burdened by that at all. We can actually have long conversations, develop relationship in the midst of these kinds of conversations, and make a—or follow a presuppositional approach.

01:05:30

There is a question that I have, if that is the case, like, how do you—at some point, you're going to have to get to the root of the issue that brings it all together in a presuppositional—it's kind of tie a presuppositional bow on the end of everything so that everybody understands that, no, we're not dealing with the deist of God, we're dealing with the

01:05:51

Christian God of the Bible. How do we bring that into a regular conversation? Well, that's part of my—I start with that.

01:05:59

So if someone says, hey, you know, again, conversations are sloppy, right? I mean, depending on the conversation, you might say something different.

01:06:06

But at the beginning of the thing, if someone's like, hey, you know, how do you know God exists? Like, well, you know, I'm a

01:06:12

Christian, so if we're going to talk about this, I got to share it from my perspective, right? I believe in the Christian God.

01:06:17

I believe that's the only God that exists. Then the question is going to be, well, how do you know the Christian God exists? And now I've already hit the ground running, right?

01:06:23

I can kind of go into the reasons why I think the Christian God exists. I can use, you know, arguments for morality, things like that.

01:06:29

Depending on the sophistication of the person you're speaking with, you can talk about the transcendental nature of logic, things like that.

01:06:36

Now, again, they might ask questions. Well, how do you know it's the Trinity, right? How do you know it's the Triune God? That's going to require you to get a little deeper, which

01:06:43

I don't think we're going to get into right now, but there are deeper areas that you can go into to show why it is, in fact, the

01:06:50

Triune God and that it has to be the Triune God as the foundation for, say, knowledge and truth.

01:06:56

That's, again, there is an interesting philosophical puzzle that has been a plague upon Western philosophical thought that's mostly expressed in kind of the pre -Socratics.

01:07:05

It's called the problem of the one and the many. How do we bring unity in the world and plurality in the world together?

01:07:13

What is more ultimate? What is more metaphysically ultimate? Is what is metaphysically ultimate an ultimate one or an ultimate many?

01:07:22

The Greeks answered either or. Some Greeks said it's an ultimate one, and there are problems. Some Greeks and other philosophers say it's an ultimate many, and there are problems.

01:07:30

The Trinity, okay, kind of give a thumbnail sketch as to how Christianity can provide this. The Trinity does not place unity and plurality more foundational than one another.

01:07:42

For the Trinity, the idea that there is one God who exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the

01:07:47

Trinity, oneness, and plurality are equally ultimate. God is the metaphysical, the ultimate metaphysical context in which we could bring unity and diversity together and have a coherent picture of the world.

01:08:01

Now, there's much more to be said there. I actually have a video on my channel where I discuss this issue specifically with actually an expert in this area.

01:08:11

If folks want to find that, the title of the video is The Problem of the One and the Many, or How the

01:08:16

Trinity Solves the Problem of the One and the Many. That's a deeper area that you're probably not going to get into on the street level, but it's there.

01:08:24

Apologetics, we can talk about what caused the universe, but we could also get into deep conversations about quantum mechanics and the

01:08:30

Big Bang and things like that. It really is going to depend on who you're speaking with. What I'm hearing you say is that at the outset, it's almost like you have to set the table.

01:08:40

One of the things that you have to say as somebody who is engaging a non -believer is, well, look, the reality is

01:08:46

I'm a Christian, I believe in the God of the Bible, and so therefore, how I'm going to communicate to you moving forward is from that vantage point.

01:08:54

Yes. A great resource for this is Van Til. Van Til argued a lot methodology.

01:09:03

His books are about methodology. I have a bunch of his books here. Here we go.

01:09:09

I have a bunch of his books. These are not a good resource to just jump into apologetics. He's very difficult to read.

01:09:15

However, there is a... Let's do that before I... I almost watched that whole thing.

01:09:23

That would have been amazing. It would have been cool. There is a pamphlet that Van Til wrote in which it's in the form of a dialogue he's having with an unbeliever.

01:09:36

You actually can see what the presuppositional method looks like in normal conversation.

01:09:41

What he does there is he lays out, hey, I'm a Christian. You guys will argue as unbelievers, I was conditioned to believe this since I was young.

01:09:49

He's like, I admit that. He talks about how the unbeliever is conditioned. I'm conditioned. Now what?

01:09:55

We're both conditioned. How do we make sense out of the way that we're seeing the world? Van Til talks about that in his pamphlet,

01:10:01

Why I Believe in God. I think you could find that, a free PDF. It is definitely worth a read to really see what this looks like in regular conversation.

01:10:11

Yeah. Well, this has been a really great conversation. I got one more question for you. Then, of course, I want more resources.

01:10:18

If the viewers want to go to a website where there are written resources, they can interact with Van Til's writings, or Bonson, or videos, or whatever.

01:10:26

I'm going to ask you about that in just a moment. Here's the last question. What about somebody who is a little bit more simple -minded?

01:10:35

They're sitting there listening to you, and they're like, wow, he's using big words. I was dropped on my head twice as a baby.

01:10:41

I'm not really that guy. By the way, I actually fell off the roof when I was 10 and landed on my head, so that explains everything you need to know about me.

01:10:50

How can you appeal to the person that maybe feels a little trepidatious about stepping into the world of presuppositional apologetics?

01:11:02

Yeah. It's all about contextualizing your language. This is one of the reasons why Van Til is so difficult to read. He speaks the language of continental philosophy, and he is interacting with idealistic philosophers, dealing with idealism, and Kantianism, and things like this.

01:11:16

That's why it's difficult for people to read him. He adopted the language of philosophy to communicate to the people he was interacting with.

01:11:24

He, as well as Van Til and others, encourage us to adopt the language of our context. Van Til said that 1

01:11:31

Peter 3 .15 was written to the common believer, so the command to defend the faith is not something relegated to the

01:11:37

Christian philosopher or pastor. It's something we're all commanded to do, whether you are a scholar in academia or, as Van Til said, whether you're

01:11:44

Sophie the Wash Woman. Regardless of who you are, we're all called to give an account, and so what we want to do is contextualize our language.

01:11:54

I don't use, for example, the preconditions of intelligibility with a person in the street. I'll simplify.

01:12:01

I'll say, you know, what must be the case in order for what you're saying to be true? That's an easy way to say it.

01:12:06

Instead of saying worldview, I say, from my Christian perspective, you know, if people don't want to speak in those categories.

01:12:13

So I just kind of dumb down the language without dumbing down the content. Simple as that. What is presuppositional apologetics?

01:12:20

I can say presuppositional apologetics is an apologetic methodology in which we utilize the transcendental argument that you're going to lose the person.

01:12:30

Presuppositional apologetics is quite simply, this is the key to it, the heart of it, in his light we see light.

01:12:38

Only in the light of God can we understand anything else. Simple. Let's give you a simple scripture. Now, if you want more, we can go more, but to a person who has dropped twice on his head, in his light we see light.

01:12:49

Basically my argument is that unless we are standing within the light of God's revelation, we can't make sense out of anything.

01:12:57

That's it. And if the person's like, well, what about this? What about this? You answer that, right? So we can answer it. We can talk to people in ways that are appropriate to the specific kind of person that we're talking to.

01:13:08

If they're more sophisticated, speak their language, right? We become all things to all men, right? So there's nothing wrong with using that philosophical language.

01:13:15

But again, if the purpose is communication, you're going to have to navigate your conversations and know what words are appropriate given the particular context.

01:13:25

And that takes practice. Because, and this is the reason why it's important that when we learn presuppositional apologetics, your primary way of learning is not watching debates.

01:13:35

Okay. Debates are fun. Can you say that one more time? Say that one more time, Eli. Primary way of learning apologetics should not be watching debates.

01:13:44

Okay. Now they are important for this. For me, this is how I see them. Debates are important for this.

01:13:50

When I hear a debate, I'm learning my method better. I'm like, wow, that was great. The way he phrased that.

01:13:55

Now the job of me standing behind my computer for three hours watching debates, right? Now my job is to take that and actually contextualize it within the context that God has placed me in.

01:14:07

That might be teenagers. It might be teenagers, right? So I'm not going to use that language. That is where the art of apologetics comes in.

01:14:15

So we can speak of apologetics with respect to being an art and a science. It's a science in the sense that there are rules we should follow in line with the scriptural foundations, right?

01:14:24

But it's an art in the sense that I need to be creative in the way I use this material. And I need to be sensitive to the context that I'm in.

01:14:31

A good analogy, not a biblical one, but I'm a huge Bruce Lee fan. I love Bruce Lee. I grew up watching

01:14:37

Bruce Lee. And I don't know if you've ever seen the interview where he talks about being water, right?

01:14:42

Yeah, there we go. You know, I'm going to do it for you. This is, this is special right here. He says this, okay. He goes empty your mind, be formless, shapeless.

01:14:54

You see like water, you put water into the cup, it becomes the cup. You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot.

01:15:02

Now water can creep, flow or crash. Be water, my friend. And so this was his philosophy.

01:15:11

This is really important because Bruce Lee, okay, was a martial artist, but he did not believe in styles.

01:15:20

He believed that when you fought, say in a Kung Fu style or a karate style only, you are too rigid and you are unable to adapt.

01:15:29

So in his movies, he would never wear kind of a traditional martial arts outfit. When he would be fighting like a karate guy with a black belt, he would have kind of a blank colored outfit.

01:15:38

Maybe it's all black or his famous, you know, yellow jumpsuit. And that was on purpose because it symbolized not being restricted by style.

01:15:46

He believed that you needed to be flexible and adaptable. And in a sense, apologetics needs to be like that.

01:15:53

In a sense, obviously he's not coming from a Christian worldview. In a sense though, we need to be like water in the sense that we need to be able to be flexible and to adapt with the type of people we're speaking with.

01:16:03

My apologetic is going to look a little different when I'm speaking to Aaron Ra as opposed to speaking to like my cousin who might not be a believer.

01:16:12

You see, I need to be able to adapt. And what that requires is that I know my faith, like the back of my hand.

01:16:19

I know how to defend my faith. I have the content, but I've mastered it so much that now I have the freedom to be more flexible as to how

01:16:27

I communicate that. And that's why we always need to be in the word. The background music of your mind must be scripture and theology and clear thinking and being able to contextualize that and speak those truths in the context that God has placed you in.

01:16:41

And that's why I, people say, people think I'm just saying this to be pious. And I really am not. When people say, what is the best book to learn apologetics?

01:16:49

It really is the Bible. Um, I'm not saying that to sound kind of like, oh, well, of course you would say that.

01:16:54

No. Um, 90 % in my experience, 99 .9 % of the attacks upon the

01:17:00

Christian faith are based on misrepresentations of scripture. Like most of it's just a, it's just a faulty understanding of God.

01:17:07

And so when someone tries to perform a reductio on you, right, to kind of show your position to be absurd, it's usually based upon a misunderstanding about God that we don't believe.

01:17:15

Right. So the more, you know, about your faith. Now this is for the average Christian. Now, the more, you know, scripture, the better position you'll be to correct error in your day -to -day conversation.

01:17:25

And guess what? That's apologetics. You don't always have to be talking about logic, transcendental things like this. Most of your conversation, dude, let me tell you something.

01:17:32

I teach apologetics and I use this terminology when I'm talking and I'm reading the material and interacting with people, but my real life interactions, like not the ones on the internet, when

01:17:42

I'm in the street and I meet someone 99 .9 % of my conversations is

01:17:49

Christian theology. Oh, we don't believe that. Well, the Bible actually says this because I'm talking to some cult member who thinks that there's a mother

01:17:56

God, which actually happened to me in a, in a Walmart parking lot. So knowing our theology is the best way to do apologetics.

01:18:05

Well, of course we want to also think clearly and learn some logic and things like this, but scripture is foundational.

01:18:11

Amen, brother. Well then help out the viewer. If they want to get deeper, if they want to read some materials, get into some resources, where should they go?

01:18:21

Websites, books, anything that you can think of. What should they do? All right.

01:18:27

Well, thank you for asking. I have a couple of resources here in my hands. Okay. Okay. So give all the recommendations in Bruce Lee voice, please.

01:18:37

In order to master the flexibility. No, I'm just kidding. All right. This is my, in my opinion, the best entry point into presuppositional apologetics, and this is

01:18:48

Greg Bonson's always ready directions for defending the faith. Basically, this used to be a syllabus and a series of articles where he defends the presuppositional approach biblically.

01:19:00

So there's lots of scripture here and practical application. And it's really great.

01:19:07

And at the back of the book, he has an exegesis of the passage in Acts chapter 17, where he argues that Paul, when speaking to the

01:19:16

Greeks is actually using a presuppositional approach and he unpacks that. So it's really cool to see this with some scripture and some practical application.

01:19:22

He also talks about how to engage the skeptic, the person who believes that, um, you know, uh, uh, that miracles are impossible.

01:19:33

These sorts of things that people don't like, you know, they're naturalistic in their approach. This book goes through it all very easy to understand.

01:19:40

Also, there are these books that were recently put out by American vision. Okay. And basically

01:19:46

I call Greg Bonson, the Christian Tupac. Now, if anyone knows this, uh, reference Tupac, when he died, he came out with albums.

01:19:55

I don't know if you noticed this. There's a new album that came out. I was like, how the heck is he making albums? He just, he just died.

01:20:01

Um, so I ain't mad at you. Yeah. Okay. Don't get, don't make me get on my do rag and start.

01:20:10

Um, so these books are actually, um, we're, we're put out by American vision and they are basically transcripts of lectures that he gave to high school students.

01:20:20

So they're, they're really easy to understand. There are study questions on the back of each chapter. The, this one here against all opposition shows you how to use the presuppositional approach against any position.

01:20:31

How do you, how do you use presuppositionalism against the atheist? How do you use presuppositionalism against the, uh, the

01:20:36

Muslim, you know, the cult member this in very easy to understand language. Of course, this one focuses more on the transcendental argument, but really simplifies it.

01:20:45

It's called the impossibility of the contrary. And this here, it sounds sophisticated and hard, but it's not pushing the antithesis and the apologetic methodology of Greg bonds.

01:20:58

And this here was a series of lectures that was given to high school students that were about to go into college.

01:21:04

And it lays out in very simple, it's very simple way with study questions and assignments that you can do, like how to put these things in practice.

01:21:13

So pushing the antithesis is an excellent, excellent resource. Um, and lastly, my favorite book by Greg Watson, it's hard to find now, but if you could find it, in my opinion, this is my favorite apologetics book.

01:21:26

It is not beginner's level, but I don't think it's so difficult to that. You know, the intermediate level apologists couldn't get a lot out of it.

01:21:34

This is Van Til's apologetic readings and analysis by Greg Bonson. And as you see,

01:21:39

I have a lot of little, you know, a few pads there. Um, and, um, covenantal apologetics by Scott Oliphant.

01:21:48

If you want to get deeper and see some, uh, conversations, my YouTube channel, while I interview all sorts of apologists from different methodologies,

01:21:55

I do have a very strong focus on presuppositionalism. So folks can check out my channel and see discussions

01:22:01

I've had with, um, a bunch of different presuppositional apologists where we unpack a lot of other issues.

01:22:06

So, well, Eli, it's been such a pleasure to chat with you and get your insights all about the great debates, which

01:22:14

I thought actually was very fun to interact with. Again, if you haven't seen the debate itself, there's videos out there.

01:22:21

You can see my reaction to it. Um, did you ever do a video on that? Uh, Eli, I have not, no people have asked me, but I just don't,

01:22:30

I don't have the time. Right, right. People don't know this, but the reason why

01:22:35

I do interviews is because they don't take a lot of prep. I have three little kids and I'm, I have a full -time job.

01:22:40

So, uh, it's hard for me to kind of dig as deep as I would like, but, uh, I thought you did an excellent job. I hear you.

01:22:46

I, I, I get this every now and then. Well, why don't you debate from atheists? Right. They're, they're angry with my analysis.

01:22:52

Why don't you debate? I'm getting debate. I only have one hour on a Thursday. That's all I got. You know, it's just, it is what it is.

01:22:59

But, um, no, I really appreciate the conversation and your, your insights. Um, for more from Eli, make sure to check out his

01:23:06

YouTube channel revealed apologetics. Uh, Eli, thank you so much for everything. Oh, it's an honor to be here.

01:23:13

And, um, maybe we can do something again in the future. I really enjoyed, I love your personality. I think we, uh, uh, you make me laugh.

01:23:20

Uh, you might not think you make me laugh, but, uh, when I, your Drax laugh, when you were critiquing that one debate,

01:23:25

I laughed out loud while driving. So, um, thank you for all the work you do. You're entertaining and informative.