Introducing Philosophy

Introduction to Truology and the Purpose of Christian Philosophy

Welcome to Truology, where we study Christian theology, philosophy, and apologetics. We do critiques on scholars, politics. We look into events in both classical and modern-day issues. We do interviews, debates, and much more.

Our goal is providing a Christian resource to edify the saints and to engage the community. But most of all, we want to glorify the Lord through our hearts, minds, souls, and strength. So, stay with us as we open up the Word of God and look into everything pertaining to life and godliness.

My name is Belushi Prevalon, coming to you from the Boston area. And right now, you are listening to Truology, the study of the truth as it is in Jesus. All right, Truology episode number three. It took a while for us to get here.

We've just been a little busy with things, but nevertheless, here we go. My name is Belushi Prevalon, as you heard, and this is Truology. Thank you so much for tuning in. I just want to give my media out links right away.

It's going to be studyofthetruth on Instagram. I have a personal account as well, you'remyboyblue, boy spelled B-O-I-I on Instagram. You can also catch me at Truology, that's T-R-U-E-O-L-O-G-Y.

Also, it can be found on YouTube through my other link, which is DrBlueTheTruologist, all one word there. So, go ahead and follow me so you can keep up with all the things that I'm doing. I'm also back on Twitter.

Haven't accessed Twitter for so long. I got my account back. Actually, my account's been where it was. I just never accessed it. It's been, I don't know, almost seven years or so since I last used Twitter.

But anyways, you can find me at Bprevalon, that's B-P-R-E-V-I-L-O-N, Bprevalon, on Twitter, or X. And that's exactly how long it's been since I've been on Twitter. Still calling it that. Anyways, so, Truology, episode number three, what are we going to talk about?

We are going to talk about, today I felt it necessary to talk about, philosophy. In my introduction to this podcast, I have, you know, we do apologetics, we do theology, and we do philosophy. I think philosophy is absolutely necessary for the Christian life.

As a matter of fact, everybody does philosophy. There's not a single person that doesn't. As Greg Bonson said, you know, philosophy is unavoidable. You either do philosophy very well, or you do it very badly.

So, in the Christian life, we have a proper philosophy. And through this episode, I just want to go, just give an introduction to what is philosophy, and the two tasks of a philosopher in this world, especially as Christians.

We have two tasks, as any other philosopher does in this world, and that's, you know, first, to be critical, asking questions, and to unify a worldview. So, let's just get into it in this topic today.

What Philosophy Is and Why Christians Should Love Wisdom

What is philosophy? Well, as I said, everyone does philosophy. Everyone philosophizes, alright? The word philosophy itself is made up of two words, first one being phileo, which is love, and then sophia, which is wisdom.

So, it's a love of wisdom. And as Christians, we should love wisdom because God is the only one wise, Jesus Christ is the manifest wisdom of God, and the spirit of God is the spirit of wisdom. So, as Christians, we have a basis for doing philosophy or loving wisdom.

The Bible tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, and, you know, the endeavors of a philosopher is to seek knowledge and truth. So, as Christians, I hope that we would be encouraged to want to do philosophy and not see it as this secular thing that is just not part of the Christian life or supremely detached from it, but rather we should see it as, wow, you know, this is a discipline that allows us to shape our thinking so that it becomes clear and correct, so that the things that we think about and how we think about them reflects how the world really is.

I hope that Christians would want to do that because I believe the Bible makes it very clear that we ought to give a reasoned defense for the hope that is in us, and that necessitates being rational, and philosophy is all about being rational and wanting to think and, you know, analyze things and give answers to questions and objections.

So, everybody does philosophy. It's unavoidable. People often contradict themselves because of bad philosophy. I mean, think about the person that believes in, like, gay rights, for example. You know, in our world today, there are certain groups of people that believe that, you know, being homosexual is okay.

As a matter of fact, it's not only okay, but they actually believe that homosexuals are who they are because of the environment they grew up in, or it's genetic. There's nothing that they can do to avoid being homosexual.

Therefore, humans are just a product of what they are genetically in their environments. They can't help it. That same group of people that would, you know, have that view of human nature would also decry someone like Vladimir Putin, who is the Russian dictator, and they would say, oh, no, you know, what they're doing to Ukraine is wrong.

You're not allowed to do that to other people. You're not allowed to march into their territory and declare war and kill a bunch of them and, you know, get in this disastrous mess in Europe right now.

You know, the people that hold this view of human nature, on one side that says, you know, human beings are just a product of what they are, will turn around with another outlook and say that, you know, taking people's lives is wrong and you ought not to do that.

You see, that's an example of bad philosophy, philosophy that conflicts ultimately in its worldview. It has two different ideas that just don't mix down together. And there's a lot of people in our world today that have that, hold those contradicting beliefs, and they are unaware of it.

As Christians, we should be aware of what kind of beliefs we have about the world and how we think about and shape our worldview. So that way it is clear, it is true, it is consistent, it doesn't contradict, but it reflects the way God made the world, which is rationally.

So, you know, the only question really is, you know, will we think consistently? You know, will we think reflectively? Will we think well? You know, as Christians, you know, we all not just have religious beliefs, but how are we actually going to consider the world in which we live?

You know, when the ultimate questions of life pop into our heads, do we just wave the hand and ignore them or do we think deeply about them and seek to get an answer that makes sense? People on the street, regular pedestrians, are different from someone who philosophizes in this manner.

The difference between the regular person on the street and the person who sits in deep, reflective thought habitually is really a difference of degree. Everyone philosophizes, everyone thinks of the big questions of life.

Who am I? Where am I going to go when I die? You know, how does, you know, the particulars in my experience relate to the whole in the universe? You know, the lack of resolve to answer the fundamental questions of life is really the difference between the regular person on the street that goes about to their job, loves their families, you know, plays video games, eats their food, never really questions anything deeply, and the person that sits in their office and writes theological treatises and philosophical reflections and articles and posts them on the Internet is just a difference of degree.

You know, it's a lack of, we must not have that lack of resolve that keeps us from, you know, thinking deeply about the world. We need to do philosophy, especially as Christians. I think we're probably called to harness the discipline of philosophy so that when we speak, we actually have something to say, something that is firm, something that people can look to and be challenged with, and hopefully, by it, come to the Lord Jesus as the foundation for why we hold the beliefs we do.

As Christians, we must stick to thinking correctly about life, right? Everybody does this. You can, you know, even rednecks out there in the countryside somewhere sometimes look up at the stars and ask, Billy, what do you think is really real?

You know, everyone asks those big questions at least once in their life. You've asked some kind of deep, reflective, thoughtful question such as that. You know, what is the really real? You know, what's my place in the universe?

Does God exist? What is truth, and what is the nature of it? Philosophical problems come from the conclusions of our natural curiosities. Now, you know, as human beings, you know, we are naturally curious, and I believe God created curiosity to get us to think and investigate and to find him.

The Bible says that God is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him. Matter of fact, that's how I came to the Lord. I started asking the big questions of life, and I found Christian apologetics, and I heard the gospel, and I got answers in Christ.

So, you know, human beings are naturally curious. You know, from the time of our infancy, we've been trying to control our environment. We've been trying to take our disjointed thinking and systematize it and make it, you know, categorize it in ways we can understand and use to our betterment and advantage in life.

And we do that through education. Education, according to Greg Bonson, can be defined this way. The process by which we reduce the diverse experiences of the world into law-like generalizations. For example, blending colors.

You know, as irrational infants and little boys and girls, we at one point realized that the color blue and the color yellow make the color green, right? These two primary colors put together create this whole new category of greenness, right?

This process occurs in higher and higher levels of generalization. So as we grow from our infancy and adolescence and we become adults, hopefully the way we think about the world and we generalize our diverse experiences in life becomes better, and we realize what things work well together and what things don't work well together, what things can blend and what things don't blend, and what the results are if such things occur.

Eventually, you come to realize that there are conflicts between certain generalizations as you grow. For example, there are certain people that are, you know, out there to become your friends, and there are other people that are out there that are bullies to you.

And as you grow in your experience of living with other human beings, you realize there's this category of people who are nice to me, and there's this other group of people who are mean to me. You know, from that, you know, because of our natural curiosity and the way we endeavor to just generalize things, we could come up with a philosophical look of human beings that says that, hey, maybe the way that people act and what's true to them is relative, because there are these people that act this way, but there are these other people that act this way.

Maybe it's just different strokes for different folks, and that becomes our philosophy of human beings and how people act and what people endeavor to use to make life make sense to them. You know, that's a philosophical conclusion based on the experiences that we've had in life, the way we've come to generalize the experiences we've had, you know?

And, you know, we also learn in our experience in life causal relationships. You know, you think about the classic example of the pool table, you know, with the, I don't know what it's called, the long pool stick.

I'm going to call it pool stick. You hit the billiard balls and, you know, and they go rolling and bouncing off one another, off the sides of the table and fall into the hole, all because of one tap to the cue ball.

That's an experience of an example of causal relationships. We see how things relate to one another based on certain actions and occurrences in life, and we can boil those kinds of relationships down to an ultimate conclusion, which becomes our philosophical outlook.

So not only do we have, you know, conflicts between generalizations, like different categories of people, but we also observe relationships between other things that aren't sometimes directly related.

You know, when you try to bring these generalizations together and you think about them and how they relate all together through your framework in mind, that is the process of philosophy. You know, when you're trying to take all these things together and boil them down to a conclusion that is true and reflects the world in which you live, that's philosophy.

I think we all do that. Sometimes, you know, unconsciously, but, you know, we go about making sense of the world in some way, shape, or form. And what's undergirding that activity is the discipline of philosophy.

We all do it. And it's good for the Christian to more or less awake to realizing that, you know, we must become masters of thinking correctly about the world and drawing the correct conclusions so that we don't end up having those conflicts in our perspective that utterly contradict.

Because if we hold views that contradict, then how can we defend the Word of God? How can we defend any particular belief that we hold? Because if we hold the belief that, you know, people are not really in control of who they are, how can we blame people like the Russians for the actions they commit?

Well, to be honest, we can't. You see, it's important. We make important decisions upon our generalizations. Therefore, we ought to have the right generalizations in our philosophical assumptions because they affect everything that we do.

The Philosopher’s First Task: Critical Thinking and Presuppositions

Next, I'd like to talk about the task of the philosopher, which is actually twofold. The very first task we have as Christian thinkers is to be critical. You see, this means that we need to cross-examine people's opinions.

Whether at work or on the street, we're going to bump into nonbelievers. And we need to properly critique the things that they say, not only for our own sake so that we are not led into believing something that's not true, but if we endeavor to love our neighbors, we ought to not allow them to believe in something that is false about the world.

Therefore, as we seek to be critical, we need to seek reliable presuppositions for all thinking. By presuppositions, I'm talking about the things that are properly basic to us, those things that we fundamentally take for granted, the things that are self-evident in our minds.

Three areas of philosophy that I want to cover as we consider being critical as a philosopher is the area of metaphysics. Metaphysics is the study of what is real. It has also been called the study of ontology or the study of being.

Many questions have been asked throughout history when considering metaphysics. One question, for example, is focused upon the question about the basis of individuation. In other words, how are things supposed to be characterized, identified by their characteristics or their material substance?

If you've never heard of it, a classical question in this area is how many angels could dance on the head of a pen? Because angels, in the Christian worldview, are created beings that are immaterial in their nature.

Therefore, they're not extended in space. So how many angels can dance on the head of a pen? One? Ten? Ten thousand? Are angels to be identified by the fact that one has blonde hair, blue eyes, and the other one has a long nose and is 5 '6 in height?

Or are angels classified by their material substance? This one weighs 280 pounds while this one weighs 175. The same question goes to us. How are we individualized? I'm a man, but there are all other kinds of men in the world.

What distinguishes us? How are we classified and categorized into particulars in light of the whole that is called man? Other metaphysical questions that we could be asking is does God exist? Does man have a soul?

And if he does, where is it? Or when is it? Is there life after death? And how do you know? Where did the world come from? Did it make itself or is there an external mechanism that generated it? The philosopher critically examines someone's metaphysical assumptions and evaluates whether they are reliable.

And as we seek to be critical, that's exactly our goal. We are seeking things that are reliable about life experience. We want to hold on to the ones that are true and reject the ones that are false. Another area of philosophy that we need to keep in mind as we try to be critical and examine other people's opinions, and even our own, is the branch of philosophy that is called epistemology.

Epistemology is a philosophical term that means the study of knowledge or theory of knowledge. How do you know what you know? As Christians, we know what we know from Scripture. We have a revelational epistemology.

We know what we know because God has revealed himself. And in doing so, he has revealed everything about everything else. We know who we are in light of who God has revealed himself to be. But if you're not a Christian, how do you know what you know?

Is autonomous self-law and your own rationality, is that the basis of all knowledge? Is that where knowledge is grounded? There are certain religious views out there that ground what they know in an external object.

Some even internalize it, some distant spiritual being, whatever the case may be. But epistemology is an area of philosophy that we need to take seriously because we utilize our epistemology every day.

We might not subconsciously be aware, hey, I'm being epistemological right now, but we use it every day. We're never separated from it. Therefore, being sharp in our philosophy will help us be subconscious about how we apply our epistemology.

Are we really seeing things through a biblical lens? Are we grounding our understanding and knowledge from God's word and the lordship of Jesus Christ? Or is it coming from something else? Third area of philosophy that I would like to consider with you as we seek to be critical is the area of ethics, which is human conduct.

Everyone applies their philosophy to whatever area of study they practice, whether in history, astronomy, literature, music, shopping, etc. We apply our ethics in all of that. How should a human being live?

What is the basis for writing wrong? Should we do circumstantial ethics? Should we look to God as a moral compass for our ethics? Where does it come from? How do we make sense of ethical conclusions that we hold?

For example, in Hinduism, it is believed that everything that is material in nature is maya, meaning illusions. So if we apply ethics in the Hinduistic point of view, how do we make sense of how human beings should act?

The person that commits a robbery, is he really robbing? Is he really committing the act of a crime? And what basis from the Hinduistic standpoint that all things that are in material existence are not real, can we argue that it is wrong to take someone else's property?

And that's just an example of applying and considering ethical conclusions from a religious standpoint, i .e. the Hinduistic standpoint. But, you know, as Christians, we must answer ethical questions as well.

You know, what is right and wrong and where is it grounded? I think if you've read scripture and you've been a Christian for some time, you know the exact answer to that question. But no one is excused from giving an ethical answer to life because we all engage in ethical situations every day.

The Philosopher’s Second Task: Building a Coherent Worldview

The next task of the philosopher, or I should conclude by saying this actually, the first task of a philosopher is to be critical. The next task of the philosopher is to unify those reliable presuppositions into a worldview, a robust and correct and coherent worldview.

Greg Bonson defined worldview this way. A worldview is a network of presuppositions that is not tested by natural sciences, in terms of which all experience is related and interpreted. I'll say it again.

A worldview is a network of presuppositions, right? Like the reliable ones that we have critically analyzed. It's a network of all those things that we have seen as fundamentally reliable. That means that because they're just basic, proper beliefs that we hold, that means that they cannot be tested by natural sciences.

We can't observe our basic presuppositions by molecular biology. We can't utilize the laws of mathematics to analyze them, in terms of which all experience is related and interpreted. In other words, our worldview becomes the lens through which we see the world and act thereupon.

A worldview being a network of presuppositions furthermore means this. The most basic convictions we hold about reality. For many people who are against Christians doing philosophy, I would like to ask, are we opposed to holding convictions about reality?

Of course not. As Christians, we ought to hold a network of presuppositions that reflect the theology that we believe, right? How we know what we know, how we live our lives, it comes from the network of presuppositions that we have examined to be reliable.

Therefore, these are used to test everything. These basic presuppositions. Everything is tested by our presuppositions. They are the things that undergird the reason why we believe language is intelligible, right?

These are ultimate commitments. These are things upon which we stand and cannot be moved and cannot be proved by any other thing, or else they would not be ultimate. As Christians, we stand upon God's Word as the basis for all truth.

And God's Word and the existence of the Triune God of Scripture as the Creator God who not only creates but sustains the world and gives consistency to it. There is nothing outside of Him that makes sense of the fact that I, as an individual man, exist apart from other individual men in the world also.

My mind is not their minds, but all our minds operate under the same laws that unify us together, grounded in God's mind, the Creator. You see, these presuppositions, according to Greg Bonson's definition here, they're not tested by natural sciences, meaning that these are used to interpret science.

I've often run into non-believers in the street, and they'll tell me that truth comes from science or truth comes from empirical observation. And I will ask them, you know, what outlook are you interpreting the scientific facts by?

And they'll look at me like I have two heads, as if, no, it's science. You don't need an outlook to analyze science. Science is science, right? But of course, that's not true, right? You know, for archaeologists who dig up dinosaur bones, they don't, you know, the bone doesn't talk.

There's no date on the bone. Their philosophical presuppositions interpret the dinosaur bones, right? Their view of geology, their view of mankind, their view of biology is guiding their interpretation of what these bones are, how they got there, and so forth, right?

For example, you know, why don't Hindus develop medicine? Right? Right? Because, you know, they hold properly basic presuppositions that disallow them to care for their neighbor, right? If a man is poor in India, in some places in India, you know, people will be less likely to help him, because with the worldview of the Hindus, it is not proper to help someone that is less fortunate because you're most likely getting in the way of their bad karma.

The reason they're in the position that they're in is because karma has rewarded them for the bad life that they had in the past life. So, as a Hindu, you know, how we interpret life is guided by our basic presuppositions.

And I hope people don't think I'm trying to pick on Hindus here, but, you know, I have it in my notes here. Anyways, so Hindus don't develop medicine because they ultimately have no fundamental presuppositions that ignite them to be able to care for their neighbor.

As Christians, we do. We ought to love our neighbor as ourselves. We ought to seek the betterment of the people who we live next to. We ought to have mercy upon one another. We ought to love the brethren.

That means we ought to seek the best for them. And when we grow up in a world where people are sick and diseased, we're looking for ways to control our environment in such a way that we can utilize our skills and crafts and science to come up with medicine that'll help the people we love get better.

To conclude this definition by Bonson here, it says, In terms of which all experience is related in interpreting, meaning, as we bring together the presuppositions that we believe are reliable, and as we seek to build this house that makes up our worldview, these things come together in a fashion that helps us to give meaning to things like logic and relationships and all of life, whether it's singing, music, art, you know, sports, you know, whether it's our scientific endeavors, education, history.

It doesn't matter what the category is, you know, we interpret what they are because of these presuppositions that we've critically examined and brought together and say, yes, you know, we're going to hold on to these and build our perceptions off them.

You see, worldviews, we must be careful here because whatever worldview you have crafted and come to the conclusion of, remember, worldviews are packaged deals, and in many cases, it can be embarrassing to hold self-refuting worldviews, or worse yet, just opposing elements within our worldviews.

For example, we got, you know, someone who is empirical in their epistemology, right? Someone who says all that can be known can be known and truly through sense experience only, right? That epistemology, the way that that person knows what they know through their senses does not mix with the idea of something like platonic dualism, which is the philosophical worldview that says that the things that are really real and exist are things that are in the realm of ideas and forms and immaterial existence, right?

If you hold an empirical epistemology, it does not mix with an outlook that says that the only things that really do exist are things that are not physical in nature, right? So, you know, on a very practical level, some of our co-workers hold these contradicting views, but the thing is, are we going to do the work of a philosopher, a Christian thinker, someone who's reflecting the truths and thoughts of God and seeing the world as it really is in light of God's truths to us in the scriptures, and confront the people that we engage with and say, hey, I don't think that makes quite a bit of sense.

You know, on one hand, you believe that only things you can see, touch, and smell are real, but on the other hand, you appeal to, you know, going home, loving your wife, and, you know, taking care of your kids.

These things don't make sense. How do you make sense of love and relationships while at the same time holding to a theory that only the things that you can physically and tangibly touch exist? The task of the philosopher is, therefore, to unify his presuppositions, which he believes are reliable and he has tested critically, into a worldview.

You see, Christian commitments or the Christian worldview means that we've made a commitment for all of life, right? We are committed to the existence of the Triune God and the Lordship of the Lord Jesus Christ, and everything we think and do is tied to our commitments to those things.

The Word of God is being absolutely true and fundamental to our understanding about the world. Therefore, any challenge in any point implicitly challenges everything we believe as Christians. So if someone wants to challenge our ethics, if they want to challenge our view on epistemology and how we know what we know, if they want to challenge our metaphysics, they are challenging everything that we believe as a structure.

Because if we have properly been critical and seeking to hold on to only the presuppositions that are true, and then building our worldview from that, anyone who picks at any point of our structure is attacking the entire thing.

So this is why it's important to know what you believe and know why it's true. You see, a proper theology naturally produces a coherent philosophy, and from a philosophy of life naturally comes a robust apologetic.

So there you have it. We have what is philosophy and the twofold task of the philosopher is to think critically and to unify those critical thoughts and presuppositions that he has examined. So that is where we'll leave it for now.

Closing Exhortation, Colossians 2:8, and the Christian Worldview

Thank you so much for tuning in to Truology. Once again, my name is Belushi Prevalon. You can catch me on Instagram at studyofthetruth. My personal account is you'remyboyblue, B-O-I-I and boy there.

You can also find the first two episodes of Truology on YouTube by just typing in T-R-U-E-O-L-O-G-Y or searching up Dr. Blue, the Truologist. I just want to thank you once again for tuning in to Truology.

It's been quite a bit since I posted. I'm trying to stay a little more consistent based on life and all the things that I'm busy with in general, but nevertheless, I thank God for the opportunity to be able to go through this with you, and hopefully, if you learn something, apply it and see to learn a little more about it, because I believe God has given us the ability to learn proper, clear thinking.

Oftentimes, you know, learning philosophy is discredited by verses in the Bible, like Colossians 2, 8, where it says, Beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

I honestly always thought that that was misapplied, because in this verse, it doesn't say, stay away from philosophy. It says, Beware, lest any man spoil you of a kind of philosophy, the kind of philosophy that is after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ, meaning that there is a philosophy that is after Christ, and I believe that that philosophy comes directly from the Word of God and gives proper meaning to our existence as we humbly submit to the words of God, His Spirit, and the Lordship of His Son.

So thank you once again for tuning in to Truology. Look me up on all those social media platforms, including Twitter, where you can find me at BeatPrevalon. I will catch you next time. I'll be posting another episode soon.

Remember, on Spotify, you can always vote for the next discussion, so I hope that you would engage in doing that. Till next time, have a good one. Truology is a podcast that seeks to equip, effect, and engage the world through Christ and His wonderful gospel of the kingdom, against which He has promised that the gates of hell shall never prevail but increase by His government, His law, and grace, till it be presented a glorious church without spot or wrinkle.

If there's any fear, threat, or worry, remember that the One that has called you according to His purpose and grace has also promised that all enemies will soon be placed under His feet. Now, I want you to believe that not because I said it or because it sounds really nice and spiritual, but primarily and wholeheartedly and only and biblically, because it's the truth.