Answering An Interesting Objection to TAG

Revealed Apologetics

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Hey, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today

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I have a very special guest with me. He is a returning guest. And he actually, if you guys are familiar with the name,

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Dr. Chris Bolt, he actually was over there at the Choosing Hats website. Maybe he can share a little bit about that when

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I formally kind of introduce him here. But Dr. Chris Bolt is a friend of mine, and he is an excellent

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Christian apologist, Christian philosopher, and he is very knowledgeable in the sorts of things that we discuss on this channel.

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So I'm super excited to have him on. Today, we're going to talk a little bit about the Transcendental Argument, and we're going to be responding to an interesting objection to the

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Presuppositional Approach. And this is a big deal, because when you write comments in the comments section, okay,

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I don't know if folks know this, if I don't respond to you right away, there might be a number of reasons why. Okay, if you're nice,

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I try. If you're not nice, I just ignore it. But when the videos drop, the new video drops, it's not live.

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So I'm not usually in the chat. Sometimes I am. I might be working, driving home from work while the video is going, and so people are talking to me.

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I can't actually respond. But I do scan the comments and try to find questions that I think are interesting and well thought -out.

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And this one that we're going to be covering today, dealing with the—I don't know how to pronounce it—but the

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Gödel Incompleteness Theorem. I know that there's a specific way to pronounce that, and I don't know how to pronounce it.

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But I am familiar with the theorem, and Dr. Bolt is as well, and so we're going to talk about the suggestion that that theorem disproves the

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Presuppositional Approach, the Transcendental Argument, so on and so forth. And so every now and then, when I scour through the really, really bad objections in the comments section, there's one that's interesting and I think worthy of taking a look at.

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So I'm super excited to have Dr. Bolt to discuss that today. Now, without further ado,

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Chris, why don't you introduce yourself and tell a little bit about your academic background before we kind of jump right into the topic for today?

02:11

Yeah, well, thank you very much for having me on again. It's always a joy to be on here on your channel.

02:16

I really appreciate the work that you're doing and what Apologia Studios is doing as well, and so I'm happy for that.

02:22

Partnership over there between you all. Well, academic background, so I have a bachelor's degree with a double major in philosophy and religion, and then

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I went on to get my MDiv in Christian ministry in particular, and then

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I have a doctor of philosophy, a PhD in philosophy, and that was an interesting degree because they did split it into majors and minors.

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And so I have a major in philosophy, and then I have minors in systematic theology and world religions, and so I'm not technically an apologetics

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PhD, but the way I view apologetics, I have all of the parts, and so the apologetics is just the outward -facing part that I was already doing, right?

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So, I can't remember if you if you had asked anything else. I will say my current position now,

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I'm back in Virginia, which is my home state. We're actually a commonwealth, but it's, I'm back in my earthly home, not too far from where I'm originally from, and I am working to build what is called the

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Reformed Baptist Institute, and for those of you who are not Calvinists, don't let that scare you away.

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We simply mean Reformed in the historic sense. We are not Roman Catholic. We're not Eastern Orthodox. We are actually

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Baptist in that history with the five soul laws of the Reformation.

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So, reformedbaptist .com is the website address there.

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I am doing some speaking, and so I was just looking at my calendar yesterday.

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It's filling up fairly quickly, but you can go to that website, reformedbaptist .com, and go to the

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About section, and then look at my section there, and there should be a speaker forum. We're gonna be working on that some more, but there are also, from time to time, some courses that you may be able to take through there, even if it's online, but if you're in the

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Richmond, Virginia area, I would invite you to take a look for sure at the Reformed Baptist Institute.

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Also, if you would, please take a look at my podcast that works with that through Converge Studios, and that is

04:32

Christ or Chaos, and I say these things, Eli. I don't like plugging myself. I don't like talking about myself, truly don't, but I haven't been on your channel in a while, and a lot has changed since I was last on.

04:44

Well, that's perfectly fine. I mean, one of the great things about having a guest who has resources is that when someone comes on and they share those things, that allows people who watch and are interested to be like, hey, there's more stuff that I could access, whether it's signing up for a class or, you know, purchasing a book or, you know, checking out a blog or something like that.

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So, when I have a guest, I do not mind at all if they give a big commercial view, as long as they don't say, if you call the number in the bottom of the screen, we will send you this anointed, then we'll have to cut you short, but I don't mind at all.

05:16

Now, why don't you tell a little bit about your podcast and the website,

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Choosing Hats. Now, I know it's been a while. I'm not sure if it's an active website, but there's definitely material there that sometimes

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I'll go and kind of brush up on some stuff. You have like a blog series on presuppositional apologetics.

05:35

Why don't you say a little bit about that? Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, we started that in 2006. That was Brian Knapp and me.

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We founded it and then we brought some other guys on as we went and that site is still available,

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I believe, at choosinghats .org. I want to say it could be .com, but I think it's .org

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and it is a bit messy. Someone is simply paying to keep it up at the moment and it is defunct, essentially.

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I moved away from it when I took on a full -time pastorate, lead pastor role, which was back in,

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I don't know, like 2015. It's probably about the last time you'll find fresh articles on there. But if you go to the post series, there are some really good series there and Choosing Hats was around really before presuppositionalism kind of exploded onto the

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Internet. I don't think you were around yet on YouTube, not quite yet, and Jeff Durbin and Apologia, they were doing things, but not to the extent that they are now.

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You just didn't, it was very difficult to find good resources for presuppositional apologetics. I'm grateful to have been involved in that frontier work,

06:54

I guess, is what it was. Our goal was to try to take difficult topics within presuppositionalism and break it down to an understandable, you know, for anyone to understand and use.

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Unfortunately, there were, you know, atheists who had come along and tried to take it into the clouds again. So we went there when they went there.

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But yeah, some information there. In fact, I was reading one today, and I don't remember the title of it.

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I think it's a response to Pat Mefford, M -E -F -F -E -R -D, and it is on multivalued logic and dialetheism and and the impossibility of the contrary.

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And so it gets fairly heady. And there's some comments there as well from some folks who know philosophy way better than me and or logic in particular, but that's actually not totally unrelated to what we're talking about tonight.

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It's an analog of sorts. But anyway, so, but I would check out that series that you mentioned a moment ago.

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I think it's called an introduction, brief introduction to covenantal apologetics. And so all of those series posts should be there, even if they don't link between one another.

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I hope to take some of that material someday and, you know, put some new, put a new suit on it,

08:15

I guess, for my podcast. Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with going in depth. I know that there are a lot of people like laypersons who are like, hey,

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I really want to learn presuppositional apologetics, but it can be really complicated. And that's not, I want to encourage you, that's not essential, that's not an essential feature to the presuppositional approach.

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I think the reason why it can be heady is because the folks that we typically are interacting with are bringing it to that level or talking about those things, and we have to address, just as Van Til was doing in his own day, when you read

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Van Til's work, it can be very difficult to follow, and that's partially due to Van Til himself, but it's also partially due to the thinkers and the philosophies that he was interacting with.

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So we have to kind of learn to speak the language of the people that we're speaking with. So yeah, so don't be discouraged, there are easy resources.

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There's a really good book, I keep suggesting people check this one out, that can be purchased over there at American Vision, The Objective Proof for Christianity, The Presuppositionalism of Van Til and Bonson.

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And then there is a one that, let me see if I can grab it down here real quick. While you do that, I'll just say, that's not unique to presuppositionalism, that things can get heady.

09:19

Correct. That's right, that's right, and I'd like to suggest this one here. It's a very good book for beginners, but it's pretty solid and good as a starter.

09:29

Every Believer Confident, I kind of wrote an endorsement here on the back here, and I've said about this book, one of the best introductions to presuppositional apologetics available today.

09:38

So it is, I used to suggest Bonson, which Bonson simplifies Van Til, but this is super, super simplified, but very practical.

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So highly recommend folks who are like, I don't know all that philosophy stuff, but give me something I could chew on.

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This is a really good book. I might even get the author back on, I had him on a while ago, where we discussed his previous edition.

09:59

So, so Every Believer Confident, this is a good one here. Introducing All Access, your premium gateway to deeper apologetic and theological insights.

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10:38

All right. Well, let's jump right in Chris, and I want to talk a little bit about first the transcendental argument.

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Because I hear, it seems like a lot of the objections that I hear on YouTube, not like the sophisticated objections where people kind of know philosophy and are familiar with some of the issues.

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Just the comments, not even the comments just on my videos, just like comments in YouTube sections can be pretty bad.

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But there is this kind of this misconception that like the transcendental argument is something like presuppositionalist made up.

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You know, and that's obviously not the case. Can you tell us a little bit about the history of transcendental arguments and why they're not strange arguments.

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They are a particular kind of argument that's right there in line, not of the same sort, but in line with something like a deductive argument or inductive arguments and things like that.

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It's just another kind of argument. Can you hash that out for us? Yeah, certainly. So, and I think

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I've done this a number of times, maybe even on your channel. But, you know, you can look at this theologically, you can look at this philosophically.

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To approach it theologically, you can draw from scripture itself. And I'm gonna go minimal on this just because I do want to get to the philosophical aspect or approach here.

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So, theologically, you can look at the distinction, for example, between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent that's prophesied there in Genesis chapter 3.

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You have God cursing the serpent and on his belly he will go. You have life promised through Eve.

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Her name means the mother of all living. And so Adam and Eve, even though they are told that they will die if they eat the fruit of the tree, they recognize that there is ongoing life.

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They didn't immediately die physically as well, even though they will. And so there is that promise that there's gonna be war between the seeds, war between the offspring, war between the children of the woman and the serpent.

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And so this is a spiritual reality of the seed of the woman, the seed of the serpent, that plays out collectively and individually, where the seed of the serpent will strike the heel of the seed of the woman and the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent.

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That's a fatal blow that's prophesied in what's called the Proto -Evangelium all the way back in Genesis chapter 3.

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And so what you have immediately after Adam understanding and receiving that promise of life by calling his wife's name

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Eve, she gives birth. And so she has Cain and Abel. And she says,

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I've gotten a man from the Lord, this sort of thing. And then, of course, Cain kills his righteous brother

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Abel. Cain had offered the fruit of the ground, much as Adam and Eve had sewed the fig leaves together to try to cover their sin.

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It took a blood sacrifice on God's part. God sacrificed an animal, put the bloody skins around Adam and Eve.

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Of course, I don't know if they were bloody by the time they went on their bodies, but you get the point. And then Abel had offered an actual blood sacrifice in that way.

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His was acceptable to the Lord. Cain's was not, the text does not explicitly say why this was the case, but I've just stated some facts from which you may possibly draw some -

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But where did Cain get his wife? Boom! Bible defeated. Yeah, yeah.

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I always like getting into that because I ask people, well, how does this work exactly in an evolutionary view where they're not two people at some point?

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And watching the meltdown, people try to figure that out. Well, actually it happened with two people all over the world.

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Yeah, that makes it more likely. Anyway, moving forward then, so then you have, you know,

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Israel and Egypt. You have, you know, the Lord calling Israel his firstborn son, his beloved child, and then you have the

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Egyptians and God says immediately to them, you know, he's gonna say through Moses, let my son go or I will kill your firstborn son.

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So you see the seed play out in an individual level as with Cain and Abel, on a collective level as with Israel and Egypt.

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So what I'm doing here is a biblical theology of what presuppositional apologists would call the antithesis.

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There's this antithesis between the view of Christians and the view of non -Christians, the view of believers, the view of non.

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There are Old Testament theologians who object to this type of systemization or so -called biblical theological approach to Scripture and they'll say, you know, what do we do when we get to the

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Psalms? Well, I would just argue you've got the righteous and the wicked all through the Psalms. There's the antithesis.

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What about the Proverbs? Well, you've got the wise and the fool all through the Proverbs. And when you move into the

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New Testament, you get the same sorts of things, even direct fulfillments of some of those more shadowy prophecies and figures and types and all that in the

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Old Testament. So that's one way to think of it. And so the argument would be, look, you believe in God, you give him the credit that's due his name, and if you don't, if you suppress that truth in unrighteousness, that results, not only, it's not only that you've lost original righteousness.

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It's not only that you have that spiritual separation from Almighty God.

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It's that your whole nature is corrupt by the fall. There are noetic effects of sins that do, of sin, that does affect the intellect, the emotions, the will.

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It's not so much that the intellect is pitted against the emotions or something as it is that sin is the enemy, as it were, of all of those, right?

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So it's not that we're as bad as we can be, but it's that sin has affected us in each of our faculties throughout.

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So we're not utterly to pray, but we are totally to pray. We're spiritually unable to come to Christ apart from the work of his spirit and his drawing us to him.

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Obviously, you know, Christ makes that sacrifice on the cross for our sins in our place after having actively obeyed

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God, perfectly fulfilled his law. He bears the wrath of God toward sin so that all who trust in him, who turn from their sins and trust in him, will be forgiven of their sins, counted righteous in God's sight.

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That is the serpent, as it were, striking the heel of the seat of the woman, and the woman crushes the head of the serpent.

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And this is not necessarily for the unbeliever, necessarily. If you're an unbeliever watching this, this is helpful to you because describing the theology of it all allows you to see where we're coming from when we say the things that we're saying.

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So this obviously is to reinforce to the Christians, like, this idea of antithesis is rooted in Scripture and should inform the way we engage unbelievers.

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If you're an unbeliever watching this, you'd be like, oh, that's why the presuppositionalist always talks about, you know, you know, the fool says in his heart, and you know, this, that, or the other thing, or without God.

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It's related to our framework. I mean, we're trying to expound biblical categories when we are engaging with the unbeliever.

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So this is not, you know, you just picture an unbeliever saying, well, you're saying all this, but prove it. That's different. We're giving the theology of the apologetic.

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We're not providing the justification, but perhaps we can get into that in a little bit. But yeah, that's a good layout in terms of the antithesis.

18:07

If anyone's interested in this concept of antithesis, you can not only find that in the writings of Dr. Bonson, but Rush Dooney's work.

18:15

By what standard I think it's called? By what standard? There's a whole section in there where he goes really deep into the biblical categories of this antithesis, starting from the

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Proto -Evangelium in Genesis 3 .15 and moving onward. So if folks are interested, you know, you like the theology part of that, you can totally check that out.

18:33

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Again, go to ApologiaStudios .com and start your journey today. Now, when this is manifested, then, within the apologetic context, transcendental arguments are not—they weren't invented ex nihilo.

19:31

I mean, they—you could even see this in elements of it in, like, Aristotle when you're dealing with logic.

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Can you kind of give us a brief kind of reconnaissance of the history of transcendental arguments philosophically, and then how it comes to head in the work of, say, someone like a

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Cornelius Fantil, and then we'll kind of take it from there. Yeah, and what

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I was gonna say there is, you know, theologically speaking, when I just presented there, sometimes unbelievers are like, okay, but where's the argument?

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We're getting to it, right? It's like I'm fleshing this out for two reasons. One, you see the consistency of the

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Christian view. If I'm then able to go on and build on this philosophically, as I will try to do in just a moment—so,

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I do believe that presuppositionalism and the transcendental argument is a philosophical manifestation of what

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Scripture already tells us, theologically speaking, right? And so an unbeliever can intellectually understand, oh, there's some form of consistency within their view, and the unbeliever can also understand that, hey, your unbelief, even, is taken into account in the

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Christian worldview. It's not like we're bothered by this. Because we know that you believe in God, and that you have a second -order belief, whereby you say, oh,

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I don't really believe in God, and this sort of thing. So, you said you just put that out there. I have an entire video where we talk about the first and second order beliefs and how they can be in conflict.

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We talk a little bit about what it means to be self -deceived. No, we get it. I mean, the unbelievers can be like, man, this is the kettle calling the pot black, right?

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Obviously, the Christian is deceived. We get the reversible aspect of that, but we actually argue that we can demonstrate that you're self -deceived and justify the fact that we're not.

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You might not believe that, but that's the argument we put forth that we could actually justify. It's not being just put out there as a name -calling kind of thing.

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So, I just wanted to let folks know that. Maybe if I remember, I'll put the link to the video where I cover—the entire video is just on the issue of the apologetic implications of self -deception.

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So, I'll try to put that in there, but go ahead. Absolutely. I mean, in order to argue for a claim, you have to be able to understand what the claim is in the first place.

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That's all we're setting up there, right? So, yeah, sure. You believe in God, but you suppress truth and righteousness. We'll prove it.

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Okay. So, let's move philosophically then into kind of just a brief history of transcendental argumentation.

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So, I did want to note that because in the Hebrew record, in the Jewish record, in the

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Christian record, because we have to remember too that, you know, Aristotle potentially had access to those documents as well.

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But Aristotle comes to logic, and this is a very much a paraphrase, but he says something to the effect of this.

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He's thinking about logic, and he's thinking, well, how do we go about proving these first principles? How do we go about showing, you know, that logic is true or whatever?

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So, he's talking about classical laws of logic, like the law of identity, the law of excluded middle, the law of non -contradiction.

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And he does think of logic in a very metaphysical sense. However, when it comes to arguing for logic, you wind up, it seems, kind of arguing in a circle.

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If you use logic to prove logic, then you're arguing in a circle, it would seem.

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If you try to argue for logic using something other than logic, well, then you've sacrificed or given up on, anyway, your first principles.

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It's like, well, we can prove logic by something other than logic. Doesn't seem to be consistent with what we want to say of logic.

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So, there's a third option, perhaps, that we just argue against logic. But to argue against logic, we would have to use logic, right?

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And so, this gets to the gist, I want to say, of transcendental argumentation.

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It's this idea that to argue for or against something, you actually have to presuppose that thing as a precondition.

23:35

Now, there are different senses of presupposition that I don't really want to get into, but just in general, this is the type of form that a transcendental argument would take.

23:44

You can move forward, and another classic example that helps us to understand this in terms of illustration would be philosopher

23:54

Rene Descartes and his cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore,

24:00

I am, from which we can make all sorts of different jokes and whatnot. He's not saying that he thinks epistemologically, and therefore, metaphysically, this is the case.

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He's not saying, I think, in terms of my thoughts, in terms of my knowledge, and therefore, reality follows that.

24:17

That's not what he's saying. What Descartes is doing is he's following this procedure, which really has wrecked modern philosophy, by the way, but he's going about seeing what he can doubt.

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He's using this method where I'm going to doubt everything I can doubt, and anything that's left that's undoubtable is certain knowledge.

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He's looking for this certain knowledge. And so, this does push him into rationalism.

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It pushes him into what he believes is kind of an a priori position. There are problems with this, but I'm not going to get into all that, because that's not what

24:51

I'm after here. What I'm after is to illustrate what transcendental argumentation looks like. And so, Descartes says, look, one of the things that I cannot doubt is that I am a thinking thing, because when he thinks, clearly, that's upon the basis that he's thinking.

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When he tries to argue against that and say I am not thinking, well, in saying I am not thinking, you are thinking.

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And so, there does seem to be within what we would call the negative transcendental critique, some type of reductio ad absurdum, a reduction to the absurd, to the incoherent, to the inconsistent, logically or otherwise.

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There's been a lot of work that's done on this in terms of self -refuting statements and self -stultification and self -defeat and all that.

25:41

And there are distinctions between those. That's more nuanced philosophy. But in general, what we're talking about, again, with Descartes, as with Aristotle, is that if you say this thing positively or negatively, there's a precondition or a set of preconditions behind that.

26:02

There are other philosophers moving forward quickly, so Immanuel Kant famously used transcendental method.

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Now, he does have scholars, Kantian scholars, who would argue that there's nothing like a formal transcendental argument in Kant, necessarily, and all that.

26:19

Again, another topic for another day. But in general, Kant appears to follow this transcendental method, where he thinks that we, as humans, bring these categories to our experience.

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So we have this raw experience. Think of that, to borrow Ron Nash's illustration, think of that as this discombobulated mess.

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It's like meat. It's sausage, or whatever meat, before you put it in the meat grinder. So you put the meat in at the top, it's all misshapen and unformed and whatnot.

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And so the substance kind of goes in there, and then you crank the meat grinder, and it comes out the other side in shapes, your sausage links or whatever it is.

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And so that is kind of what Kant is saying that we do. You can also think of it as almost a film projector, like we're walking around with these categories of experience in us by which we interpret the world out there.

27:15

Now, there are problems with Kant here again, and I'm not giving way to Kantian thought. For one thing, it looks as though Kant is thinking down both sides of thought.

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It seems as though he's talking about things he says we cannot talk about, you know, that whole realm that's out there.

27:30

But it's also the case that Kant seems to be assuming things about a human nature that you can't necessarily get to, given his own view.

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It does become very inherently and radically subjective in nature, so that knowledge now of the world and even metaphysics, as it were, turns on the individual or the subject of knowledge, rather than the object.

27:53

I heard somebody say, when you study Immanuel Kant, you quickly learn that with Kant, you can't know anything.

28:01

That was a helpful way to remember the implications of his epistemology and his metaphysics.

28:07

Yeah, absolutely. And so what Kant is doing, though, in positing those categories.

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So like, let's say I bring this idea of causality to my raw experience. I impose that category upon my experience.

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And he's arguing you have to do that. It's necessary. And that's kind of the transcendental method or argument.

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And there are different ways he questions this out. He was a brilliant thinker. I just think he was wrong. But he's also very boring to read and wordy.

28:39

You can see then, what he's saying is you can't deny those categories without using those categories.

28:44

So here again, we get that transcendental thrust to it. You have later philosophers, P .F. Strawson, A .C.

28:50

Grayling, I believe he was at Oxford. I mean, these are no philosophical slouches.

28:56

A .C. Grayling, I think he wrote, didn't he write an entry on transcendental arguments in his History of Philosophy, which

29:01

I thought was good. It was good. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He wrote a lot on the transcendental argument and others.

29:10

And so then you get to Cornelius. I'm sure I've skipped some. And I do believe that we've got an episode.

29:19

I wasn't on camera for it. And it was on your channel. It's my favorite episode I've ever done on any politics.

29:26

And I think it was like Chris Bolt and Eli talk presuppositionalism or something.

29:32

I think that might have been the first time you came on. And I remember it was a really good discussion. I'll try my best to remember to put all of my interviews with you, because a lot of people people say like, oh, you know what?

29:44

The problem with presupp is that, you know, people from other religions can use a transcendental argument.

29:50

It's like we have an entire video on that. I think that was the second time you have. So we have addressed that. And that's not a deficiency of the argument.

29:57

Anyone could use any argument. The issue is, can they pay the bills on the actual argument? So that's not a deficiency.

30:02

That's just a normal. Yeah, obviously, you know, I formulate my argument typically with three premises.

30:09

So, you know, if knowledge is possible, the Christian worldview is true. And if I'm talking to an analytic philosopher, what do you mean by the

30:15

Christian worldview? I have ways to describe and narrow it down. But if knowledge is possible, the Christian worldview is true.

30:20

Knowledge is possible. Therefore, the Christian worldview is true. And I tell people you can substitute the

30:25

Christian worldview with the Muslim worldview or the Hindu worldview. That's possible. The question is, do those worldviews actually pay the bills on the claim?

30:36

And so maybe we can talk about that a little bit, but I interrupted you got. Oh, you're good. I mean, I'm going to skip over Cornelius until actually

30:43

I can come back to him because I'm trying to say here is there is a transcendental methodology, a transcendental argument.

30:50

That's it's not the transcendental argument, but this is a common thing in the history of philosophy.

30:55

And so when philosophers, you know, insult fantillion presuppositionalist by mocking the whole concept of a transcendent,

31:03

I understand not agreeing with it. That's fine. If you want to argue that they're not good arguments. What I don't understand is pretending to be ignorant or or maybe you actually are ignorant, but there's a whole history of these in philosophy and I've barely scratched the surface.

31:15

Right. I've been planting God and William and Greg admits this in the five views book edited by Stephen Cowan.

31:22

You know, I've been planting. I use this transcendental styled arguments at the very least.

31:27

Some of those people have debated. They are transcendental arguments. And then you get someone who's a follower in his vein who early on was heavily influenced by Greg Bonson.

31:38

I do believe he's a Roman Catholic now, but I tell her this. Yes, is doing work in transcendental arguments now in print, in academic books and papers.

31:50

So, you know, this is not something that is way out, you know. But the problem but the problem is,

31:57

Chris, Dr. Bolt, OK, that everybody knows, everybody knows.

32:04

I mean, everybody knows that the precept transcendental argument is circular question begging.

32:11

Right. And I love how people they'll write it or they'll say it as though this is some kind of like, oh, my goodness, like it's question begging.

32:20

Oh, my goodness. Why don't we why don't we address that? Can you and I make this distinction to can you go through the distinction between the presupposition of an argument and the premise of an argument, or maybe talk a little bit about direct arguments and indirect arguments and how that relates to the whole claim of circularity?

32:41

Because I would readily admit, and I know you would as well, that there's a sense in which I do presuppose the truth of the

32:46

Christian worldview. But when I laid out my argument just a moment ago, right, if knowledge is possible, the

32:52

Christian worldview is true, knowledge is possible, therefore the Christian worldview is true. The conclusion isn't baked in one of the premises in some fallaciously circular fashion.

33:00

Can you kind of hash that out for folks who think that it's just a hand wave like it's a complete knockdown?

33:05

It's just circular, bro. Everybody knows it. It's it's just so cringey. But if you could address it.

33:11

Well, it's been a while, but let's I'm just going to pull pull a lot of toys out on the table. So, you know, one thing and I do know that I noted this in our very first video we did together, even though I haven't listened to it since then.

33:26

You didn't listen to it before you came on here? Come on, man. No, but I was too busy studying what you have me addressing in a little while.

33:33

So, but anyway, the, you know, the objection is out there that transcendental argument, as used by presuppositionalist, cannot be formulated.

33:44

Well, if that's the case, then you cannot also raise the objection that the transcendental argument as formulated by presuppositionalist is circular.

33:53

Correct. That's right. In a logical sense. I mean, you can have one or the other. You cannot have both because you have to have an argument that's formalized in some sense or some regard in order to charge it with logical circularity.

34:05

That's one issue. Another issue you asked to distinguish between presuppositions and premises in an argument, which

34:12

I think is an interesting way to put it. And then also talk about direct versus indirect. So you could do a direct deductive argument, you know, with, so let's use the

34:24

Kalama cosmological argument. That's one of my favorites. I think it's a good argument. Can you say it like William Lane Craig?

34:30

It's been, so I, here's the thing. Can you say, well, there are three premises, premise one, and you could just walk through it.

34:37

Here's the thing. Most of my experience with Bill Craig was reading his debates on leader youth back before the world of social media back before we had,

34:50

I mean, I think it was before Facebook. Oh, my space. Maybe it was my space though. Yeah.

34:55

It was, it may have been my space days or a little prior, but so I don't really know how he says it.

35:00

I do know some of what you're talking about, I guess, but anyway, everything which begins to exist as a cause for it's coming into being the universe began to exist.

35:08

Therefore the universe has a cause by the way, he does have a communications degree and that's why he talks that way.

35:14

He's very good at it. Okay. Anyway everything which begins to exist as a cause for it's coming into being the universe began to exist.

35:21

Therefore the universe has a cause. So that's a direct argument. That's a deductive logical argument.

35:29

I believe that argument is sound because it's, it's certainly valid in argument form, deductively valid, and it has all true premises.

35:39

Namely everything which begins to exist as a cause for it's coming into being. Now you, you will need to provide some type of evidence for that.

35:46

Craig in his dissertation, I won't get into this too much, but I think it's, I think it's very weak, the arguments he presents for that, but this, the other, you agree with the argument.

35:56

You think that the reasons that Dr. Craig gives for his premises in his dissertation are not as strong. Yes. That's fair.

36:02

Yeah. Yes. And, and of course that does relate to presuppositionalism as well, because the reason

36:08

I believe the first premise is because I presuppose that Christianity is true. Right. Which is just to say that the

36:15

Christian worldview is the necessary precondition or the context in which something like the first premise would even make sense to begin with.

36:22

You're starting with a system that provides. How do you go about proving that everything which begins to exist has a cause for it's coming to be?

36:30

Well, if you reject it, Chris, then it's worse than magic, you know?

36:36

No, I mean, and that's true. I know, I know. But that's an argument from consequences, right?

36:43

That's right. And, and actually, I don't know that you could actually posit that consequence without having experience of it in some form or fashion.

36:51

Cause how do you, what do you know? How do you know what it looks like? Yeah. Right. Would you say that he commits in a sense, maybe not him specifically as I don't mean obviously it's, his work has been in peer review and obviously he's heard everything

37:08

I would imagine, but the, the claim, some people will critique the Kalam, the first premise as committing the fallacy of composition at what is true.

37:16

I don't think that applies to to that particular argument.

37:24

And I dealt with this in pushing the antithesis, which is the first journal that choosing hats.

37:31

Yeah. I remember that. Yep. Not really academically. It was a cool, it's a cool name for a journal.

37:38

I like it, but I do have an article in there that, that does deal with Craig's thing. And I did accuse it,

37:45

I think of the fallacy of composition, but I was corrected swiftly by Paul Monada. And I, I don't remember exactly what he said, but I did actually agree with him.

37:54

I don't think it commits the fallacy composition, but if somebody wants to make that argument, that's fine.

38:00

You know, it does apply to other cosmological arguments which was what was working its way into that paper.

38:08

But so it depends a great deal on how we state these things. I mean, the Kalam already is way ahead of a lot of other cosmological arguments because it does give that qualification, everything which begins to exist.

38:20

But it is a direct argument as opposed to indirect. So there's important things.

38:26

So with transcendental arguments, people might not know this, is that there, there is debate whether it can be formulated in a particular fashion.

38:34

And if you don't think it's formulated in a particular fashion, you kind of use kind of broad strokes in the way that you present the argument, then by definition, it cannot be circular because you're not using a premise, premise conclusion.

38:45

But suppose you do use premise, premise conclusion. Like I, like I do, I have premise, premise conclusion. First premise is a transcendental premise.

38:52

Even that is not fallaciously circular because the conclusion is not stated in the premise.

38:58

As a matter of fact, but the way if knowledge is possible, the Christian worldview is true. Knowledge is possible. Therefore, the

39:03

Christian worldview is true. That's, that's modus ponens. So what I was going to do is a little bit more dirty than that.

39:11

Dirty. This is a rated G. This is a rated G channel, bro. Right? Well, it is rated R because revealed apologetics.

39:18

You just said with regard to logical circularity, which you're right to make. So we need to make this distinction and it's going to, it's jumping ahead a little bit, but there's a distinction between logical circularity and epistemic circular.

39:29

Correct. Yes. Logical circularity pertains to Petitio Principi or, or the informal fallacy of begging question.

39:37

It's, but it pertains to the formal nature of an argument as a deductive argument as well. I mean, and so the way that you just defined it though, was you know, if your conclusion is contained in the premises, right?

39:51

Here's the problem. The conclusion of any deductive argument always is contained in the premises.

39:59

In a sense, because there's consistency, right? That's just what a deductive argument is.

40:06

Yes, correct. And you could, you could argue, I guess. But that's not a fallacy. That's not a fallacy.

40:11

And it's not in a fallacious sense. Not in the sense of when you look in the literature regarding deductive logic, but there are those philosophers who have brought this problem up.

40:22

Sure. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Because if we're going to, if we're going to push to first principles and we're going to discuss skeptical worries and circularity, logical circularity, viciously circular arguments.

40:34

Yeah. I mean, you've given me two premises and then you've restated them in the conclusion. And if there is anything in that conclusion, that's not already in the premises of a deductive argument, it's not a valid argument.

40:45

So it's certainly not sound. Yes. The conclusion doesn't follow. Now you have to support the premises. Correct. Other arguments.

40:51

Yes. But now you're just telling me, okay, there's a regress here. So here's what we're saying,

40:58

I think. No, I don't believe that the transcendental argument is logically, fallaciously, viciously circular at all.

41:07

For one thing, again, if it can't even be stated, you can't charge it with that. I think it can be stated. I think it could probably be stated in different ways.

41:14

Yes. When we're differentiating between direct and indirect arguments deep.

41:21

So like that argument that we just used works within a particular frame of understanding.

41:26

For example, you just said, but that's not fallacious to have the conclusion already contained in the premises and deductive logic.

41:34

Well, we're assuming an entire body of knowledge there, right? We're assuming the literature that's behind sentential deductive logic or whatever it is.

41:46

But there are assumptions behind that, right? It's like, how do we know that logic actually conforms to the world or vice versa, the contingent realm of the things that we're describing in these premises?

41:58

How do we know that it's being communicated properly? What is truth? What does it mean to talk about the propositions?

42:05

What you're doing is you're expanding to more broader categories.

42:11

And that's why we talk about worldviews. We're talking about entire paradigms.

42:16

And I think this is one of the problems with a lot of the criticisms of presuppositional transcendental arguments is that the atheist or the skeptic or whatever is always focused on some narrow domain that's not broad enough to encompass all of the things that you're talking about.

42:32

And we talk about the preconditions of intelligible experience. I mean, that's what must be true for even any category that we can talk about to make sense.

42:41

So what you're doing there, and rightfully so, is you're broadening the picture. Yeah, but you have to consider this. And that's why we're arguing at the paradigmatic level.

42:48

We're not just picking an individual thing like logic by itself as though that kind of exists floating in the middle, in midair or something like that.

42:57

Yeah. Yeah. And so that word paradigm comes from Thomas Kuhn. And Thomas Kuhn argued on the structure of scientific revolution.

43:04

He basically said, look, it's not that we are using rationality and science to come to these new views and whatnot.

43:11

It's that we'll hold a view within the literature, within the academy, within the guild for a particular amount of time.

43:19

And what happens is those professors retire and they die. And then the newer model replaces it.

43:26

We're doing these things with regard to these overarching paradigms. You can think of these as fishbowls and everything within each of those fishbowls is completely defined.

43:37

And I'm using that in the loosest colloquial inclusive sense I can. Everything within those fishbowls is defined in terms of that fishbowl.

43:46

Okay. Well, now you've got a problem of multiple fishbowls. And so in comes

43:51

Kuhn's principle of incommensurability, whereby he's saying that all of these different paradigms, these paradigmatic views, these fishbowls are incommensurate with one another.

44:03

The way that truth itself is defined, the way that rationality is understood, the scientific method itself, there are multiple scientific methods.

44:14

Okay. All of that, even down to communication on some level is defined within those fishbowls and never the two shall meet.

44:25

Okay. And there are way more than two in his view. So what we need is something that's overarching, that does away with that relativism, that post -modern inclination there.

44:38

And that would be what we would call the Christian worldview, a world and life view that's based upon God's world and God's word as they are in harmony with one another.

44:50

And so what we have there is the Christian worldview. It's not a

44:56

Hegelian worldview thesis in this sort of thing. You're just an idealist. You're just an idealist.

45:02

We're not talking about, and this will come up later probably too, but we're not talking about idealism or absolutizing things.

45:11

Cornelius Mantile believed that the problem with the unbeliever is that the unbeliever absolutizes these various portions of what's out there in God's world.

45:19

That leads into error, but to bring it back then to the question of direct versus indirect, if this really is the case, that there doesn't seem to be common ground on some level.

45:34

Now there is in the fact that everyone's created in the image of God. There is in the fact that we live in God's world because those are true.

45:44

The unbeliever is able to function in the world, to borrow truths from Christianity, all that sort of thing.

45:50

And we can say this all day till we're blue in the face. The question is how do we prove it? Here's how you prove it.

45:56

Indirectly. One, you set forth the Christian worldview with all of its consistency, its coherency, its correspondence, its pragmatic aspects, by the way, which is something

46:08

I'm probably gonna do some work on here pretty soon. And you set that over against the alternative, the opposite, the antithesis, which is any view which rejects

46:19

Christianity. And the similar feature of those, the defining feature is what's known as autonomy, self -law or self -rule.

46:27

We mean that in a philosophical sense here where those people are rejecting God's world and God's word in terms of it being his authoritative revelation.

46:38

So they're not under Christ. They are living consistently with the first Adam. And what they do then is, what we need to do rather, is perform what's called a negative transcendental critique where we hypothetically set upon their view and then show why there are difficulties even within their own view, using their own criteria.

47:04

The internal critique. Reduce it to the absurd. Now, here's the neat thing about transcendental argument, as Vantilla would present it.

47:11

It's not enough just to do a reductio ad absurdum, to reduce their view to the absurd. Because once you've done that, there's nothing standing whereby you can evaluate it as having been refuted.

47:23

That's where you bring in Christianity. So are you saying that the presuppositional transcendental approach is not simply saying that our view is true simply because we've shown your view is wrong?

47:40

Is that what we're saying? I've refuted you, Mr. Atheist. You're whatever atheist version you flavor you want to be.

47:47

You don't provide the preconditions for intelligibility. Therefore, I'm automatically right. Is that what we're saying? Well, I'm going to say yes and no.

47:54

And the reason why... Well, there is definitely a sense in which that's true. But I'm sure that's not merely what we're saying, right?

48:01

You've even mentioned it before, that we also are now presenting the Christian worldview as providing those preconditions.

48:07

Correct. No, that's right. That's right. That's what I was getting at. I understand the sense of what you're saying now, yeah. So, Clarkians would differ from this.

48:13

Ah, don't bring the Clarkians in here. I know. I know. I know. I did a podcast the other week, and the

48:20

Clarkians just dominated the comments, and I'm not going to respond to any of them. Anyway.

48:27

But no, I mean, again, to their credit, they present very, very good criticisms and critiques of unbelieving views of the world.

48:35

But they never bring it over into a transcendental argument. We're not merely refuting that and just leaving it be.

48:42

It's not sufficient as a gospel minister or a Christian apologist to not give the person the truth, right?

48:51

I mean, yes, we're out to shut the mouths of the unbelievers. That's right. So, it may depend on the order.

48:57

Maybe you've already presented the gospel in all of its clarity and persuasiveness and power, and they rejected it, and they're giving these objections, and the goal then is to close the mouth of the unbeliever.

49:07

But it's a two -step methodology, right? We're presenting Christianity as positive.

49:13

We're refuting, as it were, I don't use that in a logically tight sense, but we're refuting the non -Christian view through that negative transcendental critique.

49:23

And so, that's the indirect method of apologetics. You can still present, presumably, direct arguments.

49:30

Again, I find, let's bring it back to Kalam, and I'm going to be quiet. You really like the Kalam, bro.

49:35

I do like the Kalam. I find the Kalam cosmological argument a persuasive argument. But it doesn't have God in any of the premises, so it doesn't follow.

49:42

Don't get me into that. It's a good argument, but I believe that because I'm a

49:51

Christian, everything which begins to exist has a cause for its coming into being. Now, I have a reason to believe that as a

49:57

Christian, because I believe in the regularity of nature, because we have a God who is a rational

50:02

God who wants us to know the world around us, to know Him better. He wants us to know ourselves better, to know

50:07

Him better. He wants us to know Him. He's a God of order, predictability, regularity.

50:13

He created us to be at home in the world, as it were. The laws of nature not only are intuitive, but they are also necessary for human knowledge.

50:23

They're necessary for the entire scientific endeavor. They're necessary for just everyday experience.

50:31

The things that we do day in and day out are inductively based.

50:37

And so, and they're based too. There's a problem, bro. Yeah, yeah.

50:43

Who created God? You don't have that in non -believers. Who created God? Boo! Yeah, no, see, we never get it either with the

50:52

Kalam or with the presuppositional approach. But again, even in Scripture, you have that principle, some sort of principle, like uniformity of nature, regularity, that sort of thing stated explicitly in places like Colossians 117 and Genesis 822 and whatnot.

51:09

So, yeah, there you go. All right. Well, all that said, because obviously we can go into more and there's more detail and you can anticipate objection, we could talk about it all day.

51:19

But for the purpose here, so now let's jump into the objection that we were going to address. I don't want to accidentally unplug myself.

51:26

So the godel, the girdle, however you pronounce it, okay, incompleteness theorems, right?

51:33

There are two fundamental pretty much results in mathematical logic that reveal inherent, what can we say, limitations in like what we call formal systems, right?

51:44

So the first theorem states that in any consistent formal system capable of expressing basic arithmetic or something like that, there's going to be true statements that can't be proven within the system itself.

51:58

And so this means that no system can be both complete, formal systems of mathematics and logic can be complete, you can't prove every truth, and it can't be completely consistent in the sense that it's necessarily free of contradictions.

52:12

And then the second theorem tries to show that a system cannot prove its own consistency using its own axioms.

52:19

So can you explain to us how a skeptic, why would they appeal to the girdle, godel, godel, you know, however you want to pronounce it, appealing to this theorem, what are they trying to show in terms of what they think is detrimental to a transcendental argument, the presuppositional approach, things like that?

52:43

Yeah. So I think I would want to pronounce it Kurt Godel, but that's not right. It's something like Kurt Gordal or something.

52:51

There's going to be one, excuse me, gentlemen, it's pronounced data.

52:56

I don't, I don't know how to pronounce it, but yes. So, so, and to clarify that, because apparently there are misunderstandings when it comes to the incompleteness theorem, oftentimes,

53:09

I'm glad you stated it first and second, because oftentimes they're combined. I did pick up, and I'm not sure if you had written that, or if you were taking it from an objection that you had received.

53:19

It's from, it's from an objection, so. Okay. There are some nuanced issues with the way it was stated.

53:26

Okay. So, so I'm going to, I'm going to take this one from, from Stanford, any consistent formal system

53:33

F within which a certain amount of elementary arithmetic can be carried out is incomplete.

53:40

And so this pertains immediately to piano mathematics, to natural numbers and this sort of thing where you can count and just assume that there's going to, you know, it's going to go on that way in a series.

53:53

But for example here, so there are statements of the language of F, which can neither be proved nor disproved in F.

54:02

And so I want to state it that way to get away from the language of contradiction that was in your objection, and also to get away from the language of truth, because Tarski comes along with his undefinability theorem and, or theorem of undefinability, and says something to the effect of, you know, these, these arithmetic systems or whatever can't be, they can't speak of their own truth, as it were, which presents a whole different, it's a whole different can of worms that we're not going to open, hopefully.

54:41

So, but Gödel did need a way in which to take these numbers and put them into a, a formula, other numbers whereby they could talk about themselves.

54:59

Because it's really, it seems really difficult to do that with mathematics, but when you start thinking about it, it's not.

55:05

For example, early on, I was going to be a computer programmer. And so, you know,

55:12

I learned C++ and Microsoft Visual Basic, that was back in the day before we had things like Python and all that, which

55:18

Python is, by the way, so I know, I think, but anyway, we would translate things in and out of ASCII, and, you know, into binary and all these kinds of things.

55:31

And so what you have there is a numerical system, where you have translated some numbers into other numbers, and they're actually talking about the other numbers, if that makes sense.

55:41

So he goes about doing this in such a way that he can generate what is really, it's analogous to what's known as the liar paradox in philosophy.

55:55

So, which I know we're talking about philosophy of math still, but, you know,

56:01

I don't, I question how fair this is, but I think it's helpful maybe for the listeners to hear it put this way. So the liar paradox is when you have a statement, and let's say it's statement

56:10

S, and statement S states this statement is false.

56:18

So statement S states this statement is false. Well, if statement

56:25

S is false, then it is true. And if statement

56:31

S is true, then it is false. And so this is a form of the liar paradox.

56:39

There are different ways to go about trying to resolve this. We can get into questions of metalinguistic categories, whether the statement can actually refer to itself in that way or not, without invoking some second order language to talk about it.

56:54

That was a more traditional way, I think, to try to go about resolving it. But it's led to things like multivalue logic, where we think, okay, perhaps propositions are either true or false, but have some third value or more than the third value.

57:13

And it's led into dialetheism and into what are known as paraconsistent logics.

57:20

That is what is addressed in that choosing of Pat's essay that I mentioned earlier with Pat Mefford.

57:31

So go check that out. I hope that my voice holds up. Anyway. So go check that out.

57:41

Pat Mefford, choosing hats, multivalue logic. I forget the exact number or name of that.

57:48

But the problem there is that one opens things up at the end of the day to two problems.

57:57

One is, on the view where you can have dialetheisms, it's difficult to know where those are.

58:06

So it's not as though these folks are saying, well, we don't have any truth at all, or we can never know when a statement is true or false, that sort of thing.

58:17

But there aren't really, I mean, of course, I haven't read on this in years, but at the time, to my knowledge, there were no criteria really, whereby we might judge when this applies and when it does not, which presents a type of skeptical worry for those who have no appeal to the

58:33

Christian worldview. Well, what about those who do have an appeal to the Christian worldview or are able to appeal to the

58:39

Christian worldview? Well, we have two things that really can work in our favor here. One is the notion, the

58:46

Christian notion of paradox, or as James N. Anderson puts it, merely apparent contradictions resulting from unarticulated equivocation.

58:55

There is a Christian mystery in that regard, not in a revelational sense, but in the sense of apparent contradictions.

59:05

The other thing is this, God does not know any true contradictions. And so that's a presuppositional response that I do borrow from Anderson.

59:15

It's a presuppositional response over against these other kind of weird views of logic.

59:20

There is a third response, which is that you could say to deal with some of these charges of logical circularity within presuppositionalism and the formalization of transcendental arguments, which are linear anyway, by the way, they're not circular, they're linear arguments.

59:34

But to deal with that objection, you could try to come up with different ways to present a transcendental argument using these other logical systems.

59:42

So that's an interesting, creative thought too. And that would give us the indirect argument, even though you might be using more direct language in that sense.

59:52

All right, let's get back to the first incompleteness theorem. Any consistent formal system F within which a certain amount of elementary arithmetic can be carried out is incomplete.

59:59

That is, there's statements of language of F, which can neither be proved nor disproved in F.

01:00:05

He conveniently sidesteps here concerns about calling arithmetic true or false, the statements within arithmetic, you know, a la

01:00:13

Tarski. So he can just set that aside. And, and the language of contradiction,

01:00:18

I think you can set aside, we're talking about whether something can be proved or disproved. The second incompleteness theorem then.

01:00:25

So those are, it's talking about those systems, and that there are particular instances of incompleteness, as it were.

01:00:37

The second incompleteness theorem then takes that and applies it to the whole, as I understand it, right.

01:00:43

So for any consistent system F, within which a certain amount of elementary arithmetic can be carried out, the consistency of F cannot be proved in F itself.

01:00:56

So it's not merely that, as in the first theorem, there are statements of language

01:01:03

F, which can either be proved or disproved. So there's a particular statement within the system that can either be proved or disproved.

01:01:10

It's also the case that you apply it to the whole, essentially. And so the consistency of F cannot be proved within F itself, the whole system falls apart in that regard.

01:01:23

So one thing you could do, presumably, is posit another axiom.

01:01:29

And so you could say, okay, well, we're looking at this axiomatic system. And an axiom is just this assumption that you then go on to prove.

01:01:40

And this is a problem, because it seems to undermine that, right, that approach. So for example, in Euclidean geometry, you get these axioms, and then you get these proofs, whereby you can demonstrate the axioms and this sort of thing.

01:01:54

The whole thing works together in this beautiful rationalistic deductive type system. Or so we thought, you know,

01:02:01

Godot comes along with his incompleteness theorem, just wrecks that. Euclidean geometry itself is incomplete.

01:02:09

We don't use this in the same way anymore. We don't think about this in the same way anymore.

01:02:16

So we could posit another axiom. So if we find an axiom that can be neither proven nor disproven, what we could just do is restate it as an axiom.

01:02:28

Like whatever it is we're trying to, the statement we're trying to set as an inference or a proof or whatever, just restate that as an axiom.

01:02:36

Fortunately, that's trivial, right? So not only is it trivial, though, for the more astute thinkers among us, we'll realize you're just going to run into the same problem again with both the first and the second theorem.

01:02:54

But some things to note here. First of all, when we're talking about these systems, they must be derivative.

01:03:03

We're talking about supposed, prior to the theorem, epistemologically speaking, we're talking about supposed deductive or rationalistic inference, okay?

01:03:17

Rational inference. And each of those must be derivative of that axiom and these proofs we're presenting and that sort of thing.

01:03:25

You can't just like make something else up that would not normally fit into that strict, strictly defined system, okay?

01:03:35

That's what he's addressing. He's not addressing something other than that. The other thing is that you have to at least be able to enumerate the theorems of the language.

01:03:48

And that's why it's worded the way it is. Any consistent formal system within which a certain amount of elementary arithmetic can be carried out.

01:03:58

It's not just a dead on arrival type system. You have to be able to enumerate the theorems and whatnot.

01:04:05

But the third thing that I think is probably most important for our discussion this evening is, well, or whenever this airs, sorry, is that other statements, like in other languages, you may run into statements in other languages that don't have some form of proof that are not derivative of axioms and this sort of thing.

01:04:34

Those aren't axiomatic. And so, this theorem is not talking about that.

01:04:40

Those three things are significant. Those three things are necessary to Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem one and two, okay?

01:04:51

That's not to throw shade at him or his theories or anything. This is fascinating stuff.

01:04:58

Sure. But anyway, so that's kind of setting that part up. And then maybe you want to go into what exactly our objection is.

01:05:05

Well, I think the objection is coming from the idea that since no system is complete, then the

01:05:11

Christian worldview is insufficient to account for the things that we say that it accounts for.

01:05:17

What stuck out to me when I read this is that there seems to be, and maybe you can confirm this and maybe expand upon this, there seems to be an obvious category error in terms of dealing with Gödel's incompleteness theorem as something pertaining to formal systems as opposed to metaphysical paradigms.

01:05:36

They're not the same, and we're dealing with necessary preconditions of intelligibility, which would be something that would be broader in scope than simply a formal mathematical system of arithmetic or logic or along those lines.

01:05:49

Am I on the right track in sniffing out the idea that there is a category error being applied here in a fallacious way?

01:05:58

Yeah. I think that's exactly how you go about it. I would go about it, and I think you know this about me,

01:06:04

I like to entertain these things a little bit more. Sure. Okay. Let them have some hope and then that's it.

01:06:11

Okay. You could say, okay, I mean, assume the objection is correct.

01:06:17

Now what? So, okay, there are no complete systems, right?

01:06:23

I mean, it was something like that with the objection. So Christian worldview cannot be true. Okay. Now, so where are you saying that from?

01:06:30

Like, where are you standing, right? As the apologist said, right? It's like, where are you standing when you say that?

01:06:37

Is it an incomplete system, a complete system? If it's incomplete, explain to me exactly how we get to anywhere, right?

01:06:46

This has not undermined anything with regard to the objections to an unbelieving worldview in terms of the negative transcendental critique and how we make sense of or account for human intelligibility, including things like logic, science and morality, or in this case, mathematics.

01:07:04

So we haven't done any damage to the negative transcendental critique. If anything, we've made it worse.

01:07:09

And so here again, we can stand upon the Christian worldview and point out some issues with this objection, which

01:07:16

I think you've done. But that's the first thing I would do is just kind of entertain it and say, so what now? Like, what have you shown?

01:07:21

What have you proven? The other thing here though, is, and I think this is important to say, presuppositionalism and the

01:07:29

Vantillion variety of that is not, and people have called it this, and I understand they mean it colloquially, but it is not an axiomatic system at all, like at all.

01:07:41

Axioms pertain to things like Euclidean geometry and to mathematics.

01:07:47

It is strictly a deductive rationalistic type system that those apply to, and they kind of carry their own sense of proof with them supposedly, that these self -evident type truths.

01:07:59

We're not really saying that in Vantillion presuppositionalism. We're saying something that perhaps could sound that way to the average person on the street, but when you look at it philosophically, that's not what we're saying.

01:08:12

Presuppositions, and Greg Bonson makes this point, even in this 1985 debate with Gordon Stein, presuppositions not only are presupposed, but are provable.

01:08:24

And that's by way of indirect proof, but all of the different - Wait, can you say that again?

01:08:30

Presuppositions are what? Presuppositions are not only presupposed or assumed, they can also be proven.

01:08:38

Whoa, whoa, whoa. But I've been told millions and millions and millions of times that by definition, a presupposition cannot be proven, because if you can prove it, it's not a presupposition.

01:08:51

See, I don't understand what that means. I really don't. I really don't even know what that means, because for one thing, that's just what we're doing through the transcendental argument.

01:09:03

Yes. I always thought of it this way, is that if you think presuppositions can't be proven, that's like saying there's no such thing as transcendental arguments.

01:09:10

We're trying to justify foundational claims, and so we're doing it transcendental.

01:09:16

So to say you can't justify foundational claims is to just say there are no such thing as transcendental arguments, which is something in need of justification.

01:09:24

You would require justification for suggesting that, since, as you just expounded earlier in this video, is that there's a long, rich history with respect to the utilization of transcendental reasoning and types of arguments.

01:09:37

Well, I mean, let me hop on that. You're used to the word justification. I know what you mean by that, and I know what you mean by justify.

01:09:43

But you can understand justification or justify in a very narrow sense. You could understand it as internalism, and you could understand it as, which

01:09:52

I'm fine, I'm not getting into that, but an internalist justification for true belief.

01:10:00

So knowledge, just knowledge, propositional knowledge. Well, there are other things to account for within philosophy or human intelligibility and that sort of thing.

01:10:11

So you get into, what about technique? What about knowledge by experience?

01:10:17

What about knowledge how? What about relational type knowledge, like knowing a person? What about science and logic and math and beauty and morality and all these sorts of things?

01:10:31

What about metaphysical preconditions? What about epistemological preconditions? And of course, some of our opponents get really upset and try to accuse us of misunderstanding that and all that sort of thing.

01:10:42

But the point here is, there's a reason that, and this is not a correction, but there's a reason that a guy like Greg Bonson would use the word account for, or even

01:10:57

Mantel, he said unbelievers can count, but they can't account for counting. When we're looking for an account, we're using a more colloquial word that is broad and includes all of these different things.

01:11:09

Whereas if you're asking for justification, you're probably asking for proof of this knowledge claim sort of thing, like reasons or evidence for this knowledge claim.

01:11:18

You meant it in the sense of account for in the broader sense, which is fine. You can use it synonymously that way.

01:11:24

But I raised this point to say that that's exactly how we look at an objection like this, because even though we have this incompleteness theorem, it's amazing.

01:11:34

I still learned about natural numbers in school, and I still learned Euclidean geometry, because for one thing, those are good so far as they go.

01:11:44

And so justification in an internalist sense for knowledge is good so far as it goes.

01:11:50

But neither of these, Euclidean geometry or natural numbers, neither of those is sufficient to take into account all of mathematics.

01:12:03

And I'm not even talking about the philosophy of mathematics. I'm talking about the practical outworkings of math.

01:12:10

There are different types of math, right? There's calculus, there's algebra, there's trigonometry, there's geometry, all of these things.

01:12:15

You're generating people's flashbacks to middle school, high school. And I don't want to stay there long because there's a reason

01:12:22

I don't do that. But then moving over, then even Euclidean geometry, again, it was good so far as it went.

01:12:31

Same thing when it comes to justifying knowledge internally or an internalist. It's good so far as it goes.

01:12:37

There are other things to look at, like Warrant or externalism. There are things to look at, like human dignity.

01:12:42

There's so many things that are broader than that category. So when we're asking for an account from the unbeliever, and when we're claiming that we can account for things, we're not talking about strict, rationalistic, deductive, axiomatic, mathematical systems almost at all.

01:13:04

We would like to know how do you account for such things and all of that. But I think that this incompleteness theorem actually helps us to show, actually, there are problems in unbelieving thought.

01:13:13

There are things that we don't know or can't know. There, this shows you why you should not absolutize some particular aspect of your thought versus the

01:13:26

Christian worldview, which does, and I'm going to use this word, and I'm not using it in an idealistic sense. Christian worldview is more holistic.

01:13:35

Christ is Lord, right? He's Lord over all. So anyway, but Van Til himself, and I'm going to throw these out here and then let you, you know,

01:13:44

I mean, I'm not letting you do anything. I'm on your show, but I'm going to be quiet. Van Til writes in A Christian Theory of Knowledge, and I said this on another podcast recently.

01:13:53

He writes, man's system of truth, even when formulated in direct and self -conscious subordination to the revelation of the system of truth contained in scripture, so he does use that phrase, but then he says, is therefore not a deductive system, okay?

01:14:10

Later on, he, right, well, not later on, actually earlier than that, his first book,

01:14:15

Common Grace in the Gospel, Van Til writes, the biblical system of truth, he actually puts it in quotation marks.

01:14:22

The biblical system of truth is not a deductive system. The various teachings of scripture are not related to one another in the way that syllogisms of a series are related.

01:14:35

Well, that speaks directly to the first incompleteness theorem. The system of truth, he goes on to say, of scripture presupposes the existence of the internally, eternally self -coherent, triune

01:14:49

God who reveals himself to man with unqualified authority. And then later on, in defense of the faith, he says, quote, another charge is to the effect that I think of the

01:15:00

Bible's presenting us with a deductive system of truth. And he goes on to say, well, it follows that and he's saying this in a positive way.

01:15:08

The creeds of the church do not constitute deductive systems derived from the master concept of God.

01:15:16

They are rather statements containing, so far as possible, all the various facets of truth about God and his relation to the world.

01:15:26

There is coherence in these creeds, but it is not the coherence of deduction, which by the way,

01:15:32

I just recently sent some comments to a student on a paper on theories of truth.

01:15:39

We want to say that truth is that which corresponds to the coherent thoughts of God.

01:15:46

And by the way, they work, they're practical, they're pragmatic. So there is a

01:15:52

Christian sense of pragmatism. I understand the negative commentation with American pragmatism, but again, you don't absolutize truth into either a correspondence theory or a coherence theory or a pragmatic theory.

01:16:08

And when you read the philosophers, they find problems with all of this. When they're absolutized, not only do they conflict with one another, but they fail in and of themselves to account for what we want to say about truth, which is a necessary precondition to human intelligibility to getting around in the world.

01:16:28

And so Van Til is explicit. I mean, that one quote I just read sounds as though he had just put down girdle and said, you know what?

01:16:36

That's not what I'm talking about at all. He's not talking about this system where each thing follows from the other in some deductive rationalistic sense.

01:16:44

And by the way, that also goes against this understanding of him holding to some Hegelian worldview thesis.

01:16:51

The idea that he's Hegelian, these are so old and literally explicitly responded to in Van Til's own writing that it's difficult to take anyone seriously who brings them up.

01:17:05

There are good objections, by the way, that you can raise to Van Til, presuppositionalism. I don't think they work.

01:17:10

Ultimately, obviously, I think we have answers to them, but there are better ones. So when I speak to the comments or whatever, like in the comment section or whatever, if I was not a presuppositionalist,

01:17:21

I would not be a presuppositionalist because of any of the reasons that ever pop up in the comment section.

01:17:27

They're just not good. However, this girdle incompleteness theorem is still not good, but it's a more thoughtful way of thinking about things.

01:17:34

And that's why I appreciated this specific question. It wasn't a question. I guess someone brought it up as a counterpoint.

01:17:41

So let's wrap things up here because just for practical purposes, I'll have to upload this.

01:17:48

It's going to be a really long upload. It takes forever. I want to make sure it goes through without any problems, but I also want it to be long enough where folks could get deep enough, but it's not too long where you kind of get lost in the mix.

01:17:59

There's a lot that was said here, which I greatly appreciate. Now, if someone were to walk up to you, man,

01:18:06

I've got like a minute and this guy, you know, I was trying to share the faith with this guy and he's a pretty, pretty knowledgeable in science and logic.

01:18:14

And he brought up this idea, you know, I gave him the presupp argument. I gave him the transcendental argument for God's existence.

01:18:19

And he's like, you know what? Kurt, go to a girdle and his incompleteness theorem shows that presupp doesn't work transcend.

01:18:27

How would you in a very simple pastoral and yet logical way give advice to this individual in terms of how they could respond in about like a minute, if that's possible?

01:18:39

Yeah, it's a fascinating problem in the philosophy of math and it applies to the philosophy of math.

01:18:46

If anything, it strengthens our claim that we need God for knowledge.

01:18:53

And it is not something which is directly applicable to presuppositional methodology, which uses not only transcendental reasoning, but deductive and inductive forms of reasoning and logic and argumentation.

01:19:09

And so this is at the end of the day, a category error. It's a creative attempt with a very narrow tool and objection to try to undermine presuppositionalism.

01:19:21

It just does not work for the reasons we mentioned. It's not broad enough. No, not even close.

01:19:28

Not even close. That's right. And again, this is why when we as presuppositionalists, we challenge the unbeliever to account for things given their worldview.

01:19:39

We're inviting you to think in broad, all -encompassing categories, not just this narrow domain like, you know,

01:19:46

I don't need God to use logic. I use logic. Like, yes, that's not a comeback. Like, we understand that even

01:19:52

Bonson and Vance. Yes, no one's denying you use logic. The issue is, can you account for it given your worldview?

01:19:59

Can you account for, you know, induction? Can you account for all this uniformity and all this kind of stuff that we typically bring up?

01:20:05

You need to, if you want to actually get on the level of what we're arguing, you need to think in broader categories, not in such narrow categories.

01:20:14

But that's just me giving advice and hoping some people might take it. If not, you can just use the same kind of limited arguments and objections, and you're just going to be, it's white noise at that point, because you're just not understanding the kinds of arguments that we're making, and you don't understand the nature of a transcendental challenge.

01:20:32

So, nevertheless. It doesn't give us the preconditions for intelligible experience to assert or affirm this incompleteness theorem.

01:20:42

It doesn't get us anywhere. We still have to be able to account for this objection we're making. Yeah. Well, I do apologize if folks are like, man, that was a lot, but it's an interesting topic, and I'm glad that Dr.

01:20:53

Bolt was here to kind of flesh some of that out. This might require listening to once or twice, maybe, and hopefully it will be useful for folks who were wondering about something as,

01:21:05

I guess, this isn't really something that's typically brought. I mean, this is the first time I heard someone use this specific point in critique of a precept kind of transcendental approach.

01:21:18

I have heard it before. You've heard it before. Okay. Choosing hats in the comments section. Okay. Yeah. The one that I hear, that I've heard was, when we talk about knowledge, people will bring up like the

01:21:29

Gettier objections and things like this and stuff like that, and of course, we have responses there, and this isn't new, but this one

01:21:35

I thought was a creative kind of way to approach, and that's why I thought it'd be cool to talk about it. All right.

01:21:41

Well, that's it for this episode, guys. I really want to appreciate you guys. If you've stuck with us the entire time, maybe you like this kind of stuff, let us know in the comments.

01:21:49

If you want more of these kind of in -depth discussions or maybe something more introductory or in the intermediate level, let me know.

01:21:57

I want to make sure that I'm producing content for you guys and inviting guests that kind of scratch where you're itching, metaphorically speaking, so I would really appreciate that.

01:22:07

Dr. Bolt, why don't you let folks know where they can get you, maybe your material, or I don't know if you do speaking engagements and things like that, if that's a thing.

01:22:16

Why don't you let folks know all those things about you? Yeah, I do speaking engagements.

01:22:23

I have been doing them, and again, my calendar's filling up quick, so let me know. Go to reformbaptist .com.

01:22:29

That's easy enough. Remember, reformbaptist .com. If you go to the About section and then look me up, you'll find a little form you can fill out or just contact us or whatever.

01:22:39

Reach out to me that way. You can find me on x at clbolt. I noticed that Eli's on there now, too, so I'm happy about that.

01:22:49

Christ or Chaos is the podcast, but those are the three big things. Try to pay attention to only maybe 10 % of what

01:22:57

I say on X, but outside of that, there's where you can find me, and I hope that you'll reach out with any questions you may have to book a speaking engagement or something or so that you might benefit from the

01:23:10

Institute. Now, how did we have you on the show, and we didn't mention your book?

01:23:18

Let me get that up here. Is your book on Amazon anymore? I don't see it anywhere.

01:23:24

It is on Amazon. It's The World in His Hands. The World in His Hands, okay. The World in His Hands, a

01:23:29

Christian account of scientific law and its antithetical competitors.

01:23:36

You'll have to type in my full first name, Christopher. Okay, my bad. Well, yes, you guys want to check that out.

01:23:44

In like 10 seconds, what is your book about? Why should people who do apologetics care? Yeah, my book is about the doctrine of divine providence and why the

01:23:54

Christian view of divine providence and a very specific view of divine providence accounts for scientific law, and the competitors of Christianity do not, including

01:24:03

Islam. Interesting. All right. Well, I've read portions of it, and I love it, although I have to get into the rest of it since my attention has been divided, but I'll try to get to that.

01:24:17

Well, Dr. Bolt, Chris, thank you so much for coming on. Love to have you on in the future, and thank you guys for listening in.