Refuting Atheist Objections with Matt Slick

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During a live show, Matt had a caller who was requesting help with his apologetics techniques when dealing with Atheist objections. This is a brief video of that portion of the show. We hope this helps you in your debates and sharpens your apologetics skills. Please visit www.CARM.org for more tools to help you in your mission work. God bless! The CARM Team

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Think of a table with three legs and the three legs epistemology ontology rationality and You know existence thinking and You get into morality other things like this, but knowledge
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Rationality and existence. And so these are the three basic areas of Discourse.
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Well, everybody has a worldview Some people's worldviews are more sophisticated than others
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You might have a 12 year old little boy whose worldview and not sophisticated at all
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And you could have a 50 year old atheist who doesn't have a sophisticated worldview just like a
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Christian But when you start examining a worldview and a worldview is that table?
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Upon those three legs and that table Everyone has one of these that table is what you believe
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Well, I believe that the the universe exists. I believe you know think therefore
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I am I believe that there's good and bad whatever they might say and those are various things that are on that table and what atheists do is they pony up to the table and they argue from that perspective of the things that are there and your table is different and They'll argue about your table and the things on your table, you know those little sub points
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Well, you believe God exists. How do you know? Well, they don't realize and both groups need to realize is that those legs that hold up their worldview need to be examined
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What justifies in an atheistic worldview epistemological certainty if they don't have epistemological certainty
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Then they can't know anything for sure. They can't know anything for sure. They can't know their own atheism is true And this cast doubt upon itself.
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How do they presuppose what justifies a universal presupposition of universals and particulars?
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How do they justify these things? Now they can come up with some sophisticated answers that a lot of atheists have tried to come up with But it ultimately comes down to begging the question because everyone has to make assumptions that are consistent with their worldview
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Otherwise, they're just inconsistent. But what justifies those worldviews or those presuppositions as being true?
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So we got here. That's not a logical issue All right. How did we get here? Did we just evolve?
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Where did this come from? Where did the beginning of life come from? Where the universe come from? What's necessary preconditions for for that?
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What must be the case that universe exists? What must be the case that axiomatic truths can exist and what they'll often do is they'll jump all over these things back and forth
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And they try and throw out terms and concepts and they'll instead of just saying that you know We might be presuppositional you presuppose the universality of God and then when we do everything makes sense
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Well, they're going to presuppose the universality of axiomatic truths And what I'll ask them is what must be the case in order for the universal axioms to be true
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What must be the case in which they have their their existence because if you're going to tell me that universal axiomatic truths are simply
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Self -extant and self revelatory that can only exist in a broader worldview that you can then impose a view upon them
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What is that worldview and what justifies that worldview? But in particular you have to issue or understand the issue of what's called primary and secondary
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Substances. So if you're in a church and you see a bunch of chairs, that's a primary substance
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He's the primary substance is chair -ness and the secondary substance Is the individual chair you're seeing the primaries represented in particulars.
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In other words, you're saying Universal qualities represented in particulars. Well, they're an atheistic worldview. How do you justify the commonality and the common ontology between the particulars?
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Because they can't answer these kind of questions because they can't justify they come down to the issue of the one and the many and this is a whole
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I'm just going through really fast on some stuff, but they don't understand how to deal with the issue of The one and the many and in some atheists want to get into the is of identity is a predication and they want to throw
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You know curveballs at you and things like this and and you know, I could teach on this for quite a while But atheists are weak in their intellectual prowess.
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They are weak in their foundational ability They cannot justify the three pillars that hold up their worldview.
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They can't justify those things They just say that they are and that's just how it is because they're axiomatic
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But when he asked the questions what justifies those axioms of being right and what? Condition must be the case in order for those axioms to be true they can't answer those questions, but we can and so the atheist will fall short and all you got to do is
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Kick the pillars those legs off underneath their worldview. Okay, right
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I and and I guess the the question that always that I always get Sometimes that's how you explain that is when they evade just say
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Well, like they didn't assume it and it doesn't matter that I don't have to justify it I can't assume that it's true what
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I'm doing good And so then you say okay If you don't have to justify anything that you believe then you don't have the right to ask me to justify what
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I believe That is to say I just wait is and it's just the way it is that God exists
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So if I use your logic, then I refute you because you say God doesn't exist or you lack belief
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But you take just the way it is. I can say that's just the way it is. God exists So and when we assume that everything works, we assume your position and you've got all kinds of problems
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Atheists like to boast in their ability to stump
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Christians and they like to ask Justifications for justifications for justifications. I often like to ask them what justifies your questioning about justification?
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They always beg the question They always assume the validity of their argumentative ability power prowess foundation or whatever you want to call it
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Without justifying that anything that they are doing has is the right question to ask
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Because they assume it's the right question Which means they're begging the question about the universality of laws of logic, which they cannot justify