Darth Dawkins (Corrected Version)

Okay, all right, Darth is back. Let's see if this works, all right? I'm so sorry, let's see.

It should work, I restarted everything.

Yay, okay, you sound perfect now, good.

All right, there we go, sorry about that. No, no worries, it happens. All the atheists are cheering.

It's all right, no worries. All right. Okay, so you were explaining, let me see if I remember what you were explaining. You were explaining what got you into apologetics or something to that effect. Let's just start from there.

How He Came to Apologetics and Presuppositionalism

So how did you get into apologetics? You said that you became a Christian, you started doing more of the evidential approach.

What was the specific? Well, I wanted to learn more about the history of the Bible, why I should believe it, not just accept it ipso facto. And I started reading books by Josh McDowell. But I didn't do serious reading in apologetics as I didn't have that many apologetic encounters until I started interacting online about 10 years ago.

And so I approached it from a more classical and evidential type of debating approach. And then when I heard Greg Bonson, it just floored me because I'd never heard anything like that. And I went, wait a minute, as I thought about it, it was solidly biblical.

He's simply appealing to the truth of what God says in various parts of scripture and their implications and ramifications which the atheists cannot escape from. And I've been a biblical presuppositionalist ever since.

Okay, so for you, it's been, and that's very similar for me as well. I mean, even atheists know this at this time when we speak of presuppositionalism, most people come to it through the Bonson-Stein debate.

Now, admittedly, Dr. Stein was not the best opponent, but I still think even if he was a better opponent, the arguments were pretty rock solid and it was definitely the perfect exemplification of presuppositionalism applied.

And so I just wish that Dr. Bonson was able to do more debates. I mean, we only have that one. It's the one with Edward Tabash. And then there was one with George Smith, I believe, which was a radio.

Yeah, I wouldn't sell Stein so short. He was probably the most well-studied and well-read atheist in the world. Okay. His PhD was in library scientists and he set up at least one profound atheist library.

So he's probably one of the most well-read atheists on the planet at the time. Okay.

I did not know that. An actual philosopher. Yeah, I guess I made my judgment based upon how bad his representation of the classical arguments were. Even his, I mean, if you listen to the debate, he, it is like Gordon Stein is debating a classicalist, which he wasn't.

And he's trying to refute arguments that weren't being made. Because I think the presuppositional approach kind of stymied him. He didn't expect it. But even He was blindsided. Oh, yes. He was blindsided.

But even his attempts to critique the more traditional arguments, I thought they were terrible. So I didn't really think he was as intellectually astute as perhaps he actually was.

Well, that's par for the course for atheism.

Okay, there you go. All right, so let's talk about presuppositionalism and let's get into some of the nitty gritty and perhaps clarify a lot of misunderstanding for folks. Because I do think, and people have heard me say this before, that presuppositionalists can do a better job in explaining their position, but I think the opponents can do a better job in listening.

Because a lot of the times when the methodology is presented I do think that it's presented rather clearly and forcefully and yet there is either a refusal to listen or there's just, you know, there's some disconnect that prevents them from really grasping the nature of what we're saying.

So let's go for just a bare definition. In a bare definition, if someone were to ask you, what is presuppositionalism? How would you respond to that? And how would you in a general sense lay out a presuppositional argument?

Well, I would first explain to them that everybody comes to the table with a worldview, a model of reality, a metaphysic, even children do. None of us are exempt from that. Within that worldview are certain foundational beliefs or parameters that we all hold to consciously or unconsciously, explicitly or implicitly.

Some of those most foundational positions or the final one, we would say that these are our presuppositions, right? And so, and because we have different worldviews we have a conflict of worldview, not just an interpretation of the facts.

Because the facts cannot be the same because the worldviews are in conflict. One of the worldviews has to be at least false. So in a presuppositional approach, we present the revelation of God as he has given it through natural and special revelation.

We explain what our fundamental beliefs are, our presuppositions, how we arrived at them and why we hold to them. And then the unbeliever has the opportunity to accept this which the majority of time they're well familiar with the Christian worldview, they then reject it.

And then in a very simple way, we show that the denial of the Christian worldview and its fundamental presuppositions is an implicit counterclaim which would entail their worldview. And then upon looking into that, as we would call an internal critique, that that worldview cannot be sustained in any shape or form no matter how they attempt at it, intellectually, educationally, emotionally, they will not be able to defend their worldview without an appeal to some aspect of God's revelatory actions.

So the denial of God's revelatory actions through natural revelation and special revelation of Christian scriptures results that whatever they assert will ultimately be absurd given their worldview or metaphysic.

There will be no background information for which them to place and defend facts. They think they have facts, but only because they're borrowing from the Christian worldview and they're not thoroughly examining their metaphysic, their worldview.

They can't ground anything they say.

So when you present the presuppositional argument, God has revealed himself in general and special revelation such that we could know what his revelation is, right? We know God innately. And so you present the Christian worldview and then you say the rejection thereof reduces one's position to absurdity.

How do you respond to people who say, well, that's a really nice claim. You're just making assertions. That doesn't mean your assertion is true. How would you engage someone who says something like that?

I would say the rejection of the referencing God's revelation of himself is itself a counter claim, okay? If they feel that the revelation of God that we point to God's natural and special revelation, when they say it's a claim, they've already made an evaluation.

They've judged that it is unworthy of belief, right? Their response is, well, you haven't proven it. And we point out that God's natural and special revelation to the extent that we're familiar with it is self-justifying it's self-attesting and demonstrating, okay?

Because not only because of its source, but because of its internal content, the properties and attributes of the God of the Bible, the parameters that the Bible says are from God's world are the necessary preconditions in order for there to be any kind of reason or intelligibility.

Now, when they reject that, either they're not understanding it or they're just playing word games. Oh, you haven't demonstrated. Well, the fact that they say it hasn't been demonstrated doesn't mean it does.

So they're making a counterclaim, right? And so if they're going to evaluate that the Christian worldview is not objectively defensible or that there's no reason to believe it, that itself is a claim.

To say that the Christian worldview is just a claim, right? Is itself a counterclaim. And they're gonna have to defend that, okay? Because they're not neutral. They're gonna constantly wanna present themselves in a neutral position.

Oh, well, you haven't proved it. But to say you haven't proved it to the extent that they're acquainted with God's revelation is a counterclaim, right? Which they cannot sustain.

So why don't you unfold for us? So, cause here's the thing, when people say you haven't asserted it or where's your evidence or this, that, or the other thing, it almost is the case that a lot of unbelievers are so wedded to these concepts of autonomy and neutrality that when they say you haven't proved it, what they really mean is you haven't proved it in an independent, unbiased fashion to their satisfaction.

So they're basically asking you to prove it in a way that we would say is impossible to prove anything, namely from a neutral and autonomous perspective.

Would that be on point? Yeah, their criterion of belief that they put forth, whether they stated or explicitly, it's just a smokescreen to, as you stated, to engage their autonomous reasoning. It's a smokescreen because the very criterion of belief that they apply to God's natural and special revelation, the Christian scriptures, okay, they abandon when they advocate directly or indirectly for their worldview.

I'm constantly telling unbelievers on Discord, you're violating your own criterion of belief. I'll ask them, why don't you believe in God? Why don't you believe in Christianity? And they'll say, oh, well, you haven't proven it.

You haven't justified it. And then I say to them, oh, and so you're not Christian worldview has been proven and justified? Do you follow your own criterion of belief? Because in order to not accept the Christian worldview, right, that means that you're gonna have to be adopting your worldview, your non-Christian worldview as actual, as true, as veridical.

But they haven't justified it. They haven't proven it. They simply adopt it. Now, they adopt it apparently arbitrarily, but in reality, we know from scripture that they don't adopt it arbitrarily because they have motivated reasoning.

They do not want God to exist. They do not want to acknowledge God. They do not wanna be thankful to him as creator. So as I say all the time on the interweb, as George Bush would say, they collect cliches, catchphrases, aphorisms to assuage their conscience.

And so when they say, well, you haven't proven it, okay, well, fine, that's a counterclaim, okay? So they're gonna have to establish that their worldview can evaluate things. See, the Christian worldview is not only proven because of its source, because of who God is, God's word is self-attesting, but the actual internal parameters and content itself reveal that these are the preconditions.

God's character, his nature, his revelation cannot be dispensed with. Van Til said that Christianity is indispensable for human intelligibility, meaning that the Christian worldview is ontologically true.

Now they think that they have intelligibility because they don't believe in God or the Christian worldview. But we're not simply talking about mere belief. We're saying that the Christian God and his attributes must exist ontologically.

Otherwise there will be no metaphysical background information, absolute or ultimate to appeal to.

Okay, so right there, so you say it has to be the case. So the unbeliever says, why? I don't see the connection as to why. You say, for example, it has to be the case, why? Because if it isn't the case, we couldn't make sense out of anything.

And then there, well, I don't see how that makes sense. How would you unpack that a little bit more?

Well, I would say in order for there to be truth and falsity, accessibility or apprehension of truth and falsity and reason, things like that, we're gonna have to be in a world where what is ultimate and fundamental and foundational is God, where God is a mind, he's eternal.

He then institutes his creation. And then he imposes all of the parameters, how things work, including ourselves, to permit us to be intelligible and to reason. The reason why we can be coherent, intelligible, and reason, because it reflects the creator who created these things.

Now, when they don't believe in that, then they're going to be operating off of the metaphysical premise that is the negation of God as creator and sustainer. But you see, no such foundational premise can be attested to.

They have nothing identifiable or demonstrable. They say, well, you haven't proven your God. You haven't proven the scriptures. Well, God's existence has been proven by God. The scriptures have been proven, but because of their motivated reasoning, they blind themselves to the objective proof that the Christian scriptures are true.

And the icing on the cake is that they're true due to the impossibility of their denial or negation, that the non-Christian worldview can never be established. So in the Christian worldview, God is, he reveals himself, right?

We could only know God exists by virtue of the way he constructs this world, right? In the non-Christian worldview, there would be no way to identify or demonstrate what is fundamental, what is ultimate, what is absolute.

So whatever parameters of existence that they appeal to for their reason, for their acquisition of truth and falsity, the foundation could never be identified or attested to. So their worldview, everything that they assert, okay, including, well, I don't have a reason to believe in God, their so-called reason that they say to reason, I don't have a reason to believe in God is shrouded in ultimate mystery, right?

So when we have the revelation from God, our model of reality is not shrouded in ultimate mystery. We know that what is eternal, ultimate, and absolute is a mind and that he has revealed that he is God and that he is creator and sustainer and that he is unfolding a redemptive plan of human history.

But when they reject that, which Ventile says is a closed system because some things cannot happen, some things are impossible, when they reject God's revelation and they say, oh, it's not God's revelation, then they're not gonna be in a position to discern truth or falsity because now they're in an open system, right?

Where anything goes, nothing is impossible because nothing is impossible from their frame of reference, then truth and falsity is inaccessible. And if truth and falsity are inaccessible, then so is reason and intelligibility and it's game over, lights out for them, but they don't care.

So when you say given their rejection, if their rejection, the worldview upon which they're standing that rejects the Christian God, if that were true, you would say that they could not in principle know the very things that they take for granted that they know.

And so suppose Yeah. Yeah, suppose It's worse than that. Okay.

You can expand that. It's worse than that. It's not even that they could know, they couldn't predicate. They could not offer propositions that will be intelligible because there's no background context.

There's no metaphysical system from which these propositions or facts can derive from.

So what if the person says, well, I don't need a foundation. I mean, I've heard some interactions that you've had and people said, like, I don't know why you're making a big deal about foundation.

Then what they're saying is, what they're saying is, I'm arbitrary in whatever I say. And well, you're, you know, that's what we call crazy. Because I think,.

As I asked you the question on purpose, because I knew what your answer was going to be, but I think it's a key point that I think would be good to emphasize. So if they don't need a foundation, how is the lack of a foundation, how does lacking a foundation result in arbitrariness with regards to asserting the truth or falsity of some fact?

Because nothing can be grounded. Nothing can be defended as being either true or false. It's not just that they're wrong. They don't have access to truth and falsity. Why? Because their metaphysic, their worldview cannot provide for it, right?

So for example, if we have a fact, a putative fact, right? The fact is only what it is because it starts in the mind of God and God's creation and his sustaining of the creation. And that all of those particulars and facts are a part of God's unfolding plan of creation and redemption.

So God is the ultimate reference point that makes any fact a fact. When they say, oh, well you haven't proven you're God, whatever their reason is for rejecting God's revelation, remember, it's not so much that they're rejecting what you and I are saying, they are rejecting God's revelation to the extent that they are in fact acquainted with it.

And once they reject God's revelation, right? Then there's no ultimate reference point for facts, okay? Because what you think is a fact today in relationship to some things could change tomorrow or next week, which is an open system.

Now I've confronted unbelievers about this. And I say a closed system is where we have an eternal, absolute, ultimate creator God, he institutes creation, he sustains it, and he operates it according to his plan, his redemptive plan of human history.

So any given fact is what it is within God's plan of human history. But when you reject that, then what is your reference for that fact? Just some other facts? Well, what's their reference point? What they wanna do is they wanna borrow from the Christian worldview that we have access to truth and falsity and the capacity to know some things that we cannot be wrong about, but they have no background information for it.

So they're violating, when they ask for proof of the Christian worldview, they're speaking a reasoning from a worldview for which they have no proof. So their position, according to their own stated criterion, is self-annihilating.

That's why Van Til said Christianity is true due to the impossibility of its denial. Or Bonson would say the impossibility to the contrary.

What I see as a common misunderstanding is when we make that claim, a lot of people think it's an empty assertion that can be replaced with any supposed deity. So if someone says, oh, well, Allah is the necessary precondition for intelligibility, how would we respond?

Why is our argument not simply a claim that can be replaced with any X? My transcendental argument for Mormonism, my transcendental argument for Islam. How would you address that specific objection?

Well, in order to have human intelligibility, we have to have a creator who has certain attributes and properties. He has to be ultimate and absolute. There are no ultimate and absolute gods on the religious landscape, either now or in human history.

Those gods that are pretenders, such as the derivational cults, reveal that they're simply ripping off the Christian God. They're poor imitators, like the God of Islam. The Quran says that Allah is the greatest of all deceivers.

If you have a God who is not always truth revealing, then you can't have human intelligibility because human intelligibility is going to require that creation, which is God's revelation, where God always reveals the truth, which would entail the law of identity and non-contradiction.

And in the Islamic world, you never know when Allah might be actually deceiving you. Now, in the Christian worldview, people can be deceived about some things, but only after they reject a love of the truth, right?

Just like in the Garden of Eden. They could not have been deceived about God's revelation about the tree, but once they rebelled and they opted for autonomous reasoning, then they get pulled away into deception.

So these other gods do not have the attributes and the properties that only the Christian God has ontologically so that there can be human intelligibility, all right? So if God is not omnipotent, then we don't know that he's constructed a world in such a way that we can know that he exists and that we can know anything at all.

If he's not omniscient, then he may not have set up the world sufficiently so that we can have intelligibility or to know things. So it's not just the concept of God, it's that it has to be a God that has specific attributes and only the Christian God has it.

And they hate that. They have a special hatred for the Christian God. That's why most of these online internet atheists like to mock and ridicule and pretend like they don't take the Christian God seriously, but they do.

You can show up by the amount of time that they spend devoted to attacking and mocking the Christian God. Sure, sure.

Let's get back to this issue of foundations. I thought that was interesting. So you said we need a metaphysical foundation that can ground all derivational facts. And for those who don't know what a derivational fact is, it is any fact that is derived from something more ultimate.

So what happens when someone appeals to brute factuality? They'll just say, well, there are certain brute facts that are a given and that's completely fine. You don't need a God to be the fundamental grounding of all facts.

There are certain brute facts, or some people might even appeal to properly basic facts or things like that. How would you address someone who might bring that up?

I think there's a very simple aphorism that Van Til gave us that I love. Brute facts are mute facts. They're meaningless, okay? They have no context for their existence, right? In other words, whatever these brute facts are, they simply exist without any metaphysical basis whatsoever.

They just are without further explanation, which means they emanate from a chance realm or an open system. So what you think is a fact today could change in any moment. So a brute fact is, and I guess you're using the word brute fact the same way I do, which is in a Van Tilian sense that a brute fact is just something that is attested to be without any ultimate or foundational basis as to why it exists.

Well, that means it's a contextless fact and contextless facts are meaningless. They're mute. They don't mean anything. The only reason why unbelievers think that they're meaningful is because they're ignoring their larger problem, their metaphysical problem, right?

They don't care that they have no ultimate metaphysic or grounding, right? They want God as the ultimate metaphysic to be proven and justified or so they claim. But when it comes to their ultimate metaphysic, their grounding, their ultimate, they don't care.

Or they'll just lie and make one up that they don't really believe.

Well, what if someone says, well, I don't, I mean, okay, fine. Perhaps we need an ultimate grounding for all derivational facts, you know, a metaphysic. What happens to the person who says, I don't know.

I have no idea what ultimate reality is. So I don't see why it has to be your God, but I don't see why I have to know what it is. I mean, I get along just fine. You know, he kind of appeals to kind of a pragmatic perspective.

How might you address that?

Well, then he's basically claiming without realizing is that he can have facts without context. Okay, how so? Well, because he has no ultimate frame of reference. There's no ultimate reference point for why any facts are the way they are.

So for you and I, when we point to any particular fact, no matter how complex or sophisticated or how simple, we know that these facts are, the creative facts are within God's hand. God instituted this world.

Everything runs and operates according to his parameters, whether it's a rock by the side of the road or the Eiffel Tower or a brand new cell phone. These things are operating according to God's facts and things are operating according to the principle of causality and the uniformity of nature that he instituted in it and imposes.

Now, what they want to say is that there are facts because of the uniformity of nature and causality and matter energy. Well, my answer is, well, where did you get those absolutes from? Okay, are they the illusion of causality and the uniformity of nature or do they really exist?

And if they really exist, are they ultimate in and of themselves or are they instituted and imposed by something that will perpetuate its continuity? They cannot answer any of these questions.

Because So what if they say, well, all right, fine. I don't know what institutes them or whatever, but I know that causality is a thing because of the impossibility of the contrary.

I have no choice, but to No, no, how do they ask the contrary? They're just, they're assuming that certain events are not spontaneous, okay?

Now, you said spontaneous. You also talked about like possibility and impossibility and you mentioned something about an open and closed system. Why don't you explain a little bit about what that is? What do you mean by an open and closed system and why is it relevant to this specific apologetic application?

Yeah, in reading Van Til, he made this point and it just, it blew me away where he explained as God is ultimate, God who is the most foundational parameter. He referred to God as the concrete universal.

He's the all conditioner, right? It can be summed up as simple as a child's song lyric. He's got the whole world in his hands. Right? I mean, it's that simple, right? So then all facts are within the context of God as creator where Van Til talked about the creator-creature distinction, right?

And this goes right back to scripture. In the beginning, God, God is creator. We see this theme all throughout scripture. We see it in the New Testament, all throughout the New Testament, even to the last chapter of the book of Revelation.

Okay. Hello? Yeah, I'm here. Oh, okay. I'm just, I just don't want to hog the mic time from you. No, that's okay.

It's because when you stopped talking, it was so quiet. There was like nothing. I thought it was like, you guys are going to cut off. All right. All right. Well, that's good stuff. And don't worry about hogging the mic.

You're my guest. I'm sure people want to hear what you have to say. So no worries there. All right. So a lot of people have an issue with the transcendental argument, which is really what we're talking about, right?

Vantil's presuppositional approach is a transcendental approach. It might not be the best to utilize that language because it often has, you know, linguistic ties to like idealistic philosophy, Kantian philosophy, things like that.

But basically what we're saying, as you said, that we're saying that God holds the whole world in his hands and it's by his light, we see light, these sorts of things. But when people object to what you're saying, they say, fine, we need a metaphysical ultimate and fine.

A God has to be in that placeholder. How do you know it's the Christian God specifically and the Christian worldview? You know, how do you know that that argument actually proves that? I think that you're trying to say too much, Darth.

You know, maybe you're onto something, but I don't see how this necessarily connects us to the truth of the impossibility of the contrary with regards to the Christian God. How would you expand on that?

Well, how do I know it's a Christian God? Same way we, you know, we know our mother's middle name. They revealed it. That's just too simple for them because they already reject that God revealed it. But if I gave any other answer, then it wouldn't be biblical, okay?

So God revealed it. But then we look at further the content of what he has revealed about himself. He reveals what his character and nature is, what his attributes are as creator. If we remove, if we try to imitate the Christian God by providing an alternative, if we fiddle around with God's attributes, like we remove his omniscience or omnipotence, or that he is the savior and he has an unfolding plan of salvation, or we decide that we want a Unitarian God rather than a Trinitarian God, the removal or tampering with any of the properties that God has revealed are all gathered together in his necessary being for actuality and intelligibility, then it destroys intelligibility, okay?

Like for example, we have the Islamic God or like the God Jehovah's Witnesses where they present a Unitarian God. And they say, oh, well, your belief in the Trinitarian God is false and our God is true.

Well, I just simply point out, well, what we then have is an autistic God in eternity past who is incapacitated to relate, right? I was explaining to a Muslim today that autism is to varying degrees an incapacity to actualize relationalness, right?

And he agreed with that. I don't think anybody would agree with this definition. Well, the Islamic God and Unitarian Gods have no capacity to actualize relationality in eternity past. There's no one to relate to.

But the God of the Bible, who is true, has revealed he is one God, one being, one essence, but he is a plurality of persons. Each of the persons can relate to another person in the Godhead in context within the third.

And so there's always a mutual relationalness between the persons of the Godhead. So I'm not trying to be insultive here using his insult, but they truly have an autistic God in eternity past because he cannot relate to any other personal being because they don't exist.

Now, it's a feature, I think, essential strength, a philosophical strength. And it's interesting because, well, we believe Christianity is true. And so we don't believe this is developed by people, but the idea of the Trinity was not understood within the context of trying to answer philosophical questions.

But ironically, it answers the most profound philosophical. Gee, how'd that happen? Yeah, that's interesting. It wasn't, the Trinity wasn't developed within a context of we need to answer these deep metaphysical questions.

That's right. It almost came out of left field and said like, oh, wow, okay. And then it just so happens to answer the most deepest philosophical question that's been asked throughout the course of Western philosophy.

Now, I have heard people say the problem of the one in the many is not an actual problem. You Christians made that up so that you could answer and come to the rescue with your doctrine of the Trinity.

Why don't you, again, that's just, that's just, I say this respectfully, that is an ignorance of the history of philosophy. Or this is something that was very prevalent in the history of philosophy, especially within the pre-Socratics.

But why don't you explain to folks, what is the actual problem? How have some people tried to respond to the problem but failed? And how does the triune God answer this philosophical conundrum of the one in the many?

Would you follow that? Yeah, the one in the many, it's a perennial philosophical problem. It just goes down. What is the most fundamental nature of reality in total? What is the fundamental ultimate nature of reality?

Is it a concrete one, it's an actual one thing without distinctions or particulars? Or is reality just simply a set of an innumerable number of discrete particulars, right? Is it one or is it many, meaning a plurality?

If you answer the question either way, it will destroy human intelligibility, right? And so when the Christian answers the question that the ultimate and fundamental nature of God is he is both the one and the many.

He is a concrete one, but within that concrete oneness, there is a plurality, a diversity. So he has unity and diversity. And as Van Til says, they have equal ultimacy. Neither one of them have supremacy over each other in terms of how we understand God.

So God is an absolute unity and a plurality. He then creates the world, okay, where we have the creator, creation, distinction, and the world is going to reflect God's nature and character. That's why we can have the law of identity and non-contradiction because all of the world is God's revelation and God cannot lie.

He cannot exude falsehood. So that's why something is what it is in a given time index. But the world also reflects God in that because God is internally coherent and he is the ultimate one and the many, that's reflected in creation where we have one creation, we have unity, but then there is a plurality of particulars.

But then even those particulars have categories, classes, and universals to provide unity among diversity so that there can be coherence and intelligibility. So the very intelligibility of the world around us requires various aspects of unity and diversity.

And without unity and diversity, there can't be intelligibility or coherence and that reflects the creator. Now, if they wanna claim that the ultimate nature of reality is not the God of the Bible and being the creator, then they're gonna have to opt that the ultimate nature of reality is a concrete one without any distinctions or particulars.

Well, then that will destroy the ability to anyone speaking intelligibly because anytime you invoke any particulars or distinctions, they wouldn't exist. All you could talk about was the one. On the other hand, if they say that there is a innumerable number of particulars, then there is nothing that ultimately unifies this from their perspective.

So all we would have is an array of unconnected, unrelated particulars and you couldn't talk about classes or universals or categories because what would impose it? They would have to identify that. Now, they might opt to say, well, there's unity and diversity by borrowing from the Christian worldview, but the question is, where did you get that from?

Okay, if it's there, if it's real, has it been imposed? So they cannot explain this, right?

Now, what if you have people who they try to bring up some hypotheticals? Well, suppose we have a religion that's very similar to God. They have a God that is, well, let's say a copycat religion that believes in a triune God, but a different story, different content to the revelation.

So we won't even go with like, how do, you know, what if you have a bininity? Like there's one God who exists as two persons or a quadrinity, one God who exists as four persons. What if someone says, well, what if there's another religion that has a triune God, but there's a different story?

You know, it's not the biblical story. This God has revealed himself in a different way. How would you respond to kind of these copycat attempts to show that the Christian God is not the necessarily only God that must exist?

I would say this is a perfect example of the sinful autonomous mind trying to evade the God that they know that has revealed himself in the triune God. And there's just simply trying to imitate the God of the Bible and knowing that the God of the Bible and his attributes that are necessary, but they try to imitate him by leaving off or changing some of God's properties and attributes.

I've run into people like this before. I even caught one atheist who actually pulled something like this. And then in a conference with an apologetic leader, Saiten Brutengate, who both of us know, and this atheist tried a line of reasoning like that.

I ran into him a year later. I asked him some similar questions, but not about that incident. And he was caught lying. So my first reaction is they're just making this garbage up. Right. Now, when we get beyond that, once you alter the attributes of the God of the Bible who is and is coherent, you immediately introduce a God who is not coherent and cannot provide for intelligibly.

Well, first of all, the God of the Bible's also, he historically reveals himself over time through the Bible. The Bible's a historical book written over several thousand years, written by 40 different authors.

How has your God, who you say is a contender or a replacement for the Christian God, where has he revealed himself through the course of history? Where is his plan of salvation? Where is that? So they're just making this stuff up so they can run from the God that they know, because they know judgment day is coming.

They take Jesus Christ very seriously, but they do not want to bow to him as Lord. So like what I say all the time, they're whistling past the graveyard with these excuses. Okay? They're just trying to assuage their guilty conscience until the day of judgment.