Darth Dawkins (Corrected Version)

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January 27, 2021

In my original interview, the first 15 mins experienced some audio issues. This version removed those issues and begins the conversation when the audio has been fixed.

00:00: Okay, all right, Darth is back. Let's see if this works, all right?
00:05: I'm so sorry, let's see. It should work, I restarted everything. Yay, okay, you sound perfect now, good.
00:12: All right, there we go, sorry about that. No, no worries, it happens. All the atheists are cheering.
00:19: It's all right, no worries. All right. Okay, so you were explaining, let me see if I remember what you were explaining.
00:27: You were explaining what got you into apologetics or something to that effect.
00:32: Let's just start from there. So how did you get into apologetics? You said that you became a Christian, you started doing more of the evidential approach.
00:39: 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.
00:47: 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.
01:01: And so I approached it from a more classical and evidential type of debating approach.
01:07: And then when I heard Greg Bonson, it just floored me because I'd never heard anything like that.
01:13: And I went, wait a minute, as I thought about it, it was solidly biblical. He's simply appealing to the truth of what
01:19: God says in various parts of scripture and their implications and ramifications which the atheists cannot escape from.
01:26: 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.
01:35: I mean, even atheists know this at this time when we speak of presuppositionalism, most people come to it through the
01:41: 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.
01:56: And so I just wish that Dr. Bonson was able to do more debates. I mean, we only have that one.
02:01: 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
02:08: Stein so short. He was probably the most well -studied and well -read atheist in the world.
02:15: Okay. His PhD was in library scientists and he set up at least one profound atheist library.
02:21: So he's probably one of the most well -read atheists on the planet at the time.
02:27: Okay. I did not know that. A functional philosopher. Yeah, I guess I made my judgment based upon how bad his representation of the classical arguments were.
02:37: Even his, I mean, if you listen to the debate, he, it is like Gordon Stein is debating a classicalist, which he wasn't.
02:44: And he's trying to refute arguments that weren't being made. Because I think the presuppositional approach kind of stymied him.
02:49: 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,
02:57: I thought they were terrible. So I didn't really think he was as intellectually astute as perhaps he actually was.
03:06: 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.
03:18: 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.
03:29: 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, there's some disconnect that prevents them from really grasping the nature of what we're saying.
03:44: So let's go for just a bare definition. In a bare definition, if someone were to ask you, what is presuppositionalism?
03:50: 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.
04:05: 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.
04:16: Some of those most foundational positions or the final one, we would say that these are our presuppositions.
04:23: And because we have different worldviews, we have a conflict of worldview, not just an interpretation of the facts.
04:31: Because the facts cannot be the same because the worldviews are in conflict. One of the worldviews has to be at least false.
04:38: So in a presuppositional approach, we present the revelation of God as he has given it through natural and special revelation.
04:45: We explain what our fundamental beliefs are, our presuppositions, how we arrived at them and why we hold to them.
04:53: And then the unbeliever has the opportunity to accept this, which the majority of time, they're well familiar with the
05:00: Christian worldview, they then reject it. And then in a very simple way, we show that the denial of the
05:06: Christian worldview and its fundamental presuppositions is an implicit counterclaim, which would entail their worldview.
05:13: 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.
05:36: 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.
05:49: There will be no background information for which them to place and defend facts.
05:55: 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.
06:03: They can't ground anything they say. So when you present the presuppositional argument,
06:10: God has revealed himself in general and special revelation such that we could know what his revelation is, right?
06:15: We know God innately. And so you present the Christian worldview and then you say the rejection thereof reduces one's position to absurdity.
06:23: How do you respond to people who say, well, that's a really nice claim. You're just making assertions.
06:28: 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
06:36: God's revelation of himself is itself a counterclaim, 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.
06:52: They've judged that it is unworthy of belief, right? Their response is, well, you haven't proven it.
06:59: And we point out that God's natural and special revelation to the extent that we're familiar with it is self -justifying.
07:07: It's self -attesting and demonstrating, okay? Not only because of its source, but because of its internal content, the properties and attributes of the
07:15: 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.
07:28: Now, when they reject that, either they're not understanding it or they're just playing word games.
07:34: 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?
07:42: 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.
07:54: To say that the Christian worldview is just a claim, right, is itself a counterclaim.
08:00: 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.
08:08: 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?
08:17: Which they cannot sustain. So why don't you unfold for us? So, 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.
08:42: 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.
08:51: 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.
09:02: It's a smokescreen because the very criterion of belief that they apply to God's natural and special revelation, the
09:08: Christian scriptures, okay, they abandon when they advocate directly or indirectly for their worldview.
09:14: I'm constantly telling unbelievers on Discord, you're violating your own criterion of belief.
09:21: 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.
09:27: You haven't justified it. And then I say to them, oh, and so you're not Christian worldview has been proven and justified?
09:35: Do you follow your own criterion of belief? Because in order to not accept the
09:40: Christian worldview, that means that you're gonna have to be adopting your worldview, your non -Christian worldview as actual, as true, as veridical.
09:50: 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.
10:04: They do not want God to exist. They do not want to acknowledge God. They do not wanna be thankful to him as creator.
10:11: So as I say all the time on the interweb, as George Bush would say, they collect cliches, catchphrases, aphorisms to assuage their conscience.
10:21: And so when they say, well, you haven't proven it. Okay, well, fine, that's a counterclaim, okay?
10:26: So they're gonna have to establish that their worldview can evaluate things. See, the
10:32: Christian worldview is not only proven because of its source, because of who God is, you've got
10:38: God's word is self -attesting, but the actual internal parameters and content itself reveal that these are the preconditions.
10:46: God's character, his nature, his revelation cannot be dispensed with.
10:53: Van Til said that Christianity is indispensable for human intelligibility, meaning that the
11:00: Christian worldview is ontologically true. Now, they think that they have intelligibility because they don't believe in God or the
11:07: Christian worldview. But we're not simply talking about mere belief. We're saying that the Christian God and his attributes must exist ontologically.
11:16: Otherwise there will be no metaphysical background information, absolute or ultimate to appeal to.
11:22: 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.
11:29: 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.
11:35: And then there, well, I don't see how that makes sense. How would you unpack that a little bit more?
11:40: 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
11:57: God, where God is a mind, he's eternal. He then institutes his creation.
12:04: And then he imposes all of the parameters, how things work, including ourselves, to permit us to be intelligible and to reason.
12:13: The reason why we can be coherent, intelligible and reason, because it reflects the creator who created these things.
12:21: 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.
12:33: But you see, no such foundational premise can be attested to. They have nothing identifiable or demonstrable.
12:43: They say, well, you haven't proven you're God. You haven't proven the scriptures. Well, God's existence has been proven by God.
12:49: The scriptures have been proven, but because of their motivated reasoning, they blind themselves to the objective proof that the
12:56: 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.
13:11: So in the Christian worldview, God is, he reveals himself. We could only know
13:16: 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.
13:29: 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.
13:41: 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,
13:51: 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.
14:02: We know that what is eternal, ultimate and absolute is a mind and that he has revealed that he is
14:07: God and that he is creator and sustainer and that he is unfolding a redemptive plan of human history.
14:14: But when they reject that, which Ventile says is a closed system because some things cannot happen, some things are impossible, when they reject
14:24: 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?
14:35: Where anything goes, nothing is impossible. Because nothing is impossible from their frame of reference, then truth and falsity is inaccessible.
14:44: And if truth and falsity are inaccessible, then so is reason and intelligibility and it's game over, lights out for them.
14:53: 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
15:03: 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.
15:11: And so suppose - Yeah. Yeah, suppose - Okay. You can - It's worse than that.
15:16: 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.
15:29: There's no metaphysical system from which these propositions or facts can derive from.
15:36: 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,
15:41: 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
15:48: I say. And well, you're, you know, that's what we call crazy. But I think, as I asked you the question on purpose, cause
15:53: I knew what your answer was gonna 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?
16:03: How does lacking a foundation result in arbitrariness with regards to asserting the truth or falsity of some fact?
16:13: Because nothing can be grounded. Nothing can be defended as being either true or false.
16:19: It's not just that they're wrong. They don't have access to truth and falsity.
16:25: Why? Because their metaphysic, their worldview, cannot provide for it. So for example, if we have a fact, a putative fact, 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.
16:44: And that all of those particulars and facts are a part of God's unfolding plan of creation and redemption.
16:52: So God is the ultimate reference point that makes any fact a fact. When they say, oh, well, you haven't proven your
16:59: 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
17:08: God's revelation to the extent that they are in fact acquainted with it. And once they reject
17:14: God's revelation, then there's no ultimate reference point for facts.
17:20: Because what you think is a fact today in relationship to some things could change tomorrow or next week, which is an open system.
17:28: Now I've confronted unbelievers about this. And I say a closed system is where we have an eternal, absolute, ultimate creator
17:36: God. He institutes creation, he sustains it, and he operates it according to his plan, his redemptive plan of human history.
17:44: 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?
17:52: Just some other facts? Well, what's their reference point? What they wanna do is they wanna borrow from the
17:58: 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.
18:10: 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.
18:19: So their position, according to their own stated criterion, is self -annihilating.
18:25: That's why Van Til said Christianity is true due to the impossibility of its denial.
18:31: 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, right?
18:47: So if someone says, oh, well, Allah is the necessary precondition for intelligibility. How would we respond?
18:52: Why is our argument not simply a claim that can be replaced with any
18:57: X? You know, my transcendental argument for Mormonism, my transcendental argument for Islam.
19:05: 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.
19:15: He has to be ultimate and absolute. There are no ultimate and absolute gods on the religious landscape, either now or in human history.
19:23: Those gods that are pretenders, such as the derivational cults, reveal that they're simply ripping off the
19:30: Christian God. They're poor imitators, like the God of Islam. The Quran says that Allah is the greatest of all deceivers.
19:39: 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
19:49: God's revelation, where God always reveals the truth, which would entail the law of identity and non -contradiction.
19:56: And in the Islamic world, you never know when Allah might be actually deceiving you. Now, in the
20:02: Christian worldview, people can be deceived about some things, but only after they reject a love of the truth, right?
20:10: 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.
20:22: So these other gods do not have the attributes and the properties that only the
20:27: Christian God has ontologically so that there can be human intelligibility, right?
20:35: 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.
20:45: 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.
20:54: 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
21:00: Christian God has it. And they hate that. They have a special hatred for the Christian God.
21:06: That's why most of these online internet atheists like to mock and ridicule and pretend like they don't take the
21:11: Christian God seriously, but they do. You can show up by the amount of time that they spend devoted to attacking and mocking the
21:18: Christian God. Sure, sure. Let's get back to this issue of foundations. I thought that was interesting.
21:23: 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.
21:32: 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.
21:41: 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.
21:50: 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.
21:58: Brute facts are mute facts. They're meaningless, okay? They have no context for their existence, right?
22:06: In other words, whatever these brute facts are, they simply exist without any metaphysical basis whatsoever.
22:14: They just are without further explanation, which means they emanate from a chance realm or an open system.
22:22: So what you think is a fact today could change in any moment. Okay. So a brute fact is, and I guess you're using the word brute fact the same way
22:33: 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.
22:44: Well, that means it's a contextless fact and contextless facts are meaningless. They're mute.
22:50: 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?
23:00: They don't care that they have no ultimate metaphysic or grounding, right?
23:06: 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.
23:17: Or they'll just lie and make one up that they don't really believe. Well, what if someone says, well,
23:23: I don't, I mean, okay, fine. Perhaps we need an ultimate metaphysic, an ultimate grounding for all derivational facts, you know, a metaphysic.
23:31: What happens if the person says, I don't know. I have no idea what ultimate reality is. So I don't see why it has to be your
23:36: 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.
23:45: How might you address that? Well, then he's basically claiming without realizing it is that he can have facts without context.
23:53: 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.
24:00: 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.
24:13: 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
24:20: 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.
24:35: Now, what they wanna say is that there are facts because of the uniformity of nature and causality and matter energy.
24:41: 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?
24:50: 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?
24:59: They cannot answer any of these questions. So what if they say, well, all right, fine.
25:05: I don't know what institutes them or whatever, but I know that causality is a thing because of the impossibility of the contrary.
25:11: I have no choice but to - No, no, how do they ask the contrary? They're assuming that certain events are not spontaneous.
25:21: Now, you said spontaneous. You also talked about possibility and impossibility and you mentioned something about an open and closed system.
25:28: 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?
25:37: Yeah, in reading Van Til, he made this point and it just, it blew me away where he explained as God is ultimate,
25:45: God who is the most foundational parameter. He referred to God as the concrete universal.
25:51: He's the all conditioner, right? It can be summed up as simple as a child's song lyric.
25:57: He's got the whole world in his hands. Right? I mean, it's that simple, right?
26:05: So then all facts are within the context of God as creator where Van Til talked about the creator -creature distinction, right?
26:14: And this goes right back to scripture. In the beginning, God, God is creator. We see this theme all throughout scripture.
26:20: We see it in the New Testament, all throughout the New Testament, even to the last chapter of the book of Revelation.
26:31: Okay. Hello? Yeah, I'm here. Oh, okay. I'm just, I just don't want to hog the mic time from you.
26:38: 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.
26:45: 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.
26:51: 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?
27:01: Vantil's presuppositional approach is a transcendental approach. It might not be the best to utilize that language because it often has linguistic ties to like idealistic philosophy,
27:13: Kantian philosophy, things like that. But basically what we're saying, as you said, 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.
27:22: But when people object to what you're saying, they say, fine, we need a metaphysical ultimate and fine.
27:27: A God has to be in that placeholder. How do you know it's the Christian God specifically and the
27:34: Christian worldview? How do you know that that argument actually proves that? I think that you're trying to say too much,
27:40: Darth. 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
27:48: Christian God. How would you expand on that? Well, how do I know it's a Christian God? Same way we know our mother's middle name.
27:55: They revealed it. That's just too simple for them because they already reject that God revealed it.
28:02: But if I gave any other answer, then it wouldn't be biblical, okay? So God revealed it.
28:08: 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.
28:20: 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
28:38: 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?
28:54: Like for example, we have the Islamic God or like the God Jehovah's Witnesses where they present a
29:00: Unitarian God, and they say, oh, well, your belief in the Trinitarian God is false and our God is true.
29:05: Well, I just simply point out, well, what we then have is an autistic God in eternity past who is incapacitated to relate, right?
29:14: I was explaining to a Muslim today that autism is to varying degrees an incapacity to actualize relationalness, right?
29:27: And he agreed with that. I don't think anybody would agree with this definition. Well, the
29:32: Islamic God and Unitarian Gods have no capacity to actualize relationality in eternity past, there's no one to relate to.
29:41: 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.
29:50: Each of the persons can relate to another person in the Godhead in context within the third.
29:57: And so there's always a mutual relationalness between the persons of the
30:02: Godhead. So I'm not trying to be insultive here using his insult, but they truly have an autistic
30:10: God in eternity past because he cannot relate to any other personal being because they don't exist.
30:16: Now, it's a feature, I think, essential strength, a philosophical strength. And it's interesting because, well, we believe
30:23: Christianity is true and so we don't believe this is developed by people, but the idea of the
30:28: Trinity was not understood within the context of trying to answer philosophical questions, but ironically, it answers the most profound philosophical.
30:38: 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.
30:48: 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.
30:58: Now, I have heard people say, the problem of the one and the many is not an actual problem.
31:04: 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,
31:13: 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?
31:27: How have some people tried to respond to the problem but failed? And how does the triune
31:33: God answer this philosophical conundrum of the one and the many? Would you follow that? The one and the many, yeah, the one and the many, it's a perennial philosophical problem.
31:43: It just goes down. What is the most fundamental nature of reality in total?
31:49: What is the fundamental, ultimate nature of reality? Is it a concrete one, it's an actual one thing without distinctions or particulars?
31:58: Or is reality just simply a set of an innumerable number of discrete particulars, right?
32:07: Is it one or is it many, meaning a plurality? If you answer the question either way, it will destroy human intelligibility, right?
32:19: 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.
32:29: He is a concrete one, but within that concrete oneness, there is a plurality, a diversity.
32:36: So he has unity and diversity, and as Van Til says, they have equal ultimacy.
32:42: Neither one of them have supremacy over each other in terms of how we understand
32:47: God. So God is an absolute unity and a plurality.
32:53: He then creates the world, okay, where we have the creator, creation, distinction, and the world is going to reflect
33:01: God's nature and character. That's why we can have the law of identity and non -contradiction because all of the world is
33:08: 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.
33:17: 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.
33:32: But then even those particulars have categories, classes, and universals to provide unity among diversity so that there can be coherence and intelligibility.
33:44: So the very intelligibility of the world around us requires various aspects of unity and diversity.
33:53: And without unity and diversity, there can't be intelligibility or coherence, and that reflects the creator.
33:59: Now, if they wanna claim that the ultimate nature of reality is not the God of the
34:04: 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.
34:15: Well, then that will destroy the ability to anyone speaking intelligibly because anytime you invoke any particulars or distinctions, they wouldn't exist.
34:25: All you could talk about was the one. On the other hand, if they say that there is an innumerable number of particulars, then there is nothing that ultimately unifies this from their perspective.
34:38: 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?
34:49: They would have to identify that. Now, they might opt to say, well, there's unity and diversity by borrowing from the
34:57: 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?
35:09: So they cannot explain this, right? Now, what if you have people who they try to bring up some hypotheticals?
35:16: 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
35:27: 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?
35:35: Like there's one God who exists as two persons or a quadrinity, one God who exists as four persons.
35:41: What if someone says, well, what if there's another religion that has a triune God, but there's a different story?
35:48: 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
35:56: 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
36:07: God that they know that has revealed himself in the triune God. And there's just simply trying to imitate the
36:12: 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.
36:23: I've run into people like this before. I even caught one atheist who actually pulled something like this.
36:29: 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.
36:39: I ran into him a year later. I asked him some similar questions, but not about that incident. And he was caught lying.
36:46: 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
36:56: God of the Bible who is and is coherent, you immediately introduce a God who is not coherent and cannot provide for intelligibly.
37:04: Well, first of all, the God of the Bible's also, he historically reveals himself over time through the
37:10: Bible. The Bible's a historical book written over several thousand years, written by 40 different authors.
37:15: 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?
37:22: Where is his plan of salvation? Where is that? So they're just making this stuff up so they can run from the
37:29: 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.
37:38: 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.
37:48: Yeah. Very good. Now, here's a question that I was thinking about before and I was wondering if you could address it.
37:56: Okay. So when you say, when you present your argument, you say that God has revealed himself both in general and special revelation. And when you're speaking of special revelation,
38:03: I would take you have in mind the scriptures, right? Yes. Okay. So how would, okay, and this has been asked often, how would an
38:11: Old Testament saint use presuppositionalism without a New Testament revelation?
38:18: Okay. Have you ever heard that question before? Yes, but not quite in that form.
38:27: Well, the Christian God wasn't revealed 2000 years ago. He was revealed to Adam when he opened up his eyes.
38:36: That is the same Christian God as we have today. And we did 2000 years ago. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yesterday and today.
38:45: Okay. Now it's hinted at, God's plurality and unity is hinted at in scripture.
38:51: There are some very clear passages which hinted that. And that God also says that he is going to provide our salvation.
38:59: Since God cannot lie, okay, he will in some way, according to his own judgment and his own wisdom, effectuate which might even seem impossible, right?
39:10: So we can appeal to God's characteristics in the Old Testament. Now, contemporary Unitarianism, for example, in Judaism, is an explicit denial of God's internal plurality, as opposed to Old Testament believers, they did not explicitly deny the
39:26: Trinity. So we can just say the same thing, even though they didn't know about the Trinity, that Yahweh, the
39:33: God of the Bible, is the only one who exists and has the capacities and the power to institute and sustain creation.
39:41: You know, Isaiah 43, 44, 45, 46. I am the only God, there are no other gods.
39:47: I am the first, I am last. I am the beginning and the end. We find these same types of remarks. The only thing that we don't have is a full revelation and detailing of God's Trinitarian nature, right?
39:58: We can find the majority of the characteristics that we find in the New Testament, in the
40:05: Old Testament, although some of it is foreshadowed and veiled. Sure. And I suppose too, that even though scripture is special revelation, prior to scripture, there was still special revelation.
40:16: So there wasn't ever a point where there was never a special revelation, all right? Right, as soon as God spoke to Adam, that's special revelation.
40:22: Yeah, okay. All right, very good. Now here's more of a historical sort of question, and then I wanna jump back into a philosophical question that I know you're familiar with, and folks who will be listening are probably familiar with the phraseology that I'm going to use, okay?
40:37: By the way, just to let you know, I do not have the YouTube window open or seeing what's going on in the text chat, because usually there's people throwing questions and all that.
40:48: So if there's any questions from there that you wanna ask, you'd have to repeat that for me, because I just wanna concentrate.
40:53: Oh, no problem. These are all my own questions, and then when we go into the Q &A,
40:58: I put them up on the screen so people who are looking on YouTube, they can see it, and I'll just repeat it and read it to you.
41:04: It'll be fun. Okay, so here's a question. So how might we respond to someone who says, if presuppositionalism is so biblical, then why hasn't it been used throughout church history?
41:16: It actually has. It's just that it's just not explicit. But you see, in church history, there were people who made blunders, because, well, for example, it was used in church history by the apostles.
41:29: They didn't use the specific nomenclature. Well played, well played. That was a good one.
41:35: Okay, yeah. They didn't use the explicit technical jargon that we may do.
41:41: They may not have gone into a philosophical representation of these theological truths.
41:48: A lot of my reasoning, my debate tactics, I take certain scriptural truths that God has said, and I say, okay, how can these truths be understood and expressed in a philosophical sense?
42:02: And then I derive questions based upon that. The apostle
42:08: Paul was not really dealing with rank atheists or even agnostics.
42:14: He was just dealing with a lot of polytheism. You read Acts 17, that's extremely presuppositional.
42:25: The apostles did have the same kind of nuances that we will have as presuppositionalists, but the content is the same.
42:34: We're appealing to the ontological trinity, and that the denial thereof is just foolishness.
42:41: First Corinthians chapter one, chapter three, has not God turned the wisdom of the world into foolishness?
42:47: Well, why? Because when you deny God and his character set, what are you gonna base anything on?
42:54: That's presuppositional. Second Corinthians 10, was it chapter five?
43:02: It's late, I'm getting tired, I'm trying to remember. Second Corinthians 10, five, okay?
43:08: Where it says, we are destroying all speculations. Look up the verse reference for me. We are destroying all speculations and every lofty thing that raises itself above the knowledge of God and bringing every thought into captivity of Christ.
43:19: That is biblical presuppositionalism right there, in a nutshell. We are destroying all speculations and every lofty thing that raises itself above the knowledge of God.
43:30: So when somebody starts talking about not acknowledging God as creator, that's a lofty thing they're raising above the knowledge of God.
43:37: That is a speculation, and we're called to destroy that. All right, very good, very good.
43:43: Okay, so I am going to, let's go to the Q &A now, because there are a lot of questions and I wanna get people's questions in.
43:51: Okay, and before you do, after I come on some of these shows, like Modern Day Debate or other places, the comments section explodes with vitriol and angst and spewing hatred and denunciations.
44:10: And I warmly welcome any of my critics, okay, who do not have a history of stalking or trolling.
44:19: And you want to say that what I'm saying here is garbage or false.
44:25: I welcome you to go one -on -one and we can discuss these things. And I'm sure Eli or someone else like himself will be a very firm, fair, and strict monitor, and we can talk about this.
44:38: But I think that many of my critics in the comments section on YouTube channels are just keyboard warriors, okay?
44:45: That's all they are. Well, hopefully the comments are good here. I haven't read through all of them. So here's one, you can't see it on the screen, but someone says,
44:54: Helen says, wait. Oh, I thought it was, okay, I thought it was Darth. I thought he said you were saying -
44:59: Garrell. Garrell. I'm looking like small inside. I thought it said Darth, and I thought they were saying that you sound like Greg Kokel.
45:07: Guess not, nevermind. Well, that's a nice remark. Thank you. Greg Kokel's a really smart guy.
45:12: I don't agree with everything he says, but I do appreciate his ministry. And I do agree with a lot of things that he says.
45:20: Okay, so let's see here. I have to scroll through. So I do apologize.
45:25: I'm just taking the one - You gotta skip all the nasty ones, right? They're actually not too many.
45:31: I don't even see a nasty one, okay? Jesus name magnified says, hello, Eli. Love the channel.
45:37: Thank you so much for that. Let's see here. Okay, here's a question from Rational Evidence.
45:44: Why do preceptors think you need reformed theology to do presuppositional apologetics consistently? What's the logical issue with being an
45:51: Arminian preceptor? Now, before you answer that question, I did have an episode on that with presuppositionalism and reformed theology.
45:59: So you might wanna check that out. I think it was with Emilio Ramos, but I'll let
46:04: Darth answer that from his own perspective. Go for it, Darth. Well, even though I consider myself a dyed -in -the -wool presuppositionalist,
46:14: I'm not reformed. I certainly understand and respect the position of my reformed brothers and sisters in Christ who feel that it's a necessity, but since I'm not reformed, then
46:25: I wouldn't consider it a necessity. What I do agree with is the extreme important emphasis on the sovereignty and providence of God and that the persistent unrepentance and sinfulness of man is what is blocking them from receiving the good news.
46:45: And that's why we have to resort to nuclear -strength arguments. Otherwise, they're just gonna go, uh -uh, uh -uh, uh -uh, uh.
46:53: So I disagree, but I have the utmost respect for people like Van Til and Bonson who strongly emphasize the reform basis.
47:04: Right, all right, thank you for that. There we go. See, look, not all the comments are bad. Many of them are good.
47:09: Darth is an awesome presuppositional teacher. There you go. I'm gonna try to be intentional. Well, that's truth -speller.
47:15: He got paid to say that. Okay, I'll be sure to include the nice comments as well.
47:24: Okay, so atomic apologetics, that's not, sorry. Ben Avery asks the question, how does Darth know his metaphysical theory is true?
47:31: I think that goes back to the main point of your argument. Why don't you address that? Well, how do
47:36: I know it's true? The same way I know my mother's middle name, okay? It was revealed, okay?
47:41: Is there any other way, Ben Avery? If God did not give revelation, right, then how could
47:50: I know anything? Number two, all right, it's because the revelation and its content are the necessary preconditions without which there could not be human intelligibility.
48:04: In other words, the denial of the contents and the parameters of God's revelation will immediately place somebody into an open system, a metaphysic of pure chance and contingency where truth and falsity as concepts would never be accessible or defendable, okay?
48:32: So it's the properties and attributes of the Christian God, the parameters of the Christian worldview as instituted by God, are the necessary conditions ontologically.
48:44: And if somebody says, well, I don't accept that, say, good, then you can explain to me what your metaphysic is without those parameters, without the attributes of the
48:54: God of the Bible and how that realm will provide for human intelligibility. The answer is you won't be able to.
49:00: I've been doing this for several years now. I have yet to have an atheist or an agnostic or anyone who seriously challenges a
49:08: Christian worldview be able to defend what it is that is actually ultimate, absolute, and the foundational nature of reality, okay?
49:18: Very good. Because they can't. Yeah, very good. Scott Terry asked the question, who has the bigger library, you or Darth Dawkins?
49:27: I don't know. I know you have a big digital library. I don't know how many physical books you have, but do you have enough physical books?
49:35: I don't, well, to be honest with you, in terms of my actual hard copy library that I have,
49:43: I don't have a lot of hard copy apologetic books. I do in digital form.
49:52: Most of my hard copy books are just general books on theology and then things like that.
49:58: Sure. All right, very good. I'm gonna go into my Kindle and see if I could, how many books do
50:04: I have? Let me see, does it even say when you go in your Kindle? I don't know, I think I have like, in my
50:09: Kindle, like 700 or 800 books, which I haven't read all of them. They're just books that I don't wanna get to, whatever, blah, blah.
50:16: But okay, so Beneberry asked the question, or makes the statement, maybe you could address this, God is a brute fact because God has no explanation.
50:23: No, Beneberry, shame on you. We've been over this many, many, many, many, many times.
50:30: A brute fact is something that exists without ultimate and foundational attestation.
50:38: Okay. Okay, right? God is not a brute fact. God is self -existent.
50:45: He's eternal, he's ultimate, right? There is no ultimate reason why a brute fact exists.
50:53: It just simply exists with no explanation. God has revealed the explanation of his existence, that he is simply eternal without beginning.
51:03: Now, if you wanna say that there are brute facts, that they're like God, they're a brute fact, well, are they eternal?
51:13: Are they ultimate? Because you can't have a plurality of ultimates. You can only have a singular that's ultimate.
51:20: Because if you have a plurality of eternal things, then they would be independent of each other, right?
51:27: And therefore, none of them would be ultimate, right? So we've been, you know, I hate to be mean, but shame on you,
51:34: Beneberry, we've been over this before. God, by definition, cannot be, nor is defined as a brute fact, right?
51:44: God, in theological terms, is ase. The ase of gods means he's self -contained.
51:51: He does not need anything. He does not derive anything. That's why he said to Moses, I am that I am.
51:58: Brute facts do not possess aseity. They just happen to exist.
52:05: There's no appeal to themselves. Now, if you told me that there was a brute fact out there, right, and then you told me that it was ultimate, it's absolute, it has aseity, it's self -contained, non -absolute, unconditionally non -dependent, well, then it would not be characterized or defined as a brute fact then.
52:25: A brute fact has no explanation why it is. That's an important, that's actually a very important distinction.
52:32: So like one of the contingency arguments used in more of the classical approach, there is one of the premises where it explains that a thing can only exist either because it exists contingently or it exists out of a necessity of its own nature.
52:46: God exists out of a necessity of his own nature, but that's not the same as you've explained as just calling God a brute fact.
52:52: That's a great answer. I like that. This is a mistake that a lot of unbelievers make because there is still in a state of rebellion against God, clinging desperately to that human autonomy.
53:06: And what they wanna do is they just wanna minimize God. They do not wanna acknowledge his complete lordship over everything.
53:15: The fact that he is Lord over all meaning he's ultimate, he's absolute, means he possesses satiety and he exists simply within himself.
53:24: Brute facts just are just simply, they exist out of a realm of chance. In other words, the brute fact is not attributed to being ultimate where God is represented or defined as ultimate.
53:40: So if you tell me that there's a fact that's ultimate, then it cannot be a brute fact.
53:46: Sure, all right, very good. Nate Werner asked the question, can you expand on the statement that in order to have human intelligibility, we have to have a creator with certain traits and properties.
53:58: Atheists believe this ability comes from evolution. How would you respond to that? Okay, that's a really good question.
54:04: Well, in order to understand why the non -Christian position is futile is you have to understand what you don't believe.
54:13: Where we have an ultimate creator God, he is entirely and completely self -conscious of everything about himself and he is omniscient.
54:21: He then creates the world, institutes all the particulars and parameters, and then endows his creation with certain capacities and abilities, including our ability to reason, which reflects his ultimate ability to reason.
54:35: In a world without God, there is no metaphysical foundation for reason. You might be a determinist, you might not be a determinist, but either one that you select, it will destroy human reason and intelligibility.
54:49: Intelligibility isn't just going to require that humans possess reason. It requires a metaphysical framework of what is absolute and ultimate and instituting and securing what's possible and impossible.
55:04: You see, this is the great achievement of Charles Darwin. According to Julian Huxley, he said
55:09: Darwin's greatest achievement was to remove God from the sphere of rational discussion.
55:15: You want to believe that you have reason from an evolutionary perspective. Well, you can't.
55:21: Alvin Plantica has destroyed this with his argument against a naturalism from evolution.
55:28: It might be the case that naturalism is true, but you could never know it if evolution was true.
55:34: Because evolution doesn't select for truth, it selects for behavior.
55:39: Now, evolution, you could never have actual intelligibility because any given mental state that you have is just simply the clicking molecular and neurological dominoes that have been going on for billions of years in your scenario.
55:55: But even that you could not attest to because that would require that your metaphysic, your worldview, establish the causal principle, right?
56:07: If you believe in evolution, then you are presupposing the actuality of matter and energy, the causal principle, that there's a cause and effect relationship between events, and that the apparent regularity of nature is real.
56:22: Now, if it is real, if causality and the regularity of nature is real, what imposes and sustains it?
56:31: Or on the other hand, is it illusory? Is it an illusion, Nate? Okay?
56:37: So either way you dice it or slice it, whether you adopt determinism or not, determinism and non -determinism is going to destroy your ability to reason and your background information that would be, or your metaphysic, your worldview, that will have to have the parameters which provide for intelligibility.
56:58: You cannot attest to it. You might devoutly believe they're there, but you could never attest and defend it.
57:06: So I could just simply ask Nate, evolution depends upon the presupposition of causality.
57:13: What institutes or imposes and secures not only causality, but its perpetuity?
57:20: Okay? Since it's not God, what is it? And you're just going to be left by just saying, well, causality just is.
57:26: Well, now you're in a chance realm. You're in an open system. Never forget, if you adopt evolution, you're basically in an open system because you're removing
57:35: God from the sphere of rational discussion. If you're in an open system, truth and falsity are inaccessible.
57:41: If truth and falsity are inaccessible, there cannot be human intelligibility.
57:47: All right, thank you so much for that. Very good answer there. Thanks for the Super Chat Gospel Edge, $5.
57:55: Thank you for that. I appreciate it. He writes, or she writes, concept of karmic reincarnation denies the mind of God, but in the next birth, punishment for deeds.
58:07: How do, I guess they're asking, how do you articulate that to Hindus? Well, it's going to be a little bit more tough to do that with the
58:16: Hindus, but we have to show them that the Hindu, and there's a variety of Hindu worldviews that are overlapping.
58:22: There's not just one concrete worldview of Hinduism, but overlapping, but we have to show them whatever worldview that they're holding to.
58:31: Let's say it's classical Hinduism where we have Brahman, and then we have he manifests himself in all these gods.
58:36: We have to show them that whatever metaphysic, whatever model of reality, which is a direct or an indirect denial of the
58:43: God of the Bible, it is incoherent. The only coherent worldview is and can be the
58:52: Christian worldview because of the internal coherence of the triune God, right?
58:58: So because God is internally coherent, he creates his world, the world reflects his coherence, okay?
59:06: Now, if we're positing a make -believe worldview, such as in Hinduism, it could never be coherent because it would have to reflect the ultimacy of reality, which is itself coherent, and then that reflecting in the creation, which is derived from that.
59:26: So the ultimacy in Hinduism cannot be coherent. For classical
59:31: Hinduism, it's Brahman who all is one. There are no distinctions. Brahman is a concrete one.
59:37: Any distinctions or manifestations are illusory. So therefore, you can't, in hardcore
59:43: Hinduism, where Brahman is all and distinctions are not real, it destroys the ability to predicate.
59:50: When we have to show them, these are just false beliefs that people go to because they want their itching ears tickled so that they can run from the
01:00:00: God that they know that they're gonna await when they die, right? All right,
01:00:06: Atomic Apologetics asked the question, please expand on the impossibility of the contrary, the impossibility to the contrary.
01:00:12: Right, so when we deny the Christian God, since the Christian God is the creator, he is the ultimate and the absolute, then positing propositions, meaningfulness, and intelligibility that derive from idolatry is impossible.
01:00:30: It doesn't exist, right? And also, the putative ultimacy that they will offer instead of the
01:00:38: Christian God does not have the sufficient and complete attribute set that the Christian God has.
01:00:45: So the impossibility of the contrary is that there is no hope of intelligibility, reason or truth, or accessibility to truth and falsehood.
01:00:55: In other words, outright deny the Christian God to the extent that he has revealed himself, and you have a metaphysic that is shrouded in mystery, okay?
01:01:06: And if your metaphysic is shrouded in mystery, then you're not gonna be able to speak intelligibly about anything in spite of the fact that you think you can.
01:01:15: But those who think they can, they're only doing so because they're robbing from the Christian worldview and they're stealing the parameters of God's creation without acknowledging him.
01:01:24: They're just basically cosmic plagiarists. That's a good way to put it.
01:01:30: All right, Rational Evidence asked the question, how can you prove that an atheist actually knows things?
01:01:37: Couldn't an atheist simply say, they assume things with a degree of certainty and claim everyone does this?
01:01:44: All I have to do is just cite what God says, game over, lights out. Lights out, okay.
01:01:52: And if somebody objects to that, then I simply say, then you have no grounds if you do not rely on God's revelatory actions, both in natural and special revelation as our metaphysical grounding, so that truth and falsity are accessible, right?
01:02:11: Then you have no background information. You have no metaphysic to say anything at all.
01:02:18: It's not just a matter of certainty. It's not just a matter of knowing anything, okay? When they refuse to acknowledge
01:02:24: God as God, when they refuse to acknowledge the creator -creature distinction, then whatever propositions, whatever putative facts that they invoke, it's shrouded in a complete realm of chance and mystery.
01:02:38: And if your propositions and so -called facts are shrouded in mystery, you have no facts at all.
01:02:46: Very good. How are you doing? Are you okay? Yeah, I don't want you to feel like these are too many questions.
01:02:54: Are you doing okay? No, not at all, I'm fine. All right, wonderful. Just give me 10 seconds and get a drink of water.
01:03:01: Sure, sure. All right, all right. Well, these are great questions. I hope that you guys are enjoying the content.
01:03:07: If you're just listening, if you haven't subscribed to Revealed Apologetics, I mean, like, what's up with you, bro? All right, go and click the little notification bell, subscribe, and get notifications.
01:03:16: Just a reminder, just a reminder for all those Darth haters out there and critics out there, okay,
01:03:22: I know I'm an imperfect person. How do I know? Because Eli told me so, okay?
01:03:28: No, Eli's a good guy. You know, if you wanna say I'm stupid or my reason is convoluted,
01:03:34: I welcome you to come on Eli's show. Eli will strictly put a leash on me.
01:03:41: He will, he will even, I even have given him permission to muzzle me if needed, spray me with pepper spray or capsaicin.
01:03:49: We're gonna let you talk. Every time you talk out of turn, I'll just shock you. But you see, I would say that 99 % of all these keyboard warriors who attacked me in the comments section don't have the intestinal fortitude to come on and challenge the biblical worldview, even under good, fair, and tight moderation that somebody like Eli will give.
01:04:11: They'll do it with other moderators from other debate platforms that are jellyfishes, okay?
01:04:17: So if you wanna challenge the Christian worldview, contact Eli Alaya, we'll set it up, and you can challenge the
01:04:24: Christian worldview. I apologize. I say ayala. Ayala. Again, I didn't know. Listen, listen,
01:04:30: I apologize. I'm older than you are, and I'm having a Joe Biden moment. Okay, oh my goodness.
01:04:38: All right, don't worry about it. Everyone messes up on my name, it's all good. Yeah, I would be happy to moderate something. So if anyone wants to -
01:04:44: There you go, there you go. But guess what? I will be surprised if any of these keyboard warriors take it up.
01:04:51: And remember, it applies to those people who don't have a chronic history of stalking or trolling.
01:04:57: Okay, all right. Sounds good. If anyone's interested in that, you could email me at revealedapologetics at gmail .com.
01:05:03: I think that'd be something fun and informative. Let's move along. And here's a question from a theist, okay?
01:05:11: Now, this is a good question because I think you get accused of doing this often, and I think people wrongfully understand the presuppositional claim as being something to this effect.
01:05:21: Here's the question. Is Darth's strategy to make assertions, define God into existence, redirect, and burden shift?
01:05:28: Why is it the case, Darth, that what the nature of your argument is not that? You're not simply making assertions.
01:05:34: You're not simply defining God into existence, nor do you desire to redirect. And if you're redirecting, what is the purpose and importance for your redirection?
01:05:42: Okay? Okay, so each one of us at any given moment, any time of the day, any day out of the week or month, we're gonna have to decide whether all the facts that we're acquainted with, excuse me, are revelatory of God.
01:05:59: So I'm coming to my unbelievers' acquaintances and saying, look,
01:06:07: God has revealed himself in all facts because if he didn't, they wouldn't be facts.
01:06:13: The moment you do not accept that and you just say, well, that's just assertion, you've just revealed that you are holding to its negation, that all of these facts individually and collectively are revelatory of God, right?
01:06:30: So you're not in a neutral position. So when you say that, when I say that all facts that we're acquainted with necessitate referencing
01:06:40: God as the necessary precondition and they reveal God because they couldn't be facts otherwise, if we believe that we have access to facts at all, then they reveal
01:06:51: God because if they don't, they couldn't be facts. There can only be facts in a
01:06:58: God world, okay? And if you wanna challenge that, be my guest. Come on the show and we'll talk about it.
01:07:05: So it's not just an assertion. You think it's a mere assertion, right? Because you reject automatically that all facts are indicative of God.
01:07:15: So because you have already concluded that all facts do not reveal God, then when
01:07:21: I say all facts do reveal God according to his plan, you just think that that's a naked assertion.
01:07:28: I'm not defining God into existence, okay? My stipulation that God exists is in virtue of God revealing himself.
01:07:36: The fact that you do not believe that or don't accept it, that's not my problem, okay?
01:07:42: So I didn't just one day wake up and make this stuff out of my head, okay? Now, you obviously believe that, right?
01:07:50: Our position is that God took the initiative. He reveals himself through natural revelation, through creation.
01:07:57: He reveals himself through all facts. Otherwise, they wouldn't be facts, right? But you reject that.
01:08:03: The moment you do not accept that, you say, oh, well, that's an assertion. Oh, you haven't proven that. You have already made a counterclaim, but you're unaware of it because unbelievers in the late 20th and early 20th century have fooled themselves into thinking that they're in a neutral position.
01:08:19: The end part of your question, you said burden shift. The very fact that you say burden shift indicates your mindset is that you're in a neutral position and that I haven't made the case.
01:08:32: Now, that might be true for gold on Mars, but when it comes to God, who is in a completely different metaphysical category, right?
01:08:39: You will either decide all facts indicate God or you will decide that all facts do not indicate God. There's no burden shifting here, okay?
01:08:46: Because you can't be neutral toward God, nobody can. And it is a popular belief that you can be neutral toward God.
01:08:55: It makes people feel good, right? But it's simply to insulate themselves from having to defend what their real position.
01:09:03: Mr. Atheist, or however you say your name, all I would have to show you that you're not neutral and there's not burden shifting here is simply this.
01:09:11: Do you believe that it is necessary to reference God as the necessary precondition?
01:09:16: There's no way you can give a neutral answer to that. If you say, I don't know, I'll say, well, I didn't ask you if you know.
01:09:22: I asked you, do you believe? So there's no burden shifting here. If you claim
01:09:27: I'm burden shifting, it's because you have fooled yourself into thinking that you can take a neutral position toward God and take a neutral position as to whether all facts are indicative of God or they are not.
01:09:42: All right, very good. We're almost done. You're doing great. I appreciate it too. This is a good point here.
01:09:49: I'm getting paid for this, right? Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Paid in friendship. Wait a minute,
01:09:57: I breached your contract. But hey, my friendship is worth something, right? I'd like, I mean, I'd hope.
01:10:02: I guess so. I got a Christmas card, right? Yeah, you technically did. I did,
01:10:08: I did. And you know what? Those are beautiful kids, okay? Thank you,
01:10:13: I appreciate it. Did the adoption take very long? I know, it was very quick. Just kidding, folks, just kidding.
01:10:22: That's hilarious. All right, so Rational Evidence asked the question, can unbelievers suppress the truth against their will, i .e.
01:10:30: they want to believe but can no longer get there because of Hebrews 6, 4, a seared conscience, unforgivable sin, and all that.
01:10:40: Can unbelievers suppress the truth against their own will? I'm not sure I understand that, okay, if they want to believe it.
01:10:46: No, I think that Jesus said there's only one unforgivable sin, and that is blasphemy against the
01:10:53: Holy Spirit. All manner of sins among men can be forgiven, but the only sin that is unforgivable is the blasphemy against the
01:11:00: Holy Spirit, and that is the persistent, chronic rejection of the convicting power of the Holy Spirit to repent and turn to God's revelation as they know it, and in this age,
01:11:10: Jesus Christ. And people who do that, they will die in their sins and be separated from God, and they will have no one to blame but themselves on judgment day.
01:11:21: All right, very good. Converse Contender, thank you for the $1 .99
01:11:26: Super Chat, I appreciate it. He's saying, tell Darth, I've been trying to get in touch with him.
01:11:31: I don't know if you know who that person is. Yeah, Converse Contender, I'm regularly on the Reformation server on Discord.
01:11:38: All you have to do is Google or Bing Reformation server and find the link. Okay, all right, very good.
01:11:47: Let's see here, gotta move down some of the comments. Let's see here, that might be, that might be.
01:12:02: Well, interesting, you said there weren't a lot of nasty comments, maybe because it's due to the nature of the host, because when
01:12:12: I've been on Modern Day Debates, the nasty comments are run amok.
01:12:22: Maybe, I have no idea. I just, I'm glad that people are behaving and even people who disagree with you, they might say like, hey, your arguments are whack or whatever, but they're, for the most part,
01:12:32: I mean, I don't see anything too crazy. People are being somewhat nice about it. So I do appreciate that.
01:12:38: And just, I mean, that's helpful for communication. So if you're doing that within the comments, I think that's a great thing, so.
01:12:45: Yeah, and remember, if any of you out there in YouTube land, you think
01:12:51: I'm whacked, you think I'm offering specious reasoning, and you think that it can be destroyed, contact
01:12:59: Eli and we can talk about it, where it'll be strictly moderated by Eli.
01:13:05: Yeah, I'll definitely moderate it. Yep, definitely reach out to me. I'm just trying to scroll to make sure I didn't skip anything.
01:13:11: I do apologize if I've skipped anything that someone might've asked. Okay, and I think, no, that's not a real question.
01:13:23: They're like these rhetorical questions. I have to, let me see here. I think that is it.
01:13:29: That is it. Hey, I think this went very well. And I think you did an excellent job. You addressed a whole host of issues and hopefully people will, let me erase that comment.
01:13:39: There's no way I could erase that comment there. Hopefully people can listen back at this and get a lot from it.
01:13:45: I think this was very helpful. I really appreciate your time, Darth. Well, thank you for having me on.
01:13:50: You wore down my resistance with your charm.
01:13:57: Thank you. Well, I mean, yeah. Go ahead. Were you gonna say something?
01:14:05: No, just, you know, you just, the begging, the pleading, the cajoling, just, it just wore me down. Just for everybody knows,
01:14:12: I like busting Eli's chops because he's just such a nice guy most of the time.
01:14:17: Well, and I appreciate that. And I know a lot of people give you flack for various reasons and interactions that you've had, but I have to say that my interactions with you and just the communicating back and forth, you've been nothing but helpful, respectful, and we've had some great conversations in the past.
01:14:33: And so I very much appreciate, you know, the time you have spent helping me in my various questions and things that I bring up.
01:14:40: So I appreciate that. Well, I appreciate what you're doing. I think that some of the interviews that you have done are unique and haven't been done on other outlets.
01:14:48: And I've actually enjoyed listening to many of your guests and I've learned, especially like listening to Scott Oliphant.
01:14:54: I really enjoyed listening to, I'm having another Joe Biden moment.
01:15:02: Chris Bolt, is that his name? Yes, yes. I love listening to Chris Bolt.
01:15:09: He was great. There was one other guy, I can't remember what his name was.
01:15:17: It was a couple of months ago, but I just, I don't think there's really, I haven't watched all your videos, but there's never one that I've been disappointed with.
01:15:25: Always been pleased with what you're doing. Well, I very much appreciate that. So folks, if - Of course, this is my favorite one right here now.
01:15:32: Hey, apart from the technical difficulties in the beginning, I thought this was very great.
01:15:37: We covered a lot of ground. I apologize for that. I'm using an audio program to get other soundtracks when
01:15:45: I'm on Discord and I forgot to turn that off and I had to reboot my system. So that was my fault.
01:15:50: Well, no problem. Well, thank you so much. And guys, please subscribe to Revealed Apologetics on YouTube and iTunes.
01:15:57: I apologize for my iTunes podcast listeners. I haven't updated the podcast recently. So I'll be sure to, within the next day or two, upload the most recent episode.
01:16:06: So once again - Yeah. Just for my fellow believers out there, please pray for all the Darth haters out there that they haven't had a heart attack tonight and have to be rushed to the hospital.
01:16:17: Just one more quick announcement. You can still sign up for a free sub view on revealedapologetics .com.
01:16:23: I will be releasing another session of the course that's currently out now and you can sign up from now until February 15th.
01:16:32: So if you're interested in doing that, you can do that on the website. That's it for this episode. Thank you so much, guys. Take care and God bless.