An Introduction to Presuppositional Apologetics 4 (Circular Arguments and the Nonbeliever's ...

An Introduction to Presuppositional Apologetics, Part 4. Brought to you by RoarNoMore .com.

Questions Before Moving On

I want to get started by just asking everyone here, do you have any questions before we move on about things we've already covered? Anything that maybe you thought of this week that you had a question about regarding anything in the introduction handout or circular arguments?

We started talking about that a little bit. I want to be able to clear anything up if I can now because a lot of this builds on itself. A lot of it we're going to get to in more detail, but just in case.

If there's anything unclear, let me know now or forever. Hold your peace.

Yeah, go ahead. You covered this a little bit, but I guess I'm trying to think of a distinction between the vicious circle and the regular circle.

The wide circle? Yeah, that's one of the most confusing concepts. We have an escape hatch. I think I have something that might help with this. Maybe I'm not wired like everyone, but I think syllogisms are so fun.

I mean, they really are. I hated math, and I don't know why I did because you get me on these things, and I just love it. Let me show you a couple syllogisms, and hopefully through showing you this I'll show you why the Christian assumption that God exists to prove that God exists is a valid thing.

Circular Arguments and the Christian Worldview

The most basic assumption that a nonbeliever has, in our society at least, not all over the world, we have Muslims, we have Hindus, there's all sorts of different worldviews. The most basic one, I think, in our society, though, is just the idea of reason, that we use reason as our ultimate authority for everything.

Well, maybe not so much anymore. It used to be. A lot of the people that we talk to will still try to somehow give an argument and say that reason is their authority. So I want to kind of show you where this leads.

This may be a little technical, but everyone's familiar with the syllogism, right? I think we talked about that a couple weeks ago. All men are mortal. Aristotle is a man. Therefore, Aristotle is mortal.

The basic way of argumentation. We're going to get to modal logic a little later, but for now, this is going to be the rationalist, right? Without A, B would be absurd. A is going to represent logic, and B is going to represent existence.

Without logic, existence would be absurd, right? If we didn't have a way to rationally look at things, there would be no existence, right? Or we wouldn't be able to perceive it. So this is what the rationalist will say.

And then he'll say in his second premise, existence is not absurd. So B is not absurd. And then the conclusion, 3, logic exists. So premise number 1, without A, which is logic, existence is absurd. Existence is not absurd.

Therefore, logic exists. Now, if an unbeliever tried to give me this argument to say that he was justified in his use of logic, I would press him here. I would say, how do you know that existence is not absurd?

Where do you get that from? Basically, let's say his transcendental argument is without logic, you can't prove anything. Like ours is without God, you can't prove anything, right? So he's saying, well, I'm just going to substitute logic in there.

Without logic, you can't prove anything. The problem is, when he gets to the third step, that logic exists, he's assuming a premise that he has not proven. I'm going to ask him the question, why is existence not absurd?

Can you give me, in your world view, you start with logic, give me an argument for why existence is not absurd. He's not going to be able to do that. The best thing he can do is say, well, we know it.

I'll say, I know you know it. Just tell me why that is. Give me an accounting for it, all right? Give me the reason that you know this. Now, let me show you what the Christian conception of this would be.

Without A, this time A is going to represent God's word, existence would be absurd. Existence is not absurd, therefore God's word is true. So that's the conclusion. Now, the unbeliever can try to do the same thing to me, right?

How do you know existence is not absurd? This is where the escape hatch comes in, and this is why this is a wide circular argument and not a narrow one. We first assume that God exists. Now, in order to have, what is logic, essentially?

It's a conception, right? In order to have a conception, you have to have a mind. It's not a material thing. You can't go out in nature and give me a pound of logic, or tell me where logic is growing.

It's not something that you can visualize, but it's something we all operate in, right? So we assume it, but we don't actually have any scientific, empirical evidence for where it is or how to demonstrate it that way.

But we all assume it. So I would say, in my second step, existence is not absurd because God has made existence not absurd. And I can give you, I'm just going to read this one, a second syllogism to prove that one.

Number one, God exists. That's my ultimate authority. Start with that. Number two, God upholds rationality. Number three, rationality exists. So I can have a reason, I can give an account for why this universe is rational.

It's because it was created by God. Because He is rational. Another way, maybe a more simple way, if it's not clicking for some of you to understand this, would be, if I was in a discussion with a non-believer who was a rationalist and the non-believer said to me, logic is my final authority, your final authority is God, I would ask him the question, if the God of the Bible exists, now this is conditional, if, if the God of the Bible exists, do you think He can communicate with His creation in a way that they can understand for certain that He exists?

Now, I've never heard an unbeliever say no to that question. They always say, well yeah, if what you're saying is true, of course, of course He can communicate with His creation intelligibly. So, God's word, if God is who He says He is, if He is sovereign, if He is over everything, His word is authentic.

And we can understand it. Now, the atheist doesn't have that possibility. He's in a world of probability. He can't say anything exists for sure. But I can, as a believer, because in my starting point is the very essence of a solid foundation.

Christ said, I like what He said about the house on the sand and the house on the rocks. That's what I think of. We have a house on the rocks. We have a way to account for reasoning, for the preconditions of intelligibility, which we talked about a little bit last week.

And so, that is my escape hatch. I say, well, I have a reason, I have a way to know things for certain. You have no way to know things for certain. And I would just press him on that point. One final thing to say about someone who wants to say that rationality is his starting point, and that he can substitute that for God, is I would say, what kind of rationality?

Remember, we talked a little bit, we got into this slightly. There are different kinds of logical systems out there. What gives you the right to just arbitrarily pick a certain kind of logical system, like modal logic, which is what this is?

What gives you the right to do that? They really don't have a right. They're going to either have to appeal to themselves, or they're going to have to say that, well, all of society uses this type of logic.

And, again, I used the moral argument last week, if we go to ourselves, I can just contradict them and win. So, I contradict you, therefore I win. If it goes to society, I can say, so if a number of people, a majority, let's say, agree that gay marriage, we can use this one, is legitimate, does that necessarily make it legitimate?

No. The amount of people that subscribe to something does not make something true or false. So those are the three things that I could use. Now, when you're talking to someone on the street, you're not going to whip out syllogisms and try to explain it to him.

I would use those two other approaches. I would try to go for what his weakest point is, which is that he cannot know anything for certain, because he cannot know that the world is not absurd. He has no reason for knowing that.

So, is there any follow-up questions on that? I know that was, getting close to about as complex as we're ever going to get in this, but I think these guys are so fun. But, probably like three of us in here.

Any other questions on ultimate authority, circular arguments, or anything to do with that? Yes? Yeah, he could try to do that. The problem is, my final authority is not a bunch of people. My final authority is the God of the universe.

So, I give the moral example. The moral example is the easiest one, because we all, I don't know why it is, but we all tend to understand that, the example I gave last week, raping children for fun, is just wrong, no matter who you are.

And, we can do the same thing in logic, but I like to use the moral one, because it's just easier to understand. He can only appeal to society, or himself, in order to prove that raping children for fun is wrong.

I can appeal to something transcendent, invariable, that's over everyone. So, I can say, no, it's wrong because God says it's wrong. God's the creator. He created you, and he gave you a conscience. You're made in his image.

That would be my reason to him. Now, if he tries to say that that's really not my reason, and that I'm really appealing to people, then he's missing my argument, and he's suppressing the truth in unrighteousness to such a degree that he's ignoring basic logic.

That would be my answer to that. And, by the way, just one quick footnote to that. I noticed that, in the last couple years, since I've been going up to Albany, with NYCF, and just paying attention to the things that are going on in the news, and so forth, the way that this homosexuality, that this has been forwarded, has been very, very aggressive.

It's an emotional campaign, through the media, through all sorts of outlets that get you to associate it with things that are good and loving. The Christian response, I think, has just been so weak because not for all of us, but a lot of us have, I'm thinking of names in my head of some major right-wing people out there.

They will try to say, well, you know, the majority disagrees with this. Therefore, that's why you can't pass it. The majority. And I knew, as soon as they did that, years ago, that's going to change. Look at the statistics, look at the way things are going.

The majority is not going to be the majority for long. In fact, I would say, I think the way things are going, I read something, in the next ten years, most states, especially in the Northeast, where we are, are going to be overrun with people that are pro-homosexual.

So, you can't use the majority argument in a valid way. And that's not the way they're arguing it. Their argument is a civil right, that it's over everyone, that it's invariable. So, interesting how things got flipped in that.

Because we should have been the ones that were coming with, it's invariable, it's from God. Right? And they ended up being the ones that tried to do that. So, anyways. Any more questions on the introduction?

No? It's all clear to everyone, huh? Alright. Let's go over the notes now. This will give us a start, at least. This is not all we're going to talk about when it comes to ultimate authority. I just wanted to get a start on it.

I'm going to read the first paragraph. An individual's ultimate or final authority can be defined as his ultimate standard by which all is measured, being last in a series, process, or progression. It is an independent standard that relies on no other source for authentication.

All worldviews, and thus all people, have a final authority. Though most are not conscious of this fact, our duty, as the apologist, is to make people epistemologically self-aware. In other words, we attempt to bring attention to their ultimate faith commitment, which, if humans are to be rational, must be the Word of God.

The Nonbeliever's Ultimate Authority

Okay, so let's look at the nonbeliever's ultimate authority. Number one, it is not God's Word. 1 Corinthians 2 .14. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

And we talked about last week that this does not mean that you must have the Holy Spirit in order to believe in God. All this means is the Holy Spirit is the one that takes the blinders, so to speak, out of man's eyes, so that he is what we're calling epistemologically self-aware.

I know that's a big word. It just means that he is consistent with his starting point. He now understands why he believes what he believes. That's what the Holy Spirit does. Ephesians 4 .17 -18. This I say, therefore, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart.

You know what's scary about this verse, is he is warning us not to be like the unbeliever. If you notice, we have an ultimate authority, which is the Bible, God's Word. How often do we live in an inconsistent way with that?

The term is usually used, practical atheists, much of the time. We say that we have these convictions, and yet there are times that the non-believer looks at our lives and says, you're no different than us.

Hopefully those times are rare, and in the sanctification process, they're ever decreasing. Paul is warning here that we do not accept their authority. That's another reason why those other methods of apologetics we had talked about are so dangerous, because if you assume at the outset that you're going to be just like the unbeliever, then you've lost from the beginning, and you're being disobedient to what Paul has said.

We're not to reason in the way that they do in the futility of their mind, excluded from the life of God. We keep our commitment to God. Number one, their ultimate authority is not God's Word. Number two, their ultimate authority is in opposition to what they know is the ultimate authority.

This is along the lines of deception. A mother who has bad boys, they're in jail all the time, they're drinking, they're getting in fights, and you go over and you talk to her and say, I'm so sorry, I heard your son's in jail again.

Oh, they're good boys though. You ever heard that? Are you thinking of anyone? No, I know they're good boys. Then every time they come home, she hides the wallet, she hides her purse, she tries to make sure that everything is secure so that her boys don't rob from her.

Now, she has this belief, this ultimate belief, that she knows they're really not. Her actions are demonstrating that, right? But, she'll insist to everyone that no, they're really good boys, because I think most of the time it would show that maybe she's partially a failure, or maybe she really wants to believe that they're good because she loves them, whatever it may be.

That's what she tells everyone, and she has partially deceived herself into thinking that. Now, in a similar way, I would say that that's what the unbeliever's done. He ultimately knows God exists. He ultimately knows he relies on him for everything.

What he does, though, is he creates a deception, right? He functions in such a way. His actions tell you he knows God exists, but his mouth doesn't. His mouth says, no, he doesn't exist. He suppresses the truth so that he can participate in sinfulness and the pleasures of the world.

And so, I don't want anyone to be confused on this. Their ultimate authority, what they say, it's not God's word. It's not their ultimate authority, but their actions demonstrate that that's really what they're relying on.

They just don't really know it. Does everyone understand that? Any questions? Ultimate authority is in opposition to what they know is the ultimate authority. Romans 1, 19 -20, because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

This is the crux of presuppositional apologetics. I don't know where we would be without Romans 1, because it really tells us what the situation is with the non-believer. It's evident within them. Now, we're going to find out later in Romans 1, creation also testifies, right?

There's a number of things that testify to God, but because he is made in God's image, because, as Ecclesiastes said, God has set eternity in his heart, man is a spiritual being and cannot escape from that.

Many societies have tried to escape from that, and they can never do it, because man ultimately is a worshiper, and he's going to worship something. Another aspect to that, another dimension to the fact that man is made in God's image is the fact that he knows that God exists.

Matthew 7, 26 -27, is the next verse. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act upon them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against the house, and it fell, and great was its fall.

We proclaim the word of God to people. They hear his word, like Jesus says here. They hear the words of Christ. Those who do not act upon them, who live accordingly, are compared to a foolish man. And I think this is applicable in this discussion, because it does show that not only are people programmed with this image of God, but even those who hear, right, who hear God's words, Christ's words, coming to them, they, in turn, also suppress that.

Even if a man were to rise from the dead, they would still not believe. It makes you nonsensical to suppress what you know is to be true. The ultimate authority of a nonbeliever resides in creation itself, Colossians 2 .8.

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

This is the crux of why secular philosophy is so bad. And, unfortunately, I've heard a lot of Christians say that you just shouldn't do philosophy, and that's not the case. The thing to realize is that philosophy is wrong, is futile, when it's according to the elementary principles of the world.

That's when it's wrong. You can have philosophy that starts with God, but if you don't start with God, if you start with anything else in the creation, because that's the only option you have, right, is either creator or creation, then you are going to have a flawed system and it becomes futile.

Have you heard some of the discussions philosophers have? I mean, some of these things they ponder are just completely absurd. What if Joe is creating me as a conception in his mind, and I'm not really self-aware, but what if aliens, I mean, they'll go crazy, and that's according to the elementary principles of this world, I think, is where the craziness comes from.

We talked about, I think, therefore I am being one of the first assumptions that a person makes, try to prove themselves, and we talked about why that's fallacious, why that's a circle, why it's a vicious circle, why it doesn't work.

Any starting point that does not start with God is going to wind up that way. It's going to contradict itself somewhere. I guess that's all I can say about that. Romans 1 .25, for they exchange the truth of God for a lie, worship and serve the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

Amen. There's a website I heard about called Truth Exchange. Some of you may have heard of it. I don't know. And it has this idea that there's only really two world views. You can sum up everything that's not Christianity and call it I think it was one-ism.

There's one-ism and there's two-ism. It's an interesting concept, but they take it off of that verse. And the reason they say that is because you're either understanding that there's a distinction between creator and creation, or you're taking that distinction away and all you have is creation, and you start with that.

And the more I've thought about it, the more I thought, you know, that's really right. Every philosophy other than Christianity does ultimately go back to creation, and it doesn't really make a distinction.

Even the gods of certain systems, the theistic systems, you'll find that they're really glorified men, aren't they? I think of the Roman pantheon of gods. They're part of creation, really. They don't even have the qualities that would make a creator.

You can go through all the world views and just see that. Ultimately, the starting point for a non-believer results in foolishness. 1 Corinthians 1 .20, Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Proverbs 12 .15, The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel. Proverbs 1 .22, How long, O naive ones, will you love simplicity?

And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing, and fools hate knowledge. Interesting that even people that are Ivy League professors that reject God hate knowledge. We think of them as these brainiacs. They must be on the top of their game.

They must love knowledge, but they really hate it.

Why the God of the Bible Is the Necessary Starting Point

If this approach is based upon the assumption that God exists, how do we branch? Where does, in this thinking, branch off to Christianity? Because there are several that believe in God. Right.

You immediately... You're very analytical. You did this to me like two weeks ago. Just kidding. That is a common objection that is given to this. I'm going to have to unfortunately try to give you a short answer right now if I can.

I can't give you the full one because we're going to get to that, but the short answer is this. When we say that without Christianity or without God's Word, God of the Bible specifically, you can't prove anything, what we're saying is you rely on the attributes of God for the preconditions of intelligibility.

I'll give you one quick example of that. You have to have a God that's a triune God. If you don't have a triune God, then you can't make sense of anything. The reason for that is you need unity and diversity.

If you have a monistic system or even the God of Islam is really along these lines. A God that is not a triune God, that the starting point is not self-sufficient within itself. If it does not have a father loving a son who is related to the Holy Spirit and there's love going around, then you don't actually have a system that works because I can say that I exist, but I look around the world around me.

How do I differentiate between me and creation? How do I know that there's a difference between the thoughts that I'm thinking and the thoughts that you're thinking right now? How come when I get hurt, I say ouch?

How come I have what we call personhood? In any other system but one that has a trinity, the God of the Bible, you don't have that. You have a system that starts with one principle instead of three. You have a system that can't make sense of unity within diversity.

That's just one example. I know I'm jumping a little bit ahead of myself with that one. Every attribute that God has, we rely on. The attribute of His sovereignty, we rely on that for the laws of logic to be invariable.

We can go down the list. That's why other worldviews don't work. The way that we defeat other worldviews is through doing what we call an internal critique of them. Internal critique means that we enter their worldview.

We put on their glasses. I'm going to put on the glasses of Islam, let's say. I'm going to enter their worldview and I'm going to say, starting with what you start with, can we actually make sense of reality?

We're going to find out in a couple weeks from now that you can't do that. You're going to run into a contradiction. I hope to show everyone, I'm going to try to take the major worldviews and we're going to show that all of them eventually wind up contradicting themselves.

We already went over a couple simple ones. We went over the fact that the post-moderns believe in no absolutes, but that's an absolute belief. We went over the fact that the modernists tried to say that science is the only way you can know knowledge, yet they don't know that scientifically.

It's a contradiction. We are going to hopefully do that if we have time with other theistic systems as well. The beautiful thing about Judaism and Islam and Mormonism is they all say that they accept the Bible.

That's what I want to hit real hard. You say you accept the Bible, this is what the Bible says. Confront them with that truth and they're going to have to try to suppress it. They're going to try to reinterpret it, the watchtower is their ultimate authority or whatever else.

That's the short answer. Sorry, I can't be a little more articulate on that right now. Where were we? Proverbs 122? Oh, we just read that one. Let's go to 1 Timothy 6 .20. Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge.

They say they have knowledge, it's falsely called. They don't really actually have knowledge. This is kind of another thing that we're going to have to talk about because we all know that what? There's certain scientists, there's people that don't believe in God, they do some brilliant things, don't they?

How can we say that they don't have knowledge? That's how I'm going to get you to come back next week. Luke 16 .31 is the last one, but he said to him, if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.

There's the one. Evidence, you can talk about evidence all day, they are going to be completely irrational when looking at it because they're blinded by their suppression of the truth. That is an introduction to ultimate authority.

That is the non-believer's ultimate authority. It resides in creation. It is not God's word, and it is a suppression of the truth. I don't think we have time, unfortunately, to show that video. I would have probably discussed it, everyone in here anyways.

It was a speech by Cuomo. I was going to play about 30 seconds from it, where he tries to say that the bill being passed is not a matter of religion or societal values. It's more, rather, it's a government, a civil rights issue.

We talked a couple weeks ago about the distinction between faith and reason, and I was just going to show that, what he's doing, and I was going to ask everyone, what would you say to Cuomo? A little practical apologetics, but unfortunately, we don't have time for that right now.

I'm going to end it one last time. Does anyone have any questions? Okay.

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