Defending Presup : A Response to an Atheist Critique | w/ @RevealedApologetics & Sye Ten Bruggencate

All right. Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today I have two friends of mine here joining me, no strangers to the show. First I'd like to introduce Jeremiah Nortier.

He is the host of the Apologetic Dog YouTube channel, and in the comments I put a link to his channel. I highly recommend you go over to his channel and subscribe. He's got a lot of good stuff on his channel.

Maybe he can take a few moments in just a bit to share a little bit about the sorts of topics that he covers. If that's something that scratches your itch, then I highly recommend that you go over there and support him by subscribing and sharing his content if it's relevant to what you're looking for.

My next guest also is Saiten Bruggenkate. He really doesn't need any introduction. He is very well known in the YouTube world, and of course that documentary How to Answer a Fool, which is available for free online.

It's definitely a great documentary highlighting the practical use of a presuppositional approach within the context of evangelism and interactions and things like that. There are many people that have reached out to me expressing how much they've learned from Sai.

I'm sure that Sai has experienced that himself, and so we very much appreciate all of the things that he's done in the past and the things that he continues to do, like coming on to the show and sharing from his experience.

We're really happy to have you, Sai. Before I let Sai give folks a quick update on what he's been up to, Jeremiah, why don't you take a few moments and tell people a little bit more about your channel and what you do, and then we'll go over to Sai, and then we'll jump right into the topic for today.

Jeremiah Bruggenkate. Absolutely.

Thanks again, Eli, for having me back on. The Heart of the Apologetic Dog is basically an exhortation to Christians saying, hey, we're supposed to be guarding the deposit that's been entrusted to us. You can kind of see in the logo of the Apologetic Dog, 1 Timothy 6, verse 20, where Paul says, oh, Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you and avoid pagan philosophy, irreverent babble, and contradictions that have called themselves knowledge.

We're saying, no, no, no, knowledge comes from God, the God of truth, and we stand on his word every point and turn. I love that verse because I read a lot of Van Til, Blondson, have always looked up to your ministry, Sai's ministry, and that's very presuppositional, meaning that truth only can come from God.

And so I just love that verse just because it encourages Christians, guard the gospel, right? So the dog is a guard dog mentality. But as we know, apologetics is both defensive and offensive. We contend for the faith that's been once delivered.

And so that's my heart. I also serve as a pastor at Twelve Five Church. I'm one of the elders here. And so my platform just has its hands in all different kinds of ministries, pastoral ministry. I'm thinking about the church that I serve at Twelve Five Church, which comes from Romans 12, verse 5, that says, you know, we are individually one of another, but we're one together in the body of Christ.

So I want the apologetics ministry to be tethered in and through the local church. And so that's just a little bit about me. I'd love for people to go over to the Apologetic Dog. I have a website, Eli, these days, and the Apologetic Dog is about to be totally revamped soon.

And I'm about to be on more social media platforms just trying to sow that gospel seed. So thank you again.

That's awesome. And just to point out for folks who are interested, Jeremiah has done a few debates. And so if you want to see a presuppositional approach used, correct me if I'm wrong, you've done a debate against a Mormon before, right?

The first one.

First one, and you applied a presuppositional approach all the time, Jeremiah, how do you apply a presuppositional approach to fill in the blank with some like religious perspective? Because some people tend to think it's only kind of effective when you're talking to atheists.

But I think you did an excellent job exhibiting a presuppositional approach within the context of Mormonism. So folks can definitely check that out. They would greatly benefit from from giving that a listen.

All right, Cy, well, you've been on before and there is one video entitled that you are on here a while back called Why Doubt Requires God. And in that video at the beginning, you kind of gave given an update on your situation, which we don't have to go into detail.

But if folks are interested in kind of like where issues are with kind of your personal things that you've expressed in the public, people can check out that video. And I think the first like twenty five minutes you just go into detail and kind of unpack what you've been up to.

So no, no reason to retread that that trail. But that video is available for people if they want to check it out. Why Doubt Requires God. Cy unpacks that. But for now, what have you been up to currently?

And then maybe you can share what are some of your plans for the future? Are there any specific plans in terms of continuing your website or anything like that?

Just a quick aside, you mentioned the film that we did a number of years ago. It's how to answer the fool in case people are searching for it. And that's on my answer anyone channel on YouTube. I also have a proof that God exists channel on YouTube, and that's more of my open air stuff.

And yeah, so I'm a teacher of presuppositional apologetics. I teach people how to defend their faith biblically, and I try to do that out in the public. Now, circumstances have been such that I have not been doing much of that lately.

I did a conference a few months back, and of course, I've been on your show. But lately, I have a cousin whose nephew bought a house from the 1800s, and it needed some renovation. And people don't realize what people like us do on the side.

But I'm, you know.

Wait, you don't sit behind a monitor, like trolling atheists on Facebook comments? Isn't that what this is?

No. So I'm adept at electrical and plumbing and stuff like that. And I've been helping them renovate this 1800s home. And that's just about done. And I have another personal issue that is before me right now, which should clear up soon.

And that will really indicate how my future is looking. I hope to go pretty soon up to Moscow, Idaho, to visit my friends up there, hang out with them. And the last month, last year, I spent three months in Panama for the winter.

And the older I get, the more I dislike being cold. So if it's possible, I might end up there again this winter as well.

All right. Very good. Well, thank you so much for that. Panama, gee whiz, I have never been there. I just recently came back from Kansas, the flattest place on Earth. I was speaking over there on apologetics covering the Roman Catholicism and atheism.

And one of the things I recognized that was really cool is that I can see North Carolina, which is where I live now, from Kansas. That's how flat it was. It was very, very nice. But nevertheless, let's jump right into the topic for today.

We're going to be reviewing a video entitled Why Presuppositionalism Can Not Justify Our Properly Basic Beliefs. OK, why presuppositionalism cannot justify our properly basic beliefs. And this is kind of it almost seems like an after show from either a discussion they had with you or maybe they were reviewing something with you in it.

So your name is mentioned. So you haven't seen this video, Cy, at least I don't think you have. But if you have if you haven't, I'm sure you're going to be familiar with the sorts of things that folks like this are going to bring up anyway.

So I thought it'd be a great idea to have you on to comment. And of course, Jeremiah as well and myself, I'll throw in my two cents every now and then as well. So let's take a look here. We're going to put it up on the screen.

And before before I press play, though, for the philosophically uninitiated, OK, you know, those people who are like, oh, man, here come the big words. I want to define properly basic beliefs if you're not if you're not familiar with that terminology.

OK, so a properly basic beliefs are foundational beliefs that are not justified by or derived from other beliefs. But some people would say that they consider them justified in of themselves. So the concept is very, very much associated with the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga, who is a former professor at Notre Dame.

And when we talk about properly basic beliefs, it is it is a topic that is within the purview of epistemology. And again, that's just a twenty dollar word which refers to one's theory of knowledge. Epistemology asks the basic question, how do you know what you know?

So that's sort of what that's all about. So that's what properly basic beliefs are. And so this video is entitled Why Presuppositionalism Cannot Justify Our Properly Basic Beliefs. So without further ado, I'm going to press play, gentlemen.

And at any moment, if you want me to stop, I will stop and then we can comment on various aspects of the video. Let me see if this works a little better. Hold up. Let me try this here. Nope. That removes all of you guys from the screen.

Nope. That makes me too big. We'll keep it right here. Boom. OK. All right. You guys ready? Let's do it. All right. Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. Why Presuppositionalism Cannot Justify Our Properly Basic Beliefs.

I guess you got to have the epic intro. All right. Let's get started.

We shouldn't be just because we're rationalists and we're skeptics and we believe in empirical principles and we trust in scientific values doesn't mean that we have to be naive empiricists and believe that all of our beliefs and the basis of our beliefs can itself be rationally warranted and grounded.

It's perfectly acceptable to say, hey, you know what? As it turns out, the very basis of rationality is composed of certain assumptions and those assumptions. Are not rational themselves. How about that?

It would seem to be true. Right. So we don't have to shy away.

All right. I want to stop here. So let's give some context. This gentleman here apparently has interacted with some presuppositionalist and has been invited to give an account or provide a justification for his own views.

And of course, the presuppositionalist is going to point out the unbelievers inability to do that because they don't have an adequate foundation. And so what it seems, Ozzie, we'll call him Ozzie for short.

It seems what he's pointing out as well. Hey, there's nothing wrong with the fact that, yeah, I have a starting point. Can't justify it. It's even. Based to some degree on on irrationality. What do you guys think of that?

So you go first, please.

Age before.

Ozzie, of course, that's not his real name. Nice fellow. I don't I haven't really been following other people on YouTube for quite a while, so I don't know where he's at now, but I actually did the talk with him.

I think even offline we communicated and I think he invited me if I'm ever in his area or whatever it was. I don't even think we discussed it that we would meet. But I always find it interesting, like a nice guy, brilliant guy.

But he says that it's perfectly acceptable to not to have irrational or probably basically or whatever. I can't exactly what he said, but the idea of something being perfectly acceptable says who it's perfectly acceptable if you're an atheist, because then you could say, well, it's perfectly acceptable because it supports that.

I don't have to justify anything. I can just start from this non starting point. I can just make it up. And when I go to talk to people about the Christian faith, I said, you have two options today. You have Jesus Christ or absurdity.

Now, we can justify our starting point with Jesus Christ in the Christian world. The unbeliever can't. So they'll just say, well, it's perfectly justifiable to be unable to justify our starting point.

And then I'll go on. And a lot of Christians allow them that point. And we'll argue with them at that point. And of course, you know that I don't. I get a lot of criticism for that. I'm thankful that there are philosophers who can engage with that.

But the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. I'm not granting that to somebody who makes such a ridiculous claim to go on from there. And, you know, we were talking before the show that how would I respond to something like this?

And it's the line that I got from Dustin Seegers and many people hate it as well. I'd say, OK, pizza sleeps fast under the West, therefore the much. And they go, well, that's crazy. Well, how about it's my proper, properly basic belief that that's not crazy.

That's my starting point. And then, you know.

So it seems it seems that the what he's expressed there is he's granting himself permission to be arbitrary. Right. And and he thinks it's fine because I would assume he thinks, well, that's where everyone has to start.

Right. Everyone has to start with the foundational assumption of, say, I don't know, rely. He'll mention it later. Reliability of memory, logic and these sorts of things. But again, he's canceling out the other option, starting with the triune God.

And of course, he'll never see the truth of that unless God changes his his his heart and opens his eyes. But he's admitting to arbitrariness. What I appreciate about his comments is that he acknowledges and he will acknowledge later on in the video the necessity of having a starting point and that the nature of that starting point is at base in a sense circular.

And as we'll point out later, not all circles are fallacious. But I want to read something real quick. And then, Jeremiah, you can comment on your thoughts on the video so far. And so I'm quoting from a book entitled The Justification of Knowledge by Robert L. Raymond.

And he's actually quoting Greg Bonson and Greg Bonson's book or syllabus entitled Biblical Introduction to Apologetics, page thirty three, thirty four, for those who are interested. And here's what Dr. Bonson says.

He says all argumentation about ultimate issues eventually comes to rest at the level of the disputants presuppositions. If a man has come to the conclusion and is committed to the truth of a certain view, P, when he is challenged as to P, he will offer supporting argumentation for it, for it, Q and R.

But of course, as his opponent will be quick to point out, this simply shifts the argument to Q and R. Why accept them? The proponent of P is now called upon to offer S, T, U and R. And V as arguments for Q and R.

But all argument chains must come to an end somewhere. One's conclusions could never be demonstrated if they were dependent upon an infinite regress of argumentative justifications. For under those circumstances, the demonstration could never be completed.

And an incomplete demonstration demonstrates nothing at all. Just real quick and we'll wrap it up here with this quote. Eventually, all argumentation terminates in some logically primitive starting point, a view or premise held as unquestionable.

Apologetics traces back to such ultimate starting points or presuppositions. And in the nature of the case, these presuppositions are held to be, and he'll mention this as well, self-evidencing. They are the ultimate authority in one's viewpoint and authority for which no greater authorization can be given.

I think that beautifully summarizes the nature of the foundations. Ozzie here is saying, yeah, we have foundations, but yeah, maybe they're even based on irrationality. But yeah, we have them. Big deal, right?

So what are your thoughts there, Jeremiah?

Yeah, it is an issue of authority. And Ozzie is taking it upon himself to declare that he is the authority, right? He's just granting himself, you know, an arbitrary starting point because he says the very basis of rationality is composed of certain assumptions.

There's the arbitrary nature. He's just started. He started with certain assumptions, but it gets worse. And those assumptions are not rational themselves. So not only does he start arbitrarily, but he starts on a flat contradiction, a basis that is both rational and irrational, right?

That's literally an antithesis. And so the Christian worldview, we understand continuity and discontinuity as God reveals to us truth. We understand that we're made in his image so we can understand things truly, but it's of a different kind.

We understand this in light of God's light and how he's revealed himself to us. So that is a self-vindicating starting point. And as we're going to get into, I think a big difference between kind of our viewpoint and these certain atheists is we actually believe that presuppositions can be demonstrated to be true, that they can have a proof.

Right. I think it's important to point out, too, when you say with God we can justify these things, I want to make it clear that we are not simply saying, oh, the atheist can't justify his foundation, but the Christian can.

God does it for us. That's not a mere authority claim. People get this confused. You know, we're not making we are making an authority claim to be sure, but it's not a mere authority claim. So we use the philosophical language, the authority claim.

We will seek to demonstrate its validity, its truthfulness through transcendental argumentation. But that we won't get into that just now, but just to let that hang out there and let people know it's not a mere authority claim, which oftentimes is, you know, we're we're given that accusation when we make argumentation.

All right. Thank you. We're going to continue on here.

Away from that and run away from it. And that's not a license to believe any old damn thing, which is what other people are trying to do. They're saying, oh, if you hold certain beliefs, certain fundamental beliefs that are absolutely integral and ingredient in rationality that which which we all share and which we cannot dispose of.

Right. We can't we simply can't discard these. Right. We'd be able to reason without them. There are people out there who will say, well, if there are these fundamental assumptions that we cannot justify and warrant that really are articles of faith at bottom, then that's a license for me to be to believe any old damn thing with whatever degree of confidence I want.

That's the mistake that people are making.

And that's not true. OK, so I want to maybe you guys can share your thoughts on this. So if you cannot justify your foundation, it's often it often is said in informal conversations, well, then we have no reason to believe anything.

You know, for all we know, fill in the blank. Now, he's saying that just because we can't provide a justification, it doesn't mean that anything goes. And what I see in there, I kind of sniff it out. Why not?

What in other words, it seems to be the case that when you say it doesn't give us a license to believe any in his words, any damn thing. OK, why not? It seems what's baked into that comment is some standards that he is certain of and that he would at least need to have a foundation for unless he's going to hold to those found those standards arbitrarily.

What do you think of that? Anybody could.

I think when when he makes a statement like that and I'm not really faulting presupposition, but they engage the statement. I engage his ability to make the statement because he's making that statement.

People engage on the basis of what he is saying. I'm saying, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm not going to grant you that you're standing on my foundation to even have a rational argument for your position.

So let's back that up a bit. You know, if what you say is true, how can you make sense of the very thing that you're claiming? You know, and that's that's the type of and I know people don't like that.

I think it's great that people have philosophical arguments. First of all, I'm not smart enough for that. And secondly, I don't want to grant him that.

Now, when you say, you know, well, how do you know what's your justification? Why is it not the case, Cy, that because people think like there goes Cy with his script. Now, I never got I never understood this.

I remember listening to a presuppositionalist argue with some other people in like discord or something. And and people are like, oh, there he goes. He's he's running the script. And I'm thinking to myself, I wasn't engaged.

I was kind of just silently listening. You know, I wasn't like raising my hand and get like, what's wrong with having a script? Do we have to go off the top of our head every single time? Like, yeah, there is a there's a script.

Yeah, there's a script. There's nothing wrong with a script. When you say, how do you know? How do you know? Are you doing that, Cy, to be annoying? Are you doing it to just play the ultimate skeptic card?

What is the reason for you to continually ask the question, well, how do you know that and what's your justification for that?

My reason is to be faithful. The Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And these people are saying that they can have knowledge without the fear of the Lord. So in a gospel proclamation, we have to preach the gospel to people.

And what is the gospel? The gospel is that Christ died for sinners. He lived a perfect life. He lived a life that we cannot live. He gave the sacrifice that we cannot give for people like you and me. What is the starting point of that?

He died for sinners. And one of the sins is not acknowledging God when you make knowledge claims. So people are going out making all these knowledge claims in their argumentation. And we're just saying, yeah, go ahead.

You say, no, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. I'm not letting you do that. If other people want to do that, that's fine. I say there's lots of Christians out there that can do that.

They're probably a lot nicer than I am. But I love you enough to not grant you the tools of Jesus Christ to argue against him.

All right. Thank you for that. Jeremiah, any thoughts?

Yeah, because, you know, as Christians, we are committed to, like I said, faithfully following Jesus. And so I'm reminded of the words of our Lord. He says, Father, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth.

Alatheia. And so when you understand what Jesus is saying, he is talking about an entire world view that exists that God created and that he came into that world to save sinners, to call not the righteous, not the self-righteous, but sinners to repentance.

And so that's at the forefront of our mind is sanctifying the Lord in our hearts. And so I like to expand the conversation, because we're dealing with the image bearers of God. They're going to say good principles and the things that they say.

And in trying to show them love and grace, I may even affirm like, man, you're right. It does seem like there's so many things that we intuitively know. But what how would you evaluate what something is true or false or what particularly is your theory of truth?

What I'm getting at is I want to think of creative ways to ask them how they know what they know or by what standard, because that's kind of where we get faulted is the script is how, you know, how do you know that?

How do you know that? How do you know that?

Jeremiah, by what standard is. It's almost like a cuss word now when you're like, by what? So, oh, here we go.

You know, yeah, yeah, real quick.

I know, Cy, you know, Eric Hernandez, right? Eric Hernandez. There was a debate where he was debating an atheist and he was talking to the atheist about morality and it just slipped out of his mouth. He goes, well, by what standard?

He goes, and then he has to apologize. He says, I'm not trying to be a presupposition.

I debated Eric Hernandez, by the way, so people can go. I think it's on his channel and I think it's on the right apologetic methodology. It's on the Sin Boldly podcast as well. That's where it was, Ethan McPherson, I think, Ethan, a gentleman, you know, a decent guy.

It's on his way. He hosted it, but Eric also put it on his website, Surprising, on his YouTube channel.

Yeah, definitely check that out. Jeremiah, I interrupted you, so I do apologize. You want to finish your thought there?

I just think since we, you know, love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, by virtue of the spirit, we want to be creative. With loving the Lord with our mind and how we engage with other image bearers of God, I believe it's the Proverbs that says that the righteous ponders how they give an answer.

And so I think figuring out ways to ask them about truth, right? This was the question that Pontius Pilate just said, yeah, what is truth? Like, as though it can be known, because that's what's at the crux of being able to justify knowledge.

And we know at the end of this that you can, we can only know truth if the God of truth has revealed himself and created us in such a way that he can be known. So I just want to look for creative ways to get that kind of conversation going.

Sure.

Thank you.

Just an interesting, a quick aside, my debate with Eric Hernandez, William Lane Craig took two of his podcasts to review my debate with Eric Hernandez. And then Dr. James White took a couple of his shows to review William Lane Craig's review of my debate with Eric Hernandez.

Metacritic, there's a metacritic.

And then Leighton Flowers critiqued Dr. White's review of William Lane Craig's review of my debate with Eric Hernandez.

So you need to make a playlist with all of those.

Yeah, I should. And then I should critique Leighton Flowers to make a full circle.

The circularity, the virtuous circularity.

That's right. That's right. OK, I'm going to put it a couple of seconds back here so we can get a little more context here. So let's go.

Assumptions that we cannot justify and warrant that really are articles of faith at bottom. Then that's a license for me to be to believe any old damn thing with whatever degree of confidence I want. That's the mistake that people are making.

And that's not true. Some beliefs are properly basic beliefs. We cannot revise them. We have no basis on which to revise. We cannot abandon these assumptions because there's nothing that warrants or even suggests that we ought to.

We can't establish that they're true and inerrant. We have no reason for doubting them. There's no principled reason to doubt them. Right. And this is why I'm saying you have to have a good reason to doubt something.

There's no reason to to to be.

Well, what is the basis upon which to doubt something without a foundation that's sure and rock solid? Right. Again, I won't apologize for this, but by what standard does someone have a basis to doubt anything at all?

You're going to. It seems like he is assuming some kind of bedrock to provide a justification as to why he doesn't have to answer certain philosophical questions. Any thoughts on that, guys?

I'll let Jeremiah get in there and tell us how he would say, well, how do you know that?

Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, when when the claim is made that, you know, precepts are about to run a script, I want to point out, no, there's a rich history of philosophy that says, how do we know that we're doubting?

Right. I think, therefore, I am like this has been something posited in secular history. So we're allowed to question these things. And in the video, you know, when he said, what do you say? He made the comment about some beliefs are properly basic beliefs.

And so I would very lovingly and charitably say, tell me more about these properly basic beliefs. Where do they come from? Because that's going to move the conversation to what he's been addressing. Some things are just intuitive that we have to start there.

Jeremiah, I think he would say they're self-evident.

They're self-evident. And this is where I would want to lovingly say, man, it really does seem like they are self-evident. But this is something that's been already explored. And so I would try to just point back to many great minds that have come before us that have been made in the image of God.

And I want to say there's kind of three options that we can go down with. These properly basic beliefs are kind of axioms. And when you say that they're self-evident, I would just say, you know, like we've been saying says who, you know, is did they pop out of thin air?

Is that just merely the case? Or we talk about, you know, things, you know, having a circularity or an infinite regress like you are talking about. And so what I want to would want to posit is say, OK, if we're kind of just saying things that are that are self-evident, then maybe we can point to things that are self-evident on a bigger degree.

So I would ask, you know, is is it possible since we're starting kind of on a whim and things being and I don't know if I would say arbitrary, but is it possible in their mind that an entire worldview could be self-evident?

And I know that the answer to be no, that's why we're having the whole conversation. But I'd want to try to stretch the circle right without because I know I've seen before just tell someone or ask them, why do you hate God?

And they're just like, that's that's definitely one way to short circuit the conversation. But we know that that is the truth, that they they hate the creator, they hate God, and they're suppressing that truth in their love for sin.

And so I would want to expand that circle, right, the things that they are taking for granted and say, look, there's a lot more going on at stake than just just merely saying things are self-evident.

Right. I would want to say that is true, but it's so much broader and bigger. And so I try to start the conversation with something like that.

Yeah. Interesting, too. I think a quote from Cornelius Vantill would be helpful here. When someone says a fact is just self-evident, they're kind of appealing to kind of brute factuality. And of course, anyone familiar with Vantill, he always had a kind of a witty way of expressing himself.

He said that a a brute fact is a mute fact. Facts do not speak when we say something self-evident that still involves interpretation, worldview, context. Right. Someone is working within a paradigm. And as as apologists and as thinkers, and I would even argue as philosophers, I think God made us all philosophers to ask questions and to do analysis on various levels.

We need to challenge the paradigm. You think something self-evident, you think there is a brute factuality or there are these neutral facts that already is presuppositionally in opposition to what we are asserting as Christians.

And so, again, the presuppositional commitment against the Christian worldview from the start is evident in how he phrases himself in describing these these things and issues of proper basicality and so forth.

Let's continue on.

Yeah, I just want to say, oh, sorry, go on.

Nope, nope, go for it.

I just want to briefly expand on Descartes' dubito ergo sum, I doubt, therefore I am, or Coggedore ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. And people want to have that as a starting point. And that fails when you break down the syllogism, I think, therefore I am.

What is the conclusion? The conclusion is I am. And what is the first premise? I think. You're already granting the I in the first premise. It's a viciously circular argument. But what you should be saying is there is thinking going on and you can't get from there is thinking going on to I am.

And that's the that's the problem with Descartes, by the way. I just want to add that for people who have never heard that refutation.

And when Descartes tries to do his project of doubting everything until he comes to the conclusion that he can't doubt his own existence, he's not actually doubting everything in the process in that in order to rationally reflect upon what he is doubting.

He is also presupposing categories of logic, continuity of personal identity throughout time, so on and so forth. So, again, it is impossible to literally doubt everything. So his entire project was faulty from the beginning.

But that doesn't mean he's not helpful in in pursuing the project. I think he highlights important things philosophically. But nevertheless, let's continue on. Oh, yep. Go for it.

Because I believe a while back, Eli, you interviewed I believe you interviewed Dr. Anderson to where he talked about that is a type of transcendental, right, that you're having to yourself presuppose these many categories.

And that's where we can get the conversation going of saying, well, so Descartes is saying that something is is almost necessary for human discourse in his thinking. And so, like I said, we're us as Christians, we're trying to expand that to the virtuous level, right, a self vindicating worldview, which that is truth.

Truth is going to reflect, you know, ontology, epistemology and value theory. But what's baked in epistemology is justified true belief. And so truth is right there in the core of that. So truth represents an entire worldview.

And when we start asking the bigger questions of what must exist for something else to exist, then we want to open that door of saying revelational epistemology, right? God truly has spoken in these ways and they're inescapable.

And so as the video continues, I want to bring up how we the things that are inescapable is how we think in these beautiful one in many categories that are complex and yet simple. And this reflects the mind of the triumvirate.

Well, I think you're correct, too, in saying that I think therefore I am is a transcendental kind of argument. Right. I would want to make important distinction for people who are not familiar. I would identify Rene Descartes kind of argument of sorts as a localized transcendental argument.