Presup Applied to False Faiths #datpresup

Presuppositional Apologetics Applied to False Faiths

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today we are going to take a look at the presuppositional apologetic method applied to false faiths or competing religious perspectives.

And so I'm really excited. I was able to prepare some notes and some slides. Unfortunately, when I was preparing my notes, I put in all these nice transitions and all that kind of stuff. But the way it's formatted here on StreamYard, if I share my screen like for my laptop, it's kind of weirdly formatted.

And so I can show you the slides with all the cool transitions and all the fancy stuff that I created, but I won't be able to see the comments because it'll be taking up my entire screen. So I have to do it this other way where the slides will show on the screen.

You have all of the things there right there on the slide, so there's not like moving from one point to another. But I have found that doing kind of this presentation style has been useful and helpful for people.

So I am a teacher by trade, and so hopefully using my PowerPoints will help folks follow along. I'm not sure how well you'll be able to see each of the slides if you're watching from your phone, but if you're watching from a larger screen, maybe an iPad, you might be able to see everything.

So yeah, I've been doing lots of stuff in the realm of presuppositional apologetics, and I do cover other topics, as those who follow the channel know. But I have put some of those other theological topics on the back burner and really been trying to focus on teaching presuppositional apologetics in all of its various applications.

And so super excited to be doing that, and so I have a lot more coming. I do have a video coming out soon along with a presentation there on atheism and how to learn techniques to expose the myth of neutrality.

So when there is this appearance of neutrality and following the evidence where it goes, I'm going to do a video where it talks about how can we get the discussion to the point where we can demonstrate that we are not neutral.

What are some of the questions we could ask? How do we navigate those kinds of conversations, specifically with atheists, but it can be with anyone. So I think that's going to be very useful for folks.

I don't know exactly when I will be doing that. Maybe soon. I don't want to have too many gaps between my live streams. But as you guys know, I'm pretty busy, so I try my best to put things out as often as I can.

So we'll see how long that will take for me to put that one out. Also, just a couple of updates. I am flying up to New York next week. I have a speaking engagement there. I'll be speaking at a church and a school.

And so super, super excited about that. Also, it's very close to where I grew up, and so I'll be able to visit my family, my parents, see my brothers, which is super exciting. And then in March, I don't know if I told people this, but in March, I think it's March, I'll be flying over to Arizona again.

I was invited again by Apologia Studios to make a Part 2 of the Apologetic series that I made for them a while back. So if you are a subscriber to Apologia Studios on their website, you have access to their classes and their lectures and things like that, you can see my Part 1.

And I'll be recording another part, which is basically my first series. It was kind of like meta-apologetics, kind of dealing with apologetic methodology from a presuppositional perspective. And then this next series, I'm going to be focusing more on a kind of presuppositional apologetics applied.

So I'm creating a series of lectures and notes on the topic of atheism, of course, how to apply presuppositionalism to atheism, how to apply presuppositionalism to Roman Catholicism, how to apply presuppositionalism to presuppositional Eastern Orthodoxy.

I've been working on that as well. And how to apply presuppositionalism to the cults, which this one here will be relevant, this livestream will be relevant to that as well, but I'll be organizing more specifically, a more in-depth look on how to do that from a presuppositional perspective.

I also will be flying out, hopefully, if everything goes well, out to Florida, I think, in May? May, I think? May? Yeah, I think May. So I'll have a speak engagement there. And then we've got something in Pennsylvania in the summer.

So I've got a nice, decent traveling schedule. It's not to the point where I'm always flying all over the country, but that's kind of the dream. My favorite thing of doing ministry is, of course, I love to do YouTube, but I love to actually go and speak to people face-to-face and to teach, give courses, classes, workshops, those sorts of things.

Speaking at conferences, I love those things. And so if you have an event coming up and you want me to be your speaker, you want me to do a thing on apologetics, that's totally a thing. You can go to the Revealed Apologetics website, and right there on the homepage, there's a way to reach me and to schedule that.

So if that's something that is interesting to you, let's make something happen. So other than that, lastly, we are already on our fourth week on PresupU, which is the online apologetics course that I teach, where folks sign up, and we meet once a week for five weeks through a private Zoom call, and we go into more depth.

With respect to the recorded lectures that I made, we go into more depth into that content, and it's an awesome opportunity for me to see the people who support Revealed Apologetics and have signed up for the course and are so willing to learn how to do apologetics from a presuppositional perspective.

So we're in week four. There's five weeks, so we're almost done, and it's been going really well. We've been meeting Monday evenings, and that's it. So we met yesterday, and then I tried to fit in something today.

So here we are with our topic of today, how to apply presuppositional apologetics with false faiths and competing religious perspectives. So there you go. We're going to get started in just a moment here.

I just want to share this—such kind words from Trinity Radio with—I think that's over there—with Braxton Hunter and Jonathan Pritchett. I believe this is Braxton Hunter here. He says, The public ministry of Eli Ayala is a treasure to the arena of worldview discussions and analysis.

This is a work I can strongly endorse. Braxton Hunter, theology geek, tamer, thank you so much for those kind words, Braxton. It means a lot coming from you. Braxton is a good friend of mine. If you have not checked out Trinity Radio, the YouTube channel and the podcast, definitely not from a presuppositional perspective, but they've got some good content, especially when they do interactions with—or response videos to a lot of atheist videos out there on YouTube.

So super helpful, and so I highly recommend what they're doing over there at Trinity Radio. All right, well, let's see here. We've got a couple more comments here. Yes, this is live. Yes, this is not a pre-recording.

I am speaking in real time. Okay. Presupp and Presuppers and Enslaved by Truth says you should cover the video on Presupp from Catholic Channel. Why don't you leave a link? I'll see if I could give it a listen.

So all right. Well, let's jump right in, and again, I have to say all of these things as a—there we go. I think I'm back on. If this content has been useful to you, please subscribe. If you haven't, share the video with folks that you might think it might be useful for.

Click the notification bell, all of the fancy things that YouTubers say. That is super, super helpful. They don't just say that for no reason. It is actually super helpful when you do those things. So all that being said, I do see some comments coming in here, and I'm going to address them before I get started, but once I start going, I'm just going to start going.

I'm going to—I can't take too many questions because I'll never get through my material, and it's a work week. So I wake up at 4 .30 in the morning, and then I get to work close to 6 o 'clock, and then I'm working from 6 to 8 when my students come.

So I do all my lesson plans, all of my work in the morning. So I've got to go to bed right after this, so I can't stay too long. But there you go. Let's see here. We have Awa. Is that what it is? Awa?

I apologize if I mispronounce it. Do you have any recommendations for videos, books, debates that dismiss the idea that God is the author of evil under the Calvinist view, that dismiss the idea that God is the author of evil?

Are you asking for video recommendations of a Calvinist defending the Calvinist view that God is not the author of evil in some negative kind of way? Yes. If you search my channel and you search the name Guillaume Bignon, G-U-I-L-L-A-U-M-E, Bignon, B-I-G-N-O-N.

It's French. I've had Guillaume Bignon on. He is a philosopher, analytic philosopher, brilliant guy, and we cover that very issue. So if you look through the past videos, I'm sure you'll find something that hopefully you'll find useful.

There might be some other ones as well too without Guillaume. I don't remember who I had on. But yes. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yep. You check the channel. I do have videos on Calvinism and the problem of evil.

Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Well, I'm going to jump right in. Okay. So today, I hope you guys don't mind me blabbing at the beginning and updating folks on everything. It's kind of my way of shooting the breeze too until we get some people who are watching.

If I jump right in, I got two people watching, and people come in late. But that's all good. So what we're going to be covering today is presuppositional reasoning with false faiths. And this is a super important topic, and it is a highly misunderstood topic with respect to presuppositional apologetics.

One of the critiques that is offered by some has been that presuppositional apologetics, yeah, it seems to work when you're talking with atheists, but what about other religious perspectives? And so that's why I'm kind of covering this topic today just to kind of clarify what it looks like to apply a presuppositional approach to apologetics to competing religious perspectives or, as I call them, false faiths.

The Indirect Method and Internal Critique

All right. Now, before we kind of jump into that question directly, I think it's important to highlight the emphasis that Cornelius Mantill placed on what he called the indirect method. And the indirect method is super important because it is an essential feature to presuppositional reasoning, to transcendental argumentation, things like that.

So we're going to kind of define those categories first, and then we'll contextualize it within the context of the discussion on competing religious claims. All right. So the Christian apologist and philosopher Cornelius Mantill urged that Christians should argue with unbelievers in an indirect fashion, okay?

And that's an important phrase there, indirect fashion. And this involves, as you've heard me say in the past, it involves doing what we call an internal critique, and this is going to it's going to require us to be able to examine the fundamental assumptions of the opposing worldview.

Now, this is generic stuff here. We all know this if you are familiar with presuppositional apologetics. But when someone asks the question, yeah, I can see how we can do this with the atheist, but what does this look like with a competing religious perspective?

It looks the same. You're still using the indirect method. You're still examining fundamental assumptions that are inherent within competing religious perspectives. Wrapping a perspective in religious language doesn't change the overall presuppositional approach.

We are still using what we call the indirect approach, which is going to engage it's going to allow us to engage in worldview analysis and internal critique. Now, if I could define internal critiques just very, very simply, because the nature of the dispute between the believer and the unbeliever is that of competing worldviews, okay?

The only appropriate way to critique a worldview is to do it internally. It's not going to help very much if we launch criticisms from our worldview assumptions onto a worldview that rejects our assumptions.

We're kind of throwing rocks from afar, so to speak. So to do an adequate internal critique, what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to hypothetically grant the truth of the opposing side, hypothetically, for argument's sake, and then show on its own basis it can't stand.

And, of course, once the unbeliever recognizes the importance and necessity of the worldview nature of your dispute, we are going to invite him to do the same for the Christian position. Not only are we going to offer an internal critique as best we can from the unbelieving perspective, we're going to invite the unbeliever to do the same for ours.

And what the unbeliever is going to have to do at that point, he's going to hypothetically grant the Christian position and try to show on its own position Christianity doesn't stand. That's what they're going to attempt to do.

Now, my advice in surviving, okay? And you have an unbeliever who's pretty smart and knows the right questions to ask. How do you survive the internal critique of your own worldview? And the key to surviving an internal critique is something very simple.

It's simple to say, but it can be difficult because theology and study is complicated and difficult sometimes, right? But the way to survive the internal critique is simply to know your worldview. Just know your worldview inside and out.

Know your theology. What does the Bible say about all of the main areas of your worldview? And be able to explain that and defend it from within your own perspective, okay? And so once we recognize that the critique that is being launched towards the Christian side, when we begin to recognize that the critique is not adequately engaging in internal critique, it's not actually representing the Christian position correctly, then we could just point out, hey, man, that's an external critique.

That's not my position. Your critique is coming from a foundation which I as a Christian reject. And so hopefully that will allow the other person to recalibrate their criticism and maybe kind of ask a different question or bring up a different point.

But to keep the issue on worldviews I think is very important in this indirect approach of examining fundamental assumptions, okay? Now, we examine fundamental assumptions, okay, or worldviews with respect to really the foundation of every worldview.

And I say this all the time, and this is super important, is that when I speak to an unbeliever, I look for three things, okay? What is their theory of reality? You see those there on my slides there.

What is the unbeliever's theory of knowledge? And what is their ethical theory? These are the foundations upon which everything else they believe is built, okay? So we can talk about the surface-level disagreements or we can go straight to the foundation.

And what we're going to want to do is with gentleness and respect, we're going to ask questions. We're going to press and critique their specific theories of reality, knowledge, and ethics and press them for consistency, okay?

Because if those foundations are not consistent, then everything that is built upon those foundations is going to come crumbling down. And so I think this is a very important way to approach worldview discussion, okay?

Let me see here. I've got an interesting question here. I don't understand that question. All right. Sorry. Moving along. Okay. All right. So let's take a look here. So here's the perceived value of precept as many people see it.

Now, there are, of course, people who don't see any value in presuppositionalism, right? We have people who really hate presuppositionalism and don't like the method at all. And, again, if I was not a presuppositionalist, I would still take issue with a lot of the criticisms of presuppositionalism.

I know people don't like when someone says, well, you just don't understand my view, and they'll get upset. They'll be like, well, of course you would say we don't understand it, right? But I do find that a lot of the criticisms of presuppositionalism is based on misunderstanding, misunderstanding from people who should know better.

So I do really take issue with a lot of the criticisms, and I would take issue of those criticisms even if I myself were not a presuppositionalist, but I understood presuppositionalism as I understand it now.

Okay?

So, yeah, you want to make sure if you're going to critique a view that you properly understand it. I think that's important. Nevertheless, the perceived value of presuppositional apologetics, right? Many people see the value of this method when applied to, say, something like materialistic atheism.

And you see they're kind of the one that we pick on, right? When we lay out the presuppositional method and we say, well, what does this look like in application? Many times the presupper will pick on the materialistic atheist.

You see this in the books as well. Jason Lyle in his book The Ultimate Proof for Creation uses examples on how to apply the presuppositional method to atheism. He's got some other views in there as well.

So that's kind of people kind of see that. They're like, okay, from a Christian perspective, if I'm trying to think of what's the best way to approach presuppositionalism, atheism seems to be kind of the easy token target to illustrate presuppositionalism's kind of main thrust.

So we can show we can say this, but it has to be actually done. But we can show that given the presuppositions of the materialistic atheist, he can't make sense of his adherence to the laws of logic, abstract conceptual laws and things like that.

Nor can he make sense out of the principles and procedures of science, issues like induction and the uniformity of nature. The atheist can't make sense or give an irrational account of the fundamental principles of ethics.

Now, I can say all of these things, and materialistic atheists and atheists of all sorts have responses to everything that I just said. The question is, are those responses adequate? Do they actually provide an explanation of those things in a meaningful and consistent way?

I would argue, which is not the topic of this video today, but I would argue they do not. And those who see the value of presuppositionalism often will admit, hey, presupp works great against atheistic perspectives.

And that's fine. Yep, I'm down with that. I think it does. When we think of theism, we often think of atheism as kind of its diametric opposite, and usually apologetics is often spoken about within the context of interacting with atheists.

But again, apologetics is broader than that. Apologetics can be applied to literally any other position that is not the Christian position, or it can be applied to other Christian positions that perhaps you're disagreeing over some important theological issue, and you're arguing from Scripture in defense of one view over another.

That's a form of apologetics as well. This is important because apologetics can take an external emphasis and an internal emphasis. If you go to Jude 1, let's use the ESV. I like the ESV. I don't know.

What do you guys think of the ESV? I like the ESV. So here's what it says here. In Jude 1, verse 3, Jude says, Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you appealing to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

Check this out. This is what he says. He says in verse 4, For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

So notice that Jude says that he finds it necessary to tell his audience to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered, and then he says for certain people have crept in. So apologetics is also done within the context of dealing with problems within the church.

I think that's super important to keep in mind. So apologetics is not simply kind of one side of the coin is apologetic method and then we're dealing with the atheist. There's internal aspects of apologetics where we're going to have to do it within the household of the church as well.

So super duper important. Now, what about false faiths? What about competing religious claims? I did a video back in the day with a friend of mine, Chris Bolt, who used to have that website. I don't know if it's still up there called Choosing Hats.

And Chris Bolt is a good friend of mine. He is excellent in his knowledge of presuppositionalism. And I remember when I was first exploring these issues and more specifically this question, I remember asking him, hey, you know, presupp works great against the atheists, right?

Everyone's seen the Gordon Stein and Greg Bonson debate. And we kind of see like, yeah, you know, that was awesome. But how do we apply this to other religious perspectives? And, you know, before when I was still green and a rookie in these areas, right, I thought he was going to give me some profound answer, some profound response.

And he said, yeah, it's the same. Like you applying presuppositionalism to competing religious perspectives is the same as when you are applying it to an atheistic perspective. Now, of course, there's going to be different content involved, right?

A religion is going to be different than, say, you know, your atheist neighbor, right? But the thrust of our argumentation is going to be pretty much the same, right? So how to apply presupp to false faith?

Simply put, we apply the presuppositional approach in the same way we would with the atheist or any other view. We engage in internally examining competing worldviews and then transcendentally arguing for the Christian worldview.

OK, now this video is not about going through the transcendental argument. I have videos for that. But just as a general principle as to how we apply this to a different perspective, it's going to be the internal critique and the transcendental argument for the Christian worldview.

So we have critique and then we have a positive presentation as to why Christianity is true. And that's basically the same thing we're going to do with the atheist, right? Going to internally critique the materialistic atheist and then we're going to offer a transcendental argument for the truth of the Christian worldview and show that given the presuppositions of the Christian worldview, the Christian worldview does provide the adequate ingredients for intelligibility, knowledge, science, and all of those other things that are preconditions for intelligible experience.

All right?

And so the simple answer, if you want to shut the video off now, this is how we apply precept to false faiths, right? But of course, there's more to be said, OK? So let's continue on. So you want to keep in mind here, OK, that when we're applying presuppositional apologetics and we're defending the Christian worldview and against religious claims, claims that include a belief in a deity or deities, not just any deity will do.

OK, the God of Christian theism, right, is unique. OK, we are going to argue for Christian theism. And I get this question all the time when I use a transcendental argument. People will often tell me, well, couldn't another religion use a transcendental argument?

And the interesting thing is when someone says this, when they ask this, they almost let me see. I'm reading some of the comments here. Oh, very good. Nice. Good, good, good. They almost ask this question as though it's a critique.

Oh, you used the transcendental argument. Other religions can use that argument too. Yeah. Yes. Anybody can use a transcendental argument. That's not the issue. That's not a criticism of the transcendental argument as we're using it from within the context of a presuppositional approach.

The question is, and I've said this multiple times in many videos, the question is not who can use the argument. The question is who can pay the bills on the argument. Anyone could say their god is the necessary precondition for knowledge or intelligibility or science or whatever or ethics.

The question is when you get into the nuts and bolts of the worldview itself, can they make good on that claim? And I'm going to jump out on a limb and say they cannot, and Christianity can. Our god is unique.

The Christian worldview is unique. It is sufficient to answer these pressing questions. And so I want to encourage Christians, do not shy away from laying out your worldview for our god. As Deuteronomy 3221 says, our god is not like the other gods.

Deuteronomy 3221 says for their rock is not our rock. And that is true. Isn't that true? The prophets in the Old Testament often critiqued the lifeless idols of the pagans who were under the sovereignty of those who created them.

That's not our god. Religious language and appeals doesn't change the applicability of the indirect method of disproving opposing worldviews. So draping the discussion with religious language doesn't change the situation.

You want to keep that in mind. But this is important. The Christian god is unique for their rock is not our rock. God is unique. We need to stand on the god of scripture and stand on the scripture. And we are going to try to defend a fully robust Christian worldview along with its theological trappings and things like that.

I think that's super, super important. All right. Let's move along. So when Van Til taught his presuppositional method, he placed great emphasis on the importance of defending a concrete conception of God.

He would often call using language of philosophical idealism and things like that. Now, Van Til was not an idealist, but he often used the language of idealism because of the nature of the folks that he was interacting with at that time.

But the conception of the Christian God is going to be concrete. This is we're going to be following Van Til here. I think Van Til is spot on. This is the kind of God that we need to be defending. OK, so when we say that Van Til's method is a concrete, the defense of a concrete God, what he's saying is we are not arguing for a generic theism.

We are not arguing for a generic theism or, as Doug Wilson once said, a fuzzy benevolence in the sky. OK, a fuzzy benevolence in the sky. Thank you. Thank you, CBess. Eli, the reference should be Deuteronomy 32, 31, not 21.

Thank you. That's a typo on my part. I'll go back and fix that later. I appreciate that. OK, hey, that means you're listening. That's good. Good for you. I appreciate it. Test all things. Right. I appreciate that.

Thank you. Let's see here. OK, I got to be not distracted from the comments. I'm never going to finish. We're going to finish. So. All right. So we are not arguing for a generic theism. We are not arguing for God.

And this is important. We're not arguing for God as an abstract hypothesis. God is not a hypothesis. As often people say, the God hypothesis. We're not arguing for God as a hypothesis. We're not arguing for God whose attributes are undetermined or under determined.

What we are arguing from a worldview perspective, from a presuppositional perspective, we are arguing for specific and full biblical Christianity. Enslaved by truth. Don't worry. Question dumping is not bad at all.

I usually take the questions. What I will do is I will go back to the comments and I will look at them and I will try my best to maybe respond in the comments or even write an article. If your question is, you know, something that I'm like, hey, maybe I can write something.

You know, I'll do it. So don't hesitate. If you have a question, type it in there. I won't get to it tonight, but I definitely will try my best to get to it. So I appreciate you sending in the questions.

All right. All right. Well, so far, if you are following me, give me a thumbs up or a smiley face or something to let me know that you are following along. OK. Hopefully I'm not talking too quickly. I've been talking a lot today, so I kind of feel like a robot right now.

Just I'm just I'm just flying through. So hopefully you are able to follow along. All right. So let's continue. So we are defending a concrete conception of God. We are defending a fully a fully orbed, as some people often use that phrase, a fully orbed Christianity.

All right. Very, very important. So let's move along here. Now, apologetics is theologically grounded. This is something that Vantill made a great. He placed great energy in highlighting the the importance of apologetics being theologically grounded.

Right. Apologetics is not separate from theology. Our apologetic indeed flows and grows out of the soil of theology that is itself biblically grounded. OK. And so Vantill's emphasis on theology and apologetics is quite intentional.

OK. It was quite intentional that Vantill began his apologetic syllabi and especially his book, The Defense of the Faith, which is his most popular book, with a detailed statement of Christian theology.

And it is intentional because the presuppositional method is not amenable to any other religion. It is not just Christian theology that Vantill placed a great emphasis on in his books, but a very specifically reformed Christianity.

OK. Vantill, at least, and there's some great debate going on now as to whether presuppositionalism is only consistent with a reformed understanding of things. Vantill definitely thought so. And while I am exploring this more and more, and I have personally a lot to learn of the ins and outs and how this method is applied, I tend to agree with Vantill on this point.

I think presuppositionalism flows out of a consistent reformed theological perspective, a reformed doctrine of God, a doctrine of man, a doctrine of sin. All of those things, they're very much connected to how we do apologetics.

All right. So that's an important emphasis there by Vantill. I like that picture of Vantill. That's when he was a young buck. He's young and looking dapper there with a combed back hair. People look so much different back then, didn't they?

I always notice that looking at old pictures. All right. Let's continue on. So someone might ask, well, aren't all religions the same? This is a common misunderstanding. OK, while there might be surface level similarities, there are fundamental differences between competing religious perspectives.

And although there's a sense of unity between world religions to certain respect, Christianity stands unique from all of them. OK, it's unique with respect to its doctrine of God as triune. It's unique with respect to its central gospel message.

It's unique with respect to the nature of the revelation that the God of Christianity provides, both in general and special revelation, the nature of Scripture as a divine word from God. This is unique.

You don't see this a lot in many other religions. Now, other religions definitely have their sacred books, to be sure, right? You have the Vedas, you have, you know, the Quran, you know, the Book of Mormon.

You got all sorts of religious books. But I would argue that the Bible is unique. None of the sacred books that we can kind of go through claim what the Bible claims for itself. OK, the Bible claims for itself.

It identifies itself as a verbal, written revelation from a personal God. Believe it or not, that is not the same, OK, as what other religious books are claiming. There are authoritative books in other religions, that these books play a central role within the religious perspective.

But they're not making the same claim that the Bible is making. I think it's important to recognize that one of the reasons as Christians that we believe the Bible is the word of God, one of the reasons is that it makes the claim, OK?

It would make no sense to say the Bible is the word of God if it did not at least minimally make the claim to be the word of God. The written word of God is the words of God. Even Jesus said, have you not read, right?

Have you not read what God said? Let me get the passage there. I think it's worthwhile reading. I'll give you a moment here. All right. That's Matthew 22, 31. Matthew 22, 31. We're going to do the ESV.

Let's be consistent here. OK. All right. And as for the resurrection of the dead, OK, I think he's speaking to the I don't know the context here. I'd have to look at the context. I think he's speaking to the Sadducees.

I might be wrong. Someone could check the context. But he says, as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what God said to you? OK, that's important because Jesus is equating. OK, he is equating the written word with the spoken word of God.

And so the Bible is unique in what it claims to be. It is a verbal written revelation from a personal God, not an abstract concept, not an impersonal God, nothing along those lines. OK, very different than what a lot of other religious perspectives are putting out there.

Now, what does an internal analysis of the metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions of these different religions uncover? Well, they uncover a number of things. Metaphysically, they either uncover the fact that there is no God.

For example, you take something like Buddhism. Buddhism does not necessitate a belief in a God. There are Buddhists who do believe in God, but there's nothing essential about Buddhism that warrants a deity of any sort.

OK, metaphysically, they can lead to the idea that there is no personal God. OK, God is impersonal. He's an impersonal force, so to speak. You know, some of these religions have ideas like that. There is no God who is omniscient and sovereign in the way that the Bible puts forth.

OK, what about epistemologically? They are not. These other religious books are not like the Bible, which claims to be a personal communication, an infallible revelation from the only living, completely sovereign and all-knowing creator.

Now, I'm going to put this guy on the spot here, Tim Moore. OK, most blessed. Big words. That's true. These are big words. And I want to simplify them for you. OK, now you might know what these are, but there might be someone else listening and be like, bro, these are big words, man.

All right. Metaphysics deals with the study of the nature of reality. So I like to summarize metaphysics in this question. What is real? Metaphysics asks, what is real? And however you answer that question, you're going to be putting forth your metaphysics.

Epistemology is one's theory of knowledge. It asks this question. How do we know what we know? Not how do we know God exists, but like, how do we know anything? Right. That's an epistemological question.

OK, now, we also will find when we examine these other religious perspectives, that ethically, these other books give no reason to submit to them as true or normative. They offer no ethical or epistemological authority.

And what they say basically reduces to non authoritative opinion. Now, they do offer metaphysical commitments and epistemology and ethics. They do offer that, but there's nothing inherent within the books themselves that make them authoritative.

They do not give a warrant as to why we ought, why we should, why we are morally obligated to hold to the metaphysical, epistemological and ethical standards that they provide. Whereas in Scripture, not only does the Scripture provide for us a metaphysic, a theory of reality, an epistemology, a theory of knowledge and an ethic theory as to how we ought to live our lives.

OK, it also, if the Bible is what it claims to be, comes with the authority of God. And so it makes sense within the Christian worldview that one ought to hold to these things. All right. And again, this is what makes the Bible unique.

All right. Now, what about religions that do have an authoritative text? OK, religions do have authority. There are religions out there that have authoritative text. You know, I get the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine of Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price.

You have the Quran. Of course, we have the Bible. You know, you have, you know, the Torah and the Tanakh. If you're if you're a Jew who holds to what we would call the Old Testament. OK, but what about like books like the Book of Mormon or the Quran?