Presup vs Evidentialism: A Respectful Dialogue

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today, tonight, tonight, yes, it's nighttime for me. We are going to be having a moderated discussion on the topic of apologetic methodology.

Presuppositionalism and Evidentialism as Competing Apologetic Methods

So if you saw the thumbnail, you know, floating around on the social media, we are going to be discussing the issue of presuppositionalism, presuppositional apologetics, and evidentialism. Of course, both of my guests will clarify what, you know, what is their position specifically, and they'll be able to make all of the different qualifications that they want, you know, to hash that out.

But we're just going to jump right in, folks. I don't want to give, I don't want to waste too much time with some, with pleasantries. I just want to have an opportunity quickly to introduce my guests, have them just share a little bit about who they are, and then we'll just jump right into the discussion.

So without further ado, I'd like to introduce David Pallman, who is a first-time guest on Revealed Apologetics. And how are you doing, man? I'm doing well. Thank you for having me on, Eli. Well, it is an honor to have you on, and I looking at your Facebook posts, I get jealous.

I'm like, man, I need to get that book. You've always got something new you're reading. It's always fascinating to see what you're, what you're up to. So I appreciate your posts there.

I'm told that I'm an expensive Facebook friend to have.

Yeah, well, that, yes, that's right. You're the kind of person, like, if I were to hang out with you, like, I would be, I'd lose $200 because I'm like, all right, and then I'm gonna go home and order the books that you suggested.

So you're one of those friends that make people poor if they hang out with you long enough. So why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself, and then I'll invite Joshua to join us.

Yeah, sure. So, I mean, I'm pretty boring. I'm just a layperson, but, you know, interested in the faith, interested in the defense of the faith. I've, you know, done some debates in the past. I've defended intelligent design theory, defended the existence of God.

I've done several debates defending Arminian theology, and then more recently I've been defending an evidentialist apologetic methodology, but anyone who's interested in my work can check it out at my YouTube channel, which is Faith Because of Reason.

All right, you're breaking up a little bit. Can you say the name of the YouTube channel one more time? I apologize for that. It's called Faith Because of Reason. All right, Faith Because of Reason. All right.

Well, thank you so much, David. Once again, it is an honor to have you on, and I'm looking forward to a good discussion. Let me introduce Joshua Pillows, who is, I'll kind of take David off there for two seconds, Joshua Pillows, who is a.

A.

Continuing guest. He's been on a couple of times to talk about various issues, one being the interesting Stroudian objection to transcendental arguments. Joshua is a cool guy, and I'm happy that he's here tonight to have this discussion.

Why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself, Joshua?

Well, I have to belabor the point every time I come on here. My main study is music. I'm basically first and foremost a musician, so I'm an organist at a Lutheran church, though I hold to Reformed theology.

I teach piano and music theory. I think I have close to 30 kids now, and I compose a lot of music on the piano, on the organ, also the glory of God. So music's my main study. It's what I do basically every day, and then when I find time, I delve into apologetics.

All this philosophical jargon and everything is not my main course of study, but something I find interesting nonetheless and give glory to God.

All right, kids, after we learn Hot Cross Buns on the recorder, then we'll talk about transcendental arguments.

That's an interesting mixture there.

I made a precept prelude that you can all play.

Do you remember Hot Cross Buns? I remember in third grade, they gave us the recorder. That was the first thing.

I'm so sick of it. Not at this point.

All right. Well, thank you for coming on. Let's get David back on. Let me change the format here. That's not going to work. Let's see here. Boom. Let's get David up there. Bam. There we go. All right.

Well, this is how things are going to go. They're going to have a brief opening statement, which they're going to lay out their view with respect to their apologetic methodology. So I'm going to give the honors to David to go first, since this is his first time on the show.

I'm going to flip a coin. Like, you know, he's the guy with the glasses. Let him go. You know, let him go first. So you're going to give your opening statement, and then Joshua is going to give his opening statement.

And the rest of our conversation is really just going to be a moderated conversation between the both of you, where you guys could hash out some of the core disagreements between yourselves with respect to methodology and things like that.

I'm going to be a background guy. I will be on the screen here only to kind of wave my hand to interject on key points. If things kind of, you know, you guys talk over each other for whatever reason. OK, so without further ado, let us invite David to give his opening statement.

Go for it, David.

David Pallmann’s Defense of Evidentialism

All right, cool. Thanks, Eli. And hopefully my Internet's not breaking up anymore. But yeah, so in order to understand and appreciate, I think, the differences between evidentialism and presuppositionalism, it's going to be helpful to first ask why we have different methods of apologetics in the first place.

And since we share a common goal, namely the defense of the Christian faith, one might be tempted to think that our differences just boil down to sort of minor preferential concerns. But unfortunately, this is not the case, as we're going to see the differences between presuppositionalists and evidentialists could not be deeper.

Apologetics is an exercise in justifying Christian belief. And because of its emphasis on justification, apologetics is closely linked to the philosophical discipline known as epistemology, the study of knowledge, which I will understand as being a justified true belief.

Within epistemology, there are various different theories of justification. I would submit to you that the differences among apologetic methods arise from their being based on different theories of epistemic justification.

In this conversation, I'll be taking up the cause for evidentialism. Evidentialism is both an apologetic and an epistemology. The apologetic focuses on the use of evidence, especially historical evidence in the use of the defense of the faith.

We recognize that Christianity is a religion of history and that its truth is contingent upon certain historical events having actually happened, in particular, the resurrection of Christ. Thus, we seek to justify Christian belief by recourse to historical evidence.

The evidentialist apologetic is consistent with the epistemology that it is based upon. Now, I doubt that Joshua and I are going to spend much time debating the apologetic tonight, as both of our apologetics are merely the outworking of our underlying epistemology.

Our difference in epistemology is the root of our disagreement. So with this in mind, I'll endeavor to set forth the evidentialist epistemology as I understand it. Evidentialism, as a theory of epistemic justification, is defined by Earl Kani and Richard Feldman as the view that the epistemic justification of a belief is determined by the quality of the believer's evidence for the belief.

Evidentialism, at least the sort that I'm interested in defending, is characterized by four distinguishing features. Those would be foundationalism, internalism, acquaintance, and inference, and I'll expand on those four points.

So first would be foundationalism. Foundationalism is the thesis that all beliefs come in one of two types, those which are inferred from others and those which are not. Inferential beliefs obtain their justification from other beliefs, whereas non-inferential or foundational beliefs do not.

Second would be internalism. Internalism places an awareness requirement on justified beliefs. In order for some belief to be justified for me, I have to be aware of the reasons or evidence that justifies my belief.

The mere existence of reasons or evidence doesn't serve to justify my belief unless I have some sort of access to those reasons. Right. Think maybe if there was like this absolute proof of the existence of God.

And so you were to ask me, why do I believe in the existence of God? And I were to say, well, there's absolute proof for it. But then I couldn't give it to you because I said, oh, I'm not aware of it.

Seems like that argument isn't justifying my belief. The mere existence of it doesn't justify the belief. There has to be an awareness requirement. And that's the that's the motivation behind internalism.

Third would be knowledge by acquaintance. Acquaintance, I will be defining that as a sui generis relationship which obtains between the mind and a fact, property or thought. The relationship is conscious, but it's not propositional or conceptual.

Acquaintance is crucial to the evidentialist project because it explains how non-inferential beliefs can be fully justified in an internalist sense. Because acquaintance only obtains between existing relata, acquaintances guarantee the truth of the beliefs they justify.

Fourth and finally, inference. One can move beyond the knowledge yielded through acquaintances by means of deductive, inductive or abductive inferences. These inference forms are themselves non-inferentially justified.

And this is how we extend our knowledge beyond our immediate awareness, but keep it tightly connected to truth. Much more could be said, but these are the basics of the robust sort of evidentialism, which undergirds my my case for Christian theism.

Trent Doherty has said that most objections to evidentialism flounder upon a bad theory of evidence. And throughout the rest of this discussion, I hope to show you that this is true. Evidentialism is more than capable of meeting the criticisms leveled against it.

And as the vast majority of them are just based upon shallow or inadequate understandings of the theory. So when properly articulated and understood, I maintain that evidentialism clearly has the upper hand over all competitors, including presuppositionalism.

All right. Thank you so much for that, David. Joshua, you can jump right in with your opening statement.

Joshua Pillows’ Defense of Presuppositionalism

All right. So while the discussion is situated on the debate between which apologetic methodology is considered to be the most biblical or proper, the discussion can likewise be put this way. Which epistemology allows for the possibility of public objective, certain knowledge?

After all, an apologetic which adheres to a self-destroying epistemology is an apologetic which fails. The Bible speaks of such knowledge coming from God explicitly states that God is the source of all knowledge and therefore that the basis by which public objective and certain knowledge is acquired is by presupposing the revelation of God, not just at the outset, but at every and any point.

That is to say, God's public objective revelation is the very foundation for a public objective knowledge. It is precisely because God's revelation is public and objective that public objective knowledge is available and possessed not just to believers, but to all nonbelievers as well.

In short, God's revelation makes possible public objective certain knowledge. The Bible also makes clear the foolishness and futility of rejecting God's revelation as a prerequisite for knowledge. David writes, the fool says in his heart, there is no God.

The fool says in his heart. Solomon writes that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and that fools despise wisdom and instruction. The Apostle Paul reinforces this maxim when he writes to the Romans, quote, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.

He likewise uses this language against the natural man to the Ephesians, quote, now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do and the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding.

Such an epistemology, which fails to give reverence to God and begin with his revelation is futile. Paul describes this type of epistemology as being vain. Quote, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty or vain deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ.

Christ, who just a few verses earlier in Colossians, Paul says, is the deposit of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Paul exhorts Timothy to avoid the quote, avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge or by professing it somewhat swerve from the faith.

If one does not begin with God's revelation, with Christ, who is the logos of God, who is the deposit of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, then, as Paul says, one will only obtain a knowledge falsely so called.

God's knowledge is original knowledge. Therefore, if man is to likewise possess knowledge, he can only do so by receptive, receptively reconstructing or reinterpreting God's revealed objective public original knowledge.

To begin with an epistemology that does not give reverence to God and his revelation is to begin with one which is characterized as foolishness, according to the scriptures. If one does not begin with the objective universal revelation of God, one will invariably begin with his own subjective experiences.

By denying the objective tether of revelation, such an epistemology will only ever end in subjectivism and therefore skepticism. Thus, Paul asks rhetorically, where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe?

Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? An apologetic that is erected on the ruinous sands of worldly thinking on autonomous reasoning that does not begin with God's revelation is one which forfeits the possibility of knowledge.

And if knowledge is forfeited, what then is left of such an apologetic? Taken consistently, evidentialism, as predicated on the authority of human reasoning and not revelation, destroys itself. The very notion of evidence is destroyed because human knowledge itself is destroyed.

Therefore, a revelational presuppositional apologetic, which always and everywhere grounds itself in God's revelation, which stands on the scriptures at every point. And the same way that Paul did in his apologetic with the Greek philosophers is the most faithful, indeed, the only apologetic for a Christian to hold to.

We concur with the psalmist that in God's light, do we see light?

All right. Thank you so much for that. Now, let's jump right into kind of the conversational portion of this discussion. David, is there anything that Joshua laid out there that you take issue with that you'd like to interact with?

And by answering my question there, you can interact directly with Joshua at this moment.

Public and Objective Knowledge

All right. Yeah, eventually I want to get to this topic of subjectivism. But first, maybe a bit of clarification is in order. So in your intro there, Joshua, you talked about public and objective certain knowledge.

And so let me ask you, do you take knowledge to be something that is public? Yes. So what do you mean by public?

We're to shared by all human beings who have been made in God's image. We live in God's universe and he created us to know things.

So public means shared in your view. OK, that's an interesting definition of the word. So do you think that people can share something that is secret?

No shared knowledge, meaning that we can all partake in the same while according to analytic terms, propositional propositions. So we can know the same things. But of course, people have their reservations, their secret interpretations and secret experiences, if you want to call it secret subjective, if you will.

So not everything is objective. Of course, we all have our own private interpretations of reality and how we see things. But nevertheless or nonetheless, there's objective knowledge available to everyone.

Do you take propositions to be something that are public? And by public, you would mean, for example, like if I'm thinking of a proposition right now. Can you share that if I'm not willing to share that with you?

Because it doesn't it seems like I can have a proposition in my mind that's completely you're cut off from that unless I'm willing to tell you what that proposition is.

No. Like I said, some knowledge would be by by its very nature subjective. Like I can't know what you're thinking. Right. And you're engaging in propositions in your head. And I don't know what they are.

But nevertheless, you have to engage in propositions that are that come from God. That's my argument. They can't just be situated in the mind and then you can do with it what you will. God is the source of all knowledge.

So, yeah, I don't know what you're thinking. But nevertheless, God is the source of the proposition by what you're thinking.

OK, OK. So I think that we might have some agreement here. So then you aren't saying that knowledge couldn't be private or if you would.

Oh, no, no, no.

Subjective. You would just be saying that the sort that you're interested in for the purpose of this discussion would be that which is public and objective.

Yeah, my point is that knowledge is subjective and available to all people. I'm not barring the fact that you can have private knowledge and I can have private knowledge. That's pretty much indisputable.

OK, yeah, I just I agree with that. That's just why I wanted to go. I want to discuss that. All right. OK, so then I did have some points I wanted to raise on this issue of subjectivism, because I know that you raised that a lot.

So first of all, I guess I want to say that I kind of object to the use of the term subjectivism. Because it's it's. I don't think it's a good word to describe the objection you're wanting to bring, because that term normally refers to some sort of relativism, which denies the possibility of objective knowledge.

And that's clearly not an entailment of evidentialism. As I have understood your criticisms of my work in the past, it seems that you want to say that we are stuck with private knowledge. And I would say that that's a little bit different than subjectivism.

It's true. We can use the words in that way. We can sometimes refer to what is private as what is subjective. But I think it would actually be clear if you did say in Europe that you are interested in public knowledge.

But I think that that is probably the more accurate term than subjective knowledge.

Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah.

OK, so then as far as responses to that goes, the fourth point that I raised to the fourth principle of evidentialism that I raised is inference. Right. So I'm going to agree that at the level of basic beliefs, I remember I hold that knowledge is a two tier structure.

We've got the basic beliefs and then we've got the inferential beliefs. So, yeah, I'm going to hold that at the level of inference. What we can be certain of that all is going to be privately accessible to myself because I'm an internalist.

But I do not hold that we cannot gain public knowledge. I would hold that we can gain knowledge of what is external to ourselves by means of inference. Do you think that the inference there is a failure?

Did you say we can't obtain objective knowledge?

No, I think that we can obtain it by means it's by means of inference. Oh, yeah, I agree. OK, so then what. In what way would you say that evidentialism fails in getting objective knowledge? If you say that we can't, if you're agreeing that we can make an inference to that.

Well, I'm not I don't speak for all evidentialist, of course, but as evidentialism has historically been promulgated, it's it starts with man. It starts with our reasoning. And then what we do is we look at the evidence and see where it leads.

And then very probably God exists or at the very least a God exists. And so my contention is that if you start with man, you're only ever going to end with man. You can't start with yourself and somehow get outside of yourself.

And so, yeah, you can use inferences, you can use non-inferential beliefs or whatever you want to use in your epistemology. But the crux of my argument is that if you don't begin with God simultaneously, you will never escape subjectivism.

OK, so it seems like in order to validate that, then you would have to say that you could not make inferences beyond yourself. Because if you're going to say you start with yourself, you're going to end with yourself.

That seems to negate the principle of inference.

Yeah, I mean, inferences are part of discursive reasoning. So you're doing discursive reasoning nonetheless. But my argument is that you have no right if you're going to start with yourself or any evidentialist to say, I'm going to start with myself and I'm going to go through a process of discursive reasoning.

And then I'll conclude that, you know, I see a computer in front of me in the objective world. And my argument is, no, if you start with an egocentric picture, you will only ever end in an egocentric predicament.

Right. So that seems to be saying then that the inference there, the inference is not valid, that it fails in some way, right?

Yeah, it fails to be public.

OK, could you explain to me why you think that the inference is a failure?

Because you're not tying your epistemology to anything outside of yourself, you're keeping it in your own mind, if you will, and you're starting with yourself. But now I need a link that gets from, you know, David Paulman to external reality.

And then I can draw a meaningful conclusion that says, yeah, you know, God probably does exist. But unless I don't have that link, then it's just all in your subjective private experiences.

Yeah, I want to say that the inference that is the link. So the inference is the link to how you would get outside of yourself into the external world and ultimately to God.

Well, I mean, that would assume a direct realist point of view. Do you affirm direct realism? I don't know. I don't think you do.

It doesn't assume direct realism. I'm not a direct realist. I would be what's known as an indirect realist.

OK, so how would end or how would inferences, you know, you start with yourself, how would inferences be the bridge to something out there?

Sure. So it would be it would be by means of an explanation. So an evidential or an explanationist approach to inference. So we're going to make an abductive inference, right? An abductive inference is an inference to the best explanation.

We know that we have certain experiences, something you seem to be granting for the time being, so that we have these privately accessible experiences that are secured by direct acquaintance. OK, so we want to propose what's an explanation.

Right. We can ask, why do I have those experiences? And so the explanation I'm going to propose as the best one is that we inhabit a real world of three dimensional minded objects. Realism. I'll say that explains the existence of my having these experiences better than any competing account.

And so it seems to me that if that is indeed the best explanation, if we can't show that that is that there's not an equal, an equivalent or better explanation, then we have justification for believing in an external world.

Do you have any proof that there's an external world?

No. Well, if by proof you mean a deductive syllogism, no, this would be abductive reasoning.

OK, so you don't have any argument for an external world that at the very least concludes with absolute certainty.

We don't have a deductive argument. We would have an abductive argument.

OK, so then you would be willing to say that every inference pattern you make could be wrong and that there really is no external reality and that this is it. You could be totally wrong in that you're an indirect realist.

But really, it's all anti-realism.

Well, no, anti-realism would be a different thesis than indirect realism. So, no, I would say that we have justification for being realist, that we have justification for believing that there is an external world.

But, yes, I would agree that it is less than certain. That's the nature of abductive inferences, is that they do not guarantee the truth of their conclusions. They are not necessarily truth preserving, but they do provide justification.

Only a deductive inference is going to guarantee the truth of its conclusion.

So would your apologetic ever conclude that God exists with absolute certainty?

Mine wouldn't, no, because I think we can only have absolute certainty on the things with which we have direct acquaintance. And I'm skeptic that we can have direct acquaintance with external objects to ourself.

I think we only have direct acquaintance with our own perceptions and certain concepts that we possess. So, no, I would say for myself, I don't think that I know that God exists with certainty. But theoretically, it's within the realm of possibility, perhaps someone could have a direct acquaintance with the fact that God exists.

So it's not like ruled out that you could have certainty of God's existence. But the arguments that I would give for God's existence are mostly going to be abductive and inductive. They can take a deductive form, but even the premises are going to be supported inductively and abductively.

So the simple answer is, no, I would not conclude that God exists with certainty.

OK, so this is my point is you're starting with yourself and then you draw inferences. And so I'm going to keep coming back to that point. You draw inferences starting with yourself. And I'm trying to figure out how do you how do those inferences get you to an external reality outside of yourself?

If you're starting with yourself, what is the metaphysical tether that ties you subjectively, privately to an external world, whether it be direct or indirect?

An adductive inference.

OK, but would not the inference also be just based on how you're subjectively experiencing the world?

The data that you're trying to explain. So the experiences that you have, that's the data that you're trying to give an explanation for. That would be internal to yourself. I suppose the inference is, of course, internal to oneself as well.

So if you're asking, is the inference internal to yourself? The answer would be yes.

OK, yeah. So, yeah, this has been my point is everything's internalistic. And so if you're going to adhere to, well, any epistemology, but if you're a foundationalist. So if your epistemology begins with yourself and you start with these maxims, these basic beliefs, notice how every belief you hold to as a foundation is tied to an internalistic and subjectivistic reference point.

And so my point this whole time, I don't know how long we've been going back and forth on Facebook. My point is that if every belief you hold to goes back and forth or goes back to a subjectivistic reference point, then you can never escape subjectivism.

You would ultimately have to conclude that truth is subjective. Everything is subjective. You could say, yeah, abductively, there's an outside reality. We indirectly know it.

Sure.

And I could be wrong. But at the end of the day, I'm just going to keep going back to the subjectivism and saying, I would like some sort of tether that gets you outside of your experience to a meaningful conclusion.

Well, what I'm going to go back to is a point that I made before, which is that I think the better word here would be private rather than subjective. So not that everything is subjective, but rather everything is private is the point that you're wanting to make.

And if we're talking about certainty, yes, I'm going to agree. But if we are talking about the beliefs I hold, well, no, because beliefs can be intentional. So beliefs can be about things other than themselves.

So I can have a belief about the external or say that there is an external world. And then we want to ask, is that belief justified?

Right.

I define knowledge as a justified and true belief. Now, because the inference I'm going to be making here is less than certain, it's not necessarily truth preserving, then I'm going to have a probabilistic abductive justification.

So, I mean, if the point you're trying to make here is, well, you could be wrong about it.

Right.

Yes, I'm going to agree with that. But that doesn't mean it's not justified. So I would say I have a justified belief that there is an external world. And yeah. And so, I mean, it doesn't seem like an objection to me to say, oh, well, you don't have certainty in that because I don't take certainty to be required for inferential knowledge.

OK, so what if I go to another foundationalist down the road and he says, I'm an anti realist based on my basic beliefs and my inference patterns. And I don't believe there is any external reality. Everything's mind.

And that's how we construe it. Now, whose word should I take? Should I take your word or the other foundationalist's word?

Well, you don't base it on either of our words. You should look at the argument that we're offering. So I would put the same question to him as I would you. And interestingly enough, one of mine, I believe I sent you a book by Richard Fumerton at one.

Point.

Fumerton would be one of my heroes in epistemology. But he actually agrees. He doesn't think that there's any way to get outside of your own mind. So, I mean, I disagree with him on that, of course. And so, yes, there are foundationalists who do, but there is actually no way outside of your own mind.

And so I'm going to put the same question to them that I put to you. OK, at what point does the inference I'm making, at what point does it fail?

Oh, is that a question? I'm sorry.

Well, you can take it like you don't have to necessarily answer if you don't want to. We can go to another topic because we have we have been on this one for.

That's fine. I want I wanted to to allow David to press a little bit. But the nature of the discussion, you both were able to kind of press a little bit. Let's kind of shift in terms of Joshua spearheading his objections against your position.

Joshua, you can continue on a point that you already mentioned, or you can bring up some other element of the methodology that you think is a weakness, as you see it. It could be more on the philosophical aspect here or even perhaps kind of a biblical issue here as to how is his position lining up with Scripture, if it at all does.

I don't know his view as to the necessary connection. I don't want to assume.

I don't want to presuppose.

But you can take any line you'd like. You can continue the line you got. You guys have already been discussing.

It's up to you.

It's all in your court, Joshua, to spearhead the next second.

Subjectivism, Internalism, and the Limits of Evidential Inference

OK, my closing statement is has more of the theological aspects of this. So I'll address those there. But my point now presently is that no matter what David does, by starting with himself, he can never end in certainty.

And so I'm not going to pull the side. You know, could you be certain about that? Could you be certain about that over and over and over and over and over again? My point is that once you start with a subjective picture, you can only end with a subjective picture.

And so a presuppositionalist, you know, start standing on God's word as an objective foundation would say, well, that's just absurd. And I would say that's absurd, too. And, of course, I don't mean that personally.

But if you can't get out of your subjective experiences with any definitive tether that's meaningful, not just, you know, an abductive argument to the best explanation, because, again, that explanation could be wrong.

I'm looking for something substantive that can get out of subjectivism into objectivism. And I use subjectivism because if David is going to be consistent in his epistemology, he's going to have to say that truth is subjective or subjective.

I'm sorry. If he wants to say, no, that's self-refuting, it's objective. Well, now he's put himself on the horns of a dilemma. And so now I'm trying to see I'm trying to get David to see that starting subjectively, you'll end subjectively.

If you want to say private, that's fine. So all knowledge he has is private. Well, it's private. And it's like, OK, well, who cares? You know, I have private knowledge. And, you know, Bob down the road has private knowledge.

And how do we reconcile these things together? We all have inferences, sure, but we could all be wrong. So, again, I'm looking for some sort of objective epistemology, some objective foundation to adhere to in order to prove the existence of God.

I want to keep this on, you know, on evidentialism. So I want an apologetic that has a foundation that's meaningful and not just private specifically. And so that's been my point.

So if I could chime in here, then I would say what you want there, Joshua. I would like that, too. Like if I could have certainty that there was an external world, certainty that God exists, I would absolutely love that.

Right.

I'm an apologist. I do enjoy having certainty about things. So when you say I want these things, I'm like, yes.

I'm on the dark side, David.

I want those things as well. The issue here is not so much whether we want them as I think whether they're available. So if your point is that David's epistemology doesn't get you certainty that there's an external world where that God exists.

Yes, I will grant that right now. I've granted that from the beginning. I don't believe that you can have certainty with respect to those things, nor do I think that you need certainty with respect to those things.