Presup vs Evidentialism: A Respectful Dialogue

Revealed Apologetics

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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.

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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.

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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.

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But we're just gonna jump right in, folks. I don't want to give, I don't want to waste too much time with some, with pleasantries.

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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.

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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?

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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

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Facebook posts, I get jealous. I'm like, man, I need to get that book. You've always got something new you're reading.

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It's always fascinating to see what you're, what you're up to. So I appreciate your posts there.

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I'm told that I'm an expensive Facebook friend to have. Yeah, well, that, yes, that's right.

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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

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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.

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Why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself, and then I'll invite Joshua to join us.

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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.

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I've, you know, done some debates in the past. I've defended intelligent design theory, defended the existence of God.

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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

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YouTube channel, which is Faith Because of Reason. All right, you're breaking up a little bit. Can you say the name of the

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YouTube channel one more time? I apologize for that. It's called Faith Because of Reason. All right, Faith Because of Reason.

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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.

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Let me introduce Joshua Pillows, who is, I'll kind of take David off there for two seconds,

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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

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Stroudian objection to transcendental arguments. Joshua is a cool guy, and I'm happy that he's here tonight to have this discussion.

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Why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself, Joshua? Well, I have to belabor the point every time

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I come on here. My main study is music. I'm basically first and foremost a musician, so I'm an organist at a

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Lutheran church, though I hold to Reformed theology. I teach piano and music theory.

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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.

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So music's my main study. It's what I do basically every day, and then when I find time, I delve into apologetics.

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All this philosophical jargon and everything is not my main course of study, but something

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I find interesting nonetheless and give glory to God. All right, kids, after we learn

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Hot Cross Buns on the recorder, then we'll talk about transcendental arguments. Do you remember

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Hot Cross Buns? I remember in third grade, they gave us the recorder. All right, well, thank you for coming on.

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Let's get David back on. Let me change the format here. That's not gonna work. Let's see here.

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Boom. Let's get David up there. Bam. There we go. All right. Well, this is how things are gonna go.

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They're going to have a brief opening statement, which they're gonna lay out their view with respect to their apologetic methodology.

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So I'm going to give the honors to David to go first, since this is his first time on the show.

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I'm gonna flip a coin, like, you know, he's the guy with the glasses. Let him go, you know, let him go first.

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So you're gonna give your opening statement, and then Joshua is gonna 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.

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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.

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Okay, so without further ado, let us invite David to give his opening statement.

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Go for it, David. All right, cool. Thanks, Eli, and hopefully my internet's not breaking up anymore. But yeah, so in order to understand and appreciate,

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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.

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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.

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But unfortunately, this is not the case, as we're going to see the differences between presuppositionalists and evidentialists could not be deeper.

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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

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I will understand as being a justified, true belief. Within epistemology, there are various different theories of justification.

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I would submit to you that the differences among apologetic methods arise from their being based on different theories of epistemic justification.

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In this conversation, I'll be taking up the cause for evidentialism. Evidentialism is both an apologetic and an epistemology.

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The apologetic focuses on the use of evidence, especially historical evidence in the use of the defense of the faith.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Evidentialism as a theory of epistemic justification is defined by Earl Connie 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.

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Evidentialism, at least the sort that I'm interested in defending, is characterized by four distinguishing features.

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Those would be foundationalism, internalism, acquaintance, and inference, and I'll expand on those four points.

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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.

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Inferential beliefs obtain their justification from other beliefs, whereas non -inferential or foundational beliefs do not.

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Second would be internalism. Internalism places an awareness requirement on justified beliefs.

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In order for some belief to be justified for me, I have to be aware of the reasons or evidence that justifies my belief.

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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?

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Think maybe if there was like this absolute proof of the existence of God and so you were to ask me, why do

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I believe in the existence of God? And I were to say, well, there's this absolute proof for it. But then I couldn't give it to you because I said, oh,

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I'm not aware of it. It seems like that argument isn't justifying my belief. The mere existence of it doesn't justify the belief.

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There has to be an awareness requirement. And that's the motivation behind internalism. Third would be knowledge by acquaintance.

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Acquaintance, I will be defining that as a sui generis relationship which obtains between the mind and a fact, property, or thought.

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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.

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Because acquaintance only obtains between existing relata, acquaintances guarantee the truth of the beliefs they justify.

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Fourth and finally, inference. One can move beyond the knowledge yielded through acquaintances by means of deductive, inductive, or abductive inferences.

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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.

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Much more could be said, but these are the basics of the robust sort of evidentialism which undergirds my case for Christian theism.

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Trent Doherty has said that most objections to evidentialism flounder upon a bad theory of evidence, and throughout the rest of this discussion,

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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.

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So when properly articulated and understood, I maintain that evidentialism clearly has the upper hand over all competitors, including presuppositionalism.

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

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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.

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Which epistemology allows for the possibility of public, objective, certain knowledge?

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After all, an apologetic which adheres to a self -destroying epistemology is an apologetic which fails.

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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.

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That is to say, God's public, objective revelation is the very foundation for a public, objective knowledge.

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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 non -believers as well.

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In short, God's revelation makes possible public, objective, certain knowledge. The Bible also makes clear the foolishness and futility of rejecting

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God's revelation as a prerequisite for knowledge. David writes, the fool says in his heart there is no

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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.

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The Apostle Paul reinforces this maxim when he writes to the Romans, 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.

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He likewise uses this language against the natural man to the Ephesians, Now this I say and testify in the

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Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds, they are darkened in their understanding.

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Such an epistemology which fails to give reverence to God and begin with his revelation is futile.

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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.

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Christ, who just a few verses earlier in Colossians, Paul says, is the deposit of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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Paul exhorts Timothy to avoid the, quote, avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge, or by professing it, some have swerved from the faith.

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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.

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

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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.

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If one does not begin with the objective universal revelation of God, one will invariably begin with his own subjective experiences.

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By denying the objective tether of revelation, such an epistemology will only ever end in subjectivism and therefore skepticism.

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Thus, Paul asks rhetorically, where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?

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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.

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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.

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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

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Greek philosophers, is the most faithful, indeed the only apologetic for a Christian to hold to.

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We concur with the psalmist that in God's light, do we see light. All right, thank you so much for that.

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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?

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

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All right. Yeah, eventually I want to get to this topic of subjectivism, but first, maybe a bit of clarification is in order.

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In your intro there, Joshua, you talked about public and objective certain knowledge.

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

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We're just 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.

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So public means shared in your view. Okay, and that's an interesting definition of the word.

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So do you think that people can share something that is secret? No. Shared knowledge meaning that we can all partake in the same, well, according to analytic terms, propositional or propositions, so we can know the same things.

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But of course, people have their reservations, their secret interpretations and secret experiences, if you want to call it secret, subjective, if you will.

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So not everything is objective, of course, we all have our own private interpretations of reality and how we see things.

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But nevertheless, or nonetheless, there's objective knowledge available to everyone. Do you take propositions to be something that are public?

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And by public you would mean, for example, if I'm thinking of a proposition right now, can you share that if I'm not willing to share that with you?

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Because 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.

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No, like I said, some knowledge would be by its very nature subjective. Like I can't know what you're thinking, right?

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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 come from God.

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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.

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

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Okay. Okay. 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 know, no, no, no subjective.

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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.

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Yeah, my point is that knowledge is objective and available to all people. I'm not barring the fact that you can have private knowledge and I can have private knowledge.

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That's pretty much indisputable. Okay. Yeah, I just, I agree with that. That's just why I wanted to go

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I want to discuss that. All right. Okay. So then I did have some points

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I wanted to raise on this issue of subjectivism because I know that you raised that a lot.

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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

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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

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Which denies the possibility of objective knowledge and that's clearly not an entailment of evidentialism

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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

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And I would say that that's a little bit different than subjectivism. It's true We can use the words in that way, right?

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We can sometimes refer to what is private as what is subjective But I think it would actually be clear

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And you know you did say in your opinion that you are interested in public knowledge

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But I think that that is probably the more accurate term than subjective knowledge. Does that make sense? Yeah Okay, so then as far as responses to that goes the fourth point that I raised or the fourth principle of evidentialism that I raised is

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Difference, right? So i'm going to agree that at the level of basic beliefs I remember

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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

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Privately accessible to myself, right because i'm an internist, but I do not hold that we cannot gain public knowledge

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I would hold that we can gain knowledge of what is external to ourselves by means of inference

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Do you think that the inference there is a failure? Did you say we can't obtain objective knowledge

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No, I say that we can't we can't obtain it by means it's by means of inference Oh, yeah,

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I agree Okay. Um, so then what in in what way would you say that evidentialism fails then in getting?

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Objective knowledge if you say that we can't if you're agreeing that we can make an inference to that well

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And i'm not I don't speak for all evidentialists, of course, but as evidentialism has historically been promulgated

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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

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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

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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

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But the crux of my argument is that if you don't begin with god simultaneously You will never escape subjectivism okay, so it seems like in order to Validate that and you would have to say that you could not make inferences

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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

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Yeah, it fails to be public Okay, um, could you explain to me why you think that the inference is a failure?

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Because you're not tying your epistemology to anything outside of yourself You're keeping it in your own, you know mind if you will and you're starting with yourself but now

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I need a link that gets from you know, david paulman to external reality and then I can draw a

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Meaningful conclusion that says yeah, you know god probably does exist But until I don't unless I don't have that link then it's just all in your subjective private experiences

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

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

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I'm not a direct realist I would be what's known as an indirect realist Okay, so how would ender how would inferences

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You know you start with yourself. How would inferences be the bridge to something out there? Sure It would be uh by means of an explanation

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So in an evidential or an explanationist approach to inference, so we're going to make an abductive inference, right?

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An abductive inference is an inference to the best explanation Uh, we know that we have certain uh experiences

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That's something you seem to be granting for the time being so that we have these privately accessible Experiences that are secured by direct acquaintance

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Okay, 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 mind independent objects realism

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I'll say that explains The existence of my having these experiences better than any competing account and so it seems to me that um

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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

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Then we have justification for believing in an external world Do you have any proof that there's an external world?

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No. Uh, well if by proof you mean a deductive syllogism No, this would be uh abductive reasoning

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

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We don't have a deductive argument. We would have an abductive argument Okay So then you would be willing to say that every inference pattern you make

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Could be wrong and that there really is no external reality and that this is You could be totally wrong in that you're an indirect realist, but really it's all

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Uh, well no because the anti -realism would be a different, uh thesis than uh indirect realism

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So no, I would say that we have justification for being realist that we have justification for believing that there is an external world

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But yes, I would agree that it is less than certain. Uh, that's the nature of abductive Inductive inferences is that they do not guarantee the truth of their conclusions.

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They are not necessarily truth preserving But they do provide justification. Uh, only a deductive inference is going to guarantee the truth of its conclusion

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

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Mine wouldn't know 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.

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I think we only have direct acquaintance with our own perceptions and certain like concepts that we possess uh, so no,

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I would say for myself, I don't think that I know that god exists with certainty, but Theoretically, it's it's um within the realm of you know possibility

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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 uh of god's existence

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But the arguments that I would give for god's existence are mostly going to be abductive and inductive

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Uh, they can take a deductive form, but even the premises are going to be supported inductively and abductively

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So the simple answer is no, I would not conclude that god exists with certainty okay, so This is my point is you're starting with yourself

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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?

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outside of yourself if you're starting with yourself, what is the Metaphysical tether that you know ties you subjectively privately to an external world whether it be direct or indirect uh

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

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Data that you're trying to explain. So the um The experiences that you have that's that's the data that you're trying to give an explanation for That would be uh internal to yourself.

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I suppose the inference is of course internal to oneself as well. So, um If you're asking is the inference internal to yourself the answer would be yes

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Okay, 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 you're a foundationalist

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So if your epistemology begins with yourself and you start with these maxims these basic beliefs notice how every belief you

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Hold to as a foundation is tied to an internalistic and subjectivistic reference point And so my point this whole time,

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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

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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

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It's and 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

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I would like some sort Of tether that gets you outside of your experience to a meaningful conclusion

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Well, what i'm going to go back to is a point that I made before which is I think the better word here would be private

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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.

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Yes. I'm going to agree Um, but if we are talking about the beliefs I hold we'll know because beliefs can be intentional

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So beliefs can be about things other than themselves So I can have a belief about the external world like say that there is an external world

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Uh, and then we want to ask is that belief justified right? I define knowledge as a justified true belief

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Now because the inference i'm going to be making here is uh less than certain it's not necessarily truth preserving

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Then i'm going to have a probabilistic Abductive justification for that. So I mean if the point you're trying to make here is what you could be wrong about it, right?

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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 um, and uh

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Yeah, and so I mean it doesn't seem like an objection to me to say. Oh, well, you don't have certainty Because I I don't take certainty to be uh required for inferential knowledge okay, so what if I go to another foundationalist down the road and he says

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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

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Whose word should I take should I take your word or the other foundationalist's work? Well, you don't base it on either of our words.

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You 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,

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I believe I sent you a book by Richard Fumerton I wonder why Fumerton would be one of my heroes in this

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But he actually agrees. He doesn't think that there's any way to get outside of your own Mind, so I mean

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I disagree with him on that, of course And so, uh, yes, there are foundationalists who do but there is actually no way outside of your own mind

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

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

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I want I wanted to to allow david to press a little bit But the nature of the discussion you you both were able to kind of press a little bit

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So let's kind of shift in terms of joshua spearheading his objections against your position

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Joshua, you can continue on a point that you already mentioned or you can bring up some other element of his methodology that you think

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Um is a weakness as you see it It could be more on the philosophical aspect here or even perhaps, uh, kind of a biblical issue here

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It's uh, you know, how is his position lining up with scripture if it if it at all does I don't know his view as As to the necessary connection.

29:32

I don't want to assume I don't want to presuppose Um, but uh, you can take any line you'd like. Um, you can continue the line you got you guys have already been discussing

29:40

It's up to you. Um, it's all in your court, uh, joshua to spearhead the next section here. Okay. Yeah um

29:46

My closing statement is has more of the theological Aspects of this so i'll address those there.

29:51

But my point now presently is that um, no matter what david does by starting with himself, he can never

29:58

End in certainty and so i'm not gonna, you know pull the side ten brooke and kate, you know Could you be certain about that?

30:03

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

30:11

And so a presuppositionalist You know start standing on god's word as an objective foundation would say well, that's just absurd

30:19

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

30:28

That's meaningful not just you know an abductive argument to the best explanation because again that explanation could be wrong

30:34

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

30:47

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

30:52

And so now i'm trying to see i'm trying to get david to see that starting subjectively you'll end subjectively

30:58

If you want to say private that's fine. So all knowledge he has is private. Well, it's private and it's like Okay, well who cares, you know,

31:05

I have private knowledge and you know bob down the road has private knowledge And what how do we reconcile these things together? We all have inferences sure, but we could all be wrong

31:12

So i'm again i'm looking for some sort of objective epistemology some objective foundation to adhere to In order to prove the existence of god.

31:20

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

31:29

And so that's been my point So if I could chime in here then I would say uh

31:34

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.

31:41

I would absolutely love that, right? I'm an apologist. I I do enjoy having certainty about things.

31:48

So when you say I want these things i'm like, yes I'm on the dark side david Those things as well, um the the issue here is

31:57

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

32:07

Yes, I will grant that right now. I will grant that from the beginning I don't believe that, uh, you can have certainty with respect to those things

32:14

Nor do I think that you need certainty with respect to those things I don't think that the vast majority of our knowledge is certain and I don't see that as being a problem uh, so I mean and and again, this is your time to spearhead as eli said, but um,

32:29

If you would want to explain how you think you do get certainty About those things, you know,

32:34

I would love to pick at that because I don't think you can get certainty On those things, uh, so i'm happy to grant from my side

32:42

I think I can get justified beliefs about those things I do not think I can get certainty about it And I don't even think you can get a justified belief about it

32:50

But if you could prove me wrong, I would be interested in seeing I would like to interject very briefly uh for the point, uh for a point of clarification, um, perhaps joshua you can define for us the difference between because you were using certainty um, if you can define for us the difference between um, psychological certainty and Epistemic certainty because that might be confusing to people.

33:10

Um, you know, if you're just saying i'm certain that god exists Are you just describing a psychological state or are you telling us something more beyond just how you're you are perceiving the issues mentally?

33:20

Why don't you pick that apart and you can answer, uh david's a point there Yeah, excuse me, no problem

33:27

Hiccups, um, yeah, so I when I say certainty i'm referring to epistemic certainty Okay, it's a certainty where you cannot fail to be wrong epistemically speaking psychological certainty is basically just amounts to a very strong conviction

33:40

Psychologically, I am certain that this is going to happen But really it might not happen. So i'm referring to certainty in the maximal sense

33:47

You just cannot fail to be wrong about it. And so that's been my um argument That we can be certain as presuppositionalists starting on the word of god

33:55

Whereas any other epistemology which doesn't um can ever attain such certainty psychological sure, you know with self -evident truths or whatever you want to talk about But epistemic certainty is where the core of my argument is

34:08

Okay, so so why don't you so david before I don't want anyone to forget what you were saying you were saying

34:13

That you don't think joshua could have that sort of certainty and that you'd like to see him You know,

34:18

I don't know if you want to save that for later since you're spearheading the questions But perhaps we can get to that so that perhaps joshua's position can hopefully um answer david's objection to some satisfaction, uh, or you can pick at it, but um, perhaps you can get to that but um,

34:34

Joshua, you can respond to his point. Uh, or you can answer his question directly. It's completely up to you

34:40

Yeah, okay, so well now the penultimate question is how do we get certainty? All right. I mean that this has been a philosophical problem for millennia basically

34:49

And well, okay. So van till comes along in the 20th century and now we have this new presuppositional apologetic and new in quotes um

34:57

How do we get certainty? Well, it's not by starting with just man It's not by just starting with ourselves because my argument again is if we start with ourselves i'll use david's vocabulary

35:06

It's private everything's private if you want to say we have certainty in our experiences i'm all for it, but it's private

35:12

So again, it's like what's certain for you might not be certain for your neighbor so Uh van till maintained that we don't just start with man.

35:20

We have to start with god our creator as well Simultaneously, we can't just say we start with god and then man we have to start with ourselves as the approximate starting point

35:27

But van till's point was that we start both with man and with god and we start with the revelation that god has given us in the scriptures

35:34

Such that we start with the metaphysical scheme that this is god's universe god created us He exists, you know this laptop in front of me was made by materials from god the created order

35:44

I live in the created order. I have a mind created by god. I made in his image I was made to think things so I start with the metaphysical picture the metaphysically biblical picture

35:52

Of creation and me being made in god's image And so it's not just I start with myself and then i'll work out for myself out for my mind to god

36:00

I start with myself and with god in his proper place as my god, right? He is the original uh knower of everything the creator of this universe

36:09

And so how do we get certainty? Well, we get it by starting with our creator at the same time with his revelation

36:15

And that's the problem that van till brings up over and over and over again That if you don't start with god, you're reduced to subjectivism and skepticism

36:22

And that's the presupposition list argument How do you get certainty you start with god as well at the same time?

36:28

How because we're made in his image and he's revealed himself at every point of our experience

36:34

Yeah, so I mean if I can push back on that, um, it seems like you're saying how do I get um

36:40

How do I get certainty? Well because god reveals it. Um You know, but i'm curiously what justifies this revelation?

36:48

Well first you could ask how does god reveal it but more importantly as far as the justification point what justifies that revelation?

36:56

Well, there are three revelations you have the innate revelation we all have being made in his image and this again

37:01

This was this is going to get where? Um, the apologetic is determined by theology. So we have differences of theology, but according to van till um, it's through innate Revelation were made in his image second.

37:14

It's revealed in nature. The romans one nature proclaims the glory of god As the psalmist writes and then third it's through scriptures.

37:20

Well, it's a scriptural or a special revelation And so god reveals his himself through these three mediums if you will and so no matter which way we look

37:29

If you know, we want to close our eyes and you know, not look at anything outside of us We still know him internally if we look outside of us

37:35

We know him through the created order and as christians. We know him through the bible is what he's revealed himself in okay, so if I can then ask on the topic of innate knowledge and scripture, what would you say justifies your belief in uh

37:49

Accepting I could say what justifies the innate knowledge and what justifies you believing that scripture is accurate?

37:59

Uh, well the former i'd have to ask what just If you're asking what justifies my belief in innate knowledge or what justifies it being the case

38:05

Uh justified often I am a skeptic that there is such a thing as innate knowledge But let's just grant that there is what would the justification be of this innate knowledge, which i'll hypothetically grant exists

38:17

Oh, uh because god says so and there's no higher authority to appeal to than god I can't keep going regress.

38:23

I can't invoke the regress problem And here's god and now I got to keep going and going and going it stops at god, right?

38:28

Whereas in foundationalism, it stops with non -inferential beliefs through experience or whatever. It stops with god according to van till So if god says something you don't question it because he's perfect.

38:38

He's infallible. Holy sovereign, etc So you say it stops with god So you're saying that there is not any justification then for what god says because that's where the justification stops

38:48

Now god is self -justifying whatever he says justifies itself by the very nature of who god is, okay

38:54

So do you see that there's a circularity? Issue there. Yep Okay, so then the problem with circular reasoning here is that um, we're not making any progress, right?

39:05

We're starting in one place and we're ending in that same place, but for somebody like myself, you know

39:10

Maybe you don't want to question god, but you know, I will have Two questions there first, how do you know it comes from god and then even if it does why do you believe it?

39:19

Uh, but then let's let's just focus on the why do you believe it part of that? Um, you're just saying well,

39:25

I believe it Because it said I could believe it then there's the problem of circularity there so um

39:32

I know you're gonna want to say that circular reasoning can in some instances be justificatory, right?

39:39

Okay Yes Could you explain under which circumstances circular reasoning is acceptable and why?

39:48

I'll give you uh, i'll give you two answers. Um the first a theological answer. Um, it's

39:53

Um permissible for god because god is god and no one speaks for god's god speaks on his own authority

39:59

No one questions his revelation in virtue of who god is what he says is the case And so I take that at his word since I can't appeal to anything higher and to try to appeal to anything else is

40:09

Sin, it's the same thing that eve did in the garden Uh, the second answer is a philosophical answer and that scripture acts as a transcendental to experience includes

40:19

It's a necessary precondition. If you don't start with scripture or presuppose its authority you're reduced to absurdity

40:24

And so you have to assume the truths of scripture in order to even argue against them. And so The first one if I would call it, you know theological circularity

40:33

You have to invoke the metaphysical aspect of it I can't just take god out of the picture and then reduce it to a formality

40:39

As like a syllogism or whatever and say oh, there's circular reasoning Bantill invokes god's ontology into the argument.

40:46

God is god You can't question him But for transcendental arguments since the bible is a transcendental for experience to make experience intelligible

40:54

You have to assume the transcendental in order to argue against the transcendental So transcendental circularity is an indirect circularity.

41:01

It's not direct like i'm begging the question It's indirect and that you have to assume the transcendental in order to even argue for the transcendental

41:08

And even secular philosophers have adhered to this. Kant, Stroud and others have adhered to this as well.

41:15

Openly So look, we'll have to I mean a transcendental argument is just an argument that takes the form that you know

41:22

You need something x in order to get the possibility of y y would be possible.

41:27

So therefore x is a reality Now some types of transcendental arguments the sort that you would seem to be interested in here are arguments where You know a classic example here is going to be aristotle's argument for the law of non -contradiction, right?

41:40

Where he's not asserting it or rather denying it as uh, at least he thought is going to implicitly assume it

41:46

Could you maybe draw it out for me how you think a person who says god does not exist

41:52

Is in some way God's existence Is being assumed in that statement

41:59

You broke up. You said how god's existence is being assumed and denying If I said that god does not exist in what way does that statement assume that god exists?

42:09

Because when you say god does not exist you're now invoking a number of transcendentals You know the causal principle laws of logic uniformity induction the reliability of memory and sense perception and cognitive ability

42:21

And now the question is well, how do you make sense of all these transcendentals, right? You have all these necessary preconditions in order to even utter

42:27

The denial of god and van till's argument is that you have to assume god and the christian worldview in order to even deny

42:33

The christian worldview that disobedient child has to slap his father against the face or while his father's keeping him up the whole time

42:40

So you have to rely on god to deny god Could you uh show me what in which way that statement would rely on?

42:46

Just take one example that you listed the reliability of memory Uh, how do you mean?

42:52

So you said that in order to ask, uh The question or rather in order to hold the proposition to deny that god exists.

42:59

So to say god does not exist That would have to invoke a number of things, uh, including you said laws of logic principle of causality

43:09

There were a few others One of them was the reliability of memory. I'm not sure how i'm invoking these things in Affirming proposition god does not exist

43:19

So could you maybe show me in what way that depends on the reliability of memory sensory perception?

43:25

Some of these examples because i'm not seeing how i'm assuming those things Well, I mean you have to go into more detail for memory and sense perception

43:32

I mean sense perception in terms of you know If i'm engaging you and i'm you know, we're looking at each other and so you're assuming something's there um, but then again you can answer that privately but More importantly more meta things like laws of logic and mathematics causality

43:46

You have to assume those norms those principles and even in order to even get your argument off the ground or your statement off the ground

43:52

Right. So if if you're a skeptic and you say well, you know, I don't know if god exists or not Right, and I I just don't believe in god that god exists

44:00

Well, you're at the very least saying that's probably true But if you're going to say that's probably true, then you have to assume the law of identity the law of non -contradiction

44:08

It can't be true and not true You have to assume mathematical norms that one is one two plus two is four all that's embedded in there the causal principle

44:15

That's something like I invoke that god exists and then that caused you to say no, I don't think god does exist

44:21

So you're assuming all these principles all the meanwhile saying I don't think god exists So van till says only the christian worldview can make sense of all these transcendentals

44:29

And therefore you're assuming the christian worldview in order to deny the christian worldview, right? What i'm denying is that those things are being invoked and saying that god does not exist

44:38

And so that's where I need the connection to be. So for example, you used the law of identity, right? Or was it was it the law of non -contradiction?

44:45

Anyway, you said that you could be saying that uh, god does not exist and god does exist at the same time in the same sense, right?

44:53

Uh that does not assume the law of non -contradiction, right? So it is a mistake to think that a non -contradictory fact

45:00

That is affirmation of a non -contradictory proposition commits you to a law of non -contradiction

45:07

That is people who do not believe in the law of non -contradiction They don't believe that all contradictions are true

45:13

They believe that some contradictions are true, but they also believe that other contradictions are false So to say that god does not exist does not commit you to there being a law of non -contradiction

45:24

Does that make sense? Okay, so I could just ask you the question is what you said true

45:30

And is it also true that it's not true at the same time? So I can just invoke the law of non -contradiction against your objection of the law of non -contradiction

45:37

That's not that's not invoking the law of non -contradiction. That's just asking about this particular proposition So what's the law of non -contradiction?

45:44

It would be a proposition about other propositions. Namely that no, um, that no contradictions can be true so that no

45:51

Two or more propositions which are incompatible with each other can't obtain at the same time and in the same sense

45:58

So is it possible for god to exist and not exist at the same time? Uh, well Are you asking me or are you asking the hypothetical person?

46:07

We're saying who's denying god's existence? well both I mean if we're gonna You know meander with the law of non -contradiction and I get that happens and you know quantum physics and dilatheism

46:15

There are some arguments against it and you know Even granting that that's fine. But in order to affirm dilatheism or quantum physics

46:23

You have to assume that what you're saying is true and not not true at the same time So the law of non -contradiction still holds

46:31

No, see it's not the law doesn't hold you'd be saying that this particular proposition is true and not false

46:37

But it's not saying that all propositions Uh are going to be true and or are going to be either true or false

46:44

In other words, you could affirm that some propositions are both true and false while saying that this particular one

46:49

Namely that god does not exist that yes, that's true The point i'm making with this is i'm not here to defend dilatheism as you know,

46:55

I I reject dilatheism But i'm just saying that the person is not in fact assuming the law of non -contradiction

47:02

And it just seems to me you're saying that um in order to deny god's existence You have to assume all these things and I don't think you have actually established that i'm assuming the reliability of memory sensory perception

47:12

Laws of logic anything like that to say god does not exist It doesn't seem to me that what you want to call transcendentals.

47:21

I'm not seeing how those are being assumed Well, I mean again You have to assume them in order to deny them or not deny them

47:28

You'd have to go back and forth with denying or defining terms and so forth But if I as a vantillian,

47:34

I would just back up and say okay, what are laws? You know, what are principles the principle of causality? What's mathematics?

47:40

What are these abstract things? We call numbers and laws and so forth normalities. And now my question is well

47:46

How do you account for that on your worldview? Right if you want to put into question the law of contradiction Or the law of excluded middle s has been done for thousands of years already.

47:55

My question is okay. Well, how do you account for? um bringing it into question to begin with Right.

48:00

Are we assuming some objective external reality? We're assuming the reliability of our established that the person in uh holding the prophecy from god does not exist

48:08

Has assumed any of those things even if I wanted to grant you That assuming those things would somehow be tacitly presupposed now, that's the second part of the conversation is, you know,

48:18

I don't think that Believing those things is in any way presupposing god's existence But it just seems to me that if the person is saying god does not exist

48:26

It's not even clear to me that they are presupposing those things. I mean, does that make sense? Yeah, but now we're going to go back to a comparison of worldviews

48:33

I have a worldview and my opponent has a worldview now Which worldview can make sense of laws of logic and mathematics and causality and uniformity in nature and so forth?

48:41

and my opponent my argument is he can't even make sense of the preconditions necessary to say I'm, i'm not using the law of non -contradiction or I don't believe god exists

48:49

He can't even make sense of the preconditions to even say that statement without assuming the christian worldview

48:54

Okay. So for example, uh, let's just say like just laws of logic, right? Do you have an absolute disproof of something like platonism or something like nominalism?

49:03

I mean these are proposed again I'm, not sure which view you hold on this. I'm It seems to be most presuppositionalists hold to a sort of divine conceptualism

49:11

Which you know, that's one way of accounting for abstractive But I mean so with nominalism and platonism, do you have like absolute disproofs of those ways of accounting and understanding?

49:21

things like that Well, the trickery there is that even within presuppositionalists you'll have different views of you know, what laws are yeah

49:29

I think most would say divine conceptualism I'm a divine conceptualist, but I know there are some in atomistic tradition that have different views or not necessarily different But you know a little meandering and here and there

49:41

But I mean if you want to attack the point that we all have a little disagreements over You know what exactly the laws are how they relate to god, that's fine.

49:48

But again, my argument is transcendental I'm going to back up beyond that i'm going to go zoom out from that picture and say what needs to be true?

49:55

In order to make sense out of laws of logic and mathematics to begin with barring discrepancies between even presuppositionalists

50:01

Those are more secondary issues what needs to be true in order for there to be absolute universal eternal laws of logic and mathematics

50:08

That's that's what van till has one of the arguments van till has presented over the years, right? So, I know

50:13

I apologize but wasn't clear before I wasn't picking at disagreements among presuppositionalists I was just I didn't want to appreciate

50:20

I didn't want to presuppose that you were a divine conceptualist But I was saying that we have all we have rival accounts, right?

50:27

We have divine conceptualism We also have plaganism and nominalism and i'm not saying that presuppositional so I don't know any presuppositionalist who holds to nominalism

50:36

But uh, we've got plaganism and nominalism, right? So, uh platonism, for example That would sufficiently account for there being uh laws of logic that are eternal and unchanging and whatever else you would want to say

50:49

I I tend to lean more towards the nominalist camp where I would Uh Deny in one sense that laws of logic exist in that sense because i'm skeptical that they exist as abstract objects.

51:01

Um, Because i'm also a theist i'm going to say that they do actually exist As eternal propositions in the mind of god, but I don't think we're tapping into that when we have our own.

51:11

Um, Thoughts about it, but it would know what if the if nominalism for example, if that's a viable, um,

51:17

Alternative for the atheist to take Then he can just reject your assumption that there are these eternal unchanging laws of logic or if maybe you've got an argument for that He can accept platonism

51:29

Do you like actually rule these possibilities out because it seems to me like we've got multiple ways here

51:35

At least three possible ways being proposed that would make sense of laws of logic

51:40

Uh, and you know, we can argue which is the most plausible which is the best Um, but I don't see any like knocked down proof against um any of these proposed accounts

51:52

Well, i'll tell you what david when I first heard that there were christian physicalists um

51:57

At that point I was like well You know, there's no way you can you find unification even and with it between christians that just boggled my mind.

52:07

Um, So well in terms of what we're talking about laws of logic, you know I Could grant that maybe there's some sort of quasi -nominalist view and I don't accept that at all right now

52:19

I firmly don't believe that's the case but again The tendency is to situate oneself on the subject when my point is i'm going to keep backing up And look at the transcendental considerations because that's my apologetic.

52:30

That's my worldview, right? So what even needs to be possible to argue for anomalous to argue against a platonist?

52:38

A divine conceptualist or whatever what needs to be the case and even to order argue and even to argue

52:43

For the laws of logic on anomalous view or platonist view i'm looking for the preconditions

52:49

In order for that itself to be intelligible not just to focus on that debate I'm backing up and saying what needs to be the case in order for that debate between these two parties

52:58

Needs to be the case what needs to be the case? Yeah, i'm perfectly okay with you know backing up as well.

53:03

I mean as you know for me everything's ultimately going to back up with Acquaintances and with you everything is going to back up but god said so and I would like to push on that circularity point a bit more

53:16

There but I was just saying in regard to the specific issue that you were bringing up Like you were saying what would need to be the case in order to have?

53:23

Uh, you know eternal Immaterial laws of logic. I was just saying on that particular point.

53:28

It does seem like the atheist has plausible alternatives. Oh, i'm, sorry Haven't been ruled out.

53:34

Okay So I I forgot about that point, okay If the atheist and this happened in the bonson stein debate in 1985

53:42

And and the q a and atheists said to ask bonson Well, why can't I just presuppose the laws of logic, you know on on any point of view they were referencing?

53:51

And the point is bonson said that's fine. You know, the laws of logic have a transcendental necessity to them

53:57

You know, you can't deny them without affirming them. I mean, it's self -contradictory and so bonson at the debate said, okay, that's fine

54:03

But the point is how do you now unify all of these particular transcendentals together into a holistic system?

54:10

Because someone can just argue for causality and then maybe anomalous atheist will argue for the laws of logic and then the uniformity in nature

54:16

Well now van till says well, how do you bring all these things together? You need a worldview in which all the transcendentals can be brought into harmony with one another

54:24

In which all the facts can relate to one another and the mind of man and van till says it's the christian worldview

54:29

God has made all of these things Capable to the mind of man if you have if you want to argue transcendentally

54:36

Nominalistically for the laws of logic as against a platonistic view of laws of logic From a transcendental perspective or whatever van till says, okay, that's fine

54:44

But it's like a rock falling in a bottomless ocean You have a hard substance a transcendental argument or nominalistic or platonistic or whatever you have a hard substance

54:52

But it's just falling in a bottomless ocean. You have nowhere to put it You need a worldview in which you can fit all of these arguments together and van till's contention was it's the christian worldview

55:00

That can do so so the debate between nominalist point of view and the platonist point of view of laws of logic

55:06

We can talk about that But again, i'm looking at ultimate commitments What must be true in order to make sense out of intelligibility in order to make sense even out of that debate itself?

55:16

Yeah, and so I mean i'm sensitive to that concern there and I mean I could appreciate that way of viewing it

55:21

So what i'm pushing towards here and what's motivating my evidentialist apologetics that it seems like we have multiple competing views

55:29

All of which are capable of explaining the relevant data all of which are capable of explaining why this debate is able to happen

55:37

And so then what I want to say is then okay We're going to have to look at the specific evidence and then see which worldview is explaining that data

55:44

The best because we can all build a worldview to explain some we can all explain laws of logic in our worldview

55:51

We can always explain the existence or non -existence of universals one in many in our worldview

55:56

We can explain those things, you know, you can do that as an atheist you can do it as a theist You can do it as a theist.

56:02

You can do it as a christian Uh, it seems to me that there's just not an argument there because we can all do it

56:07

So then the question is okay who's doing it the best and so that's what's pushing me towards evidentialism

56:13

Okay, so yeah now i've seen this objection Actually recently with an atheist and he had dr.

56:20

Alex Malpassant. He's a british Um philosopher, I don't know if you do you know him? I've had a couple interactions with him.

56:27

I I like him but you know his coherentism clashes with my foundationalism. So yeah Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

56:33

So He was on with three other people and they're all atheists and they're critiquing The what's this impossibility of the contrary, right?

56:40

I mean as you said everyone can have a worldview everyone does have a worldview In which they try to interrelate all the facts together and make sense out of experience and so forth

56:49

And then van till comes along and says well we prove it from the impossibility of the contrary Well, it's like man. That's a lot of worldviews.

56:55

You got to go through right? I mean just think of all the different points of view and experience And then once you get through all of the points of view of experience that people hold you now

57:02

We got to go through all the hypothetical worldviews that can go through and it just never ends. It's like You would die long before you could even finish refuting every single other worldview that makes sense of experience

57:14

And so well, what's the comeback to this? Well again, it goes back to transcendental reasoning Transcendentals are necessary preconditions.

57:22

If they're necessary preconditions, you can't have another necessary precondition that contradicts it There can only be one and so van till's point is there's only one transcendental and you can't have multiple

57:32

Otherwise you're left with incoherence. And so the christian worldview accounts for it Transcendentally therefore by default every other worldview is wrong because it assumes the christian worldview.

57:42

And so what are you saying? This necessary transcendental is That like unites the worldview

57:51

And what are you saying that that is? Oh the existence of god metaphysically and then his revelation of epistemically

57:58

Okay. All right. Yeah, so I mean that just sounds like you're saying that um, If you don't have god in your worldview, then you don't have god in your like It just it's like this is not something that's necessary for a non -christian worldview to account

58:09

They don't have to account for the necessary transcendental of the christian gods. Their worldview doesn't accept that Well, that's fine.

58:16

But again van till says What foundation are they standing on when they accept when they say that that's the case?

58:22

They can't make sense out of experience at all if they can at best. It's private. It's subjective But even then you have to ask the question.

58:29

How does your mind interrelate all the you know Propositions in your head together into a cohesive system, you know, that was hume's criticism as well

58:36

So van till says yeah, if the critic wants to say I have a worldview that can make sense of it I'll say fine. Let me hear it, you know

58:42

But then at the end of the day he's assuming the christian worldview in order to do it because there can only be one true Worldview one true reality one true transcendental

58:50

Yeah, we agree that there can only be one. Uh correct worldview, but the point I think is uh apologetics is how are we illustrating that?

58:58

The christian worldview is that worldview, right? So yes, I mean i'm going to agree with you that there's only one that's correct

59:04

There was another point in that I wanted to respond to but unfortunately, yeah, I skipped my mind

59:09

Um You could do it in one of two ways Transcendental reasoning by its nature is indirect.

59:17

We don't give a you know modus ponens argument and then say okay There you go case closed. We prove it indirectly from the impossibility of the contrary the transcendental argument

59:27

In a formal nature would be a syllogism All right So the first premise would be for p to be the case

59:32

Well, and this is one way of putting it for p to be the case Q must be the case because q is a necessary precondition for p

59:39

The minor premise is well p is the case therefore q is the case And so the question that so that would be

59:45

I guess you'd call it the positive form the direct form But that's not technically correct, but i'm giving it to you in a syllogistic way

59:51

Okay. Well now some transcendentalist comes along gives you that syllogism And says here q is the case q is a necessary precondition for p p is the case.

59:59

So q is the case Well, that's not enough to convince anyone right? You have to prove that q is the necessary precondition and how do you do it?

01:00:07

Well, you deny q you show that okay If you deny q is a necessary precondition you're left to absurdity or you render the operational feature that you're talking about Unintelligible, so you take the opposite of the transcendental show that it's absurd

01:00:20

And therefore include that absurdity can't be the case. So therefore the transcendental must be the case

01:00:25

Well, and that's what I was trying to do before is I was trying to deny that that first premise there and say that In saying the proposition that god does not exist

01:00:34

I don't think that you have shown that that is reducible to absurdity in and of itself

01:00:40

Okay, well, which i'm going to attack the worldview now So if a worldview comes along and says god doesn't exist i'm going to ask that person a number of things i'll ask him

01:00:48

Well first, how does he know that? Then how does he make sense out of human food informity and nature outside of him granting that inside of him internally?

01:00:56

How does he make sense out of logical norms mathematical norms causality? You know cogitation all of these different things that he's utilizing in order to even utter the statement, right?

01:01:06

So i'm going to push him on his own assumptions. How does he back that up transcendentally? How does he prove that god doesn't exist?

01:01:13

What are the transcendentals he's appealing to and how does he unite them into one cohesive system? Without assuming my worldview already

01:01:19

Yeah, and I mean it seems like that's what we kind of went on before for a while, right? Like you want to push back on laws of logic and I was saying they can explain that through platonism or nominalism

01:01:28

You know if you want to push back on morality, they got similar explanations there So let's just seem to go back to the other point that it seems to me that the absurdity of denial of god's existence

01:01:38

Has not been demonstrated because atheists have viable answers open to them at every turn.

01:01:44

I would buy your answers. Yep So I so let's now so there are a couple of points that you guys were were were suggesting that Joshua was saying you need the christian worldview and then david seems to be saying well

01:01:57

I mean there are multiple options available to the unbeliever, right? He can adopt platonism. He could adopt nominalism

01:02:03

He could adopt the different perspectives and it seems that there was kind of talking past each other So let's take a moment to kind of narrow in on that that point

01:02:11

So my question to joshua on behalf of david, okay And you can correct me if i'm not representing where what you're trying to get at david

01:02:19

You're saying the unbeliever has other options joshua, why

01:02:25

Why is it the case that the unbelievers options are not good options in other words you're saying he can he can choose different perspectives, but they won't work because Is that what you're getting at david pretty much?

01:02:36

Yeah, it's like you're gonna say that uh, if you deny if you deny god's existence, then it's absurd

01:02:41

And i'm saying how he's saying well, okay laws of logic. Okay. Well, they can go to platonism

01:02:47

Why is that absurd, right? Or else you're gonna have to abandon your argument from laws of logic and go to something else

01:02:52

It just seems like any point you can bring where allegedly denying god's existence is absurd There is a non -absurd answer.

01:02:59

I would hasten to add from the evidentialist perspective I think we can show these explanations that they're wanting to give are not as good as theism, but It seems like joshua wants to make this stronger claim and say not merely that theism is more probable than atheism

01:03:13

He wants to say it's actually absurd. And so i'm saying then where is the absurdity in platonism nominalism?

01:03:20

Etc. So just so joshua perhaps you can give some illustrations as to why you think platonism or one of those other options

01:03:26

He suggested are are not they're not Implausible, but they're actually absurd.

01:03:31

Is there kind of an illustration that you can give an example a sampling, uh, if you will of why? some of those options, um

01:03:39

Really aren't good options for the unbeliever, uh to take well again I i've belabored many points to david and i'll reiterate

01:03:48

Probably three of them. So again the first I brought up David talks about non -christians have options.

01:03:55

Okay. Well, no matter what the non -christian has Let's talk about anything mantel says talk about anything and we'll see how it implies god.

01:04:02

So let's talk about options What are options? Well in order for this notion of options to be the case there has to be uniformity in nature

01:04:08

Rational faculties etc that everything's united So I would again have to ask how is my opponent's position unified cohesively internally and externally

01:04:18

What needs to be the case for there to be options to make sense out of terms like platonism and nominalism? And then the second thing again as I've belabored the christian worldview can already make sense of these things

01:04:28

Universally and david's already admitted that there can only be one worldview So now my question is well, why are we arguing anymore because the christian worldview can do it?

01:04:35

So again my opponent he says they have alternative answers But again, as i've already said everything's private everything's subjective.

01:04:43

So who cares, you know, it's it's Suitable and it's intelligible to them personally But why should

01:04:49

I listen to that person personally if I can go to someone else and take their opinion? It's all arbitrary Right, and that's botson belabor that point over and over again

01:04:56

If you want to argue transcendentally for the laws of logic as he said with platonism or nominalism Now you have to find a worldview which you know unites all the transcendentals together

01:05:05

So these three points i've been belaboring over and over again And it seems like david's kind of beating around the bush with it

01:05:11

I need a worldview which unites all of the transcendentals together I need a worldview which can make sense of this cohesiveness of my thinking to even object to god's existence

01:05:19

And I need a worldview that can even make sense of the notion of what are options what needs to be true and even to Say I have options what needs to be true to even utter that sentence to begin with?

01:05:29

That's what that's what i'm getting around. I'm looking at transcendental considerations broad picture what needs to be the case

01:05:35

Okay, so I certainly apologize if anything has come across as beating the beating around the bush But respectfully that seems to me also to be what you're doing because you keep bringing up an issue saying

01:05:45

Oh, well, the atheist has a problem here. I'm saying here's a solution. Can you show me how it reduces to 30?

01:05:51

You said okay. Oh, well, you're saying they've got options. Well, how do you account for options again? You could also do that through platonism.

01:05:56

So again, why is platonism? Like you like want to keep running away from the issue like they're offering their account.

01:06:03

They're offering their worldview They're doing what you want them to do. They're giving explanations for these things and you're like, well i'm, just going to take it up another level and you know and perhaps like that's that's just how it's going to go and so you want to do another topic, but that's that's

01:06:20

If I if I could jump in real quick and I do apologize, um I don't want the the conversation to get too off topic.

01:06:28

But um Joshua you think platonism doesn't work?

01:06:33

So are david are you asking him then to just right now offer a refutation of of platonism?

01:06:39

I mean Or how do you think that would that would lead him? I I think to have to now like refute platonism like one by one for the purpose of this conversation

01:06:48

I'm, not sure if he'd want to take time to to refute that but I mean and maybe you do maybe that's a point You think that's important and that's fine as well.

01:06:55

I'm just that master argument he presented, uh before right about how we have that god is necessary in order to have um oh goodness, i'm forgetting what you put there, but um, basically that you need god in order to have any kind of Uh intelligible experience right to deny god's existence.

01:07:14

The christian god's existence is going to lead to absurdity That was the first premise of the argument. I want to see how that is justified

01:07:21

And so let's say okay, let's take the proposition god does not exist And then like let's see you do your worst to reduce it to absurdity

01:07:29

So you're going to say it's absurd because it can't account for laws of logic. I'm saying okay Here's a defeater platonism

01:07:35

So kind of I would ask if you can give a defeater to that in order to justify his belief that atheism does reduce to absurdity

01:07:43

And respectfully joshua. It just seems that you have not wanted To defeat right so I I brought it up and You're very analytic and i'm very vantillian and continental.

01:07:54

So this whole we're the language we use is and i'm puerto rican We're gonna be talking past each other and I anticipated this and that's fine i'm not gonna

01:08:04

Fault either one of us, but again, okay, i'll take your position Okay, an atheist comes along and says

01:08:10

I have platonism Here are the laws of logic. I can account for the laws of logic, right? Is that what basically you're getting at?

01:08:16

I'm saying I don't see any absurdity in that. Okay, so As a vantillian

01:08:21

I can say okay You have platonism and you have your laws of logic. I'll grant it and I brought this up already

01:08:27

Now what? All right, the laws of logic by themselves are not enough to give you an intelligible experience

01:08:33

There are so many other things so if the atheist says, okay, I have laws of logic Well now i'm going to press him on a plethora of other necessary preconditions that he needs to justify

01:08:41

And yet at the back of it He still hasn't justified how his brain Can make sense out of his experience to begin with such that he can argue platonistically for laws of logic

01:08:51

I keep going back to the fundamental issues. So i'll grant him the transcendental if he can account for laws of logic great

01:08:57

Okay now account for the causal principle now solve induction with absolute certainty solve uniformity in nature

01:09:03

You know all of these other things so it's not it's it's not a blockhouse method You know like van till says we don't build block by block

01:09:10

If you want to argue transcendentally for the laws of logic you have a block you have a rock falling in an ocean I need somewhere to put it and if you don't have a worldview that brings all of these, you know

01:09:20

Meta issues together then you don't have an intelligible worldview And again as i've been arguing and all of this already assumes the christian worldview all of this assumes biblical authority and what god has revealed

01:09:30

In scripture. So at a certain point it's like I gotta ask Why are we arguing anymore? Because you already said there's only one true worldview and our worldview our christian worldview can make sense of it

01:09:40

And so if an atheist says I can make sense out of laws of logic. Okay, that's one thing at best I'm taking for granted.

01:09:46

He can't even make sense of what's happening in his head. That's at best what he's solved now Give me An answer for all the other transcendentals and then unite them all together

01:09:53

Yeah, and so what i'm saying is, you know, I mean we can go through the whole list But i'm saying I have not seen an example of these things that you want to call transcendentals that atheists don't have

01:10:03

Non -absurd answers for and so it seems like to justify that master that first premise of the master argument

01:10:09

That these have to be shown to be absurd options or that that transcendental argument that you offered from the outset

01:10:16

It doesn't get off the ground because the first premise of it has not been Justified in fact, it would seem to have been falsified and so just by saying well i'm going to grant you platonism

01:10:27

Uh, okay. So yes, I mean we could go through all the topics, right? You know, I think that there's a solution to the problem of induction, you know

01:10:32

I think that there's solutions to the logos epic predicament these traditional problems of philosophy as far as I can see they do have non -absurd solutions, um, and so, uh, you know, we don't have to go through the whole list it just Um, it seems like that's kind of this is serving as a defeater to that first premise of your argument

01:10:52

And okay now you have to bring them all together If you can't bring them all together, then everything is disjointed and I don't have coherence

01:10:58

So if I grant that, okay, fine i'll bring it all together into a workable worldview assuming that I know you're not an atheist

01:11:04

Or whatever, but just for the sake of the argument, okay, fine I'll give you every transcendental you want and i'll bring it all together to where everything's cohesive and works

01:11:10

And if you can't do that, there is no such thing as intelligibility because I have no unification between anything

01:11:16

Can you explain what you mean by bringing together and why that's so important to you? Okay, so let me let's say, you know

01:11:23

I think bonson argued for laws of logic in the sign debate And then he argued for uniformity in nature and the taoist debate and then you know causal principle mathematics, um, um

01:11:34

Proper cognitive function are at the very least reliable all of these All of these things that we have to assume for an experience to be intelligible

01:11:42

Okay. Now what was that four? Okay. I have four different things now Now what is the meta?

01:11:50

Factor that takes all these things together Right because if I just you know go one by one by one one at a time, that's great

01:11:57

But that doesn't at all imply unification between the four. I need something holistically bringing all of them together

01:12:04

Right. It's almost like the problem of the one and the many sort of I have all these manys But I don't have any one that unites them all together.

01:12:11

I need some ultimate cohesiveness in a worldview that Interrelates all these transcendentals together.

01:12:17

So this this might be my nominalist sympathies kicking in here But why why do you think you need that for intelligibility?

01:12:24

Because if you don't have coherence Then there's no such thing as intelligibility. Yeah, but coherence is different coherence is different than unification

01:12:33

Okay. Well the way I was defining it it would be the same thing Basically, I need something that where everything coheres with one another where everything's unified together

01:12:41

So I would agree but I don't I don't think that there is any um Factor that is making things like external to a system of beliefs that is making it coherent

01:12:50

I don't think there's like this universal that supervenes on coherent belief sets and makes them coherent

01:12:56

I think that they just are coherent in virtue of their Non -contradictoriness with one another

01:13:02

I don't I don't think I need any I don't think I need an external unifying factor for that Okay.

01:13:09

Well, so there you appeal to you know, logical norms I don't know if you would call it the law of non -contradiction But okay again you you say everything is unified in a non -contradictory way and so I have to okay

01:13:19

Well, that's fine. You have coherence given your mind But I again I need everything cohering together not just in your mind

01:13:26

But with facts outside of your mind between laws of logic mathematics all these other sorts of things Yeah, you have coherence you've built up this philosophy.

01:13:34

I call it foundationalism if I can, you know, summarize it that way You've built up this philosophy and everything coheres with itself

01:13:40

But again, I have to keep asking on your worldview, you know, if I assume you're not a christian on your worldview

01:13:45

How do you make sense of the cohesiveness of your rational abilities to even formulate an epistemology to begin with?

01:13:52

I'm asking you to back up and look what why how is it that you can have rational abilities up here and formulate everything?

01:13:59

Cohesively barring the fact that it's all private and you know, therefore arbitrary. How do you account for cohesiveness at all?

01:14:05

Well assuming that I would assuming if I were an atheist then the explanation would presumably be that that is the way that evolution

01:14:13

You know designed me and endowed me with the abilities to do that Um, but I don't think you need to know how you have the ability to do it

01:14:21

Like you don't need to know how and where to know that so like you can know These certain propositions about reality even if you don't know like the full causal chain of events that Rendered it such that you were able to do that.

01:14:33

It just seems like a bit of a non sequitur to me Sounds kind of like externalism, huh? that would see that's where I would go because I The second pillar that I brought up was internalism, right?

01:14:45

So in my view external factors. I don't have awareness of something. It's not relevant to the justification

01:14:54

So, yeah again, it's just you have this cohesiveness and I I like I just got to keep asking the question

01:15:00

If you're an atheist And I we're kind of getting off the whole evidentialist presuppositional thing Why don't you answer this last part here and then we'll kind of shift gears a little bit.

01:15:10

I want to know a little bit about um The biblical foundations for your methodologies and where that fits in with respect to both of you

01:15:18

I mean i'm a presuppositionalist myself. So I kind of know joshua's position But maybe he could explain in a little bit more detail the biblical basis for his method and then david

01:15:28

You could explain how the bible fits in with your methodology um And and how you understand those things

01:15:33

So why don't you finish that thought joshua and and then we'll move on to that if that's okay Unless there's something very pressing david wants to uh add on top of what david's uh, joshua says

01:15:44

Okay, yeah, so again I I keep going back to the preconditions necessary to even object to christianity to begin with Right if you can object to christianity

01:15:53

What are the preconditions you're objecting to and van till's argument has been you're already assuming the metaphysical structure that god has laid out in the bible

01:16:00

And so david wants to keep presenting these hypothetical scenarios of an atheist who can account for the laws of logic

01:16:06

Or you know, I have cohesiveness in my thoughts and so I don't need god Well, no, that doesn't necessarily imply that you don't need god.

01:16:13

You've just concluded that I keep going back to the question How do you attain cohesiveness to begin with in your worldview presuppositionalism is a comparison of worldviews

01:16:22

And so as far as I can tell david hasn't answered the question of how there's even coherence to begin with He hasn't answered the question of how laws how all these transcendentals are brought together

01:16:31

And he hasn't addressed the fact that since the christian worldview can already account for these preconditions There's no other argument

01:16:37

I mean the only other argument to give is that I can just reduce any opponent that comes to me to absurdity And that he's assuming i'm right to say that i'm wrong, right?

01:16:44

And so again, I I think there's some talking past each other Um, I guess from the traditions we come from but my point has always been we start with transcendental analysis worldview analysis

01:16:54

And I keep asking these big questions to david and they're still left unanswered. So Anyway, yeah, I kind of want to get back onto uh

01:17:01

Apologetics, you know, okay Unless there's something david wants to add to that. Uh, we'll move on to the next

01:17:07

Uh portion here with what I mentioned before with respect to biblical foundations. Is there any last uh comments you want to make there?

01:17:13

Yeah, I would just say if those were the questions that you wanted to answer I wish you'd asked them like in the opening statement,

01:17:19

I would have gotten right to answering them Well, I didn't know what we were going to talk about Well, I did know okay. I just didn't know specifically.

01:17:25

So I just gave out a presentation of presuppositional methodology All right, cool, um, so, um, let's let's move let's shift to david.

01:17:35

Um, with respect to explaining his uh biblical foundation Uh of Evidentialism you describe yourself as an

01:17:43

I know there's kind of variations within apologetic methodology. Would you just um, describe yourself as an evidentialist?

01:17:49

What other apologists can people think of so that they can understand? Oh, yeah david david's more in line with that Uh, if people are familiar at all with uh, dr

01:17:58

Timothy mcgrew and his wife lydia mcgrew. I very much follow them in my approach. They're unfortunately not as well known

01:18:05

In the apologetics community, but if you're like apologetics nerd, you should be familiar with those names

01:18:10

Uh, those would very much be uh apologists who I would follow very closely in my own methodology Uh, there are other evidentialists who

01:18:17

I follow less closely So like people know names like gary hodder maz michael dacona, they would be considered.

01:18:23

Um evidentialists, uh, jonathan mclatchy He would be another evidentialist Unfortunately, just evidentialist names are often not as well known.

01:18:31

But those are some names they might know Okay um now with respect to evidentialism as a methodology, why do you hold to evidentialism

01:18:40

Um, and is the reason I mean, i'm sure there's multiple reasons But is there a biblical grounding for why you hold to that specific view with respect to your epistemology?

01:18:50

Or do you not think that they're necessarily, uh derived from the other? Can you explain that for us? So i'm going to get some hate on this

01:18:56

But I am not primarily an evidentialist because I think that the bible teaches it now if you think that's an objection to Evidentialism then that's just criticizing me for being an evidentialist and not presuppositionalist

01:19:08

So you have to do an internal critique of my evidentialism There you go. It is not an objection to evidentialism that we do not explicitly derive that from scripture in the first place because it is part of the methodology that Scripture is something that we would arrive at the truth of inferentially now that being said we would have a problem if it was

01:19:29

You know, we arrived evidentially at the truth of scripture and then scripture was Containing things that you know said that we shouldn't be arriving at that way

01:19:37

So I do think it is fully consistent with scripture Even though I would not first and foremost to be an evidentialist because scripture teaches it

01:19:45

And you know, I won't go through all the biblical evidence Which is some examples would be paul's case for the resurrection and not particularly.

01:19:50

It's 15 Uh definitely is wrong with um appeals to eyewitness testimony

01:19:57

We have a lot in the prophets of baal where they do an evidential test to see, you know, which whether god or baal is

01:20:05

Uh is the true god and we see that I think this is first kings 18 Uh, and you know, we we don't see anything about you know

01:20:12

Doing internal critiques of worldviews and accounting for laws of logic or induction It's it's very evidence -based based on which god, you know would send fire from heaven

01:20:23

Uh, you know, even jesus his own words, right? John 14 11, uh, believe me for the very work's sake

01:20:28

Appealing to his miracles. So I would say evidentialism is fully consistent with scripture But I would be through the line if I said

01:20:36

I was an evidentialist because I thought the bible taught I do think Scripture is fully consistent with it

01:20:42

Okay. Thank you for that. David. Uh, joshua. Why don't you tell us? Why you are a presuppositionalist in the sense of how do you think the bible?

01:20:52

You know How do you use the bible to support your presuppositionalism? Um, especially in light i'm going to add kind of a little salty

01:21:00

Flavor to the question right especially in light of the of the fact that Presuppositionalism really comes into full kind of thrust with van till and you don't really see a lot of it

01:21:10

Throughout the course of of church history. So that's kind of a criticism too, you know, it's innovative It's you know, if we're claiming it's biblical then why did anyone else use it, you know?

01:21:19

So, um, why don't you answer the first part? What's your biblical grounding for your position? Maybe address that aspect of the question.

01:21:25

I just threw in there perhaps to complicate things more than it should but go ahead Thanks. Eli. I'm so sorry um

01:21:33

Well, I hold to it because it holds to the lordship of christ at any and every point we stand on the scriptures

01:21:40

I mean if you just think about the christian picture of things, right god created the universe and adam and eve

01:21:45

And he where they fell into sin and so now the plan of redemption comes into the picture and all throughout all this time

01:21:51

You know, we have written revelation from god until revelation It's written by john and now we have this church that's been around for two thousand years the bride of christ

01:22:00

And we have these scriptures that come from this god. So if you assume that picture Why why would you not start with god's own revelation?

01:22:07

And so presuppositionalism is a comparison of worldviews But it stands always on the lordship of christ right without christ there is no knowledge or without presupposing god

01:22:18

There is no knowledge Anything at best would be private or subjective as i've belabored before and even then that needs to be explained itself

01:22:24

How the mind can do that? um, and so Biblical basis for it would actually well would be in two places paul's encounter with the greeks in act 17

01:22:34

And then his when he was brought before king agrippa in acts 26 And in both of those instances see you don't see

01:22:41

And some sort of explicit transcendental argument given by paul I mean, I would be totally fine saying paul doesn't use a transcendental argument

01:22:48

But what paul does is he does the exact same thing that presuppositionalists do in methodology? He never pretends neutrality

01:22:55

He never forsakes his christian commitments at every point He stands on the revelation of god to preach to the greek philosophers or to preach to king agrippa

01:23:03

And even in act 17 he he quotes the uh philosophers own poets Even your own poets have said, you know this this this and so he uses their own worldview to criticize it

01:23:13

And then he comes in and says well Let me talk about this christ that raised from the dead and this god and god's angry with you and you need to repent

01:23:19

You have this altar to this unknown god. What is this all about? You know, so we see in paul first and foremost

01:23:25

No neutrality whatsoever and absolute certainty and acknowledging the authority of god's revelation

01:23:31

Reducing his opponent's position to absurdity and then fourth with king agrippa.

01:23:36

He asked king agrippa Why do you find it incredible that god should raise someone from the dead? Well, what's paul doing there?

01:23:42

He's not only assuming the revelation of god that appeared to him on the road to damascus And in scripture and through all the prophets and everything, but he's implying that god is the source of all possibility

01:23:52

No god exists. So why do you find it incredible that god should raise someone from the dead? So we see this standing on scripture at every point in paul's apologetic

01:24:01

He's acknowledging the antithesis between his thinking and worldly thinking darkened thinking that I brought up in my opening statement is and he's citing god for other philosophical issues like the

01:24:11

Possibility we are and we live and move and have our being as the poets have said but that's true because of god as well

01:24:17

And so even barring that paul wouldn't use a transcendental argument or doesn't use a transcendental argument

01:24:22

He's still presuppositional if I could put it that way in terms of you know The way vantill outlines our principles.

01:24:27

This isn't anything new the vantill is just going back to scripture and the fact that yeah Maybe the church hasn't adhered to it for 2 000 years doesn't say anything about the apologetic

01:24:36

It's just showing that the church is continuously being sanctified. The church isn't perfect All right We were always growing and any protestant would say wow, you know

01:24:44

In 1517 we really went through a lot of sanctification because we got a lot better You know from that western church and the eastern church and all of that So it's the church the bride of christ is growing in its sanctification and so My biblical basis would be for paul and his encounter with the greeks and both tests and both chapters of acts

01:25:02

It's being presuppositional. And again, I have to clarify Vantill would be the first to tell you we

01:25:09

Absolutely endorse the use of evidences Presuppositionalism is not against using evidence whatsoever as paul says and the same

01:25:16

Engagement with king agrippa these things have not been done in a corner, right? I mean we use evidences and as david said they used evidences in the old testament

01:25:25

So we're not against the use of evidences We're just against using them apart from the lordship of christ apart from standing on biblical authority

01:25:32

And so that's the difference. That's a worldview Apologetic All right. Thank you so much for that.

01:25:37

Um, all right So I think this is a good time to move to um the closing comments and then we can spend the rest of the time

01:25:45

Tackling some of the questions that folks. Um are asking and I think that that's going to be a lot of fun Um, by the way, this has been an excellent conversation you guys have been super respectful and just a lot of content no awkward pauses

01:25:58

That's always the worst when you have someone, you know as a host you don't know You know if you don't know how things are gonna go and if it just gets super awkward and quiet You're just kind of like All right, let's move on, you know

01:26:09

There's not much you can do at that point. So I really appreciate you guys have been doing an excellent job. So, thank you very much Um, so david, why don't you give us your closing comments and then uh,

01:26:18

Joshua will give his closing comments and then we'll move right into the questions All right. Yeah, so, uh, I do not have a prepared closing statement.

01:26:25

Uh, I Know i'm just gonna get an opportunity for that. So, I mean i'll just give some brief thoughts though throughout this and so I apologize if this isn't as well organized as my opening statement was but um,

01:26:37

Yeah, I mean, uh, so here's kind of one thought and uh, you know Sorry to bring up an argument at the end here

01:26:42

It's just something that I meant to bring up in the discussion and it just didn't come up. But um, As far as you know, getting knowledge, you know objective knowledge or public knowledge, so there's knowledge that's outside of yourself um

01:26:55

This is an argument that I have kind of developed. Uh against presuppositionalism you know, especially of if they want to bring this objection that joshua has raised that Uh where you only have private knowledge and the only way you can get outside of that Is through you know an inference that is less than certain

01:27:15

It does seem to me that the presuppositionalist if he does not like The idea of having a less than certain inference.

01:27:23

It does seem to me that he faces the same problem It is true that you couldn't have a matrix -like scenario

01:27:30

Under um, you know the christian worldview. Obviously, you can't have worldwide deception But it certainly does seem that it could be the case on a local scale that you could have that sort of deception

01:27:40

Right, even if we assume that christianity, it's true it's possible that a mad scientist can still kidnap you and knock you out and hook you up to a machine and give you um this uh, you know this virtual experience that you know is an illusion that would seem just as real as our everyday experience does

01:28:00

If an evidentialist inference to the external world is not allowed for some reason, you know a probabilistic inference

01:28:07

It seems like for the same reason the presuppositionalist is stuck in this problem How does how is he able to get knowledge of an external world?

01:28:15

Unless he's allowed to make an inference to the best explanation namely that it's this is less probable that he is the victim

01:28:22

Of a mad scientist within the christian worldview is a note that that's not it's not begging the question against the presuppositionalist

01:28:27

Uh, you know and so that's just something I think that People who would want to urge this argument against my epistemology

01:28:35

Are going to need to wrestle with is that it does seem like even under the christian worldview You're still going to have to make a probabilistic inference to get out of that problem

01:28:44

Uh, and so, you know, just some closing thoughts here. Um, uh It's come up here a few times in the past that you know, we're making reason the ultimate authority

01:28:55

I know reason is not an authority reasoning is a cognitive process. It's not a proposition.

01:29:00

It's not something that gives propositions Uh, so it's just it's wrong to think of that. It's an authority and you know

01:29:08

I believe when we gave it bold was on chris ball was on the channel. He talked about you know I make myself the authority or something like that Uh on an evidentialist model justification terminates in evidences.

01:29:19

It doesn't terminate in authorities And so that's I think an important point to keep clear on And a few other points here

01:29:28

I am curious how presuppositionalist can justify their own beliefs in say logic induction or knowledge at all

01:29:34

It seems like it goes back to a circular foundation and to the extent that we're not willing to accept that circular reasoning is

01:29:42

Justificatory then it's not going to actually serve to justify those beliefs for the presuppositionalist

01:29:48

I would maintain that we can justify those beliefs On evidentialism and so to the extent that we want to have justified beliefs in logic and induction.

01:29:57

We should be evidentialists Uh, and just maybe the last point is it does seem to me that transcendental arguments have premises

01:30:05

And the evidentialist can always ask. How do you know these premises like not not even that they're true, but just how do you even?

01:30:12

Know these propositions. How do you know? That you're holding these particular propositions in mind and it seems that a transcendental argument

01:30:20

Is going to require acquaintance for that you're going to need a direct acquaintance with those propositions that are forming the premises in your argument and if that's correct then not to have a mic drop moment, but Transcendental arguments will presuppose or at least require the truth of evidentialism

01:30:44

Thank you very much for that david Hey, I hope i'm doing an okay job at being neutral.

01:30:50

I just got finished teaching a class saying neutrality is impossible I'm trying my best Though i i'm trying to be as objective as possible and I appreciate what both of you guys have to say

01:31:01

So thank you so much for that. Um, just real quick. Um david. I didn't um, we didn't mention

01:31:06

Uh closing statements beforehand and joshua had said express if he could have a closing statement

01:31:12

And I I figured it would be okay between the both of yous and and david didn't have an opportunity to prepare one Um, so just wanted to throw that out there

01:31:19

It's it's my bad. Um, but I think you did an excellent job kind of summarizing your thoughts there david Um, so thank you.

01:31:24

Um, so joshua, why don't you give your closing statement and then we'll move right into the q a Uh, well first.

01:31:32

Thank you. Uh eli and david for Um making this discussion possible I hope it's been nothing but edifying to those watching live and those who will watch live in the future.

01:31:41

Um, I think it's been great um while my opening statement I presented revolved around the moral and epistemic necessity of adhering to a revelational epistemology

01:31:51

I would like to close out today's discussion by addressing the antithesis that exists between the people of god and the people of the world

01:31:59

The antithesis between darkness and light has existed since the beginning of time in the garden eve audaciously assumed the role of god

01:32:07

She through the beguiling deceit of the serpent brought into question the absolute authority of god's revelation to her and adam

01:32:13

To not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil Has god said the serpent asked them? Sin, therefore did not enter the world through the act of eating the fruit

01:32:21

But rather from the moment adam and eve brought into question the words of god and themselves assumed the role of god

01:32:27

As a result of such disobedience sin and death entered the world Second as is obvious the antithesis is present today between those whom god has saved and those who reject their maker

01:32:37

And their love for sin and autonomy for their desire to assume the role of god and interpreting how reality really is

01:32:44

Worshiping themselves rather than god as paul's poignantly says in romans How is he apologists to operate in such a climate should we cater to worldly standards pretend neutrality for the sake of open -mindedness?

01:32:56

And hope to win over the unbeliever who is darkened in their understanding By operating on their feudal principles in order to bring them to the faith

01:33:03

Such a method is internally incoherent Such a method requires openly rejecting the antithesis that is everywhere present not just in salvation

01:33:12

But in our entire thinking processes according to paul in order to hopefully win over the unbeliever and thereafter acknowledge that the antithesis was there all along The apologist must rather always stand firm on the authority of christ and his revelation

01:33:25

The apologist must not do what the first adam did putting the god's revelation to the test in order to potentially win over the unbeliever

01:33:32

To thereafter preach behind the pulpit that what the first adam did was wrong such an apologetic method is self -contradictory

01:33:39

To quote from bonson and I love this he says and I quote christ the second adam Unlike the first adam replied thou shalt not put the lord thy god to the test

01:33:49

The first adam put god to the test the test of his own thinking what he would find acceptable The second adam refused to do what the first adam did thus satan's challenge was answered by jesus from scriptural authority

01:34:01

Even though it was the authority of scripture that was in question End quote. It's like what's wrong with you.

01:34:07

Jesus. We can't beg any questions, right? You see van till has taught us that the bible has the self -authenticating and authoritative words of god himself is authoritative over everything

01:34:18

Since it speaks of everything either directly or through implication And as such we ought indeed we must as christians stand on its authority and on its authority alone when defending the faith

01:34:30

For only through the lens of god and god's inscripturated revelation can experience be made intelligible

01:34:36

To pretend neutrality is to embrace an absurd and immoral position against our creator Since god is faithful to us bonson says our apologetic must not be faithless to him

01:34:47

Our apologetic must always be rooted in the lordship of jesus christ in whom are deposited all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge apart from starting with this christ our apologetic indeed our philosophies of life following worldly thinking

01:34:59

Will always end in ruin and intellectual suicide via subjectivism I close with these words from the apostle paul to the corinthians

01:35:08

He says and I quote now we have received not the spirit of the world But the spirit who is from god that we might understand the things freely given us by god

01:35:17

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the spirit interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual

01:35:25

The natural person does not accept the things of the spirit for they are folly to him and he is not able to discern them

01:35:31

Because they are spiritually discerned The spiritual person judges all things but is himself to be judged by no one

01:35:37

For who has understood the mind of the lord so as to instruct him But we have the mind of christ

01:35:43

The proof of god's existence is that without god you couldn't prove anything in order to even bring it into question.

01:35:50

You have to assume He exists and the truths of the christian world view are true Thank you. All right.

01:35:55

Thank you so much for that joshua and thanks again david, uh for your closing comments as well This has been an excellent discussion and i'm looking forward to having some fun with some of the questions

01:36:04

And so we'll jump right in there's a question here from ron Dean piacomo, he says question for brother david.

01:36:10

Uh, what are the preconditions for the possibility of direct acquaintance? Yeah, so it's an interesting question um

01:36:18

I don't think we actually have to know the answer to that in order to uh be able to Have justified true beliefs on the basis of direct acquaintances

01:36:26

But uh once you know, we have made inferences to the existence of the external world and such Then uh, it seems that certain uh conclusions that we could draw for you know

01:36:35

What originally made it possible for us to have those direct acquaintances in the first place would seem to be?

01:36:41

uh properly functioning cognitive faculties, for example, my eyes actually have to work my Nose has to work my my tongue has to be able to taste things.

01:36:49

Uh seems like I uh, i'm a dualist so I think that we actually would have to have a soul that is able to um, receive the qualia that our senses, uh bring in Uh as a theist,

01:37:02

I think that god is actually necessary to create us in such a way that we are able to um,

01:37:08

Interact with the world. So, uh, those are some examples of I guess another one you could mention would be um an environment that is um compatible with our um having direct acquaintances

01:37:19

So those would be some um examples of things that I would say are preconditions for the possibility of direct acquaintance

01:37:25

But I don't arrive at them a priori. I arrive at them a posteriori that is as the result of inferences

01:37:31

Very good. Thank you very much Josh, would you have any comments on david's response there? And if you don't you can just pass and we can move on but if you do you can take a few moments to respond

01:37:40

No, i'm, i'm, okay. Okay. Thank you very much for that ron Uh, thank you so much for the five dollars super chat.

01:37:46

Israel has just been dropping five dollars every episode I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much

01:37:51

Uh, so israel asked david how does your view not end up being pragmatic ultimately if it is if it is why hold it?

01:37:59

Is your pragmatic choice arbitrary? Um, I yeah, I don't think that my view is a sort of pragmatism

01:38:05

Uh, so the view that I hold I guess would not I mean you could you could hold pragmatic elements to it

01:38:11

But I yeah, I mean I would just reject. Um the premise that he seems to be assuming which is that my

01:38:16

View is pragmatism whether or not it's pragmatic. I mean I spend an awful lot of time people a lot of people would say wasting time, you know reading books on epistemology

01:38:27

So in some ways, maybe it's not pragmatic Um, but uh, yeah To the extent that he thinks that i'm a pragmatist.

01:38:35

I would just reject that assumption Okay Um, let's see here. Uh, I have to scroll through so pardon if it takes me a couple of uh, okay

01:38:44

Here's a question for joshua by uh, travis lee. Thank you so much Um, he says joshua. Do you think we can have the same degree of epistemic certainty with phenomenal conservatism?

01:38:54

Uh that we can with preset Uh, you have to define phenomenal I can define that term for you

01:39:00

So phenomenal conservatism would be a form of weaker foundationalism. They would agree that we have the two -tier structure of belief

01:39:08

But uh when it comes to basic beliefs, they would say that those are justified by recourse to a seeming instead of an acquaintance

01:39:14

What's a seeming? So just think it seems to you that um, god exists

01:39:20

So you're non -inferentially justified in believing that god exists based on that seeming It would be fallible right because obviously something can seem to be the case could be wrong

01:39:28

But they would seem they would state that that seeming can function as evidence I would say that um phenomenal conservatism relies on the christian worldview and the epistemic certainty that comes with it the metaphysical

01:39:41

Of baggage if you will and so, uh, if I was going to give a harsh criticism,

01:39:46

I would say That it would at best conjure uh psychological certainty

01:39:52

I don't i'm not sure if it would um procure epistemic certainty But at the end of the day again,

01:39:57

I would add I would say that uh Presuppositionalism starting with the christian worldview with revelation that directly comes from god is epistemically certain because any

01:40:07

Foundationalist epistemology like we started out with stems from man. And what's man? He's fallible. He's finite. He's subjective.

01:40:12

He's imperfect We could be in a matrix david's already alluded to that So I don't think the degree of certainty would be the same in a phenomenal conservatistic approach

01:40:20

Um than it would be with a presuppositional approach David, would you you have any comments on that since that was a question for for uh, joshua?

01:40:28

I mean i'd just say I don't think either one gets you certainty There's a host of problems with phenomenal conservatism out there

01:40:34

But I mean just an obvious one would be you know, why do you think a seeming is indicative of truth? You know, you could say it seems to me that it is but you kind of get a circularity problem there

01:40:44

So, um, yeah, I mean, no, I don't think phenomenal conservatism or for yourself gave you certainty Okay.

01:40:50

Thank you for that. Uh, here's another one for joshua I mean, this is a comment, but I think it kind of relates it can you can kind of extract an interesting question from that So alex malpass, uh, who was mentioned previously, uh before in a couple minutes ago

01:41:02

Um, he made the argument if I don't know god exists then the christian god doesn't exist How would you respond to that joshua?

01:41:09

It seems to be the case that to refute, uh, the christian claim that all men know that god exists We just need to assert well, no,

01:41:16

I don't and so end of the story end of story. How would you respond to that? Uh, well theologically that's not true

01:41:23

Right, and that's pretty straightforward now. He's not going to accept that because he's not a christian If if ryan is representing malpass correctly here,

01:41:30

I would i'm shocked that he would even say something like this I don't know god exists Therefore the christian god doesn't exist which is basically saying, you know, according to some subjectivistic mental state that I have

01:41:40

Therefore there's an objective conclusion that god doesn't exist. It doesn't follow at all. I mean we have beliefs

01:41:46

We have so many beliefs, you know in our epistemic and noetic web of things and then on top of these beliefs We have iterated beliefs second order beliefs about our beliefs

01:41:54

And so for all he knows he could be being deceived. He could be deceiving himself himself And that's what roman says and again, dr.

01:42:01

Bonson his doctoral dissertation was on this very subject, but at base it's just Asinine it's like I subjectively don't have this belief.

01:42:09

Therefore. It's absolutely the case that god doesn't exist There's no serious scholarship there All right.

01:42:15

Thank you. Uh, david. Do you have any comments on that? Whoops i'm muted.

01:42:21

Aren't I? All right. Uh, I would say just it seems like it's a premise in an argument you have to add

01:42:28

Additional premises to that to say I don't know that the christian god exists. Therefore christian god And i'll just say i'm not

01:42:34

Christians aren't committed to the claim that all people know that god exists. Um, I know many christians who don't affirm that so,

01:42:43

I mean it seems like you would have to modify that to say that the christian god as conceived of by presuppositional, so A lot of modification would be needed there

01:42:53

All right. Thank you for that israel again with another five dollar super chat. Thank you so much Uh david, why why appeal to plausibility to explain meta logic?

01:43:01

How do you know you're not missing tons of factors that could change what is most plausible? Yeah, simple answer is

01:43:07

I don't um if you're familiar with my work on how I think we can justify our belief in logical laws, and if you haven't

01:43:14

You're not familiar with I have a video on my channel called the justification of logical laws where I deal with this

01:43:20

I do not appeal to plausibility. I think that these are justified by recourse to our direct acquaintance with concepts that build up logical propositions as well as a concept that um

01:43:31

Philosophers call analyticity and it's more complicated than that. So anyone who's interested i'll just point you to the video on my channel

01:43:37

All right. Thank you for that. Um, you have any comments on that joshua? Yes, and so david's response was basically what i've been getting at this whole time

01:43:44

He's starting with an egocentric picture and now he's openly admitting that he can't answer the big questions because why he's starting with a finite

01:43:52

You know subject himself and so he's being consistent. He said oh, I can't answer the big questions. I can't i'm not infinite

01:43:57

I don't know all the answers and which is to say that and ultimately speaking that sort of epistemology is irrational

01:44:04

Because he can't answer all the questions ultimately everything's mystery up to a certain point because of our finitude

01:44:09

And so again, this just gets back to my point that if you don't start with god, it's just a subjectivistic picture

01:44:14

It's an egocentric predicament, which is absurd. You know, we can't What kind of apologetic would be you know?

01:44:20

prefaced off of that or Jumping off of that starting point and that's been my argument this whole time tonight is it's subjective.

01:44:26

It's private It's egocentric whatever you want to call it, but there's nothing, you know serious or meaningful here.

01:44:31

That's objective or universally, um applicable Okay. Thank you. Uh, chris bolt, uh asks, uh, david, uh, you appear to argue for internalist foundationalism as an epistemology

01:44:43

Rather than evidentialism as an apologetic method. What's distinct biblical argument would you offer for evidentialism?

01:44:55

Uh, you're you're muted david Sorry about that Yeah, I mean

01:45:00

I did discuss evidentialism as an apologetic method at the beginning of my opening statement but Because that's the outworking of the epistemology

01:45:09

That's what I have identified as the reason for there being different apologetic methods is because we have different theories of justification and so different ways of justifying

01:45:18

I think that's where the main differences lie. And so that's why um, I primarily have focused on that, uh area

01:45:26

But um, yeah, I mean, I think I offered it before basically a brief case would be uh Look at paul's appeals to evidence in first corinthians 15.

01:45:34

Look at how elijah deals with the prophets at all look at uh, jesus is uh

01:45:40

Pointing to his miracles as evidence for why people should believe in him So, uh, yeah,

01:45:47

I mean I I think I could probably think of more examples than that if I really wanted to but those are Just kind of three that quickly come to mind

01:45:54

And uh, joshua, do you have anything to say to say to that? So so, uh david suggests that there are appeals to evidence there and so that kind of his methodology is consistent with what we see

01:46:03

In scripture, um, would you take issue with how he uses that as an explanation or do you kind of agree on the surface there?

01:46:10

well, we've got to be very careful because Uh, dr. Bolt is asking about evidentialism We're not about just using evidence evidences and so evidentialism

01:46:19

What does that all entail right that we can use evidences alone to get to? Probability that god exists

01:46:24

But as i've stated earlier god or paul does not argue from probability and acts

01:46:30

Yeah, he'll appeal to evidences and that's totally fine But he's standing on scripture the entire time and he's utilizing reductive arguments of his opponent's

01:46:38

Worldview to reduce it to absurdity and he's always standing on the bedrock of revelation and so um what david is

01:46:46

Referencing are instances of giving evidences, but now I have to ask is that the same thing as evidentialism?

01:46:52

As opposed to just giving evidences because presuppositionalist degree that's totally legit. Yeah, let's use evidence is all we want, you know

01:46:58

But what about the ism? That's the part that I would press further on All right, chris bolt has another question

01:47:04

But for joshua pillows, uh, you appear to be arguing for certainty in precept and against in other positions

01:47:10

But how does precept address those who don't affirm or need epistemic certainty in their view?

01:47:17

This came up I remember when this came up. Um Again, I I would just go back to transcendental considerations

01:47:24

What needs to be the case in order for to even make sense of do we need certainty or do we not need certainty? I'm going to keep going back to transcendental considerations in order to even bring that Uh question in order to even make it intelligible i'm going to argue it assumes the existence of god in order to do

01:47:38

So in the christian worldview, um as to whether or not certainty is required for knowledge I mean you'll get different answers.

01:47:44

I lean towards infallibilism um as a whole but I wouldn't give a definitive answer as of yet But my point being that I would just uh go to transcendental considerations if anyone wants to talk about certainty again

01:47:56

Bantle says take any fact whatsoever and we'll see how it fits into the system via transcendental implication

01:48:02

And to uh the mind of god and how he's interrelated all the facts together. So transcendentally

01:48:08

Okay, uh david. Are you have any comments on that? I mean, I'm also an infallibilist with at least with respect to basic beliefs.

01:48:15

Um, I mean, there are plenty of arguments for infallibilism So, I mean that's what I would put against a priest up or anyone else who doesn't think that certainty is needed at least at the level of basic beliefs and um, you know

01:48:28

For a collection of such arguments. I'll just refer people to uh, dr Nevin clemenhaga has a paper titled, uh knowledge and certainty.

01:48:37

It's his uh phd dissertation Where he offers several arguments for the conclusion that knowledge requires certainty and I I personally find many of them quite persuasive

01:48:46

I would like to piggyback off of that because you know, if if someone comes along and says well We don't need epistemic certainty for anything whatsoever

01:48:53

If they're, you know a universal fallibilist well then they have to embrace the absurd view that they could be wrong about the nature of laws of logic and uniformity in nature and That they exist going back to descartes argument

01:49:04

If certainty is not required for anything and everything then they start they have to start saying well I'm, not sure that I exist or that laws of logic are real or that there are mathematical norms

01:49:13

I know christians who hold to the position that they don't even know they exist. So there are people who hold to that Yeah, like I said, once I heard there are christian physicalists.

01:49:22

I everything just went out the window for me. So But I mean, yeah, if you're gonna hold to you We don't need certainty over anything whatsoever then you're you have to embrace these absurd beliefs that we could be wrong about everything about laws of logic and Uniformity and causality and that just doesn't make it's self -refuting.

01:49:36

So Okay, joshua after this remind me to send you a book on christian physicalism that you will love.

01:49:42

Oh boy. Okay All right, uh israel again with another super chat, uh, he's just got an endless, uh,

01:49:51

Endless supply of five dollars. Hey, man cash flow That's right. That's right.

01:49:56

Uh, he says david, uh, and I apologize if it's grammatically incorrect I'm, just going to read it as best I can david with god you have intention of logic working you got

01:50:06

Teleology, you cannot derive teleology from a non -god explanation

01:50:12

We justify that it works. I don't know if you understand what he's getting at But if you do you can try and take a stab at it

01:50:19

Yeah, so, uh, as you noted it is phrased a little awkwardly, but um, i'm gonna do my best.

01:50:25

So, um, He says that with god you have intention of logic So, I mean in my view,

01:50:32

I guess I said I I lean towards a nominalist view. So on nominalism

01:50:37

Uh logical laws, they're just mental propositions in our minds They're not they don't correspond to like an external abstract object.

01:50:45

There is no law of non -contradiction floating around in the universe It's an analytic proposition that we have in our own mind

01:50:53

Uh, so in that sense, yeah, i'm gonna want to say it's intentional and so well Yeah, if you want to be a divine conceptualist, you could say

01:51:00

Uh, I can explain that through god. I mean, okay through nominalism. I can explain that through a human mind

01:51:06

It's not clear to me that a divine mind is necessary for that If you want to go the plaguenist route on that I think they can just deny that logic is something that is intentional and that that has not been justified as far as I can see

01:51:21

All right. Thank you for that. And uh, joshua. Do you have comments on that? I do like this point. I if I remember correctly

01:51:27

Um, james anderson and greg welty referenced this in their paper lord of non -contradiction Whether you know, there's something

01:51:35

Distinct about you know laws of logic and that they have an aboutness they have Intentionality about something as opposed to you know, something some other relationship like spatial relationships or something like that um

01:51:46

Logic is about something and that's not a property you find in the physical universe something that transcends it and if logic has

01:51:52

Intentionality about something then um as anderson would argue it comes from a source a mind that is also about something

01:51:59

So I do find this um question rather fascinating All right, thank you. This is a question for joshua

01:52:05

Uh, do you think that god exists can ever be the conclusion of an argument? If not, then there can't be a line of reasoning for god and thus no reason for atheists to accept his existence um, i'm not sure

01:52:18

I understand the second half, but of course I believe Do you think god exists can never can ever be the conclusion?

01:52:24

Wait can ever be the conclusion? Well, that's my argument. That's the transcendental argument.

01:52:29

I mean in a I mean roughly stated, you know Vantil's argument is the christian worldview is true and that god exists.

01:52:35

So that's the conclusion of the transcendental argument So i'm not coming in here with some sort of fallibilistic or probabilistic argument saying

01:52:42

I believe god exists, but I could be wrong, you know vantil says it's a concrete transcendental worldview apologetic an argument that god

01:52:49

Absolutely does exist. So my argument tonight has been that god does exist and we all know it absolutely and that it's an objective proof

01:52:57

So, okay. All right, uh, david. Did you have any comments on that? Yeah, i'm just gonna say within presuppositionalism

01:53:04

I don't think that they would ever be denying that god can be the conclusion Argument, I think they would say in some sense the argument started with god as well

01:53:12

Although obviously not as simplistic as god exists. Therefore god exists But yeah, I mean presuppositionalists so far as I know don't have a problem saying that god exists can be the conclusion of an argument

01:53:23

They're just going to want insist that the way that they got there was showing that you depended on god all along All right, thank you for that Um, there's a question here from larry rain

01:53:33

Uh, how does one give an account for the reliability of their reasoning without arguing and reasoning in a circle?

01:53:39

I suppose that's for david Um, okay. I was gonna ask if josh wanted to take a stab at it first since I got the last question

01:53:47

Oh, that's fine. Uh, sorry. I guess I guess he did get the last question. I'll take it first if you want

01:53:52

Okay, okay. All right. Yeah, I wrote an article on this specific question. I would be on free thinking ministries

01:53:57

The article is entitled is all reasoning circular so you can see my extended thoughts there But um, basically, uh when the question comes up is our reasoning?

01:54:06

Reliable, uh, I think that and basically you have to assume it in order to justify it

01:54:12

I think that this assumes an externalist reliabilist account of epistemic justification

01:54:18

I'm an evidentialist. So at the level of basic beliefs i'm just going to jettison any reliability requirements at the level of basic beliefs

01:54:25

Justification always comes by means of acquaintance If reliability is relevant at some later point, you know, that's fine, but it's going to be justified through evidence or he froze

01:54:43

See calvinism's true. He's one of the frozen chosen It's a dead it's a good hey, it's a good pose though,

01:54:50

I mean he's like, yeah, he's spitting facts yo He's spitting he's spitting damn evidences.

01:54:57

Yeah, let's go man. I'm, so sorry david um You could david you could if you could hear me so, uh, yeah,

01:55:07

I mean I I just You could try signing out and then following the link again that might actually be um, that might actually work

01:55:17

So, uh, i'm so sorry guys. All right Um, oh I don't want to short change his answer too, uh

01:55:25

Okay, so we we'll just move along and uh, hopefully he'll be able to sign back in okay

01:55:31

See if I could find a question for uh, joshua here Let's see here

01:55:39

I think we're kind of drawn to the end unless it starts loading up again Um Let's see here.

01:55:46

Um while i'm scrolling for a question now give this video a thumbs up if you've been enjoying this conversation

01:55:52

Um, and even in the comments give it thumbs up if you let me know that you're enjoying these sorts of conversations

01:55:57

So, um, i've enjoyed this conversation a lot. I think both speakers have done an excellent job Uh, there was one question that was kind of a fun one david.

01:56:04

Uh, someone someone said i'm sorry joshua Someone said well, I really want to know what is under the blanket behind joshua

01:56:10

Uh, there's something I guess there's a blanket behind you, uh, you're concealing something So Yeah, so well, uh david asked if he was back in the chat and I said

01:56:23

I see your chat But I don't see his I think he tried to restart. Um, so i'm at my aunt's house right now because my cousins are in town from college and we're having a big party after this and This is the office and It Basically, there's a lot of clutter in here

01:56:39

And so my cousin was like just throw a blanket on it, you know, it'll look a lot more cleaned up and everything so, um

01:56:46

It's not a dead body or anything. It's just a lot of Stuff that I don't even know what it is.

01:56:51

I just covered it for aesthetic appeal. So all right. Okay. Um, Yvonne I think yvonne rivera says how can

01:56:59

I support you eli? Well, thank you so much. Uh, you can support by Uh subscribing to the channel if you haven't already, uh you could also financially support if you're so inclined through super chats on these live chats and uh,

01:57:10

You can also give to revealed apologetics through the revealed apologetics website. So revealed apologetics .com

01:57:17

There's a donate button. And of course, um financial, um help is always um appreciated

01:57:23

Um, and of course, I know this is often given as kind of like a throwaway like i'm a christian So I would say that but I would really appreciate your prayers

01:57:30

Um, so, um, that's another way that you can support Myself revealed apologetics, you know, um, so thank you for that.

01:57:37

Um, here's a question here Someone is at planting us bulldog. Oh, it seems like david's back with us.

01:57:43

Sorry. Okay. There it is I'm, sorry that that happened man Is there do you remember the line of reasoning you were kind of already on that you?

01:57:52

uh might want to just pick up where you left off or Oh, I mean I I was on the last sentence. I was just about to say

01:57:57

I think that the Question how do you know that your reasoning is reliable? Just it begs the question in favor of externalism and reliabilism

01:58:05

And so if you're an evidentialist, you don't have a circularity problem there Okay.

01:58:11

Thank you for that. Uh planting the bulldog, uh says while we're waiting while he's back But perhaps you can kind of give a brief explanation here, uh, joshua

01:58:18

Um, can you explain your answer to the stroudian objection in his discussion with baylent? Uh, it seemed like he didn't understand the objection or else

01:58:26

I didn't get his reply so, um, basically, um, by the way, if you have no idea what the stroudian objection to transcendental arguments are

01:58:34

I have had joshua on previously and if you search through my videos in the podcast where the entire episode is

01:58:43

Discussing the stroudian objection so you can go look to that video for more information. But uh, why don't you um,

01:58:50

Uh Explain your response to the strategy objection briefly briefly explain what the objection is and your brief summary response

01:58:58

That would be very helpful. So in the 20th century transcendental arguments kind of resurfaced after the 19th century, you know cont for um

01:59:09

Spearheaded the uh philosophy of it and so in the 20th century they kind of come back But they come back in like local sort of arguments over specific issues

01:59:17

It's not broad scope at anything like van till and so you'd have philosophers arguing transcendentally

01:59:23

And stroud critiqued one philosopher and i'm not going to get into all of it. But basically stroud said Well a transcendental argument you can conclude that we necessarily have to think in a certain way

01:59:33

But that doesn't necessarily mean that that's how it is out there in external reality, right? In order to know anything outside of us

01:59:39

We need a verification principle by which we can verify what the truths outside of us are what reality is

01:59:45

So if someone wants to give a transcendental argument, that's totally fine But all it can only ever conclude is we have to think this certain way and this was his response to strawson and so um

01:59:55

Well, this would be devastating if it applied to van till because it's like uh -oh Well now all we have is some sort of conceptual transcendental argument that we have to think this way

02:00:04

But that doesn't mean god actually does exist And bonson's answer to that and I don't know if van till answered it directly but bonson's answer was well everyone starts

02:00:13

With a metaphysical scheme, right? I mean It's not like we're all coming into this neutrally without any metaphysical assumption

02:00:20

Excuse me man hiccups and so Um van till's apologetic is a concrete worldview apologetic.

02:00:27

We start with the christian worldview That's how we know we're in touch with reality how we know god exists and we were made in his image and we can know things

02:00:33

And so our transcendental method already has built into it the metaphysical scheme of christianity and so Two comebacks to that would be well, how do we know?

02:00:44

that That what the metaphysical scheme is and the answer would be through scripture and someone says. Oh, well, you have the bible that's scripture

02:00:51

That's your verification principle. So you don't need the transcendental argument Well, no, that doesn't automatically mean we don't need a transcendental argument

02:00:57

All all it means is van till has given us added ammunition I've said earlier paul didn't use a transcendental argument in acts

02:01:03

But he still stood upon the authority of scripture just as we do so scripture is our verification principle

02:01:08

The second answer to that would be oh, no. No van till's begging the question. You can't start with god You can't start with all the metaphysical truths of christianity because that's begging the question

02:01:17

You have to start with man and then work out for man Well, of course that criticism is extremely naive because he's taken for granted

02:01:24

What he's trying to argue against how does he know we can't start with god? How does he know that we have to start with man before going out to god?

02:01:31

So the critic the stride and critic who raises that criticism is likewise begging the question He hasn't assumed that we can't start with god.

02:01:38

He's just taken it for granted And so, uh the question or the answer to a presupposition is we start with the christian worldview

02:01:44

And the critic who wants to object to that starts with his non -christian worldview So if i'm begging the question so is the critic the point is we all beg the question in that we all start somewhere

02:01:53

The real question is how do you justify that starting point van till's answer was from the impossibility of the contrary

02:02:00

Okay, david. You have any uh comments on that? My own thoughts on pillow's response to this particular argument, which is, you know, certainly one of the stronger ones against Transcendental arguments though.

02:02:11

It's not one that I have really developed myself in my own criticisms of presuppositional apologetics

02:02:17

But I guess my issue with joshua's particular response is that I think it just kind of shifts the issue

02:02:23

The problem here is about the justification that a transcendental argument yields and joshua's

02:02:29

Just sort of like saying well that objection doesn't it doesn't apply to my argument because I I don't believe in autonomous reasoning

02:02:36

And I don't know that has anything to do with autonomy per se is it's just about whether the argument can confer justification

02:02:42

So saying it doesn't apply to me It just seems like special pleading to me but again

02:02:47

I I would have to more carefully look at you know Joshua's written work on this and even get my own thoughts on stroud's whole objection more clear myself

02:02:56

It seems like a good objection to transcendental arguments at least world -directed transcendental arguments but um, and uh, yeah, those are just kind of some some scattered thoughts

02:03:05

I have on I've written a paper on the stroudian objection against valence paper supporting it um, and I Wasn't left satisfied with it for whatever reason so For those of you who want to you know get more insight

02:03:19

I've written a completely new paper on the objection that have yet to be released, but it's brand new

02:03:25

It's from a different approach and I think i've got more in it So I will be releasing another lengthy paper Responding to the stroudian rejection because I wholeheartedly agree with what david said.

02:03:34

I think this is one of the most devastating criticisms of um presuppositionalism and I mean

02:03:41

I believe bonson answered it wholeheartedly. I mean everyone begs the question we have to start somewhere you justify it transcendentally

02:03:48

But anyway, yeah, so I have a paper coming out as well a new one All right. Well, um

02:03:53

That seems to be the end of the questions. I do apologize if I missed any of the questions it's uh the way stream yard works i'm gonna have to scroll through some stuff and sift through comments and questions, but um, i'd like to thank both my guests david paulman and joshua pillows you guys did an excellent job and I am

02:04:09

I I am Positive that this discussion will prove useful for people who are are interested in these sort of methodological

02:04:17

Debates the one thing that I want to encourage people and and I guess I just feel kind of impelled

02:04:22

Compelled to say this is that we have to understand. Okay David's a christian joshua was a christian.

02:04:29

I'm a christian. We disagree. I mean fine. There's nothing wrong with criticizing and critiquing um, but I would encourage folks to not make this kind of like Apologetic turf war sort of thing like when this debate is over Uh, I hope that people don't trash the other guy and you know, oh look at this guy, you know

02:04:49

I think we should really just come to grips with the specific things that they um, That they said and deal with the arguments and not so much

02:04:58

Uh the persons and things let's not blow this out of proportion like many people tend to do once these sort of debates end um so We want to honor christ even in the midst of our disagreement and that includes even when the camera is not on so i've encouraged folks, um to Have at it re -watch this video take notes have your debates, but do so as first peter 3 15 says with gentleness and respect

02:05:21

David, is there any place that you'd like to direct people, uh to um, Become more familiar with your own work your youtube channel, maybe a website some books.

02:05:31

Um, Now would be the time to share that with folks Yeah, sure. So for my own, um, you know thoughts on this topic

02:05:37

I as I mentioned free thinking ministries is a website where i've published a few articles some of them on presuppositional apologetics

02:05:45

So not all and then on my own, uh channel faith because of reason Also, if you just want to look into this issue a little more

02:05:52

I think this is a good book for getting into it. It's titled debating christian religious epistemology Uh, you got five different views in there

02:06:00

But one of them being the classical foundationalism that I hold and then you've got a scholar and defending presuppositional because i'm into great

02:06:07

Introduction to the topic very clearly written just evidentialism in general This is kind of the standard work on it a little dated by now

02:06:14

But evidentialism by harold connie and richard feldman And then if you want the in my opinion the panultimate critique of presuppositional apologetics though, not necessarily directed towards it

02:06:24

Uh this book internalism and epistemology, uh by timothy and lydia mcgrew. It's just a general critique of all um

02:06:32

Versions of epistemic externalism which is going to include presuppositionalism Thank you for that david and joshua, is there any

02:06:41

Anywhere you want to direct people to your stuff your articles things like that Um, not presently.

02:06:48

I have a lot coming Um, but i'm going to refrain from making any sort of announcements right now.

02:06:53

Um, as always I always recommend. Um, If not bonds and jason lyle if you want a really primer

02:07:01

Introduction to presuppositionalism and then bonds and then van till after that to get see you'll have a fundamental understanding of it, but um, you'll find tons of resources on the presuppositional apologetics facebook group

02:07:13

Thousands of members in there and so many links and papers that have been posted over the years in there. So Um, you really can't go wrong.

02:07:20

If you have a question just join that group and ask a question Ricky rolled on will tell you Use the search

02:07:27

Yeah Yeah, he's I know. Yeah He doesn't mind if I call him out. Um, by the way, just you mentioned david lyle's work um,

02:07:34

I just want to let people know that david has a review on um, jason lyle's book, uh,

02:07:40

The ultimate proof of creation where he offers his criticism of uh, the presuppositionalism that's presented by uh, dr

02:07:46

Lyle there so folks can check that out. I believe it's on the free thinking uh website as well, right?

02:07:51

Is that correct david? It is although i'm gonna qualify and say that I think um, I was a little newer in epistemology then so I would

02:07:59

Have developed some of my thoughts there a little differently. So yes, you can read it I think my general critique of lyle stands and that is where you can find it.

02:08:06

But I um I would have said some things differently in retrospect All right.

02:08:11

Well, uh, thank you gentlemen. It has been a blessing and an honor. I love you both and um, Keep working for the kingdom even as we disagree and when we get to heaven, we'll find out who's right.

02:08:21

I'm just kidding I'm, just kidding. Um, well, that's all for this episode Thank you so much everyone for listening in questions super chats so much appreciated