Presup & Objective Idealism: Presuppers Respond

Introduction and the Purpose of the Discussion

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and today I have with me my good friend Joshua Pillows. We're going to be interacting with a video that was put out by an atheist YouTuber, Ben Watkins.

He has a really cool name by the way. That name sounds like someone from a comic book who's a superhero and then when he's not wearing the suit, Ben Watkins, right? It sounds really cool. But Ben, I've had some interactions with Ben.

Every now and then I will message him through Facebook Messenger. Hey man, what are you reading? I'm always interested in what he's reading. He's a super sharp guy, very nice guy and a joy to interact with.

And so both of us, myself and Josh, we're looking forward to taking a look at the video that he put out entitled Objective Idealism and Presuppositionalist Apologetics. I think he means Presuppositional Apologetics but that's okay.

And he interacts with some Presupp and tries to counter Presupp with some various views that we're going to be interacting with tonight. And so he was super gracious. He sent us over the slides that he used for the video as well as the transcript so that we can take a look at that and make sure that we're understanding where he's coming from and so we really appreciate Ben doing that.

So we hope to interact with his video that we're going to be putting up in just a little bit respectfully and hopefully this moves the ball a little bit in terms of understanding where we're coming from as Presuppositionalists.

And I hope that we're able to represent his view accurately as well. And this is how ideas need to be discussed and debated. They need to be discussed thoughtfully, respectfully, but in depth as much as we're able to do so.

And so I just pray that this discussion goes well and I'm super excited to have Josh. He's not only a friend of mine but he's also a super sharp guy and is very knowledgeable in Presuppositional Apologetics.

But first, before we get into the video, I would like to let folks in on the new book, the new book that came out. This is, and maybe this will cause people to buy it, I don't know how influential I am, but this is my new favorite book on Presuppositional Apologetics.

I remember years back talking to Josh, hey, you've listened to a lot of Bonson lectures. You've studied this stuff. Where should I focus my energy in really mastering this method? And I remember him telling me, well, if you really want to master the method, the argumentation, you're really going to want to focus on Greg Bonson's lectures on Transcendental Arguments because that's really the heart of the argument that is typically put forth by a Presuppositional Apologist.

And so I did what he said. I listened to the lectures over and over and over again and they were immensely helpful. But then this book here is essentially those lectures in book form. And it includes Dr. Bonson's lectures on Transcendental Arguments and his protege, Michael Butler, who contributes to the discussion as well.

So you get a history of Transcendental Arguments, the current landscape of Transcendental Arguments, what sets the Vantillian Transcendental Argument apart from Transcendental Arguments in general. I often get asked the question about the Stroudian Objection.

There are some comments, Josh, in some of my YouTube videos where like, oh, Transcendental Arguments are they're dead. You know, the Stroudian Objection destroyed them. I'm like, oh, not quite. The Transcendental Presuppositional Argument is unique and different and I think escapes the traditional critiques of kind of the run-of-the-mill Transcendental Arguments and that's addressed in this book as well.

So I highly recommend it. And if you notice, you can't see there, but under the good-looking fellow on the other side where his name is Joshua Pillow is there. Joshua Pillow's name is on the bottom of this book here.

He is the editor. He edited this book. As a matter of fact, he was the one who transcribed the audio into book form and added his own footnotes and helpful insights to expand upon or highlight some aspect of what Dr. Bonson said to clarify various points.

And so I highly recommend, okay? I highly recommend The Objective Proof for Christianity. Josh, why don't you share with us the background of how this book kind of came together and eventually was created?

How the Bonson Transcription Project Came Together

Well, it started in 2017, really, when I was introduced to Bonson shortly after I was saved. And I just devoured his tapes with apologetics. I didn't know it at the time, but I was just on fire for defending the faith.

And it was really just a long train from that point on. I came around his Transcendental Seminar, from which this transcription is probably COVID time. And of course, we had nothing to do. And so I just kept transcribing tapes as I had been.

And I realized that, wow, this is material that we need in public because in the absence of Bonson's death or Bonson being here, academia has come after presuppositionalism. Other Christians have, and they've leveled philosophical criticisms that weren't addressed in any of his other books or any of his public debates or really any other presuppositionalists for that matter.

And I'm like, wow, this is what we need. Like, this is it. So I transcribed it like I transcribed his other courses, his other tapes. And it took it was probably two or three years after that, that I approached the American Vision about publishing it because it was much needed.

And the footnotes were originally my notes when I was first transcribing it to, you know, OK, this is I get this. And then over the years, I refined them as I grew in that knowledge. And so it really just came about through years of studying Bonson.

And it was like a treasure that I had found. And I was like, this is what we need. This is it. And so it really is the end all defense of presuppositionalism and in the process, illustrating it to be an objective proof in the wake of academic criticisms today.

I mean, it addresses every single criticism from a philosophical standpoint that has been promulgated since Bonson has passed.

Why Presuppositionalism Needs a Broader Defense

And even the ones, Josh, where I often hear. But the problem with presupp is and then someone will lay lay out a counterpoint that they think presuppers have never thought about. Like, oh, my goodness.

You know, and then it's been addressed. Right. So like and it's old. Like these are old objections. Right. So a lot of the things that people just take for granted, like, oh, presupp is weak because this obvious weakness.

I'm like, dude, that's that's old news been responded to. And it's available, unfortunately, not available in a lot of the writing, but available in a lot of the audio lectures. But now we have some key audio lectures in right in written form.

So that's going to be super helpful for people.

Yeah, for sure. And it helps that a Covenant Media Foundation made it free a few years ago. And then Apologia took up the task, so to speak, in the audio. But even then, free or not, I mean, you don't how do I learn about this apologetic?

You know, oh, what about these tapes from the 80s and 90s? It's like it's not your first thought. You want to go to literature and it wasn't in the literature. And so now it is.

So now if you go over to American Vision dot org, you can order your copy of the objective proof for Christianity coming straight to your home with just a simple order and it will be autographed by Joshua Pilton.

I'm just kidding. He won't order autographed. I'm sure he would if he could. But maybe one day, one day you'll start signing books like one. I want pillows autograph. That'd be pretty cool. And then people will be fighting over your autographed copies, just like people try to fight over my my Cornelius Vantill signed copy of Defense of the Faith.

Well, actually, speaking of, well, this is on my mind and I posted about this on Facebook. But for those who don't know or haven't read it, that the book was a huge success and we expected it because of the material that was in it.

Gary DeMar at the American Vision, where are we starting on another project in the same format? So the next project, presumably because we haven't really started it yet, is transcribing. Well, there's a transcription, but it's of the Bonson Stein debate and it's going to be the same layout with my footnotes at the bottom as well.

You know, articulating what's going on, embellishing on it. But more of quotes from Bonson's other works such that he's more of a present figure in the book to where he wrote the book in real time. And here's what I'm cross referencing from what I wrote years ago.

And so that's going to be the next task in the coming years. And it's just amazing how God has worked through that man. It's just insane.

You know, it'd be great in book form, but I know it'll never happen is to have the interaction between Dr. Bonson and Gordon Stein. Their written correspondence is lengthy enough to be put in book form.

That would be cool. But there's no access. We have no access to that, unfortunately. And I think there's some issues of publishing it. So but anyway, maybe if Molanism is true, there's a possible world in which God actualizes that.

Introducing Ben Watkins and the Video Under Review

Yeah. All right. Well, let's jump right in without further ado. So so one quick one last. OK. The objective proof for Christianity. The presuppositional ism of Cornelius Fantil and Greg L. Bonson. And it includes portions of the presentation of Michael Butler, who was really kind of Dr. Bonson's prime primary student that was kind of studying under him, who has disappeared.

He is apparently raptured. Nowhere to be found. But he's got some great stuff nonetheless. And so folks could totally check it out. All right. Well, without further ado, let's kind of jump right into this mamma jamma.

OK, we're going to be playing the video here of Ben Watkins interacting with. Well, let's let him explain himself as we play the video. All right. And by the way, before I get started, all of the YouTuber kind of stuff.

If you like what you see and it's useful, click the you know, the like button notification bell, all that sort of jazz. And be sure to share the content if you find it useful. And of course, when this transitions over to the iTunes podcast, writing a review is super helpful as well.

Greatly appreciate it. So. So there you go. All right. Did it did it did it to do. Let's get started. All right. You can just indicate that you'd like me to stop. OK. And then I'll stop. Welcome to another episode.

Really, theology, philosophy of religion podcast. I'm Ben Watkins and I'll be your host today. In today's episode, I want to discuss at least three things. Presuppositional apologetics, objective idealism, and a few brief remarks on the argument from divine hiddenness.

Presuppositional Apologetics and the Christian Precondition for Knowledge

So let's start with previous presuppositional apologetics. There's a notorious tradition of Christian presuppositional apologetics online. But there's also a Christian tradition of it, specifically the Vantillian tradition, that is more serious and makes more analytically respectable claims as far as what is often associated with the study of knowledge, often called epistemology.

Well, first, I want to stop here to say kudos to Ben for making that proper distinction. Right. A lot of people will be exposed to presuppositional apologetics online. And so there's kind of like a stigma associated with like online presuppositional list.

We don't have to mention any names or any situations, of course. But part of my goal, Josh, in this channel, when I first got started, was to try and help the presuppositional apologetics public relations to offer kind of a more respectable presentation of presuppositional ism to make a distinction between presuppositional ism as a methodology.

And presuppositional ism as certain individuals and personalities that are typically associated with the method. So I really appreciate Ben making that distinction between what we might call pop presuppers and the more sophisticated presuppositional ism found in Vantill, the followers of Vantill and things like that.

So I really much appreciated that distinction.

And so this tradition, the Vantillian tradition of presuppositional apologetics claims that knowledge implies theism because God is a necessary condition for the intelligibility of the world and its ability to know itself.

According to this view, if there were no God, then we could not know anything at all because God's divine revelation is a necessary precondition for knowledge. Because everyone knows something, it follows everyone knows God exists.

So Vantill puts it like this. If one does not make human knowledge wholly dependent upon the original self-knowledge and consequent revelation of God to man, the man will have to seek knowledge within himself as the final reference point.

Then he will have to seek an exhaustive understanding of reality. He will have to hold that he cannot attain such an exhaustive understanding of reality. He has no true knowledge of anything at all. Either man must then know everything or he knows nothing.

This is the dilemma that confronts every form of non-Christian epistemology. Presuppositional apologetics takes several implications from this. So, for example, if someone denies God exists and they admit they do not know everything, then they must be somehow suppressing a knowledge of God.

Additionally, there is no neutral epistemological ground between the Christian and the non-Christian to resolve their disagreements. Any conversation about the coherence of theism, the uniformity of nature, or the place of Christianity in anyone's life, we must either presuppose Christian theism or succumb to total skepticism and admit that knowledge is impossible.

All right, so Josh, what would you say so far? How has Ben doing so far in explaining his understanding of presuppositional methodology and thinking?

You know, I appreciate it. It's pretty much accurate. One point that he mentioned a little earlier was that he emphasizes that divine revelation is a necessary precondition for knowledge. And many critics today, no doubt because of the analytical mindset and philosophy, is it's really epistemically emphasized.

And revelation is the epistemology of Christianity. But it's also God's very existence that is the necessary precondition. And, of course, if you say his divine revelation is the necessary precondition, then that presupposes his existence, obviously.

Otherwise, we wouldn't have a revelation. But, yeah, just to be conscious of the fact that we need to also take into account the metaphysical aspects, which we will get to at length ad nauseum as we go through this video.

Right.

So when we presuppose the existence of God, that's a metaphysical presupposition as much as it is arguing transcendentally that the Christian worldview is conceptually necessary. So they would argue for conceptual necessity.

The Christian worldview is conceptually necessary. And the triune God is metaphysically necessary.

Correct.

Okay.

According to Psalm 14, the fool hath said in his heart there is no God. And according to Romans 118, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and righteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Objective Idealism and the Autonomy of Reason

My aim here is going to be twofold. I want to first respond to Van Til's claims by putting forward a form of objective idealism recently defended by Sebastian Rodel in his wonderful book, Self-Consciousness and Objectivity.

And then in closing, I want to turn the tables on the presuppositional apologists and argue that not only are there people who sincerely believe that God does not exist, our knowledge of such people is actually evidence against God.

This is the well-worn argument from divine hiddenness as defended by people like J .L. Schellenberg in his wonderful book, The Hiddenness Argument. And in case you've missed it, my co-host Justin Schieber has put together a series going much more in-depth into the reasoning of the hiddenness argument.

If you've not seen that series yet, I highly recommend it. So check out those episodes of Real Atheology, a philosophy of religion podcast, and I'll be sure to include links in the description.

Now, real quick, folks are wondering why does he sound like the way he's sounding. He's reading off a transcript, which is perfectly fine. People do that. That's fine. And we have his voice sped up just a little bit, so if he sounds a little quick here.

Now, I want to say something important here, Josh, and maybe you can comment on this. I think what Ben is doing in terms of presenting the case that he's going to present is what unbelievers should be doing if they want to interact with presuppositional apologetics, right?

He is offering a counterpoint to argue that he could have objectivity in a non-Christian worldview. Now, we don't believe he succeeds, but that's what we're wanting to do, right? We lay out our worldview and we try to explain why the Christian worldview provides the necessary preconditions for knowledge and intelligible experience.

And then, of course, the unbeliever is going to bring his worldview to bear and try to say, hey, my worldview, to counter your point, my worldview can provide those preconditions, and so your position is false.

That's what we should be doing, interacting with the ideas, not just accusing presuppositionalists of playing word games. We're not playing word games. We're laying out worldviews, and it's really helpful when the other side actually is willing to lay out their view.

So again, more kudos to Ben for approaching the topic the way that he does even though ultimately we're going to disagree. Any thoughts on that, Joshua?

No, it's good. And later on, he's going to remark more about his metaphysic idealism, the metaphysic, his view of reality. And as he said, he's an objective idealist, and he delineates that with subjective idealism, which says that really everything is a product of the mind, which is solipsistic.

And so he's presenting some form of objectivity, and idealism, as I've told you before, is very abstract compared to other views, and it's very nuanced. So I guarantee there will be points where I will misrepresent some things of what he says, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter because what I'm really wanting to go out are specific statements of what he's saying.

But yes, it's very commendable, and it is the appropriate thing to do to well, let me lay out my worldview to counter the presuppositionalist before or after you lay out yours or whatever. This is how it should be, worldviews and conflict, as Bonson would always say.

It's not just name-calling and this is why you're wrong, and then I'm not going to explain my side. But so yeah, it's a conflict of worldviews. That's what apologetics here is.

All right, very good.

So to recap, I will defend at least two contentions here. The first is that neither divine revelation nor any form of theism are preconditions for knowledge because reason is autonomous. The second is that there are some people who do not believe God exists, much less know that he exists, and some of these non-theists imply atheism.

My first contention we can call the autonomy of reason, and I will argue a form of objective idealism undercuts essential claims of presuppositional apologetics. I will also help us understand the metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions that underpin reason, judgment, and their relation to our knowledge more generally.

My second contention constitutes the argument from divine hiddenness. It provides us with a negative answer to the question of whether or not God exists.

Hey guys, it's Justin. Sorry to interrupt, but we put a lot of time and effort into these episodes because we think it's very important that people come to think more carefully about religious opinions.

And you're watching the... Anyway, that's all. Back to the episode.

There we go.

Hume, Kant, Hegel, and the Rational Structure of Reality

So let's now turn to objective idealism in my first contention. I want to point out at the start that my own sympathies regarding the science of knowledge or what is called epistemology are with Hume, Kant, and Hegel broadly.

And the form of objective idealism I'll be defending here is roughly the view that reason is a fundamental and primitive idea. To use some Hegelian jargon, we can have knowledge of the world in and for itself by understanding any determinate concept in itself and then out of itself by way of negation.

This dialectic implies that humans are rational animals capable of reason or understanding reasons to have certain beliefs.

Okay.

The first issue. And, I mean, again, for the listeners, you're just going to hear the same thing over and over again because Ben misses the mark from the get-go. So he's just going to keep committing the same blunders.

You know, he says, you know, we're reasonable creatures. We're rational creatures. But he never bothers to mention why. You know, why is that in the first place? He starts with the rationality of the mind and how we can construct an objective reality apart from revelation.

But the problem is that there are transcendental preconditions for the rationality of the mind, which is to say that he's thinking too parochially. He's not seeing the broad picture, which is what the Vantilian apologetic is.

So already I'm going to point out many times that he's going to keep appealing to the rational creatures. We know what's true and so forth. And, well, you just took for granted that that's the case. Why is that the case?

On your worldview, on your view of reality, why is it the case to begin with? So he just takes that for granted. So that's one of his major mistakes throughout the entire video.

All right.

Now, when someone says, well, we are rational creatures. Like, I don't have to prove that, bro. You know, how would Because there are people who say, like, this is dumb, man. We're obviously rational creatures.

Like, we can take that for granted because it's obviously the case. How would we interact with something like that?

Well, I mean, you could say, well, obviously God exists. I don't need to justify that. If we're going to play the arbitrary game, I'll just play it right back at you. But in another sense, it's, okay, well, your game is we don't have to justify these fundamental beliefs.

These aren't just trivial beliefs. If that's the game we're playing, then I don't have to justify God existing. It just is that way. And we can all just be arbitrary at the end of the day. We don't really have to be justificatory in our philosophy.

That's just what we're going to do. It's not a rational enterprise.

All right. Thank you for that.

A way of concepts or ideas, because the world itself has a rational and intelligible structure. Hegel helps us understand his view with his famous dicto

Oh, right there. I was at piggyback.

He said the world itself has a rational structure. That's a huge metaphysical claim.

Again, it's like, you know, there are these memes or comics out there like, you know, are you a philosopher? And then the response is why? You know, because that's all philosophers ask is why, over and over again.

They want to get to the fundamental, you know, the basic truths of reality and so forth. So again, you know, we're rational creatures. Why he took that for granted. Well, you know reality is rational.

Well, why you took that for granted and I pushed him on this on Facebook After he posted the video. I said what you first have to justify the uniformity of nature the rationality of the mind is dependent on the Rationality or the uniformity of the reality that it's in to begin with.

And so the uniformity of nature is a transcendental for the rationality of the mind. Metaphysics precedes ontology and so when I pushed him on that he openly admitted that we probably don't have any Justification as to why you know the external world so to speak of reality is rational to begin with there's really no solution to The problem of induction and so forth.

He openly admitted that right and it's just a concession to defeat because that was my entire point is if you can't justify that Transcendental then you can't justify the transcendental argument. You're trying to get from the rationality of the very mind, right?

He's giving a localized transcendental argument for the rationality, but not going broad enough to the more the deeper foundations. It's kind of like and I'm not saying he's doing this on purpose. But it's kind of like hey, look what's happening over here, but don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

Which is at the fundamental level. I can't justify the things that I'm talking about on this side of the curtain so to speak.

Yeah, and that's that's why you know, one of the reasons I'm sure way philosophy is taking an analytic term. We'll just focus on the narrow aspects because you know, all the great philosophers up to Khan Hegel they really fail.

They're always defects and. Yeah, it's just and Bonson mentions this in the new book as well that and Vantill openly knows that Unbelievers can give a transcendental argument. I mean, it's been a literature before Vantill all the way back to Aristotle.

But if an unbeliever gives a transcendental argument, it's like a rock falling in a bottomless ocean. He says you have this rock this solid argument here. That's a transcendental argument. But you have nowhere to put it in your worldview because if you want a rational coherent system By which to justify to argue from it has to be rational and coherent.

Everything has to be connected. So if you have one transcendental here, it's like good for you. You know, but you have a plethora of others others that you have to justify and so if you bring them together.

How do you bring them together in a unified whole?

Yeah, and that goes to you know brute facts or mute facts. He has to come to you know All the facts of the universe for the first time and interrelate them via the medium of his own mind. And what's the mind?

Well, it's fallible. It's finite. It's temporal. We're all mistaken. We're not objective creatures were subjective creatures. And so it's just a mess at the end of the day. So even if he succeeded in giving this local transcendental For the rationality of his mind through objective idealism It's ultimately meaningless because he has a plethora of others to account for and as I said, he openly admitted on Facebook We can't really justify the uniformity in nature in which case he has no argument to begin with.

All right, very good.

Dumb that the rational is the real and the real is the rational. What this means is that the metaphysics of reality can be understood by the rational capacities of our minds on this view. Whatever is real must be discernible to mind because knowing and being thought and existence are necessarily part of the same rational whole.

In other words thinking subjects can know the world because there is in at least some sense an Identity between thought and existence. This is what makes objective idealism a form of idealism and should be contrasted with Subjective idealism, which is the view that the ontology of the world is constituted by purely mental objects and any further material reality is ultimately illusory.

Subjective idealism is most often associated with Bishop Berkeley and the empiricist tradition. But objective idealism is most often associated with post Kantians like Hegel Shelling and Fichte and even some American pragmatists like C .S. Peirce and Wilfred Sellars.

The key to understanding objective idealism involves understanding several primitive notions. We would frequently refer to the human capacity for consciously understanding things as reason. Rationality and judgment and I will use terms like reasons or justification.

To refer to considerations that count in favor of reasoning or judging in certain ways. It's important to realize that on objective idealism Reason in the sense of our capacity for understanding and in the sense of considerations that count in favor.

Or two sides of the same coin. You cannot have one without the other on this view. There is a continuum between our valid forms of thought and what we should believe about the world.

Because another issue right there and and it's kind of a basic criticism. But you know he and he'll say this later, too. And if you see me looking over here, it's because I have the transcript here and I'm just following.

You know, he mentions valid reforms of thought valid arguments legitimate premises and so forth. How does he you know justify that or verify what is and isn't valid without self-reference to his own mind?

Because as I just said and as I will continue to say it's subjective. It's fallible. It's finite. So he has no claim to dogmatism from that local perspective but again Metaphysically he has no claim to consciousness to begin with because he offers us no explanation as to why he's a conscious being or why?

We're conscious rational beings in the first place. So he's there's another two-fold problem.

Right and just appealing to say the fact that they're self-evident for example. Yeah, you know. Yep. God's self-evident. Then you get down to the issue of arbitrariness, right?

You can just assert what you think is self-evident. Yeah, and you just swap the words. It's evident to the self and again What's the self. It's subjective and it makes it an internal reference point.

And who cares you have over 8 billion people on this earth. It's self-evident to me. Well, congratulations, you know, but I don't care about self evidence subjective evidence. I care about objective evidence.

Just a real quick word to Tim Moore most blessed. He says. But not knowing the terms doesn't mean I can't poke holes in what they say. Yeah, if you're listening to what we're saying, obviously, we're interacting with more sophisticated presentation.

So that's gonna require us to kind of use vocabulary that to those who are philosophically theologically and apologetically uninitiated. It's gonna be difficult. But here's some encouragement when you're talking to someone that is using big words and you're in the context of an apologetic interaction There's nothing wrong with saying.

Hey, that's a really big word can you define that for me so that I could understand where you're coming from and Allow the person to explain themselves and then see if you could interact with what they've explained in more easier terms.

So just because someone uses big words doesn't mean you can't interact with them. So just wanted to throw that out there.

Knowing and being are necessarily part of the same rational whole. It is this essential feature of reason? I will argue supports my first contention the autonomy of reason. Before I can argue for the autonomy of reason you must first be clear about the idea of reasons.

Autonomy. The autonomy of reason constitutes freedom from external control or influence and reasons. Independence from collective or individual desire or authority. The term autonomy is derived from the Greek word autonomous.

Meaning to have its own laws.

Now real quick. He said that autonomy is freedom from external Forces or. I don't remember exactly what he said. I was thinking too when I heard that. How could you know that you're not being influenced by external factors?

Yeah, I mean if you're a Darwinian first of all, and you have the problem, you know of the mind and the chemical processes. No, but you know if we want to just focus on Idealism per se again. It's a problem of self-reference.

How does he know that without appealing to himself and he's gonna say Presumably that. Well, I just said there's reason this objective, you know, it's ingrained. Rationality is ingrained in the universe.

But it just goes back to the previous problem. Why is that the case? You can't be arbitrary about that. So it's the horns of a dilemma.

Hmm, okay.

And famously characterize his formula of autonomy or categorical imperative is the ability to act in accordance with self-given laws or rules.

Right there in the right there. I really hope when he said self-given that was metaphorical. You know, like who's giving people these laws. This, you know, I mean if you're an atheist. You don't believe in this higher consciousness or anything.

So I really was metaphorical again I mean if that would be a transcendental in a sense as well. But there's just another rock falling in the pool falling in the ocean. I mean all these disparate arguments you have bring them together somehow then, you know.

Good the arbitrary appetites of our desires or the whims of some authority. I will argue similarly that reason is autonomous in the sense that reason is independent of any subject whatsoever and reasoning is a Self-governing act.

All of the necessary conditions for knowledge are contained within our acts of reasoning and the objects of our judgment themselves. Contrary to van Teel and other presuppositional apologetics the autonomy of reason implies that God cannot be a necessary condition of knowledge.

I want to argue that the autonomy of reason is entailed by an understanding of reasons objectivity self-consciousness irreducibility and universality. This is really important because these four features of reason are the heart of objective idealism and give non-christians their own transcendental argument.

Against Presuppositional apologetics the autonomy of reason implies that the preconditions of knowledge are contained entirely within reason itself.

So that reason is this is where? Bonson would usually say unbelievers have no problem with the concept of a god. They just want to don't want to get personal about my accountability. And so he's really deifying reason in a sense if you will that Implied in that reason ingrained in it contained the preconditions necessary for intelligibility.

So he substituted a theistic God with his autonomy which is Consistent with what he's saying, but I need more and you know fleshing that out. How do you know that? Why is that the case again?

You know good stuff. It's a Scott and the comments here said this year. I thought this is interesting. He says you cannot use language without obeying linguistic rules. At the very least using grammar would violate Watkins view of autonomy.