Presup & Objective Idealism: Presuppers Respond

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and today I have with me my good friend

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Joshua Pillows. We're going to be interacting with a video that was put out by an atheist

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YouTuber, Ben Watkins. He has a really cool name by the way.

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That name sounds like someone from like a comic book who's, you know, he's a superhero and then when he's not wearing the suit,

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Ben Watkins. It sounds really cool. But Ben, I've had some interactions with Ben.

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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.

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He's a super sharp guy, very nice guy and a joy to interact with.

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And so both of us, myself and Josh, we're looking forward to taking a look at the video that he put out entitled

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Objective Idealism and Presuppositionalist Apologetics. I think he means presuppositional apologetics, but that's okay.

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And he interacts with some presupp and tries to counter presupp with some various views that we're going to be interacting with tonight.

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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.

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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.

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And hopefully this moves the ball a little bit in terms of understanding where we're coming from as presuppositionalists.

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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.

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They need to be discussed thoughtfully, respectfully, but in depth as much as we're able to do so.

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And so I just pray that this discussion goes well and I'm super excited to have Josh.

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He's not only a friend of mine, but he is also a super sharp guy and is very knowledgeable in presuppositional apologetics.

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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.

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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.

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I remember years back talking to Josh, hey, you've listened to a lot of Bonson lectures.

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You've studied this stuff. Where should I focus my energy in really mastering this method?

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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.

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And so I did what he said. I listened to the lectures over and over and over again, and they were immensely helpful.

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But then this book here is essentially those lectures in book form, and it includes

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Dr. Bonson's lectures on transcendental arguments and his protege,

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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

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Vantillian transcendental argument apart from transcendental arguments in general. I often get asked the question about the

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Stroudian objection. There are some comments, Josh, in some of my YouTube videos where like, oh, transcendental arguments are, they're dead.

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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 the run -of -the -mill transcendental arguments, and that's addressed in this book as well.

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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

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Joshua Pillow is there, Joshua Pillow's name is on the bottom of this book here. He is the editor.

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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

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Dr. Bonson said to clarify various points. So I highly recommend, okay?

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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?

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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.

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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.

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I came around his Transcendental Seminar, from which this transcription is probably

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COVID time. And of course, we had nothing to do, so I just kept transcribing tapes as I had been.

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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

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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.

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And I'm like, wow, this is what we need. This is it. So I transcribed it like I transcribed his other courses, his other tapes.

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And it was probably two or three years after that that I approached the American Vision about publishing it, because it was much needed.

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And the footnotes were originally my notes when I was first transcribing it to, you know,

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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

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Bonson. And it was like a treasure that I had found. And I was like, this is what we need.

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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.

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

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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.

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Like, oh, my goodness, you know, and then it's been addressed. Right. So like and it's old. Like these are old objections.

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Right. So a lot of the things that people just take for granted, like, oh, presupp is weak because this obvious weakness.

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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.

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But now we have some key audio lectures in right in written form. So that's going to be super helpful for people.

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Yeah, for sure. And it helps that a Covenant Media Foundation made it free a few years ago.

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And then Apologia took up the task, so to speak, in the audio. But even then, free or not,

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I mean, you don't how do I learn about this apologetic? You're not. Oh, what about these tapes from the 80s and 90s? You know, it's like it's not your first thought.

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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 or 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.

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I'm just kidding. He won't order autograph. I'm sure he would if he could. But maybe one day, one day you'll start signing books.

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I want a pillow autograph. That'd be pretty cool. And then people will be fighting over your autographed copies, just like people try to fight over my event.

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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.

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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.

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Gary DeMar at the American Vision, we're starting on another project in the same format.

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So the next project, presumably because we haven't really started it yet, is transcribing.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Bonson and Gordon Stein. Their written correspondence is lengthy enough to be put in book form.

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Yeah, that would be cool. But there's no act. We have no access to that, unfortunately. And I think there's some issues of publishing it.

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So but anyway, maybe if Molinism is true, there's a possible world in which God actualizes that.

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Yeah. All right. Well, let's jump right in without further ado. So one quick one last.

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OK. The objective proof for Christianity, the presuppositional ism of Cornelius Vantill and Greg L.

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Bonson. And it includes portions of the presentation of Michael Butler, who was really kind of Dr.

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Bonson's prime primary student that was kind of studying under him who has disappeared. He is apparently raptured, nowhere to be found.

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But he's got some great stuff nonetheless. And so folks could totally check it out. All right.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Greatly appreciate it. So. So there you go. All right. Did it did it did it to do.

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Let's get started. All right. We can just indicate when you'd like me to stop.

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OK. And then I'll stop. Welcome to another episode.

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Really, theology, philosophy of religion podcast. I'm Ben Watkins and I'll be your host today. In today's episode,

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I want to discuss at least three things. Presuppositional apologetics, objective idealism, and a few brief remarks on the argument from divine hiddenness.

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So let's start with previous presuppositional apologetics. There's a notorious tradition of Christian presuppositional apologetics online, but there's also a

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 presuppositionalism, to make a distinction between presuppositionalism as a methodology and presuppositionalists as certain individuals and personalities that are typically associated with the method.

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So I really appreciate Ben making that distinction between what we might call pop presuppers and the more sophisticated presuppositionalism found in Vantill, followers of Vantill and things like that.

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So I really much appreciated that distinction. And so this tradition, the

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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.

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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.

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Because everyone knows something, it follows. Everyone knows God exists. So Vantill puts it like this.

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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.

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Then he will have to seek an exhaustive understanding of reality. He will have to hold that he cannot attain to such an exhaustive understanding of reality.

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He has no true knowledge of anything at all. Either man must then know everything or he knows nothing.

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This is the dilemma that confronts every form of non -Christian epistemology. Presuppositional apologetics takes several implications from this.

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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.

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Additionally, there is no neutral epistemological ground between the Christian and the non -Christian to resolve their disagreements.

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Any conversation about the coherence of theism, the uniformity of nature, or the place of Christianity in anyone's life, we must either presuppose

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Christian theism or succumb to total skepticism and admit that knowledge is impossible.

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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?

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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.

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And many critics today, no doubt because of the analytical mindset and philosophy, it's really epistemically emphasized.

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And revelation is the epistemology of Christianity. But it's also God's very existence that is the necessary precondition.

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And, of course, if you say His divine revelation is the necessary precondition, then that presupposes His existence, obviously.

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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 nauseam as we go through this video.

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Right. So when we presuppose the existence of God, that's a metaphysical presupposition as much as it is arguing transcendentally that the

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Christian worldview is conceptually necessary. So they would argue for conceptual necessity. The Christian worldview is conceptually necessary.

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And the triune God is metaphysically necessary. Correct. According to Psalm 14, the fool hath said in his heart there is no

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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.

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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,

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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.

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This is the well -worn argument from divine hiddenness as defended by people like J .L. Schellenberg in his wonderful book,

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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.

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If you've not seen that series yet, I highly recommend it. So check out those episodes of Real Atheology, a

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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.

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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.

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Now, I want to say something important here, Josh, and maybe you can comment on this. I think what

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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?

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He is offering a counterpoint to argue that he could have objectivity in a non -Christian worldview.

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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

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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.

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That's what we should be doing, interacting with the ideas, not just accusing presuppositionalists of playing word games.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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I'm not going to explain my side. So yeah, it's a conflict of worldviews. That's what apologetics here is. All right, very good.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I will also help us understand the metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions that underpin reason, judgment, and their relation to our knowledge more generally.

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

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God exists. Hey guys, it's Justin. Sorry to interrupt, but we've 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 ideas.

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And you're watching the epitome. Anyway, that's all. Back to the episode. There we go. So let's now turn to objective idealism in my first contention.

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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.

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And the form of objective idealism I'll be defending here is roughly the view that reason is a fundamental and primitive idea.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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He's not seeing the broad picture, which is what the Vantillian apologetic is. So already

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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.

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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?

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So he just takes that for granted. So that's made one of his major mistakes throughout the entire video. All right.

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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.

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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?

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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,

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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.

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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.

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And we can all just be arbitrary at the end of the day. We don't really have to be justificatory in our philosophy.

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That's just what we're going to do. It's not a rational enterprise. All right. Thank you for that. All right.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. one transcendental here, it's like, good for you, you know, but you have a plethora of others that you have to justify.

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And so at the end of the day - How do 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.

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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.

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And what's the mind? Well, it's fallible, it's finite, it's temporal. We're all mistaken. We're not objective creatures, we're subjective creatures.

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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.

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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.

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Right, very good. 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.

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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.

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In other words, thinking subjects can know the world because there is, in at least some sense, an identity between thought and existence.

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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.

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In 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, Shelley, and Fichte, and even some

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American pragmatists like C .S. Peirce and Wilfred Sellers. The key to understanding objective idealism involves understanding several primitive notions.

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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.

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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 are two sides of the same coin.

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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, again, because -

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Another issue right there, and it's kind of a basic criticism, but, you know, 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 along.

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You know, he mentions valid forms of thought, valid arguments, legitimate premises, and so forth.

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How does he, you know, justify that or verify what is and isn't valid without self -reference to his own mind?

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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.

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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.

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So there's another two -fold problem. Right, and just appealing to say the fact that they're self -evident, for example.

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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.

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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.

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And who cares? You have over eight billion people on this earth. It's self -evident to me. Well, congratulations.

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You know, I don't care about self -evidence, subjective evidence. I care about objective evidence. Just a real quick word to Tim Moore, most blessed.

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He says, but not knowing the terms doesn't mean I can't poke holes in what they say easily. Yeah, if you're listening to what we're saying, obviously we're interacting with a more sophisticated presentation.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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, we must first be clear about the idea of reasons autonomy.

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The autonomy of reason constitutes freedom from external control or influence and reasons independence from collective or individual desire or authority.

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The term autonomy is derived from the Greek word autonomous, meaning to have its own laws.

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Now real quick, he said that autonomy is freedom from external forces or I don't remember exactly what he said.

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I was thinking too when I heard that, how could you know that you're not being influenced by external factors?

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Yeah, I mean, if you're a Darwinian, first of all, and you have the problem of the mind and the chemical processes, but if we wanna just focus on idealism per se, again, it's a problem of self -reference.

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How does he know that without appealing to himself? And he's gonna say, presumably, that, well,

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I just said that there's reason is objective. It's ingrained rationality, it's ingrained in the universe, but it just goes back to the previous problem.

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Well, why is that the case? You can't be arbitrary about that. So he's on the horns of a dilemma. And famously characterized his formula of autonomy or categorical imperative is the ability to act in accordance with self -given laws or rules.

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Right there. Right there. I really hope when he said self -given, that was metaphorical.

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Who's giving people these laws? I mean, if you're an atheist, you don't believe in this higher consciousness or anything.

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So I really hope that was metaphorical. Again, I mean, that would be a transcendental in a sense as well, but there's just another rock falling in the pool, falling in the ocean.

30:58

I mean, all these disparate arguments you have bring them together somehow, Ben. You know. All right, good.

31:05

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.

31:15

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.

31:25

Contrary to Vantillo and other presuppositional apologetics. The autonomy of reason implies that God cannot be a necessary condition of knowledge.

31:33

I want to argue that the autonomy of reason is entailed by an understanding of reason's objectivity, self -consciousness, irreducibility, and universality.

31:42

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.

31:53

The autonomy of reason implies that the preconditions of knowledge are contained entirely within reason itself. Reason is...

31:59

This is where Bonson would usually say, unbelievers have no problem with the concept of a

32:05

God. They just don't want to get personal about their 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.

32:18

So he substituted a theistic God with his autonomy, which is consistent with what he's saying.

32:25

But I need more fleshing that out. How do you know that? Why is that the case again?

32:33

Yeah, good stuff. Here it says, Scott, in the comments here, said this here, I thought this was interesting.

32:38

He says, you cannot use language without obeying linguistic rules. At the very least, using grammar would violate Watkins' view of autonomy as not being influenced by anything.

32:46

That's an interesting comment there. Yeah, it's very, again, nuanced. And I use that actually in the book in one of my footnotes, like trying to illustrate it at a layman's level of what a transcendental argument would be to a skeptic and how it's inherently circular.

33:00

You have to use language to prove it, but it's not begging the question. But yeah, so it's interesting that he paralleled that.

33:08

Is independent of any knower or object of judgment, but it also does not require us to go beyond them.

33:14

Let's start with reason's objectivity. Reason is objective in the sense that the truth of judgment does not depend on any particular subjective character.

33:22

So reason is general or universal enough to apply to any particular subject.

33:28

The objectivity of reason arises when we conceive of the world as objects independent of subjective experiences and independent of subjective appearances.

33:38

So it presupposes we are self -consciously aware there is a world independent of subjective experience.

33:44

Subjective thought is characterized by the attitudes or responses of subjects towards the objects of their judgment.

33:49

While objective thought is characterized by irreducible rules or principles about how subjects should, ought, or must think about the world.

33:57

Now let's consider self -consciousness. Thinking or judgment that something is true contains within it a self -conscious awareness that it is a right or it is objectively valid to judge so.

34:08

For example, I am self -consciously aware of my judgment that I have hands. I have the experience of my hands and I have a concept of something having hands.

34:18

I judge that I have hands. And that judgment also in the same act contains the judgment that it is right or correct in an irreducibly normative sense to believe that I have hands.

34:29

Insofar as my judgment is objective, the judgment that I have hands. Again, just going back, knowing anything presupposes uniformity, let alone knowing he has hands, he keeps talking about having judgments.

34:42

How is that possible? Why is that the case? Why does he presume validity and soundness? He references truth.

34:49

What exactly is this theory of truth? And so forth. So that's why I keep saying it's just ad nauseam, the same problems.

34:55

He's just taking all of that. And enduring identity through time. Yeah, and even these other problems, like one in the many.

35:03

For instance, identity through change. I'm sure he might have an explanation for that. He's a smart guy, but I'm just touching on the immediate issues that he's going through.

35:13

So he's talking about all of these categories and these judgments and some are valid, some are not. And I'm just like, okay, great, but explain why that's the case to begin with and why our consciousness is structured that way to begin with metaphysically or ontologically or both.

35:26

Wasn't it Richard Dawkins who said, why questions us? Just silly questions. Yeah, and to which

35:31

I respond, why? Why questions? They're just silly.

35:36

They're just silly questions. Not that he's saying that, but it reminded me of Dawkins just then.

35:43

All right. Hands is universal, independent of any given first person characters or determinations of subjects that are not contained in this.

35:51

How does he know that? How does he know things that are independent of first person characters or experiences to begin with?

35:58

See, part of idealism is connecting reality with the mind, which he has to justify, but like really definitively to draw that dichotomy on an autonomous ground, like just all these presumptions, like I don't get it.

36:12

Very judgment. So I do not need to go beyond the object of my judgment, say into a divine revelation in order to have knowledge of it.

36:21

Now consider irreducibility. Reason is also irreducible in the sense that it's irreducibly normative, meaning that truths of reason or facts about what we should believe can be neither restated nor rephrased using non -normative concepts and terms.

36:37

When we characterize a reason to believe something, we are given neither a causal nor empirical description of it.

36:43

Rather, we characterize justifications about what self -consciousness should believe in what Wilfred Sellers calls the logical space of reasons.

36:51

The space of reasons describes the objective concepts and logical landscape that we use to intelligibly understand and navigate the world.

36:59

That is the a priori knowledge we have that makes our experiences of the world intelligible. Talk of reasons, epistemic justification and intention are not the same as, and cannot necessarily be mapped onto what

37:12

Wilfred Sellers calls the realm of law or claims about causes and their effects in an extra world.

37:18

Contrary to presuppositional apologetics, the logical space of reasons provides us with a neutral ground where the question of God's existence or coherence can be considered in an impartial and universal way.

37:29

Anything that stands out to you there, Josh? Yeah, well, the first thing before that is, just that came up to mind is he's appealing to Sellers.

37:39

And if you wanted to say, well, he's appealing to his book, you know, we'll just say a book. Sure. That's his holy book, right?

37:44

And we have our holy book, and one of them's from man, one of them's from God. And that's just another way to frame the argument and put him in a corner.

37:52

When I first read that, here's his proof that there is a neutral ground after all. I was being charitable and he's arguing it from, again, his worldview, right?

38:01

We don't wanna, you know, misrepresent him. And I have no problem with granting him that on his presuppositions on what he believes.

38:10

But again, it's the parochial problem of broadly speaking, we're not all in the same boat.

38:15

And so in that sense, broadly, which he's not taking into consideration, there is no neutrality.

38:21

If he can prove that his worldview is true, then sure, there is neutrality, there's a consciousness, there's a rationality behind the world.

38:27

But as far as the broad picture goes, then no, there is no neutrality. I mean, he's proving his point by making a response to presuppositionalism because that assumes that there are two different worldviews, two competing philosophies.

38:39

So if he can't prove that his idealism is objectively correct, which he never will be able to as a subjective creature, then no, he has not proven that there is any neutral ground whatsoever.

38:50

Okay, very good. Finally, let's consider the universality of reason. Reason is universal, meaning that any particular reason should convince any subject able and willing to consider it impartially because its authority is general enough to apply to any -

39:06

He said impartially, did he not just assume categories of neutrality already? Yeah, that's just him being consistent with what he believes.

39:15

And he can't - Particular self -consciousness, whatever. If it is the case that we ought to believe something for some reason, then that same reason, without exception -

39:27

There's a keyword ought, I don't know where that came from. He's having problems, as we've already underlined with his descriptions of reality that he's just arbitrarily taken for granted, but now he's incorporating prescriptions of ought and who or what tells us what we ought and ought or shouldn't believe to begin with.

39:45

So he has a problem with the descriptions, he doesn't realize it. And now he's talking about prescriptions and he's just gonna run into another problem with that.

39:52

So there's just another issue. Would also apply to any other subject in a similar epistemic position.

40:00

The universality of reason is captured once again in Kant's formula of universal law or categorical imperative.

40:06

If there is a reason to believe something, then that truth is not relative to any particular subject. It is objective.

40:13

For example, if it's the case that some argument is valid and has true premises, then it's the case that any subject who judges such an argument should, ought or must accept its conclusion.

40:24

And then - Its conclusion - Really quick in passing, like I mentioned earlier, he talks about validity and if an argument is sound and so forth, again, how does he know that or justify that without self -reference?

40:35

Because, and he sent a you and I, for those watching, a PowerPoint and a slide. And he talks about three different ways that Winshaus and Trelima, how you can justify something and we want to avoid circularity, but how does he justify that without self -reference to his own mind, which again is subjective and fallible?

40:51

How do you tether that subjectivity and fallibility to objectivity and infallibility? So - Why don't you expand, why don't you explain that for some of our listeners when you talked about that he can't avoid self -reference?

41:00

So in an atheistic worldview, there is no God that we know of anyway.

41:05

So there's no higher mind, let alone a higher mind that's absolute, eternal, omniscient and so forth.

41:11

And so the only, the default is therefore that it's our minds, 8 billion plus people.

41:17

And as I've said before, well, you have to describe the mind, it's fallible, we all make mistakes, we don't live forever, we don't know everything.

41:24

And so using your own mind or even other people's minds, cons, sellers and so forth, which are all fallible and can easily mistake and prone, would never procure an absolutely certain objective conclusion by definition, because those things are contradictory.

41:40

You can't get objectivity from subjectivity. And so in an atheistic worldview where there is no higher objective mind or absolute mind to appeal to, your only recourse is a subjective, fallible, finite mind.

41:51

And again, it just, it won't get anywhere meaningfully if we're wanting to be objective in our analyses and not just appeal to consensus or relativism.

42:00

Okay, good, good point. Would be a categorical imperative. These universal concepts of should, ought, must are irreducibly normative or reason implying.

42:12

It's important to notice that each of these characteristics implies the others. For example, the self -consciousness of reason implies its objectivity.

42:20

If the self -consciousness of reason divides the world up into subjects and objects and our reasoning contains within it the very judgment that it is valid, then the very concept of self -consciousness presupposes the objectivity of thought.

42:31

Conversely, the very concept of the objectivity of thought presupposes the self -consciousness of thought because an objective thought presupposes a self -conscious subject that is aware of the object of judgment.

42:42

Okay, so there is an allusion to Descartes' argument, or his dictum, I think, therefore I am.

42:47

If I have a thought, I must exist in order to have that. And that's a transcendental argument. So whether he knows that or not, he's giving us another transcendental argument.

42:55

So there you go. You're just adding more rocks into the bag and you have nowhere to fit them into a coherent system. So he's just got all these isolated transcendentals he's explicitly or implicitly referring to, but it's not in any uniform fashion.

43:11

To be universal, then it must be objective. So the objectivity of reason also implies its universality.

43:17

Additionally, the irreducibility of the logical space of reasons implies reason's objectivity, self -consciousness, and universality.

43:25

So all these characteristics are, to borrow an analogy from Derek Parfit, climbing the same mountain from different sides.

43:31

And they're meeting at the same peak, where this peak is a metaphor for what I've called the autonomy of reason.

43:37

But if reason is autonomous, then it follows that God is not a necessary condition for our knowledge. So my first main contention was to argue

43:44

Christian theism is not a precondition of knowledge. And objective idealism gives us a framework in which that contention is true.

43:51

The argument from divine hiddenness is my second contention. All right, so are there any things to say about his objective idealism as a demonstration of neutral categories to which then the

44:03

Christian worldview is not a necessary precondition for intelligibility? Well, in the paper

44:08

I skimmed over last night, when he said that it follows that God is not a necessary precondition,

44:14

I'm given his philosophy, and I said, I wrote down, not even close. He made way too many blunders to even draw that conclusion.

44:21

And then right after he said, objective idealism gives us a framework in which that contention is true.

44:28

And he forgot to incorporate arbitrary framework into that because he's taken all these things for granted.

44:34

It's already a tentative, but arbitrary is really the force of what's wrong with his position.

44:41

Okay, all right. So now he's gonna move into his divine hiddenness objection. Again, I will be brief here as my co -host has already done an excellent job in explicating this argument.

44:55

So I'll be sure to include a link in the description. The point of the argument here is to illustrate that objective idealism provides us with a neutral ground for Christians and non -Christians to disagree about the existence of God.

45:06

Indeed, the non -Christian can argue God does not exist without any violence to his epistemic commitments.

45:12

Let us now consider the argument from divine hiddenness. If God created us with a common purpose, then the revelation of that purpose would invite a widespread consensus about the nature, content, and significance of a shared revelation we were all directly acquainted with.

45:27

However, there is not such widespread intersubjective experiences. Not everyone has theistic religious experiences, and most subjects of religious experience widely disagree about the fundamental nature, content, and significance of religious experience.

45:40

Some people never believe or no longer believe God exists, and this non -theism is neither the result of emotional nor behavior.

45:46

All right, so when he says that there are people who don't believe that God exists, that's begging the question against the biblical statements that from a divine perspective, if Christianity is true,

45:56

God is in a position to know what is in the heart of man, regardless of what comes out of the mouth of man. So it seems to me that this critique, and we mentioned this last night,

46:07

I think it was last night when we talked about it, May Saturday maybe, that this is an external critique of the

46:14

Christian position, right? You say, well, the biblical statement that all men know that God exists has to be false, because I know people who don't believe that God exists.

46:26

Well, yes, that's the claim, right? We're claiming that those people are deceived, and it is not an arbitrary assertion of deception.

46:33

Part of the way that we demonstrate that people are presupposing categories that only make sense if God exists, we do that through worldview analysis, internal critique, and asking critical questions that show that they're actually presupposing the categories of a perspective they're explicitly denying, or implicitly denying.

46:51

So any thoughts on that? I kind of saw this as kind of a very weak argument, because it clearly is begging the question in favor of the other side, so to speak.

47:03

What are your thoughts there? Yeah, I'm pretty confounded that he would make that argument, because again, he's a really smart guy.

47:11

If Ben was on this video with us, I'd be like, Ben, what happened to sin?

47:18

Like, you're trying to argue against Christianity via an apologetic. Why aren't you taking into account the aspect of sin?

47:25

And Romans 1, and I'm sure he hasn't read Bonson's dissertation on the aspect of sin. And this, Josh, he has to do.

47:32

He has to consider sin, because he's trying to engage in some kind of internal critique. Yeah, again, if you're gonna, willingly or not, leave out the aspect of sin from a critique of Christianity, which endorses universal sin, it's ubiquitous, then,

47:48

I mean, by definition, you're not internally critiquing Christianity. And so therefore, you're not giving a successful reductio argument, reducing

47:55

Christianity to absurdity. It's a definitional or textbook external critique. He's bringing his understandings of what we believe to argue against us, which is just external.

48:05

His understanding is external to the internal system of Christianity. So yeah, it completely misses the mark.

48:10

I have no idea how he missed that. Right, yep. Behavioral opposition towards God.

48:17

For example, former theists were presumably already acquainted with God, and their loss of belief has ended that relationship.

48:23

Lifelong seekers are open to finding or being found by God, without ever achieving that goal. Isolated -

48:29

Are they, though, given the biblical categories, are they open to being found by God? I mean, that just begs the whole question, right?

48:36

The Bible explicitly says no one seeks God. We're at enmity with God. It doesn't seem like, given biblical categories, that's what's happening at all.

48:44

Yeah, and it's not even an implication of scripture. It's an explication. No one seeks God. Yeah, it's not implied.

48:50

It's explicitly said, you know? Yeah, and just again, like he needs to do his homework before he decides to critique whatever position he's wanting to critique.

48:58

Right, especially if this is a critique against not just Christianity, generally speaking or broadly speaking, but a

49:06

Vantillian tradition, which has undergirding in a Reformed theology.

49:12

I mean, you cannot adequately critique Vantill and ignore his

49:18

Reformed theological presuppositions of total depravity, the noetic effects of sin upon the mind, right?

49:25

It's literally to completely miss the mark if you're going to critique his perspective and ignore some of those key points that are inherent within his methodology.

49:35

Yeah, and that's a good point, too, because you'll have many Christians that would probably argue that, no, everyone would be open to it, whether they would or not, but with rejecting total depravity and rejecting the fact that we are literally dead in our trespasses and sins.

49:50

We're not sick or just totally cured at all or anything like that. We're totally dead. He just completely overlooked that fact.

49:57

And again, I just don't understand how he could make a video without doing his homework. Right, yep.

50:04

Late and non -theists have never been in a position to resist belief because they've never had the idea of God. Again, never had the idea of God.

50:14

Who says this? The sinner who's running from God? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know God. Of course, of course.

50:19

How convenient. The natural man is going to suppress the knowledge of the truth, which is found in the very scripture that he quoted towards the beginning of the video.

50:26

Now, again, you don't have to believe that the scripture is true, but if you're internally critiquing the Christian world, do you need to consider what

50:32

Christianity's, how Christianity speaks to that situation? It's accepting what we believe is true for the sake of the argument.

50:39

Right. In particular, for the sake of the reductio argument that you're wanting to give forthcomingly.

50:45

And he's not assuming it in charity or just out of ignorance. Right. So the hiddenness of God argument,

50:51

I never, I mean, I never found convincing at all. Not at all. If Christianity's true, right?

50:58

Internal critique. If Christianity's true, God's not hidden. That's it. And there are explicit propositions in scripture that state he's not hidden.

51:06

He's, the heavens declare the glory of God. His existence is so obvious that men are without excuse.

51:12

Again, you don't have to believe that. You can be like, well, I don't believe that's the Bible. Yeah, but if you're internally critiquing the

51:17

Christian worldview, you can't pass that by because then you're not going to adequately internally critique the

51:23

Christian worldview. So again, this, whatever you think of his objective idealism, which obviously we think has problems and I don't think it demonstrates what he thought, what he thinks it demonstrates.

51:31

This second argument I think is worse, and even clearly so, given the external critical nature of his argument.

51:39

It's more blatant. It doesn't have the idealism to hide behind, you know, and how abstract it can be.

51:45

And I was just reading Alex in chat is saying the same thing. Basically he's alluding to the according to what standard, you know, and it's true.

51:53

It's his standards of what he believes. And so that's what he's predicating his argument off of. But yeah, I mean, he projects a standard of the

51:59

Bible and he's disingenuously using his external standard of his mind and so doing, failing to give a reductio argument.

52:08

And this is when he gets later on, he says, so it follows that God does not exist. It's just a huge non -sequitur based on a straw man.

52:15

Right. Yep. Okay. Hundreds of centuries of isolated non -theists have unavoidably lived their entire lives within the influence of a fundamentally misleading system of religious meaning if Christian theism were true.

52:30

These evidential considerations, to my mind, decisively refute the claim everyone knows that God exists. To your mind, definitely not logically demonstrated.

52:37

Yeah, see that's, those are the key words to my mind. Well, yeah, you got a one in over 8 billion chance of being right there.

52:43

There are people to their mind thinks the question who created God is a complete reputation of.

52:49

Oh yeah. Had me shaking in my boots. Yes, yes. Okay. Let's see. My judgment here would be idiosyncratic.

52:56

The problem is that theism implies there are no non -resistant non -theists because God's perfect love implies always being open to a relationship, which in turn implies.

53:07

Scripture in verse, please. Scripture in verse. Tell me that. Yeah. Every finite person also believes that God exists unless they are somehow resisting such a belief.

53:19

That's because a belief that someone exists is a necessary condition for a meaningful relationship with that person.

53:25

It cannot be the case that we are in a meaningful, positive reciprocating relationship with someone unless we also believe that they exist.

53:33

So if theism is true, then there are no non -resistant non -theists. However. If theism is true, there is no non -resistant.

53:42

What? What'd he say? Theist. Yeah. So if he's localizing his argument to theism broadly away from Christianity, you know, let's be charitable.

53:51

He's not talking about us in the Bible specifically. But again, I mean, let's not be too charitable because what's his critique?

53:56

This whole entire critique is against precept. So it's going to be, it's going to have to be narrowly focused to the theological position that undergirds, that undergirds the presuppositional methodology.

54:06

So it's going to be fallacious on his part to critique the narrow scope of Vantillian stream and then to kind of pivot and talk more broadly where it's going to serve as argument to make these broad claims that the

54:19

Vantillian is going to reject. Yeah. And what I was saying is even if he's diverting from presuppositionalism to theism, which again is why you're doing that.

54:28

But even if he was arguing against theism broadly, it's the same issue of he's employing his subjective concepts.

54:34

And theism is not one blanket worldview. You know, if theism is true and you know, there is a

54:39

God, let's get back to being a philosopher. You know, why or how, what is this God like?

54:45

You know, theism doesn't automatically imply that the concepts he's employing for his argument are universally true at all times.

54:53

There are nuances with theism as there are nuances with idealism. And he should know that even if he's not talking about Christian theism specifically.

55:01

Yeah. And again, we're not talking about God as an abstract principle, like a hypothesis or something like that from the

55:08

Christian perspective and more specifically the reformed Christian perspective along Vantillian lines, there's very specific concrete things we believe about God that I think the way it's being presented here, it completely misses the point.

55:23

Yeah. However, we just saw, there are some non -resistant non -theists like former believers, lifelong seekers and isolated non -theists.

55:30

So it follows that God does not exist. We have now arrived at a definite negative answer to our question of God's existence.

55:37

Are we sure that's definite? I said, are we sure it's definite?

55:43

Yeah. I like this comment here by Alex. Alex says, and I agree with Alex here.

55:50

I always marvel, though I'm not necessarily surprised at how atheists virtually never adequately explain theological doctrines.

55:55

They'll critique the doctrine, but I mean, where are they getting these categories? It's like he's critiquing a different stream of theology as opposed to say

56:10

Vantillian stream. I don't know if he understands the distinctions between say someone who holds to reform theology versus say like some universalist somewhere or an

56:20

Arminian or something like that. He's like, we're on the football field and he's applying the rules of baseball.

56:25

Yes. It doesn't work. Yes. And now the tricky thing is that baseball and football are both sports.

56:31

So it sounds like he's talking about something related. It's like when we critique Mormons, we use the same language and that's the problem and you have to dissect that more.

56:41

And so the problem is there's this confusion behind or this ambiguity behind the language that's being used.

56:49

Yeah. All right. Let's. For atheism. And we've all done it from a neutral ground.

56:57

I've put my own transcendental argument for the autonomy of reason on the table in the form of objective idealism.

57:03

Now I've argued this defeats the presupposition that theism, much less Christian theism, the necessary condition for knowledge.

57:10

Finally, we saw how there are some non -resistant non -theists implying. Did we see? Did we see that?

57:16

We saw that there are non -resistant non -theists. Did we see that? Is the evidence simply because someone says that they're non -resistant?

57:25

I'm open. I'm open. I remember having a conversation with a person who he, quote unquote, used to be a

57:33

Christian, right? And then the reason why he walked away, quote unquote, walked away, was that there really is no evidence, no arguments for God.

57:42

And then we walked around the block and had a very long conversation. I answered most of his questions and then eventually just flat out after like an hour and a half of walking around the block 20 ,000 times, it felt like, he goes, even if your

57:55

God exists, I wouldn't worship him. I was like, oh, okay. So you should have told me that at the beginning so then I wouldn't have wasted my breath answering your questions and giving you reasons that you said didn't exist.

58:06

People can say all sorts of things. This is why the Bible says that God does not judge as man judges,

58:11

God looks at the heart. And so Mr. Watkins, from his finite perspective, does not know the hearts of the individuals who claim

58:20

I'm not resistant. And apparently he does not know his own heart as Jeremiah 17, nine says, the heart is desperately wicked, who could know it?

58:27

There is self -deception definitely going on. And I highly recommend folks read Dr. Bonson's doctoral dissertation on the very issue and reality of self -deception.

58:36

And so again, people can claim Christians are self -deceived as well. We understand that as well. And we'd have to talk about that, but it's not as simply demonstrated.

58:44

They're just these non -resistant non -theists. And so therefore that's an adequate counter to the

58:51

Christian presuppositional position. What are your thoughts there, Josh? And overarching all of that is the problem of other minds, which

58:59

Kant couldn't solve as an idealist and no idealist, let alone any unbeliever can solve that.

59:06

His mind works in a certain way, but how do we know all minds work that way? And maybe I could grant them that his group of people that have the same consensus of objective idealism works that way.

59:18

But objective idealism comes from man, again, who is subjective and fallible and so forth. And so he has no absolute definitive reputation against solipsism.

59:26

So are there even any other minds to begin with? So he's taking all of these metaphysical assumptions for granted.

59:32

There are no non -resistant theists or whatever, but he's categorizing them and classifying them as if all minds work alike.

59:39

But how do idealists rectify that problem pre -Kantian or post -Kantian if every single philosophy stipulated by man is stipulated by man who is fallible and accident prone, mistaken prone, and subjective?

59:52

And so, again, it's just more assumptions he's taking for granted without realizing. He's just taking it for granted. It's a given. Well, all our minds work alike.

59:59

Why is that? Again, so he also has to address whether or not all minds work the same way that objective idealist minds work.

01:00:09

Now, he's finishing up here, and I feel bad. Scott Terry looks like his head is gonna explode because we haven't mentioned the -

01:00:17

Oh, yeah. The Fitch's Paradox. We didn't talk about that, yeah. Fitch's Paradox, well, it's your lucky day because I do think it's a good point.

01:00:26

And so I'm gonna bring it up here. So folks who have no idea what Fitch's Paradox is, I'm gonna read the definition here so you kind of know what's being alluded to here.

01:00:34

Fitch's Paradox is also known as Fitch's Paradox of Knowability. It's one of the fundamental puzzles of epistemic logic.

01:00:41

It provides a challenge to the knowability thesis, which states that every truth is, in principle, knowable.

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The paradox is that this assumption implies the omniscience principle, which asserts that every truth is known.

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Essentially, Fitch's Paradox asserts that the existence of an unknown truth is unknowable.

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So if all truths were knowable, it would follow that all truths are, in fact, known.

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And so Scott points out that Watkins needs to believe all reality is rational, which is what he asserted in the video, okay?

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And hence, all truths are knowable, okay? To which there is a problem there, right?

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He needs a metaphysic where all truth is knowable, but how can we know all truth is knowable without omniscience?

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That seems to be a problem in his perspective. So again, something definitely to look into.

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If I'm not mistaken, Scott, or someone, I don't know if that's his real, Scott wrote an article.

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You can maybe verify, you wrote an article that covers this that might be something fun for people to look at.

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Actually, let me put a link here. If you guys are interested, I recommend, I'll give a little shout out here.

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I recommend a little blog, and I don't mean that condescendingly by calling it little.

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I do apologize. I didn't mean it to sound like a little blog. Come on, Eli, what are you doing? Yeah, it's a little blog.

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I'm going to put a link to his blog. Oh no, that's the wrong link, hold up.

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Let me get, okay, so we have Vantillian Fire.

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Let's see here, so we're here. Let me just try this over here. Sorry, just bear with me. Okay, so if you go to, geez

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Louise, hold up. Let me see, okay, if I go here, boom, I got it. Okay, we're going to do this.

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I'm going to copy, and we're going to post this in the comments here, boom, boom, paste, and send.

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If you guys want to check out Vantillian Fire, the blog, it's a pretty cool presuppositional apologetics blog where I think it's

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Scott. I think that's the person who writes the articles. He covers a wide range of issues. There's even an article there with me as kind of a side topic there in some of my interactions in the past, and so I've appreciated a lot of what he's written.

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So definitely check it out. He's written an article that goes into more detail about this Fitches Paradox and how it's relevant to this discussion.

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So there you go, man. I hope people visit your blog. I read your article, and I thought it was very useful.

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So maybe people can read that blog article as a compliment to this video.

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So let's play the rest of the audio here and then let him finish, and then we can maybe have some concluding thoughts, and then we can all go to sleep.

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It's pretty early, yeah, but okay, go ahead. There are some people who neither believe, much less know, that God exists.

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And we saw how the argument from divine hiddenness implies there are no non -resisting, non -theists, which in turn implies atheism.

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Okay, one second here. I'm trying to multitask. All right, okay, so there you go.

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Not a very good case, although what I greatly appreciate about Ben is that his thoughts are nice and organized, so you can at least follow what he's trying to say.

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And that, I guess, is both the strength and the weakness of it, right? I mean, the strength of it is it's easy to follow because he lays everything out in detail, but at the same time, because he lays everything out in detail, it's easier to critique and point various things out.

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So what are your, do you have any final thoughts there? No, I mean, it was just one massive blunder, and I don't mean that in a disrespectful way, obviously.

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Ben obviously knows a lot more about idealism, at least than I do, and he's done his homework in that regard.

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But the transcendental considerations that he, to the extent that he has studied, are too, again, parochial or too myopic.

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It's too short -sighted, too narrow, to where he fails to, from the very beginning of the video, represent

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Van Til's transcendental apologetic as being a holistic, metaphysical apologetic. It's not confined to the mind, like an idealist would say, or any analytic philosopher.

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It transcends the mind and is a precursor to the mind. And as I've mentioned, that the uniformity of reality as a whole must first be the case transcendentally in order for you to even talk about idealism being transcendental.

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And I emphasize talk about, because you couldn't talk about anything if the universe was random, if reality was random.

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So the very metaphysical possibility of him even making a video is predicated on a transcendental that he himself has just left unjustified and has openly admitted on Facebook that it's probably just ultimately unjustifiable.

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And so like a good analytic philosopher, we'll just focus on a narrow subset of some sort of philosophical considerations.

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Yeah, very good. And then, of course, the divine hiddenness, of course, is a blatant external critique. There are a lot of premises that he laid out that we would just blatantly like, well, that's not our position.

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That doesn't count. You don't get the conclusion you're trying to get to because it doesn't accurately represent the situation.

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And it should be a testament and illustration to show that it doesn't matter who you're talking to or how smart they are, they can always make such elementary blunders, no matter how intellectual, how long they've studied.

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You don't have to be afraid of anyone. Always be ready, as Bonson says, always ready to defend the faith.

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God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. Let them step into the mic, as we let Ben do, and he hung himself on the court.

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He did it for himself. All we had to do was expose him. Now, the beauty of 1 Peter 3, verse 15 is the last part too, we do this with gentleness and respect.

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And what I appreciate about Ben is that he makes it easy to be gentle and respectful because he is very respectful as well.

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And so we really do appreciate that from Ben and his willingness to share his transcript and the slides so that we can kind of go through his stuff and offer our response.

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So to that end, obviously, we are going to vigorously disagree for reasons that we've laid out, but we very much appreciate the interaction.

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And yeah, that's our thoughts. Now, I just wanna say something real quick with respect to Scott Terry.

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So Scott Terry said, that is, this is what I saw. So the Vantillian Fire blog site is

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Scott's. I've read a bunch of his articles and I really like what he's written. So Scott, if you could hear me and you haven't signed off, you have an open invitation to hop on my show and we can talk about some of your articles that you've written and walk through some important things that I think you cover and do a great job in explaining.

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So if you want, you can message me on Facebook and we can schedule a time and none of this.

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Well, you know, I just really, I like to just write. I don't wanna be in front of the camera. Shut up.

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You got helpful things to say. Listen, Joshua Pillows here was a ninny pants when

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I first invited him, right? You were like, oh, I don't know if I, you know, I'm a musician.

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I'm like, oh, shut up. Just come on, stop being whack. You know, look, here he is a couple of years later.

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I remember when I was standing in my old job, I was in a narrow staircase, switching buildings from teaching from one class to another,

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I had to switch buildings. And I'm in between, I'm in like this narrow case and I'm talking to him. I was like, bro, it'll be fine, man.

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It's not a big deal. And I was able to get him on my show those years ago. And so I'm grateful.

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He's a musician. Joshua Pillows is a musician. He's not a formally trained, but he's learned, he's listened, and here you go.

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Years later, he's got an edited, a book with Greg Bonson's content and things like that.

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So God can use even musicians who play, what do you play, bro?

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I forgot what you play. Oh my goodness. The hardest instrument in the world, bro, the organ. The organ, yeah, see, right?

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His day job, he's a boring musician, but by night, he is a presuppositional assassin.

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I'm just kidding. Yeah, right. Dude, I made you sound super cool, at a presuppositional assassin.

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Yeah, there you go, with an Illuminati sign. Oh, here's a question. I know you didn't want to take questions, but let's do this one here.

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So Alex asks, he's a musician, cool. What's your favorite hymn? I just responded, probably

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Abide With Me. I wrote a, I composed a chorale prelude on that with the organ. Can you sing it?

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Can you sing it? Yeah, but you probably want to put, take out your headphones first. I had Braxton Hunter on from Trinity Radio, and we talked about worship music.

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It was an, and I actually got him to sing in a deep vibrato voice, an old hymn.

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It was hilarious. He didn't, when I asked him, his face dropped. He was like, oh, oh my goodness. Like, I'm not gonna sing, and then he ends up doing it.

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It was hilarious. That's crazy. You don't have to sing. I'm just messing around with you, but all right. But yeah,

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Scott, your open invitation to hop on the show. I'd love to have you. So let me know through Facebook Messenger or email me at revealedapologetics at gmail .com,

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and we'll set something up, man. All right? We need more people to chime in, and definitely people who have good content there and some good insights.

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That's what makes for good content. So even if you're ugly, we can just take the, I don't know what you look like.

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We can just, you know, we can turn your face off or whatever, okay? But seriously,

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I would love for you to come on. All right, well, guys, that is it. On that awkward note, we're gonna close up the stream here.

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I really appreciate the comments and support, and Josh, I really appreciate, just seriously, all joking aside, people look at me and say, hey, you know,

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Eli is the pre -supper guy. I have learned so much from Joshua and our private conversations and things like that, and I've read a lot of his papers that he's written.

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I have found him to be a great resource, and so I very much appreciate your work. I appreciate your labor to promote

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Bonson's work, and I appreciate your friendship, so thank you so much for being on with me. Thanks, bro.

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I mean, it's always a blessing and an honor to be on here, and you know, just like as a testament, I've had zero formal education.

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I was apprenticed for probably a decade now in music, and I've got my accomplishments through the

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American Guild of Organists, which sounds really archaic, but it's basically the college equivalent, and so I have my certifications from there, and it's universally accepted, so I could go anywhere in the world, and they wouldn't hire me, but yeah, apologetics and music, never went to school, never went to seminary, and it just shows that,

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I mean, if you have the work ethic and the time, anything's possible, and with prayer, of course.

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Let God guide you in all things. Right. Well, thank you so much, Joshua. I thought I was gonna call you pillows.

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I appreciate it, and until next time, guys. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, take care, and God bless.