Practical Presup Explained & Employed Pt. 1

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Practical Presup Explained & Employed Pt. 2

00:22

Okay, so as you guys know we're going through the the book always ready by Greg Bonson now

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How many people in here understand every single big word that Greg Bonson says? Probably none of us right so what

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I'm going to try to do is take those big words condense them down into words that maybe We can understand and actually put into practice so for the next two weeks.

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We're going to go through a practical application of presuppositional apologetics For beginners okay, so with that.

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I want to go move a little quickly at first, so where do we begin I? Want to give you the basic concept of what presuppositional apology presuppositional apologetics is and How to employ it

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So the basic concept is that everyone has presuppositions

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Presuppositions are basic assumptions about reality. It's kind of like where you start

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These are the things that you come into the argument assuming everybody comes to the argument assuming there is truth

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Assuming that we can communicate that we understand language The uniformity of nature that tomorrow is going to be like today when we talk about science if tomorrow wasn't like today

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Well, why would we believe any scientific experiment could prove something going into the future?

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So everyone has presuppositions and like Greg Bonson says no one is neutral The presupposition from the unbeliever is antagonistic in opposition to God's Word Our presupposition is no

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God has spoken, and we're going to come from that angle, so we're going to be at odds with one another

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Your world view will be determined by your ultimate starting point So where you start is vital in presuppositionalism, okay?

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We're going to go through that a little bit more. This is also known as a transcendental argument which means a

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Transcendental argument is what must be true for anything else to be true

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So in other words for truth to even be proclaimed We need laws of logic

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Okay, uniformity of nature. We need these things in place before we move forward a

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Simple transcendental argument would be this someone comes up to you and says there is no truth

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What do you say is? That true, okay? If they if they're making us a truth statement that denies truth, it's self -defeating

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Okay, it's going to commit suicide So the the presuppositional argument is an argument that's not self -defeating whereas the atheistic arguments are

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We're going to go through that Where you start is the most important point because it determines where you end

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Real simple illustration if you were playing baseball and you get your bat and you walk out to second base and you're facing center field

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Where you start is wrong the pitcher is going to throw the ball over home plate, and you're not going to be there

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So the goal in baseball is to start at home plate circle the bases and get back to home plate You starting on second base is in the wrong spot

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Okay, so where you start with your worldview is going to make all the difference

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Starting in the wrong place leads to contradictions inconsistency and arbitrariness

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We critique worldviews internally for contradictions inconsistency and arbitrariness

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Contradictory inconsistent and incoherent worldviews must be rejected So if you can find an internal contradiction in someone else's worldview well, then that means it's self -defeating

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It's contradicting itself if it's not consistent in the way it applies truth to certain things

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We can reject it so With worldview with with presuppositionalism you're going to do an internal critique which means you're going to jump into that person's worldview and assume the tenets of that worldview and Examine it from within I call this the hokey pokey principle, right?

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You guys ever played a hokey pokey sing the hokey pokey you put one arm in you pull one arm out, right? So what we don't want to do is stand in our worldview stick our hand in there

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Play with it and come back and say see it's wrong because that's what atheists do to us

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They stand over here. They stick one arm in and say Oh God's evil. He kills people. Look at this and they

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From their worldview. They're trying to make an assessment of ours The hokey pokey principle means you got to put the whole body in you sit in their worldview think everything that they would take their the tenants of their worldview and Apply it to itself and see if it's

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Internally consistent or contradictory It demonstrates presuppositional presuppositionalism demonstrates that their starting point their

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Presuppositions are inadequate to provide the necessary preconditions of intelligibility logic uniformity of nature moral laws

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Physical laws. All right Your worldview must provide these things in order to understand truth

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That makes sense so far. So if your worldview doesn't give you the ability To bring forth the preconditions of intelligibility.

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It has to be rejected. It's unintelligible Okay, so I'm gonna go through a couple of basic definitions so that we know where we're starting

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I'm gonna try to boil these down make it a little simpler for us So the first one you've heard pastor talk about autonomy

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Autonomy basically means self -law or independent thinking So I call it going

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Eve like going rogue when Eve was in the garden Adam told her what God said you touched you you you eat the the fruit of the tree.

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You're gonna die She now gets approached by the serpent so instead of Standing on God's Word and what he said she moved off of it and now started to listen to someone else's word

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And now is deliberating. Okay, which one is right? The moment you get off of God's Word you you are gonna have a problem now

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You made yourself the arbiter of truth versus God So Satan comes along crafty throws throws in a couple of allies couple of questions to to make you doubt

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God's Truthfulness and now you're gonna make the decision so autonomy Basically means you're gonna stand on God's Word You're not gonna come to truth on your own apart from apart from what

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God says make sense, okay a Brute fact an

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Uninterpreted fact that stands alone without reference to some other fact especially to God presuppositional apologetics

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Denies brute factuality in that all facts are created and controlled by God According to his plan and for his glory

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So a brute fact is a fact that has no explanation behind it.

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It just is Okay. Now our buddy Eli.

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He says God is the father of all facts I love that every fact that's a fact is a fact because God made it a fact

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He's the one who defines everything now I'm gonna do a little illustration and I know some of you've seen this if you have

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Just bear with me if you haven't pay attention So can anybody in the room tell me what this is?

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Someone Butter knife. Okay. So now I'm not from around here I've never seen a butter knife heard of what a butter knife is.

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How could you prove to me that this was a butter knife? This is the easy question

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Somebody's gonna make toast and you spread the butter and I'll be like, oh, that's really nice However, I've been to some of your houses and I've seen some of the guys in their little tool drawer

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They take this thing out and they use it like a screwdriver Right, and I've seen some of the women struggling to open up cans

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So they put it on the edge and they pull in and use it as a pry bar And then sometimes if you're in a jammie, you got to hang up a picture you take the back of this right and you

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You tap something into the wall and you can hang your picture There are even some kids who drew circles on the wall and they start

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Trying to get it into the center of the circle. I Also know that if an intruder came into the house you would grab this like this and you could use it as a really good weapon

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So although you say it's a butter knife, I'm telling you that this is a multi -purpose tool

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You're limiting what it actually was made for So now

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I have empirical scientifically verifiable evidence that this is a screwdriver a pry bar a little hammer a weapon and a

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Thing you could play games with how could you prove me wrong? What's the only way you can prove me wrong?

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By introducing me to the creator of the butter knife who said I made this to spread butter

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Yes, you can use it for other things, but that's a misuse of what I made it for because I defined it now think about how that can apply to humanity and human beings

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Some people say hey we can use humans as slaves You know from a from a practical standpoint.

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It's really cheap. It's very productive and we pump out a lot of product Well better yet, you know, we got these this new medicine out and we really don't know how it's gonna work

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Maybe we'll just pull some human beings aside and use them as guinea pigs Let them so they could be test cases for our experimental medicine

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Now wouldn't that be using human beings for the good of humanity? Oh From from a practical standpoint or a pragmatic standpoint.

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Absolutely, but from a worldview with God you're misusing human beings You cannot do that and there's many many other ways that people misuse human beings, right?

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So only when you come into contact with the Creator Can you be certain of what something is and can you use it correctly or incorrectly?

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All right, so that's very important with the brute fact watch this Bertrand Russell the universe just is and that's all

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That's a brute fact Now if I put the word God in there God just is and that's all would he accept that?

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No, that's not a brute fact. So who makes the brute fact he does he arbitrarily designed

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Defined it right. So the person is acting arbitrarily. He says well, it just is without any grounding and It has this this particular fact has no connection to anything else

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Isn't that convenient? Right. This is autonomy. He steps off God's revelation

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And now he's the arbiter of of what a fact is and isn't he gets to define it. We reject that Internal it's internally inconsistent

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Let's move on Epistemology is a big word and it's based on two Greek words episteme, which means knowledge knowledge and logos, which means word

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So epistemology is the study of the nature of human knowledge. It addresses questions about truth belief justification

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Etc. How it addresses how you can know what you know How do you know what you know?

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Is it information? Is it revelation? How do you how do you determine what this is if you don't have anybody telling you what this is?

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It's very important. Your epistemology is part of your worldview and you need to know how you access

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Truth and certainty or truth and falsity How do you know something is true or false?

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That's what epistemology is going to address. Okay, and we're gonna get a little bit This is I'm trying to water it down and then we're gonna go to a really basic illustration.

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Hopefully it'll put the pieces together Next is your metaphysic. This is meta means beyond physica is physics or nature

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Metaphysic literally means beyond the physical that is beyond the physical world sense of perception

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It's the study or the of the structure or the framework of nature and reality

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The nature of reality it provides the necessary context. So if I told you hey last night, did you see the

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Yankees? They scored two touchdowns You'd be like, wait a second. I know the

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Yankees and That's not baseball. That's a different field. Right? So metaphysics is basically the field that you're playing on Right.

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What is the field that we're playing on in this world? And where does it come from? Who defines it?

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How do you know? What the meta what what your metaphysic is? So when you find somebody who's playing football on a baseball field, you can say that's inconsistent.

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That's a contradiction So as we compare worldviews, that's what we're going to look for So the metaphysic is basically your structure of reality or what game you're playing

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Next is transcendental reasoning and we went over this real quickly What conditions must be satisfied for any particular instance of knowledge to be possible?

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In other words, what must be true for anything else to be true, right? If I said listen walk up these stairs and go on to the second floor

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What must be true You need a first floor Right. You can't have a second floor without a first floor and you can't have a first floor without a foundation

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Right. So the transcendental argument starts at the foundation. What are we standing on in order to build our house?

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What are we standing on in order for anything else to be true? Is this making sense? We're doing good.

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Okay good truth Truth there's a theory called the correspondence theory and they'll say that truth is that which comes corresponds to reality and That's true in and of itself.

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The problem is Who defines reality? Hitler Mother Teresa who defines reality

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That's the problem. So we have to find out what reality is now for the Christian. It's real simple Truth is that which corresponds to the mind of God in other words?

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Truth is that which corresponds to God's Word or his scriptures. Oh No sound

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I had a nice little bell All right, whatever. All right.

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So truth is that which corresponds to the mind of God? So God who's omniscient he knows everything if an omniscient

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God Reveals something to you about the world You can know it but not just know it you can know it with certainty

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Because he knows everything If you're floating around and you walk into one of these and you see somebody in their house doing this

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You can say oh, wow. This is a pry bar. I saw it with my own eyes I actually tried it with my own hands and it works

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How are you gonna? Convince the person that it's not just a pry bar

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They're going to need to know who made it. That's the person who defined it You got to introduce them to the

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Creator and it's the same thing with the world that we live in So truth for the Christian is that which corresponds to the mind of God?

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Preconditions of intelligibility. All right. Here's another long phrase It's the conditions that must be accepted as true before we can know anything about the world before we can know anything about the universe the preconditions the condition beforehand pre condition of intelligibility are things that most people take for granted a

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Logically correct worldview must provide these preconditions of intelligibility because without them we could not know anything about the universe in other words the laws of logic uniformity of nature moral laws mathematical laws

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Personhood what's a person? If that's not defined up front and most people don't define that up front and now come to the table and say well

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We know what a person is, but you see what's happening in today's society Person may not be a person gender may not be gender love means something different Science could mean something completely different So now the preconditions of intelligibility from our standpoint never change on theirs it fluctuates

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Because it's not grounded in one being On their worldview or an atheistic worldview.

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It's grounded in the subjective mind of each of these people Right. So each one become the arbiter of their own truth

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Whereas we stand on the word of god, we understand that there's one truth god has defined everything for us already

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Okay, last one is worldview and this is probably the most important one So a worldview is a net a network or system of our most basic beliefs about reality

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In light of which all observations are interpreted Worldview is like the lens you look through when you look out at the world

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Real easy. So you ever hear somebody say oh, he's got rose -colored glasses on everything. He sees through these he's got everything

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Everything's rosy He's looking through rose -colored glasses For us we look through the lens of scripture.

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We see everything through the lens of jesus christ Because he's the the author and finisher of our faith.

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He's the author of reality Basically, it's gonna uh Oh, i'm missing something.

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Okay um your worldview is composed of your metaphysic the structure of the

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The plain ground you're working on your epistemology how you know what you know and your ethic your moral law

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Worldview is going to look basically something like this your world That's the globe and it's composed of a bunch of different pieces

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And all these pieces need to need to fit together Uh logically and coherently

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If a piece is out of the puzzle, well, something's wrong. They may call this a brute fact. Oh, that's just hanging out there

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You know, nobody's defined it. It's it's it's not attached to anything else

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So when we go to put our worldview together, it's going to look like a puzzle and we're going to put all the pieces together

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Metaphysic is the framework of reality that provides context So every fact in this world is related to another fact

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Right. So it doesn't matter what I what I what fact I would tell you it's dependent on something else and whatever that Is dependent on that's a fact and it's dependent on something else.

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All of our facts are interdependent And ultimately depend on god for their for their truth

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Okay, are we we're good so far? All right. Good Epistemology how you know what you know

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And your ethic the proper use of facts We don't want to misuse one of the puzzle pieces and try to force it into the puzzle

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All right, that would be wrong. We need it to fit nicely Now your worldview is untestable by natural science

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It's tested and affirmed by consistency and coherence So when we do an internal critique of the christian worldview and an internal critique of the muslim worldview and an internal critique of the atheistic worldview

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There's no way There's no scientific experiment that you can do that can prove what the metaphysic is

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Except for the fact that it's self -attesting and it's coherent and consistent not contradictory.

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Did you ever? Think about this that there's no scientific experiment that you can do that can prove that the scientific method is the only way to know something

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The scientific method can't tell you That what the nazis did in germany was wrong the the scientific method can't tell you that um, the world didn't start a week ago and we were all

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Uh, we were all created with memories that go back further than that The scientific method can't tell you that there's other minds in this room besides your own

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Scientific method can't tell you a lot of things because the scientific method is a tool to measure nature natural things

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So if I was walking on a beach And I had a metal detector and I go up and down the beach all day long

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And then I come back at the end of the day. I say, you know, there's no water plastic on the beach You're like dude you're using a metal detector

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No, no metal or you're using the wrong tool You cannot measure a worldview with with the scientific method scientific method is designed to measure things that appear in nature

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Okay, it's like trying to weigh a chicken with a yardstick You'll get that tomorrow. Okay Presuppositionalism examines an entire system

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Against another entire system. So this is worldview against worldview in its entirety

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What an evidentialist does he takes little bits and pieces of the puzzle here Little bits and pieces of the puzzle here and then compares them

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And that's not the right thing to do because it's not that we can't use evidence We certainly do but the atheist is coming not from a position of neutrality.

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He's hostile. He does not believe in god He's rejecting that and once you do

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If you come off of that and say, okay, i'm gonna i'm not gonna stand on the scriptures. You're going eve you're going rogue

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All right. Now i'm going to explain it from my point of view not god's And then you're just going to get into a an argument not get anywhere and again um

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It's not that you can't use evidence. Of course evidence is going to flow from your worldview I love presuppositionalism because I get to stand at the foundation and then use the evidence that supports my position

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Right and I tell the person listen, you know god exists But the bible says that you know god exists you're in contact with god right now

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You're using the preconditions of intelligibility that your worldview can't Can't give us you're you're stealing from god in order to deny the the things that the god who gave you these things

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Right. Okay So it's entire system against entire system not little bits and pieces

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Every worldview requires an objective fundamental starting or reference point.

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That's vital If the atheist or whoever it is, you're talking to can't tell you what their starting point is

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You reject it say i'm not well they a lot of times so we're going to get into an example soon

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Guy keeps asking me for evidence Well, you I need evidence for a god I need evidence and I said listen evidence presupposes truth

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How do you ground truth on your worldview this is not about me this is about you prove you're a god

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I said no, you don't understand your worldview can't even give you truth or access to what's true or false

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So you're just going to continue to deny this and not give an accounting for your worldview If you're telling me that I need evidence and you would never adopt a worldview without evidence

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Then just simply give me the evidence for your worldview They won't do that because they have not All right, and the butter knife.

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Okay the butter knife illustration So facts need a context and a reference point for this illustration

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The reference point would be the the inventor of the butter knife. You go right back to him He says no look this is what it's for.

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Oh, yeah You can use it to hurt somebody and defend yourself and as a toy and all these different things But that's not what it was intended for So in order to know a fact is a fact you got to go back to the source of that fact

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Presuppositionalism is sometimes called worldview apologetics Again, we're looking at entire systems and seeing how they

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How they compare with each other And the last one.

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Okay. I'm sorry metaphysic. What did I say metaphysic was this is going to be our little illustration and short quiz

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What is what was what's the metaphysic? Yes again,

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Erin Outside of the physical right and for for for our illustration it's the structure of reality or context our framework

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Right. So basically my illustration is going to be like this We're going to put together a puzzle right the puzzle

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Anybody who puts together puzzles generally tries to do the outside first Right because you got all the flat edges and you start lining them up and once you get the whole framework

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Of the puzzle done now, you can start filling it in but at least you have a good head start

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So when you're looking at a worldview think the metaphysic is the structure Of the puzzle we're going to put together a puzzle now in this puzzle

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Every piece needs to put in be put in its place correctly If you start forcing things into the puzzle

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Well, maybe that piece doesn't belong in the puzzle or maybe that piece is going to expose a contradiction in your worldview

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Which would nullify it? Okay, which would prove that it's wrong So now what else do we need when we're putting together a puzzle?

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We usually open the box right and you know, you put the puzzle pieces on a table, but you got the box top

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Right the box top shows you ultimately what the puzzle should look like when it's finished

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What would happen if you didn't have a box top like with a couple of thousand piece puzzle?

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It'd be very very difficult To put that puzzle together because you don't even know what it looks like Right.

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So without a box top And a structure a metaphysic

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What are you putting together? You could be in the middle of that puzzle and think it's it's a horse when it's really a mountain

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You have no certainty without that box top Right, you don't know what direction the puzzle's going because you weren't shown that up front

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But if you have the box top up front and as christians we do We have the scriptures that give us the whole structure of reality

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Now when we look at the the pieces of the puzzle We can now see how they start to fit together to form a view of reality.

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So the metaphysic is our context our framework Then we have facts And what are facts?

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In in our little illustration here. How do we if I say it you're gonna how do we know what a fact is?

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What would that be? Huh? Right god told us but what's that called?

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What's the big word? Epistemology, right? How you know what you know?

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How do you know that a fact is a fact? Right. That's that's epistemology.

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So the facts Are the individual puzzle pieces? And each piece is necessary It connects to something else and it comprises

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It's part of the whole picture All right, all the puzzle pieces need to fit together

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And they need to match the box top if they don't match the box top.

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They don't belong in this puzzle Now, I don't know if you're anything like me at my house. We got a bunch of boxes of puzzles and Pieces in all different boxes and we have no idea which is which

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That's what most people do with their worldview. They have pieces Especially Christians, I got a piece from here and a piece from that book and the book of revelation

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I got a piece and they have worldviews a jumble mess It's only when you start to put those things together

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Okay, it make a nice neat puzzle that you understand what the whole thing is. Okay Next we have coherency and consistency

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So what would this kind of relate to In the definitions that we we went through so far

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All right This is where it would be ethical Right, so it would be wrong to misuse a human being as a slave or For medical experimentation because a human being is created in the image god it would be wrong to use a butter knife to Put a screw in or use it as a hammer or as a weapon

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Okay, it would be practically useful. Okay, but ultimately it's it's a misunderstanding of what it was meant for Okay, so it's a violation of purpose

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You're violating the purpose of this butter knife. So when we put put the pieces in the puzzle here

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If they don't fit, you know, do you ever try to jam a piece like it? This has got to fit. I know it fits here and you're pushing it in you make it fit

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But it's wrong and you know, it's wrong because it doesn't look like everything else. That's a misapplication of the fact

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So you need every worldview is comprised of metaphysic epistemology and your ethic

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So this would violate the ethic or be the ethical part of this illustration And it would also provide context once you start putting all these puzzle pieces together.

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You'd be like, oh I Understand that we're on a baseball field and I understand that these are bases and that's a pitcher's mound and you start understanding the game

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Right when you put the together the puzzle pieces of your worldview you start understanding reality and what it's what it's about especially when you read the scriptures because the scriptures are the story of reality

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Next is contradictions and arbitrariness. And this is what we know as brute facts

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Where is it? There we go. Now those look like they fit.

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Does it matter? Yeah, of course it matters it matters if you're trying to put together a

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Coherent worldview without contradictions and without being arbitrary The atheist says well, it's it is what it is.

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And that's all that is. I don't it doesn't need to be grounded Really? So would you accept that if I said well

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God doesn't need grounding. No. No. No. No, we need evidence Well, I need evidence that that fact is a brute fact

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And if that brute fact has no bearing on any other fact, then it's irrelevant

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But you're not using that brute fact in an irrelevant way. It's very relevant to you making your point, but you're saying

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You're contradicting yourself and saying it's a brute fact. It's not connected to anything else So when somebody says, oh we have a brute fact here you say no

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I don't grant you that you need to ground that fact Tell me how you know that it's a brute fact and tell me how it's not related to anything else

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The very fact that you're calling it a brute fact and using it in your argument tells me that it's not a brute fact

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You need it to substantiate all the other tenets of your worldview And finally the preconditions of intelligibility, right?

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These are the things that must be true in order for anything else to be true So if there's going to be truth at all, the question is how do we ground it?

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Right and finally the last one truth Does it match the box top?

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If the box top looks like this and you end up with your puzzle not looking anything like this

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Well, then, you know, you're messed up. You're missing pieces or you just didn't get it, right?

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The problem is if there is no box top you can make any puzzle you want, but it can't be proven true or false

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Without a box top, right a picture that you're going by you cannot know if something is right or wrong

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Again, go back to the butter knife If if you're not if you weren't introduced to the creator of the butter knife, how could somebody?

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Convince you that this wasn't a screwdriver or a multi -purpose tool They couldn't do it with just physical evidence

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You need the metaphysical structure around it Which would mean the creator came the inventor of the butter knife came he designed it.

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He made it for a specific purpose Without that you're flying in the wind How else are you going to figure out what this is apart from the creator?

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You can't use physical means to do that Okay, so your worldview has to line up with how you live so if you're living a life

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And you're living in your you're telling other people. Oh you you need to be nice to other people You need to love your neighbor.

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You need to treat people with empathy Why? What in your worldview?

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Obligates me to act like that if you're an atheist and there is no God. Well, it's your

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Felt it's your fellow humans that you should be nice to humanity again.

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Why? Why not eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die who cares

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Ultimately, I came from nothing. I'm going to nothing Why not just have the best time

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I possibly can and not worry about what other people think or say or someone gets hurt Okay So that's how we we would internally critique.

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Okay real real quick recap Worldview is a network or a system of our most basic beliefs about reality and this is wrong

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We went through this Okay, here's what I wanted to show you Okay, so do you guys ever play golf?

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Anybody in here ever play golf? No one. All right, great. Oh Ted. All right. Good. Thank you So maybe you're the only one who's gonna understand this

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All right So if you ever if you ever do get finally get a ball onto the green and you're you're you're able to make a putt

35:47

You usually try to sit behind the ball and and line it up with with where you're trying to shoot it in right into the hole

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That's the golfer behind him is the caddy What we want to do basically is get a like sit over God's shoulder and look at all the facts in the world from his vantage point

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When you start seeing facts from God's vantage point now You're gonna look your thoughts are gonna line up with God's thoughts.

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God's thoughts are perfect We want our thoughts to line up with his thoughts So you want to crouch down look look at the world through the lens of Scripture and see things the way he created them

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All right, this slide was supposed to be afterwards but okay so questions to ask Big world big big questions to ask the person who is coming against your

36:36

Christian worldview. What is truth? I did a An interview on on my channel with some guy

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We were going back and forth back and forth and I and I really didn't stick to a presuppositional method until towards the end

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So finally I asked him we're going back and forth. Wait a second. What is truth? We're arguing about you know, this is true.

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That's you what is truth and The guy he just he got caught he's like and I just let the silence

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Go for about 30 seconds. I just waited What is truth he's like Reality said who's he just didn't have an answer

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So he says the same reality is yours. I said Oh God. No, no. No. Well, then it's not the same reality is mine, right?

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What's your standard for truth your standard for truth is not something that you can measure with a scientific experiment

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It's not something you can see touch way or feel right? So it's immaterial What is your starting point what is ultimate on your worldview

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What are you standing on in order to know anything else in order to see the things around you?

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How does that ground or provide knowledge? How do you know your starting point is correct

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Right. Our starting point is self -attesting right without the existence of God. You could not know anything for certain

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You want to ask them big world big questions about origin identity meaning morality and destiny origin, where did you come from?

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How do you know evolution? Oh, we got proof for it. Really, you know Anybody who's been around a million years to observe it.

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Isn't that one of the tenants of the scientific method? It needs to be observable Wow Is it doesn't the scientific medicine needs to be repeatable?

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So it's not observable. It's not repeatable But you believe it and it's a fact it's not faith, right?

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Sure Identity, what are you? Are you a person? How do you know on your worldview?

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Tell me what's the difference between a bug a bird a baby a bonsai? Tree or a boulder.

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What's the difference on your worldview? We're just old molecules in motion, right? Is there?

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Where are you going? What is the goal for the world? Again if you don't have a box top to shoot for you

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Can't tell me what I ought to do or ought not to do there is no ought in a random chance universe

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Remember your starting point affects your worldview Vantil says this I propose to argue that unless God is in back of everything.

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You cannot find meaning in anything I like that quote. Okay. So now Last week as God's Providence goes

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I put up The the video from last week's lesson and there's a there's an atheist guy who

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I constantly go back and forth with and he just He doesn't listen to what

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I have to say. So he puts this up He says who gave birth to Jesus who wrote the

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Bible who built the ark not God if people do God's work Then God is useless and not necessary Funny how people do things and claim

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God told them to do it. It's just as if there wasn't a God So the week before I had gone.

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Oh gosh 70 80 lines with this guy and I was just like I'm not doing this.

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So I said look Hi, Andrew I know you lack belief in God and seek to comment on my posts which are in favor of the

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God of the Bible We need to agree to disagree as it's beginning to look like you're trolling my posts like everything

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I put up He just keeps going at right. We've gone round and round numerous times and may never end up agreeing

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So why continue making these posts? I don't do that to you and would appreciate if you would respond in kind your standard is empathy, right?

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You want to put yourself in the other person's, you know position say, okay, you know, they don't want that. Here's his response

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Instead of addressing the points I make you attack me the messenger He doesn't know what an attack is

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That's not an attack. All right so much for the truth will set you free now.

40:51

He's quoting the scripture I didn't even go there with him, right? We both can't be right. So how can you agree to disagree?

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I'm not trolling. I'm educating Okay, you obviously don't care about what the truth is

41:06

You admit you just presuppose truth. We did go round the round instead of proving your claims you attack my worldview

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Which is irrelevant to your claims. That's not true You once admitted to me that you do this because it brings comfort to people and what he's he's quoting me

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When I had my debate at Long Island University at Brookville I said this and I knew somebody was gonna take it out of context

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I said even if and I'm and I said that just like this even if God didn't exist on Your worldview and it comforted somebody it would be better I said,

41:41

I don't believe that God doesn't exist. But on your worldview, it's about comfort What makes you feel better? So even if God didn't exist and you telling somebody that he did and they found comfort in it

41:51

Well, that would be beneficial for them. And I said specifically don't take me out of context and he has been for the past 10 years anyway

41:59

Lots of things can bring comfort including heroin, but that doesn't make it good What are you what you are doing is holding back science and hindering people from developing skills to deal with reality

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In favor of a false sense of comfort. You're causing more harm than good whether you realize it or not

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Okay, so here's my response I'm not going any further with this and your statement proves your own worldview self -defeating

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How can you know I'm causing more harm than good if you don't have an objective standard for good or truth?

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Okay, he doesn't have a box top There's no picture of the puzzle that he's trying to create with his worldview

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He has no way of knowing if I'm causing harm or good What standard is he using aside from his own?

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subjective autonomous standard It's all subjective on your worldview on your view.

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There is no way the world should be Just random chance universe, right?

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Molecules in motion didn't come from anywhere isn't going anywhere. There's no goal for the world

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Nor any way to prove objectively except for your Subjective feelings and subjective standard, of course, and you exercise your standard of empathy for others except for my view

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Empathy empathy empathy except for the Christian world. Of course, you're harming people. I'm educating them.

43:31

You're harming them You don't know you really don't know how much harm you're doing. Okay? Now I'm I'll show you his response to this in a minute, but Next week we're gonna go through that 70 80

43:46

Post thing to show you how the argument plays out This just by God's providence was a quick little example because I knew

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I wasn't going to be able to fit everything into Into one lesson. So here's his His response seriously, you don't know the difference between harm and good

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That's the knockout punch for the Christian worldview. Seriously, you don't know the difference between harm and good

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That's the response once you once I attacked the Foundation for his worldview showing that he has nothing objective to stand on to prove the standard by which we can understand whether something's harmful or not and it's

44:29

Subjective inside himself. He can't answer So now the difference between objectivity and subjectivity

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Subjectivity means the standard lies within me So in other words, I like Rocky Road you like butter pecan you like vanilla who's right?

44:47

It's subjective it depends on the subject but if I were if you had a headache and I had a

44:53

Two bottles one full of our aspirin and the other one full of arsenic

44:59

Right, which would you want? Oh, I prefer arsenic. That's not gonna work

45:05

Arsenic is going to kill you that aspirin is going to help you. It's objective The standard is outside of yourself not inside of yourself

45:13

So what the atheist does they go rogue they go Eve they go off of God's revelation and now they say, okay

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I'm gonna determine what's true based on my my experience my experimentation

45:28

This is a screwdriver and you can't prove me wrong They're not understanding in their metaphysic their worldview

45:37

They have no access to truth or falsity because they don't have an omniscient God revealing it to them.

45:43

Make sense Last thing I'm gonna leave you with remember hit Christopher Hitchens, right famous atheist.

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He died of cancer. He used to ask What's one thing? You can say as a

45:56

Christian that I can't say as As an atheist and you know, none of the apologists that ever answered this.

46:03

Oh, I forgot to That's that's his big thing, right? You know all none of the apologists really gave him a good answer to this and I don't know why it's stumped so many

46:15

People but for me it came simple. Is there an ultimate consequence for evil? What can

46:21

I say as a Christian that you can't say as an atheist there is an ultimate consequence for evil you can't say that If there's an ultimate consequence for evil then it matters how we live our lives here and now

46:35

If there's no ultimate consequence for evil who cares how you live? Right, but their lives don't match that.

46:43

They don't live that way. They they want to be good people They just don't understand where the standard of good comes from and they don't recognize that in their hearts they are evil

46:53

They're depraved that they need to be rescued Right. Okay. So any questions with regards to this next week?

47:00

we're gonna I'm gonna break it down to show you a three -step way to Go at somebody in a competing worldview and then we're gonna go through a law a much longer conversation between myself