Responding to Critics: w/Eli Ayala

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and I'm back.

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This is two days in a row. I was live yesterday, I think it was yesterday, with Dr.

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Danny Faulkner talking about the age of the universe and that was a fun discussion and I encourage people to check that out.

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That's the previous video on this channel. And so here I am today kind of not planning these things too far in advance.

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We had a long family trip and so I really haven't planned anything specifically but I want to continue to get content out there.

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The beauty of what I do is that on YouTube there is an infinite number of things that I can cover, especially in light of the fact that on my videos people leave all sorts of interesting comments and objections and criticisms and things like that.

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And so suppose I haven't had a show in a while and you know

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I'm looking for content. Well all

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I got to do is search the comments and collect various comments and questions and things like that and there you go you have content for videos.

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But I do think that while I don't read all of the comments I do try to skim through and see what kind of questions people are asking or when someone brings up a particular objection to apologetics or the

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Christian worldview is there a teaching opportunity in those questions or those comments.

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And so I've kind of gathered a couple of questions, a couple of comments that I think would be good in terms of instructing in terms of apologetic application and things like that.

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So hopefully this will be useful for folks. Yeah Reform Disciple 1689 thank you very much.

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He says Eli Ayala is doing a stream with Eli Ayala. That's right I think I have with Eli Ayala the title there.

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Thank you. Thank you for pointing that out. That's right. Imagine I had a twin brother named

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Eli and you guys didn't know about him and we both popped up on the screen and I was being interviewed by someone who looked exactly like me.

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That'd be super freaky. But no that's not true. I have two older brothers. I suppose

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I can't say we look nothing alike. I do look similar to my my brothers but there are significant differences.

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Okay so nevertheless that is either here nor there. So moving away from that before I jump in I do want to encourage folks as and the reason why

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I give kind of these introductory spiels is because when I'm live I want to give some time for people to come in. So I see a couple people trickling in.

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I do want to encourage you folks as I am responding to certain critics in my video comment section things like that feel free if you have a question preface your question with the word question and and if I if I'm able to answer your question

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I will try my best to address your question. So so yeah and it feels really weird doing a show at 3 p .m.

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Eastern because I typically do my show like super late at night and I am revved up on coffee but now

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I am revved up on water and I just realized my water bottle matches my sweater.

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That wasn't on purpose. Such a God thing. Let's see one second. All right there we go.

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So again if you have any questions about the Bible about theology apologetics presuppositional apologetics or anything along the lines of a past video that I've done please preface your question with question.

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If you want to support Revealed Apologetics by sending me a super chat that is always greatly appreciated as well and you could also donate to Revealed Apologetics if you really believe in what

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I'm doing and you've been blessed by the content there is a link in the description where you can support it takes you straight to the donate page on revealedapologetics .com.

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If you have a question or a video topic you'd like me to make you can email me at revealedapologetics at gmail .com

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and I will I will answer your question via responding to your email or I will create a video based upon your question depending on the kind of question.

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So I do read my emails if you want to you want to look that up and you know email me a question or comment or even just a word of encouragement.

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I'd greatly appreciate it. I do want to apologize also that I have not been updating my podcast.

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I have not given up on my podcast. I'm going to sometime this week take the time to update the podcast.

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It takes a little bit of time and so once I'm off the video here I'm often kind of busy with family stuff and so I haven't had the time to just sit down do that and then provide all the links and I have to set up the description so it takes a little time so I do apologize.

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I'll try to make sure that I can do that soon because I know that a lot of people who listen to this content do so on the iTunes podcast.

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Not everyone has the cool YouTube premium where you could listen to me in the background and turn your phone off and just fall asleep to the sound of my deep voice.

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So I'll make sure it will do that. The Alcoon project, I think

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I'm pronounced it, thank you so much. He says or she says he says I love your work Eli. Thank you so much for that $10 super chat.

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That is super appreciated. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay, well again, remember while I'm going through the various points that I'll be going through in this video, feel free to send me your question.

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Make sure not only do you preface your question with question but think very carefully when typing out your question.

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Make sure it's grammatically correct and don't assume I know what you're talking about. I remember one time

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I was speaking at a church and it was a Q &A after a talk on apologetics. It was a Q &A and I had a pile of little rolled up pieces of paper with questions from the people who, you know, the audience.

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And one of the, when I opened up one of the papers to see what was being asked, the one question that had the word dinosaurs question mark.

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That was it. It's like dinosaurs? Question mark. Well what about the dinosaurs? Are you asking about the dinosaurs?

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Did Noah have dinosaurs on the ark? Are you talking about what happened to the dinosaur? So be specific if you can, okay?

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If I don't understand your question, it's gonna be very difficult for me to answer your question, alright?

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Alright, well let's jump right in. Let's see here. So I gathered a couple of things and the first,

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I guess, statement I think is going to be very, very helpful in terms of unpacking really the difference between believers and unbelievers, especially with respect to topics relating to really the content of my previous interview with Dr.

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Danny Faulkner on the age of the universe. And so this whole kind of creation, evolution, or kind of the age of the universe in terms of what the

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Bible says and what the scientific data is. And so in response to the title of the video, which was,

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I think it was, Is the Universe Young? A gentleman by the name of David says the answer is no.

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And then he goes on to say that the consensus of experts in the field say no. And the only reason, here you go,

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I want you to pay attention to this. Now again, I'm talking to Christians now analyzing statements. Hopefully this will be helpful.

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He says the consensus of the experts in the field say no. The only reason you deny this is because of your biblical interpretation, which you put first and then you, check this out, and you bend backwards with mental gymnastics and bad science, okay?

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Now again, when you see a statement like this, okay, you need to learn how to analyze the statement.

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There are a lot of things going on in this statement. First, I'd like to thank David for his comment there. I appreciate people who send their comments even when they disagree with me.

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And so let's kind of unpack that. I think there are a couple of things to keep in mind in light of that statement.

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First, it's true that the majority of scientists today support kind of an old universe model based on various lines of evidence, such as things like redshift, cosmic, microwave, background radiation, radiometric dating, all that nice interesting sciency stuff.

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However, I think from a logical standpoint, it's essential, I think, to recognize that the scientific consensus is not infallible, right?

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And has changed throughout our history. And so the consensus, you know, regardless of what view you're interacting with, it can and is influenced by prevailing worldview assumptions and interpretations of the data, okay?

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To suggest that something is true or probably true or you're unreasonable unless you agree with the consensus, okay?

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When someone says something along those lines, I think they're completely ignoring something that we focus so much on this channel, and that's the issue of presuppositions and worldviews, okay?

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This is super important. A lot of the folks within the scientific community assume all sorts of things, philosophically, that have nothing to do with science.

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For example, the philosophy of naturalism. Isn't that right? Many scientists operate under a naturalistic framework, which of course excludes, ironically, supernatural explanations by definition, okay?

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And obviously, I'm not going to argue with a scientifically minded person about the scientific consensus without addressing the underlying presuppositions that are held by many within the consensus and held by the person that I am disputing this particular issue with, right?

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Okay, so many people operate under all sorts of philosophical bias, okay? So if you're starting with naturalism, again, that's going to exclude supernatural explanations by definition that needs to be addressed.

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You see, this bias influences, it's not saying that it can influence, it does influence our interpretation of the data, which then leads to conclusions that align with what?

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Surprise, surprise, naturalistic assumptions. It's surprising that when you presuppose naturalism, amazing, you end with naturalism.

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Isn't that true, right? It is a philosophical and logical no -no when a Christian presupposes supernaturalism and then ends with naturalism, but it is philosophically okay when someone starts with naturalism and then ends with naturalism, you see?

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Because people will start with naturalism and not think that they're starting with something particularly problematic.

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It's like, well, it's just a default position. Well, again, to even claim a position as a default position is to show a bias towards how one, you know, the relationship between one's starting point and ending points, okay?

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And how do we know naturalism is a default position, right? From a Christian perspective, I would reject that outright.

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I think the default position and the position that is continued to have, even when rejecting God, is the position that all men have a knowledge of God.

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You don't have to accept that. You can say, well, that's ridiculous. Well, you're just reflecting your belief in the Bible. But yeah, my understanding of what default positions are is going to be very different at a fundamental level than what many unbelievers think are the default position.

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I remember listening to a discussion slash debate, you know, an atheist said to a Christian, well, you know, babies are atheists and then they have to be taught religion.

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Well, how does the atheist know that? How do you know that? How do you know if belief in God or some form of primitive knowledge of God is the default and someone has to be taught out of that?

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Well, that's ridiculous. Well, again, what you consider ridiculous is going to be dependent upon your worldview, right?

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Now, this is not something new. It's not something weird that a presuppositionalist like myself just happens to bring up.

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I mean, philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn and Paul Fairbairn have argued that scientific paradigms, there's a whole book written about scientific paradigms, are influenced by a whole host of things.

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They're influenced by sociocultural factors, especially various shifts in consensus will shift and move because not simply by looking at empirical data but due to the changes in these underlying sociocultural factors, presuppositions, philosophical positions, the consensus changes because people's philosophies change.

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They impact how they see things, right? This isn't like weird Christian presuppositional spooky way of, you know, some of our tricky way of avoiding.

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It's just ridiculous. This is philosophically naive to think that science just, you know, there's the consensus and so there you go.

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No. Well, yes, as a Christian, I disagree with the consensus. By the way, the consensus within the scientific community is that people who die stay dead.

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Isn't that right? Well, as a Christian, I reject that. By the way, not only do I believe that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead bodily, by the way, that tomb was empty.

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I believe that everyone will rise from the dead one day. All right. That goes against the scientific consensus, but I don't care.

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I think the scientific consensus is wrong on that. And so, again, because I have a different worldview than many within what we might call the scientific consensus.

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Now, it is true that I hold the Bible as my ultimate authority in all things, right? I'm very clear on that, okay?

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But this, of course, is true in the case of the secular scientist. Isn't that right? To pretend, for example, that scientists are just these paragons of neutrality and objectivity, you know, with no bias whatsoever, it's philosophically naive and it's demonstrably false.

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I'm reminded of Richard Dawkins when he says, well, nature, although nature looks to die, we need to keep reminding ourselves that it's not.

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Yeah, that's neutral. That's objective. Yeah. We all have worldviews, guys. That's why I keep harping on it all the time in this channel.

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So we want to keep that in mind. Okay. Science is not neutral.

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The facts don't speak for themselves. Facts are interpreted. All these sorts of things that we've talked about ad nauseum in this channel,

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I think it's just very important to keep in mind. Okay. If you believe that the Bible teaches that God created everything in six days, rested on the seventh, and then and that your interpretation of that text is correct.

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If you hold to a literal, straightforward reading, I know that there are Christians, for example, and what

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I appreciate about David's comments here, look what he says here. And I think this is a good, I think I'm going to point this out here.

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With respect to the question, is the universe young? He says the answer is no. The consensus of experts in the field say no.

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And the only reason you deny this is because of your biblical interpretation. That's true. I do interpret the

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Bible in a particular way and people who will to kind of a straightforward kind of what we might call the literal 24 hour reading of the text.

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Sure. You know, people will hold to that. That's an interpretation. Yeah. But to say something's an interpretation doesn't entail its falsehood.

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And that's why Christians who disagree on this issue will have, you know, in many cases, a fruitful, disagreeing discussion and debate over this, right?

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Um, that's fine. Okay. Um, but at the same time, uh, again, we come to the text with presuppositions and worldview assumptions.

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You know, Christians try to, um, you know, believe things that are consistent with what they take to be the ultimate authority of the

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Bible. I believe the Bible is my ultimate authority. And so of course it's going to inform how I see everything just as the unbeliever has their

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Bible. Okay. They have, if my Bible is the ultimate foundation, the person who rejects the Bible is going to have a different ultimate foundation.

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Maybe it's on, it's his own self autonomy. Maybe it's his adopting of some philosophical perspective that he finds convincing as a foundation to understand everything else.

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We all have our foundations, our ultimate commitments. And this is, again, is not some weird presuppositional, you know, word game.

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It's just common sense. Obviously the reason why we disagree over certain things is because we have certain beliefs that differ and are in opposition to one another, right?

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This isn't, this isn't hard. Um, I'm sorry if I sound kind of, uh, annoyed, uh, you know, reading some of the comments and, uh,

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I kind of sympathize sometimes, sometimes, and when I say sometimes with a lowercase s,

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I kind of sympathize with other apologists who get, they can come across really snarky and very disrespectful to those they're interacting with.

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And of course that's, that shouldn't be something that should characterize a Christian, but sometimes I understand the difficulty of trying to repeat yourself over and over again, addressing certain issues.

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And the same things come up as though everything you said just went right over their head. And I get it.

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You might disagree with, but at least to understand this basic point, right? Science is a useful tool.

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Okay. But science is not independent of presuppositions. It doesn't exist apart from a particular worldview, right?

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I mean, I don't see, I have difficulty seeing how, why some people find that difficult to, to see.

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Okay. But anyway, I, I'm going on and on. All right, let's see here. Uh, let's see.

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All right. So again, if you have any comments, okay.

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Uh, then, uh, please preface your question with the word question.

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And again, I'll probably come through some, there's some questions, uh, comments I might address later on as well. Okay. Here, here's a, here's another one.

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Okay. Someone said, uh, and, and the person that I'm about to read here and I'm not mentioning anyone's names, but I pre

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I appreciate they begin with, let me be clear and concise. And, um, what they say is actually very concise.

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Okay. I was not very clear. It's actually something very illogical, but again, a great opportunity to kind of, kind of examine.

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And so someone says here, uh, let me be clear and concise. Apologetics exists because gods do not.

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Okay. Now I want you to, to listen to that statement. Apologetics exists because gods do not.

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I want you to, um, take the time to reflect upon the, really the silliness of that statement.

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So if I have to, if I want to argue that something exists, then it, then it doesn't exist because things that exist, we don't have to argue over them.

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They're just, it's just very, again, so naive. Okay. Uh, first of all, uh, it's a non sequitur.

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Isn't that right? Right. The conclusion, God does not exist, uh, does not logically follow from, from the point that apologetics exist, right?

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The existence of apologetics as a discipline does not entail the non -existence of gods or God, right?

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Apologetics by definition is the practice of defending a belief system, right? Through reasoned arguments or, you know, whatever, right?

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The presence of a defense mechanism, such as something like apologetics, and I don't mean defense mechanism in kind of the generics.

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I mean, like a mechanism of defending a position, right? Does not provide necessarily evidence for, or against the truth of the belief being defended.

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Isn't that right? Right. And also there's a category error committed here. The statement conflates the existence of apologetics as a discipline with the existence of some deity, some being, right?

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These are different categories and the existence of one doesn't logically negate the existence of others. Okay. Now we take in terms of, uh, take this in terms of historical and philosophical context,

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Christianity, um, whether you like it or not has a rich intellectual tradition that includes, you know, people like theologians and philosophers who've engaged in apologetics for centuries.

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And the existence of this intellectual tradition is evidence, not of the non -existence of God, but of the sophistication and great depth and complexity of Christian thought.

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Okay. And that, that, that, that could be admitted, even if you weren't a Christian, I mean, for crying out loud, I mean, you might think

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Christianity is false, right? That doesn't mean everyone who's a Christian who philosophically reflected on these complex issues are idiots, right?

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Okay. Apologetics again, also is not unique to Christianity. Other worldviews, including atheism.

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And there goes the crowd. Atheism is not a worldview. Yes, it is. And, uh, there might not be one, um, um, you know, uh, one atheistic worldview.

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I would say any worldview of an atheistic flavor, you can put whatever kind of atheism you want. Uh, it's, there are worldview implications there.

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And of course, each of those categories of atheism or any of the world, you have their own form of apologetics, right?

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For instance, even today, prominent atheists engage in apologetics by defending their disbelief and deities through various reasoned arguments.

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Now the presence of atheist apologetics, again, doesn't imply that atheism is false.

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I'm going to say that again. Okay. The presence of atheist apologetics does not imply that atheism is false.

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Do you think that apologetics is something only Christians do? Well, of course not. Christianity didn't invent apologetics, right?

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To give an apologia is to give a reasoned answer. People have been doing that for a very long time and not all of them have been

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Christians, right? Isn't that right? I mean this, I'm confused.

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I don't think, uh, I don't think that, oh man, hold up.

20:56

Okay. So redeemed zoomer. Oh man,

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I, I messaged you and I didn't get a response. I didn't see a response. And so I apologize if you're, if you're down,

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I could invite you on and we can do, or you want to reschedule. How about you in the comments?

21:16

Why don't you, uh, let me know that because I was, I was waiting for a response and uh,

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I think I emailed you back and maybe you've emailed me back and I missed it and I do apologize. Uh, oh man,

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I was supposed to have redeemed zoomer on, but I didn't think we finalized everything. So I do apologize.

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And apparently, apparently it's supposed to be now. I feel so embarrassed. Uh, so redeemed zoomer, if you want,

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I can get you on now or we can reschedule. That's up to you. So you can let me know in the comments. Uh, I thought it was finalized once we settled on the time.

21:52

No. Okay. So can, so, so redeemed zoomer, I'm going to email you again and we're going to schedule a specific time.

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Okay. Um, uh, unless you want to jump on with me for, for, for fun and then

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I'll get you on where I could interview. You want it, you want to help me kind of, uh, share your thoughts on some of the, uh, points that I'll be going through.

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Uh, let me know. Do you say, yes, I will send you the link and it might be kind of an unexpected surprise to have you on.

22:17

It might be fun. So let me know. Okay. So I'll keep my eye on the comment and continue here, but I'm going to keep my eye on the comments. If you want to hop on, we can totally, there we go there.

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See redeemed zoomer. Thank you. I'm going to have redeemed zoomer on redeemed zoomer. It's got a great YouTube channel.

22:31

Let me actually, uh, oh, this is so much fun. There we go. Let's see here. Redeemed zoomer.

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Let's see here. Yeah. Redeemed zoomers. Got a great YouTube. They've got a big YouTube channel. He's got 431, 431 ,000 subscribers and he's got some great content on there.

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He's appeared on other channels as well. Uh, super, super, what a, what a strange day. So, so redeemed zoomer and I apologize for people listening in.

22:58

I'm going to take two seconds to, uh, share a link. So what I'm going to do. Let me see how to do this.

23:05

Let me see how I share a link while I'm also live. I don't know if I hop out, maybe if I hop out and share the link and hop back in, or is there a way to share a link while I am on?

23:21

Hmm. This has never happened before folks. Interesting. So what

23:26

I'm going to do is I'm going to try to hop out. So if my screen goes blank, ladies and gentlemen, just bear with me for like 30 seconds.

23:34

I just need a email, a link to redeem zoomer. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to hop back on one second.

24:12

Boom. Okay. I'm back. All right. So I just, uh, I just sent a link to redeem zoomer.

24:17

So hopefully he will join me when I see him at the bottom of the screen there. Uh, then, um,

24:22

I will have him on the screen with me. Okay. Super fun. Awesome. Cool. Okay.

24:28

Okay. So getting back to this, this idea of, um, you know, if apologetics exists, my

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God doesn't. All right. Just to think in terms of how silly that statement is. Okay. We understand that atheists, uh, to engage in apologetics to defend their disbelief in deities, right?

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By that same logic, we could argue atheist apologetics exists ready because atheism is false.

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And this of course is clearly fallacious, right? Again, this demonstrates the, really the, the silly nature of, um, of that assertion.

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All right. All right. I'm going to, by the way, I'm about to invite, uh, the redeemed zoomer on.

25:06

This is the first time I'm ever meeting him. So this is a lot of fun. A lot of, it's pretty exciting. Um, so, uh, super happy to have you on.

25:13

Let's see if you're on there. Can you hear me? Okay. Brother. Uh, yeah, I can hear me. Okay. That's so hilarious. I'm so,

25:18

I am so sorry for the miscommunication. It's my fault. I thought that when we decided on a time, that was the confirmation.

25:25

It's my fault for not responding to your email asking what specifically we should, we should discuss. Cause I, I thought we could just chat because there's a lot of things we could talk about and whatever you're talking about here is probably relevant to me as well.

25:36

So yeah, I'm happy to be on the show. Thanks for this spontaneous invitation. Awesome. Very good.

25:41

And I, I've been watching a lot of your stuff on YouTube and I've really been blessed by it. And, um, so it's a pleasure.

25:48

It's a pleasure to meet you. Um, well, basically what I'm doing, I mean, this, this, uh, live stream is called responding to my critics.

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And so I'm kind of moving through some, uh, comments. I'm not sure if you know, uh, Richard, your camera turned off.

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I don't know if that was on purpose. Yeah. My bow tie over here. Cause I just put it on. You need to get the bow tie.

26:06

You need to get the bow. I, I, I had to choose. Did I, do I want to present myself, uh, in a more formal way or, you know, and I figured maybe these hoodies and I kind of wear these like collar shirts sometimes it's kind of my go -to look, but you can't go wrong with the bow tie.

26:23

All right. Yeah. Basically I'm just responding to some, to some, uh, criticisms here. Now, uh, Richard, I understand that you are

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Presbyterian in your theology. Is that correct? Correct. Yeah. Okay. Um, now again, I have no idea whether you are sympathetic to, uh, presuppositional apologetics.

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So this, this channel is almost entirely, uh, focused on presuppositionalism and it's totally fine if you're not.

26:46

Uh, but I was just curious what, what's, uh, how would you identify your apologetic methodology? Right. So I've, um,

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I'm actually not quite sure what I think right now, because about a year ago I decided pretty strongly against presuppositionalism, but now

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I'm not quite so sure anymore. Okay. Critics I have of the way a lot of presuppositionalism works and critics

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I have of like Van Till and his whole school of thought. But then recently I've found evidence that you could argue

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Augustine was presuppositional in some way because they didn't say that faith precedes reason that I believe in order to understand.

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So now I'm like, I'm not exactly sure within the reform tradition, there are two sides. There's the Vantillians who are very presuppositional and the more, you know, classical reform people who follow like classical reform scholastic theology is very influenced by Thomas Aquinas and Don Scotus.

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And those guys were not presuppositional. It's very, very hardcore. You know, we start with first principles.

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We start with Aristotelian metaphysics, and then we talk about distinctively Christian things. And in the reformed in reformed theology today, there's several schools of thought there's reform scholasticism, which is very

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Thomistic Scotistic. There's a, the Vantillian precept guys. And then there's neo -Orthodoxy following people like Karl Barth and they don't like doing apologetics at all.

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They think you should just believe and just have faith. And unfortunately, presuppositionalism often gets lumped into kind of the neo -Orthodox kind of fideistic position, which is yeah, it's not.

28:16

Yeah. It's not. Yeah. Very cool. Awesome. Well, if you're ever interested in presupp, like at a personal level and you have questions or you want to talk about it,

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I'd be more than happy to bounce ideas off and help you out along those lines. And so I do have,

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I do have some, my criticisms and concerns with free stuff, but I could share that whenever I don't need to share that right now. I know. Yeah, absolutely.

28:35

That's something. No problem, brother. No problem. So, so again, so how about I give you this one and I'll share,

28:41

I'll share my thoughts as well. So here's what someone said on one of the comments in my videos to tell us

28:46

Eli. Okay. And by the way, the way this is phrased, I also want to highlight the fact that this is the reason why

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I don't typically respond to people in the comments who ask questions in this way, because Richard, maybe you can, you can, um, you know, attest to this.

29:01

When someone asks a question in a snarky way, you get the impression that they really don't care. If you were to respond, they really don't care.

29:07

And so why would you waste so much time giving a detailed answer to their question when in fact they're just going to reject it and write another response.

29:14

Then you get sucked into this, this thing. So, so how would you answer this question here from your perspective? Uh, he's saying, tell us

29:20

Eli, uh, do you have a single scrap of credible evidence of the God you childishly claim yet?

29:27

Or do you have evidence yet? Or are you still failing spectacularly with your pitiful God of the gaps argument?

29:33

Um, of course I u I utilized the transcendental argument, um, but from your perspective,

29:39

I feel like an argument. I also do think there's like, um, you shouldn't throw pearls to swine.

29:45

I'm not sure. I'm not sure what you think of reform theology, but according to reform theology, really we can present the best apologetics.

29:51

But if someone's clearly an unbeliever with a hardened heart, now we're apologetics is not going to change their mind.

29:57

So I think I see the role of apologetics is trying to give Christians confidence in their faith.

30:03

I think that, um, to evangelize to people, we just need to display the goodness, truth, and beauty of Christianity, not simply with our words, but with how the church interacts with society and the things that the church creates.

30:14

And that's why I think, you know, the church needs to be building hospitals and universities and pretty buildings and all that. Yeah, that, that's awesome too, because again, that, that highlights the importance that defending apology, defending

30:24

Christianity is not simply providing rational arguments. It's also living the life that Christ has called us to live. And that includes impacting our society, building beautiful buildings and feeding the hungry and so forth.

30:35

And so there, uh, I remember when I was in seminary, uh, there was a section in our apologetics encyclopedia, and it was a kind of called incarnational apologetics, pretty much this idea of defending the faith in the flesh and not in the sinful way, but kind of in the, how we live our lives.

30:53

And so I think that's a very important element of how we present ourselves before the world. That's interesting. Which seminary did you go to?

30:59

I, uh, well, I am reformed in this. I'm a reformed Baptist in my theology. I don't know if you might have thoughts on that.

31:05

That's perfectly fine. But, um, I am a Calvinist with respect to my soteriology and things like that.

31:11

Um, but I, I graduated from Liberty Baptist theological seminary, uh, definitely not the Paragon of, uh, reformed the reformed tradition.

31:19

Uh, but I, um, what was it? I had a book, I think it was the popular encyclopedia of Christian apologetics.

31:25

Right. Um, the, yeah, I am, I had never heard this term before, but it's a brilliant term incarnational apologetics.

31:32

That is kind of what I would describe my position as it's very mainline Protestant position. Cause I am mainline

31:38

Protestant. I'm in the PC USA. So I, I believe that like our gospel preaching needs to involve feeding the hungry.

31:46

And, and like I came to faith in a Christian based music camp where it wasn't like people tried to argue me into faith.

31:52

I saw the goodness, truth, and beauty of Christianity and all the community service everyone was doing. So that, that's sort of my perspective.

31:58

And I think some of that goes into presuppositionalism, um, because presuppositionalism talks about the superiority of the

32:05

Christian worldview. That's definitely something I could get behind where I would size presupp is sometimes

32:12

Pete presuppositional aside for them, defend the church, not actually building great institutions because they're like,

32:19

Oh, by what standard are you saying these institutions aren't great? Like some Christian will start some, you know,

32:24

Bible college in their basement. And they'll say, by what standard are you saying this isn't as good as Harvard. So that's been my frustration with presuppositional lists.

32:32

They seem to sometimes not believe there's an objective standard by which we can compare the things

32:38

Christians build to the things that the world builds besides the point. Okay. Yeah.

32:43

Thank you for sharing that. I, I do think a helpful distinction, uh, would be to make a distinction between a presuppositionalists and presuppositional ism.

32:52

Yes. So I think someone's, uh, you know, perspective of like, well, by what standard, just because someone says by what standard doesn't mean they're, they're thinking correctly along presuppositional lines and biblical lines.

33:01

So I think that's an important thing to keep in mind, but thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that now with respect to this comment here, if I could share my thoughts here and I appreciate

33:08

Richard talking about the importance of building beautiful buildings and actually going out there and living the

33:14

Christian life. That is something that is part of our apologetic. I believe it's not something separate.

33:19

We don't do apologetics over here. And on the other hand, we were over there living the Christian life. It's, it's a holistic, the

33:25

Christian worldview is a holistic position in terms of how we, um, reason about things and live and act and interact with others.

33:32

So I think that's very important. However, to directly respond, uh, to this particular comment, uh, tell us

33:38

Eli, do you have any single scrap of evidence of a God you childishly claim, uh, yet, or are you still failing spectacularly with your pitiful

33:44

God of the gaps argument? Uh, he calls it BS and that's fine. He's free to, it's free to say that, uh, the problem is, and there's the reason why it's hard to interact with, with comments like this is that it is presented not only in a snarky way, let's move that aside, right?

33:59

We're not babies here. Okay. I don't want to cry and be like, Oh, he was mean. That's why I don't. Let's look at it. Logically, um, credible evidence again, if you're listening and you're trying to learn kind of, well, what is

34:11

Eli getting at here? What is considered credible is going to be based upon what our presuppositions, right?

34:19

Uh, some people that are resurrection isn't very credible. Well, of course it's not credible. If you already begin with certain presuppositions about the nature of the world, what is considered evidence is going to be worldview depending to these people often present these questions as though we just come to the facts and there's just, it's just straightforward.

34:35

Just give me straight forward what the, no, because it's, it's naive. It's false, right? Um, I'm going to give this person evidence and they're going to throw it over their shoulder because why not the evidence it's our presuppositions.

34:47

Now, with respect to the statement of a God of the gaps, I mean this is again, this is very philosophically naive.

34:54

Uh, the centerpiece, the argumentative centerpiece of the presuppositional method is the transcendental argument and it's argument form goes something like this.

35:01

X is a necessary condition for Y Y exists. Therefore X exists.

35:07

And so this case, God is a necessary condition for the intelligibility of logic, morality, science, and so forth.

35:12

We observe logic, morality, and science. Therefore, God exists. Okay. That's not, it's not based on the

35:18

God of the gaps, right? That's not based on something we don't know. It's based upon intelligibility, which we know we can't deny.

35:24

And then we're arguing that the Christian God is the foundation for those things. And so whether one likes the argument or not, or disagrees with the argument or not, it's, it's definitely not this, it's not the

35:34

God of the gaps argument. So I just wanted to point that out. You have any thoughts on that, uh, Richard? Sure. I do like the transcendental argument.

35:41

I'm a big fan of it. And part of my struggle with presuppositionalism is wondering like, is transcendental argument identical to presuppositional apologetics?

35:50

Now I do see a conflation. I think that you can use the transcendental argument to argue for God in a general sense.

35:58

But I do believe in the Thomistic school of thought that specifically the Christian God, like the Trinity, that can only be approached by special revelation, which is in scripture and in Christ.

36:08

I don't think we can make a pure, logical presuppositional argument just for specifically the

36:13

Trinitarian Christian God, just for God in a general sense, because I do think a Muslim could use the presuppositional argument of the transcendental argument.

36:22

And they often do, they often do use the transcendental argument to explain why mathematics shows that there must be a creator.

36:29

And they are, they're right about that. That's why, um, I know this is like nails on a chalkboard to presuppositionalists, but a lot of the best scholastic metaphysics did build on the work of some

36:40

Islamic philosophers. Say that, say that last part again. A lot of the best scholastic metaphysics in both the

36:47

Reformed and Catholic traditions built on some Islamic philosophy, because there is this common natural law and natural revelation tradition.

36:57

Yeah. So, so again, so respectfully, I would I would disagree with, um, and that's fine.

37:03

I don't expect everyone to kind of agree. I love talking to people who don't necessarily agree with me and especially folks like yourself who seem to be like,

37:10

Hey, these are some interesting topics that I want to look more into. And that's perfectly fine. But just by way of sharing some of my thoughts, um, is that, um,

37:18

I don't think that, uh, at least within the context of Vantill and how Greg Bonson argued presuppositionally is that, uh, we don't argue for generic theism.

37:27

Uh, we argue for the Christian worldview, which implicit within that is the metaphysical reality of the triune

37:33

God and his, um, revelation, which is connected to, um, our epistemology.

37:39

Um, I, uh, when someone says, for example, the Muslim can use, uh, a transcendental argument, that's correct.

37:45

Anyone could use a transcendental argument, but as Dr. James Anderson of Reformed Theological Seminary has said, and I keep repeating it because I love the way he says it.

37:52

Anyone could use a transcendental argument. The question is, can they pay the bills on the claim? And so when we say that the

37:58

Christian, the Christian worldview is the only foundation for intelligible experience, knowledge, mathematics, and so forth, and all those sorts of things, uh, we're actually willing to show that given it's metaphysical and epistemological claims, the

38:10

Christian worldview does in fact provide those conditions in a way that the other worldviews cannot. And the way we demonstrate those worldviews cannot is via worldview internal critique.

38:19

Um, so again, so I would, I would have some disagreement, but that would be a great, that would be a great topic to, to dive into on an entire, entirely separate, uh, separate show.

38:27

But, um, but thank you for sharing your thoughts there. I do appreciate that. Um, okay. So let's, uh, let's address here.

38:35

Someone says, and I do apologize. These questions are related to presuppositionalism, but maybe you'll actually, uh, sympathize with some of the questions here.

38:42

Someone says, um, let's see here. This is the question. There's a person, uh, says as a

38:48

Christian man, I reject presuppositional apologetics aside from the ambiguity of terms like necessary precondition for intelligence.

38:57

He really means intelligibility laws of logic and Christian worldview. There are also many fallacies committed along the way.

39:04

From a personal point, I reject idealism in all its forms. Historically, I contend that idealism has had its day collapsed and we should, it's collapsed and we should as Christian apologists move along to better apologetic methodologies and arguments.

39:17

Um, and you're understanding Richard, uh, and this completely fine. You won't offend me at all. That's perfectly fine.

39:23

Um, have you in listening to presuppositionalist or reading presuppositionalist, have you gotten the sense of ambiguity of terms in terms of making it difficult to understand?

39:34

Not really. I, I know what they're trying to say. I also disagree with this guy because I think some idealist metaphysics is good.

39:42

For example, like a lot of my argument for God, like for mathematics depends on like a platonic view of math, basically like mathematical

39:49

Platonism. I have a math major in college and math is a big reason why

39:55

I believe you can argue that God exists. Um, so I would disagree with this guy's critique of idealism.

40:02

My problem with presuppositionalism isn't so much the ambiguity. It seems to be a bit of a conflation between the one essence of God and three persons of God.

40:09

And I think that comes down to Van Til's idea that God is one person, three person where he doesn't have this strong Thomistic distinction between the one essence of God and the three persons of God.

40:20

So if you think the divine essence is trying you, and if you sort of, um, conflate the essence and personhood of God, then you're going to think that you can't argue for the divine essence in a general sense.

40:28

You have to argue for the three persons of God. That's, I think most of modern Vantillion presuppositionalism is rooted in, uh,

40:37

Van Til's sort of collapsing of the oneness and threeness of God. Okay. Now that's a, that's a great, um, uh, great observation in terms of, um, explaining at least kind of linguistically what, uh, how

40:48

Van Til had defined the Trinity. I think this, I don't want to get off track, but that is a very important topic that I think

40:54

I might actually do a video on Van Til's, uh, view of the Trinity and discuss it there.

40:59

So I don't want to get too off track, but thank you for sharing. You see, having someone come from a different perspective allows me to kind of be like, you know what, that's a good topic to cover.

41:06

So I appreciate that. Um, all right. So thank you for that. Um, yeah, so let me see here. So he rejects presuppositional apologetics aside from ambiguity.

41:14

Yeah, I would agree. Uh, the terms aren't ambiguous, especially the terms that he is referring to here, the necessary preconditions for intelligibility.

41:21

Um, I don't find that ambiguous unless you've never heard those terms before, but of course the utilization of that vocabulary assumes that we are, have a somewhat passing knowledge of, uh, philosophy, right?

41:32

The preconditions, what must be true beforehand. Okay. Intelligibility in order for something to make sense.

41:38

So what must be true in order for anything to make sense? That's not ambiguous. It's been defined and discussed in the literature, um, and through lectures and various things like that.

41:46

The laws of logic. I don't know what's ambiguous about the laws of logic. Do you find those, the phrase, the loss of logic ambiguous?

41:52

Uh, no, I, I think that the, the existence of logic is not something we can take for granted.

41:59

And there's no reason why logic must exist. Why the universe must make sense. I think the fact that the universe does make sense.

42:06

The fact that there is laws of logic and mathematics is proof of a creator. So that's why I favor a transcendental argument in that sense.

42:13

Okay. All right. Um, in the Christian world, do you think the Christian world view is ambiguous? Okay. That's, that's a bit more tricky because, um, and I know that you want to talk about this.

42:22

So which Christian worldview, because the Eastern Orthodox apologists, like, you know, the diorite school of thought, the

42:31

J Dyer school of thought, he, he was trained at Bonson seminary. So he learned the reform precept arguments then applied it to Eastern orthodoxy.

42:38

So when he argues, he's not just arguing for God in a general sense. He's not just arguing for the Christian worldview in a general sense.

42:44

He's arguing for the Eastern Orthodox Christian worldview. When we talk about the Christian worldview, which

42:49

Christian worldview, because there are slightly different Christian worldviews. That's what I think. Now, I do think you can talk about the

42:55

Christian worldview, uh, but I don't think every Christian necessarily has an identical worldview because there are different schools of thought within Christianity.

43:05

So that's the, that's where I'd say is the tricky part. Yeah. And I pre I appreciate the nuance there because that, that is true now, now for Vantill, um, if someone's confused with respect to the presuppositional tradition with through, uh, along Vantillian lines, uh, that it wasn't ambiguous for Vantill.

43:19

It was obvious that Vantill, whether people think he succeeded or not is developing an apologetic methodology that flows out of a consistent application of his reformed convictions.

43:28

Right. That's, that's different than the Baptist worldview. Correct. Correct. So your

43:34

Baptist presuppositionalism is not going to be the same as his priest, Presbyterian presuppositionalism, not going to be the same as Jay Dyer's Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism.

43:42

Correct. And, and, uh, I think, uh, Dr. Bonson pointed out, he said that, uh, you know, you can think in terms of the different denominations as, as different, uh, as money, different value of money is like the

43:52

Presbyterian church might be, you know, a $50 bill and the Baptist church might be, uh, you know, a $20 bill.

43:59

Like there's, there's still money, uh, but there are different values. And he would of course value the Presbyterian perspective.

44:04

And of course that was more in line with, uh, with Vantill, which I thought was a helpful way to, to kind of make those nuanced distinction there.

44:10

If that is what he said, that's, that's interesting. I would think that makes more sense if you're having a classic apologetics because you can, in a classical apologetic view, you can say, here's what we agree on.

44:20

We have common ground, we agree on this, and then we can see what we agree and disagree on based on this foundation of this common ground.

44:26

But presuppositionalism, the whole deal with that is there is no common ground. You just have to presuppose the entire system. Well, well, well, real quick.

44:32

So just to, uh, Vantill never said there is no common ground. So he makes a distinction between neutral ground and common ground.

44:38

He would say there's no neutral ground, but there is in fact, common ground. And the common ground is, uh, with respect to the believer and unbeliever, the common ground is that he's made in the image of God.

44:47

Um, so there is common ground, no neutral ground. I would just kind of make that clarification. Um, did you want to finish up a thought there?

44:54

I interrupted you. I apologize. I, I, I would like to eventually talk about how to respond to like Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism because in some ways,

45:02

I think the Eastern Orthodox presuppositional arguments can be more persuasive to the average person than either, um, the presuppositionalism of either reformed or Baptist.

45:12

Hmm. Hmm. All right. So let's see what we have here. We addressed that already.

45:22

Okay. That was the last point here. So let's see. Uh, would you like to, to look through,

45:28

I'll look through the comments here. Maybe we can take some questions from the guests. Would that work? Yeah. Someone asked if you saw my debate with, uh,

45:34

Orthodox Luigi recently, I have not, I have it saved on my watch later. I definitely want to, uh, to take a look at it.

45:42

Yeah. So I, I thought it was pretty 50, 50 in the debate. Generally speaking, all the Orthodox people thought he won all the

45:49

Catholic and Protestant people thought I won. So I don't know. It was, it was, it was pretty split.

45:54

I think it was a tie in the end. We both sort of got each other good in the cross examinations. Yeah. Um, but, uh, what

46:02

Luigi does follow, he has like a disciple of Jay Dyer. He's like Jay Dyer jr. And he does use

46:08

Jay Dyer. That just sounds, that sounds funny. He's Jay Dyer light. I've never heard of Luigi other than the

46:14

Super Mario brothers. I've never seen his videos. Yeah. Well, there's Chris, there's Christian Mario who's

46:19

Orthodox and there's Luigi also Orthodox. They are not related to each other. They independently of each other.

46:25

And they're both, they're both good guys. They're both good guys. Um, but, um, they do use a lot of the, especially Luigi and Jay Dyer use a lot of dollar store epistemology where it's just like this epistemic nihilism of you can't know anything without the

46:39

Eastern Orthodox church telling you, right, right. They would hold to kind of a, an ecclesiastical epistemology.

46:46

Yeah. I would like to see what's your take on that. How would you address their claims? Because a lot of the reformed presuppositional claims, they can also use those claims, except they have a,

46:55

I think they can employ presuppositionalism very well because they can just appeal to their church whenever there's any sort of, um, question about how, how they know what they know.

47:05

Well, that's a particular topic that I have taught on it briefly. I have a lecture on it, um, in a class that I've, that I've taught, but it's not an, it's not my area of expertise.

47:15

That one of the things I appreciate about your channel is that you, you seem to have a very good grasp of some of the historical aspects of the church dealing with specific lines of thought, particular individuals.

47:25

The, for me, my focus more is kind of theology and philosophy. And then I kind of try to get, you know, garner as much as I can from people like yourself, from Dr.

47:34

White. And I have some church history books that I try to flesh out. So, um, it's definitely an area that I'm trying to flesh out more, uh, since especially

47:41

Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism is becoming more and more popular. Um, so I would definitely would want to prepare beforehand to kind of address it very specifically, because I think it is a nuance that requires, um, uh,

47:56

I think a firmer grasp on where someone like Jay Dyer is coming from. Um, but I do understand the importance of within his position of kind of an ecclesiastical epistemology in which, um, unlike the reform position where we would appeal to kind of the self -attesting revelation of God, um, they would appeal to kind of the necessity of the church to even know, uh, what

48:18

God has revealed. And so that's kind of the, one of the, uh, the ways in which they, they tend to argue. So that's something

48:24

I'm exploring in more depth. And I would say that like, if you're,

48:29

I think Protestants and Catholics can have very productive discussion when they're coming from an evidentialist or not.

48:36

I don't like that word when they're coming from a classical framework. That's why I'm not sure if you know, Christian Wagner, he's a very educated, brilliant Catholic scholastic apologist.

48:45

And he knows that the Canon question is a really silly question for Protestants.

48:50

It's, it's persuasive, but it's also silly. So he has very productive dialogue with Protestants because they're both just working within the system of scholastic principles.

48:58

They can find common ground. Um, but with Orthodox presuppositionalism, uh, they are only presupposing one authority, which is the

49:08

Eastern Orthodox church. I feel like in reform presuppositionalism, you need to presuppose 66 different authorities, which are the various books of scripture.

49:16

So like their faith is just in one thing and everything sort of emerges from that. So how would you answer the

49:22

Canon question from a presuppositional perspective? Like, how do we know we have the right Canon of scripture?

49:29

Well, first I would disagree that we don't have 66 separate authorities, I think. Uh, and I don't, and I don't agree that it's just the church.

49:35

The church doesn't exist in a vacuum. I think a worldview is required to make sense out of how to understand the church.

49:41

So I think, uh, just even reflecting upon it philosophically, people believe things in bundles, you know, just like the church and that's it.

49:47

And that's the only filter. I think we have a set of, you know, our worldview is a set of presuppositions in terms of which all reality is interpreted.

49:54

So, um, I would, um, kind of clarify that within the Christian perspective. Um, one of the fundamental presuppositions for me is kind of really in my worldview is comprised of at least three foundations, a foundation of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

50:08

We might be able to delineate some other categories some philosophers have, but my metaphysical assumption is the trying

50:14

God. And my epistemological assumption is his revelation, both in general and special revelation. And of course, understanding the proper relationship between a special and general and the necessity of having special and a special revelation and properly understanding the nature of a general revelation.

50:30

Um, so I hold to the, uh, the primacy of the verb in day, right? God speaks self attestingly.

50:35

I have no problem with asserting something that, uh, that part of the presupposition of my worldview is that human language is a sufficient mechanism to convey truth.

50:44

God has utilized language to communicate. And so we were able to read the documents appeal to history and things like that, uh, appeals to history as someone like Michael Kruger would point out is not a departure from something like solo scriptura for solo scriptura does not deny one's appeal to, uh, tradition and history and things like that.

51:03

But again, having the scriptures as the ultimate authority, obviously we're going to have to, um, judge based upon what

51:10

God has previously revealed, which is exactly what the Jews did when the Bereans tested Paul's words, when he was appealing to the scripture that they accepted.

51:17

So I have no problem asserting that God speaks self attestingly. He uses a language, a human language that's sufficient for, um, communicating truth that using the rules of interpretation, we can read and investigate and come to a conclusion that both has historical aspects of investigation, as well as the miraculous aspect of God speaking to us, uh, in the words that he has.

51:39

So there's a subjective aspect to it. The spirit of God speaks to us in his word, and there's a historical aspect to it in terms of which we appeal to, um, history, tradition, and things like that, but always coming back to the more fundamental authority, which is the verbum day.

51:54

I hope that makes a little sense. Right. So if someone asks you like, Oh, uh, Protestants have removed seven books from the

52:00

Bible. How do you know that you have the right canon of the Bible when other people don't? So we'll be the quick response to that for you.

52:05

I mean, I have my responses, but, um, I don't, I don't have a quick response because I don't think it warrants a quick response.

52:11

It's a very nuanced position. It's one of those things that I have to sit down and gather my thoughts so as to not, uh, flummox and answer.

52:18

Cause it's actually a, a, a question that requires both, um, historical aspects and my theological aspects in terms of how

52:26

I understand how God has miraculously identified himself, uh, to the church, uh, through the spirit. So, um,

52:32

I wouldn't, I wouldn't venture to give a quick answer, especially if that's not an area of my, of my expertise. Um, I do have a interview on my channel with Dr.

52:40

Michael Kruger, where we talk about, um, not only presuppositionalism, but issues of canon as well. Um, so, so for me, when

52:46

I do my show, for example, or when I study, I do it in the midst of my busyness. And so I tend to focus on certain things that are my focus.

52:54

And then there are other things that I know are super important, but I don't feel adequate to speak too quickly without first sitting down and gathering my thoughts in a way that perhaps

53:02

I might not have to do if I'm speaking about those areas that are more, that are stronger for me. So, um, so yeah,

53:07

I could, I couldn't give you a detailed answer at this moment without being a little bit more careful in terms of gathering my thoughts and sharing it here off the top of the dome, so to speak.

53:15

Right. So, um, just a warning from experience, I made mistakes in the past.

53:21

My debate with Luigi went pretty well, but one time I was, um, I was told I would have like a casual discussion with Jay Dyer and he turned it into a debate that I wasn't prepared.

53:29

It never is a casual. Do not engage in debate with any Eastern Orthodox people.

53:35

If you don't know how to address the canon. That is correct. And thank you for that. No matter what the debate is, it could be something completely irrelevant, like justification.

53:43

You could be nailing them on justification and they'll just change the topic. And they'll be like, but you don't have a canon of scripture and Martin Luther moved seven books from the

53:50

Bible and have lesbian priests. So it sucks. That's, that's correct.

53:55

Well, you shouldn't engage in anyone if you're not informed, uh, you know, reasonably informed in a particular area.

54:00

So for example, philosophically and theologically, those are my areas, but I wouldn't debate someone on the intricacies of church history, not because I don't have confidence in my own position.

54:10

I don't have confidence in my ability to recall the relevant information on the spot. Uh, so I don't think, um, it's always wise to debate just any old issue.

54:19

I think it's smart for people to stick in their wheelhouse. Um, you know, and at least for my, my life caters to me studying certain areas where I haven't just having a time to go into other areas, which

54:29

I think are still super important, but I leave others to debate those issues. And then I study what

54:34

I can, and then I teach from what I've learned. And, um, just because you can teach a topic doesn't mean you're always equipped to debate the topic, if that makes sense.

54:41

So I also, someone asked, what are my thoughts on need God .net's combo with Orthodox Kyle need got .net one in a landslide.

54:48

It wasn't even close. And he was very good at defending soul script Torah. I think the reason why, um,

54:55

Orthodox can easily criticize Protestant presuppositional ism is you talk about a Christian worldview without a normative authority, without a normative church to tell you what the correct interpretation of the biblical worldview is.

55:09

Every Protestant is going to have his own interpretation of scripture. Every Protestant is going to have his own version of the

55:14

Christian worldview. So how do you know which interpretation of scripture is the right worldview?

55:20

Yeah, well, there, there's again, uh, when you say every single, I would, I guess I would disagree with that. A Christian worldview has essential elements to it and non -essential elements to it.

55:29

And I think, uh, most Christians that are genuine Christians will, will agree on essential issues.

55:35

Now, how do we determine which are essential and non -essential? Again, if we have a common ultimate authority as Christians, professing

55:40

Christians, the word of God is something that we can go to. The existence of multiple interpretations does not negate the reality that a particular interpretation is correct, nor does it negate the reality that we have a

55:55

How do you know which issues are essential versus non -essential? I'm sorry? How do you know which issues are essential versus non -essential?

56:01

Right. So in many cases in scripture, we're told there, the scripture actually gives us qualifications. So for example, Jesus says, you know, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

56:10

Uh, so we have qualifications there, uh, in the book of Galatians. Uh, we're told that if you believe you're justified by our works, you are cut off from Christ.

56:16

So we have a qualifications there. Now, all, all of the, uh, aspects of theology might not have explicit qualifications that will have to be work done there.

56:25

But for the most part, the essentials that, that pertain to salvation, I think can be, uh, ironed out. If we agree that a, the

56:32

Bible is the word of God and B, God has communicated, uh, in such a way that language is a sufficient mechanism to convey truth.

56:38

If someone denies that and kind of holds to some of some form of linguistic agnosticism, then again, that's going to be, that's going to shoot themselves in the foot.

56:46

If we're going to be linguistic agnostics, uh, then again, their communication would be destroyed. I mean, how do we interpret anything, much less the text of the

56:53

Bible? Yeah, I know if they, if they say you can't interpret the Bible, then you can't interpret the church fathers or church councils either. Um, now, so would you say the

57:01

Trinity is necessary to believe for salvation? Uh, I, I don't know.

57:07

That's a good question. I'd have to, I'd have to think about that more. Um, because when I think I am disturbed when

57:13

Protestants say that you need to believe in salvation by faith alone, but not the Trinity like that you're getting your point.

57:18

I, I, I'm inclined to say that you do. I just, I, I'd have to, it's not the same as say what

57:24

I just quoted for when Jesus says, unless you believe that I am, you will die on your sins. There's, there's no statement in scripture that says that explicitly, that does not mean that I don't think the

57:32

Bible doesn't teach it implicitly because as we know, both of us would agree that the doctrine of the

57:37

Trinity is connected to other doctrines that are explicitly, um, told with the qualifiers to be essential.

57:43

So I'm inclined to say that it's correct. Um, um, I'd have to think about it before I kind of dogmatically say one way or the other.

57:49

What I would say is that we're told to believe in Jesus and the person that the Trinity are inseparable.

57:54

The identity of Jesus is inseparably tied to the identity of the father and the Holy spirit. Correct. So, so yeah, that's a good, that's a good argument in terms of seeing the connection that I just spoke about.

58:05

So that's why I said I'm inclined. I mean, you asked me off the top at the, the, uh, right on the spot. I just want to be careful.

58:10

So, but yeah, that point you just made, I would agree. So that's I'm not trying to debate you. I'm trying to play devil's advocate, get your answers and then use them against my opponent.

58:20

That's what I was saying. No, no, no worries. I can tell you're a lot smarter than I am on this topic. So I'm just trying to get your answers so I can know.

58:26

No worries. No worries. Here's the thing, the way I answer certain questions, and here's one of the reasons why I'm not inclined to jump into like a, a room with, uh, you know, someone like a

58:35

J Dyer or someone who follows along those lines is that if, if I have a particular position that I know it's my position, but I want to be careful how

58:44

I word it. Um, he would, or someone along people who argue along those lines would make that as a weak point, as opposed to just respecting the fact that,

58:53

Hey, I have a position, but I don't want to kind of just sloppily state it because I know it's an important thing to, to, to discuss.

58:59

And so in someone in goodwill will be like, okay, well maybe we can talk about that later when you have your thoughts gathered.

59:04

Someone like J Dyer wouldn't let you do that. He would exploit that as a weakness. And then of course, look, you're a heretic and look, the

59:09

Protestants believe all sorts of things. And so, um, so yeah, so there are things that I think we would agree on. Um, but I would probably, uh, kind of need a little moment to gather my thoughts and say it in a way that I would feel comfortable.

59:21

So I'm clear, but what I loved that you just did with the Trinity there is talking about how the Trinity it's all wrapped up in father, son, and Holy spirit.

59:28

Even, well, I suppose the Bible says if anyone does not have the son, they don't have the father. Yeah. So I guess, so yeah.

59:34

So I guess thinking off the, as we're talking, see now I'm talking, yes, I would say that the Trinity is essential, but I had to think about that real quick.

59:40

Cause I know that's, uh, we, some people make distinctions between essential doctrines, secondary essentials. They're kind of this like a gradation on how we kind of categorize those things.

59:48

So, so yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. That helped me clarify my thoughts there. Thank you. All right.

59:53

Let's, uh, let's get through some other ones here. All right. I'm so happy you came on, man.

01:00:00

This is so cool. I hope you're enjoying yourself. I didn't have a plan going in.

01:00:07

I just thought we could chat. Yeah, no worries. No worries. Let me see. I know I'm going to skip someone. I don't mean to, but I keep telling people to preface the question with the question with the word question.

01:00:18

Uh, let's see here. David Hewitt says brother Eli, did you notice the post I tagged you in on Facebook about the video from the reformed classicist?

01:00:24

I did notice it. However, when I tried to comment, it doesn't allow me to comment. So I think that's something on your end in terms of, um, how you allow people to interact with your posts.

01:00:33

So apologies if I didn't, if I wasn't able to respond, I literally was not able to, as the option wasn't there.

01:00:39

So, right. Okay. Let's see. Is my audio better now? I just moved my mic. Say again.

01:00:44

Is my audio any better now? I just moved to my mic. No, you sound fine. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're good. Yeah. A lot of people think

01:00:50

I need to get a mic. I do have a mic. I'm just a boomer with tech. So I don't know how to optimize it. Well, okay.

01:00:56

All right. Uh, Jonathan Myron says, how does presuppositionalism presuppositional apologetics fit into a reformed view?

01:01:04

Well, again, we have to define what reform means. Of course, Cornelius Vantill, um, comes from, uh, the

01:01:10

Dutch reform traditions, got a particular understanding of covenant and things like that. And so that would be, uh, slightly different than say someone like myself, although covenant theology, although I hold to covenant theology, broadly speaking, it's not, again, not an area that I've, I'm in deep study with just to give a more kind of a simplistic theological explanation.

01:01:29

One important aspect of Vantill's presuppositionalism is that is part of how he understood the

01:01:35

Christian world. You includes a picture of God that has, you know, I'm going to pick just a few categories here that has a particular reformed understanding of God's sovereignty.

01:01:45

For example, uh, Vantill called God the all conditioner. And so, um, it is going to be difficult in terms of being consistently presuppositional along Vantillian lines.

01:01:56

If you hold to something like libertarian free will or anything that might seem to challenge, uh, at least

01:02:02

Vantill's understanding of what it means for God to be sovereign, all conditioner, definer and father of all the facts and all these sorts of things.

01:02:08

So, you know, within the reformed view along Vantillian lines, you know, if you look at the Westminster confession of faith and look at the details of what that says about God and things like that, there was a great desire on Vantill's part to again, produce an apologetic method that was consistent with those, those theological convictions.

01:02:25

Now, whether he did that successfully or not, obviously people debate that. And obviously people within the reformed tradition would agree, disagree, so on and so forth.

01:02:32

But, um, that's how I would say it fits in the reformed view that if you define what you mean by reformed along Vantillian, the

01:02:40

Vantillian tradition, and then see how his apologetic flows from his conception of God, his conception of man, his conception of revelation, how that fits into categories of epistemology and things like that.

01:02:52

Um, you know, in that sense, you can see the reformed, uh, connection. I think I have a video on that. Yeah, I, I'm not presuppositional exactly, but I can,

01:02:59

I understand how it is consistent with reformed theology in some ways. Reformed theology have this, has the strongest doctrine of sin out of any

01:03:09

Christian tradition. We believe in total depravity and sin affects every part of us, including our mind. If sin affects our mind, then we, our minds are not just going to be open to evidence or pure logic.

01:03:19

The Roman Catholics have a slightly more positive view of human nature than we do. So Roman Catholics and like Thomas Aquinas are more inclined to say that our human reason can approach a

01:03:28

God from the ground up. Whereas if you have a strong view of sin, you're going to say, you know, you can't do that. You need to just presuppose

01:03:34

God. And that can only happen if that's revealed to you. Now, um, there are people who are all following the, the logic of reformed theology who come to different conclusions, because I think in many ways,

01:03:45

Karl Barth is following the logic of reformed theology by putting God at such a great distance from us that there can't be any natural revelation at all.

01:03:53

I think Karl Barth is taking reformed theology to the absolute max extreme. You say natural revelation or natural theology?

01:04:00

Both. Karl Barth denies both. Okay. Okay. Thank you for that. Um, let's see here.

01:04:05

Yeah. So Joshua here is sitting here. So your breakdown on this Apollo in the Apologia class was a good starter into understanding the issue.

01:04:10

And he's speaking about the, um, how to address, um, and understand the, uh,

01:04:16

Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism in that lecture, uh, that folks can find on apologia .com.

01:04:21

It's part of their, um, what is it called? It's the, uh, oh man, it's been a while since I've been on the way.

01:04:28

If you go to apologia .com, you can find a shorter version of my lecture on Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism.

01:04:33

And then I have a fuller lecture on my website, uh, in the course that I offer there, but yeah, it's a beginning.

01:04:38

Um, it's something that I, I tried to address, um, uh, because I don't find any material out there, out there available.

01:04:46

Now, if folks are interested, there is someone who is very familiar with Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism, and I've had him on the show before.

01:04:55

His name is Joshua Shooping. He's a convert from Eastern Orthodoxy. And while he was Eastern Orthodox, he wrote a book about Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism.

01:05:04

And then after having left the Eastern Orthodox church and he's, I think he's Lutheran, um, he's edited the book and kind of, um, tailored the information to be consistent with the position he now holds.

01:05:14

So people might find that interesting. Joshua Shooping, he is, um, had him on, I think once or twice on my channel to discuss this issue, and he's also got a blog called the

01:05:22

Reformed Ninja where he, uh, it's an awesome title, by the way, a website name, uh, where folks can read up some articles on his thoughts, uh, with respect to this topic.

01:05:31

Yeah. Is he still a precept from a Protestant perspective? I believe so. If he's

01:05:37

Lutheran, he'll be the first Lutheran presuppositionalist. Yeah. So I think he's Lutheran. Uh, but I don't, I don't remember the detail.

01:05:43

I haven't read the entire, the new, the new version of it. So I'm not sure. Yeah. I don't want to be like, uh, evidentialists, classes, classical lists, or fideists, but not really presupp.

01:05:55

No. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, let's see. So here,

01:06:02

Richie. So yeah, I know who Jay Dyer is. And then he says, I love that dude. I'm not EO, but his arguments are well thought out.

01:06:08

Well, I would give this to Jay is that his arguments are well thought out what I appreciate about Jay. And, um, people often ask me, you know, why don't you have

01:06:16

Jay Dyer on the show? I actually wanted to have Jay Dyer on the show. I was, uh, some years ago, I was going to moderate a debate between, uh,

01:06:23

Jay Dyer and, um, Dr. Tony Costa, who's a reformed

01:06:28

Baptist. And, uh, he's pretty up on church history as well. I thought that'd be a good interaction. And, uh, so I reached out to Jay on Instagram back when

01:06:35

I had Instagram and it was really nice. He was super respectful. And, um, you know,

01:06:40

I was like, yeah, he's like, yeah, just set it up, blah, blah, blah. And so I ran this by, uh, Tony Costa and, um,

01:06:47

Tony Costa turned it down, not because he was afraid or anything like that. And that's, well, I'm unfortunately people give the, he's afraid, you know, but actually the reason why he, he, he turned down the debate was because of Jay's conduct in past debates.

01:07:00

And, uh, Dr. Tony Costa is a, is a gentleman, uh, was turned off by Jay's behavior and some of his interactions.

01:07:07

And so I shared that with Jay. Um, and I said, Hey, you know, this is, this is why he won't do the debate, but I'm willing to have you on.

01:07:14

Cause I'm trying to learn Eastern Orthodoxy. And then the whole mood changed. Uh, he accused me of trying to trick him or trap him or blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:07:21

And so, you know, I literally recorded, like, I didn't want to text him. Like, let me, I wanted to hear my voice. Like, Hey, this is not what I'm doing.

01:07:27

He accused me of, of, um, tone policing and all this stuff. And I'm like, man, like, how can

01:07:33

I tell this guy that I'm not trying to like pull one over him? Like if I try to be nice, he'll, he'll think

01:07:39

I'm pretending and trying to trick him. But if I'm a jerk, then he'd be justified in calling me a jerk.

01:07:44

So it was impossible to communicate with him. And so what, what happened was I'm like, I told him, I'm sorry you feel that way.

01:07:49

And what did he do? He took a screenshot of our private conversation and posted it on Twitter claiming that, you know, reformed

01:07:55

Protestant, blah, blah, blah, afraid to debate Eastern Orthodox. I was like, wow. So that's the reason why, um, I respect his knowledge.

01:08:03

I appreciate some of his debates. Obviously we disagree. I think he is a very intelligent guy. I think he does a great job when he's talking to atheists and things like that.

01:08:12

But I mean, um, it's very hard to have a conversation with someone like that.

01:08:17

And so, you know, I would have liked to have learned from him and I still do. I watch some of his videos and stuff like that, but, um, yeah, that, that, those are my thoughts there.

01:08:25

So I know if someone, if someone knows Jay or Jay, they'll probably make fun of me and say, look, I'm a soy boy for something like that.

01:08:33

But I'm a nice guy. I'm not trying to do so, to be deceptive. But I mean, if, if someone thinks

01:08:38

I'm doing that, there's really nothing I can do. So, so there you go. Hopefully people will stop asking me now.

01:08:44

Can you get Jay done? That's the reason why he, I don't have him on. So I have, well, how have your interactions been with him,

01:08:49

Richard? Uh, other is he, did you just pop in the show and that was it when you had that It was a scheduled discussion.

01:08:56

So I've been doing discussions with Orthodox Kyle. He's another like Gen Z YouTuber and he, uh, he likes to use a lot of memes in his videos.

01:09:04

And I did several collabs with him. I did back and forth videos with him. Kyle's a really nice guy. And Kyle said

01:09:09

I should do a discussion with Jay on his channel, which we did. Now, of course, I felt like I was sort of tricked into a debate.

01:09:16

I mean, it was supposed to be a casual chill discussion, but it was just, uh, Jay grilling me on Protestant theology for three hours.

01:09:22

Some of it was like honest questions. Like, how do you define what a true church is? How do you know the Canon stuff that he made up?

01:09:29

Like the idea that the reformed are mono -energists and monothelitists because monergism sounds like mono -energism.

01:09:35

So it's the same thing. And, uh, after that, like right after the discussion,

01:09:41

I didn't really care. I wasn't really offended. But then after the next few days, I saw like the online ortho bro community began harassing me over that.

01:09:51

So it wasn't really the debate that I got annoyed with, but the reaction to the debate. So after that,

01:09:57

I did something I shouldn't have. I said some mean things about Jay Dyer and I took them back, but then he still blocked me anyway.

01:10:02

And that's the way it's been ever since. And then I think Kyle tried to set up an actual formal debate between me and him recently, but he declined.

01:10:11

Between himself or with Jay? Between me and Jay. He tried to set that up, but Jay declined.

01:10:17

So I debated Luigi instead. And that went pretty well, I think. Oh, I got to watch. I got to watch that. It popped up on my feed.

01:10:23

I want to, I want to watch it with Jay. I've seen Jay debate and he's really respectful and it goes well and I've seen him do it well.

01:10:33

No, he, uh, I don't think that the problem is with Jay himself. I think it's with the, uh, the

01:10:39

Orthodox community, especially of like young converts. And, you know, I think

01:10:45

Eastern Orthodoxy is by nature full of idolatry because the faith is much more about the one true church than it is about believing the gospel really.

01:10:53

Okay. Um, but I, I do see some very nasty fruits from the Orthodox online community, not from Kyle and Jay themselves, but from their followers.

01:11:01

Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Uh, this is a question for you. Um, uh, Rich, I keep redeem

01:11:07

Zoomer. You're a human being with a real name. I'm just going to call you Richard. So, uh, so Sky asks, can

01:11:12

I expect, um, RZ debating the papacy anytime soon? Honestly, it's not an issue

01:11:18

I care about that much. Like if I'm convinced of Roman Catholicism, it won't be because of the papacy.

01:11:23

Um, I'm not planning to go Roman Catholic anytime soon. Don't worry guys. Everyone thinks

01:11:29

I'm about to become Catholic because I care about things like tradition and pretty buildings and institutions.

01:11:36

Those aren't Catholic things. Those are Christian things. Every Christian denomination until 1960 with non -denominationalism cared about those things and had those things.

01:11:45

So it doesn't mean I'm Catholic. I'm just a traditional mainline Protestant. Yeah. Well, good. I, I, a lot of the content where you have kind of, like I said before, you do, you do show a good knowledge of church history.

01:11:55

These, these are areas that I'm weakened. Uh, not, I don't, I'm not ignorant of church history. I mean, you can't pull one over me, but if you get into the minutia and the details of this counts on that council, it's

01:12:05

I have to step back and be like, let me read up on that a little bit. So I like to benefit from people who are more learned than myself in those areas.

01:12:12

Um, so I appreciate what you do. There's another question here of respect, a friend of mine, um, not the person asking the question, sorry,

01:12:19

Skye, I don't mean you're not a friend, but the person they're asking about is a friend of mine. Um, and so here's a question for you.

01:12:24

And he, he has a good knowledge of church history as well. Uh, he says, would you be willing to have Anthony Rogers on your channel?

01:12:30

That would be great. You know who Anthony Rogers is? I listened to Anthony Rogers like several years ago when I was interested in counter

01:12:36

Islamic apologetics and he makes some good arguments. Do you know what denomination he is? I believe he's a,

01:12:43

Oh man. He, if he listens to this, he'll laugh because, uh, very good friends there.

01:12:49

Uh, he writes for Ligonier, I think. So I would want to think he's

01:12:55

Presbyterian, but I don't want to mess that one up. I don't know. That's a good question. I gotta text him. I, Oh, that's so embarrassing.

01:13:01

Yeah. Well, I've, I've seen him do really well against like anti -Trinitarian, like debating anti -Trinitarian.

01:13:08

So yeah, if I had the opportunity to have him on my channel, I would, um, well, he's a friend of mine.

01:13:13

I do have his contact information. I could reach out to him if you're interested. I think he'd be a fun guest. I didn't know that. Well, that's cool.

01:13:19

Does he, does he have that much stuff engaging like Catholicism and orthodoxy or does he mostly, he's very, he's very well versed in Roman Catholicism and, uh, he's knowledgeable about Eastern orthodoxy and knows his church history.

01:13:31

He's a very, very sharp guy and a funny guy too. He might be a fun, a fun guest to have on too. He's, he's, uh, he's, he's got good stuff.

01:13:38

So yeah, cool. Yep. All right. Let's see here. All right.

01:13:44

Let's see. Okay. I think I skipped the whole one. If you see any questions,

01:13:50

I think, uh, can you see the comments on your side there? Okay.

01:13:57

Sky says here, will you both do more with the other Paul? Do you know who the other Paul is? Yes. He's great.

01:14:02

He's probably the best, like distinctively Protestant apologist who engages like, uh, ecclesialist apologists.

01:14:10

Ecclesialist is the word where we need to popularize for Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox. Okay. If it's like Catholic versus Protestant, of course they seem more unified because there's one of them in a million of us.

01:14:21

But if we talk about ecclesialist as a category versus Protestant as a category, that puts it a lot more in perspective because when they talk about, you need to join the one true church, which one true church, there's like seven different, um, groups that have apostolic succession that claim to be the one true church.

01:14:36

Um, so the, the other poll is great. Um, after my debate with, with Luigi, there was like Q and a, where anyone could call into debate, either of us and the other

01:14:45

Paul stepped into debate. Luigi did a great job way better than I did. People commented that was a nice debate between the other

01:14:51

Paul and Luigi with guest star, redeem Zoomer. Uh, the other

01:14:57

Paul is hilarious. I don't know if you've ever heard his impression of Jay Dyer.

01:15:03

I have. And the other Polish is such a nice guy and gentle. He is a nice guy. It's I'm thinking,

01:15:08

I don't want to, yeah. If you guys listen to my interview with the other Paul, he does this awesome impression of Jay Dyer and it's spot on.

01:15:14

It's actually pretty hilarious. But, uh, anyway, yeah, I, I actually, I had the other

01:15:19

Paul on with Gavin Ortlund and Jordan Cooper and dang, that is a powerhouse.

01:15:25

Yeah, we had, it was, let me actually see. Um, and like you might as well have said, yeah, I had a podcast with John Calvin, Martin Luther.

01:15:33

Those are the intellectual powerhouses of Protestant YouTube. Okay. Let's see here.

01:15:39

Protestant Gavin or land yada, yada, yada.

01:15:45

Let's see what pops up here. Yeah. So Protestant round table discussion. Let me actually put this in the comments here and, uh, let's get this out more.

01:15:55

I think this was a really good discussion. What I like to do, uh, Richard is sometimes I like to get people like multiple guests and there are multiple guests that people don't think they'd ever see together.

01:16:07

And so I had, um, I had, uh, the other Paul Jordan Cooper, Gavin Ortlund, and, uh, there's this other, other individuals, other brother, uh,

01:16:16

Jeremiah, the black doctor. I keep, I've for the past, like three years,

01:16:22

I've been planning to do something with Jeremiah and we've just never gotten around to it. Yeah. He's a great guy, man.

01:16:27

He did from, he did defect from the one true Presbyterian faith, but now he's

01:16:32

Anglican, but still I want to have him on my channel at some point. Well, what, maybe, maybe, uh, cause I, I, he,

01:16:38

I've got his contact as well. Um, maybe I could have you, we could do like another group live stream.

01:16:43

I could have yourself, uh, Jeremiah, and maybe we can kind of invite about the pain. We can kind of address some of these topics that you were talking about,

01:16:49

Canon and all that kind of stuff. Sure. If I have time next few weeks are pretty hectic for me, but yeah, sure. Sure.

01:16:55

If you don't mind me asking, what do you, what do you do? What do I do? Yeah. What do you do? Uh, like, are you a teacher?

01:17:01

Are you, uh, I'm still in college. So there's that I have to deal with. I'm trying to get a job in mathematics.

01:17:07

So there's that I have to keep studying for and taking certification exams. And I have my, I have my wedding coming up and I have to do a lot preparing for that.

01:17:15

So, so you're a broke college student engaged to be married. I didn't say broke

01:17:21

YouTube, uh, is a good career for now. It's not, it's not a long lasting career.

01:17:26

So I'm going to eventually, like, I, I think my channel's already peaked a while back, so I have to transition to a real job pretty soon.

01:17:36

Okay. All right. Well, yeah, when I first, uh, saw you, I was like, realize you do, you do have a really big channel.

01:17:42

That's awesome. You got some, uh, I got to check out some more, some more videos there, but, uh, yeah, folks.

01:17:47

Um, if you don't know who the redeemed zoomer is, hop over to his YouTube channel, give him a subscription there, thumbs up on some of his videos there and, uh, you know, check them out.

01:17:57

Um, let's see my, my little lowly channel. We're actually, what are we, uh, close to 10 ,000 been doing this for maybe four, four or five years or something like that.

01:18:06

Um, what I really appreciate about this channel, the people who are in the comments for the most part are so nice.

01:18:13

We got some random things to have nice commenters on your channel. Oh, yes.

01:18:19

It's rare. It's rare in the YouTube world, but, and you get, you know, obviously you get the random things here and there, but for the most part in live streams, people are great.

01:18:28

They're encouraging. Even when people disagree, they'll have, they'll try to have conversation and sometimes, you know, it'll go a little

01:18:33

South, but for the most part, I really appreciate, um, the, uh, you know, the folks who listen in, but listen, actually, um,

01:18:40

I have to take my kids to church, uh, five. So I actually have to bring this to a close.

01:18:46

Okay. But it was a pleasant surprise having you on Richard. And I would love to have you on again with a specific topic, highlighting some of your strengths and things that we can learn from, from you and your background.

01:18:58

That'd be great. How does that sound? Great. Thank you. All right. All right. Well, I hope you had a good time.

01:19:04

I had a good time. It was a lot of fun and, uh, you know, thank you for exposing my, my weaknesses by grilling me.

01:19:10

Now I gotta go do my homework. You know, I wasn't trying to grill you. No worries. I was recognizing you're smarter than me.

01:19:16

I want to try and just steal your answers. No, my, some of my answers to church history.

01:19:22

So if you asked me a philosophy question or a theology question, I probably would give you a quicker response depending on what it was, but church history questions and those sorts of things,

01:19:31

I tend to be more like slower. I'm like, okay, I need to stop. Let me go. And because philosophy,

01:19:37

I can kind of just be gathered these ideas together, but in terms of names, councils, and this thing over here in that sometimes

01:19:43

I have trouble remembering them. So perhaps I'd be better writing those issues as opposed to just shooting off the top of the dome.

01:19:50

But, but anyway. All right. Well, that's it guys. Thank you so much for listening in.

01:19:55

We're at one hour and 20 minutes longer than I expected, but it was a pleasant treat to have Richard, the redeemed zoomer on the show with me.

01:20:03

And I hope you guys benefited and we're blessed by this discussion until next time. Take care and God bless.