Responding to Critics: w/Eli Ayala

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and I'm back. This is two days in a row. I was live yesterday, I think it was yesterday, with Dr. Danny Faulkner talking about the age of the universe and that was a fun discussion and I encourage people to check that out.

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

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.

And so suppose I haven't had a show in a while and I'm looking for content. Well all 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.

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

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. So hopefully this will be useful for folks.

Reform Disciple 1689, thank you very much. He says Eli Ayala is doing a stream with Eli Ayala. That's right, I think I have with Eli Ayala the title there. Thank you. Thank you for pointing that out, that's right.

Imagine I had a twin brother named 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. That'd be super freaky.

But no, that's not true. I have two older brothers. I suppose I can't say we look nothing alike. I do look similar to my brothers, but there are significant differences. OK, so nevertheless, that is neither here nor there.

So moving away from moving away from that, before I jump in, I do want to encourage folks as and the reason why 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 of people trickling in. 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 if I if I'm able to answer your question, I will try my best to address your question. So. So, yeah, and it feels really weird doing a show at 3 p .m. Eastern because I typically do my show like super late at night and I am revved up on coffee.

But now I am revved up on water and I just realized my water bottle matches my sweater. That wasn't on purpose. Such a God thing. Let's see. One second. All right, there we go. 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.

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 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 Revealed Apologetics dot com. If you have a question or a video topic you'd like me to make, you can email me at Revealed Apologetics at Gmail dot com.

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. 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.

I greatly appreciate it. I do want to apologize also that I have not been updating my podcast. I have not given up on my podcast. I'm going to sometime this week take the time to update the podcast. 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. 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. 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.

So I'll make sure it will do that. The Alcun project. I think I'm pronouncing 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. That is super appreciated.

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

Make sure it's grammatically correct and don't assume I know what you're talking about. I remember one time I was speaking at a church and it was a Q &A after a talk on apologetics was a Q &A and I had a pile of little rolled up pieces of paper with questions of from from the people who, you know, the audience 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.

That was it. It's like dinosaurs question mark. Well, what about the dinosaurs? Are you asking about the dinosaurs? Did Noah have dinosaurs on the ark? Are you talking about what happened to the dinosaur?

So so be specific if you can. OK, if I don't understand your question, it's going to be very difficult for me to answer your question. All right. All right. Well, let's jump right in. Let's see here. So so I gathered a couple of things and the first, 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 my previous interview with Dr. 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 Bible says and what the scientific data is. And so in response to the title of the video, which was is is the I think it was is the universe young.

A gentleman by the name of David says the answer is no. And then he goes on to say that the consensus of experts in the field say no. And the only reason here you go, we want you to pay attention to this.

Now, again, I'm talking to Christians now analyzing statements. This hopefully will be helpful. He says the consensus of the experts say 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 then you bend backwards with mental gymnastics and bad science.

OK, now, again, when you see a statement like this, OK, you need to learn how to analyze the statement. There are a lot 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. And so let's let's kind of unpack that. I think there are a couple of things to keep in mind in light of that statement. 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 data, dating, all that all that nice, interesting sciencey stuff.

However, I think from a logical standpoint, it's essential, I think, to recognize that the scientific consensus is not infallible. Right. And and has changed throughout throughout our history. And so the consensus, you know, regardless of what view you're you're interacting with, it can and is influenced by prevailing worldview assumptions and interpretations of the data.

OK, to suggest that something is true or probably true or you're unreasonable unless you agree with the consensus. OK, 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. OK, this is super important because a lot of the folks within the scientific community assume all sorts of things philosophically that have nothing to do with science.

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. OK.

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

You see, this bias influences. Does it? It's interesting that can influence. It does influence our interpretation of the data, which then leads to conclusions that align with what? Surprise, surprise, naturalistic assumptions.

It's surprising that when you when you presuppose naturalism, amazing, you end with naturalism. 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 OK when someone starts with naturalism and then ends with naturalism, you see, because people will start with naturalism and not think that they're starting with something particularly problematic.

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.

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

You don't have to accept that. You can say, well, that's ridiculous. Well, that's 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.

I remember listening to a discussion slash debate, you know, an atheist said to the Christian said to a Christian, well, you know, babies are atheists and then they have to be taught religion. Well, 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? Well, that's ridiculous. Well, again, what you consider ridiculous is going to be dependent upon your world view.

Right now, this is not something new. It's not something weird that a presuppositionalist like myself just happens to bring up. I mean, philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn and Paul Fairbairn have argued that scientific paradigms, there's a whole book written about scientific paradise, are influenced by a whole host of things.

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, they impact how they see things, right?

This isn't this isn't like weird Christian presuppositional spooky way of, you know, some are tricky way of avoid. It's just ridiculous. This is philosophically naive to think about science, just, you know, that's the consensus.

And so there you go. 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. 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. I believe that everyone will rise from the dead one day. Right. That goes against the scientific consensus.

But I don't care. I think the scientific consensus is wrong on that. And so, again, because I have a different worldview than many with within what we might call the scientific consensus. Now, it is true that I hold the Bible as my ultimate authority in all things.

Right. I have no I'm very clear on that. OK. But this, of course, is true in the case of the secular scientist. Isn't that isn't that right? It 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. And I just reminded of Richard Dawkins when he says, well, nature, although nature looks to die, we need to keep reminding ourselves that it's not.

Yeah, that's 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. So we want to keep that in mind. OK, science is not neutral.

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. I think it's just very important to keep in mind. OK, 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.

If you hold to a literal, straightforward reading, I know that there are Christians, for example, and what I appreciate about David's comments here, look what he says here. And I think this is a good I think this is I'm going to point this out here with respect to the question, is the universe young?

He says the answer is no. The consensus of experts in the field say no. And the only reason you deny this is because of your biblical interpretation. That's true. I do interpret the Bible in a particular way.

And people who will to kind of a straightforward kind of what we might call the the literal 24 hour reading of the text. Sure, people will hold to that. That's an interpretation. Yeah. But to say something's an interpretation doesn't entail its falsehood.

And that's why Christians who disagree on this issue will have, in many cases, a fruitful, disagreeing discussion and debate over this. Right. That's fine. OK. But at the same time, again, we come to the text with presuppositions and worldview assumptions.

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

OK, they have if my Bible is the ultimate foundation, the person who rejects the Bible is going to have a different ultimate foundation. Maybe it's only 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.

We all have our foundations, our ultimate commitments. And this, again, is not some weird presuppositional, you know, word game. 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. This isn't this isn't hard. I'm sorry if I sound kind of annoyed, you know, reading some of the comments. And I kind of sympathize sometimes, sometimes. And I say sometimes with a lowercase s. I kind of sympathize with other apologists who get that they can come across really snarky and very disrespectful to those they're interacting with.

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.

And the same things come up as though everything you said just went right over their head. And I get it. You might disagree with. But at least to understand this basic point, right, science is a useful tool.

OK, but science is not independent of presuppositions. It doesn't exist apart from a particular worldview. Right. I mean, I don't see I have difficulty seeing how why some people find that difficult to to see.

OK, but anyway, I'm going on and on. All right, let's see here. Let's see. All right. So again, if you have any comments, OK, then please preface your question with the word question. And again, I'll probably come through some of there's some questions, comments I might address later on as well.

OK, here's a here's another one. OK, someone said and. The person that I'm about to read here and I'm not mentioning anyone's names, but I appreciate I appreciate they begin with, let me be clear and concise.

And what they say is actually very concise. OK, I was not very clear. It's actually something very illogical. But again, a great opportunity to kind of kind of examine. And so someone says here, let me be clear and concise.

Apologetics exists because gods do not. OK, now I want you to listen to that statement. Apologetics exist because gods do not. I want you to take the time to reflect upon the really the silliness of that statement.

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, they're just it's just very, again, so naive. OK, first of all, it's a non sequitur.

Isn't that right? Right. The conclusion God does not exist, does not logically follow from from the point that apologetics exist. The existence of apologetics as a discipline does not entail the nonexistence of gods or God.

Right. Apologetics, by definition, is the practice of defending a belief system through reasoned arguments or whatever. Right. The presence of a defense mechanism such as something like apologetics. And I don't mean defense mechanism in kind of the generics.

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. Isn't that right? Right. 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. These are different categories and the existence of one doesn't logically negate the existence of others.

OK, now we take in terms of take this in terms of the historical and philosophical context. Christianity, 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.

And the existence of this intellectual tradition is evidence not of the nonexistence of God, but of the sophistication and great depth and complexity of Christian thought. OK, and that that that could be admitted, even if you weren't a Christian.

I mean, for crying out loud, I mean, you might think Christianity is false. Right. That doesn't mean everyone who's a Christian who philosophically reflected on these complex issues are idiots. Right.

OK. Apologetics, again, also is not unique to Christianity. Other world views, including atheism. And there goes the crowd. Atheism is not a worldview. Yes, it is. And there might not be one, you know, one atheistic worldview.

I would say any worldview of an atheistic flavor, you can put whatever kind of atheism you want. There are worldview implications there. And of course, each of those categories of atheism or any other worldview have their own form of apologetics.

Right. For instance, even today, prominent atheists engage in apologetics by defending their disbelief in deities through various recent arguments. Now, the presence of atheist apologetics, again, doesn't imply that atheism is false.

I'm going to say that again. OK, the presence of atheist apologetics does not imply that atheism is false. Do you think that apologetics is something only Christians do? Well, of course not. Christianity didn't invent apologetics.

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

Oh, man. Hold up. OK, so Redeem Zoomer. Oh, man, 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. I could invite you on and we can or you want to reschedule.

How about you in the comments? Why don't you let me know that? Because I was I was waiting for a response. And I think I emailed you back and maybe you emailed me back and I missed it. And I do apologize.

Oh, man, I was supposed to have Redeem Zoomer on, but I didn't think we finalized everything. So I do apologize. And apparently, apparently it's supposed to be now. I feel so embarrassed. So Redeem Zoomer, if you want, I can get you on now or we can reschedule.

That's up to you. So you can let me know in the comments. I thought it was finalized once we settled on the time. OK, so can so so Redeem Zoomer, I'm going to email you again and we're going to schedule a specific time, OK?

Unless you want to jump on with me for for for fun. And then I'll get you on where I could interview you want it. You want to help me kind of share your thoughts on some of the points that I'll be going through.

Let me know. You say, yes, I will send you the link. And it might be kind of an unexpected surprise to have me on might be fun. So let me know. OK, so I'll keep my eye on the coming to 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. See, Redeem Zoomer, thank you. I'm going to have Redeem Zoomer on Redeem Zoomer. It's got a great YouTube channel. Let me actually. Oh, this is so much fun.

There we go. Let's see here. Redeem Zoomer. Let's see here. Yeah, Redeem Zoomer's got a great YouTube. They've got a big YouTube channel. It's got four hundred and thirty one four hundred and thirty one thousand subscribers, and he's got some great content on there.

He's appeared on other channels as well. Super. So what a what a strange day. So so Redeem Zoomer and I apologize for people listening in. I'm going to take two seconds to share a link. So what I'm going to do.

Let me see how to do this. 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?

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

I just need to email a link to Redeem Zoomer. OK, I'm going to I'm going to hop back on one second. Boom. OK, I'm back. All right. So I just I just sent a link to Redeem Zoomer. So hopefully he will join me when I see him at the bottom of the screen there.

Then I will have him on the screen with me. OK, super fun. Awesome. Cool. OK. OK, so getting back to this, this idea of, you know, if apologetics exist, my God doesn't. All right. Just to think in terms of how silly that statement is.

OK, we understand that atheists, too, engage in apologetics to defend their disbelief in deities. Right. By that same logic, we could argue atheist apologetics exists. Ready? Because atheism is false.

And this, of course, is clearly fallacious, right? Again, this demonstrates the really the the silly nature of of that assertion. All right. All right. I'm going to by the way, I'm about to invite the Redeem Zoomer on.

This is the first time I'm ever meeting him. This is a lot of fun. A lot of it is pretty exciting. So super happy to have you on. Let's see if you're on there. Can you hear me OK, brother?

Yeah, I can hear me. OK, that's so hilarious.

I'm so I am so sorry for the miscommunication.

It's my fault. I thought that when we decided on the time, that was the confirmation. It's my fault for not responding to your email, asking what specifically we should we should discuss, because 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. So, yeah, I'm happy to be on the show. Thanks for this spontaneous invitation. Awesome. Very good.

And I've been watching a lot of your stuff on YouTube and I've really been blessed by it. Thank you. And so it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to meet you. Well, basically what I'm doing, I mean, this this live stream is called Responding to My Critics.

And so I'm kind of moving through some comments. I'm not sure if you know, Richard, your camera turned off. I don't know if that was on purpose.

Yeah, I'm trying to get my bowtie over here because I just put it on.

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

Mm hmm. All right. Yeah. Basically, I'm just responding to some to some criticisms here. Now, Richard, I understand that you are Presbyterian in your theology.

Is that correct? Correct. Yeah. OK.

Now, again, I have no idea whether you are sympathetic to presuppositional apologetic. So this this channel is almost entirely focused on presuppositional ism. And it's totally fine if you're not. But I was just curious, what's how would you identify your apologetic methodology?

Right. So I've I'm actually not quite sure what I think right now, because about a year ago, I decided pretty strongly against presuppositional ism. But now I'm not quite so sure anymore. OK, so critics I have of the way a lot of presuppositional ism works and critics I have of like Van Til and his whole school of thought.

But then recently I've found evidence that you could argue Augustine was presuppositional in some way because they didn't say that faith precedes reason that I believe in order to understand. 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.

Sure. Is very influenced by Thomas Aquinas and Don Scotus. And those guys were not presuppositional is very, very hardcore. You know, we start with first principles. We start with Aristotelian metaphysics.

And then we talk about distinctively Christian things. And in the reformed in reformed theology today, there are several schools of thought. There's reform scholasticism, which is very Thomistic, scottistic.

There's the Vantillian precept guys. And then there is neo-orthodoxy following people like Karl Barth. And they don't like doing apologetics at all. They think you should just believe and just have faith.

That's right. So, yeah.

And unfortunately, presuppositional ism often gets lumped into kind of the neo-orthodox kind of fideistic position, which is it's not. 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, I'd be more than happy to bounce ideas off and help you out along those lines.

And so I do have some of my criticisms and concerns with presupp, but I could share that whenever. I don't need to share that right now.

I know. Yeah, absolutely. That's something. No problem, brother. No problem. So so again, so how about I give you this one and I'll share I'll share my thoughts as well. So here's what someone said on one of the comments in my videos.

Tell us, Eli. OK. And by the way, the way this is phrased, I also want to highlight the fact that this is the reason why I don't typically respond to people in the comments who ask questions in this way, because Richard, maybe you can you can, you know, attest to this.

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. 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 and you get sucked into this this thing?

So so how would you answer this question here from your perspective? He's saying, tell us, Eli, do you have a single scrap of credible evidence of the God you childishly claim yet or do you have evidence yet, or are you still failing spectacularly with your pitiful God of the gaps argument?

Of course, I utilized the transcendental argument, but that can be from your perspective.

I feel like that's an argument. I also do think there's like you shouldn't throw pearls to swine. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what you think of reformed theology, but according to reformed theology, really, we can present the best apologetics.

But if someone's clearly an unbeliever with a hardened heart, our apologetics is not going to change their mind. So I think I see the role of apologetics is trying to give Christians confidence in their faith.

I think that 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.

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 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. And so I remember when I was in seminary, there was a section in our apologetics encyclopedia, and it was a kind of apologetics called incarnational apologetics.

Well, it's pretty much this idea of defending the faith in the flesh and not in the sinful way, but kind of in how we live our lives. 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?

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

But I graduated from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. Definitely not the paragon of reform, the reformed tradition. But I what was it? I had a book. I think it was the popular encyclopedia of Christian apologetics.

Right. The yeah, I am. I had never heard this term before, but it's a brilliant term, incarnational apologetics. That is kind of what I would describe my position as. It's very mainline Protestant position because I am mainline Protestant.

I'm in the PCUSA. So I believe that like our gospel preaching needs to involve feeding the hungry. And like I came to faith in a Christian based music camp where it wasn't like people tried to argue me into faith.

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. And I think some of that goes into presuppositionalism because presuppositionalism talks about the superiority of the Christian worldview.

That's definitely something I could get behind. Where I would presupp is sometimes presuppositionalist. I've heard them defend the church, not actually building great institutions because they're like, oh, by what standard are you saying these institutions aren't great?

Like some Christian will start some, you know, 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 presuppositionalists.

They seem to sometimes not believe there is an objective standard by which we can compare the things Christians build to the things the Christian, the world builds. But that's besides the point.

OK. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I do think a helpful distinction would be to make a distinction between a presuppositionalists and presuppositionalism. Yes. So I think someone's, you know, perspective are like, well, by what standard?

Just because someone says by what standard doesn't mean they're thinking correctly along presuppositional lines and biblical lines. 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 Richard talking about the importance of building beautiful buildings and actually going out there and living the Christian life.

That is something that is part of our apologetic, I believe. It's not something separate. 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 Christian worldview is a holistic position in terms of how we reason about things and live and act and interact with others. So I think that's very important. However, to directly respond to this particular comment, tell us, Eli, do you have any single scrap of evidence of a God you childishly claim yet?

Or are you still failing spectacularly with your pitiful God of the gaps argument? He calls it B .S. And that's fine. He's free to it's free to say that. 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. We're not babies here. OK, I don't want to cry and be like, oh, he was mean. That's why. Let's look at it logically. Credible evidence again, if you're listening and you're trying to learn kind of what is Eli getting at here?

What is considered credible is going to be based upon what? Our presuppositions, right? Some people 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. Just give me straightforward what the no, because it's it's naive.

It's false. Right. 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. Now, with respect to the statement of God of the gaps, I mean, this is again, this is very philosophically naive.