Apologetic methodology & do tongues continue today

It's fascinating to me how easily someone in one religion can find the fallacies and biases in another religion.

I think that what's fascinating...

You're razor sharp on your criticism of Islam here.

Yeah, but what I find fascinating, Jeff, is that you recognize that with other religions, but you don't do it with your own. That may be the case.

And there's that confirmation bias coming up again.

Show Introduction and Technical Setup

This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host of Striving for Eternity, Andrew Rapoport.

Well, welcome. We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your questions, challenges, or whatever else you may throw our way. Give you guys some updates. We're going to be joined by Eli. He's been here before, so I hope you guys will enjoy him.

But to let you know, give you guys some updates on status. And what we're going to do, Eli, is we're going to give Matt status first, then I'll give some status on me. But yours is the good news, so we'll put yours last, because you should always end on good news.

So, you can't hear me. That's not good. Can folks hear me? Can folks? That wouldn't be good. Let's see. Can you hear me now? Okay. Eli, they say they can hear me. So, Eli's got to check his speakers. We had this all working.

They love technology. Because it works great when it works. And when it doesn't, oh well. All right. So, this would be really bad if Eli can't hear us. Because that would be bad. All right. Well, while we're waiting for Eli to get himself set up, let me give you an update on Matzlik.

Matzlik is planning to move. I think it's in October. Sometime in October. So, he's probably packing up and getting ready to move and then moving and getting down there. And then what we end up seeing is he's probably going to be out the rest of the year.

Is the way it's looking. So, we're going to have some different people coming in. And just so you know, those different people will be next week. Will be Dr. Jason Lyle. Nope. Wait. Do I got that right?

Let me double check the dates. I think it's Paul Taylor. Paul Taylor from Mount... Let's see. Let me see who it is. Yeah. Paul Taylor at Mount St. Helens Creation Center is going to be the 19th. And then we have Dr. Jason Lyle that will be coming in on the 26th.

So, if you have questions about things like creation, Mount St. Helens, evolution, that'd be a great one for next week. If you want to talk astrophysicists, well, Jason Lyle is an astrophysicist. So, that would be really good.

So, those are... Who's going to be coming on? We're going to have some different guests coming in and speaking so that we'd be able to have some other folks. So, let's see. Eli says, I will try and use the laptop.

It's kind of slow though. So, Eli's having some trouble. It was working. Don't know what changed. So, here's an update on me. Just so you guys know. Some of you know that I did not do a show last week.

And basically, I had an unexpected medical emergency that was not fun. So, basically, what ended up happening was I had come back from the Philippines, was not feeling that wonderful. Thought I was sick.

I thought maybe I got a urinary tract infection. In fact, I did get a urinary tract infection. I was feeling a little better and thought not to go to the doctor. But because I had just returned from the Philippines, I thought better of it and said I should go.

So, I did. Good thing that I did. So, basically, not to get too graphic, but my bladder was not... It was retaining too much fluid. And so, they put me on a medicine that was supposed to solve that. And I went in for what was supposed to be a routine test just to make sure the medicine was working.

And the doctor freaked out because I was retaining way too much liquid and had to do an emergency catalyzation. And if you've ever had that or just think about what that is, it was not fun. And so, I had to have that in for over a week.

And so, they think the medicine is working now. I will be going in for a procedure on the 21st where they will take care of it, hopefully for good, and solve the problem. But basically, it was a very painful experience.

And I'm glad that that is removed. But the day they were doing that was last Thursday to see whether they could remove it or not. And I was very glad that they did. So, now I'm on a fun regimen. I have to drink cranberry juice.

My wife gives me cranberry juice now because that's supposedly good for you. So, I don't like it that much though. It's really sour. I don't know if Eli has his setup working yet. He looks like he's still working on something.

But, you know, I need to tell him to try to go out and come back in because he has the good news. Eli has the good news. And I should really wait till he comes back in to say, Now, folks, if you want to join, go to ApologeticsLive .com.

If you're watching on YouTube, just go to ApologeticsLive .com and you'll be able to join from there. Catherine asked this question. Can you see my message first time on here? Well, Catherine, there you go.

Now, everyone can see your message because it's right there. Yeah. So, if you guys have questions, we can answer them through the YouTube chat. I should mention this is a brand new YouTube channel for Striving for Eternity.

We're moving off of CARM's. I think I might have mentioned this last show. CARM is going through making a bunch of changes. And in those changes, basically, there was a lot of people had access to the website and YouTube and a bunch of different things.

And they're trying to reduce that. Okay. You can hear us now. Good. Yes. That was weird. All right. So, why can't I change this? There we go. Okay. So, folks, if you want to join, go to ApologeticsLive .com.

If you are on that YouTube channel, please hit the little bell up to hit the thing that says subscribe. I think it says subscribe. Let me double check. Go to subscribe to the channel and then go up top where it has a little bell, I think, that tells you that you can get notified when we go live.

But, folks, share this right now so that other people know and know that we kind of changed which page we're on. Striving for Eternity created a new page because our old page was kind of in a crazy state.

And so, we just figured we'd start a new one. And hopefully, that'll work because the other one was always problematic. Eli, you had some good news to update. I updated everyone on the bad news, which you totally missed because you were playing with your computer.

But you have some good news. You've been busy staying up late and changing something. Diapers. Yeah. So, what's been going on, sir?

Well, my wife gave birth to a Protestant reformer. His name is Calvin. You know what? I can't take any credit because when the baby wakes up in the middle of the night, I have nothing to offer. Usually, my wife I get up just to give the visual effect of, hey, I'm here to help.

But my wife is feeding the baby like a champ waking up in the middle of the night. And I'm just waiting until the little guy gets on the bottle, and then I'll step in. But yes, we had a baby. His name is Calvin Jude Ayala, CJ for short, and he's awesome.

Please tell me he looks like your wife. Hey, I'm a good-looking guy. Come on, man. You know what? I actually do think he looks more like my wife. Although, my other two kids I have a daughter who's four and a son who is two, Ethan and Autumn, and I would say they look like me.

I got two of them. My wife….

Okay. Well, folks, if you want to come in and join us, you can. Just go to ApologeticsLive .com. There's a link to participate there. And so until we get folks coming in, we got a couple things we wanted to talk about.

Apologetic Methodology and Presuppositionalism

First thing, Eli, that we wanted to talk about is apologetic methodology. So there's typically three schools of apologetics in a general sense, right? We have evidential, classical, presuppositional.

Which one do you prefer? Yeah. It would depend how you break those. There's subcategories, too. I think even in the five views on apologetics, you have the epistemology and categorizing.

I'm sorry? Your internet's getting bad. Maybe we should turn your camera off. Let's try that because you're…. Okay. All right. That won't be as much fun. I don't know. Can you hear me now? I hear you.

Folks who are watching, do you hear them okay, or is it just my end? Maybe it's my internet, but I had a pretty good signal. We'll wait for them to respond whether they hear you cutting in and out. Maybe it's just me.

Okay.

Which one would you hold to? When I first got started in apologetics, I held to the classical method. Through later study and some exposure to the work of Cornelius Mantill and Greg Bonson, I was convinced of the presuppositional methodology.

That's where I stand now.

Let's deal with one thing that I find happens often. A lot of people feel you must hold to one or the other. What say you? Do you think that these are mutually exclusive positions?

Yes, I do. But I need to be very careful in that. I have a very good friend who is a classical apologist. And he says, I don't mind…. I'm not a presuppositionalist, but us classicalists like to play with your toys.

So he says something to the effect as a classicalist, he likes to use presuppositional arguments. And I think that's an illegitimate move because it almost assumes that as a classicalist, presuppositionalism is just an argument that can be employed in a completely different methodological context.

And that's not necessarily the case. For example, when a presuppositionalist utilizes evidences and say like the use of the Kalam cosmological argument, that is not the case unless engaging in classical evidences within a presuppositional framework is not to leave the presuppositional framework and operate on a different methodology.

You see, that's the false perception of presuppositionalism is that presuppositionalists don't use evidence and evidentialists don't care about presuppositions. Presuppositionalism is an entire methodological framework with which we work out if we don't skip in and out of methodologies, if that makes sense.

Yeah, and that's, I think the thing, so let's define some terms, right? So in a broad sense, because we have a couple different topics we want to address, but in a broad sense, evidential apologetics is going to be where people try to use evidences to convince someone to be saved.

They're giving enough evidence. Here, if I give you enough evidence, you're going to see that Jesus is the Savior and you need to repent and you're going to do that because here's all this evidence. Some evidential apologists that we would think of, Josh McDowell would be one.

Oh, I just lost his name, the journalist, Lee Strobel, he would be another. So these are guys that they are looking to evidence. Presuppositionalists, like you and I, would hold to the fact that, I mean, I argue there's two presuppositions I hold to.

God exists. He has spoken. In other words, these are two things I'm not going to try to argue, I'm not going to give up in a debate if we're sitting and discussing and an atheist says, well, just give up your Bible and then let's discuss.

No, no, I'm not. There's nothing that you can use to ultimately prove God, because if you could, that would be greater than God. And we don't put God on judgment. He's the judge. He's not the one that we're going to sit under and say, and we're going to judge whether he exists or not.

So a presuppositional mindset starts with the fact that we could not know anything without God first existing. In other words, things like our ability to reason. I mean, whenever you get into a discussion, you need to have an ability to reason.

And if you don't have an ability to reason, that's going to be, you're not going to be able to do science or anything else. But where do we get that ability? Where do we get any of the immaterial things like truth and knowledge, laws of logic, morality, all of these things are immaterial things and can only come from an immaterial source.

And so we would look at these things and say, when we examine this, we cannot even discuss things like truth and knowledge without first presuming God. And that would be a presuppositional view, that we presume that God exists and he has spoken.

I guess the only thing I would add is that I would probably, maybe you would agree with me once I clarify, that presuppositions seek to prove God's existence. I would say we seek to prove God's existence, but not in the same way other people try to prove God's existence.

In other words, you know, I was talking to an atheist YouTuber by the name of Tom Jump. He's kind of an upcoming YouTuber kind of guy. And we were talking about, does God exist? And we talked about presuppositions.

And he said to me, and I hear a lot of people say this, and it's relevant to the point I want to make, is that presuppositions by definition are assumptions that do not have justification for them. Because if they have justifications for them, then they're not presuppositions.

And I disagreed with that because in the presuppositional methodology, while it's true that some presuppositions are assumptions without justification, the Christian presupposition is not a presupposition without justification.

It has justification, but its justification is not justified by an appeal to something outside of itself. The justification for our presupposition as presuppositionalists is demonstrated transcendentally.

So it's an appeal not to a standard external to itself. It is an appeal to itself showing its transcendental necessity that to deny it is to demonstrate its principle. And the reason why I want to mention that is because there is a common misconception about presuppositional apologetics that we don't seek to prove God.

And if you look at debates by Greg Bonson, what does he say? He says the proof for the truth of the Christian worldview is that if it were not true, you couldn't prove anything. That is a proof, and we are to employ it, and it includes both a positive presentation and a negative aspect in which we also try to demonstrate the truth of the Christian faith while also demonstrating the falsity and inability of other worldviews to provide a foundation for knowledge and truth and things like that.

Yeah, and I think the thing so when we say prove, okay, we are looking at things that show that God exists, but I'm going to take God as the axiom. In other words Say again?

As an axiom. I would be careful with the word axiom. Why would you be careful? Because when we talk about axiom, when we use the word axiom as opposed to, say, a mere presupposition, someone who has the background in presuppositional apologetics, we can now run into the deep waters of the vast differences between the methodology of Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark.

And the difference between them is a very important difference in that Clark started with an ultimate axiom, which he defined as a starting point that cannot be justified. You don't try to justify it, you just accept it because it's your authoritative dogmatic starting point.

And he sought to show that when you start with the axiom, the Bible is the word of God, that proposition houses the adequate ingredients to build a positive worldview, and you can demonstrate the superiority of the Christian worldview by its logical consistency.

And that's actually different than what Cornelius Van Til tried to do. Van Til did not start with a Clarkian axiom because the axiom can't be proven. Van Til believed that the Christian worldview could be proven, just not in the same way you would prove, say, a deductive argument in which you support its premises by appealing to something external to it as kind of a standard by which to measure what is considered valid evidence.

Van Til believed you can prove the Christian presupposition transcendentally. And I think that's a very big difference between Clark and Van Til, and that's why as a Van Tilian I'm very careful not to use the word axiom because an axiom by definition is unprovable, in which case you're not engaging in proof, you're just engaging in, hey, my axiom is better than your axiom because my worldview is consistent.

And that's kind of a different twist, and I think an important difference there.

Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, we do use these things to say, look, if we examine this stuff as I just did, you look at the immaterial world, there is no way to explain that without an immaterial source.

Okay, and that would be the argument when people say, well, you know, we see evidences of God, and we see that everywhere. But the thing that I won't give up in any argument that, you know, like you'll get a professing atheist will be like, well, let's step out of your world and step into mine.

Why? You know, I'm going to have a debate later this month. And it's really kind of funny, because the guy wants to debate that secular humanism is better than Christianity or superior. The problem is he first has to show that his worldview can actually exist outside of relying on ours.

That's the problem he has and doesn't even realize it, because what he wants to do is say, well, let's just step into my worldview and discuss the differences, things that I see. And it's like, well, that's nice, but that's not the worldview that we actually live in.

So that's the thing that we end up recognizing that, I mean, these guys have some problems that they don't even want to recognize. So I think that classical is kind of a mix between the two. They will use evidence at times, and they'll use presuppositional apologetics at times.

So they're kind of in the middle.

I would say they wouldn't use presuppositional apologetics.

They would use. Well, they use some of the tools. They use some of the arguments.

Right. But I would say that the classical method is inconsistent with the presuppositional framework, even though, you know, you can use a transcendental argument as a classicalist. But I would argue that within the classical framework, there are certain presuppositions that are inconsistent with the utilization of the kind of methodology that presuppositionalist use.

But again, there are layers and crossovers in which, you know, as a presuppositionalist, I often use the Kalam argument, but I don't think that that's illegitimate since on my world, on my methodology, everything is evidence for God.

And so if everything's evidence for God, I can talk about anything. If I want to talk about the universe, if I want to talk about aesthetics, ethics, logic, I think it was Scott Oliphant, who is a professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster.

He said that, and I don't think this is original to him. He said that presuppositionalists are eminently evidentialist since we believe that everything is evidence for God. We can use anything and we can do it without forsaking our ultimate starting point, which is the Bible as that epistemological base and the triune God, which provides that metaphysical context out of which everything else makes sense.

We can do that while standing on that, on that foundation. And when we engage in apologetics, assuming that knowledge acquisition is possible without the assumption and reality and existence of the triune God, then at that moment, we are using some other standard other than the word of God.

And we're actually granting a level of neutrality to the unbeliever. And I think that's what classical apologetics does on accident. I don't think people do it on purpose. I think that's one of the inconsistencies and how that method is employed.

Okay. So we got it for folks who may not be familiar with the whole issue of neutrality, right? Because we throw these terms out having studied them. I mean, neutrality is the idea that somehow we have this neutral ground that we speak with a professing atheist.

And there's this neutral ground that we can both come to and agree on. And we would have to give up our Bible and our faith. And just come to their worldview of science. And, and we, you know, it's, it's really not neutral is the thing people don't understand what they're asking you to do is give up everything that's true that you believe and come into step into our realm, but they never want to step out of their realm and come into the truth.

And so the, the reason mostly is because they think they, they firmly believe that everything that they believe religiously and it is religious is, is true just because a majority believe it. And that's a logical fallacy called the fallacy of population populum.

So just because a majority believe it doesn't make it true. And so I think that what, when it comes to the different methods, one of the issues I see that, and I notice it more in the presuppositional camp than any other, that will argue that if you're not doing their method, you're doing it wrong.

And that's what I think we as presuppositionalists have to be careful of. I don't see that so much. I definitely don't see it from classical apologists. See it from some evidentialists, but not many. But I see it very kind.

And when we think of classical, I should give some names for classical apologists we could think of Greg Coco would be a classical apologist. I think Frank Turk may be falling in that camp now because he used to be more of an evident classical.

I, well, it was his, his latest book. I forget the title of it, but his, the title of his book and the press, the whole premise of his book is, is almost seeming like a presuppositional argument. So I don't know if he's kind of moving.

Stealing from God. Stealing from God. Yeah. Where he's arguing that, that the, the unbelievers stealing from God's, you know, from, you know, stealing from our worldview essentially.

Right. And I, and he, he actually, I think he actually has a small little quotation from the debate between Gordon Stein and Greg Bond, definitely aware of Bonson's presentation or, or kind of how Bonson, you know, demonstrated that the unbeliever is in fact borrowing from the Christian worldview.

Now he's using presuppositional principles, but when you get down to the foundation there, there is a vast difference. And I think there is a, a little bit of conceding ground within the methodology of Frank Turek.

And I think that's again, it looks like presuppositionalism and the book is completely awesome. I have the book, I have it on audio book and I actually love Frank Turek, even though I don't agree with everything.

And I like what you said before that just because someone's not a presuppositionalist, you know, we tend to think they're doing it wrong and maybe, maybe to be consistent, I do think many people are doing apologetics wrong.

However, that does not mean that we don't have anything to learn from the other methodologies. I've learned, I learned a lot from William Lane Craig, for example, even though there's a lot I disagree over.

I learned a lot from Greg Koekel. I learned a lot. We need to be able to stand firm on, on a consistent biblical basis, allowing our apologetic methodology to be consistent with our theology while at the same time, not dividing unnecessarily over issues like this.

People make these things, you know, hills to die on. And we fail to see the value of what other people are, are, are providing. Very little in the presuppositional is a, a, a grasp on if people become intellectually lazy because like, you know, you know, they'll, they'll throw when it is to some of the specifics, a lot of presupposition was, are unable to because they're just reading presuppositional works.

They're not really dealing with some of the specific evidences that can be very useful when we're engaging with unbelievers.

Yeah. And this is a thing where I think with the methodologies, we have to be careful not to, we gotta, we gotta have grace in this, right? I mean, you'd be a good example. You started out more classical, like an R .C. Sproul.

He, he would have been a classical apologist. I think he's now presupper. But, but no, you started out one and you changed, right? Hey, I'm just saying, I think that in heaven, we'll all be presuppositional.

That's all I'm saying. I agree. Well, well, will there be apologetics in heaven? No, there won't be a need. No, but, but the thing is, I think you see guys who have changed over time. So to be dogmatic and start saying that people are doing it wrong or things like this.

I, a lot of times I think that some people just don't understand the differences in the apologetics. Some people have not been trained, haven't been taught, haven't read. And because of that, there is going to be some differences that you're going to see.

I mean, I, I wasn't before I was trained in apologetics. I, you know, I didn't know anything other than getting a copy of more than a carpenter by Josh McDowell. And he had some great arguments and, and I would use those arguments when witnessing to people.

And there were times where people were like, wow, that was, that's neat. I didn't know that. And it makes you think like, wow, this is really cool. So what do you do? You study more. And I will admit evidential apologetics takes a lot of work, a lot of knowledge.

I mean, you got to study and you got to know these things because all this science stuff, it changes and you got to have it just like rapid fire because you got to know all this stuff. Presuppositional isms a lot easier.

It just is. No, I don't have to know all that. I just have to know. Can you explain your worldview without God? No. Okay. Right. I mean, it's like,.

You know, it can be a little more complicated than that. General principle and a general principle. I like, I like what Greg Bonson one said that, that when the Bible commands us to do apologetics, that's something that's possible both for the professor and for Sophie, the wash woman, the principals are principles that whether in a very simplistic form or in a very, very complicated form.

So the, the cool thing about presuppositional ism is it has a depth to it, but there's also a simplicity to it that really anybody can use. Now, if you're going to do classical apologetics and evidential apologetics, it is going to take a lot more study and handling of facts, but at the same time, we have to be very careful.

I've heard some presupposition lists kind of poo poo, that fact kind of like, Oh, well you have to be a genius. Well, we'll slow down. Those are good things to, to attain. We want to know the facts better than the unbeliever.

But at the same time, if we define apologetics as necessarily having to deal with all of those specific things, then you've now blocked the average human being who is a profession, professing Christian from actually engaging in that stuff in a, in a very effective way.

Whereas presuppositional principles are kind of, they can have that simplistic flavor to them where really anybody can use them.

That's right. And you know, let's, let's engage with the sound that Katie says here. She says, so-called science changes all the time. Scripture doesn't. That's one of the things, you know, I mean, I don't know how many times have you heard the argument that we're just reading from an old book, you know, that goat herders, you know, had written.

But the reality is that book has not needed to change through all these centuries. It's still just as true 2000 years ago, 4 ,000 years ago, as it is today. And when we look at this, well, okay, sorry, not 4 ,000 years ago, because it was probably written about 3 ,500 years.

But the point being is science. I mean, I just, I was just reading a report where they're, they're trying to come up because they've now figured out mathematically that there was not a, for years, they've been saying that the big bang came about from a single explosion.

And now they're realizing it's mathematically impossible. So they're trying to come up with a way of explaining that there was actually multiple singularities, not a single one, but multiple that explosion.

So it was the big bangs, I guess, is what they'll call it. But, you know, this is the thing that we end up seeing is the fact that when we start with God, and this is what I love about presuppositional projects.

The starting point is God. So we're putting God on high. We're glorifying him. And he's, he's the one that we're going to look to. And when we do that, what we end up seeing is they cannot, these folks cannot explain their worldview without appealing to God.

And that's, that's a must. If they're going to, if they're going to argue that we're just chemical reactions. I mean, what makes one chemical reaction better than another? Nothing.

So, yeah, their starting point lacks the sufficient ingredients to build a worldview that can provide the foundation for knowledge, for science, for history, and all these other kinds of things, because they do not have that immovable starting point.

When you talked about people discuss this issue of, you know, science always changes, but the Bible, the Bible doesn't. And usually that people kind of explain that in a negative light, because it's a good thing that science changes because people say we're moving closer to the truth.

We have to understand that we're talking about science. We're talking about something that's categorically different than something like the Bible. If the Bible is a divine revelation from a perfect being, then by definition, it shouldn't change since the truth that he declares is the truth.

Whereas the very methodology of science is based upon principles, which require us to be able to revise certain things. You see, the Bible gives us an ultimate starting point. It is a foundation upon which we build everything.

Science is not a starting point. It is something that comes along later in the web of our worldview. You need something immovable in regards to your foundation that doesn't change in order to actually have a rational basis to engage in science, which presupposes change.

And really the fact that it's good that in science, in the scientific realm, things change. That's what the whole method is, is you know, that change is an important aspect of that method. We also have to understand too, that when we're standing on the word of God and we put the revelation of God at the center of our epistemology, our theory of knowledge, that which provides for us an explanation as to how we gain knowledge and how that's related to revelation.

When we look at things like that, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. We tend to mix categories when talking about science, as though science is a knowledge acquiring discipline. It's not.

It's not a truth finding discipline either. Sean Carroll, who is an eminent cosmologist, he actually defines science. He says, science does not give us truth. It gives us theories that work. Science is by definition pragmatic, whereas scripture is epistemological, metaphysical.

God is giving us information that's true and that we can know with certainty. And science doesn't really set itself up to provide that kind of thing, since they're completely different categories. So we want to keep those things distinct.

Yeah,.

Because, well, the underlying premise, though, is you can't do science without God first existing.

You can't do science without an immovable starting point. Correct. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's an example I always give,.

You know, when I was a kid, I made the, you know, the volcano, you know, out of plaster Paris and put a cup in top and you, you put a little baking soda and then you pour the vinegar in it. And I always ask, so what happened?

And people are like, Oh, well, it fuzzes over, you know? Okay. Is it morally right or wrong? People go, what is it morally right or wrong? No. And people will be like, it's just a chemical reaction. Oh, so it's just chemical.

So that you can't get morality from that. And they're like, well, no. And then later they're going to get into saying that we can, our brains are what gives us morality. And it's like, wait a minute. You know, that's the thing.

If we're nothing but chemical reactions and nothing more, nothing less. Well, this is, this is the, uh, the thing that we'll end up seeing is chemical reactions. Don't have immaterial elements to it. Like concepts.

You and I are having a conversation because we have an immaterial understanding of concepts. I'm using words. You understand the meaning of those words. It really, while this is, it's, it's sound, it's a, it's a vibration of the air that is going through.

In this case, it's going through this microphone being digitized, being converted into a digital signal and B and coming back out your end. And you're hearing the vibration of air, but yet you understand the concepts in the certain vibrations and the sounds that they make.

And you know them and you understand them as a concept, not just a sound. That is something that's immaterial. That is something you can't, that's a basic thing. You can't have any conversation without understanding that concepts exist.

And yet if it's just purely chemical reactions and nothing more, well, then we can't have concepts. We can't have conversations like this. And so there, there has to be an immaterial source for everything that we know.

And that is the problem that the atheist has because they don't have an immaterial source. They, they require a material source for everything. And there isn't one in this case because that, that unchanged or uncaused cause as the philosophers would say, you need that being that created everything.

So I think it gets complicated too. And I apologize if it does, if I'm making it more complicated than it has to be, but that is a good example. What you're doing, which is an element of presuppositional apologetics.

One of the elements is that you are providing internal critique of someone else's worldview. So if someone claims to be a materialist, then you grant the truth of that perspective and ask them if that's true, what does that lead to?

And what you've just described there is what such a worldview, what, what a worldview like that leads to, which really is irrationality. But then you get the person who is not necessarily a materialist.

They won't say God doesn't exist, nor will they say that they know for a fact that matter and motion is all that there is. Rather, they are more methodologically naturalists in terms of their method of how they do things.

But in regards to metaphysical reality, you know, there may be a God. And that gets a little more slippery because the argument that will materialism leads to fill in the blank is not necessarily a critique of a metaphysic that they're assuming kind of what they are, because they're not, they don't necessarily assume that everything is matter in motion, but they assume kind of this, you know, methodological kind of naturalism, the way they go about practically speaking, they don't assume God.

However, even in doing that, if we can't use a materialistic critique on a person who doesn't necessarily adopt that perspective, we can also offer a critique in terms of epistemology, their theory of knowledge.