My apologies to those who have been waiting on me to post the next installment … again.
This study is part 5, and includes two new members – Josh and Sean. I hope you enjoy it and are able to gain a further understanding of Presuppositional Apologetics by listening in!
– BK
I have noticed as of late that there is an increase in discussion amongst atheists about the subject of presuppositions. I think this is just great. After all, one of the most difficult tasks in debate (formal or otherwise) with unbelievers is getting them to understand the role that presuppositions play in their thinking. We’ve talked about this here at Choosing Hats in great detail, both in posts and in our Bible Study on Bahnsen’s “Always Ready”. This is the good news.
The bad news is that I do not believe that these same atheists understand how completely foundational these very presuppositions are to their reasoning process. Despite their concurrence that such things exist, and their commentary about the role they play, the atheists that I have read or listened to fall prey to the same thing many Christians do – assuming the very presuppositions they are defending, without the realization they are doing so.
Presuppositions exist at many levels, but it is the foundational ones (those which are most basic) that I am interested in highlighting here. It is just the nature of these particular presuppositions that makes them impossible to step outside of while evaluating them. For the Christian, the most basic of all presuppositions is the existence of God. That means that logically speaking it is not possible for a Christian to evaluate anything at all without ultimately presupposing God, including the belief that God exists. This is, after all, the very source of the complaint of circularity against those presuppositionalists who employ TAG.
The unbeliever has their basic presuppositions, too. One of the most basic is the belief that they are able to reason without a foundational appeal to the God of the Bible. It isn’t that they necessarily deny God’s existence directly as part of their reasoning process, but rather it is the fact that they presume to even question whether God exists at all. Doing so implies that they believe it is possible to know at least one thing (whether or not God exists) without ultimately relying upon God to answer that question.
Van Til uses the analogy of a telescope, where the telescope is God and the star is any fact that a person wishes to investigate. The epistemologically self-conscious Christian will always look through the telescope anytime they wish to investigate a “fact”. The unbeliever on the other hand attempts to look directly at the star without the aid of the telescope, thinking they will be able to have an accurate view of the fact. The real problem is uncovered when the “star” in question is the existence of God.
The unbeliever assumes that there is no telescope that is required in order to determine whether there exists a telescope which is required to “see” any “fact”. They attempt to look directly at the “fact” of the star in order to see whether or not there is a telescope which is required in order to see any facts at all. The problem is self-evident. If the Bible is true and such a God as this exists, the unbeliever is never going to conclude that such a God exists simply by looking directly at the “stars” (i.e. using un-aided human reason).
This is, to me, the clearest example of a foundational presupposition that no matter how hard they try, the atheist cannot *logically* “put aside” in order to question whether or not God exists.
– BK
My apologies to those who have been waiting on me to post the next installment.
This study is part 4, and was limited to Paul and myself. I hope you enjoy it and are able to gain a further understanding of Presuppositional Apologetics by listening in!
– BK
Two Considerations for a Solution
There are two considerations when offering a solution to the Problem of Evil from a Presuppositional standpoint. In order to look at the first, let’s reconsider the formalized statement of the problem:
a) God is all powerful
b) God is all loving
c) God knows that evil exists
d) Evil does exist
e) Therefore, God does not exist
Notice that this takes the form of a deductive argument, meaning that the conclusion “God does not exist” follows with necessity just as long as every one of the premises is true, and just as long as the form of the argument itself is valid (which in this case, it is).
An important aspect of the argument above to recognize is the difference between premises a-c, and premise d. In presenting this argument, the unbeliever is stating premises a-c as hypotheticals; that is, according to the claims of Christianity, premises a-c are true. However, premise d is presented as fact. 9 times out of 10 the unbeliever does not say “the Bible claims that evil exists”, but rather “evil exists”. Let’s consider why this distinction matters.
When presenting the argument above, the unbeliever is attempting to demonstrate the truth of all of his/her premises in order to demonstrate the conclusion is true. We, as believers, “give” premises a-c to the unbeliever, since those are the attributes of God found in the Bible. However, we don’t need to “give” premise d to the unbeliever, at least not at the outset.
Please note that I am not claiming that we, as Christians, do not believe evil exists – we obviously do. However, as the burden is on the unbeliever to make their case, there is a real benefit in pressing them to demonstrate that premise d is true. After all, if a demonstration of the existence of evil is not forthcoming from the unbeliever, then they have failed to prove that God does not exist. The purpose in taking this tack is not to avoid the question of whether evil exists, but rather to press the unbeliever’s worldview to demonstrate their inability to make the argument in the first place.
With that said, ask the unbeliever to demonstrate that evil exists. In doing so, be sure to clarify that they must offer an objective demonstration of this, if they wish to demonstrate their conclusion that God does not exist. This is exactly the point at which you can press the issue of worldviews, as the unbeliever does not have an objective, non-arbitrary set of presuppositions to use as a foundation to demonstrate that evil exists.
Short of offering an objective foundation for the existence of evil, the best the unbeliever can do is turn to you and state “but don’t you believe evil exists?” This is exactly what you want them to ask!
We will cover the second consideration next time around, and offer the Biblical answer to the problem.
– BK
It never ceases to amaze me how difficult it is to reason about our presuppositions.
The most natural approach to reasoning, I believe, is to rest upon our presuppositions blindly, without thinking about them at all. This is apparent to me time and time again in discussions I have with unbelievers. A rather enormous challenge in presuppositional apologetics, therefore, is getting your opponent to see that they have presuppositions, and that they must give an account for them. This is no easy task, believe me! The discussion I had two days ago was no exception.
There is this discussion board that I literally “lived” on for the past 7 years, that I have only now begun to wean myself from. It hasn’t been all bad, actually – I learned a great deal about the beliefs of others, and about what I didn’t know about my own beliefs by spending time on that board. My skin grew thick from the constant abuse I took there, and my skills as an apologist grew greatly from what they were when I started out.
Two days ago I ventured back to that board, and entered into a discussion about prayer. Never one to give even an inch to Christianity, this individual latched on to one of my comments and immediately challenged me to prove that “my god” answers prayer. Seeing an opportunity to challenge his presuppositions, I responded – and we were off!
After a few exchanges, where he challenged me to prove the truth of the Bible, I said to him “I’m not trying to prove the authority of scripture – I am relying upon it“, realizing – hoping actually – that he would challenge me to account for what I was relying upon. Sure enough, he responded with “Well, before you can rely on it, you must prove it is valid“. After some more back and forth, he set the bar with the following – “The ONLY way to demonstrate that the bible is true is by hard evidence and facts“. This was the perfect lead-in to start to challenge him about his standard, which I proceeded to do.
I then asked him “what standard are you measuring [your standard] against” and “why should you use this standard, and not another?” His response? “The validity of my standard can be validated in every observation that that has ever been made that resulted in a hypothesis that was tested and validated (or not) since the beginning of history.“
This was just what I was hoping for. I countered with “So your standard is validated by using the very thing your standard relies upon – evidence, reasoning, and the scientific method“, hoping that he would see the circular nature of his argument. He didn’t. It required another few rounds of back and forth before he finally realized he couldn’t simply assume that his standard was valid, and responded with “Okay then, how would you suggest demonstrating the validity of the scientific method?“.
I will likely return to the board in the next day or so to respond, at which point I have no idea how far I will get with him.
Regardless, this conversation got me thinking. There has to be a way to make presuppositionalism succinct. There has to be a way to get right to the heart of the matter, within just a few minutes, because there is so much time to spend after you reach that point. What is that “heart of the matter” of which I speak? Getting your opponent to realize that they are arguing from a standard – a worldview – that itself needs to be accounted for.
This is one of my goals to tackle – to figure out a “formula” (for lack of a better word) to accomplish this.
Thoughts?
– BK
Well, the great people at eCamm came through and assisted me in repairing the corrupted audio from our last study recording. I have been able to mix and edit the audio, and now have it available for those who would like to listen.
– BK
The other day I had a very interesting conversation with an unbeliever in an IRC discussion room I frequent. I wanted to share it here because I think it is a fairly good representation of how to put the presuppositional method of apologetics into practice.
The conversation lasted about an hour. There was no repentance – no conversion – nothing remarkable like that. In fact, I heard later that the individual “Blast” might not have even been genuine in his side of the discussion. No matter, I think that God was glorified as the gospel was shared and it was demonstrated to “Blast” (albeit in a rather limited manner) in a presuppositional manner, that God is the foundation of morality.
Click HERE to read the conversation
– BK
