How to beat a presupp at their own game

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

Isn't the only way to win being not to play? To paraphrase a certain 80's movie.

Is it do-able to have a world view that doesn't start with their form of presuppositions? Is it do-able to have a world view that doesn't presuppose at all?

Cheers.

[Mister Agenda]

I've heard presuppositionalism described as crawling down a rabbit hole and pulling the hole in after you. You can't reach a presuppositionalist with logic or evidence, they've immunized themselves against them. The only way for them to get out of their rabbit hole is for them to dig their own way out.

[The Grand Nudger]

 Is it do-able to have a world view that doesn't start with their form of presuppositions?

Yes

Is it do-able to have a world view that doesn't presuppose at all?

No.  

In fact, they see the latter as a convincing rationalization for their own presuppositions which include the notion that the former is not possible.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Presuppositionalism is a mental bubble designed to convince the already convinced that their right. It's pointless to argue with them.

[The Grand Nudger]

More to convince them that they can't be wrong - people who believe in gods already think that they're right about gods. As I mentioned earlier, it is very much and explicitly a rationalization after the fact. This isn't a problem with it or an argument against it or an atheists critique of it - that's literally what it is and is intended to be.

---

-deliciously...the categorical imperative of presuppositionalist theology is to begin with and share the gospel of christ - but it sounds like our friend on discord is busy doing something else. Perhaps he should ask himself..if he has ten minutes of an unbelievers time, is that ten minutes better spent worshipping at the altar of reason - or reading from the good book? If, as presuppositionalists contend, their pressupositions are valid, which is to say manifestly true in the sense of any other axiom - there couldn't be any better way to demonstrate that to someone.

If a man asked me to convince him that clouds exist, I'd take him outside and point at one - not argue the rationality or grounds of the a-cloud worldview - but that's just me.

[Nay_Sayer]

Darth Dawkins is not a presuppositionalist. He is however a misguided troll/ mental defective whose every argument has been torn to shreds, Which is why he refuses to debate anyone that isn't in an environment where he can mute/censor them and claim victory afterward.

[Angrboda]

If someone asks me how do I know if the existance or the universe is the absolute grounding (Darth likes to use the words Ultimate in particular) my answer is I don't know.

I think "I don't know" is a wise position.

The trouble is that guys like him who like to fight will take it as an expression of weakness, and try to pound you over the head with it. I don't think they are interested in the truth -- only in winning. As if "winning" debates on the Internet were worth anything. 

Epistemology is a fascinating subject, though. Probably you've already spelled out the standard position: we hold things to be true based on either 1) experience, or 2) logic. 

Since we are easily fooled by experience, and don't have access to any "absolute" source of knowledge, the best we can do is just double check things and remain modest.

Rephrase it as, "It's not currently known." That way he has to attack consensus and in doing so stumbles into an argument from ignorance.

[The Grand Nudger]

Or remind the arguer that the universe means everything - if there's an ultimate ground of being, including his own silly god...it's hard to see how it would evade being in the category which references..literally, everything.

[Angrboda]

Very simple.   Atheism is "grounded" when we have no personal impetus to believe in gods.  That's all that the word means, so that's all that it takes.  

The same grounds for facts and knowledge that anyone else has, whatever those are - for better and for worse.  Adding or removing a divine friend has no effect on knowledge claims or their basis.

The same way we know things, if we know things, in a god-ed world.  To say that we know something is, like atheism or theism, primarily, a claim about ourselves - not a claim about a god.  In a godless or god-ed world we either know the thing, anything, or we do not.  Really, though, the questioner would have to be more specific.  You know your own name and what ice cream tastes like for reasons not at all similar to how you know that william lead the norman conquest.

Well, rather than arguing this point, ask them to explain what they mean by it.  How, in what way, is god the foundation of knowledge?  Who's knowledge?  What knowledge?  The foundation of knowledge of my own name or what ice cream tastes like?  You'll reach a point where..either what they have to say on the subject convinces you, or it does not..and then you have an even more specific answer for the very first question.

If a person has attempted and failed to convince you of a gods existence..they too are now part of the "grounding" of your atheism.  Congratulate them on a job well done.

Thanks for your reply! The answer I've heard from Darth is that whatever conforms to the mind of God is knowledge. You can only know that it is true if it conforms to the mind of God. And God has revealed himself through divine and special revelation in such a way that I know it cannot be false. He is also omniscient. This is his justication.

Katalepsis (Greek: κατάληψις, "grasping") in Stoic philosophy, meant comprehension. To the Stoic philosophers, katalepsis was an important premise regarding one's state of mind as it relates to grasping fundamental philosophical concepts, and it represents the Stoic solution to the problem of the criterion.

Stoicism
According to the Stoics, the mind is constantly being bombarded with impressions (phantasiai). (An impression arising from the mind was called a phantasma.) Some of these impressions are true and some false. Impressions are true when they are truly affirmed, false if they are wrongly affirmed, such as when one believes an oar dipped in the water to be broken because it appears so. When Orestes, in his madness, mistook Electra for a Fury, he had an impression both true and false: true inasmuch as he saw something, viz., Electra; false, inasmuch as Electra was not a Fury. Believing that the mind instinctively discriminated between real and false impressions, the Stoics said that one ought not to give credit to everything which is perceived, but only to those perceptions which contain some special mark of those things which appeared. Such a perception then was called a kataleptic phantasia (Greek: φαντασία καταληπτική), or comprehensible perception. The kataleptic phantasia is that which is impressed by an object which exists, and which is a copy of that object and can be produced by no other object.

Wikipedia || Katalepsis

One of the problems with this line of reasoning is that it leads to an infinite regress.

For example:

"I know that knowledge is what conforms to the mind of God."

"How do you know that you know that knowledge is what conforms to the mind of God?"

"I know because I know that my belief that knowing that knowledge is what conforms to the mind of God also conforms to the mind of God."

"And how do you know that that conforms to the mind of God as well?"

And so on. The point is that in order to know, one has to know that one knows, and in order to know that one knows, one has to know that one knows that one knows, and so on.

[LadyForCamus]

These are certainly good questions. It seems like we should have answers ready when someone asks.

What answers have you given so far?

edited to add:

It looks as though the guy you're referring to goes by "Darth Dawkins." Not "Darkins." He has gotten a certain amount of Internet fame.

Sorry, Darth Dawkins. He is on the Reformation server on Discord every day, and last night he was basically bullying a woman who was an agnostic in this way, by essentially making her concede that her position was just completely arbitrary.

He then attempted to discredit Evolution for 30 minutes.

If someone asks me how do I know if the existance or the universe is the absolute grounding (Darth likes to use the words Ultimate in particular) my answer is I don't know.

You don’t have to. He’s the one making a positive claim. He’s the one asserting Christianity is true. This work is not yours to do; it’s his.