Van Tillian/Clarkian Presuppositional Apologetics.

[Statler Waldorf]

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At some point in the past, I posted this exercise of giving apologetic thinking a try. I think it's time to revisit this experiment/

OK, let's pretend this silly song I and every other kid at summer camp used to sing (perhaps you all may remember something like this ditty) is actually part of the Bible. I have to reconcile the contradictions using Stat Wal Logic:

One day in the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight
Back to back, they faced each other
Drew their swords and shot each other
Two deaf policemen heard this noise
Came to kill the two dead boys
If you don't believe this lie is true
You can ask the blind man, he saw it too.

In verse one, the term "day" can mean a 24 hour period. So the event happened at night.

Regrading verse two, naturalists scoff at the idea that dead boys can get up to fight but they're just trapped in their self-refuting mindset. Most people believe in miracles anyway so the burden of proof is on them to prove that zombies aren't real.

In verse three, there is no contradiction. First they went back to back and then turned to face each other. Just like in verse four, drawing swords doesn't preclude later drawing guns.

In verse five, there are varying degrees of deafness. Even people hard of hearing can hear gunshots. So no contradiction there.

In verse six, killing the dead isn't a contradiction when you believe in the afterlife. The Bible itself refers to the Lake of Fire as the "second death". Consistent with this passage, the police attempted to put down the zombies in final death.

In verse seven, the term "lie" is actually a a translation of an ancient Hebrew word that can mean "story" or "fable". It isn't really a lie but a story that is true, as declared by the verse.

Finally, verse eight provides an embarrassing witness, the blind man who was able to recount the events. If this story were truly a lie, they would not have made up such an embarrassing witness.

So using Stat Wal logic, you really can do away with an "apparent contradiction".

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This is your response? Seriously?

[The Grand Nudger]

There's a school somewhere that gives out degrees in magic? You're unimpressive Stat. No one cares where you claim to work, no one cares how smart you claim to be. You're just some guy sitting at a keyboard desperate to have his myths mistaken for facts.

[Statler Waldorf]

There's a school somewhere that gives out degrees in magic? You're unimpressive Stat. No one cares where you claim to work, no one cares how smart you claim to be. You're just some guy sitting at a keyboard desperate to have his myths mistaken for facts.

If nobody cares then why do you bother following me around like some groupie on here? Apparently you do care, I think it really bothers you that I do have more education than you. It bothers you that you always have to look up the things we are talking about on Wikipedia because you just don't know anything. It bothers you that someone who believes in the Triune God could be so much more sophisticated at debating..

[DeistPaladin]

There's a school somewhere that gives out degrees in magic?

They're called degrees in theology.

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh. we're debating? Bring an argument next time. "I believe in supernatural things" is just a proclamation of faith.

[Ryft]

I told you at the outset that I do not accept your premise, nor your definition of logical absolutes as transcendent.

I know. That follows from the Christian presupposition as argued by Van Til et al. (e.g., Rom 1:18–22). Having said that, I am not sure how your autobiographical information is supposed to be relevant to the truth of Christianity as argued presuppositionally by Van Til et al.—unless you think begging that question is a valid move. (And it is not.)

I do find more than a little irony in your complaints about an ad hominem, considering your "you will of course deny this" song and dance.

How you managed to find irony in that is equally mystifying, for it is not as if I attacked the arguer rather than the argument the way you had. Quite the contrary, I was engaging his argument rather directly and underscoring mine; I then anticipated a denial in order to obviate it as illegitimate, in hope that he would offer a valid response in lieu. (It is certainly safe to anticipate that an atheist will deny that God is self-evident to all acts of cognition. And since that is a question-begging move given our present context, I wanted him to avoid making it.)

Your argument does not attempt to argue for the existence of God, as you yourself have stated.

Then apparently you have not been paying attention. Ah well.

What it does is provide you with a vehicle to degrade others by way of defining concepts in a favorable manner, and refusing to address whether or not those definitions are accurate.

First, what it does is define concepts as intelligible in a coherent and consistent manner. Does this mean the argument is favorable to itself? Certainly, but any coherent argument is—by definition, I should think. I must confess, however, that it is unclear how that degrades others. Second, it does not refuse to address whether or not those definitions are accurate, but argues quite explicitly that they are vis-a-vis the impossibility of the contrary (q.v. law of excluded middle); i.e., as it is necessarily accurate, no others can be.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: philosophical legerdemain in place of intellectual rigor.

You can say it endlessly if you like; it does not make it true. What should be embarrassing for you (although it probably is not) is that if this truly was just philosophical legerdemain in place of intellectual rigor then you should be able to take it apart without making straw man caricatures of it first, without begging the question, without irrelevant ad hominems and so forth. Yet for some reason you choose these fallacious routes; a strange way to approach something that is supposed to be mere sophistry.

Maybe then I could show you, and your argument, just an ounce more respect.

So far what you have found unworthy of respect is a scurrilous caricature of my argument; until you can perform a rational reconstruction of my argument that is recognizable to me, there is no reason to think that it is my actual argument that you are unable to respect. So far what you have been objecting to are irrational reconstructions thereof.

I'm not having a debate with you, Ryft, I'm trying to have a discussion with you.

Ditto. If this were truly a debate, I would be far more aggressive.

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I see you still refuse to answer the question. Don't worry about it. We all know you can't ...

Still clinging to argumentum ex silentio, despite its fallacious nature. You are nothing if not consistently irrational.

... because if there was any proof that your God existed, we'd have no need for either faith or apologetics.

And non-sequitur. You are compounding fallacies upon fallacies—and without even blushing.

Step 1: Start with a belief in your God and realize you need to invent some kind of proof or justification to support that belief.

Since this first step is an illegitimate straw man caricature—compounding your fallacies even further—the rest of the steps no longer follow (allowing us to ignore the fact that just about every single other step was also inapplicable). Moreover, neither those steps as a whole nor any of them in part demonstrated the question-begging fallacy, confirming with perspicuity that you really misunderstand this fallacy.

Pay attention to Captain Scarlet and learn what intelligent discourse and rational integrity looks like.

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I understand what you are trying to convey. What I cannot grasp is its meaning. Saying X is grounded in the very nature of Y doesn't obviate the contingency of X. Saying that Person A has human property B ... grounded in his humanity ... makes sense. But whilst property B does not depend on Person A for all of humanity, it does for Person A's existence; i.e., Person A's own property B is wholly contingent on person A's existence. It is therefore contingent. I concede that you may fully grasp the meaning of it and I do not, but that does not alter the fact that I do not, even though I have earnestly tried. To me it seems like a non-answer and a form of words which adds mystery but no explanation.

Let me try clarifying this from a different angle, then. Just as there is a distinction between "what is moral" and "what morality is," so there is a distinction between "what is logical" and "what logic is." The principles by which we determine what is logical are contingent by virtue of being analogous reflections of God in his creation and imago Dei. In one sense this is what Paul means when he says that the attributes of God "are understood through what has been made." Obviously I shall need to unpack this and explain what it means to say that "logic depends on God in the sense that it is grounded in the nature and character of God; thus it cannot be arbitrary and cannot fail to be necessarily true, as God himself is necessary being."

In theological terms logic is a "communicable attribute" of God, which is distinguished from his "incommunicable attributes" (e.g., aseity); thus it is a divine attribute with which creation has an analogical relationship (as distinct from an identical relationship). (1) As a divine attribute (original), logic is coterminus with God's being—understood in terms of divine necessity and simplicity—and addresses the coherence and consistency of his nature and unchanging character; as such, logical order is manifest everywhere that the sovereign and sustaining power of God is. (2) As a human attribute (derivative), given our nature as imago Dei, logic is contingent insofar as we are creatures whose existence is distinct from and sustained by God; at this level, logic is understood analogously as conceptual formulations expressing the logical order of creation and the self-consistent coherence of God's immutable being.

So then, in the first case (divine attribute) the sense in which logic is necessary is explained, and in the second case (human attribute) the sense in which logical principles are contingent is explained. The fact that logical principles (e.g., the law of contradiction) are necessarily true, absolute, and universal is accounted for by their analogical relationship to the divine attribute of logic that is coterminus with the very nature and character of God. This is why we see Van Til say things like, "The law of contradiction cannot be thought of as operating anywhere except against the background of the nature of God."

I understand that you believe [this contradicts Scripture], but you are only framing the debate to favour your position and giving no latitude to explore what is logically possible from your arguments.

That is exactly the problem, though. That the universe could sustain itself apart from God is NOT logically possible from my arguments. For example, your thought experiment works only if God is "separate from his creation," which is precisely antithetical to my argument, such that all things are held together in him, all things are sustained by his powerful word, all things have their being by his will, and so on. Thus it is not "logically possible for him to exit the universe and leave it self-sustaining." All of creation—everything that is not God—is inexorably contingent upon God who alone is self-existent.

And of course I am framing the debate to favor my position. If I framed the debate to favor some other position, then it would not be my position I am arguing for. The subject of this thread is my position, Reformed theology as argued presuppositionally by Van Til et al. As I said earlier, challenges against worldview X must target worldview X—i.e., you can posit a scenario that is antithetical to biblical Christianity if you like, but by doing so you would be challenging something other than biblical Christianity (and thus leaving it unaddressed).

It seems to me that under your view the statement ("it is logically impossible for the nature of God not to include logic, because of his nature") is true. But this argument is also circular.

And it seems to me that you are conflating logically impossible and metaphysically impossible. In order for that statement to be recognizable to my view, I would reword it thus: "It is metaphysically impossible for the nature of God not to include logic." As an attribute of God coterminus with his being, the issue is thus metaphysical.

Based on my admittedly limited understanding of philosophy, I believe you are presenting an epistemology based on certain axiomatic truths (presuppositions). I am engaged in an attempt to disprove those axioms, as axioms. You are then advising that the act of trying to disprove these axioms is based on an informal fallacy (question begging), therefore I can't—at least in the way I've presented them. It seems to be perfectly reasonable for me to demonstrate why I do not think that belief in the alleged Jesus and his supposed redemptive qualities are axiomatic.

You were doing good right up until that last sentence, and here is why: if your demonstration is question-begging, then it is not perfectly reasonable—by definition. That is why you find me cutting off the debate over this point, because fallacies are errors in reasoning. We can certainly debate the question, but I am going to insist that we do so rationally. When an error in reasoning is discovered, I will point it out in order to provide you the opportunity to correct it. (And I should hope that you would do the same for me.)

Furthermore, this view does not hold piecemeal a multiplicity of axiomatic presuppositions, but rather only one. Although we presuppose a host of things (typically arguendo), none of them are axiomatic save one: the truth of God as revealed in Scripture. That is our sole axiomatic presupposition. Anything else that we assume arguendo, whether theological, Christological, soteriological or what have you, is not axiomatic but rather deduced from the sole presupposition that is.

I will not prevent you from demonstrating how it is not axiomatic, unless your attempt commits an error in reasoning (such as begging the question).

God, whether the Godhead, or any of its 3 manifestations are, prima facie, reducible into one another.

I must confess that your sentence does not make sense. You will have to rephrase this one for me.

If Jesus cannot be reduced to the Godhead, the Godhead can be reduced to Jesus.

Jesus is not reducible to the Godhead; that is the modalist heresy of Sabellius. Nor is the Godhead reducible to Jesus; God is three persons and Jesus is not. While I can appreciate that you struggle to see how the Trinity works, what I cannot overlook is the persistent appearance of an error after it has been identified as one.

Jesus is reducible to a man ...

No, he is not; that is the monist heresy of Arius.

This is a bare assertion. You cannot demonstrate that God is self-evident to all acts of cognition.

Except I did; namely, it follows by necessity from God being the necessary precondition of intelligibility.

There are also powerful inductive reasons (which you may not accept) to believe that the Christian God is not self-evident: the argument from non-belief or divine hiddenness, the argument from religious confusion, the geographical distribution of the world's faith, etc.

Even if we assumed for the sake of argument that those arguments succeed (and they do not), they commit the fallacy of stolen concept by using induction as a valid epistemic heuristic device while denying the very thing upon which it logically and genetically depends, God as the necessary precondition of intelligibility.

Either way, the mere fact that we can argue over God's existence ... suggests that you are wrong and that it is not available to all cognitive acts.

On the contrary, the mere fact that we can argue over God's existence proves that I am right, as the whole enterprise presupposes the existence of God (apart from whom nothing is intelligible). It is akin to trying to "invalidate logic," as invalidating is a logical function (i.e., the attempt itself uses logic). This is why Frame responded to Martin, "To deny that such a necessary condition exists while engaging in supposedly meaningful discourse is to contradict oneself."

Any imagined being could be invented that this could be said of. I thought you were ONLY arguing for Christian theism; therefore, to rebut this you must present evidence why the Christian God is undeniable and not just any god.

That God is undeniable follows by necessity from God being the necessary precondition of intelligibility. In this discussion—wherein the truth of presuppositionalism is the question—the burden of proof falls upon whoever seeks to deny, for example, that logic depends on the nature and character of God, which requires demonstrating that it cannot. You attempted to do this by arguing that if logic depends on God then such things as the law of contradiction would be contingently true rather than necessarily true. I have shown how that fails because logic depends on God in the sense that it is grounded in his very nature and character (thus it cannot be arbitrary and cannot fail to be necessarily true, as God himself is necessary being). The only recourse you have left is showing that the nature of God cannot be necessary being.

[The Grand Nudger]

It has been taken apart. "You will of course deny this".

[DeistPaladin]

Pay attention to Captain Scarlet and learn what intelligent discourse and rational integrity looks like.

While I do admire Captain Scarlet, I don't think I need any instruction on intelligent discourse or rational integrity from you, considering how I'd busted you for lying in one of our debates. I consider intellectual honesty to be a critical component to intelligent exchanges and rational thinking. Putting on a pompous demeanor while showing a proficiency for the use of Latin phrases is not sufficient to compensate for such a shortcoming.

[DeistPaladin]

Still clinging to argumentum ex silentio, despite its fallacious nature. You are nothing if not consistently irrational.

When someone refuses to answer a question despite numerous requests, it's more than fair to assume that the person doesn't have an answer to offer.

... because if there was any proof that your God existed, we'd have no need for either faith or apologetics.

And non-sequitur. You are compounding fallacies upon fallacies—and without even blushing.

Actually, it does follow and is a relevant point. And while I know you are an apologist, can I ask you to be honest at least about things that are not in dispute?

Christian beliefs are based on faith. This shouldn't be a disputed point. You may argue that there are some shreds of evidence to bolster your faith (which is where apologetist comes in) but that Christianity relies heavily on a leap of faith is an obvious point. Faith, as your Bible says, is the "substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (or proven to exist) (Hebrews 11:1). Jesus supposedly admonished the virtues of believing without reason, saying "blessed are those who have not seen and still believed" (John 20:29).

The authors of the Bible, even in their superstitious day, seemed aware that there was no hard evidence for their beliefs, else they would have simply offered evidence. Then as now, there would be no need for faith if there was hard evidence. To believe the sun exists or that water is wet requires no faith. If God were to appear and address the UN as Yahweh supposedly did to the Jewish people in Judges chapter 1, it would require no faith to believe God exists.

Hence, I'm well aware you can't answer my demands for evidence that your god exists. If you could, it would be an accomplishment only dreamed of by theologians through the ages. You'd be interviewed on international television right now instead of posting on this forum.

Christian apologetics is not the science of studying and presenting known facts about God. You have no yet unseen treasure trove of magical artifacts nor can you produce any faith healers ready to submit their trade to peer reviewed medical examination (despite the Bible's assertion that such healers should exist, Mark 16:17-18). Your god has proven far more shy any mysterious than in the days of the OT when he often spoke "face to face" with his prophets (Ex 33:11).

Christian apologetics is the art of fabricating rationalizations to believe in something that is by admission of the very believers, a matter of faith. Because you have no evidence, you rely on mental slight of hand working toward a preconceived notion and selectively finding reasons to believe it. Mental gymnastics, fallacious reasoning and occasional lies (perhaps more than occasional) are all tricks of the trade. Your clownish knockabout might be funny for the stark realization that this is as rational as Christianity can be.

Hence, my assertion that the whole field of apologetics would be unnecessary if hard evidence existed.

Step 1: Start with a belief in your God and realize you need to invent some kind of proof or justification to support that belief.

Since this first step is an illegitimate straw man caricature

Oh please, Ryft, who do you think you're fooling?

[Ryft]

... considering how I'd busted you for lying in one of our debates.

Anyone willing to accept his characterization of that debate is asked to read the post prior to it (Msg. 53), wherein I also deal with his twaddle about apologetics and such now regurgitated here.