Van Tillian/Clarkian Presuppositional Apologetics.

[Faith No More]

Hey FNM, did you get your username from the band Faith No More?

Yes, they've been one of my favorite bands since I was little, and I figured it was quite the relevant name for an atheist forums.

This is a critique of worldviews; the Christian worldview can completely justify the preconditions for intelligibility using scripture. It is the only worldview ever critiqued that can do this. Since knowledge is possible, and it has been demonstrated it would not be possible when any other worldview is consistently used the Biblical worldview is proven true through the impossibility of the contrary. When you say that there may be a worldview that can provide these answers and we just have not found it yet you are fallaciously appealing to ignorance. The atheist needs to propose a worldview that is first of all not self refuting (i.e. empiricism) and that can justify the preconditions of intelligibility or just concede defeat. That is the biggest strength of presuppositionalism; it goes after the atheist’s worldview and proves just how weak it is.

Let’s take just one of the preconditions for example. Uniformity in Nature, namely the laws of nature in the future will resemble those of the past. This provides a foundation for the principle of induction which makes science possible. Can you justify this assumption given an atheistic worldview though?

Again, you are using an argument for the existence of any god to justify your specific god. Being how I am an agnostic atheist, I make no claims to the existence of a deistic god, so my 'atheistic worldview,' as you call it, needs to justify nothing as far as the existence of knowledge. Since I make no claims to a specific god, I don't have to justify the existence of anything to account for the existence or nonexistence of a deity. So pointing out that my worldview can't account for something amounts to nothing, because I make no claims that need to account for anything.

As far as the Christian god is concerned, I do not try to explain the existence of knowledge or uniformity in nature without him, so again, I don't have to account for anything to prove that something can exist without him. I only need to account for my reasons for denying he could exist, which is his contradictory and irrational nature. A personal god that punishes people for their thoughts is wholly inconsistent with the nature of an enlightened being.

In short, your argument only works if I make the claim that no god can possibly exist, and even if I did, your argument can only account for the existence of a non-specific deity. I could come up with an infinite different specific gods that could all account for what you claim is only possible with the Christian god.