Van Tillian/Clarkian Presuppositional Apologetics.

[Captain Scarlet]

Recall what I said about the nature of that dependency (Msg. 104); i.e., that logic depends on God in the sense that it is grounded in the nature ...

Ryft, 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 Person A, has human property B (lets say this is a unique bioilogical property of humans), is grounded in his humanity (lets define that as his genome for now), makes sense. But whilst property B does not depend on person A for all of humanity, it does for Person A's exsitence, ie 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.

This scenario you paint does not follow from biblical Christianity...

I understand that you beleive there is a contradiction with biblical 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. So whilst the god you believe in may not have done this nor intends to do this, my understanding is that it is still logically possible that the xtian god can do this. He is ominpotent and separate from his creation, that ominpotence and spearation is also part of his nature and thus, it is logically possible for him to exit the universe and leave it self-sustaining (but operating without logic, because of his absence). I see no contradiction with other parts of his nature unless you care to point them out. Nor do I accept that I cannot explore this argument and if true it is hard to see how this can be the case.

If logic depends on God, then it certainly is incoherent to affirm that logic exists while denying that God exists. You will of course deny this view, that logic cannot exist apart from God, but since that is what we are debating you should not therefore beg that question....Nobody has argued that "it is logically impossible for the nature of God not to include logic," so this circular tail-spin never begins.

Again you seem to be narrowing the debate to only the ground that you want to debate on. I do not see how I am begging the question, but exploring what appears logically possible under the views you hold. It seems to me that under your view, the statement: "it is logically impossible for the nature of God not to include logic, becuase of his nature" is true. But this argument is also circular.

1. Jesus cannot be reduced to the Godhead...

2. As the necessary precondition of intelligibility God is self-evident to all acts of cognition...

3. God is utterly undeniable....

Thus it only seems a terribly weak place to start because you have begged the very question at nearly every turn....

Based on my admittedly limited understanding of philsophy, I beleive you are presenting an epistomology 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 me to be perfectly reasonable for me to demonstrate why I do not think that belief in the alleged Jesus and his supposed redemptative qualities are axiomatic. If I can demonstrate this, your epistomolgy is baseless, so I would expect you to defend it vigourously; but not to cut off debate. Given I am making no assumption when refuting the presuppositionalist axioms, but demonstrating how they cannot be axioms, I do not see how I am begging the question? To your response:

1. God, whether the godhead, or any of its 3 mainfestations are, prima facie, reducible into one another (ie If Jesus cannot be reduced to the godhead, the godhead can be reduced to Jesus. If they are not I can't see how the trinity works? Either way would seem to deny xtain revelation as axiomatic. Further to my previous argument Jesus, is reducible to a man, which is reduciable to a body etc etc.

2. This is a bare assertion. You cannot demostrate that any god, let alone Jesus is self-evident to all acts of cognition. Infact he was so not self evident that he had to appear to his followers after his death (if that ever happened) to convince them that he really was who he claimed to be (if he ever claimed that), even though they knew him!

There are also powerful inductive reasons (which you may not accept) to beleive that xtian god is self-evident: The argument from non-belief/divine hiddenness, the argument from religious confusion, the geographical distribution of the worlds faith etc. Either way the mere fact that we can argue over gods existence, that this argument has happened since the huamn race either invented religion or was revealed to, and that it continues to be debated suggests that you are wrong and that it is not available to all cognitive acts. I cannot for example logically prove that earthquakes happen primarily as a result of tectonic activity. There is however a very strong correlation of distribution between the worlds observed tectonic plate interfaces and earthquakes. Would you live above the San Andreas fault becuase no logical proof was available?

3. Any imagined being could be invented that this could be said of. I thought you were ONLY arguing for xtian theism, therefore to rebut this you must present evidence why the xtian god is undeniable and not just any god. In addition I fail to see how the statement "god, probably, does not exist" commits the fallacy of the stolen concept?