RE: What's the best way to shut up a Presuppositionalist?
April 30, 2014 at 3:51 pm
(This post was last modified: April 30, 2014 at 4:05 pm by Coffee Jesus.)
(April 26, 2014 at 8:09 am)Esquilax Wrote:(April 25, 2014 at 1:05 pm)Coffee Jesus Wrote: That's easy. Their premise, which they use to exclude all other possible foundations, assumes that their foundation is correct.
The argument is essentially: My foundation is correct, therefore my foundation must be correct.
What verses do they use to support their premise?
Sye Ten Bruggencate seems to be fond of "the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom" from the Psalms, though interestingly he'll switch out "wisdom" for "knowledge," despite not being present in any translation I've seen.
Given this, he presupposes that if you don't believe in god, you can't have knowledge and... that's it. He's done, and he can spend the rest of the conversation asking "how do you know that?"
It's really gross.
They need to assume an empirical framework to know that the Bible exists! Whenever they say "The Bible says..." ask them how they know The Bible says that.
"Because I read it."
"How do you know you read it right?"
"Because I know how to read."
"How do you know you know how to read?"
"Because everyone else reads it to say the same thing."
... and so on, until they tacitly acknowledge that they can't know what The Bible says without first assuming an empirical framework.
Then you proceed to show that their empirical framework contradicts their Biblical foundation.