Dr Greg Bahnsen - Introduction to Apologetics: Methods XVII (Part 27)

All right, let's begin this morning with a word of prayer. We thank you, our heavenly Father, for the love you have shown us, and it is the very basis of our lives. We thank you for holding on to us and assuring us that we shall always be yours. We do pray that with the assurances that we have and the gratitude that is in our hearts, that you would open our mouths and make us more willing and free to testify of you, to speak of your glory and to defend your truth. We do pray that you would help us to be prepared with an answer for anyone who asks us a reason for the hope that is in us. We rejoice and worship your name today in hope. And we do ask that you would equip us to defend that hope in a way that not only shows the meekness of Christ, but shows forth his glory. Do use our class time together. To that end, we pray in Jesus name. Amen. As you know, in our congregation we trade off quarters, the two pastors teaching Sunday school and Bible study. And for the last three quarters, I think I have been teaching our apologetics class. And this has been going on on Thursday evenings most recently. But with Pastor Curto on vacation this weekend in Lord's Day, I've been asked to teach his class for him. And it just so happens by chance, I guess, no, in the providence of God, it just so happens that we ended on Thursday evening a whole cycle of classes we had, learning how to critique non Christian worldviews and ways of thinking. Because the apologetical method that I've been teaching you rests so heavily upon taking the offensive, not simply being left on the defensive, but trying to show that those who have contrary worldviews and philosophies don't have anywhere to stand when they're criticizing us. We took a long period of time and I won't review all of it, but you may recall that we spent a number of lessons. In fact, when we were doing it on Sunday morning, we were still doing lessons that pointed to the impossibility of the atheistic, naturalistic worldview. And then we turn to philosophical systems that are not atheistic and materialistic. We looked specifically at a system like Plato's that allows for immaterial realities, for spiritual realities, and yet is an inadequate worldview. And we turn to the major religions of the world, whether they emphasize transcendent mysticism like Hinduism or imminent moralism like Buddhism, or if they are pseudo Christian religions like Islam, which really is aping Christianity and having a sovereign God and a revelation from God and Those sorts of things, or pseudo messianic imitations like the Moonies that have their new savior that takes who's the third Adam, taking the place of the second Adam, Jesus, things like that. And we finished up by looking at those who want a smorgasbord worldview and those who end up saying, well, I don't need any reason for what I believe, I just do it on faith. Or it's true for you, but it's not true for me. So that's where we finish Thursday evening. For those of you who haven't been with us, and we would invite you to be with us, we'd like to see more of you there on Thursday evenings. But since in the providence of God I'm to teach Sunday school today, I thought what I might do is cap off that whole cycle trying to illustrate how to do presuppositional apologetics by going over my opening speech at a debate that I had with an atheist a few years ago, three or four years ago, at the University of California, Irvine. And the reason I'd like to do that is without in any sense trying to flatter the speaker, hopefully it is an example of how to do presuppositional apologetics. Many of you have listened to that debate, or some of you were even there. And if you'd like to get the tape, Robert says someone needs to return what the first of the two tapes. And I think we're getting some more. But you may want to check out the tape on that debate and listen to how a presuppositional, hopefully consistent presuppositional approach would go. What I'm going to do is take just 10 minutes or so to read my opening statement from that night, and then I want to go back and dissect it. I want to go back and tell you why I was doing what I was doing. And if I've taught you well, hopefully I've taught you well. Some lights will start going off. You'll say, oh, that's right. In the class you taught us, we had to do this, that, and the other. And this is what's taking place here. So pardon me for a moment, I'll get out of Persona and I'll be the debater for the moment. I just read my opening statement, and if I can keep myself from commenting as I go along, then I'll at the end go back and show you what was going on. I said it is necessary at the outset of a debate to define one's terms, and in particular we should make clear what is meant by the term God? The debate was on the existence of God. I want to specify that I'm arguing particularly for Christian theism and for it as a unit or a system of thought, not for anything like theism in general. And the reasons for this are A the various conceptions of deity in the world religions are logically incompatible, leaving no unambiguous sense to general theism. B I have not found the non Christian religions to be philosophically defensible, each of them being internally incoherent or or undermining human reason and experience. C Since I am, by the grace of God, a Christian, I cannot from the heart adequately defend those religious faiths with which I disagree. My commitment is to the triune God and Christian worldview based on God's revelation in the Old and New Testaments. Secondly, we should indicate just what is and is not at issue in this debate and on what basis we hope you would consider must be made clear that we are debating about philosophical systems, not the people who adhere to or profess them. Our concern is with the objective merits of the case, which can be made for theism or Christian, excuse me, for atheism or Christian theism, not related subjective or personal matters. And the reasons for this are A the personalities of those individual who adhere to different systems of thought are not relevant to the truth or falsity of the claims made by those systems. And I added parenthetically, atheists and Christians can equally be emotional, unlearned, intolerant, rude. Sadly, Christians make a bad name for themselves too, and atheists as well B subjective claims made about the experience of inner satisfaction or peace, and such claims are made by both Christians and atheists, and promotional claims made about the superiority of Christianity or atheism, for instance, greater mental health through the independence that you can gain, so forth, are always subject to conflicting interpretations and explanations, being autobiographical rather than telling us anything for sure about the truth of the system and C the issue is not whether atheists or professing Christians have ever done anything undesirable or morally unacceptable, respectively the French Revolution's reign of Terror and the Spanish Inquisition, but whether atheism or Christian theism as philosophical systems are objectively true. So my first opening comment had to do about defining terms and I said I'll defend only Christian theism and secondly, that I will debate the philosophical systems, but we will not talk about personalities and subjective claims about satisfaction and so forth. My last opening remark I'm going to skip. I simply this was a debate ploy I conceded to My opponent. All issues having to do with his doctoral dissertation, which in the providence of God happened to be on Japanese quail. And it was a way of David's here, he'll tell you, you're not supposed to do this, but I was poisoning the well by telling the audience this fella is not competent in philosophy. And so I did that. But you know, God did something even better than my poisoning the well because, you know, I got a little bit of chuckle from the audience for doing that. And when he got up, he conceded to me all the issues of my doctoral dissertation which happened to be on self dec. And so what? He gave me my closing speech. I mean, just handed it to me. I didn't think he was going to do that, but it worked out nicely anyway. Now here. So having laid the groundwork, here's what I want you to get in terms of how you set forth the defense of the faith, whether it's in a formal debate or over coffee with your next door neighbor. The three things that I talked about in my opening statement are the nature of evidence, the presuppositional conflict of worldviews, and then finally the transcendental proof of God's existence. And you may find it interesting. It wasn't just because time was short. I think I had 14 or 15 minutes. But if you were looking at my notes, you would see the transcendental proof of God's existence is half a page. When we finally get to the heart of the matter, if you set it up right, the punch line should come very easily. And so let's see how that's developed. The nature of evidence. How should the difference of opinion between the theist and the atheist be rationally resolved? What Dr. Stein has written indicates that he, like many atheists, has not reflected adequately on this question. He writes, and I quote, the question of the existence of God is a factual question and should be answered in the same way as any other factual question. End of quote. And then I say the assumption that all existence claims or questions about matters of fact are answered in the very same way is not merely oversimplified or misleading, it is simply mistaken. The existence, factuality, or reality of different kinds of things is not established or disconfirmed in the same way. In every case, we might ask, is there a box of crackers in the pantry? And we know how we'd go about answering that question. But that is a far, far cry from the way in which we would determine the reality of barometric pressure or quasars or gravitational attraction or elasticity or radioactivity or natural laws, or for that matter, names or grammar or numbers or the university or past events or categories or future contingencies or laws of thought or political obligations or individual identity over time or causation or memories or dreams or love or beauty. I mean, you go on. All of these things are real, aren't they? That whole list and none of them here. I'm commenting already. I couldn't get to the end. None of those things. Do you confirm the existence or reality of in the same way you find the box of crackers in the pantry? When he says we settle all factual questions in the very same way, I mean that's just unlearned. In such cases one does not do anything like walking to the pantry and looking inside for the crackers. Have you seen the quasars today, dear? We don't confirm the existence of quasars in that way or of love or of political obligation. You won't find it in the pantry and you won't be able to drop it on the floor. There are thousands of existence or factual questions and they are not at all answered in the same way in each case. Just think of the differences, argumentation and types of evidence used by biologists, grammarians, physicists, mathematicians, lawyers, logicians, mechanics, merchants and artists. Each of those fields has a way of arguing, by the way, when you talk to people, but they don't talk in the same way. They don't use the same kinds of arguments or appeal to the same kinds of considerations. It should be obvious that the type of evidence which one looks for in existence or factual claims will be determined by the field of discussion and especially by the metaphysical nature of the entity mentioned in the claim under question. Metaphysical nature, that is. What in the nature of reality, what kind of thing is it? We may debate whether angels dance on the head of a pin, but the way in which you confirm the existence of an angel is not the way you confirm the existence of the the pen. Dr. Stein's remarked that the question of God's existence is answered in the same way as any other factual question mistakenly reduces the theistic question to the same level as a box of crackers in the pantry. What we will hereafter call the crackers in the pantry fallacy. Okay, so that was the first point is we need to understand what the nature of evidence is. And since I'm gonna run out of time if I don't do it, other than what I told you, I'll comment. Now you need to establish with your next door neighbor over coffee or with your professor at school, that the two of you understand that the kind of evidence called for improving the existence of God is not the same kind of evidence. And trying to decide if there are clams down at the beach. Okay, now that should be obvious, but you'll find in almost. I haven't done the survey, but I'll bet you it's 95% of the cases or more. When you get into a discussion of religious matters with people, you will find that they do not recognize that they try to treat all questions the same, you know, and so if you can't prove things the way they would have tuberculosis shown to them, or, as I say, the crackers in the pantry, then somehow they think you're not arguing. We want to point out that's not true. You know, that different fields and different kinds of things call for different kinds of evidence. And now the question is, what kind of evidence do you use when you're talking about religion? This brings me to the presuppositional conflict of worldviews. What Dr. Stein has written about the nature of evidence in the theistic debate points to a second philosophical error of significant proportions. In passing, we would note how unclear he is when speaking of the evidence which must be used, describing it variously as logic, facts, or reason. Now, each of these terms is susceptible to a whole host of differing senses depending upon who is using the terms. I take it that he wishes to judge hypotheses by the test of logical coherence and empirical observation. The problem arises when Dr. Stein elsewhere insists that every claim which someone makes must be treated as a hypothesis, which must be tested by such evidence before accepting it. Okay, don't miss this. He says every claim made by someone must be first treated as a hypothesis. And what? You know, don't you? I mean, you're all thinking, now that's impossible. Not every claim can be of a hypothetical nature because then you would never have anything on the basis of which to judge any hypothesis. There is to be nothing which smacks of begging the question or circular reasoning. Here he says, this is oversimplified thinking is my claim, and again, misleading. What we might call the pretended neutrality fallacy. One can see this by considering the following quotation from Dr. Stein. The use of logic or reason is the only valid way to examine the truth or falsity of a statement which claims to be factual. End of quote. One must eventually ask Dr. Stein then how he proves that statement itself. He says the use of logic or fact is the only proof that can be Used. And so I'm saying, well, how do you prove that statement? How does he prove the statement that logic or reason is the only way to prove factual statements? He's now on the horns of a dilemma, an epistemological dilemma in terms of his theory of knowledge. If he says that the statement is proven by logic or reason, then what's he done? He's reasoned in a circle, which he said, you can't do no reasoning in circles. Okay, so he can't reason in a circle. That would be one way to go. If he says that the statement is proven by something other than logic or reason, then he has refuted the statement that all statements are proven by logic or reason and that that's the only way to prove things. So he either violates his own rule by reasoning in a circle or he refutes his principle. My point is not to fault Dr. Stein's commitment to logic or reason. Please don't give unbelievers the idea that we're against being reasonable or logical. My point is to observe that it actually has the nature of a pre commitment that what he's talking about here is not something he's proven, but something that he's taken into the debate, taken into his research. It's something he's assumed in advance. It's a presupposition. It is not something he has proven by empirical experience or logic, but is rather that by which he proceeds to prove everything else. He is not presuppositionally neutral then. And the value of doing this is showing that everyone has their ultimate authority. Everyone has that which they do not question, and on the basis of which they prove everything else and they are not neutral. He does not avoid begging crucial questions rather than proving them in the ordinary way. This tendency to beg crucial questions is openly exposed by Dr. Stein when the issue becomes the existence of God. And what I'd like to do for the sake of time is just summarize this paragraph. Having shown that he is not neutral and he has his presuppositions now, I want to show. And his presuppositions are vicious. Okay, I don't use that word. But what you want to point is this is not just, you know, some kind of inert thing. It's not going to harm anybody. He actually assumes that there can be no evidence for God's existence. And I quote him to the effect that you never can use a supernatural explanation in science, okay? And whether you can or not, the fact is when someone tells you that you cannot, he's Stipulating a rule showing that he rules out God before he even goes to look at the evidence. I say Dr. Stein is committed to disallowing any theistic interpretation of nature, history or experience. And he's committed in advance. He is just as much begging the question then, as is the Christian who approaches the evidence with his theistic presuppositions. The theist does the same thing when certain empirical evidences are put forth. This is allegedly disproving the existence of God. Just as the naturalist would insist that Christ could not have risen from the dead or that there is a natural explanation yet to be found of how it happened. So the supernaturalist insists that the alleged discrepancies in the Bible have explanations, even if they haven't been found yet, and that the evil in the world has a sufficient reason behind it which is known to God. Each of us have our governing presuppositions, even as all philosophical systems or worldviews do at the most fundamental level of everyone's thinking. Beliefs that are primary convictions about reality, man, the world, knowledge, truth and behavior. Convictions by which all other experience is organized, interpreted and applied. Dr. Stein has such presuppositions, and so do I, and so do all of us. And it is these presuppositions which determine what we accept by ordinary reason and evidence. For they are assumed in all of our reasoning, even about reasoning itself. Even the way we reason about reasoning, you see, assumes our basic presuppositions. So that ends the second section of what I wanted to say. I talked about the nature of evidence, the kind of evidence you use in a theistic debate, the not the same as the crackers in the pantry sort of thing. Don't let people treat it that way. Just say, even, you know, that's oversimplified. That's not true. Next, we need to point out that the evidence that one accepts, the kind of evidence one accepts, is based on the presuppositions one has. And everyone has them. No one is neutral. Make it clear to the person you're talking to that he or she or they are not neutral. They have basic commitments that they have not proven in the way that they think everything else has to be proven. They are the standards by which all other proof proceeds. And then be honest and say, I'm not trying to condemn you for having presuppositions. I just want to point out and make you aware that you have presuppositions. I have them too. Everyone has them. So not only is the evidence going to be different Depending upon the kind of thing you're arguing about. But the way in which we handle evidence will differ from worldview to worldview depending upon one's presuppositions. Those presuppositions are not arrived at scientifically. They are rather what enable us to understand things scientifically and evaluate them. So this brings us then thirdly, what are we going to do? We might think, well now we're locked into a, you know, well, you have your approach, I have mine, and there's no way to get across to each other. I mean there's, we're just going to be in mutual towers loathing each other. That's all we can do. I can't touch you, you can't touch me. And so finally I offered the transcendental proof of God's existence. The transcendental not transcendent as Dr. Stein later referred to it. Transcendental proof refers to something especially those of you who've had history of philosophy, you know, the, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Kant was not able to offer either a rational or empirical basis for things like causation or induction. And so what he offered has often been called a transcendental proof in that he said it was a precondition of all experience that we believe in induction or causation. And what I'm arguing is a presuppositionalist is just such a transcendental argument for God's existence. Let me give it to you. How then should the difference of opinion between the theist and the atheist be rationally resolved? Rationally resolved. We're not going to give up reason here. We're going to say how can we intellectually deal with each other and resolve this. That was my opening question. How should we do it? We have seen two of Dr. Stein's errors regarding it. The crackers and the pantry fallacy and his pretended neutrality fallacy. In the process of discussing them, we've observed that belief in the existence of God is not tested in any ordinary way like other factual claims. The reason for this is because of the non natural character of God. Metaphysically, God is not a natural object. And secondly, epistemologically because of the presuppositional character of commitment for or against his existence, because we reason presuppositionally and we're dealing with a non natural entity. The kind of reasoning is not going to be ordinary. Arguments over conflicting presuppositions between different worldviews therefore must be resolved somewhat differently yet still rationally than conflicts over factual existence claims within a worldview or system of thought, which we must compare the worldviews themselves and ask whether they provide the preconditions of intelligibility and rationality for man's experience and thinking. We must engage in transcendental argumentation, the only kind that ultimately deals with skepticism, the foundations of science and logic, and the question of epistemological certainty. And when we do, when we do that, we see why one must rationally be committed to the existence of God. We would prove God's existence from the impossibility of the contrary. The transcendental proof for the existence of God is that without him it is impossible to prove anything. The atheist worldview is irrational and cannot consistently provide the preconditions of intelligible experience, of science, of logic or morality. That was the end of my opening talk, is that once you get this thing set up so that neutrality, you know, is not going to be allowed and the kind of evidence has got to be recognized, then what you have to do is say, well, if we're going to now hold on to a reasonable resolution of the difference between us, we're going to have to compare worldviews and ask which one provides what is necessary for reasoning at all. Now, in my closing speech, those of you who've heard the tape over there, you remember basically what I said to Dr. Stein is the fact that you came to the debate proves my point, because debate presupposes the laws of logic. If you don't have to observe laws of logic, why bother to debate with each other? But the laws of logic make no sense in an atheist worldview. In an atheist worldview where there are no immaterial things, much less things that have the characteristics of universality or obligation, you can't find universality in rocks. You can't find obligation in atoms or molecules. And since we are saying we are obligated to follow the universal absolute laws of logic and your worldview rules out there being anything like that, then what I said is the fact that you came to the debate shows that you were assuming a Christian view of the world in order to argue against God's existence. This is what's called the transcendental proof. You showed that that person must be standing on your ground in order even to be arguing with you, you proved the impossibility of the contrary. Well, I didn't teach the class the way I thought I was going to within a couple of minutes here, but I hope then you can see some of the elements of what I've been teaching you in terms of how to defend the faith. In my opening remarks, I said, I'm not going to define, I'm not going to defend God in general. There is no such thing as God in general. It's not like we'll all agree with the Muslims for the time being and we'll all defend a God. And then I want to tell you that it's a Christian God. No, it's all or nothing. I'm defending the Christian worldview. Not bits and pieces of it, but the whole thing. And I'm going to set that over against your worldview, okay? And remember that we are not dealing with personalities. When people start talking to you about how bad, you know, Jim Baker is or, you know, how rude some Christian they've known has been and so forth, you have to say, I apologize for that. I think that horrible. And by the way, the basis on which I would condemn that behavior is the system called Christianity. It's Christianity that teaches us not to live like that and do those sorts of things. So I'm not going to defend Christians, but I am going to defend Christianity, the system of thought, and I'll try to do the same for you. I'm not going to talk about all the nasty things atheists have done to me or have done in the world. I'm going to talk about atheism itself. And then remember the nature of evidence. Remember that it's worldviews that are in conflict. And finally, you want to show the impossibility of the contrary. Answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceits. And that's what we've been doing over the last few weeks. Okay, I'll take maybe one or two questions if you have them before we eat this afternoon. John, first of all, questions on the Sunday school lesson. I'm not sure if there are any, but I'll give a moment. Ken, I understand.

I was there at a debate and it was quite three or four hours long. It was a long debate night and he had had some time, but had had some fill there. I thought you wiped them out the first 10 minutes. When you challenge the laws of logic, how do you do that is proven. I'm wondering if a shorter approach to the problem, although I really love the way you handed the thing, would have. Would have been to. Well, as Van Till says, it's just. It's an impossibility. It's impossible for a man to sit and judge of God as a, as a possibility among possibilities.

Well, I think what you've just said is Instruction. For us who are believers, we know that it is impossible to ask the one who is the source of all possibility to prove himself as a possibility to us. I mean, that's got things all backwards and wrong. However, to bring that up in just that way to someone you're debating or speaking to over coffee. You see, his comeback would be, well, if there was a God, that would be true. But since there is no God, I don't have to worry about that. That's something that you have to take into store can. But I don't, because I don't believe there is a God. So I have to deal with him at a more fundamental level. And that is, how can he reason at all? Later in the debate, he was pretty frustrated by this argument. I didn't watch him a lot. That's one of the things you don't do in a debate, is give eye contact to your opponent. But I'm told that he fumbled around and he sounded to me like he was really having a difficult time. And recently I listened to the tape and that was confirmed again. But he got frustrated and he just started saying this is irrational, you know, there's no reason here, and so forth. And so I responded finally to that and I said, well, you know, without dealing with all the, you know, the claims of it being irrational, sort of, let's just look at the claim of it being irrational. Not the details, but just the general claim. And I would, I said, if your worldview had some basis for rationality, then I might be concerned that you're claiming that it's irrational. But since it's only my worldview that gives you a basis for rationality, then I'm not going to worry that you call my worldview irrelevant, irrational, because it's only my worldview that will rescue your claim. See, I don't need to take Christianity and have it protected under the roof of some atheist way of reasoning. He needs Christianity as a roof over him to protect him against irrationality, against the randomness of nature and so forth, or else he doesn't have science and logic and morality. Well, he, of course he would not say that he was doing that. He, he would say he's, he's appealing to, to reason and to logic and to experience. Mark, see, you did try to defend the club's logic a couple times. You were very scientific. One thing did, which, although I knew it had still sonic problems, it does have. How would you respond to that? It is, it may be the case that particular laws of logic are self evident, although self Evidence is not. If that's turned into a subjective claim, then it can be challenged. But there is a kind of self evidence to certain laws of logic. My claim to him is how can there be such a thing, thing as a law of logic in a worldview that doesn't permit anything to be universal, to have obligation and so forth? The only defense he offered. And then we're going to have to eat here. The only defense he offered is that the laws of logic are stipulated. They're conventional. You may remember he tried to. Well, you know. And to which I said, well, then I'll stipulate a new law of logic. I win the debate, you lose. You know, I mean, if you're going to have stipulated laws, just conventional laws. The problem is that if the laws of logic are conventional, one has got to wonder at the fact that they work so well in building rockets and bridges and doing things in the world. Why do they help us in the world? And why, when we violate the laws of logic. Try this one on just to see how pragmatically successful this is. The train's coming down the track right at me. The train's not coming down the track right at me. And that's acceptable under my logic. Well, there aren't a whole lot of logicians like that around because they've been mowed down by the trains. The laws of logic are not conventional. They aren't just cultural. Like, I think we're gonna come over to my house, we'll barbecue today, we'll make up some new laws of logic. How's that? I mean, when he said that, it's just. It's really asinine. That is not the nature of the laws of logic. But that's the only defense that he offered. Okay, enough of this. John had a question on today's sermon. Jeff, would you lead us in prayer today?