Dr Greg Bahnsen - Seminary Apologetics: Checklist for Reasoning Part 2 (Part 24)

This message is a continuation of the previous tape. It's readily confused when you read the literature of 20th century reformed apologists. Schaeffer, Clark and Van Til don't mean the same thing by the word presupposition, but in the presuppositional approach that Van Till taught us. Ultimately, in principle and many times in actual conversation, when we're defending the faith, it comes down to our pointing out that the unbeliever has a particular presupposition. The believer has a particular presupposition or set of presuppositions, as I've taught you. And we must argue in terms of the preconditions of intelligibility, that ours is correct and theirs is not correct. Remember the indirect approach. We have two positions, two worldviews. We invite the unbeliever to stand within our worldview to see that all of his objections are not really forceful objections. We don't answer the fool according to his folly, lest we be like him. But then we stand within the unbeliever's worldview to look at his basic presuppositions and explain to him what that would entail. We answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit, lest he think, well, I have a basis for science and I have a basis for logic. I have a basis for moral absolutes and human freedom and dignity. So the final step in the procedure is to show that the empiricism and the atheism of our Epicurean friends is completely inadequate to give an account of or even to make possible objectivity in man's thinking, rationality in man's thinking impossible to give an account of or make intelligible man's freedom our moral absolutes. Now, it would be helpful to give some illustrations of how we can show that the unbeliever can't make sense out of moral absolutes, rationality, objectivity, science, and so forth. And so, although I'm not pursuing the outline on the board here, A would be a consideration of the two sets of presuppositions, the indirect argument that I've just talked about, and B would be illustrations of the faultiness of the unbeliever's worldview with respect to these preconditions of intelligibility. And I'm going to subdivide here as well. We can deal with three basic kinds of worldviews. You're going to encounter one of three basic kinds of worldviews. And obviously within each one you can draw further distinctions but all worldviews are either going to be materialistically monistic, where they may be immaterialistically monistic, but I'm not going to talk about them because they just, if they're immaterialistic, monistic, they deny all distinctions. And so there's no logic and there's no argument. So there that goes. Maybe I need to talk about that. Was that too fast for you? When a Hindu says all distinctions are illusion, the Hindu is also rejecting logic. But if the Hindu's rejecting logic, then the Hindu can't rationally argue about Hinduism or Christianity. Now, I might patiently take three and a half hours discussing that with a Hindu. What I just took took basically 15 seconds to say to you, but I trust you should all be on to that by now. When you expose the presuppositions of Hinduism. You've also shown that Hindus don't have the preconditions of intelligibility. They can't make intelligible our very dialogue. Why then are we having this conversation? If you and I are one in the same? You can't live according to your worldview. You keep asking me to engage in yoga and meditation and so forth so that I can enter into Nirvana. But that assumes that I'm not in nirvana right now. But according to your view, in Nirvana there are no distinctions, and so I can't be somewhere other than Nirvana because everything is Nirvana on your worldview. Given your worldview, there would be no rational discussion possible between us. Okay, now, materialistic monism is what you're going to run into, or dualism or some religious version of philosophy. All said and done, those are the only possibilities. The person who is an atheist and says everything's matter in motion. There are variations, but worldviews can be, you know, categorize under that general rubric. And then there'll be people who say, no, I don't think that matter is everything. I believe that there's a realm of matter and there's also an immaterial realm of ideas or laws or values, whatever it may be. And so we'll call that dualism. You either have materialism, dualism, or some religious philosophy. And of course, there's a plethora of religious philosophies. How do we as presuppositionalists pursue step four, showing the failure to provide the preconditions of intelligibility with respect to the different worldviews that we can encounter? Let's start with the materialist. We want to point out to the materialist that he or she can claim that only concrete, particular things exist, that there are no material or abstract realities, that he or she can claim that all events are random, there's no personal plan, no control over this world in which we live. And he or she can claim that reality amounts to matter in motion. But they cannot think or act or reason in that way. They can claim that, but they can't reason or act. They cannot think in that fashion at all. Five questions quickly to address to the materialist, to the atheist. One, why be rational? Two, what's the origin of life? Three. Why think in terms of scientific inference? Four. Why think in terms of general principles? Five. Why be moral? I'm going to talk about each one of them, but I want you to see there's an overwhelming avalanche of philosophical problems with materialism. One, why be rational? I once had a radio dialogue with George Smith, who wrote the book the Case Against God. And this book was really, you know, played up and so forth. And it's supposed to take all the great arguments, you know, into account. And it was very, you know, deep and profound and so forth. And in my interview with him on the radio, I said, george, one of the basic flaws I find in your book is your conception of Christian faith. You have the idea that reason takes all of us so far, and then some of us in this world have a leap of Christian faith that goes beyond reason. I want to point out that in the Augustinian tradition, that's not our conception of reason and faith. We believe that all reasoning rests upon faith, and so faith is not other than reason. Faith is the most reasonable thing because reason itself relies on it. Now, I notice that in your book, you say all of us must be rational and not follow this Christian idea of reason. Now, his notion of reason is not really the August. But I pressed him further and I said, but given your conception that reason is apart from faith, when you say that all men must follow their reasoning and not do like the Christians and have a blind leap of faith, I want to know on what basis you can say that. Why are men under obligation to be rational? You know, it's just almost like something the guy had never considered. It just blitzed his thinking, you know, I don't mean that he just crumbled on the radio. He's really quite arrogant and wanted to keep, you know, pushing things back at me. That's fine. But he didn't have any answer for that. I said, now, I think all men should be rational. I think we are under obligation to use our intellectual tools to glorify God and to learn about this world, we should be consistent and so forth and so on. I think we should believe things on good evidence. I believe everybody should be rational. But I believe that because God requires all men to be rational, so within my worldview I can make sense of this demand for rationality. But you know, if this world is sound and furious, signifying nothing, why should anybody have to be rational? Why don't I just live moment by moment and not worry about inconsistencies or rational theories or intelligent ways of interpreting my experience? Why don't I just think one thing, one time and another thing, another time, and not care about logic at all? After all, logic has nothing to do with this world. You see, the strange thing is about the materialist is the materialist who wants to be rational has already departed from his materialism. Another aspect of this question, why be rational at all? If the person you're talking to is really a materialist, then they have a naturalistic explanation for everything that we think and do. The naturalist says, what's going on in this brain, in this gray matter in my cranium, is controlled by the laws of physics and chemistry and biology. I don't really think I'm just like a weed that's growing in this particular weed, expresses itself through vocal cords and all that, but nevertheless, weeds don't think and make decisions and neither do I. We're all subject basically to the laws of physics. I'm just at a more complicated level, a more complex level. So if naturalism is true, then there is no mind and there is no objective reasoning and no freedom to my thought. And so if naturalism is true, why do you call on people to be rational? If naturalism is true, there is no rationality. There's just whatever people end up thinking and doing. Atheism destroys the demand for rationality. Secondly, what's the origin of life? Where'd life come from? According to the atheist theory, the reigning dogma or prejudice in our day, as you know, life came from non life. That ought to be enough right there to make any rational person snicker. Excuse me, life came from non life. In fact, I thought it was one of the established principles of biology that spontaneous generation is not true. And you know what the atheist will say? I mean, he may have a more sophisticated way of doing it. Basically, the atheist says, we want one exception. Just give us one exception to our universal rule. Well, if I give you one exception, it's not universal. And if we start giving out exceptions, then the Christian can just as easily say, I want an exception too. At every point that you think that what I'm saying is not rational, not consistent, then I just want an exception from the demand of rationality. No, I cannot give you an exception to where life come from. The idea that there was a prebiotic phase of evolution where chemicals just somehow came together accidentally and life originated is a preposterous scientific theory. It's a preposterous philosophical notion too, because it assumes that something that doesn't have any of the characteristics of the final product came together with something else that had none of the characteristics of the final property. But in bringing those two somethings together, you got the final product. It makes no difference how much you tinker with or work with a cake mix. You're not ever going to get a political constitution out of a cake mix. And I don't mean a cake mix box having somehow a political constitution in it. You all know how to make it. Well, maybe you don't all know, but you have some general idea of how cakes are made. You also have some idea of the character of political constitutions. They have no relationship to each other, they don't share attributes. And, and so for somebody to say, I think political constitutions arise from cake mixes, you say, well, that's preposterous. And somebody says, give us time, we're working on it. That's essentially what the evolutionist is doing. It says, well, that's right. Life and intelligence and morality have attributes which don't have anything to do with inert chemicals, but give us time, we're working on it. Let us tinker with the cake mix and eventually we'll get freedom, we'll get morality, we'll get intelligence, we'll get life itself. Inorganic things do not, by mechanical reconfiguration, give rise to the organic. And so secondly, we see the absurdity of the atheistic materialistic worldview in that they have qualities coming from their opposites. Life coming from non life, the moral coming from the non moral, the intelligent coming from the unintelligent. That's not good science or good philosophy. Why be rational? What's the origin of life? Thirdly, why think in terms of scientific inference? If you're a materialist and you believe that everything happens by chance, there is no personal control over the universe and what happens in history, then how can you hold to the uniformity of nature In a random chance universe, there is no basis for expecting the way things have happened in the past to be the way they happen in the future. Now, you need to be aware of the fact, as a Christian apologist, that all human reasoning, all human experience, all use of language presupposes uniformity. Why is that? Well, if the way the natural world operates is radically different from moment to moment, then I couldn't learn anything. I couldn't learn anything because every experience I have doesn't give me any basis by analogy for what's going to happen later. Okay, so I stubbed my toe this night and it hurts. That has nothing to do with whether stubbing my toe will hurt in the future. If it's a completely random universe. But if there is uniformity in the natural order, then from analogy, from past experience, I can predict what will happen in the future. So I'm going to avoid, you know, bumping my toes into that chair leg because I don't want that kind of pain. That's a very homespun down to Earth illustration. Sending someone to the Moon based on calculations and observations and experiments and so forth we've done in the past. I mean, you'd have to be out of your mind to get in a rocket to be sent to the moon if you really thought that this universe was random. Somebody says, trust us, we've done a lot of tests in the past. And he says, but why do you think those tests in the past provide any model or analogy for what will happen in the future? If you're an atheist, why be scientific at all then? If you're an atheist? There's no uniformity to nature. Now, I once debated an atheist, Dr. Stein, who, when confronted with this kind of thing, said, well, it's just the characteristic of the material world to be uniform. Anybody see any kind of unargued philosophical bias there? Now, the most obvious indication of bias is that he just wants to say, the world's like this, pure and simple. Oh, you don't need a reason for that. Now, science is the demand. For what? A reason for the events that take place. And what you want to tell me, then, Dr. Stein, is the whole edifice of science rests upon no reason. So science rests upon the opposite of itself, indeed, the very violation of what it demands. You don't need reasons for the uniformity of nature, you say, but then everything else calls for reasoning for causes of the events that take place. So you're not even living in terms of your own worldview. But I'm going to press beyond this. When he says that matter simply has this character, what has he assumed about matter? That it's not constantly changing. Right. That it has Quote, unquote. A character has an unchanging character is the very question under dispute. Does matter have an unchanging character so that whenever you put the vinegar and the soda together, the quart pops off? Is that one of the attributes of vinegar and soda in combination that hydrogen's released and so the cork's going to pop off? Well, only if hydrogen from Tuesday is like hydrogen on Wednesday, vinegar from Tuesday is like vinegar on Wednesday, and so forth. Only if matter has an inherent character can you do these predictions. But that's the very thing we're asking for. What's the basis for making these predictions? You can't say the material world is predictable. Why? Well, because its character is to be predictable. That's just unreasoning prejudice. And so here we have the atheist without any rational foundation for rationality and reasoning, any rational foundation for the origin of life, without any rational foundation for science. Fourthly, why should atheists think in terms of any general principles? Everybody, to think, must use general principles. That is to say, everybody is committed to classes of things. Our experiences are not taken as novel new experiences, one by one by one by one by one by one, having no connection with anything before. Not everything is brand new. The last few nights I've been in the same hotel room, and when I've gotten up every morning, it was the same hotel room. That's what I want to say. But if materialism is true and only material particulars exist, then it turns out the experience I had getting up in the hotel room the first morning is not the same experience I had the second morning, the third, and so forth. Those are all just momentary experiences, and therefore there's no sameness between them unless. Unless classes exist. To put it another way, unless something called similarity is real. But is similarity a particular thing? Now, I've never known anybody say, Dr. Bronson, I'm really worried I've lost my, you know, my quantity of similarity. I don't know where I put it. Similarity is not the sort of thing that you. That you materially encounter. Here's something else you don't encounter in the material world, the laws of logic. Laws of logic are general principles of reasoning. They're prescriptive in character. The classes or general principles that we think in terms of are descriptive in character, but nevertheless, they are both immaterial. When I say classes are descriptive and immaterial, I think in terms of giraffes and cats and running and events and qualities that can be categorized together. So there is cowness, in terms of which I recognize particular animals in the field as cows. I don't just say, oh, there's Beulah and there's Beauregard. There's no connection between the two of them. I say there's something that makes me say they're both cows. But that something that makes me say they're both cows is not a cow. Nor is it anything physical. In fact, if it were, then I'd have to have something that unites whatever this something is and the two cows into another category by which I can say this something belongs to cow ness and not to Katniss. And so whatever it is that unites the cows together cannot itself be a material particular. It has to be universal, it has to be abstract, and therefore it has to be immaterial. Well, back to my point, the unbeliever who is an atheist, therefore is making use of categories which are immaterial, even if it's only the category of similarity and laws of logic which are immaterial and prescriptive for the way that we should reason. And so why should we reason or think in terms of general principles at all? If we are materialists, why have categories like barns and redness and cows and the laws of logic if you're a materialist? Now, you all wanted illustrations, and so these are the illustrations. I'm going to give you more. But this is the sort of thing you need to think in terms of. Many of us don't want to be philosophical, though in some of this, and because of brevity, and also because of my own training and personality, it may seem somewhat abstract, but all of you can think this way, all of you can push these issues with some practice. You'll do it better, there's no question about that. But you need not be intimidated by it because it's philosophical. Everybody's got to ask, why is it that we speak of these objects as being cows? Why don't we just say experience? Experience? Why don't we just have names for every single experience we have and nothing is ever common? Why do we think that there are common or universal laws of thinking? The only reason I do so is because as a Christian, I know that the mind of God unifies the world and controls the world, and my thinking should emulate his. But I don't know why a materialist, why an atheist would do so. And then the fifth question that I rattled off real quickly is, why be moral? If naturalism is true, I can say two things for sure. First, there are no absolutes. If naturalism is true, everything's in flux and whatever happens, happens. There are no absolutes, there are no absolute prescriptions. There's only descriptions of moment to moment to moment experience. If naturalism is true, then from that we'd have to say there can be no absolute prescriptions. But if there are no absolute prescriptions, there's no ethics, is there? There's no thou shalt or thou shalt not, which is without qualification. There's no universal obligation in a world that's completely naturalistic. Secondly, if naturalism is true, there's no human freedom or dignity by which people choose to live a life which is noble or ignoble, to do what is right or what is wrong. If naturalism is true, we don't have any freedom or any dignity to maintain anyway. What is, is that pretty profound, right? Whatever happens, happens. So that on the materialistic approach to reality, when it's reported to us that Hitler engaged in genocide against a number of human beings, or there are criminals who have raped and killed people, or people who have molested children, all you can say as a naturalist is poop happens, right? Things that are ugly and smelly take place. What else can I say? I can't tell you it's wrong, because in a naturalistic universe there is no wrong. There's no freedom to choose between right and wrong, and there's no absolute prescription by which whatever I did could be right or wrong. So naturalism destroys all morality too. Now I should warn you that many atheists who have gone to the university and have studied under atheist professors will have been taught. Here's the answer to that problem. Naturalists try to live moral lives. And so you're wrong to say that naturalism destroys ethics because people can choose values by which to live. Well, first of all, you need to say, you mean they can choose values by which they live? I thought in the naturalistic world, everything happens by the laws of physics and chemistry and biology. But whatever it is that's going on there, let's not call it a choice. That's kind of problematic, isn't it? Whatever that's going on, there is still not an absolute prescription that's being chosen. It's just what somebody decides to do. So let's say that you decided to live a noble life of self sacrifice and protection of the weak. And so you're real upset with what Hitler did. Now you come to me, I'm talking to you, and I say, you really can't condemn what Hitler does. You're going to say, I do condemn what Hitler does, because I believe in self sacrifice and protecting the weak. I said, well, that's fine that you've chosen to live that kind of life. My point is you can't condemn Hitler for not having chosen the same lifestyle with you because on your naturalistic presuppositions, there is no obligation for Hitler to be like you, to be self sacrificial or to care for the weak. At the debate I had at Davis with Edward Tabish, this Jewish lawyer, he complained about his relatives having died at Auschwitz. That's a very sensitive subject. And I tried to address that sensitively. I said, I, as a Christian, condemn what happened to your relatives. It's morally outrageous, it's atrocious. But what I have to point out to you is that on your worldview you have no basis for condemning it at all. On your worldview, why should Hitler be under any obligation not to torture and maim and kill anybody he wants? What one animal does to another animal is morally irrelevant if you're a naturalist, because what, what is, is. Poop happens. That's it. That's all you can say. You don't like it, you find it smelly, but it nevertheless happens. End of story. Okay, so when you deal with the worldview of atheism or materialism, we finally get down to this level. We have to say, you see, you can't provide the preconditions of intelligibility for rationality, for understanding life, for thinking scientifically, for thinking at all logically and in terms of general principles or being moral. So when somebody says, well, your Christian worldview is already assumed when you take the evidence and are led to Christian conclusions. But on my non Christian worldview, I don't have to be led to those conclusions. We have to say, you're right. If you keep your autonomous presuppositions, the evidence we give you will not lead you to Christian conclusions. But you won't be able to draw any conclusions because you won't be able to be rational at all. The proof of God's existence. Is the coin going to drop now? Is what? That without God you couldn't prove anything. Dealing with the materialist, many people will say, however, is the easy task. Once you catch on to these criticisms, it really isn't all that difficult. Please turn the cassette over at this time. It will become easier for you as you do it more and more. But I mean, the materialist is philosophically, I mean, a sitting duck. But what about worldviews like dualism and religious worldviews? How now can we deal with Them. And so let's expand our outline further and try to talk about those possibilities. If we move away from the atheistic, materialistic, or naturalistic viewpoint to an outlook that's more like Plato's, a more idealistic worldview, what are we to say? Plato held that there's a physical world, this world of time and space, but he also believed there was a world of ideals or ideas. He called them forms, we might say formulas. There was a world that is the rational essence of everything that we find in this world. So in this world, we run into Huey, Dewey, and Louie out on the lake, but in the other world, there's the rational formula, the ideal, or the idea of duck. And that's why we call those three things out on the lake ducks, because they all are part of that idea or that formula of duckness. That's Plato. In our modern world. Well, throughout history, too. But in our modern world, there are many people who say, I believe in the physical world, but I also believe in values. I believe that there are ideas. I believe in the laws of logic. I believe in the laws of morality. Okay, now you're defending the faith, not with the materialistic, atheistic naturalist. Like I say, he's a sitting duck. You can philosophically knock that out. But as you think about it, most of my arguments don't seem so good. When you talk to the dualist, the person who says, oh, I think there's matter and ideas, matter and laws, matter and values. And you're right. Most of the criticisms that we would urge against the atheist don't work so well against Plato. And the people today who say, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. That's what idealists are like in our day, right? They say, well, we live in a physical world, but we also believe that there's a spirit of goodwill that should animate men. Did I understand right? Isn't that the end of the story? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus because there is good will by which we give children presents and so forth. There's more to this world than just matter. There's also goodwill. Well, I'm using a very philosophically unsophisticated illustration, but many of the people you talk to are unsophisticated dualists. They'll say, oh, I believe in the laws of logic. And so I don't have the problem of Dr. Stein. I think that we can have a debate and we should follow the laws of logic because I believe in the laws of logic. And I also believe that you can't win a Debate by shooting people. So, Dr. Bonson, you can't expect me to accept your challenge to Dr. Stein to. I mean, you can't expect that you're going to win by challenging me to show why I shouldn't shoot you to win this debate. That is showing me that there are moral absolutes, in which case you have to be a Christian. I believe that it's wrong to kill people, but I still don't believe in the Christian worldview. Now, we're not talking about. But I believe in some other religious worldview. I just believe that there's right and wrong and I believe that there's logic. Let me strengthen your hand at this point because many of you, if you're paying attention, are thinking this shouldn't be difficult to refute at all. In fact, aren't we back up to one and two? Here's somebody who says, oh, well, you can't refute me as being a materialist because I believe in immaterial values. I believe in the laws of logic. You're not going to have a hard time dealing with this because the next question is what you've already thought of. You are better philosophers than you may have thought. Next question is, well, how do you bring those two together? What's the relationship between those two things? Now, on your view, there's matter. Where did it come from? And on your view, there are laws or values, immaterial things, where did they come from? What are the possibilities? They're both eternal, so they didn't come from anywhere. One's eternal and the other isn't. Okay, let's look at most of the possibilities. If they're both eternal, how did they ever get together? You might want to say, well, matter decided that it wanted to get married to ideas. Matter doesn't have any personality. It can't choose to do anything. So the way in which matter and ideals and values got together can't be on the material side of things. You say, well, then maybe ideas, values and logic decided to bring them together. But ideas and values and logic are abstract. They aren't personal at all. You might be interested, just as a matter of historical curiosity, to know Plato's answers to this. Plato said, oh, there must have been a personal demiurge that brought them together. Plato knew very well matter and ideas would never get together on their own. If they're both eternal, then there must be some other eternal thing that is personal that brings them together. Plato also said, by the way, and I know that's only a myth, I have to resort to a myth. Because I don't have any philosophical explanation of how you can get things which have conflicting attributes together in one realm. Conflicting attributes? Matter is particular. Ideas are universal, matter is contingent. Ideas are necessary, laws are necessary. How is that which is universal and necessary somehow in fruitful contact with that which is particular and contingent? And so Plato said, I don't know. Just grant me one exception to my philosophical rationalism. All I want is to appeal to mythology once, and then I can explain everything else. You see, that's the problem with all unbelieving thinking. They always want the one grand exception. Let me get started and then I can argue against you Christians. And what am I teaching you to do? In essence, don't let them get started. Argue with them at the presuppositional level and say, I, I want to know on your presuppositions how matter and ideals, how matter and values ever got together and there's any relationship to them. If they're both eternal, then you would think you have two things which are on two different tracks, really, and there's no contact between them. So the only other alternative is to say one is more basic than the other. Right? Okay. But if one is more basic than the other, which is which? If matter is more basic and ideals grow out of matter or develop, evolve, whatever, out of matter. Don't you see? We're really back to the first option. We were looking at materialism. What you have here is just a more sophisticated version of materialism that says really, laws and values somehow developed out of the material world. Well, if they did, how did that which is particular and contingent give rise to that which is universal and necessary? That's philosophical nonsense again. Well, it has to be the other way around. Then it must be that the physical world developed out of the world of ideas, out of the world of forms and values. Well, how could ideas give rise to that which is non ideal? How could ideas do anything? How do ideas develop into a physical world where there are trees and fish and clouds in the sky? I mean, that's just a preposterous philosophy. So in essence, what we're saying is any dualistic approach, any worldview that has both matter and non matter, is going to have to face up to the problem of its dualism. Why then do we have the two things interacting? Why in our experience do we have both matter and ideas, both matter and values? Plato put it this way. The soul once existed in the realm of ideas. If you do an internal critique of Platonic philosophy, I hope I'm not pushing too hard on you right now, but you need to understand that last sentence doesn't make sense in terms of Plato's philosophy. He says the soul once existed in the realm of ideas. No, no, Plato. On your view, only the idea of the soul could exist in the realm of ideas, not the soul. And so where does the soul exist? Plato is contradicting his own philosophy when he says the soul once had concourse among the ideas. And then according to him, the soul comes into the body and is there, entombed for a period of time, and eventually the soul escapes and goes back to the realm of ideas. Plato says that that's why all philosophy is a longing for death, because all philosophy is a longing for the ideas. And that's where our soul will go when we're finally released from this body. But my question is, how did the soul, where did the soul come from? Is it eternal? Are there a lot of eternal souls? Are all of us little gods? What are you telling us, Plato? Where did the soul come from if it's not eternal? And if it, I mean, if the soul existed at all, no matter where it came from, it couldn't have existed in the realm of ideas, because the soul's not an idea. So how did the soul have concourse with the ideas? The very problem that Plato is trying to solve on earth is just now replicated in another realm because he thinks he has two things right, ideas and the material world. The soul is supposed to be the mediator between these two, but the soul can't be the mediator between the two, because the soul is not an idea. What do you do then? Plato said, I can't account for this. All I can do is tell you a story. I have this mythology of the soul coming into the body, and it comes in remembering the ideas. I don't know how it knew the ideas, but it comes in this world remembering the ideas. And that's how values and ideas get in contact with our physical body. The chances are that your next door neighbor that you're talking to about the faith is not going to resort to mythology in arguing against your Christianity. It's not very likely that you have a neighbor that's going to say, I can't believe all these myths in the Bible because I've got my own myth, thank you. Most modern dualists haven't even asked themselves the question, how do I get the two things unified in one worldview? And so you do an internal critique of the unbeliever system. Materialism won't work. It destroys the Preconditions of rationality. The preconditions of rationality can't be saved under dualism, because dualism is arbitrary and incoherent. And that leaves only one option, if you're not going to be a Christian, is that you have to have an alternative religious worldview. We say, God's the answer to all this. God created the physical world out of nothing. It's God's mind that's the basis for the laws of logic and God's character that gives us the moral laws by which we live. So we have the preconditions of intelligibility within the Christian worldview. Somebody says, yes, but why the Christian worldview? One of the questions that you want me to answer is why does it have to be the Christian worldview? Why not just theism in general? Okay, you've asked, so I'm going to tell you. Because there isn't any such thing as theism in general. It can't be theism in general because there ain't anything like that. There's only particular versions of theism. Okay? Every version of theism, therefore, needs to be treated as its own particular kind of worldview. And how do you answer the various versions of theism? In the same way that you've answered the materialist and the dualist, by doing an internal critique of that worldview. How would that work? Well, to do an internal critique of a different religion, you're obviously going to ask at least this question, why do you believe what you believe? On what authority do you do so? And if there is no answer to that question, then you're dealing with something that is. Look at number one, you're rejected because now that's just arbitrariness. You talk to some other religious point of view and you say, why do you believe this? People say, I don't know, I just do. Well, that's arbitrariness, so that's no threat to Christianity. You say, oh, so you have arbitrariness or you have Christian rationality. Those are the choices. What? Well, again, in apologetics, that's all we need to reduce things to. If you wish to be rational, give a reason for the hope that is in you. If you wish to be rational, you have to be a Christian. In order to be a whatever it is out here, you need to give up rationality and affirm arbitrariness. Everybody can believe whatever they want. Of course, the arbitrary person has to allow you the same arbitrariness and everybody else. So there's no apologetical argument. With that kind of religion. Do you hear me? Sure. We want to witness to such a person. Yes, such a person is made in the image of God and really can't successfully live in this world apart from God. Yes, such a person is under the condemnation of God and has guilt and so forth. But there's no apologetical argument with such a person. Such a person's purely arbitrary. All right, well, then you're going to have a another kind of answer that says, well, because we have a great prophet who told us these things. That's the Confucian answer. They don't call him the prophet so much. He's a wise man. And you might think, oh, okay, now what do I do? I've got Jesus, they've got Confucius. Well, I've got Jesus. And Jesus provides the preconditions of intelligibility. I know it doesn't sound real warm and pious and intimate to put it that way, but we've talked about this. Jesus gives me a foundation for wisdom rather than foolishness. What does Confucius have going for him? Well, Confucius saying, here's what the nobleman do. The heavens declare, this is what the nobleman is to do. Well, I have the right to say, well, Confucius, that's just your opinion. Back to number one. That's rejected too, because for everything Confucius said, Buddha said something, you know, and for everything in the Bhagavad Gita, you can find something that accounts that fits in with the Dao. The fact that you have religious leaders or prophets or wise men or great people saying things doesn't mean that there's a good reason to follow. Follow what they're saying. The difference between Christianity and Confucianism, Buddhism and so forth is that Christianity's got an apologetic. We don't just arbitrarily choose Jesus over Confucius. We've got historical evidence, we've got philosophical evidence. We've got all kinds of reasons for believing what Jesus said, not the least of which is our lives make sense and all the facts of history make sense within the Christian worldview taught by Jesus. That isn't true for Confucius. In fact, it gets really bad when you come to the Bhagavad Gita. Here's the Bhagavad Gita that many people say, well, they've got their religious book. You Christians have your religious book. Oh, not so fast. I mean, that's what an amateur would say. If you've really done any reading or any study, it's A big mistake to put the Bible in the Bhagavad Gita in the same category. Why in the first place? Because the Bhagavad Gita doesn't claim that a personal sovereign, all controlling God has spoken and this is the book that tells us what he said. And you know why the Bhagavad Gita doesn't say that? Because it doesn't believe there's a personal holy sovereign God who can speak. And so this book cannot be the result of God's revelation in the personal sense that the Bible is. That doesn't mean the Bible is automatically right. But don't think that the Bhagavad Gita is running in the same race with the Bible. They're not doing the same thing at all. Moreover, when you start comparing the Bhagavad Gita as a worldview and the Bible as a worldview, the Bhagavad Gita destroys the possibility of the comparison. Did you know if the Bhagavad Gita is correct in what it says, there is no difference between it and the Bible. Oh, and by the way, not to overlook the obvious, there's no difference between you and the Bhagavad Gita either. There's no difference between you and the book and the earth and the sky and the trees and everything. We're all in this thing together. And none of the distinctions between sky and tree and stream and book and human being make any difference. Indeed, none of the distinctions between logically sound and logically unsound, morally good, morally bad, make any difference either. Oh no, it's a huge mistake to think the Bhagavad Gita is running in the same race with the Bible. The Bhagavad Gita undermines all logic and reasoning, all morality, all human personality, all human choice. So what do we have left? We have the arbitrary religions that say, Confucius say, Buddha say so forth. And you say, yeah, but everybody has an opinion that's just arbitrary. You have the books that refute themselves like the Bhagavad Gita. There's no rational basis for science or logic given that worldview. And then you have one other class of religions, the only ones that really is of interest in this race for the preconditions of intelligibility. Materialists can't provide them, dualists can't provide them. The vast majority and vast majority of religions of the world can't provide them. But somebody says, what about the Muslims? Because they've got a personal God They've got a revelation, they've got a book where it's recorded. What about the Mormons? What about people like that? And although in abstract, in terms of the general format or outline of what I'm presenting to you, you might think, okay, finally we've gotten to a good competitor. It turns out at the point where we get a good competitor, we have the easiest way of dealing with them. How do you deal with those religions? You deal with them biblically. And the reason you deal with them biblically is because every one of them is committed to the Bible. There are no unique competitors with Christianity. Christianity, the only ones that appear to give us a run for our money are all dependent upon our worldview. Did you know that the Muslim faith is based on the Quran? The Quran itself endorses the law of Moses, the Psalms of David and the Gospel of Jesus. Muhammad said that the Quran is nothing more but the end of the revelatory process that began way back in what we call the Bible. And so Muslims, if they are true to the Koran, and they must be, because that's one of the pillars, after all, Muhammad, the Prophet of God. Muslims must be committed to the previous revelation of the Bible. And I'm not saying this is an easy thing, indeed, psychologically and socially, culturally it's a very hard thing. But logically, in terms of apologetical strategy, it an easy thing to answer. How do you deal with a Muslim? You deal with the Muslim biblically. You go to the Quran and show that the Quran endorses the Bible. Then you go to the Bible and show that what the Quran says contradicts the Bible. So then, on the Quran's own terms, you must reject the Quran. Let me run this past you slowly. I know time is out today, but I'll try to slowly do this. The Quran says God revealed himself, Allah revealed himself in Moses in the law. So we go back to the law which is endorsed by the Quran. In the law, Moses says any future prophet that comes along must be judged by the previous revelation that God has given. So the Quran sends us to Moses. Moses says you must judge the Koran or any other prophet by previous revelation. Then you point out that what the Koran reveals or claims to reveal is in conflict, indeed in dire conflict, with the law of Moses, the Gospel of Jesus and the Psalms of David. And so the Quran can be refuted on its own terms. How do they conflict? Well, time won't allow me to go into a full comparison at this point, but they conflict first of all in that according to the Quran, God cannot have a son. But according to the Gospel of Jesus, God did have a son, and his name is Jesus. According to the Qur', an, people can be right with Allah, can be right with God by doing good works. According to the law of Moses, nobody can be right with God. In fact, we come into this world dirty and filthy, and that's why circumcision was taught to the Jews. No one enters this world except through an organ that has to be cleansed in the eyes of God. And no one can be right with God without blood sacrifice. There's no blood sacrifice in the Quran. There's no need for blood atonement because your good works are to compensate for your bad works. And so in terms of their view of God and their view of salvation, Muslims stand in utter contradiction to the teaching of Moses and David and Jesus. And so once again, the internal critique of Islam is it rests upon the Bible. It says, and so you can go to the Bible to refute the Koran. How about Mormons? You say, what do you do with Mormons? Because they're not like Muslims, a different religion. They're some kind of version of Christian. Yeah, but Mormons will all tell you what that the Bible is their book. And the Book of Mormon is just what, the capstone of the Bible. It's just another revelation that Christians have left out. Well, but if they honor the Bible and the Book of Mormon, then you can argue with them by comparing the Bible and the Book of Mormon to show that the Book of Mormon conflicts with the Bible. Now what will Muslims and Mormons and all the rest of the. Well, there aren't that many. But in this narrow category of religions that ape Christianity, what will they do? Once you point out the Bible conflicts with their revelation or putative revelation, it never fails. They'll turn around and say, well, then you don't have the right Bible. The Muslims will say the Bible's been corrupted and that in its original form, it really did agree with the Koran. Number one. The only reason Muslims say that the Bible has been corrupted is because it conflicts with the Quran. They have no evidence of such corruption, no history of such corruption. They say, oh, you Christians, you tampered with it. Have you ever known somebody to accuse another person of his own sin? Takes one to know one. You know why Muslims think Christians corrupted the Bible in that way? Of course, there's no evidence that they did. Is that as a matter of fact, the version of the Qur' an that we have today arises from a recension of the textual evidence. In the third Caliphate of Uthman, they called in all the conflicting texts and burned them upon pain of death. So maybe since they've done that, they think we've done the same thing. But there is no evidence. This arises only from prejudicial conjunction. There's no argument here. It's just you must be wrong because we must be right. The Mormons will tell us, well, the Bible's been corrupted and you really need the interpretation of Joseph Smith. Yeah, but Joseph Smith's the only one who saw the plates and only one given the miraculous ability to translate them. And about this Joseph Smith, you should keep in mind that he's been twice convicted, and we know this, of being a con man. In the state of New York, the con man became the prophet of God who tells us he alone has seen the gold plates and knows how to translate them. And we should all now give up the public evidence of the Bible for this. It's asking too much for anybody to be reasonable in that way. Very quickly, at the end here of our session, what I'm getting at is even those written religions that ape Christianity can be dealt with in terms of an internal critique of what they say. And so I think presuppositionalism is not only a strong, indeed the strongest argument for Christianity, it can deal with all comers as well. We'll continue tomorrow. This recording is distributed by Covenant Media Foundation, a non profit educational organization. Unauthorized reproduction of this tape is strictly prohibited. A free catalog of the Foundation's tapes and articles is available by calling 1-800-553-3938.