Dr Greg Bahnsen - Taking it to the Streets: Worldviews in Collision (Part 2)

Well, I'm glad I didn't scare you off that many of you are back for the second session. That's always an encouragement to a speaker from out of town. People come back for the next session. Now, I've told you that we have quite a task to perform as Christians if we're going to defend the faith, because there are so many different kinds of criticism and objection that can be raised against the faith. And so let me begin our second session by asking you what you think would be the most reasonable approach to dealing with people that have so much to say in criticism of Christianity. I'm going to give you an analogy. Let's imagine that we were in a small room, maybe the size of your living room at home, or, well, make it twice that big, and you're in that room alone. There's no other furniture. It's just you and another individual. And that individual's got a gun, and the gun is loaded. Now, this person wants to shoot that gun at you. This person wants to kill you with this gun. Now, I'm going to ask you, in preparation for that, what would be your most reasonable approach? Here are two possibilities. One is you could learn to dodge bullets, okay? So you could really just work on this so you know how to jump this way and jump that way and go up and down everything so that whatever people are shooting at you, you've got some kind of maneuver for this and some kind of maneuver for that and so forth. Or secondly, you could spend your time learning to disarm your opponent so that he can't shoot the gun at you anymore. Now, of those two approaches, which is the reasonable one? Ah, good, there are some people listening. The second one, the first one, you may show your agility, may be a real challenge and so forth, but you're probably going to live very long. The second approach is much more reasonable. If you have all these different bullets that somebody can shoot at you, the best thing you can do is to take the gun away from your opponent. And as Christian apologists, in essence, that's what you need to learn to do. It isn't as though you need to go home and read all the books you possibly can about this objection and about that religion and about this kind of problem with Christianity, how to answer this, how to answer that, and so forth. Reading those books may help you. I'm not telling you not to pick up on that sort of thing, but that had better not be at the very center of your apologetical strategy, because if it is, that's like trying to dodge bullets. You're not able to learn about all the different bullets that are out there, all the different attacks and so forth. And I'll tell you, although it's my calling before God, and people say, okay, well, you're a professional, Dr. Bonds, and you're supposed to do this. I don't know the answer to all the objections out there on a piece by piece by piece basis. But then I don't worry about that either because I know how to disarm my opponent. If you learn how to take the gun away from your opponent, then you can spend your time learning about this objection. And that. But you don't have to worry about accomplishing the end of that project of study before you can defend the faith. It's important for us to see that apologetics is not simply defensive, it's also offensive. I don't mean offensive in the sense that we have bad breath and we are rude to people. I mean, we've got to take the attack, we've got to take the battle to the unbeliever. That's not what you're inclined to do psychologically. When somebody comes on real strong about, oh, how can you believe that the dead rise, or that God is three in one or this or that, and the other, your first tendency is going to be to step back from that and say, ooh, wow, what can I do here? Well, you need to learn to go on the offensive. In apologetics. There are answers that you can give to people, but you need to do more than simply answer their objections. You need to push hard against what they are saying as well. You see, apologetics has to bring out the irony of the fact that, that those who are demanding a defense from God are, just because they are demanding a defense from God. The ones who are in need of a defense. Should I say that again? Apologetics needs to draw out the irony of this fact, that those who are demanding a defense from God are just because of that, the ones who really are in need of defense, they are the ones who, who, from a philosophical as well as an ethical perspective, are in need of a defense. Now, unbelievers don't think that way. Unbelievers consider themselves self sufficient. They think that they've, you know, got things wired pretty much. They understand the world, they understand life. And it's you Christians that are all messed up. Unbelievers take their self sufficiency or what we'll call their autonomy for granted. They think that intellectually they don't have anything to answer for. Everything's fine in terms of the way they see things, because after all, everybody else at their school thinks the way they do, everybody else on the block thinks the way they do. So they don't have any intellectual or philosophical problems to answer for. They take their autonomy, their self sufficiency for granted. And so they're going to find it hard to believe, but this is what you're going to press. They're going to find it hard to believe that they are in no position to be questioning God and God's revealed word. I like the words of C.S. lewis on this matter. Let me quote him. Lewis says the ancient man approached God, or even the gods. As the accused person approaches his judge, for the modern man, the roles are reversed. He is the judge. God is in the dock. The dock is in English jurisprudence, where the accused person stands. The trial may even end in God's acquittal, says Lewis. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God is in the dock. And that's the way unbelievers think. They think that from an intellectual standpoint, they are the judge, they're at the bench, and God is in the dock. An accusation has been brought against God, who He is, what he says, and some defense is called for. Now God in His Word reveals the unholiness of that attitude. In Deuteronomy 6, verse 16, we read, you shall not make trial of Jehovah your God. You don't put God to the test. You don't put God on trial. When Satan tempted Jesus to do that very thing, to push God and into offering proof of the veracity of his word, Jesus rebuked Satan. He rebuked the accuser. And he did so with these very words from the Old Testament. Jesus declared, it stands written, you shall not make trial of the Lord your God. For you see, in the end, it's not God whose integrity is somehow suspect. It's not God whose veracity is somehow suspect. It's not God whose knowledge is to be brought into question. It is that of those who accuse God. It is their veracity, their knowledge, their competence that calls for an answer. In answering the objections of unbelievers, those who defend the faith should never lose sight of this profound truth. The unbeliever is on trial, not God. Of course, it is incumbent for us to offer a reasoned defense to the unbeliever. We are to deal with his criticisms in an honest, in a detailed way. Christian apologetics will not be served by an obscurantist attitude, by generalities and vague answers. And yet at the very same time as we are willing to talk to the unbeliever and try to explain things to him or her in answer to their objections, we must never lose sight of the fact that that the unbeliever has no intellectual ground on which to stand. In opposing God's revelation. Our argumentation should end up showing that the unbeliever's worldview consistently leads to foolishness and to the destruction of all knowledge. Let me say that again for those of you who are taking notes. Our argument should end up showing that the unbelievers worldview would consistently lead to foolishness and the destruction of all knowledge. And so in that case it's really the unbeliever and the unbeliever sinful lifestyle that is in the dock. It's the unbeliever that cannot make sense of this world. It's the unbeliever who cannot even make sense of his or her objection to the Christian faith. That's what I mean by disarming your opponent. Being able to go in and deal with anybody who has objections to Christianity and to take the gun out of their hands to show that they really are the ones that are in need of defense rather than the living and true God and his Word. Okay, so you know where we're going. You got the project in front of you. What's the $64,000 question? How do you do that? How do you do that? The way in which you do that is by understanding that unbelievers are walking worldviews. Unbelievers are walking worldviews you say. Dr. Masan, I don't understand what that means. I know you don't. That's why I'm here. We're going to talk about that for the rest of this lecture. Unbelievers are walking worldviews. Whose perspective is intellectually justified? Is it the Christians or the non Christians? Many people, many believers who would like to jump in and defend the faith unfortunately take a very simplistic and naive approach to how they do that. They think that all you have to do is go to observable evidence to verify the Christian hypothesis and show that the non Christian hypothesis is false. They say, well that's the way we do things in everyday life. That's the way we do things in science. So why don't we just go out there and look for observable evidence to offer for Christianity and that which will disprove the unbelievers claims. Let's say you and I have a dispute over the price of eggs at the store. How are we going to resolve that dispute? Let's say somebody says, I think eggs cost $1.39. Somebody says, oh, no, no, it's $1.89. You're way off. I may be way off. Anyway, I have no idea what the price of eggs is.139. 189. And so we're arguing, what is it? How are we going to resolve that? Well, we're going to jump in our car, we're going to drive down to the store, we're going to go open our eyes and look down at there and see it says 189. That settles it. Some people think smoking causes cancer. Some people think it doesn't. So they argue and they argue and argue. What do they do? Well, they call for scientific tests and they. They do all these statistical analysis and they observe the results of people who smoke and don't smoke. And they cross check and so forth and so on. And many people think when you get into a religious dispute that it's something like that, that you have to do. We have to go out and look at the evidence. Go look at the price of eggs. Go do your statistical analysis. That's the way we settle things. But you have to understand that when people have a dispute over something more fundamental than the price of eggs or what causes cancer, when the dispute is over something much more fundamental, appeals to observational evidence are not decisive at all. The reason for that is that a person's most fundamental beliefs will determine how he or she accepts the evidence and determines how the evidence is interpreted. I'll illustrate this for you as a Christian. I believe Christ rose from the dead. And I believe what the Bible says about Christ's resurrection being evidence of God's favor, that he was vindicated by God, that he is the very son of God. And so I understand the power and the evidence of Christ's resurrection. But now, if I take Christ's resurrection as some kind of historical or maybe scientific evidence for the truth of Christianity, to somebody who doesn't believe as I do, in the living and true God, who is the creator of heaven and earth, and who sovereignly controls everything by his divine decree, if I talk to somebody who doesn't believe in God, doesn't believe in creation, doesn't believe in providence and so forth, is the observational evidence of Christ's resurrection sufficient intellectual ammunition to make that person change his mind or to refute his position? Now, I have to give you a moment to think about that, because I think many of you have heard, since it's such a popular approach to Christian apologetics, you would have taken for granted the answer is yes. But it isn't at all where you see a person who is a naturalist, who believes that the only thing that exists is what is studied by empirical science, a person who doesn't believe in the supernatural, a person who doesn't believe in God, creation, Providence. If that person is willing to accept the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, that is not going to change that person's outlook, does not need to change that person's outlook one iota, not at all. Does that surprise you? You could have unbelievers accept the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And the reason for that is because an unbeliever will say, well, of course strange things happen in this world, and there's one of them. And one of these days we'll be able to explain it when we get more evidence, and when we study these sorts of things, we'll be able to explain why it is very rare. But nevertheless, sometimes cadavers resuscitate, you see, because you have not dealt with the underlying philosophy or worldview of that unbeliever. The evidence, the observational evidence, even if that's what it were of Christ's resurrection, is not enough to force a change of conviction. Everybody has a worldview, and that worldview helps them to decide what. What can happen and when things do happen, what it means. It helps them to understand man's place in the universe, helps them to understand what the universe as a whole is or what the meaning of life is, or how we know what we know. Everybody has a worldview, and that worldview is what controls their use of evidence. And that's why you are able as a Christian apologist, as a defender of the faith, to deal with anybody who comes along. Because what I'd like to teach you to deal with is the worldview of the unbeliever. The unbeliever may have all these different bullets in his or her gun, all these different objections, all these different challenges, but that gun that shoots the bullets is the worldview, is the philosophy of life that the unbeliever has. And if you can disarm your opponent of the gun, then you can deal with any objection that comes along. Everybody has a worldview. Well, what is a worldview? Let's get a little more precise here for those of you who are taking notes. I'll read this a couple of times. A worldview is a network of related presuppositions in terms of which every aspect of man's knowledge and awareness is interpreted. It's not going to be all like that. So you can all, just for a minute here, put up with a little definition. A worldview is a network of related presuppositions in terms of which every aspect of man's knowledge and awareness is interpreted. Let me go word by word here. A worldview is a network. We're not talking about just one conviction here. We're not talking about just one isolated belief. We're talking about a network of beliefs, beliefs that in some way work together. They may not work together very well. That's one of the things you're going to challenge in the unbelievers thinking. But the point is he's got more or she's got more than one or two fundamental convictions. There's a network of them. And as I've said, a worldview is a network of related presuppositions. There's a big long word, presupposition. A presupposition is not simply a hypothesis. It's not simply a supposition. It's something that's held as a conviction prior to the hypothesis. It's presuppositional. Before you look at any supposition, there are nevertheless fundamental convictions that you use in evaluating hypotheses. And so it's called a presupposition. And I'm saying that everybody has a network of related presuppositions. What are these presuppositions about? Well, they're about, first of all, the nature of the world. One's presuppositions have something to do with the nature of reality and the origin of reality or the structure of the world and its history. A person's presuppositions tell him or her what the limits of possibility are. Some people say, well, that's not possible. Other people say, oh yeah, that could happen. Well, you see, they differ in their presuppositions about reality, about the nature of reality. Presuppositions tell us about the limits of human knowledge and the sources of human knowledge. How do we know what we know and how much can we know? A person's presuppositions deal with fundamental convictions about right and wrong, how we should live our lives. A person's presuppositions tell him man's place in the universe and the meaning of life. So presuppositions are very broad. But if I could summarize it, a person's presuppositions have to do with the nature of reality. What's real? Where did it come from? They deal with knowledge. How do we know what we know? What are the sources of knowledge? And how should we live our lives? Ethics, reality, knowledge and ethics. And I'm saying everybody has a related network, a network of related presuppositions about reality and about knowledge and about life. Everybody has that. And it's that network of fundamental beliefs that interprets every, every aspect of that person's knowledge and awareness whenever he or she learns something. It's put into the general framework of the worldview. It's interpreted according to that worldview. So if you have a naturalist, a person who says, there is no God, there is no creation, there is no providence, when you say this man, Jesus of Nazareth was dead and then lived again, that person puts that information into his worldview and says, ah, the natural world produces strange events. We have more study to do to explain everything that can happen in the natural world. Another person, such as myself, has a worldview where that information confirms the claims of Jesus Christ, shows that God is real, and that Jesus will be the judge on the final day. Now why do I draw those conclusions and the other guy draws completely different conclusions? The answer, because we have different worldviews. Now, everybody has a worldview. And the reason why you find that hard to believe is because not everybody, you know, talks about the things I just talked about. Not everybody, you know, talks about the nature of knowledge and the limits of possibility and how we should live our lives. In fact, you might think it rather strange if your next door neighbor started talking that way too. Whoa. You've really entered into a different world. You're not yourself today. Ben, what's going on? Not everyone talks about philosophy. That's true, but everybody does philosophy. Not everybody talks about it and not everybody thinks about it self consciously, but everybody does it. Okay, so you say, Dr. Bronson, I'm sorry, that's just not true. My next door neighbor, he says, hey, you only go around once in life. Grab for all the gusts that you can get. That's his life. That's it right there. And I want to tell you that is a worldview. It may not be expressed in an academic way. It may not sound real scholarly, it may not be sophisticated, it may not be defensible, but that is a worldview. Let's stop and look at that. You only go around once in life, so grab for all the gusto you can get. What does it mean, you only go around once in life? There's no life after death, right? There is no spiritual domain. That probably means there is no God as well. But nevertheless, you only go around once in life. It's a statement about the nature of reality and the meaning of human life. And notice that there's an ethical position attached to it. So grab for all the gusto you can get. How should you live your life for pleasure? Now, if you were at the local university, we have a name for that. We call that hedonism. In fact, we can get real technical about that. We can distinguish between quantitative and qualitative hedonism. You have the hedonism of Aristippus and the hedonism of Epicurus. And your neighbor happens to follow the school of Aristippus rather than Epicurus. You think he's going to be fascinated by that? He doesn't care. Just give him his beer. That's all he wants. But the point is, his grabbing for the beer is a stunning statement of his philosophy. He says, grab for all the gusta you can get. It's not important to him the quality of pleasure. It's just how much pleasure you can get. Build up those pleasure points. That's what life is all about. So you see what I'm getting at When I tell you that unbelievers are walking worldviews, that everybody's got a worldview. I don't mean everybody's a scholar. I don't mean everybody talks philosophically. But I'm saying everybody's got philosophical convictions. Everybody. Everybody has some elementary conviction about what is real. You know, you tell your neighbor that you saw a ghost, and your neighbor might say, hey, that's real. You can't touch it. It's not real. Okay? That's not a sophisticated philosophical position, not well worked out and so forth, but it's a view of what is possible. Neighbor says, hey, ghosts aren't possible. Now, other people think that they are. I mean, you have people who read, you know, the astrological forecast and so forth, and they've got some conviction about this being a magical universe that mysteriously controls our destinies and so forth. Everybody's got a view of reality. Everybody's got a view of human life, what it. What it's all about. Where does man fit into the universe? Is there life after death? How should we live with one another? What's right? What's wrong? Everybody's got such a worldview. In the nature of the case, then when you defend the faith, what you want to do is to set the Christian worldview over against the non Christian's. Worldview. And your aim is to show that the non Christian's worldview cannot make sense out of life at all. Indeed, the non Christian's worldview cannot even make sense out of the criticism that the non Christian has directed at you. Okay, unbelievers are walking worldviews. And now what you want to do is make sure that you're defending the faith gets around to comparing the worldview of the unbeliever to the worldview of the Christian. I do not mean to suggest that's the first thing you talk about. I do not mean to suggest that that is the first that you talk about. That maybe in your first discussion even you may have to take some time just clearing away a lot of intellectual debris or answering, you know, petty questions that the unbeliever has. But along the way, what you have to eventually get to is what's really at stake. And that's the underlying worldview with which this person approaches the faith and the underlying worldview that you are defending as a Christian. The Bible teaches us that there is in principle an unresolved antithesis between the way unbelievers think and the way believers think. There is a clash between our worldviews and our commitments and our lifestyles. The mind of the sinful nature is at enmity with God, for it is not subject to the law of God, nor can it be. That's what Paul says in Romans 8, 7. The mind of the sinful nature, the mind of the flesh, the unregenerate man's way of thinking is at enmity with God. Take that seriously. The problem with your unbelieving friend is not that he or she lacks information. Don't think that. You see, they really would like to find God. They'd like to become Christians. If we could just give them enough information, then they'd finally convert. That isn't what the Bible tells you. You need to understand your opponent better than that. The Bible says the unregenerate person's mind is an enemy of God. And it's not just that. Your unbelieving friend has failed to subject himself or herself to the law of God. Your unbelieving friend cannot subject him himself or herself to the law of God, cannot think God's thoughts after him, cannot obey what God requires. In Ephesians 4, verses 17 to 19, Paul's description of the unbelieving mind is graphic. Paul needed a real lesson in how to talk to people and not be offensive. You know, because here he describes the unbeliever and he doesn't hold back at all. He says, unbelievers walk in the vanity of their mind. Minds. They walk with darkened understanding. They are guilty of ignorance and hardened hearts. Or if you want it in a real simple expression, Romans 1:22 says, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. In a nutshell, that's what it's all about. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. The unbeliever thinks he's so smart, he's so self sufficient. He, he's got it wired. He understands what truth is, he knows the nature of reality, he knows how he should be living his life. He professes to be wise, but the Bible says he becomes a fool. There is an antithesis, a fundamental principal clash between the way Christians think and the way non Christians think. And the Bible says the way non Christians think reduces to foolishness, to absurdity. We don't really share a worldview with unbelievers, though. Unbelievers are inconsistent. We'll talk about that tomorrow. Especially for what they say with their mouths. There is no agreement between the unbeliever and the believer. Remember how Pilate arrogantly asked, what is truth? When the truth was standing right in front of him? Agrippa differed with Paul over what is believable or possible. Paul said, look, the resurrection of Jesus was not done in a corner. Why do you think that this is not believable or possible? In 1 Timothy 6, 20, Paul tells us that what unbelievers call knowledge, believers call pseudo knowledge. And in First Corinthians 1, verses 18 to 25, Paul goes on and on about how what believers call wisdom, unbelievers call foolishness, and what unbelievers call foolishness. Excuse me, wisdom we call foolish. There is a fundamental clash between the underlying philosophy of the believer and the unbeliever. And on top of that, the Bible assures you the unbeliever's philosophy, whatever its brand, whatever its stripe, the unbeliever's philosophy reduces to absurdity, to foolishness. People might think that if the way in which we approach evidence is controlled by our underlying worldviews, by our philosophies of life, then you never can get down to the bottom of any argument with an unbeliever. Because the believer uses one philosophy to approach the evidence, the unbeliever uses a different philosophy or different worldview. And since those are in principle totally different, they'll never be able to come to agreement. They'll never be able to resolve anything. Well, it might appear that way, if that's all we knew about the unbeliever is what he or she professes. But, you know, the Bible is something of a manual that deals with apologetics and gives us insights in the fundamental truths that we need to operate. And the Bible tells us the unbeliever professes one thing and believes another. Okay, so let's go back to my opening line. Unbelievers are walking worldviews. And let's now expand on that. Unbelievers are really walking double worldviews. Unbelievers operate on two different levels. There is, first of all, what unbelievers say with their mouths, what they will defend openly, what they tell us about the nature of reality, what they believe, the way in which they would argue for it and agree with their neighbors about it, and so forth. But then the Bible says there's also what unbelievers believe in their heart of hearts. They say one thing with their mouth and they believe another thing in their hearts. Isn't that amazing? They profess one worldview, but down deep they believe another. How do I know that? You probably are thinking of the same passage that I'm referring to, Romans, the first chapter, where Paul tells us, beginning at verse 18, that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Who do what? Suppress the truth in unrighteousness. And Paul goes on to say that what can be known of God is perfectly plain to the unbeliever. And it's perfectly plain because God has made it known. He's made it known through the created order. He's made it known through the internal work of conscience, and that no one can escape his revelation because God is the communicator. He is successful in getting the message across. And everyone knows this God, everyone has this truth. But not everyone is willing to give thanks and to live obediently in terms of what they know about God. They rather suppress that truth in unrighteousness. And now what happens when sinners know God in their heart of hearts, but they try to hold that down. They try to distort it, to do away with it. They become vain in their reasoning, and their senseless hearts are darkened. You can't expect the unbeliever to come and tell you that, Say, by the way, I'm vain in my reasoning, my heart is senseless and darkened, and I know I'm suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. God must be very unhappy with me. You go to the unbeliever. You know that's true about the unbeliever. But you don't expect the unbeliever to start by admitting that the unbeliever is going to say something with his mouth. He's going to talk about the nature of logic and science and evidence and so forth and how you can't believe these superstitious things in the Bible. But in his heart of hearts, he knows that he's suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. And so how is it that we can successfully defend the faith even though the unbeliever in principle has a worldview totally opposed to our own? We can successfully defend the faith because God has already convinced the unbeliever in his heart of hearts. What we need to deal with is not the heart of the unbeliever. That's the Holy Spirit's work. I want you to remember that. Don't ever evaluate your apologetic on the basis of how many scalps you have won, okay? It's not a matter of victory and success in getting people to cry uncle that you should be looking for. Because the Holy Spirit changes people's hearts, you, as an apologist, should aim to close people's mouths. It's what the unbeliever professes with his mouth or her mouth that you need to deal with in defending the faith. And the reason why you will be able to be successful is because though the unbeliever says one thing with his mouth and his heart of hearts, he could not reason at all if he did not believe in the God that you are talking about. I'm going to give you a fancy way of referring to this kind of argument here. I don't want to lose you. You already understand it. But this is what we call arguing over the preconditions of intelligibility. The preconditions of intelligibility, that is to say, what would have to be true? What are the preconditions that would make anything intelligible or sensible? What is it that has to be true about the universe or about man in order for us to make sense of something? Let me give you an example. A number of years ago, when I was attending a Christian evangelical college, I spent time evangelizing people on the local city college and the University of California campuses. And I'd come across, of course, all kinds of weird ideas and challenges to Christianity and so forth, but one that really sticks with me. I remember one evening I'm talking to somebody who tells me, this is in the days of the sexual revolution. He's living with his girlfriend out of wedlock. And so I talk to him about the nature of God and God's standards and why God then is displeased with this lifestyle. This person's under the wrath and curse of God and needs a savior. Okay? So that's the general thing that I'm talking about. In the process of talking about the sin of preaching premarital sex, this person informs me that he doesn't go along with all that religious stuff. Well, I knew that already, but he doesn't go along with that. And as far as he's concerned, it's different strokes for different folks. Some people think you should wait till after marriage. Some people think it's all right before marriage, okay? Some people masturbate. Some people are homosexual, some people are heterosexual. He goes on and on about how there's all these different ways the sexual pleasure, and it's different strokes for different folks, okay? But our conversation continues, and I find out another thing about this student in Santa Barbara. He also believes that the war in Vietnam, which was raging at that time, is utterly immoral. It's totally wrong for the US Government to be intervening in Vietnam. And I don't mean to get into that issue with you tonight. Whatever your convictions on one side or the other, however you approach that, you can all imagine my chagrin to hear this person who has just taught me that it's different strokes for different folks, that it's absolutely immoral for the US Government to be in Vietnam. You see how he has violated the preconditions of intelligibility. You can't have it both ways. If this universe or if this world in which we live is such that moral issues are all relative, different strokes for different folks, then you can't turn around and burn banks and go on protest marches against US involvement in Vietnam, because for all we know, that's just a different stroke for a different set of folks. Now, you might be able to improve your apologetical efforts by studying some philosophy and reading books that tell how to deal with unbelievers and so forth. But I want to tell you that if you were to stop and think about it, you could have given that answer without studying anything, if you just would have stepped back and said, now what has to be true in order for this claim to make sense? And then when the unbeliever goes on to say things contrary to it, you can say, hey, wait a minute, you're not even sure about your own philosophy of life here. Which is it? Are there moral absolutes or are There no moral absolutes. My point is, though you can talk about this in philosophical terminology, you all can catch on to this technique of dealing with people. The reason why you're able to deal with any objection that comes to you is because anybody who's shooting those bullets has got a worldview, a gun that is propelling those bullets at you. Every objection is coming from a particular philosophical point of view. And you can disarm the philosophy of the unbeliever. You know that you can, because the Bible says, professing themselves to be wise, they become fools, if you will. Simply actually, and I'll talk to you more about this tomorrow, if you just let the unbeliever talk, most unbelievers will tie themselves in knots. You won't even have to practice that much. Just learn to be a good listener, know how to ask this question, push a little bit there and you'll have them tied up. But here's the point. The Bible says unbelievers have a philosophy of life, but it's one that is foolish. How do you feel about that? Here's a person who has a foolish philosophy of life cannot make sense of knowledge, cannot make sense of ethics, cannot make sense of this world in which we live. And it's that person who dares. It's that person who dares to challenge the existence of the living and true God and His Word. You see, you're in a very strong position. But you need to understand what's at stake here. Every apologetical encounter ultimately involves a clash or a conflict between worldviews. And what you need to do is to show that the unbelievers worldview reduces the nonsense. Paul put it this way. In First Corinthians 1:20, he said, where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Don't you love it? Paul says we're going to take on anybody who wants to argue, where's the debater of this age? And Paul said that. Notice Paul said that because he had this confidence that God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. Now, I've done a lot of study, relatively a lot of study in the history of philosophy, the history of culture and so forth. I've done that more probably than most of you in the audience. And so I could ask you, just trust me, if nothing else, because I've read, I know Schopenhauer, I know Kant, I know Hume, I know Bertrand Russell, so forth. And believe me, it's A wasteland. Out there, the unbelieving world of scholarship roars and roars like a lion, but it's a shivering mouse over in the corner. They don't have anything to offer in the place of the Christian worldview. But you can't expect unbelievers to come and tell you that they're not going to admit their poverty. They're not going to admit the bad shape they're in. And so I would invite you to do more reading about the objections of unbelievers and how Christian philosophy, philosophy can deal with them and so forth. That will encourage you. It will improve your efforts at defending the faith. But you don't need to do that to defend the faith. It'll make it sharper and make you feel more confident. But any unbeliever who comes to you with an objection, you can start asking about what they believe about the nature of reality, what they believe about man, how man knows what he knows and how he should live his life. And in the end, the unbeliever will show that he does not have the preconditions of intelligibility. The preconditions of intelligibility applies to things outside of philosophy, too, though. That's what we're going to talk about, because that's my field of expertise and that's what we usually get into in apologetics. You could be talking to somebody about music or about some. About some ballet or something. If your unbelieving friend makes a comment about that this is beautiful, or make some kind of value judgment that is positive, then you can talk to the unbeliever and say, well, I'm surprised that you think that's beautiful. And this isn't. Because from what you've told me about what you believe, this world is sound and fury signifying nothing. If this world is the kind of world you say that it is, then your comment about this musical score being better than that one doesn't have any meaning at all. That's what we're getting at when we talk about the preconditions of intelligibility. How can the unbeliever make sense of anything he or she says, given what they say about the nature of the world? And there's a reason why I'm telling you this here at the end of this session, I want you to realize that you can defend the faith. You can deal with any fact of the universe, anything the unbeliever wants to talk about, and offer the same defense that I'm talking about tonight, a defense that shows that given the unbelievers underlying worldview, he or she could not make sense of what he or she is saying. If you really believe that about the nature of the world, then you could not say and do what you are doing over here. The preconditions of intelligibility have been violated, which is to say they can't make sense out of life. You all understand that, don't you? Paul says they suppress the truth and unrighteousness, professing themselves to be wise. They become fools. And that's what you're going to do as a Christian apologist. There's a passage in the Bible that very nicely puts this together and I think I'd like to consider that before we break for the evening. In Proverbs 26, verses 4 and 5, you will see how the Bible offers a strategy for dealing with fools. Now, before I go any further, you have to understand when the Bible calls the unbeliever a fool, it's not engaging in name calling. You know, we're used to calling people fools as a way of, you know, putting them down or insulting them. It's like Mr. T used to say, you fool. That isn't what the Bible's doing when it says the unbeliever is a fool. The unbeliever is describing, excuse me, the Bible is describing in the unbeliever a style of life or a mentality that is morally dull and that is futile. The unbeliever should know better, but doesn't. And so he or she gets into all these sorts of different problems. And if you want to know about that, read the book of Proverbs. Beautiful explanation of what happens in your life if you don't submit to God and fear him at the very beginning of your thinking. Anyway, Proverbs 26:45 tells us how to talk to fools. And it gives us instructions that at least at first impression, might look contradictory, although they are not. Proverbs tells us we should answer the fool. I think it begins, answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like unto him. When you talk to a fool and he brings his arguments to you, don't use his foolish philosophy of life to answer him. The fool's going to say, look, just assume what I say is true about things and then try to give me an answer. The Bible says, don't you do that. You answer the fool according to his folly and you're going to be just like him. Does that make sense? When I got ready to come out here from Orange County, To Chicago. I got an airplane that was labeled Chicago. Anybody who gets on that airplane should expect they're going to go to Chicago with me. It's not going to do them a bit of good to get on that airplane, be just like me. Think they're going to end up in Atlanta? Not going to happen. And the Bible tells you that if you get on the airplane with the fool, guess where you're going to end up? In fool's land. You'll be just like him. You won't be able to explain the nature of this world. You won't understand the meaning of human life either. Don't answer the fool according to his philosophy of life. And then Proverbs turns it around just the opposite and says, do. Answer the fool according to his philosophy of life. Answer the fool according to his folly. Why? Lest he be wise in his own conceit. The point here is you stand on the fool's position. You say, okay, let's just for argument's sake, let's assume that it's different strokes for different folks, okay? But now, if that's true, it makes no sense for you to march in a parade or to burn a bank against US Involvement in Vietnam. Answer the fool according to his folly lest he think he's got things wired, lest he think he really understands the nature of life and so forth. Show him the foolishness of his position by running it into the ground. We call this reducing a person to absurdity. I'll take your premises and show what absurd conclusions follow from them. And so then what are the alternatives that are left to a person when you defend the faith in this way? You say, I've given you an answer from a Christian perspective. I've not answered you according to your folly because I'm not going to end up in fool's land with you. I'm not going to get on that plane. Thank you. So you answer in terms of your Christian presuppositions and worldview to show that there is a reason for this, that and the other. There is an answer. But then you take the fool's position and say, but now what would happen if what you say is true? And you reduce that to absurdity, lest he be wise in his own conceits. Paul said, where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Bring them on. Hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of this world? This is very valuable when you deal with people who talk about warfare and sexual ethics and so forth. It's valuable if you Want to talk about beauty, about the opera, about music, whatever it is. But obviously it's very valuable when you get into a specific debate over the truth of Christianity as well. I'm going to give you one illustration. I don't know how many copies there may be, and I don't want to be a walking commercial, but you can get tapes of my debate with the atheist Gordon Stein at the University of California, Irvine from 1985. Now, Dr. Stein is well known around the country, but especially in Southern California, as they head of the Rationalist Federation and Free Thinkers association and so forth. He's an atheist and he's proud of it. And though he has a doctorate, he has decided to give his life to spreading the good news of atheism. And so he's around on university campuses with his book table and literature and answering questions and ridiculing Christians and so forth. The University of California at Irvine, the debate team, knowing of this man's work and his being on campus, asked or invited if he would like to debate a theist. And he said of course he would. You know, he's just going to wipe the floor with these theists, right? And they invited me to be the opponent, taking the different point of view. So I'd like to explain for you. If you get the tapes, you'll get a better flavor for. But let me just explain for you the strategy of that debate and then we'll take a break this evening and come back tomorrow morning in the debate. Basically, what I pointed out is that Dr. Stein has a philosophy of life. I've got a philosophy of life. Everybody's got a philosophy of life. That much you understand. We've been talking about that. And then I pointed out that debate, in order to make sense out of debate, people have to have what we call laws of logic. Laws of logic are laws of argumentation and inference that tell us what a good argument is and what a bad argument is. I can't teach you everything about logic, but I think you all have some idea of what a law of logic is. If I had a blackboard here, I'd say now we can schematize one kind of argument that is always going to be valid. If your argument says if P, then Q Q, that's the first premise. If this premise, then that premise. And then secondly you say P is true, then you can conclude that Q is true as well. Kind of like algebra a little bit. If P, then Q, P, therefore Q. Now that would be a law of logic. Other laws of logic deal with Arguments in ordinary language, like not arguing against an opponent saying, well, you can't be right because look how ugly you are, or something like that. That's not a good argument. You may be tempted to do that, but in your science vacation, don't. Okay, now back to the debate. So I'm explaining. We all have our worldviews. We all have our underlying philosophies of life. And in order for us to make sense out of debate, we need to have laws of logic. Because it's the laws of logic that are going to evaluate the. The arguments used by the different people in a debate. Yes, or what I said. Well, Dr. Stein, because you are an atheist, you hold to the position that nothing is true unless it is material, unless it's physical. Okay, you don't believe in a supernatural or spiritual domain. That's right. But the laws of logic are not physical. No one can hide a law of logic under his bed tonight and say, okay, no one will find this law. I'm hiding it. Laws of logic are not physical. You can't swallow them, you can't kick them, you can't touch them. The laws of logic are not something material. And so here you have Dr. Stein saying, nothing exists except what is material or physical. Since the laws of logic are not material or physical, then he has to say, the laws of logic are not real. There's no reality or objectivity to the laws of logic. Okay, now some of you are already grinning because you can see how the noose has been put around his neck. So the next step is simply this. According to your worldview, there could be no laws of logic. And if there can be no laws of logic, there can be no debate. Therefore, to make sense of your coming to the debate tonight, Dr. Stein, I can see that you really do believe in God already, because that's the only way you can make sense out of the laws of logic to which we are committed, by having this debate. You see, what that is, is if you were in wrestling, that would be a quick reversal on your opponent. What you're trying to show is the very fact that you want to argue shows that you already have my worldview. But you will not admit it. That's what makes you a fool. So my closing remarks. I suggested that we could talk about how to win a debate. What are the rules for winning a debate? So what if I take a gun out and I point it at you, Dr. Stein, and I say, okay, are there moral absolutes or not? Make my day. Because, you see, if he says there are no moral absolutes, then I shoot him and I win the debate. And if he says there are moral absolutes, then he admits that his position is wrong and I win the debate. So either way, I win the debate. And the reason for that is we can do this with humorous examples or we can get real serious and academic and so forth. But what's at stake in every case are the preconditions of intelligibility. This atheist cannot make sense of entering into a debate unless he already knows the Christian worldview and is suppressing it in his heart of hearts. When we defend the faith, you may not be interested in going up on a stage and debating in a university setting, something like that. But when you're talking to your next door neighbor or your milkman or your best friend and they throw arguments at you about your Christian faith, eventually you want to work back to the worldview and philosophy of life that they have, because unbelievers are walking worldviews and you want to show that it reduces to absurdity. Answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceits. In this way you're able to answer any man who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you. And tomorrow we'll look more into the details of how to do this. I hope that's enough for this evening. Thank you.