Apologetics to the Glory of God

Category: Bad Arguments

  • A Fantastic Insight into Redaction Criticism and the Islamic use of it

    Two brief excerpts:

    I can tell you, without hesitation, that the vast majority of those who embrace form and redaction criticism in all of its flavors and kinds do so out of tradition, not out of having examined the case set forth in defense of these methods. In fact, very, very few of those who glibly repeat the party line have ever even given thought to any other viewpoint. Anyone who thinks there is a fair, open dialogue in “the academy” over these topics is simply misinformed. To “get ahead” in Christian scholarship you must—not should, MUST—toe the line when

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  • New Atheism, Intentional Ignorance, and Apathy

    Over at erstwhile atheist blogger Paul Jenkins’ site, he posted the following:

    At Choosing Hats, contributor McFormtist considers what constitutes successful apologetics. As the type of apologetic usually in question at Choosing Hats is “covenantal” or “presuppositional” apologetics, and my own limited encounters with presuppositionalists have led me to the conclusion that presuppositonal apologetics is spectacularly unsuccessful in the declared purpose of apologetics in general, naturally my interest was piqued.

    Early on in the piece comes this:

    Our theology dictates to us that it is God who changes men’s hearts. As Reformed Christians, we understand that God in

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  • Van Til and starting with the self

    I’m posting this here because the blogger I’m responding to has a character limit on his blog comments. The original post can be found here, and my initial comment can be found here. Here is my response.

    “Yes, Van Til distinguishes between “mystery” of modernism and the “mystery” of Christianity.”

    Then perhaps you should have made the separation clear in your conclusion. It didn’t seem to be clear – it seemed to be confusing “mystery in general”, and/or conflating them.

    “Yes, to Van Til, the “mystery of modernism” is irrational, while the “mystery of Christianity” is rational.

    So

    …

  • Copan’s Folly

    Dr. Paul Copan’s “critique” of presuppositionalism has started a minor furor over at TGC, with my response as only the first of many.

    Steve Hays
    Copan on Presuppositionalism
    Does Presuppositionalism Begs the Question
    Paul Copan on Common Ground

    James Anderson
    Does Presuppositionalism engage in question-begging?

    James White

    K. Scott Oliphint
    Answering Objections to Presuppositionalism…

  • Questioning Copan

    The Gospel Coalition is running a series on apologetics, and today’s entry was by Paul Copan, entitled “Questioning Presuppositionalism”. What struck me, while reading his take on the subject, was how superficial and inaccurate it was. He introduces Van Til, and then says that Gordon Clark supposedly “generally followed” his methodology, along with Bahnsen and Frame, and then called it “variegated”. Well, given that he’s simply wrong concerning Clark, and that Frame consciously departed from Van Til as well, I’d supposed that’s an assumption guaranteed to result in a certain conclusion, wouldn’t you? It is not the case that …

  • Jingle Bells and the Money Man

    We had a fabled metaphysical subjectivist in channel recently. They are quite fascinating. He took the time (quite wastefully) to object to our conception of God, express his moral outrage at the conception of God as judge over creatures, et al. It was quite an interesting exercise in utter confusion.

    It reminded me of some things one of my children used to do. My now 11 year old used to have an imaginary friend with the festive name of “Jingle Bells.” Along with all the usual hijinks a young man has with an imaginary friend, they were quite regular chess …

  • Van Til’s Argument Part II

    In our last post, we dealt with the claims made over at The Gospel Coalition Blog that Van Til did not make an argument while setting forth his methodology. “Roberto G” made that claim, and we dealt with that sufficiently for the time being. Now, we will deal with Doug Perry’s assertion that Van Til’s “legacy” has “given us the school [of] circular reasoning held by most presuppositionalists”. His sentence is rather garbled, and none too clear, but it seems to be saying that transcendental argumentation is circular, as far as I can tell. Now, even if this isn’t precisely …

  • Van Til’s Argument Part I

    In the comment section of Justin Taylor’s post, we have already seen perhaps the most common claims made by opponents of the covenantal apologetic. By “Roberto G”, we have the claim that Van Til didn’t make an argument; and by Doug Perry, we have the claim that the argument is circular. To head off any claims that I misunderstand what they have to say, let me quote the two gentlemen in question on the specified topics, and then I’ll deal with their comments as a whole in later posts, as I’ve decided to make this a short series, to …

  • Extraordinary Claims (The Atheist’s Burden of Proof Revisited)

    Fundamentalist Atheists often claim that Christians are making “extraordinary claims” and therefore Christians are the ones that have “the burden of proof” and they use this to try to disarm the Christian from arguing further or they will use this as some sort of dismissive escaping device when an a challenge to the atheistic position is made. Brian Knapp has already shown that Atheists have a burden of proof but I would like to extend his post a little further.

    Often the topic of the burden of proof gets mired down in misunderstanding and sadly in willful ignorance when speaking …

  • Why Shouldn’t Paul Baird Choose Hats?

    Paul Baird has given us his opinion in the case of the use of worldviews he does not adhere to.

    This is a common complaint ie why argue a worldview that you do not hold ? The answer is the tallest child in the playground argument ie I do not have to be the tallest child in the playground to point out that you are not the tallest child in the playground – I can point out that individual (in this instance it would be a child of equal size).

    Paul’s understanding here doesn’t really deal with the problem being …