Search results for: “certainty”
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The Arrogance of the “Impossibility of the Contrary”
A lot of people have problems with the “impossibility of the contrary” claim often made as part and parcel of the covenantal or presuppositional apologetic method. A lot of people. And they have problems with it for very different reasons. I will address only two of them here.
The first is exclusivity. To say that anything contrary to some given position is impossible is to make a very bold claim to exclusivity. I am not going to enter into the various senses in which the covenantal apologist might be using the term “impossibility” here. But it will suffice to …
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Baird is the word
A few weeks ago I was answering some of the problems an atheist had with the apologetic method that we adhere to. He was noticing it to be a new “fad”. I only posted a few comments in response to some of the comments there and moved on. Today I was reading through some of my unread comments and I noticed that Paul Baird responded to me responding to the blogger. I found some of the comments interesting so I decided to answer them from here. I will post the comments that Baird responded to me responding to Adam. …
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“How do you know that for certain?”
A quick qualm…
I’ve noticed a slew of presuppositional apologists on the Internet basing the entirety of their apologetic around the issue of certainty in knowledge.
That has its place. Richard Pratt does something similar here – http://www.amazon.com/Every-Thought-Captive-Defense-Christian/dp/0875523528/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1337572150&sr=8-2
But not all knowledge claims are claims to certainty.
And not all knowledge is certain.
Enough about certainty itself though; that is not the subject of this post.
Rather, when the apologist is engaged with an unbeliever it needs to be pointed out not merely that the unbeliever cannot know anything for certain, but that the unbeliever cannot know anything at …
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Debate Opener
The following is the text I was going to use to open the debate on the 25th.
The Reformation’s theological reclamation sent shockwaves throughout the Church, and the consistent application of the principles of that reclamation created the Protestant theological legacy of Sola Scriptura, along with the other 4 Solas which comprise central tenets of the Christian faith, seen as a cohesive, coherent, comprehensive unit. The premise I intend to defend in today’s debate is that Covenantal apologetics is the only Biblical apologetic methodology. The principle that the Scriptures Alone are the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all …
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Some thoughts on the upcoming debate
In my preparations for the debate on Sunday, and in dealing with the quite providential example Paul Copan gave us last week of the importance of the subject, I felt it might be valuable to give a few impressions I’ve had along the way. My opening statement has been written for a week or so now – prior to Dr. Copan’s comments, in fact – and my first thought after reading it was this. I wouldn’t change anything I had to say. First, because Dr. Copan’s comments weren’t anything we hadn’t seen before. Second, because I’m giving a positive presentation …
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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 …
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Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black VII
…“But how can anyone know anything about the ‘Beyond’?” asks Mr. Black.
“Well, of course,” replies Mr. Grey, “if you want absolute certainty, such as one gets in geometry, Christianity does not offer it. We offer you only ‘rational probability.’ ‘Christianity,’ as I said in effect a moment ago when I spoke of the death of Christ, ‘is founded on historical facts, which, by their very nature, cannot be demonstrated with geometric certainty. All judgments of historical particulars are at the mercy of the complexity of the time-space universe. . . . If the scientist cannot rise above rational probability