Tag: presup
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Eight Steps to Popularizing Presuppositional Apologetics
A presuppositional apologetic is a method of defending the Christian faith. Presuppositional apologetics are based on a recognition of the need to be committed to God and Scripture even when chatting with unbelievers who raise supposed intellectual objections to the faith. The result is that God and His Word are presupposed while arguments and evidence are presented. Other methods of apologetics start with presenting arguments and evidence before concluding that God exists or that Christianity is true. Presuppositional apologetics start with the existence of God and truth of Christianity before presenting arguments and evidence. Do not misunderstand; presuppostional apologetics do …
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Are sunglasses evidence of God?
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”
Psalms 19:1-4 (ESV)The other day I jumped into a conversation about the presuppositional approach to hermeneutics. One of the individuals involved in the conversation was talking a bit about the use of evidence and saying that evidences are not always bad.
Well, I …
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Mitch LeBlanc’s Proposed Solution to the Problem of Induction
Introduction
Mitch LeBlanc has written a post concerning induction ( found here – http://urbanphilosophy.net/philosophy/inductive-reasoning-and-the-christian-god/ ) in which he writes that “the uniformity of nature (or rather the principle of the uniformity of nature) states that ‘the future will resemble the past’ and is used in inductive reasoning”. He then attempts to describe the difference between deduction and induction and writes, “…in a deductive argument it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false (provided the argument is valid/sound)”. All Mitch need write in his parenthesis is “provided the argument is valid”. If an argument …
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Logical Fallacies In Presuppositionalism
“I’ll be honest Chris…it amazes me that just like Greg Bahnsen you’ve done a degree in Philosophy yet can’t see through the multitude of logical fallacies present in presuppositionalism. Like all other presuppositionalists you also appear completely unable to demonstrate to any degree of satisfaction how Christ presents you with wisdom, knowledge or certainty despite these bold claims.”
Notice the assertion that there are a “multitude of logical fallacies present in presuppositionalism” as well as the claim to have come into contact with “all other presuppositionalists”. The author goes on to provide alleged examples of these fallacies, however it is …
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Is it sinful to call evidentialism…sinful?
Recently I was directed toward a blog post found here:
http://calvindude.com/dude/blog/2008/08/on-the-%E2%80%9Cappropriate%E2%80%9D-apologetic-method/
I must confess that I am unfortunately not familiar with this particular writer.
In his post Calvin Dude presents a number of arguments against the use of the presuppositionalist method in certain contexts. The arguments look as though they are almost wholly based upon misunderstandings of the presuppositional method. As best I can tell this writer’s concerns are dealt with directly in most presuppositionalist literature.
The author of the entry begins by taking issue with an apologist who claims that presuppositionalism is the only valid method of apologetics, which …
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Zoroastrianism, Part 2
The contributors to https://choosinghats.org/ make an apparently radical claim: People cannot know anything if God has not revealed Himself to them. Certainly then, people cannot know God without revelation. Our epistemology is revelational; we start with the presupposition that God has spoken and stay there throughout our thoughts and actions. Finite, fallible, sinful humanity can know nothing of God apart from His revealing Himself to us, hence Christian apologists who desire to move from some would-be autonomous position to the conclusion that God exists engage themselves in futility. Likewise for those who wish to prove the existence of some …
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In the Church but not of it…
Sometimes it is as if no matter where I go, I cannot cease to be in the world.
Duh.
Where else would I be? Now, certainly I could lock myself up in my house or my closet…maybe move to Phoenix, Arizona and be an ascetic (oh wait, people actually LIVE out there!), but for the most part I am going to be in the world. That is not the difficult part of the little cliche, “We are to be in the world, but not of it”.
Being in the world does not mean living ungodly, saying stupid things, mutilating your …
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Zoroastrianism, Part 1
At base, there are only two worldviews, Christianity and non-Christianity. There are numerous instances of texts of Scripture which give rise to this understanding of worldviews. Of course, within the realm of non-Christian thought there are many manifestations of the non-Christian worldview. For example, Islam and agnosticism are two different manifestations of the rejection of the Christian worldview. These manifestations are what people typically refer to when speaking of worldviews. This may serve to raise some interesting discussions about the terms we use when describing the aforementioned entities, but for now we will set this issue aside.
A frequent objection …
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The Asparagus And The Ape – Part 2
One of the wonderful things about presuppositionalism is that one need look no farther than the very basic teachings of the Bible in order to get one’s answers about philosophical issues which worry and weary the unbeliever. One such problem before the unbeliever is how the essential assumption of human dignity is accounted for in a non-Christian worldview. Our society is ruminated with the implications of human dignity, and yet we saw in Part 1 of the treatment of this subject that there are fatal flaws in attempting to consistently adhere to both a non-Christian view of the world and …
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The Asparagus And The Ape – Part 1
“It was nothing to brag about, just a sort of squishy blob…”
The mysterious squishy blob described above is a character in the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. The blob lives “half a billion years ago”. Ishmael, a story telling gorilla, relates the details of the blob’s environment.
…Nothing at all stirred on the land, except the wind and the dust. Not a single
blade of grass waved in the wind, not a single cricket chirped, not a
single bird soared in the sky…Even the seas were eerily still and silent, for
the vertebrates too were tens of millions of